We Were Killers Once

by Becky Masterman

  “You’re going to have to stop the car,” she said. “I can’t do this while you’re driving like a madwoman.”

  “I can’t stop,” I said.

  “I repeat, that guy isn’t going to make a move unless you take longer than usual to get from the airport.”

  “I stopped to pick you up,” I said. “I told him I’d be there in about an hour. I’m afraid if it’s much more than that he’ll get nervous. It will be bad if he’s nervous.”

  “You’ve more than made up for the time it will take to stop by doing fifty in a thirty-five zone,” she said.

  “How long will it take?”

  “Less than five minutes if nothing goes wrong.”

  I pulled into the first parking lot I came to, Coco’s restaurant at the corner of Oracle and Ina.

  “The container thing is in my tote, too,” I said.

  Gemma-Kate dug around and pulled out the empty nasal spray. She looked somewhat concerned.

  “Don’t you think it’s big enough to do the job?”

  “I told you to get a spray bottle.”

  “They didn’t have any. Just use that.”

  “Aunt Brigid, even an atomizer doesn’t have the power of an aerosol canister and it was risky. Now you just want to, what, squirt it at him? I don’t think these things squirt all that well. Let’s stop at a drugstore.”

  The thought of what Carlo was going through ate me up inside. “I don’t want to waste a minute I don’t have to. I’ll be careful,” I said.

  “Suit yourself,” Gemma-Kate said. She popped off the lid that I had replaced after emptying the bottle. Then she took two pairs of heavy-duty plastic gloves from her backpack and told me to put on one pair while she slipped on the other.

  “You sure are careful with capsicum,” I said.

  She looked at me. Thought. Spoke. “It’s capsicum with a kick,” she said. She handed me a small plastic bag “in case I needed it.” “Safety first,” she added, as she told me what I was to do, with what effect. And smiled.

  * * *

  It had taken us the usual fifty minutes from the airport to the house, plus an extra ten for picking up Gemma-Kate and fixing the vial, which was now in the side pocket of my travel pants. As I headed east on Golder Ranch Road I called the number Beaufort had given me, and told him where I was.

  “Great,” he said. “Now come to Gloria’s house. I understand you know where it is.”

  As he said that we were passing by Twin Lakes. I pulled off onto the hard-packed stretch on the right-hand side of the road, made a U-turn, and turned right to head to Hawser. “I’ll be there in two minutes. If you do anything to Carlo in the next three minutes you’re dead.”

  “Awful lot of talk talk talk about killing,” he said. “You don’t know killing like I do.” He disconnected. I could tell it made him feel in control to have the last word. Let him feel in control.

  I dropped Gemma-Kate off under a tree on Hawser and continued on to Gloria’s house. We had planned this in advance. Gemma-Kate had her cell phone and I had mine. I told her I would call her when I had Beaufort neutralized. When I said that, I got a hey, good luck with that expression. We both knew what neutralized might mean, and how it was by no means a certainty.

  Beaufort’s car was in the driveway as expected, with the gate unlatched. What I didn’t expect was to see Gloria’s lime green Beetle there as well. I’d felt certain she would be at work and safely out of the way. It was hard enough to go into a situation like this dealing with Beaufort and Carlo. It was even harder to try to imagine to what extent Beaufort might have Gloria in thrall to him. Was she a victim or an accomplice? A woman like that could go either way.

  I picked up the black garbage bag by the top where it fastened, slopping it around in the little clear pool on the plastic covering the seat. Carefully stripping off my plastic gloves, I got out of the car, leaving my phone on the dashboard and my gun in the glove compartment. I had to appear totally helpless in order for this to work.

  I slammed the door so he’d know I was coming. Everything on the up-and-up. I was doing as ordered within limits. I had no doubts that before the next thirty minutes were over he expected both Carlo and me to be dead.

  He should have no inkling that I could kill him instead. To hide that thought I washed the image of Carlo being hurt out of my mind and off my face. I regretted my threats. It was important that when Beaufort first saw me his impression would be that of a vulnerable, worried, weak, old woman.

  Certainly he would have Carlo tied up. Maybe tape over his mouth so he couldn’t yell, not that Carlo would. He would do what Beaufort told him to do. I thought I knew Carlo.

  Don’t think of Carlo. I arranged my face again, pursed my lips and made them tremble.

  Beaufort must have been watching through the venetian blinds, because when I reached the door he said, “It’s open.”

  So I went in. I never thought I’d be relieved to see someone standing in front of me with his weapon trained on my face. This was what I expected him to do. So far, so good. Well, not altogether. I didn’t see Gloria. But I focused only on what I had to do.

  “Close the door,” Beaufort said to me, and then, “Hold out your arms.”

  I did as he directed, and while he ran his hands down my body I saw Carlo tied to a chair as I had expected. I had never seen the look on Carlo’s face until that day. His eyes were wide and unblinking, and his bushy brows taut as if they were paralyzed in that spot. His mouth was slightly open with a white circle around his lips. There was no gag. His breath came in fast, tiny sniffs through his nose. It was audible across the room. It wasn’t just the inconvenience or even the pain of his restraints. The man was pretending not to be terrified. And he stared at me so intensely it was as if he see anything else. I glanced at a closed door leading off the living room, and then back at him. His eyelids trembled with the strain of not following my glance.

  “Carlo.”

  “Shut up,” Beaufort said.

  “I want to know if he’s been hurt,” I said.

  “He hasn’t hurt me,” Carlo said with an effort to smile for my benefit. “My wrists are a little sore.”

  “Undo his wrists,” I said to Beaufort.

  He laughed. “You’re giving me orders? I’m the one with the gun.”

  “Are you sure?” I said, and hoped he would see some logic in that preposterous statement. I was at the edge, too, not thinking real clearly, holding the bag farther out from myself and hoping it would neither drip nor dry altogether. I wasn’t sure exactly what Gemma-Kate had used.

  He might have taken the bag then, but he needed both his hands. Telling me again to hold both arms out, Beaufort held his gun in his right hand as he used his left to frisk me for weapons. He ran over the side pocket of my pants without noticing the empty plastic bag that Gemma-Kate had given me.

  A snuffling and scratching sound came from behind that closed door. “How’s Achilles?” I asked, hoping to distract him.

  Goddammit. Beaufort had reached the buttoned pocket in my travel pants and felt through the cloth. He reached inside and withdrew the vial. I held my breath and prepared to dive away in case he got cute and tried to squirt it on me.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “What does it look like? I get congested at high altitudes,” I said, praying that he wouldn’t tell me to use it. Capsicum up my nose would sting like the devil.

  He unscrewed the top and gave it a little sniff, then tossed the container on the rug, and I put all my energy into not crying out, not moving a muscle in my face. I waited for the solution to seep out into the rug.

  It didn’t. I supposed she hadn’t filled it to the brim, and hoped if I could somehow get to it, and use it, I’d be able to apply enough force to get a good stream out of it.

  Achilles whined.

  “I really like that little guy,” Beaufort said, mostly to himself. “I think I’m going to take him with me.”

  Then he looked at the bag th
at I held away from my body with my right hand while trying not to look like I was holding it away from my body. “So that’s it?” he asked, and ran his thumb over his bottom lip.

  I nodded.

  “No bogus blank sheets? You wouldn’t think I’m stupid enough to fall for that, would you?”

  “Not by half,” I said. While I wanted to say go ahead, open it, I couldn’t trust that he was that much of a sucker. Instead, I looked at it sadly as if I hated to lose my last bargaining chip, but what I was thinking was take the bag, take the bag.

  “I’ll make sure you and Carlo can’t do anything for a couple of hours, plenty of time to get across the border and get picked up by some friends. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.”

  The same words that Hickock had used with the Clutters. Maybe the same words that Beaufort had used with the Walkers. I forced my eyes to light up as if I believed him.

  “Would you mind if I put it on the table here and untied Carlo?”

  As I did so, Beaufort looked at the bag with a mixture of eagerness and fear that I’d never seen before, the door to the basement stairs in a horror movie that he was forced to open. He seemed to have forgotten me for an instant as he focused on it, lying there on the table, and I decided the next safe move was to make sure to get Carlo out of harm’s way for what might come next. I stepped slowly to the back of the chair where he sat and tore duct tape from around his wrists. He started to rise, but I put my hands on his shoulders and, without actually moving him, pressed in the direction of the kitchen to his left, hopefully sending a message to go there. He nodded ever so slightly, and I hoped that meant he understood.

  First wiping the back of his hand against his mouth as if he was salivating, Beaufort grabbed as I had hoped he would, eagerly, with his whole hand around the bag in which the papers were curled into a tube. Then he seemed to recognize that we were standing off to the side. He trained the gun on me, on us, balanced the bag against the wall, and opened the top with one hand.

  It only took a few seconds for things to get interesting as the natural moisture in his palm interacted with the surface of the plastic. While he didn’t yet drop the gun, Beaufort reacted with a “shit,” and put the palm of his hand instinctively to his mouth, licking it. That was when the shit turned into a shout as the substance hit his tongue and, while he wasn’t yet letting go of the gun, the muzzle dropped down and just to the right of Carlo.

  It was either save Carlo and get killed or get Beaufort and save Carlo.

  I dove to the floor where he had tossed the nasal spray container, grabbed it, and kept rolling away from Carlo, toward Beaufort, to both get closer and draw fire. The one second it would have taken to unscrew the top could have been my last. Beaufort was bent at the waist, close enough. At the last second I wrenched my head away to avoid hurting myself and pressed as hard as I could to spray the mixture at his face.

  * * *

  At the shock of the cold liquid Beaufort spun blindly and got two shots off before the cold turned to little fire bombs that exploded across his face. He dropped the gun and rubbed, no, grabbed handfuls of skin that came away as the fluid ate through his closed eyelids and burned through his corneas. If he had been in less agony, he would have seen that his hands came away bloody after he had clawed at his eyes.

  As it was, he dashed without purpose around the room, caroming off furniture, a pinball in a game that couldn’t be won.

  * * *

  I swear I could feel the rushing air before hearing the sound of one of the shots Beaufort fired. It passed just over my back, and would have killed me or at least severed my spinal cord and crippled me for life. The other shot went high, hitting a chrome and glass bookcase against the far wall so that the bang was followed closely by a shattering sound and then by a slower tinkle as the larger shards drifted to the floor.

  Momentarily stunned, I watched Beaufort drop to the floor and writhe while the skin on his face bubbled and dissolved. My own index finger started to burn and I dropped the spray container and the rug under it melted.

  This wasn’t like any pepper spray I’d ever seen. I should have known Gemma-Kate was using acid. I probably did know.

  Back to the moment, I had the presence of mind to grab the sandwich bag out of my pocket and use it to pick the gun up off the floor where it had dropped, too late yelling Run at Carlo to both get him out of the room and to draw Beaufort’s attention toward me. I was glad he had fired the shots and there would be residue on his hand, not mine. We had struggled with the weapon, I thought. I pointed the weapon at his heart, trying to get in a good shot. It was hard to aim because he was twisting about so. On top of that, I couldn’t press the trigger with my burning index finger and was attempting to do so with my right-hand ring finger instead.

  But I hadn’t figured on Carlo. He rushed forward and went to Beaufort. Beaufort grabbed for Carlo’s arm with hands reddened and raw from touching the acid in the plastic bag.

  “Don’t touch him,” I yelled over his screaming.

  Carlo knelt, keeping his hands raised as if wanting to help Beaufort but not knowing what would help and what would hurt. When he heard me yell, he got off the floor and stood in my way. When I moved a little, so did he.

  “Step aside,” I said, my vision tunneling through him to the man on the floor.

  There was a look on his face that had about a hundred different thoughts in it as his eyes focused on my mouth. Some of the thoughts might have been about what was making me smile. Was it my triumph at having won? Revenge? Divine justice, the pleasure of playing God? Whatever my feelings, my smile seemed to freeze Carlo in place between Beaufort and me.

  Then it was Carlo’s turn to speak. “No,” he said, just loudly enough to be heard over Beaufort’s yelling.

  My vision cleared and I saw him.

  “Don’t do it,” he said, probably not loudly enough to be heard over the screaming, which is why I said, “What?”

  “You may not kill this man,” he said, this time with a voice commanding a person he didn’t know. Two strangers.

  “Why not?” I asked, even in that adrenaline-charged moment knowing how I was simply stalling. I was going to kill that man, and I wanted Carlo for once to see who, what, I am.

  “Because he can’t harm us now,” Carlo said. “You’re not saving me anymore.”

  Carlo wouldn’t know that I hadn’t put the acid in the nasal spray, that I thought it was only on the bag that would burn Beaufort’s hand. I thought Gemma-Kate was giving me a capsicum solution that would temporarily blind him. This wasn’t capsicum, this was the really bad stuff. I was going to shoot him to put him out of his misery. I was also going to do it for the Clutters, the Walkers, Father Santangelo, and Detective Meadows. And Gloria.

  “Oh my God, Gloria,” I said, and ran through that closed door with my gun raised.

  I found her quite still on the bed, a plastic bag over her head and one of the bed pillows at her side. I dropped the gun at the foot of the bed and bent over her, whipping off the bag and placing my fingers at the side of her throat.

  Here was the final victim in a long trail of death that stretched from Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Smith’s meeting in that cell in Leavenworth, before they were killers.

  I wanted to scream at her. I didn’t.

  Then, as it always happened at a time like this, thinking of her death made me think of all the other innocents I hadn’t saved. And I thought of all the bad guys I hadn’t killed, and especially one who didn’t suffer enough, who didn’t take long enough to die because a shotgun blast to his back ended the pain too soon.

  Carlo was right, for reasons he could not imagine. Not shooting Beaufort was much more satisfying.

  I picked up the gun, came out of the room, and put the gun on the table, my voice getting a little cold when I said, “She’s dead. Again, I advise you not to touch him.”

  I went into the kitchen area, where I ran cold water over my hand to stop the burning, then turned back to t
hem.

  While I was doing that, Carlo had staggered to Beaufort’s side, either still in shock or sore from having spent God knows how long tied to the chair. He fell to the floor on his knees, and crawled the rest of the way to Beaufort, who had ceased thrashing about.

  Then he looked up at me. “Call an ambulance, for God’s sake,” he barked.

  I pointed out spots on the rug that were burnt as I said, “Be careful. There could be acid anywhere.”

  If he had questioned whether I knew what was happening to Beaufort, he understood now. I could tell by the way he looked at me, grieving at what he saw. He stayed on his knees but lifted his hands off the carpet. He made a mark with his thumb on Beaufort’s forehead, near his hairline where the skin was not burning.

  Now. Where are the days when you could find a landline in a house? None there, and neither Gloria’s nor Jerry’s cell phone was in sight. With another caution to Carlo—Beaufort’s screams had subsided and he was only moaning—I ran out of the house and to the car to call Gemma-Kate, where she sat under the shadeless tree with her own cell phone, waiting for the results of her experiment.

  “Is Uncle Carlo alive?” she asked first.

  “Yes,” I said. “I thought you were just putting the hydrochloric acid in the bag. You didn’t tell me about putting it in the spray bottle.”

  “I thought you might object to it,” Gemma-Kate said.

  “You idiot, you could have killed me.”

  There was a pause and then she said, “Nobody hurts Uncle Carlo.”

  I looked at the time on my phone and figured I couldn’t wait any longer for Beaufort to die and not look like I was doing it on purpose. I told Gemma-Kate to call nine-one-one with the address and emergency situation. I also instructed her to tell the emergency services to call Deputy Sheriff Max Coyote, and give him my name.

  I thought of Gloria. I told Gemma-Kate to say it involved a homicide.

  When I got back into the house, Carlo had gotten a pot of water from the kitchen and was pouring it over Beaufort’s body. Looked like a baptism. I hoped if there was anything to it, it didn’t work this time, that Beaufort would spend eternity burning.