The Tin Box

The Tin Box
by Sonia Suedfeld


The storm swept in at midnight.

Outside the window where I stood looking out into the darkness, gusts of wind bent trees nearly to the ground and whipped through heavy snow. It was barely November but winter came early here in the mountains. Within minutes, the world was covered in a cold, white blanket and the first tiny seed of worry was taking root inside me.

Damn you, Robert, I thought. You should have been back by now.

Out of nowhere, the memory of our love-making earlier in the day sent a delicious shiver dancing up my spine. Our bodies entwined on the rug in front of the fire, we had made love to the sounds of wood popping and crackling while outside, snowflakes drifted from gunmetal skies.

Afterward, I set about preparing dinner while Robert went out for more wood and stoked up the fire. As I worked, I looked up every once in a while at the snow-covered landscape framed in the kitchen window. It was serene and beautiful and yet, it was also stark and cold, and I found myself shivering despite the warmth in the cabin.

We were isolated here in the mountains. The closest neighbour was at least a mile up the winding road; the nearest town, more of a tiny village really, was five miles to the south. We’d stopped in at the only grocery store to load up on supplies on the way in the day before, like we always did when we came up to use the cabin. There wasn’t much else in town - a gas station, a hardware/video store, a diner, a church, and of course, the inevitable country-western bar on the corner. The sign at the entrance into town read: “Welcome to Winstonville, pop. 1879.”

The four-room cabin, built of cedar logs on a sloping hillside, was rather rustic but it had great big windows that afforded spectacular views of the mountains and the lake lapping at their feet. It had been in Robert’s best friend’s family for generations, and growing up Robert had spent many summer vacations up here with David. He had brought me soon after we met and in the years since, we had often taken David up on his offer to use the cabin whenever we wanted. It was the perfect hideaway, beautiful no matter what time of year, and we always returned to the city refreshed and reborn.

After dinner, Robert suggested we go down to the bar in town for a few drinks.

“Are you out of your mind, Rob? You know I hate country music.”

“C’mon, Miranda, we never go out. It’ll be fun.”

“Fun? I don’t think so. Besides, the road will be slippery with all that snow.”

“There’s barely two inches out there. Nothing the 4x4 can’t handle.”

“Then you go, if you want to. I’d just rather stay here.”

“Well, fine, then. I guess I’ll see you later.”

His voice could have frozen water in July. I watched him stalk to the hallway, heard the closet open. He returned with his boots and coat on, holding a pair of gloves.

“Oh, and don’t wait up,” he added, his voice a solid minus 28 degrees as he tucked his laptop under an arm and turned to go. “I might be real late coming back.”

The front door slammed and a second later, my empty coffee cup followed suit, shattering against the wood.

*****

I winced now, remembering all the nasty names I had called him, one for every piece of broken porcelain I picked up. But the anger only lasted until I had brewed myself a cup of tea and settled on the couch with a new thriller. After five years of marriage, I no longer dwelled very long over Robert’s fits of icy rage and stalking-off habits. I knew he’d come back when he had cooled off; knew that things would return to normal between us. They always did.

But now as midnight came and went, and still I stood at the windows watching the snow toss and turn in the wind, I felt the knot of worry tighten in my stomach. I stared into the darkness, one part of me yearning to see Robert’s headlights cresting over the hill while another hoped not to see them. I prayed he’d have the sense to rent a room at that tiny motel in town instead of attempting to drive back up in this storm.

By two in the morning, I gave up my post and curled up under a mound of blankets on the couch. A strong fire spit and hissed in the hearth, and I felt its warmth on my cheeks as I watched the flames throw dancing shadows on the walls. Time crept by, and still Robert did not return.

I waited, dozing on and off through the long, dark night. I got up once to add logs to the fire and to check the driveway. Still empty at quarter to five. I wondered and worried and finally slept a little more.

I was up before dawn, stoking the fire and making strong coffee in the kitchen. I drank cup after cup, laced with sugar and milk, and looked out at the mountains and the lake glistening like a polished jewel in the morning light. From this angle, I could see part of the road leading up to the cabin, and I stared at it for what seemed like hours, hoping to see Robert’s 4x4 rounding the bend. But there was nothing to see but the trees and the mountains and the snow that was still swirling thickly to the ground.

By mid-morning, worry was a solid fist in my stomach. Robert had never stayed away for this long before and I tried hard not to imagine the 4x4 wrapped around a tree or crushed at the bottom of a ravine with Robert inside, trapped and bleeding or even dead. I chewed my fingernails down to the quick as I tried to reign in my imagination and decide on what to do.

Robert had taken his computer and there was no television nor telephone here in the cabin. I searched my purse for our cell but remembered I had left it in the 4x4. I wouldn’t be able to call around to hospitals or ask for help from the police, and I cursed myself for not bringing it inside. But there was a radio around here somewhere; we had used it the last time we’d been here. If nothing else, I could catch the local news.

I searched every closet, every shelf, every drawer in the cabin, but couldn’t find it anywhere. David, who often came here with his family, could have taken it with him or maybe the old thing had played its last song and he’d gotten rid of it. There was only one other place I had not checked.

With boots and coat on, scarf wrapped tight against my neck, I set off for the little shed at the back of the property. The wind had died down but snowflakes still drifted from overcast skies, brushing my face as I trudged through a foot of loose, powdery snow on the ground. The air bit at my nose and lungs, sharp and cold.

Halfway to the shed, the high-pitched whine of an engine reached my ears and I turned to see a snowmobile flying on the trails at the edge of the forest. The driver was only a speck from this distance, but I knew it had to be the owner of the cabin a mile up the road. A retired FBI agent and an avid outdoorsman, Fred Osborne practically lived up at his cabin when he wasn’t on the road consulting for various law enforcement agencies around the country. He fished and climbed mountains in the summer, hunted and rode his snowmobile in the winter, and easily looked a decade younger than his sixty-odd years.

I thought of his twinkling blue eyes, and felt relief knowing that he was up at his cabin. I could always walk up to his place for help if I needed it.

I smelled motor oil as I stepped inside the shed, my eyes slowly adjusting to the semi-gloom. I looked everywhere, but I didn’t find the radio. I did find batteries, however, and grabbed a pack for the flashlight up at the cabin. I would also need a screwdriver and opened the scuffed, metal tool box on the shelf in front of me. I took out the one I would need and started to close the lid when I noticed a smaller box tucked in the corner. It was nearly hidden under other tools, and I pushed these aside to pull the little box out.

I had never seen it before and I wondered if it belonged to David. No bigger than the size of a 5x7 photograph and about four inches tall, the tin box was dented in places and icy to the touch. Shaking it produced a rustling sound and the tinkling of objects knocking into each other. My fingers numb with cold, I decided there was no sense in freezing to death trying to open it out here and carried everything back up to the cabin.

I took off my coat and boots and sat in front of the fire on the rug, the box in one hand and the screwdriver in the other. Slipping the tip of the tool inside the lip of the lid, I tugged and teased until it finally sprang open. I might have imagined it, but for just a fleeting moment, I thought I could smell the faint scent of perfume.

The rustling I had heard earlier were newspaper clippings, dozens and dozens of them, some so old they were yellowed and warped around the edges. The top one’s headline read: “Unidentified Body Found Mutilated”, and I drew a sharp intake of breath as I pulled the clippings out of the box. “Foul Play Suspected”, “Local Woman Raped and Murdered”, “Body Pulled From River”, “Decapitated Body Found in Forest”. The headlines were terrible, the few words I read while scanning the articles even more so and I found myself overcome with horror and repulsion.
The bottom of the tin box looked a lot like the bottom of my own jewellery box, with bracelets and necklaces and rings all tangled together. There was little doubt that these items had belonged to the women described in the articles.

Trophies, I thought. Souvenirs.

My hands were shaking as I picked up the clippings again. I couldn’t help the shudders racking my frame or the tears that welled in my eyes as I read story after story of murder and depravity. I noticed that some of the clippings had no dates or any other identifying information, while others did. The oldest I found dated back nine years, the newest five months ago. Some had newspapers’ names printed at the top - The Chronicle Journal, The Sun Times, The Mountain Reporter. I had never heard of any of them. But what struck me was that the crimes had taken place all over the states, from California to Florida, and many others in between.

Nine years. Eleven states. Sixteen souvenirs in a tin box.

A box that had to belong to David. Or did it?

Synapses were firing in my brain; tiny electrical charges raced from nerve ending to nerve ending, bridging the gap between buried memory and conscious recollection. Fragments of thoughts and images flew at me. Thousands of pieces to a puzzle started to take shape in my mind, and I squeezed my eyes shut as knowledge stole my breath.

It could just as easily belong to Robert.

No, it was impossible, I repeated to myself over and over again, even as another voice inside my head told me otherwise. Unless David had suddenly started inviting all kinds of people up to the cabin - and I seriously doubted it - the box had to belong to David or Robert. An only child whose parents had died several years earlier, David trusted no one but Robert to take care of the cabin as well as he did. But even more damning was the fact that Robert and David, who worked together at the same bio-chemical lab, often attended conferences all over the states as part of their jobs. Just last year, Robert had gone to a conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Sure enough, when I dug through the clippings, I found one detailing the murder of a woman whose body had been found along a highway just outside the city eight days after the conference ended. She had been stabbed forty-two times in the chest and stomach, and I felt nausea roll in my stomach.

Had David been with Robert at that conference in Georgia? I couldn’t remember. Was he the killer? Or was it Robert? I pictured them both in my mind. Tall, blond and good-looking, David was a good friend, the kind of man who joked with everyone, loved his wife and four kids, worked hard, and played even harder. He was into car racing, mountain-climbing, and had recently started taking lessons to become a helicopter pilot. He also drank like a fish, flirted with other women every chance he got, and gambled excessive amounts of money at the card tables. But did those things make him a killer? And what about Robert, my own husband? Where David was light, Robert was dark with brooding good looks and the personality to match. His idea of fun included reading 800-page novels and working for weeks on a single short story in his spare time. Robert was the type of man who preferred wine to beer, baths to showers, auctions to sports. He loved doing the crossword puzzle, taking long walks in the woods and making love in the afternoons.

I felt tears slide from under closed lids as I thought of our love-making the day before. Surely the man who had loved me so slowly and tenderly on the rug in front of the fire could not be the same man who had killed so brutally and repeatedly in various states around the country. Robert could sometimes be intense, distant and cold, but most of the time he was sweet, loving and kind, and I could not imagine him taking another human being’s life. David, neither, for that matter. But it had to be one of them.

David or Robert? One of my closest friends or my husband of five years? I wanted to scream and tear my hair out. I wanted to run away and never look back. I wanted to erase everything I knew, and pretend that it was all just a nightmare.

I don’t know how long I sat there, feeling the chill of the cold in the air while a much-colder fear clawed at my heart. I was alone in the mountains. The closest neighbour was a mile away. I had no car, no phone, no TV, no radio, no computer. What I had was a friend and a husband, either of whom could be a cold-blooded murderer. A serial killer.

The room starting spinning, the walls disappeared, and the snow drifted, swirled, danced around me. I shut my eyes and let my head fall over my knees. My whole life, my marriage, everything I knew was crumbling down around me, and suddenly I was struggling to catch a breath as sobs tore from my throat.

I was crying so hard I didn’t hear anything at first. But gradually, the sound of an approaching vehicle reached my ears. I flew to the window, but it was not Robert’s red 4x4 I saw coming up the road. It was David’s white Bronco.

The sight paralysed me. Fresh fear choked me like fingers at my throat. I stood rooted to the spot by the window, watching the truck get bigger the closer it got. An image of a deer caught in headlights flashed at me, and I forced myself to move. I picked up the clippings and the jewellery scattered on the rug, stuffed everything back in the box, and crammed the lid down tight. I stood holding it in my hands, searching for a hiding spot, fighting waves of panic cresting in my chest at the sight of the Bronco turning in the driveway. I didn’t have much time.

I stuffed the box behind a row of books on a shelf as the sound of the Bronco’s engine died and a car door slammed outside.

When a knock sounded at the door a few seconds later, I yanked it open, ready to turn on the tear jets, and gasped when I saw Robert standing next to David on the steps.

“What… Oh my God, Robert!” I sputtered, eyes wide. “Where the hell have you been? I was worried sick.”

Robert rushed inside and hugged me to his chest. The relief I felt at seeing him alive and well was quickly replaced with repulsion as his arms closed around me.

“I’m so sorry, Miranda. There was no way to call you… the cell was in the 4x4.” He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to me. “You must have been up all night.”

It didn’t take long for the story to come out. After leaving the bar around midnight, Robert discovered the 4x4 wouldn’t start. He rented a room at the motel and called David in the city, who drove up this morning to help out.

I surprised myself by acting as I normally would, ushering them both to sit at the table while I brewed coffee, made sandwiches and kept the conservation flowing. A half hour later, they left again to see if they could fix the 4x4.

I waited until the Bronco was only a speck along the road before grabbing the phone off the counter. I had just started dialling Fred Osborne’s number when I heard the high-pitched whine of an approaching snowmobile.

I threw the door open before he had even climbed off his machine. “Fred! What a surprise! I was just about to call you. Come in, come in.”

Fred stamped his boots before entering and shut the door behind him. “Saw you out earlier and thought I’d drop by with a little something to warm you up.” He produced a bottle of his homemade wine from under his parka and set it on the table. “Wasn’t that David I just saw heading down the road?”

I told him it was and explained what had happened with Robert’s 4x4 as I took his coat and ushered him into the living room.

“So is that why you were about to call me? You need something for the 4x4?”

I shook my head, motioned him to a chair and retrieved the tin box from the shelf. I set it on the coffee table and took a seat on the couch.

“I found it in the shed today,” was all I could say through the lump in my throat.

Fred said nothing as he picked up the box, pried it open and rummaged around the clippings and the pieces of jewellery inside. I watched him examine a diamond ring and waited long moments as he read through several of the clippings.

Finally he set the box down. “Where’s the phone? I’ve got to make some calls.”

“On the kitchen counter.”

I dropped my head in my hands, despair washing over me like frigid water. Those calls would set in motion a series of events I could imagine only too well - Robert and/or David led away in handcuffs, lurid headlines splashed across newspapers, a painful trial drawn out over many months. My life as I knew it would never be the same.

I heard Fred’s footsteps returning to the living room. I started to lift my head and twist around when I felt the cold, sharp point of a knife press against the side of my neck.

In the next instant I felt shock, then relief - Robert wasn’t the killer after all - and then fear unlike any I could ever have thought possible. I felt a trickle of urine run out of my body as my heart hammered against my ribs.

“What, no screaming?” Fred rasped in my ear as he came around and sat beside me, jerking my head back against his shoulder. “Too busy trying to work it all out, aren’t you? Well, let me make it easy for you, Miranda. I put that box in the shed, for safekeeping. I’m the killer. I’ve been killing for ten years; I even worked and consulted on some of my own cases, believe it or not. Who’d suspect the great Fred Osborne, retired FBI agent, the guy who helped catch monsters like the Highway Hacker and the Richmond Ripper? But you probably knew most of that already. What you don’t know is this… when I’m done with you, the local cops are going to get an anonymous phone call, and when your hubby and his buddy get back later, they won’t just find your corpse and this box. The cops will be waiting, too, with handcuffs.”

I couldn’t help the sobs and pleas that tore from my throat. “Please, Fred…”

“Shut up,” he growled, slapping me across the face as he pushed me down into the couch and straddled my hips, placing his full weight on me. I caught the blur of the knife as he plunged it towards me, and I screamed in terror, my legs kicking at empty air.

But it was my shirt and bra he sliced through, not my flesh, and I knew at that moment that immediate death would have been preferable to all the sick, perverted things he planned to do to me before he killed me.

His hands were cold and rough against the soft skin of my breasts, the tip of the knife sharp and hard as he trailed it down to my stomach and started cutting my jeans. I dared not move. Only my eyes darted around the room from beneath half-closed lids as I searched for anything that could serve as a weapon.

When I was naked, he moved off the couch and stood looking down at me as he started to take his pants off. I waited until he had pulled them down to his ankles before making my move.

Then in one fluid motion, I lunged for the screwdriver I had left on the coffee table earlier, grabbed it and stabbed at him. He tried to dodge, but with his feet tangled in his pants, he started to fall towards me and I felt the screwdriver plunge into flesh. With a whoosh of air, he collapsed on top of me, pinning me to the couch.

Screaming the whole time, I struggled with all my might and finally managed to wiggle out from under him. Face down on the couch, with bare buttocks raised in the air and blood pooling beneath him, Fred Osborne was dead.

I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at him while my body shivered with shock and cold. I had just killed a man, a monster for sure, but a human being nonetheless, and I knew it would haunt me for the rest of my days.

But I had killed more than just a man. I had killed a friendship and a marriage with distrust and suspicions and for that, I could never forgive myself.

I let the tears fall down my face like the snow falling outside as I stood by the windows and waited for Robert and David to return.

(Note: This story received Honourable Mention and appeared in the Tall Tales and Short Stories Vol. III anthology, published by Tall Tales Press in 2005)