by Margot Hunt
Including, apparently, commit murder.
And as much as I hated to admit it, Nat was right. I could feel myself spinning out of control. I needed to calm the fuck down.
“I know. I’ll get it together before he comes home. Which is when, by the way?”
“I’m picking him up tomorrow afternoon.”
“Good. I’ll come with you.”
“I thought you had basketball?” Natalie picked up the pile of mail that had accumulated on the white lacquered tray she kept by the back door and began flipping through it. She called the tray a landing strip and I hated it almost as much as I hated the whiteboard calendar.
I stared at my wife, who calmly looked through the mail, and wondered if she had lost her mind. I did play in a basketball league, every Sunday at two. Most of the guys in it were my age, or close to it, and I’d always enjoyed the camaraderie and the stress relief. But that was before I’d killed someone. Did Nat really think that life would just roll on as it had before?
“I’m not going to basketball.”
Nat glanced up from sorting the mail. “Why not?”
“Why not? Because we—well, technically, I—killed someone last night! I don’t understand how you can just stand there and...look through the mail like nothing’s happened!”
“What would you rather I do? Run around in circles, waving my hands in the air?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” My knees suddenly felt shaky. I sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs. “You seem way too calm about all of this.”
Nat tossed the mail back on the tray and folded her arms again. “I’m just trying to stay focused on what we need to do to get through it. To not get caught.”
“Maybe we should go away. What do you think? We could drive up to North Carolina, rent a cabin for a few weeks and just wait and see what happens here. Lie low until the police have found the...body.” My stomach gave another queasy lurch. “And if they buy the suicide story.”
“No, we definitely can’t leave town.”
“Why not?”
“Do you remember the Curtis Webber case I tried last year?”
I didn’t remember. Her clients ran together in a jumble of drug addicts and thieves, and I’d long since stopped attempting to keep track of which case she was working on.
“Remind me.”
“Curtis was charged with the unlawful discharge of a firearm. Basically, he fired his gun into the house of a rival gang member. And the next day, he took off for Orlando. The police monitored his cell phone and were able to pick him up a few days later. At the trial, the State’s Attorney was allowed to use that trip to show that he was fleeing the area, which showed consciousness of guilt.”
“I’m not saying we flee. We just...drive slowly away.”
“Still. We can’t be seen acting out of character, making radical changes to our schedule, just in case we do fall under suspicion. We have to behave as normally as possible. You have to go to basketball tomorrow. And maybe we should go out to dinner tonight.” She looked at me, obviously assessing whether I could pull off going out to dinner without falling apart.
“Okay.” I nodded, and tried—and failed—to suppress an eye roll. “Act as normal as possible. Got it. No problem.”
“I’m serious, Will. You can’t break down in public or suddenly appear super stressed out. People will notice. You have to act like your normal, happy-go-lucky self.”
I could tell from the flatness of her tone that this was not meant as a compliment. My temper, momentarily muffled by shock and the horror of the past twenty-four hours, flared back up.
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to make this huge, life-changing decision without talking to me first!”
“I tried talking to you about it. You wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Because it was insane. It is insane. He’s dead...and we can’t take that back.”
“I don’t want to take it back.” Natalie’s expression turned cold. “I’m glad he’s dead. And if you think that makes me a monster—too bad, you’ll just have to live with that.”
Natalie turned away from me and stalked out of the kitchen.
Chapter 20
Mark Sefton dropped his shoulder and rammed it into me just as I was about to dribble the ball past him. The impact was surprisingly hard. I reeled back as my feet slipped out from underneath me. I fell backward onto the slick wooden gymnasium floor, landing with a heavy, painful thud. While I attempted to regain the ability to breathe, Mark dribbled the ball down the court, set up his shot and swished the ball through the net. He made a fist with one hand, his arm bent in a ninety-degree angle. Rage surged through me, hot and violent.
“What the fuck, Mark?” I said loudly.
“You okay, man?” Zack Smith stood over me, holding out a hand.
I grabbed it, and he pulled me to my feet.
“Let it go,” Zack advised. “That guy’s always been a dick.”
I’d known Zack for years, although we’d always had one of those superficial relationships that revolved around the basketball league and chatting at Super Bowl parties. His two sons went to Charlie’s school, although they were a few years younger.
Charlie. I closed my eyes for a moment and wondered if there would come a time when just the thought of my son’s name wouldn’t engulf me with this sticky swamp of grief, fear and anger. I ran a sweaty wrist band over my face.
“Are you okay, man?” Zack asked. He squinted at me.
Actually, I killed the Franklin School principal the night before last. Now I’m in the middle of having a nervous breakdown, I thought. But other than that, everything is A-OK.
“Yeah, sure. Just a little hungover.”
“Oh.” Zack nodded, looking relieved that I wasn’t going to pick the middle of the basketball court to start unburdening myself about job or marital problems. “What did you do last night?”
“Nat and I went out to eat.”
“Where’d you guys go?”
“Piatti’s,” I said, naming what was usually my favorite local Italian restaurant, but which I might forevermore associate with the horror of this weekend. I had ordered my usual veal Parmesan. But when the plate was placed in front of me—oil pooling up on the meat, the red sauce gloppy and unappealing—I didn’t think I’d be able to choke it down. Nat, who was calmly twining spaghetti around her fork, gave me a sharp look. I managed to take a few bites, washing them down with three glasses of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo from the bottle Nat had ordered. She’d had to drive us home, where I promptly passed out on the couch and then woke up at three in the morning covered in sweat, my head pounding.
“Cool,” Zack said. He hesitated, then shook his head. “Crazy week at the school, huh?”
“Pretty crazy,” I agreed.
“Do you think he did it? I’m hearing a lot of conflicting stories.”
Another wave of fear and revulsion swamped me, but this time I thought I managed to keep my expression neutral. At least Zack didn’t look at me strangely again.
“I hope not, you know? I’d hate for any kid to have to go through that.”
“Yeah.” Zack shook his head again. “I know what you mean.”
“Are we playing or talking?” Mark called out, running backward down the court. He threw the basketball at me, harder than necessary. “You have possession, Clarke. Let’s see if you can keep it.”
“He’s such a dick,” Zack muttered.
But this time, my temper didn’t flash back up. I was instead filled by a queasy emptiness, and the unshakable fear that Nat and I were never going to get away with what we’d done.
* * *
I was showered and sitting on the couch with a beer, watching the Dolphins game on television, when Nat and Charlie returned home.
“Hey, Dad,” Charlie
said, dropping his blue camouflage pattern backpack on the ground on the floor next to the front door.
“Don’t leave your bag there,” Nat said automatically.
“Hey, kiddo.” I put down my beer and held open my arms. Charlie—ignoring his mother’s instructions—came over and gave me a quick hug. I had to force myself not to grab onto him and crush him against me. “Did you have fun at Gram’s house?”
Charlie threw himself onto one of the club chairs, shoulders first, legs waving up in the air. “We saw a manatee and I beat Gram at Mario Kart. Did you know the Flash can run at near light speed? That’s faster than Superman. Although that’s only in the Earth’s atmosphere. Superman can probably fly faster than that in outer space, but it would be impossible to set up a race.”
I was used to the non sequiturs that came with having an eleven-year-old son.
“Maybe they could have the Flash race on earth and Superman race in space and clock them,” I suggested.
Charlie shrugged. “I don’t think that would really be possible. Unless maybe Superman started at the International Space Station or something. But then it wouldn’t really be a race. It would be more like they were each just going for their personal best record.”
I noticed that Charlie’s face was chalky. There were faint dark smudges under his eyes. Worry gripped at me. Was it just garden variety fatigue...or was this a symptom of what could be a long-lasting trauma?
“Charlie, your backpack,” Nat said again. “Go put it in your room. I’ll get dinner started.”
“What are we having?” Charlie hopped out of the chair and retrieved his backpack from the floor.
“Tacos,” Nat said.
“Awesome,” Charlie turned and ran up the stairs, his footsteps thudding heavily.
Nat, still standing in the doorway to the living room, shook her head. “Can you picture my mother playing video games? I would never in a million years have thought that was even possible.”
“How’s he doing? He looks tired.”
“That’s because my mother let him stay up late to watch a movie. As far as I could figure out from his description, I think it involved alien robots.”
“Why the fuck would she let him watch something that inappropriate?” I said, surprising myself with the biting anger in my voice.
Nat looked at me strangely. “Because he wanted to watch it? Why do you think? Besides, it was rated PG-13, so I don’t think it was necessarily inappropriate. Just maybe a little too exciting for right before bed.”
“We have to protect him. That has to be our first priority right now.” I grabbed my bottle of beer and took a swig. It had grown warm.
Nat walked over and sat down next to me on the couch, tucking one leg under the other.
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.
I could feel my shoulder muscles bunching up. I tried to roll them back down. A brittle silence stretched between us and I realized that what I wanted—more than anything, except maybe to go back in time and stop the events of Friday night from happening—was for my wife to get as far away from me as possible.
“I’m fine.”
Nat glanced up toward the stairs, but the sound of water running through the pipes signaled that Charlie had gotten in the shower. Charlie took outrageously long showers, so we were safe for a bit.
“We need to talk about our timeline on Friday night.”
“What do you mean?”
“We need to get it straight between us in case we’re ever questioned. Our story has to be tight. I left the house at 6:35. Just as I was pulling out, Janice Green came over to tell us that our sprinkler was broken—”
“What’s wrong with the sprinkler?”
“Will, focus. I chatted with her for a few minutes, then told her I was going to Publix to pick something up for dinner. If anyone asks, I’ll say I purchased a rotisserie chicken and paid in cash. There won’t be video of me buying it—maybe I should have stopped for the chicken. Oh, well, too late now. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Where were you that night before we spoke?”
I closed my eyes as the images of that night swam back to me. What had come before...and what had come later.
“We went to Rockbar Oysters,” I said. “With one of the applicants for the associate’s position.”
“You went all the way out there? That’s a thirty-minute drive. No wonder it took you so long to get to Robert’s house.”
“Yeah, I know.” I tried—and failed—to think of a good reason why my law partners and I would have to drive to an out-of-the-way restaurant. “I don’t remember. It wasn’t my idea to go there. I think someone was in the mood for oysters.”
“Who was with you that night?” Nat pressed on. “And what did you say when you left?”
“You know, the usual suspects,” I hedged. I realized with fresh horror that this could possibly be a serious problem. I’d been so freaked out from the moment I’d killed Robert, I’d completely forgotten about the earlier part of my night. The part Nat couldn’t find out about.
“Did you tell them that I’d called you and said I wasn’t feeling well?”
“Actually...I don’t remember what I said when I left. I’d had a few drinks. But, wait. You didn’t call me from your cell phone.”
“I know. I had to leave my real phone at home. Modern smartphones are basically GPS tracking devices. The police can subpoena records from your cell phone company and trace your movements through where your phone was. I had to use my burner phone to call you.”
“Why did you have a burner phone?”
“I got one just in case I needed to make a call that night. Which I did.” Nat hesitated. “There might be a problem. Robert used the same phone to call Michelle Cole earlier that evening.”
“Who’s Michelle Cole?”
“She’s a school mom. Pretty blonde?”
I shrugged. At least half of the school moms were pretty blondes.
“Anyway, Michelle and Robert were dating, but were keeping it a secret, I guess because she was a school mom. But she hadn’t been taking his phone calls, so he wanted to borrow my phone to call her.”
“Why would you let him do that?”
“I didn’t let him do anything. He was drunk and stoned and went through my purse before I could stop him.”
“But what if this Michelle tells the police that Robert called her on the night he died from a number she didn’t recognize? And then they pull the records from that number and see the phone call to me?”
Nat hesitated. “That would be a problem.”
“Jesus Christ, Nat!”
“Don’t panic. First of all, it may be a while before his body is found.”
“Why does that matter?”
“The longer it takes, the more his body will decompose. The harder it will be for them to pinpoint his time of death.”
“That’s revolting.” I felt another wave of nausea surge through me.
“Anyway, I don’t think Michelle will go the police, even if she does figure out that Robert called her on the night he died.”
“Why not?”
“I wouldn’t if I were her. I wouldn’t want anyone to know I was romantically connected to the local pedophile. If no one else knew about their relationship, I’m sure she’ll want to keep it that way.”
“But...it’s a risk.”
“Yes.” Nat nodded. “It is.”
“Oh, my God.” I could feel the panic rising up again, twisting around my chest and lungs.
“Look, I’ve thought this through. It’s only an issue if Michelle tells the police about the phone call—which I’m pretty sure she won’t do—or if the police pull your phone records for some reason. Which they would only do if you were a suspect. So, yes, it’s potentially a loose end, but I don’t thi
nk a fatal one.”
Fatal. The word did nothing to calm my snowballing terror.
“What did you do with the stuff? The evidence?”
“I took a hammer and broke the screens on the tablet and the phone, then submerged them in water for an hour. Neither one would turn back on, so I’m pretty sure I fried the circuits. I put them in a plastic bag with some raw chicken, and tossed them in a Dumpster behind the gas station. They don’t have a security camera back there.”
“Wait, you wrapped them up with chicken? Why?”
“Just in case anyone was Dumpster diving,” Nat explained. “The smell of the rotting meat would act as a repellent. And the rest of the stuff—the pillow, the broken dolphin, the broom and dustpan—I left at the Dumpster by that apartment complex. Either someone will take them or they’ll be off to the landfill Tuesday morning, when the garbage truck picks them up. Either way, the police will never find any of it, even if they knew to look for it. Which they won’t.”
Nat seemed so calm, so self-assured, but it perversely made my anxiety spiral even further out of control. Who was this woman I was married to?
She looked at me suddenly, her blue eyes direct.
“Is there anything that happened that night, before you met me, that I should know about?” she asked. “You have to tell me if there is. We need to have a clear timeline for that night ready, just in case we’re ever interviewed by the police.”
“No, nothing else. I was just out at Rockbar Oysters, having a business dinner.”
I hoped to hell that she would never find out just how big a lie that was.
Chapter 21
After another sleepless night, I went to the office early on Monday morning. Partly, I wanted to avoid having yet another conversation with Nat, but I was also craving the normalcy of work. Maybe if I was at my desk, taking calls from clients, pushing paper from one stack to another, I would start to feel like myself again. The person I’d been on Friday before this whole nightmare began. The self that wasn’t a murderer.
I was already showered, dressed and just knotting my tie when Nat woke up.