The day arrived. I didn’t sleep well the night before.
Looking over at the red numbers on the clock by the bed. Thinking, and rethinking, every part of the plan. Allowing myself to overthink and find flaws where no flaws existed. It was almost like the plan stood alone, outside of me.
I knew the boy would be picked up by his father around five in the morning. At five-thirty I drove over to Samantha’s house and let myself in the back door. She’d gone back to sleep like I knew she would and the house was quiet. I went to Little Allen’s room and got his pellet gun. I drove to Allen Sr.’s house and pulled up at a spot on the road with a clear shot at the streetlight. I took aim at the light, pulled the trigger, and missed. The gun wasn’t very loud, but I felt stupid missing the entire streetlight. I shot again. And then again. On my fifth shot the light busted and glass crashed to the ground. I drove away in a hurry, checking the rearview mirror for any cars coming from the direction of the Weltys’ house down the road.
Back at Samantha’s, I replaced the pellet gun in Little Allen’s room, wiping my fingerprints away while she slept.
I took Samantha to breakfast and we spent the morning shopping at the mall. I tried to focus on little things, bacon, a kid sitting on a wood bench, swinging his legs, waiting for his mother to try on another pair of ridiculous shoes, a dog outside lifting his leg on the back tire of a new car, and then the front tire a few seconds later. I tried not to think about how the plan would ultimately end, only the next step. The next thing to do on the list in my mind.
I called Eddie Miller and set up a time in the afternoon to drink a beer together. He picked me up around three o’clock. Down the road on the way across town to the sports bar to watch the Saturday game, I said, “Do you mind swinging by Samantha’s ex-husband’s house? It’s on the way. I’m supposed to see if the kid’s back from fishing.”
“Yeah, okay,” Eddie said. He didn’t care anything about the game.
As we pulled up near the front of Allen Kilborn’s house, I pretended to notice the broken glass for the first time.
Eddie said, “Looks like somebody busted the streetlight.”
I told Eddie to stop at a spot on the street where he couldn’t see the front door. His windows were up and the radio was playing. Eddie was the kind of man who enjoys air-conditioning and music.
I walked on the pavement and then across the steps to the door, glanced back to make sure Eddie’s car was out of sight, knocked on the door three hard times, and then opened the front door with the key cut in Chicago. I hurried to the kitchen and opened the drawer using the tail of my shirt between my fingers on the knob. Inside was a .357 pistol, just as Allen Jr. said, in a special wooden rest. It was loaded.
I went to the foot of the stairs and walked up slowly, stepping near the middle of each step. The seventh step squeaked in the middle. The right-hand side made no sound. At the top of the steps, straight across the hall, was the computer room. The back of the chair faced the stairs, with the computer in front of the chair, and a big window to the left. I went back down the stairs, again slowly, and avoided the middle of the seventh step. I ran to the refrigerator, grabbed two beers, stepped outside, locked the door, and walked across the stones and the pavement to Eddie’s car, careful not to step near any broken glass.
“The door was unlocked,” I said. “They’re not back yet. I don’t think he’ll miss a few beers.”
Eddie drank down nearly half the beer like he was thirsty. In only a few minutes I’d accomplished a good chunk of the plan. I tested the key, verified the location of the gun, made sure it was loaded, and got the layout of the house. I checked out the stairs, saw the design of the computer room, made Eddie a witness to my visit to the house of Allen Kilborn, as well as the unlocked door and the busted light. Most importantly, I now had an explanation for any hair, fingerprint, glass shards in the shoe sole, stray eyelash, or anything else I could leave behind or take with me from the crime scene. I simply stopped by to check on the boy. He wasn’t back yet. The door was unlocked, so I called inside, walked up the steps to see if they might be upstairs, grabbed a few beers, and left. And who could say the door wasn’t unlocked? Allen Kilborn? He’d be dead in ten hours, according to the plan.
At around seven o’clock in the evening, according to schedule, Allen Sr. dropped off his son at Samantha’s house. The boy was exhausted. He told us all about the day. He went to his room after a shower and talked with his father on the computer. By ten o’clock, Allen Jr. was sound asleep.
By eleven o’clock, Samantha was on her fourth glass of her favorite Chablis. I brought over two bottles, and every time I poured a glass for myself I’d fill it half with water. We watched a movie, and around twelve o’clock, midway through her fifth glass, Samantha fell asleep. I carried her to the bedroom and she was snoring like a sailor in just a few minutes.
I entered the boy’s room quietly. He was hard asleep. The computer in his room was turned off. I closed his door and then sat down alone in the living room. I could have laid down on the couch and just fallen asleep. I could have let the Saturday marked in red on the calendar pass by. Sometimes I wish I had.
I got the clothes from under the wheel well and changed in the front seat of my car. I drove the posted speed limit to the road leading to Allen Kilborn’s house. The light was on upstairs in the computer room. The Weltys’ house was dark except for a light on the front porch.
I parked away from the broken glass on the dark street. I could have driven away. I could have gone home and stood on the back porch smoking a cigarette. But I didn’t. I closed the car door quietly, walked over the pavement and across the stones to the door. No matter how much you plan, no matter how precise and careful, luck demands a role. Allen Kilborn could’ve been standing in the kitchen in his underwear drinking milk out of the carton when I opened the door. He could have been at the top of the stairs looking down on me. But he wasn’t. He was sitting, just as I envisioned, at his computer, with his back to the stairs, when I arrived behind him, holding the man’s loaded pistol in my gloved hand. He didn’t hear the squeak from the middle of the seventh step, because I didn’t step in the middle. He didn’t hear anything at all.
I was behind him. I could’ve gone back down the stairs. I could’ve avoided the squeak on the way down, replaced the pistol in the special drawer, locked the door on the way out, and climbed in bed with beautiful, drunk Samantha. But I didn’t. I held up the gun and thought of her on her knees with her mouth on him, with him looking down on her, and her eyes looking up at him. It disgusted me, and I felt my chest tightening inside. Suddenly, I couldn’t draw the next breath, just like the day at the pond with my grandfather. My lungs seized. I felt the panic rise through my body.
Allen Kilborn’s fingers stopped on the computer keyboard, like he sensed someone behind him. Like he knew I’d gotten the best of him. And according to plan, even in the middle of a full-blown asthma attack, just as I knew I would, I pulled the trigger, exploding the back of Allen Kilborn’s head like a ripe melon across the room.
I bent over at the waist and tried to concentrate. The air sucked in, and I stood, arms outstretched, praying I wouldn’t collapse on the floor in the dead man’s room. Listening for my grandfather’s words of comfort. Trying to rationalize the irrational, and in time, the air came more freely. I didn’t look back at him. I kept the gun, ran down the stairs, rubbed both doorknobs with my gloved hand, and left the door unlocked on my way out. I stayed on the stones, and then the pavement, and avoided the shards of glass. I drove carefully, my hands shaking on the wheel like a man with Parkinson’s, my breath still short and forced, to the first designated location on the backroads. I turned the car so the headlights would shine in the woods, walked in my Salvation Army clothes to the hole I’d dug, and dropped the gun into the hole. With the shovel I’d left near the hole, I pushed dirt and mud inside until it was full and covered the top with dry leaves. I walked back, careful not to step in any mud, and removed my
boots before entering the car. I changed clothes in the front seat. At the second designated location, after parking the car again with the headlights shining my path, I walked in sock feet to the second hole. I dropped the shirt, pants, gloves, and boots into the hole, filled the hole, and again covered it with leaves.
Before entering the car, I removed the heavy dark socks and put my regular socks and shoes on my feet. A mile down the road I threw one sock out the window. A mile further, the second sock followed. And a mile later, the little shovel ended up in a gully and the spare key flew through the air and landed in a farmer’s field.
I parked outside Samantha’s house and opened the back door quietly. Again, Samantha, or even worse, Allen Jr., could have been standing in the kitchen getting a glass of water. But they weren’t. Allen was still sleeping hard after a day fishing in the hot sun. Samantha still snored like a sailor. It was done. It was over. I stood in the shower and felt the hot water down the back of my neck, felt the shaking in my hands slow to a pulse, took long steady, deep breaths, in and out again.
I climbed in bed in my underwear and waited until my body warmed beneath the blankets. I touched Samantha and woke her with a kiss. If she only knew what I’d done for her and her boy. If I only knew how it would occupy my mind for the rest of my life.
She smiled. “You’re staying the night?” she asked softly.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m staying the night.”
six
That night I dreamed again of the scary black circle on the floor. I hadn’t had the dream in years, but it came back just as before, except this time in the dream I was an old man. I was alone in a bedroom, sitting in a wheelchair, watching television. I was very tired. The circle appeared slowly on the hardwood floor by the closed door. I watched it form, beginning as just a slight discoloration, and then taking shape until it was the same circle from my childhood dreams.
The black circle began to move toward my wheelchair. The movement was steady and slow, getting closer and closer to me. I couldn’t move my arms. I was too tired to move my arms to roll away from the circle, and it got closer and closer until the edge reached the outer wheel of the chair, and the chair began to tip into the hole, and I woke up covered in sweat.
Believe me, my various motivations for what I’d done to Allen Kilborn did not completely escape me. I’d built a fortress of justification, but it was impossible to ignore my savior complex rearing its ugly head. The jealousy and anger held deep roots, and regardless of whether the world, and Samantha, and Allen Jr., were better off, I would forever struggle with untangling the necessities.
I lay in bed, thinking of the circle and waiting for Samantha to open her eyes and see me in her bed, see the clock, and know I’d slept with her throughout the night. I backtracked through my mind, making sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. The explosion of the man’s head was difficult to believe. How quickly he went from alive to dead. How suddenly I was alone in the house, his brains and blood across the computer and the wall. The next morning, it was hard to believe I’d done such a thing.
“Good morning,” she said. The clock showed 8:07 a.m.
“Good morning. How do you feel?” I asked.
“Like my head got stepped on by a giant.”
She went to the bathroom, and I put on my pants. While she took a shower and tended to her headache, I banged around in the kitchen until Allen Jr. wandered in for breakfast.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I fell asleep,” I answered.
The boy made a face of disgust. He went back to his room, and I knew he would send a message to his father telling him I’d spent the night. Tangible confirmation of my alibi. See, even the boy knows I spent the night in the house. I was there the next morning, in the kitchen, with no shirt.
Allen Jr. and Samantha arrived back in the kitchen at the same moment. She avoided eye contact with the boy, recognizing the anticipated repercussions from her ex-husband for allowing a man to spend the night in his home with his son in the other room.
Allen Jr. said, “Dad’s not answering on his computer.”
“Maybe he’s still asleep,” Samantha said.
The boy picked up the phone and dialed a number. I poured a cup of coffee and imagined the phone ringing in an empty house, the dead man upstairs in a cake of his dried blood, stuck to the floor. My stomach felt weak. The smell of the coffee was suddenly sickening.
“There’s no answer,” he said.
“Well, maybe he had to go out for something,” Samantha offered. “We’re gonna go to church this morning. We missed last week.”
“Can I go?” I asked. I’d never been with them before.
Samantha seemed pleasantly surprised. “Yes, you can,” she said.
I drove home, washed my clothes in the washing machine with hot water, took another long, thorough shower, washing my hair twice. On the way to meet Samantha and Little Allen at church, I stopped at a self-service car wash and vacuumed the car, including the trunk and under the spare tire. I sprayed down the car, concentrating on the tires and underneath.
The church was big and white. We sat near the front, and I was glad. The multi-colored, stained glass window of Jesus on the cross glowed in the morning sunlight, high above.
The Episcopal priest stood to deliver the sermon. He was a small man, thin, with not much hair left on his head. He spoke of our limitations, and how we shouldn’t be disappointed in our inability to always behave like God would want us to. He said that’s the very reason we need a God, to forgive us, to teach us, to help us find our way. What would be the role of God in a world full of God-like humans? None. Just like the Devil would have nothing to do in a world of sinners who fail to recognize their sins, or fail to repent. I tried very hard not to fidget or look around too much.
Afterwards, on the way out, I shook hands with several people I recognized, and knew they’d remember seeing me for the first time in their church. I shook the priest’s hand at the door, but didn’t overdo it or bring attention to myself. He hugged Samantha, and told her he was praying for her. I wondered how he had enough hours in the day to pray for everyone he knew, or even everyone he knew who needed praying for.
On Sunday night, alone on my back porch, I sat in the dark smoking a cigarette. All day I’d waited for the phone to ring, the news of Allen Kilborn’s death, the suspicion cast on the ex-wife and her boyfriend. The coming down of everything upon the discovery of the dead man. I hoped it wouldn’t be Samantha or the boy to see him first.
The phone rang. It was Samantha. “Allen wants me to take him over to his father’s,” she said.
“It’s a school night,” I said. “His father’s probably not home because he’s stalking one of us again. Maybe he’s hiding in my bushes right now, or putting sugar in my gas tank.”
She laughed a little, but not really. It was more a nervous giggle, kinda like it was risky to say such things over the phone. Like there was nothing Allen Kilborn couldn’t hear, or tape-record, or find out about.
It was impossible to sleep. I kept hearing the priest’s words in my head. I kept going over and back over every detail of the plan, every unforseen mistake, and the black circle waited for me. Waited for my eyes to close, the cover of darkness, peaceful sleep, to sneak back into my room and maybe swallow me completely, sucking me down. But eventually I must have fallen asleep, because at 6:48 in the morning the phone rang, loud like a fire alarm.
“Hello,” I said.
“Oh my God,” the woman’s voice said.
“Hello,” I repeated.
“Allen’s dead,” Samantha stuttered. “Somebody killed him.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Little Allen?” I asked.
“No, no. Not Little Allen. Big Allen. They found him shot in his house. His business partner was supposed to meet him there at six-thirty this morning. He just called me. The police are there.”
“Oh my God,” I said convincingly. I knew the phone records would show Sam
antha called me immediately after hearing the news. I knew the investigators would jump to the conclusion we killed him together, and Samantha was calling me to tell me the body had been found.
“You need to go over there,” I said. I figured her emotions would be genuine in front of the investigators. She had nothing to fake, because she knew nothing, and never would. The first impression she would leave with the investigators could be invaluable.
I needed to be seen at work, composed, yet concerned about Samantha. I ended the conversation telling her to go to Allen’s house so she could give the police any information about the fishing trip, and her son’s return Saturday night, and Allen Sr. not answering his boy’s calls all day Sunday. I didn’t want to be there with her, following the old pattern of the murderer returning to the scene of the crime.
I shared with the people in my office what had happened, appearing amazed and shocked. Later that morning, about lunchtime, Samantha called from the police station. She asked if I’d come down. The investigator wanted to ask me a few questions. I didn’t hesitate or hurry, arriving at the police station and asking to see Samantha Kilborn.
A man introduced himself to me.
“I’m Frank Rush, the investigator on the Allen Kilborn homicide.”
“I’m Early Winwood. Is Samantha here?”
“She’s in the back talking to my partner. Would you mind stepping in my office? I was hoping you could answer a few quick questions.”
“Absolutely,” I said.
He was mid-fifties, slightly overweight, with a mustache and a patient way about him. I sat down across his desk. Behind him there was a picture of a woman with three grown kids, maybe college-age. The youngest looked very much like his father sitting in front of me, except without a mustache. The woman was remarkably unattractive, her face reminding me of a rodent.
“How long have you and Samantha been going out?”
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