“I gather the divorce was ugly?”
“No, it was more than ugly. She made all these accusations about me being abusive, physically and verbally. Never anymedical reports for evidence, nothing at all, but she got a woman judge.”
“Oh my God,” Kate murmured.
“I ended up not getting anything out of my marriage, and she got it all. But worse than that,” he said, his voice filled with pain, “she got my sons.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have cared about anything else. The bitch could have had it all,” he declared, “but she didn’t have to take my sons. And then she did even worse than that.” Charlie glared at Kate with such fury in his eyes. “She turned them against me and told them all kinds of lies. And they were lies,” he stated. “I never laid a hand on her. I never yelled at her. She was just like the rest of them bitches. She was the one always yelling at me.”
Turning his face, pointing to a long scar on his cheek, he went on. “You see this scar?”
She nodded slowly.
“She did that. With a knife no less. A kitchen knife. She lost her temper.” He added, “I never told on her either. I never did.”
“Maybe you should have,” Kate suggested.
He glared at her. “You know how many people would have laughed at me then?” He roared, “They all would have said I was weak. How it was stupid to be abused by a woman. That I should tune her up, like she deserved. But I couldn’t do it. I was raised to never hit a woman. How the hell was I supposed to do anything and hit her now?” he asked, shaking his head. “I hated her. God, I hated her,” he repeated, “but I never ever touched her. Even after all she did. And she’s still out there, walking around, being the same old bitch she always was, which apparently I couldn’t see before we got married. Oh no, she was just pretending to be this absolutely gorgeous woman who supposedly loved me.” Tears were in his eyes at this point. “But she never did,… no, she never loved me at all. Once she got hersons, that was it. She got the house too. She got everything. And me? What have I got?”
He shook his head. “I got a fucking scarred-up face and nothing else. It shouldn’t be allowed. You know that, right?” He started to get angry again. “Somebody had to do something.”
“And you thought that was you?” Kate asked.
“Well, it’s not as if you would do anything about it, would you?” he sneered. “No way you would stop Jenna from hitting her husband. You know she used to do that, right? Jenna used to beat the crap out of her husband, and he didn’t do anything to deserve it. But everybody thought he was abusive. No, no, no, it was the other way around. He was the one taking all the shit from her. I told him once that he shouldn’t stand for it. And he just looked at me, horrified that I actually knew. I told him once that I understood. But he didn’t really understand what I did understand.”
Charlie’s words started to get jumbled up.
“I realized then just how bad it was. I mean, I’ve watched those two couples for years. And the bitchy wives had just gotten worse and worse and worse,” Charlie said. “Relationships are supposed to make you better together. Those two, Jenna and Robin, they had a vile evilness within them that you could never imagine. And everybody suffered. I’ll tell you that the world is a hell of a lot better off without them.”
“So you decided that you would become judge and jury and that you would carry out the maximum sentence,huh?”
He nodded. “Damn right, I did. Somebody had to.” Charlie glared at Kate. “You cops wouldn’t touch them. The judges wouldn’t touch them. My wife got away scot-free for being the bitch she was and left with me with nothing. Nobody could touch her now,” he snapped. “I figured it was up to some of the men who have taken all the abuse all this time to put a stop to it.”
“Did they know about your plans? The husbands, I mean.”
“Nah, not really. One time I told Agnew that I might just do something about it. But that was after they were all having a bawling session, where all these guys were talking about how bad it was. But I didn’t come right out and tell anyone I would do that. I think Agnew might have wondered though.”
“You think that had something to do with his attempt to commit suicide?”
He thought about it and nodded. “You know? It could have. Guilt would eat at him, especially if he thought I would do that, but I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone. No, no. He needed some time to get his head together. He needed time to heal. Man, that bitch took the stuffing out of him, tore it all apart right in front of him, and threw it on the ground and stomped on it. There wasn’t a whole lot left of the real Agnew for him to deal with the aftermath.”
“Suicide is like that. You think the world’s better off because you’re such a loser.”
“Somebody needs to build that kid back up again and tell him that it wasn’t his fault. It was all that damn wife of his.”
“And the other couple?”
“I already told you,” he said, with a dismissive wave of his hand.
It bothered Kate that two lives were deemed so unimportant that they were picked to die because a wife may be having a bad day, or maybe they had a bet going that day, or maybe she was kicking her husband. Maybe she was doing something else, and Charlie thought that she was kicking him because he was coming from that perspective where everything was so bad and so ugly, and that’s all that women did. It really bothered Kate, but this wasn’t the time or the place to share that with Charlie. Plus, she also didn’t need to set him off either.
“I still think it’s sad,” she told Charlie quietly, “that you snuffed out two more lives because you just figured they were headed down that pathway.”
He shrugged. “Once I killed two, I was already headed for life in prison anyway. What’s two more?”
She winced.
He nodded. “You ever kill anybody?”
“Yes, in the line of duty,” she replied, tilting her head to the side. “I’d like to think it was justified.”