Detached

By Alisa Burris

After a sudden fire almost burns down one of their units, neighbors Wanda Lindstrom, Charlotte Murray, and Marcy Seele are thrust into immediate turmoil. But the trauma only worsens when a brutal murder is discovered within the ashes. As details of the homicide unfold, white nationalism and the various relationships to this controversial victim intertwine, heightening the women's complicated reactions. Wanda's hidden identity as a Jew and Marcy's decision to convert to Judaism cause an unstated terror to build as they each confront their underlying fears. Meanwhile, Charlotte's assumed ties to neo-Nazism and well-documented criminal background help make her a prime suspect, an automatic label she's powerless to overcome. Told from the women's vastly different perspectives, Detached explores an emotional fusion of their guilt, apprehension, and anger. While they each lead very separate lives, Wanda, Charlotte, and Marcy find themselves attached to each other in complex ways over the course of an unpredictable murder investigation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Running Wild Press
• Release date: Sep 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781955062237

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Acknowledgments

I am incredibly grateful to a number of individuals who have been so essential in the creation of my novel.

First, I'm immensely thankful to Founder and Executive Editor Lisa Diane Kastner as well as Running Wild Press for believing in this work. I feel enormous gratitude, well beyond words, because of their wonderful dedication to my manuscript. Additionally, I'm grateful for Lisa's decision to assign Cecilia Kennedy as the editor. Cecilia's insights, guidance, and fantastic input were so instrumental throughout this very exciting process.

Also, I'm indebted to Rabbi Edward Friedman who helped me determine the Hebrew blessings and transliterations to incorporate into this text. I am grateful for his substantial and extensive knowledge, the great generosity in his thoughtful consideration of my numerous questions, and his much-valued friendship.

Likewise, I wish to thank many family members and friends whom I cherish. I'm beholden to them for their caring support of my writing aspirations over the years. In particular, I want to express gratitude for my mother Bonnie Spiegel's astute feedback as an early reader of this story's first chapters. I'm also thankful to her for showing me how to represent the world that I see with art. Furthermore, I appreciate my brother Noah Spiegel, my second cousin Susan Figelman (who's more like a sister), her parents Matt and Fran Figelman, who are also my god parents, and Raymond and Joan Burris, who immediately embraced me into their family with such love.

Lastly, I want to thank my husband Todd Burris. I'm forever grateful to him for his continued faith in me. As the love of my life and best friend, I treasure his companionship through this wondrous journey of existence.

* One *

I just felt so helpless all the time, like always on edge. Nobody, not even the police, could really do anything. They pretty much told me their hands were tied until something happened. But I knew that would be too late.

- Shirley Myers, Stalking Victim (Endangered, Season 3, Episode 7 on the TrueClue Network)

Even in the cloudy darkness, Wanda could see her bluish-green, glittering eyes. She’d grown used to that unfriendly stare, almost resigned to its icy, tinted glow, which had hovered over the quad for nearly three years. Sometimes Wanda huddled deeply under the covers at night, aware of every coarse laugh, thudding beat of music or piercing, hateful obscenity that vibrated through the bedroom wall she was forced to share with this beast. Just the slightest settling noise would cause Wanda to reach for Ben as he snored or curl herself around the cats just to make sure she wasn’t alone in the dim room. It wouldn’t have surprised her in the least if a shotgun had been pointed at the sheetrock from the other side, perfectly lined up with her head.

But now as she stood in the snow, seeing large, slithering puffs of smoke rise out of the chimney, Wanda knew the rage was not because of her for once. After all, she hadn’t started the fire. She had nothing to do with it. When all of the emergency vehicles arrived, converging on the community driveway with a shrill urgency, Wanda had been watching television. So the blame belonged to Charlotte alone.

Let’s cross the street, Ben whispered to her.

Why?

Wanda noticed Charlotte’s wide figure at the end of the driveway casting a black silhouette on all of the entwined hoses surrounding them.

Because I don’t want to be near her, Ben replied and lifted up both cat carriers from the sidewalk. I might say something I’ll regret later.

Before Wanda had the chance to answer, Ben slipped around a parked ambulance, its red lights still swirling, and found a spot across Juniper Way by the line of rusted metal mailboxes. She rushed behind him and silently agreed it was best to keep their distance. They didn’t need another incident. Yet it fascinated her to watch Charlotte shrug strips of rope-like, excessively highlighted hair off her tattooed shoulders as if she didn’t have a care in the world. The cold air had no apparent effect on her either. Unlike Wanda, who was bundled up in her thick, winter coat, Charlotte stood at the base of the driveway in a frayed tank top and worn-out jeans, scrolling through her phone with an occasional eye roll whenever someone approached. While firefighters ripped layers of insulation from the chimney, letting debris fall along the snow-splattered hill in all directions, Charlotte had the hint of a smirk twisting her brightly colored lips. She leaned in to make what could only be sarcastic comments in her friends’ ears, covering her mouth so that her black fingernail polish gleamed from the streetlights above.

There better not be any damage to our home, Ben said. The gray hairs in his sideburns glinted angrily.

Wanda nodded, but felt compelled to stare at an angular crane that lifted a firefighter into the blackened sky, where he aimed a high-powered hose into the now skeletal chimney. From her vantage point, it looked as if he was entering a swarm of barren branches. Although they were across the street among a growing crowd of people, Wanda clearly heard the fizzing sounds the water made as it hit the chimney’s surface. Then she watched as it streamed off the edges, trickling and popping before each droplet plopped onto the snow.

Amazing, Wanda murmured and swiped some blowing strands of hair from her face.

The whole building might’ve gone up in flames because of her, Ben whispered back. It’s a miracle we’re not homeless right now.

I know.

Truthfully, though, Wanda didn’t know anything. And even though the sight of the smoldering fire was hard to believe, she couldn’t help feeling numb at the same time. In what seemed to occur just moments earlier, she’d endured Charlotte’s screeching, drunken laughter with some man, probably a love interest of sorts, booming his car speakers in the parking lot. Wanda tried her best to ignore the continual racket outside. At times, she raised the television’s volume in their bedroom while envisioning Charlotte as a much-deserved murder victim in one of her favorite programs on the TrueClue Network, violent blood spatter and all. That habit offered a little bit of comfort, but it didn’t erase the frightful combination of annoyance and alarm. However, this channel, with all of its slickly produced documentaries on actual cases, had morphed into Wanda's bible, her insight into all of the obvious perversions that circulated on the other side of the bedroom wall. Based on everything Wanda learned from the station's diverse collection of well-produced shows, she knew something criminal definitely occurred in the next unit. As the screen’s blue glow reflected off the vinyl window blinds, insulating Wanda from the pandemonium a few feet below, she could still hear the raucous cackling between Charlotte and her latest guest somewhere within the misty darkness. He was one of a zillion visitors who drove in and out of the parking lot every day to see that woman with her garish hairstyles, full of bleach and deceit.

Without Charlotte corrupting every morsel of air space, brazenly sustaining an unbearable amount of tension at every turn, this quad of homes would be calmer, safer, and so much more pleasant. That unmistakable reality intensified Wanda's resentment, where she attributed all of the problems that emanated from this corner of near-identical townhouses directly onto her insolent neighbor. If Charlotte were to disappear, conveniently evaporate into pure nothingness, so many issues would disintegrate in an instant, never to tarnish this far section of Juniper Way again. Wanda could picture a slew of vivid scenarios, detailing how Charlotte might meet a most unfortunate demise. Numerous stories of horrific violence were catalogued in Wanda's mind, plots she could isolate as possibilities to remove Charlotte for good. Privately, she considered herself to be something of an expert, an informal detective of sorts. Through numerous true-crime shows, Wanda learned that evil did exist, even in the most unexpected, most sacred places, to degrade and diminish the subtlest pleas for security. From her spot, huddled under layers of blankets, the haunting programs alerted Wanda to realities such as secret drug dens, arbitrary murders, and white supremacist violence, among other shocking inhumanities, that circulated in plain sight. She often considered how Charlotte, in all her criminal defiance, could be woven into each one of those depraved plotlines as the embodiment of every kind of atrocity imaginable.

The ongoing, ever-evolving fantasies were abruptly interrupted when Wanda heard a curious commotion before the firetrucks descended onto the shared driveway. The noises seemed to originate from Charlotte’s garage, located merely inches from Wanda’s bedroom. So despite her habit of turning up the television, an automatic response to these continuous disruptions, fragments of some sort of disturbance shivered into her room and it sounded odd in a way she couldn’t quite name. Yet she didn’t feel worried beyond the usual clamor that constantly echoed from that side of the building, almost deadening her to the daily barrage of noise. With all of the traffic that came and went in the driveway, Wanda figured a car waiting for Charlotte had overheated or something just as routine. Most of the vehicles that barreled into the lot, leaving squashed cigarettes and crushed Styrofoam coffee cups behind on the asphalt, arrived for one person or another in Charlotte’s disorderly household. It was a never-ending cycle that blended running motor sounds and thrashing music into the breeze throughout the day and long into the night. The end result, a hollow sensation of hopelessness, only reinforced Wanda’s ever-present conclusion that she lived in a world of callous disrespect. Surrounded by such inconsiderate noise, her desolate misery became more pronounced by the day. Yet remnants of intense fury still mixed into this numbness at the sustained intrusions. She just knew that her neighbor committed an atrocious offense, despite the slightly disappointing fact that Wanda couldn’t see the illegal act as it unfolded.

But through the various details she had mentally gathered about women killers through TrueClue's programming, Charlotte fit the profile of a classic poisoner with her loud-mouth laziness and bravado, qualities that concealed sociopathic deviance. For months, Wanda noticed how shadowy people were drawn into Charlotte's unit, practically sucked inside with the lure of what had to be exotic drugs. Watching from the bedroom window, listening for any sounds through the wall, Wanda envisioned that Charlotte laced their alcoholic beverages with deadly substances or materialized from out of nowhere with lethal injections to administer by force. Once these unsuspecting guests were eliminated, Charlotte most likely took every item of any worth from the still-warm bodies, right down to baseball caps or embroidered socks, whatever valuables she could collect. Without a care, Charlotte sold each possession, somehow disposing of the remains through methods of chemical disintegration that only a drug dealer would know. Perhaps the odd racket Wanda had heard earlier from Charlotte's garage involved barrels of acid, where corpses decayed into odorless liquid, totally undetectable. Of course, Wanda couldn't verify a single one of her theories, which often shifted, depending on a particular true-crime episode. With her television screen, situated in a chipped, slightly peeling wooden stand across the bedroom, Wanda had a peephole to the sick reality that resided in such close proximity.

I know, honey, Ben often replied with a tired nod, but we don't have any facts to prove it.

She has more cars coming and going than a McDonald’s drive-thru. I just know she’s doing something illegal over there.

Yes. You tell me about it every day.

Whenever Ben made a comment along these lines, Wanda felt an awful ache that mixed shame and rage all at once. She knew her tendency to obsess frustrated him just by the flutter of his eye rolls, the flattening of his lips. But he needed to understand. His instant reaction to brush off her fear as a mere annoyance only made the situation worse.

So sometimes she couldn’t stop herself from murmuring, It’s not my fault we live next door to a criminal.

Usually, Ben appeared to ignore this response. Or perhaps he didn’t hear her mumbled retort in the already well-established rhythm of this continual conversation. Like I’ve told you, there’s not much we can do about it. We can’t really prove anything.

He was right. Ben had always been the king of logic. Yet the way he sat on the couch with his arms folded only stirred Wanda’s hysteria, something she knew from past experience had to be concealed or, at the very least, subdued. Otherwise, Ben would become even more irritated with her. Any insistence on her part and he'd just leave the room. That constant, unresolved tension, which always heightened Wanda’s ever-present dread, caused her to feel more alone than ever. Ben didn’t see the continual stream of cars that sat in the driveway, waiting for whatever questionable services Charlotte provided. But Wanda witnessed this monstrous activity while standing frozen at their bedroom window.

Just ignore it, Ben advised as Wanda followed him around the house one evening to offer details on Charlotte’s latest antics.

Ignore it? She lives inches away from us! Our homes are connected! What if somebody comes over with a gun and kills everyone in sight? What if someone is looking for her and gets the address wrong and goes after us? What if we’re just coming up the driveway and all of a sudden people start shooting at each other? What do we do then?

Maybe it sounded crazy, but horrific crimes of this sort did emerge, even in decent neighborhoods. Wanda remembered one case she'd seen on the series Endangered, where an entire family had been shot dead in an abrupt spree of bullets between rival gang members. The two young parents and their toddler entered a tragic scene of unavoidable gunfire just by stepping into the community's shared parking lot.

But Wanda sensed Ben had grown tired of her many examples over these past torturous months. It didn't matter that she could describe these fitting scenarios to him in detail. He just shook his head with a deep sigh as he walked into their bedroom. The reddish freckles on his cheeks darkened with an impatience Wanda immediately recognized. She felt a surge of worry at her frenetic energy in a bid to persuade him, at Ben’s typical reaction that usually silenced her in the end. But she refused to act sorry or ask for his forgiveness this time. Lifting her chin high, Wanda passed through the doorway behind him and stood next to the nightstand on her side of the bed.

Honey, the woman is dangerous, she said then, keeping her voice measured, totally controlled.

Oh, please, Ben said. It isn’t like one of those investigation shows you’re always watching on TV. Nothing like that’s going to happen. It’s not like we live in Chicago.

That was true. They were far enough away from the city and all of the violence Wanda read about on the internet. But she also knew that bad people were everywhere. It would be impossible to separate herself from all the evil threats that loomed around them, even in little Riverton. Despite the fact that this suburb mostly consisted of monotonous, virtually identical strip malls that flowed down the flat roads for miles, it didn’t make the town immune to people like Charlotte. Yet sometimes Wanda imagined Riverton had secret tunnels, hidden layers that could serve as a shelter against evils such as the constant menace that Charlotte embodied. Perhaps these concealed, even camouflaged sections, were the ideal place for burying actual threats, fully equipped to encompass hazards that endangered the entire community. To protect Riverton's residents, Wanda imagined that nobody beyond an elite squad of officers or high-ranking detectives would ever know about the toxic remains now submerged deep within the soil of these darkened passages.

Nothing’s going to happen, Ben said.

His tone was so casual that Wanda could tell he’d mentally moved on to something else. Knowing him, it probably had to do with sports. Wanda frowned and watched him carefully fold the sweater he’d worn to work that day. This was her chance. Just as he moved forward to open the closet door, she jumped in front of him, her heart suddenly beating with such energy that she felt light-headed for a second.

How do you know? Wanda demanded with both hands on her hips.

Know what?

Grimacing, Wanda said, How do you know nothing’s going to happen?

Because I just do, Ben said. Calmly, he reached around her to turn the closet’s gold-painted doorknob. After placing his sweater on his side of the shelf, he retrieved a gray sweatshirt and pulled it over his head. Keep on working on your blogs and put that jerk out of your mind.

Wanda, now sitting on the edge of the bed, just nodded. There really wasn’t any point telling him she’d been unable to concentrate on her clients for days. A sharp shame diluted the rage, making her feel like a silly fool who wasted so much time peeking through their vinyl blinds. Many more hours had been spent at the bedroom window, straining to get the best view of the shared driveway, than shaping website content from behind the massive, pressed wood desk Ben had put together for her. While the wages Wanda earned were modest, barely covering their lowest expenses, every bit of income helped. Otherwise, they would be stuck sinking even deeper into this nightmare, unable to save enough money for a decent down payment on their next home in a much better neighborhood. Wanda could not have envisioned a decade earlier that buying this townhouse, situated at the far back of a well-manicured quad and streaming with sunlight, would have turned out to be such a huge mistake. But the economic downturn had transformed her lovely home with its Pergot floors and polished oak staircase into a worthless heap. Fury filled her at the thought of how hard they had worked to buy this home, putting money aside for a down payment with such diligence, when years later vermin could easily rent the unit next door without ever being screened beforehand.

This unresolvable fury distracted Wanda from various paying projects. She particularly lost her ability to describe vacation destinations in exotic places all over the world. These short blurbs of general copy, bland enough to be skimmed over without a second thought, were squeezed into indistinguishable website pages as filler and promptly forgotten. But that didn’t bother Wanda as much as the injustice which allowed some people the luxurious means to escape from their lives while others were so painfully trapped. Still, she forced herself into her black desk chair, determined to refocus that heavy weight of useless frustration into more productive energy at her keyboard. From the back bedroom that had become her makeshift office, she browsed through online photos of upscale properties that needed fluffed-up language to lure unsuspecting consumers. Many of these places stood so beautifully isolated on patches of beach, exuding luminous peacefulness through their large, sparkling windows. With their warm, open floor plans and sturdy walls, Wanda imagined the luscious tranquility of such secluded residences. The colorful sidings in ocean tones or decorative touches of light-shaded brick provided the feel of comfortable protection. Despite these reassuring images, though, it wasn’t long before Wanda heard an apparent racket coming from the parking area outside. She rushed down the short hallway to her bedroom window again.

During her clipped march to that same peeling windowsill, where dusty chips of white paint gathered at the corners, Wanda often sensed concern in Milton and Serena’s crossed eyes as they mewed for her to be reasonable. They knew better than anyone how often she stood guard at this spot, the flooring dulled in that one place. With ears that darkened at the tips, both cats documented her predictable movements to peer through the crooked blinds. Undeterred by the serious expressions on their pointed faces as they sat primly next to each other, Wanda felt pulled back to the window every time she heard even the slightest rustle to scan the lot with neurotic care and find this particular noise’s exact source.

You always tell me to stop thinking about her, but she’s vicious. I know she’s a danger to everyone around her, Wanda argued and watched Ben’s frown deepen as he shut the closet door.

Stop giving her so much power, he said, smoothing out the wrinkles on the front of his gray sweatshirt. Then he walked out of their bedroom. She’s not worth it. Just ignore her.

Try as she might, though, Wanda couldn’t disregard Charlotte. She always heard the habitual crash into Charlotte’s recycle bin below their bedroom window, sometimes just as she drifted off to sleep. The complete lack of common courtesy stirred enough rage to make Wanda want to scream, even pound on the bedroom wall so hard that her wrists hurt. Instead, she pulled the quilt up to her mouth, pressing the softness against her skin for at least some kind of comfort. If only her cherished detectives on TrueClue would work their strategic magic to make that heinous woman disappear. In all honesty, the monster belonged in jail, taking her continual hatefulness along with her.

At times, Wanda lulled herself to sleep by visualizing ways to build magnificent barricades between them. She saw beautiful images of broad, soundproofed walls and enough space to transform Charlotte in all her immensity to a miniscule, irrelevant dot, distant and disconnected from Wanda’s home. However, Charlotte’s attached garage would always remain fused below Wanda’s bedroom window, keeping their lives much too linked together, even though they hadn’t actually spoken in months. As Wanda peered between the blinds whenever headlights pierced their bedroom, watching yet another strange, shiny car sitting in the middle of the driveway, music blaring and cigarette butts flying out smeared windows, she fantasized about removing their townhouse altogether. It could be a separate, independent home, free of all the filth that surrounded them. Life would be so much better then.

Of course, this dream was impossible. Their home would be joined to Charlotte’s forever. The only thing she could do was hope that her neighbor’s lease would end soon so she might have her quiet way of life back again. Then her prayers would be answered. Only minutes after her latest, most enduring plea and without any warning whatsoever, Wanda watched shredded pieces of Charlotte’s chimney peel off and land in a slimy pile on the ground. That whole part of the building now looked like fragments of wood and insulation lining the dirt-encrusted snow. Everything had changed in a moment, leaving Wanda to make sense of it all from across the street.

The cats are probably cold by now, Ben said. He stood up from checking on them in their carriers, his breath exhaling into swirls of steam.

Oh, Wanda said. They probably are.

She’d forgotten about Milton and Serena, who’d been silent since the trauma of rushing out of the house. Their crossed eyes, tinted in bright shades of blue, shone fearfully through the cage doors as they stared at all of the unusual activity around them.

Good kitties, Wanda murmured and touched their heads through the metal bars.

The most important thing now was for them to feel safe despite all of the uncertainty that came with perpetually standing outside in the cold darkness. Wanda remembered the panic when that short, sturdy policewoman with her hair in a tight bun had banged on the front door and commanded them to evacuate. Right afterward, Milton had been a streak of white terror as he raced to hide under the nearest piece of furniture. It took some time to get both cats secured in their carriers before following the officer’s orders and rushing out the front door onto the smoky street.

I’m going to ask one of those policemen over there if we can at least put the cats in my car, Ben announced.

I’ll go with you, Wanda answered quickly and followed Ben back to their side of Juniper Way.

Glancing down the street, she noticed a large number of firetrucks and ambulances on the road, blocking cars from driving past. Their twirling lights and humming motors made the night seem even more unreal. For a second, Wanda felt dizzy, nearly slipping on a patch of ice along the curb. She looked down at her feet and held onto the back of Ben’s leather coat as they weaved around people eagerly taking photographs with their cell phones. The excitement that buzzed in the air confused Wanda, especially while parts of Charlotte’s chimney continued to fall onto nearby snowbanks.

As they approached their building, Wanda saw Charlotte out of the corner of her eye at the foot of the driveway. She still stood tall, her chin high in the air. Yet Wanda sensed something else in that pose. She had an urge to find a nearby tree so she could watch Charlotte more closely without being seen. But that was a ridiculous idea. Eventually, Charlotte would notice. Then those callous, stone-cold eyes, glimmering with an unsaid threat, would make her a convenient target as always. The thought sent a twinge through Wanda’s legs, almost causing her to trip. At that moment, a bug-eyed man with a shaved head and an oversized, orange T-shirt approached Charlotte, obstructing her from view with his bear-like embrace. Smoke from his cigarette blew toward Wanda in a lingering, gray cloud. Covering her nose with the collar of her coat, she moved along on the edge of the sidewalk with Ben, careful of the protrusions of ice along the curb’s sharp sides. They reached a cluster of police officers that appeared to guard the intricate pattern of hoses leading to Charlotte’s front door.

Excuse me, Ben said. Then the same stern woman who had told them to leave their home turned around. Is it possible to put our cats in my car? They’re getting cold. My car’s just over there. He pointed to the back of the driveway, where his vehicle sat in its regular spot under the snow-covered branches of their cherry tree.

Yes, sir, the officer said. I’ll escort you. Don’t want to see you get in trouble with the firefighters.

Thank you.

Ben nodded and walked behind the officer while Wanda stayed at the end of their driveway, just a few feet away from Charlotte. The scent of faded perfume, mixed with body odor, wafted over. That odor could be from any of the numerous, indistinct people with their smelly cigarettes and thin, musty clothes who had collected around her, murmuring, shuffling in the cold. But something told Wanda this was Charlotte’s true smell, complete and unapologetic.

Seconds before she ventured a peek in her neighbor’s direction, Wanda noticed an awkwardly tall fireman wearing reflective clothing and an older man, probably a police officer, with a slight limp come over. From Wanda’s vantage point, the two men seemed to appear out of nowhere through the foggy, but brightly lit entrance to Charlotte’s home. She couldn’t quite make out their features in the distance. But she imagined they both had soot stains on their lined, serious faces. Their boots hit the snow in heavy crunches, stopping in front of where Charlotte stood, now bouncing from one foot to another under a ragged spot of moonlight.

Who was in the house besides you tonight? Wanda heard the policeman ask. His voice was crusty, but not disagreeable.

I don’t know. It was kind of a crazy night. I had a bunch of people over. You know. It being Saturday night and everything like that.

Tell me who.

Charlotte let out an exasperated sigh and threw her hands up in the air. My boyfriend, okay? We were just coming back to relax with a few of our friends, you know? Kind of unwind after a long week. That’s him over there, she said and pointed to the man with the shaved head. He saluted the officer, his arm then flopping at his side.

Wanda saw what looked like a large star tattooed on the man's stubbled cheek. She’d wondered if he'd become Charlotte’s latest romantic sidekick. Until recently, Charlotte had entertained a different, but no less tattooed love interest almost every weekend for months.

"Just