The excited charge waned in me after a cool shower and a glass of wine. I’d found the endless pool of energy did have a bottom, but there was enough in reserve to carry me through the night. I’d take a small nap before Steve and the kids were up and then send them off into their day before finally laying down to sleep longer. Nerd would be waiting for me in the early afternoon. We’d completed our first contract and earned our first commission. It was time to pick up the next job.
I cleaned up, poured some wine and went snooping in our home’s office. From the looks of Steve’s desk, he’d spent the evening in and out of the office too, leafing through one particular case. Papers and photographs were strewn across the top, shoved around like a deck of cards. In my heart, I feared that it was the case about the homeless man. They had the buttons, that was something, and Steve seemed convinced that he needed my blouse.
I pinched the corner of a photograph and slipped it out from beneath a short stack of court documents. As the crime scene photo came into view, I nearly spilled my wine. The photograph showed me John’s beautiful face—a bullet hole above his eye, his perfect skin blown apart and caving into a black chasm. His eyes were open, which surprised me. Just half slits, but enough to see them staring up at me. There was no color in them anymore. The piercing sea-green that captured every girl’s attention had turned pale, almost gray or white beneath a dull film. A lump of hair and skull and brain matter spilled out of the top of his head where the bullet had exited, showing the small eruption of gore that had killed him.
I gasped and turned away, hating to see my friend like that. I put my mouth to the lip of my wine glass, spilling the fruity taste onto my tongue.
“Why are you doing this to yourself, Steve?” I mumbled, trying to understand what it was my husband was searching for.
“Maybe this was John’s fate,” someone had said at the funeral. I’d wanted to turn around and smack that person in the mouth. Steve had held my arm, coaxing me to remain calm, and soothing me. A cop’s wife never wanted to hear those words. And it wasn’t just me; the moist eyes of those around the casket had stared sharply, fixing hurtful, witching looks on the asshole behind me.
“It’s fate, I’m telling you,” he’d continued. I had begun to spin around again, but stopped short when Steve spoke up.
“Maybe you need to shut up,” Steve had whispered harshly over his shoulder. I hated that there was some truth in what was being said. But sometimes the truth was best left unspoken. I shook my head, hearing and feeling the echo of the man’s sentiment.
Fate could be cruel. A minute more, a minute less, and John would still be alive.
Fate is cruel, I thought. A moment, a flash, a pull of a trigger, and lives changed forever.
John’s family was in my mind, and the sting of a tear came to my eye. Maybe John’s death had given Steve the idea, a small miracle, that he should take charge of his own fate.
“Is that why you’re looking at these?” I slurped down what remained, chasing the earlier whiskey buzz, and swiped at my eyes before pouring enough wine to fill the round glass again.
A yellow legal pad lay cocked and lifted at one corner, cradling another pile of case files. A pen sat atop, perched and threatening to roll. All the markings on the page were in Steve’s familiar scratchy handwriting. I peered over my wine glass, gulping faster, pouring more, beginning to feel a little drunk. Fleshy blue lines had been scrawled across the yellow page. The curvy scratches connected circles with other circles and dates held inside penned boxes, along with names.
Names? What names? I wondered, thinking John’s case had been open-and-shut.
At the center, I saw one name that Steve had firmly traced over and over again, circling it until he’d nearly torn through the paper: Todd Wilts.
TWENTY-FOUR
WHEN I FINALLY laid my head on my pillow, I was drunk from the wine. I pushed what Steve had written on the legal pad to the back of my mind. I stared up at our ceiling and imagined beaming lights of vibrant colors jutting across our bedroom. My body thumped to a bass tone that wasn’t there but that rattled our bed, humming through me in a steady rhythm.
I was in the tavern again, surrounded by college students and drinking shots with Todd. He gave me a starved look that said “I want to fuck you,” and then placed a shot glass in front of me. A woman’s moan sounded from far away. I threw the shot of White Bear Whiskey to the back of my throat, choking down the fire in one gulp, and heard the moaning cries come again.
The smell of diesel fuel and the sound of gas station bells forced my eyes open. I’d dozed. She hated it whenever I fell asleep. “After all,” she’d said, “I’m doing this for you too.” The moaning became loud—a man’s voice whispered sex-filled words I’d heard before, but his voice was new. The air was moist with humidity, steamy. I sat up and peered through the car window. Semi-trucks were parked around us, but behind them I saw the woods and heard the chirp of tree frogs singing while fireflies danced, blinking on and off like strings of holiday lights.
The man was almost done, and the woman was close behind. By now, I’d learned the sounds and recognized the changes in their breathing and the whispery chatter that went back and forth, leading, urging, and encouraging. When I looked over the seat, her lips were in full view, her finger poised and pressing against them.
Shush, she motioned. I moved forward, climbing from the trunk of our station wagon to the middle seats—my skin was sweaty-wet and slipped against the vinyl. When I made my way to the floor behind the front seats, I found the belt she’d placed there. I picked it up and traced the wings on the buckle, running my finger over the raised metal.
“Make a loop,” I whispered, remembering what she’d showed me, pinching the belt’s hole over the metal stud. “Backward and inside out so the buckle faces me.” Then I wound the tail around and fished it through the hinged ring. The noose was ready. I grabbed the loose end and glared above as the sounds of their sexual peaks rained over me. She eased his head back with a practiced proficiency, her fingers in and out of his mouth, perching his neck over the edge of the seat. He made sucking noises and his panting became heavy, filling the car with the smell of liquor. And when he began to grunt, I raised the belt loop and did what I was told, throwing it over his head. The leather stretched immediately, creaking as it cinched tight against his neck. I hung on, my body bouncing up and down while he choked and tried to free himself. Her moaning was all I could hear then, like an explosion of thunder after a lightning strike. She held on too, riding him, her hands clutching his neck. She climaxed then—her screams heightened by the sudden death of her lover. There were no sounds after that. Only quiet satisfaction.
My eyes opened wide with a start, my stomach flipping and groaning harshly. A dull throb ached in my balloon head. I had seen more of the dream this time. I remembered more of it too. And it scared me that I knew who the little girl was: it was me. I wanted to cry.
I rushed into the bathroom, the urge to vomit making my mouth water. All that came up were gassy burps. I managed to hold it in, making it to the sink where I hung on to the stone lip and rushed water over my face. I’m not sure how long I stayed like that; I might even have dozed in that position. Until I heard Steve getting out of bed.
Waking in a haze, bloated, bleary-eyed, and seeing doubled images—all the bad that comes with a gut-wrenching hangover—marked my morning. The front of my head weighed me down like a stone. The drinking didn’t help, and though I can be a lush at times, I think the hit against the wall made the morning worse. The mark above my eye had swollen horribly, turning into a juicy bruise full of color. That would definitely turn some heads. I should have put an ice pack on it instead of cracking open a bottle of wine. I scooped a finger-full of concealer and creamed it over the egg, wincing when I neared the center.
Another look in the mirror gave me the urge to vomit again. That last part was all wine. I was sure of it. I still felt drunk. No wonder, since I had finished the entire bott
le while pouring over every case file on Steve’s desk. I had stayed up until I heard the first of the early morning traffic, searching for connections that related to my first mark.
Steve entered the bathroom and lifted his nose as he passed me. I wouldn’t have time for a shower. I headed for the kitchen to get the day started. Our bed called to me, urging me to climb in, and every part of me wanted to wrap myself up in a blanket and stay there until the storm in my body passed.
Maybe later, I promised myself as the sound of the shower came on.
The rest of the morning came and went like the dream I’d had—my body in motion but my mind a vaguely detached observer. I wasn’t entirely there, yet I’d managed to make my way to the kitchen and go through the motions of getting the kids breakfast and sending Michael off to school. Steve barely said a word. No amount of alcohol was going to rinse away the tension from the night before. While he didn’t mention my missing blouse, his frustration and suspicions, and maybe even mistrust, lay on me like an itchy blanket. There was only so much of it that I could take.
“He’s a cop,” I told myself. “You’re only fooling yourself if you think that this is going to pass.”
I caught him glancing at the empty bottle of wine in the sink, tilting it as if reading the label.
“We’re doing this now?” he asked, his voice sarcastic and uncaring. But what hurt more was the purposeful distance he put between us. He never made eye contact, not once, and even seemed to go out of his way to avoid me. We’d had tense times in our marriage before, but nothing like this. It was taking us to the edge. I could feel us getting closer. It wouldn’t take much more before falling into that place that was so impossibly hard to climb out of.
“Just had a few glasses,” I said, but I heard the slur in my words and stopped talking out of embarrassment. I caught his stare, brow raised and wondering if I was still drunk. I tried to make it sound better than it was, adding, “Had some drinks with Katie too.” I began to clean the kitchen, trying to look busy. My hands jittered as I picked up and put down flatware and plates for no reason other than to burn nervous energy. I’d lied. I’d been lying. I felt guilty. And that was what Steve was picking up on, he just didn’t know it.
But nothing I could say or do would help. Steve didn’t care about the drinking. We’d been drunk around each other a thousand times—played drinking games, nursed each other’s hangovers. He did care about the truth. The air between us was only going to get thicker as long as the truth about what happened with the homeless man stayed hidden from him.
TWENTY-FIVE
WHAT I’D LEARNED from Steve’s notes was that Todd Wilts had been a known acquaintance of one Luis Garcia, the man who’d shot and killed John. Steve wasn’t just browsing through John’s case file to feed some morbid act of mourning—he was investigating. He’d found a clue that had connected Luis to Todd. Picking up and reviewing all known acquaintances was any detective’s usual procedure. But, in this case, Todd happened to be my first job. By now my first contract was completed and my hit, my mark, was lying on a steel table, growing colder and awaiting an autopsy.
What did that mean for me? For Nerd?
There was one other name on the notepad. I could almost see the hesitation in Steve’s handwriting: Jerry. And below his name, Steve had added the word “license.” Katie’s husband wasn’t having an affair—he’d gotten himself involved with the folks at the tavern. I just didn’t know with what exactly, and maybe it was better that I didn’t. College kids might like the tavern for the dancing and the booze, but it was business when it came to the liquor that Sam had told me about.
Was there more? Why would Sam pay Jerry?
For most of the morning, I remained puzzled by what Steve had written on his notepad. Jerry? Even as Katie waved to me at Romeo’s—our weekly lunch had come around again—I couldn’t stop wondering what connection her husband had to Todd Wilts. I waved back to her and opened the door to the café. This would be a short lunch; Katie said that she wouldn’t be able to stay, and I was eager to meet with Nerd and discuss what I’d found anyway. While the flash drive he’d given me was great for browsing the Deep Web, I thought—hoped, really—that he’d know of a way to find out how Jerry was involved with the White Bear.
“What happened to you?” Katie asked, but I hardly heard her words. For the first time in our lives, I was concerned for my friend. She wasn’t dressing the business part today. Jeans and a shaggy mop of hair, with a shirt and jacket that had clearly just been thrown on. She gazed at my head. “Did Steve . .?”
“No. Nothing like that,” I answered, interrupting with a wave of my hand. I led us to a table by the tall windows and ordered wine spritzers. It was hair of the dog for me. I hoped a drink would smooth the rough edges. I just wasn’t sure a wine spritzer would be enough. Given how Katie looked, though, I thought she might need much more than a spritzer.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look terrible. Are you sick?”
“Well, fuck you too,” she said with a giggle. Then she added, “Thank you very much.”
“Talk to me, Katie.”
She perched her elbows on the table and stared outside for what seemed the longest time. Yellow daylight shined on her face, and I could see the toll her worries had taken on her. I’d never seen the creases above her brow or the ones creeping away from her eyes. And though she continued to laugh quietly at what I’d said, I could see that she’d been crying, which added to the redness and swelling. She drank the wine spritzer in a single gulp and asked for another.
“Actually, can you make that a Scotch? A double?” she corrected. I cocked my head and tried to remember the last time I’d seen Katie drink anything stronger than wine. Jello shots at a college frat house, maybe? And even then, she couldn’t stomach more than two. Katie was a lightweight when it came to booze. Or at least she used to be. The waiter delivered the whiskey. My stomach dipped just looking at it, but I knew a drink might settle me. I motioned with my hand, saying nothing, and he disappeared to get another. Sunlight sank into the glass, glinting from atop the whiskey, bouncing as Katie raised it to her mouth. She stopped and peered through the glass at me.
“What? I’m not driving.”
“I’ll drive you,” I told her. If the need were there, she could have my drink. I slid my hand over the table, taking hers. Icy and rough and scathed from tiny cuts, she wore three bandages on her fingers: two of them blood-soaked, her fingernails beneath in question. “What did you do to your hand?”
She shook her head. Her other hand had faired the same; it too was roughed up and scratched, bandages covering the worst of the damage. I fixed her with a curious look that quickly turned to annoyance. By then, she was ready to start talking.
“Packing,” she finally said. “In a hurry too. Ripped the shit out of my hands on those fucking boxes and crap luggage. But we’re not taking everything. Just a few things.”
“Packing?” I asked. “What do you mean, packing? To go where?”
“You can’t tell anyone,” she said, her glassy eyes huge as she shook her head and searched around us. “Jerry’s got us packing. Told me that we have to run.”
“What?” I nearly laughed, thinking her story had to be a joke.
“It wasn’t an affair. There wasn’t another woman. But Jerry . . . he fell in with some people. Bad people,” she continued.
The tickle inside—the urge to laugh—went away then. My stomach soured and ached. Whatever was going on had to do with my seeing Jerry at the White Bear.
“He’s gotten himself involved with this group—these bikers—and he did something, but won’t tell me what it is, only that we . . . we have to run. Hide. Like fucking animals.”
This wasn’t the Katie that I knew, and that began to scare me. This wasn’t a joke. As much as I wanted it to be, I could sense real danger.
Todd, I thought.
But the timing wasn’t right. Not yet, anyway. Poi
son wouldn’t show up until the autopsy. Or better yet, the toxicity screening. I’d done my research. So if it wasn’t a connection between Todd and Jerry, then it had to be about the money, the envelope.
But what would Jerry have to do with bikers?
Sam was the only biker I’d seen at the Bear.
“Bikers?” I asked. “Katie, you’re not making any sense.” She was crying heavily and swiped at her tears impatiently. I pushed my glass over, sliding it in front of her. She only sipped the whiskey this time as the last drink rose into her mouth. She caught it, pressing her lips, and held it in.
“All I know is that a year ago, these bikers wanted to start a distillery or something like that, and so Jerry helped them.”
“Do you know the name?” I asked, sounding abrupt, sitting on the edge of my seat. I knew the answer, but had to hear Katie say it.
“I’ve only overheard Jerry say the name Sam.”
“Which you thought was the name Samantha?”
Katie nodded, daring another sip. “He’s the owner, but a whole group of them is involved. Not just here, but all over the East Coast.”
“Money?” I asked, wondering if Jerry had tried his hand at extortion. Corruption in the mayor’s office was the norm, but the current mayor had remained untouched by it through his first term and well into his second term. Jerry might not have had an affair, but he surprised me with the balls he’d shown in taking a taste from the White Bear. “Was it Jerry, or was it his boss?”
Katie began to cry again. “I don’t know,” she managed to say. “Amy, I’ve got to go.”
At that moment, watching Katie finish her drink and collect her things, I realized that I didn’t know when I’d see her again. “Wait!” I pleaded, feeling dread slow me down.
“It’s too late,” she answered as she wrapped her arms around me. Her body shook against mine with a soft whimper. “You’re my sister, Amy. Always will be—don’t forget that.”
Killing Katie (An Affair With Murder) (Volume 1) Page 15