“Just wait,” he pleaded. “I want to show you.”
I slumped my bag onto my lap and frowned. Nerd’s expression was filled with pity, so I reluctantly decided to give him a minute.
“Fine,” I said and followed his gaze back to the screen. I saw a school photo of a young, beautiful girl. It could have been Snacks in ten years. She had long walnut hair, a touch of sunlight highlighting what had been carefully woven into braided pigtails. She wore a plaid skirt, cut just above the knees, with a maroon knitted top—a school logo was embroidered in gold on the front. “She’s a beautiful girl. But what does that matter?”
“She’ll never have children,” Nerd said, gazing at me and then back at the monitor. I could hear the emotion in his voice. “She was in a coma the day that she turned fifteen. I’m thinking that maybe it shouldn’t be quick. Don’t you agree?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. I jabbed at my screen, tapping on the rows of links until he followed my hand with the cursor. “We’re not in the pain business. I’m sure there are plenty of leg-breakers for that.” Nerd winced, but said nothing. He needed to know that I was in the elimination game only. An exterminator, controlling life and death.
“Doesn’t seem right, though. Just doesn’t—” Nerd began to say.
“Are you up for this?” I asked, interrupting. I fixed him with a firm look, showing no emotion. I’d begun to have some doubts about him. I felt bad—horrible—for the girl, but this was about the mark. “You know, we’re bound to see worse. Much worse.”
“I’m good,” he said, closing the photograph of the girl.
“Sure?”
“Yeah,” he assured me. “How are you going to get close enough?”
It was my turn to shoot him a sneery look as though he’d insulted me. He raised his hands, backing off jokingly, which helped lift the tension.
“Got an address?” I asked, an idea coming to mind that called for a road trip.
“Address,” he repeated, searching through what I assumed were the police reports on his screen. “Not a house address. A bar, I think. White Bear. He’s a bear all right. Why the address?”
“I’m going to see if he’s moved on or if he’s decided to stick around,” I answered and glanced at my phone to check the date. Steve worked some nights, but tonight he would be home. I decided to tell him that I had a dinner date planned with Katie. My gut cramped at the thought of the small lie, but the distraction was subtle, easier. There’d be more lies, and they’d get easier too.
“Like I mentioned, he’s local. Here’s the address. Might be a coincidence, but that’s the only address I see for him. A room above the bar maybe?”
I tapped the address into my phone. “Bring up his photo again?” I asked, then grabbed his mug shot with my phone’s camera. Though I didn’t think I’d soon forget the face. He was a monster, and if I had to guess, he’d probably only gotten bigger while in prison.
“You’re going today?” Nerd asked, sounding concerned.
“Just want to get close enough to take a look. This is a part of it. It’s the type of homework we’ll have to do.”
What I didn’t share with Nerd was that I wanted things to move fast. Putting together a Killing Katie–type design would help me prepare mentally, but what I hadn’t expected was to feel fear, trepidation. When I looked at Todd’s photo on the phone, I stared past it, trying to think of how I’d get the courage. I wasn’t just afraid of him, I was terrified of getting caught. My heart thumped hard, beating in my chest and head, and my stomach went rigid with knots; I felt dizzy. But there was another feeling too—an intensity. A hunter’s instinct before a kill. If I could pull this off then I could pull anything off.
NINETEEN
THE TAVERN’S BRICK facade slumped sadly. Loose mortar stuck out in messy clumps, barely holding jutting bricks in what looked like a gapped-toothed smile. A tall and narrow building with peeling paint hanging off it in stringy vines, the original colors faded by countless passing sunsets. The White Bear stood alone on the narrow city street. The nearby buildings had been abandoned and left to die—a sign of how run-down the neighborhood had become.
Sad, I thought, distracted by the urban blight. The second floor of the White Bear held two black windows that stared down on those coming and going. Was this the bar where Todd Wilts had met her? How was it that a fifteen-year-old wound up inside a place like this? I shuddered at the question. In my mind I saw Snacks as a young woman, wandering inside the White Bear like a lamb to slaughter. How would I react if she were attacked?
“I’d kill anyone who touched her,” I muttered. My breath fogged the car windows, and I turned the heat on, fanning the air to clear the humid mist from the glass. There was no telling if Todd Wilts might show up. I needed a clear view. The street remained empty, though. A thin mist hovered above the blacktop. The scene was eerie, haunting. The White Bear could have been a house of horrors, complete with special effects.
I circled the block again and slowed long enough for another good look. I imagined what was inside—a cherry-wood bar surrounded by stout tables, each of them filled with dangerous bikers. They smelled like the earth and sat squatly with shoulders hunched, their eyes like white beads set deep in their browned skin, aged by years of sun and wind. They covered themselves in leather and drank sloppily, celebrating an overdue break from the road. And their women clung to their thick, tattooed arms, wearing torn jeans and carrying wildly dyed hair that draped over naked shoulders. Local women were there too, some dancing, some kneeling, some feeding men shots from the hollow between their breasts—too naïve to know any better.
I imagined that the air was choked with smoke and filled with the scent of beer and piss and a funky musk. I imagined the bathrooms’ sticky floors and doorless stalls that wore heavy coats of black, chipped paint. I imagined a grab-and-go machine hung crooked on the bathroom wall, vending tampons and tropical-flavored condoms for a quarter. I imagined all these things. At once, I knew that I wanted to go inside.
As if to confirm what I saw in my mind, the toothy grin of an old biker caught my eye as he approached the tavern. Long, rangy legs, thin to the point of looking emaciated, his high cheekbones dagger sharp, his face coming to a point on his chin. Bald in the front, graying hairs sticking out in the back beneath a blue-and-white kerchief. He had lively, bright eyes that happily gazed around without a care in the world. A silvery metal chain swung from around his hip, connecting to his back pocket. It glinted in the gray autumn light when he turned away from my car and headed toward the door. He took the steps in sets of two, spry and light-footed for his age, his boots clopping against the slanted concrete.
Just then, a younger man came from around the corner and called out his name, giving the biker a curt wave. He was younger by a few dozen years and dressed in a preppy college fashion. He wore catalog clothes—from his fall-semester jacket to dark denim jeans and black shoes that were at once casual and formal. His hair was sandy brown and moppy, hanging down to his neck. Broad-shouldered and fit.
An athlete, I thought. Rugby, maybe.
The biker stopped at the top of the steps and they exchanged a few words. The younger man gave a laugh. Clearly, they knew each other.
“What is going on here?” I muttered, trying to understand the dynamics of the White Bear. Then I saw the school logo on the younger man’s shirt.
“The university! Of course,” I said, nearly jumping. Just a short walk from the tavern, a popular university—the oldest in the city—housed thousands of campus students. How many of them must have had their first experience of college boozing at the White Bear. The sad state of the building, of the neighborhood, told me all I needed to know.
Might have been a biker bar once, but the college kids are keeping it open now.
Another group of students appeared from around the corner, waving at the two men. Moments later, they all disappeared inside. I tried to understand what might have happened to the girl. Had she been with
a group of the college students? While in high school, I hung out a few times with college kids—but never as a sophomore, never at fifteen. But that was me. And where did Todd Wilts fit in at the White Bear? Renting the room above the bar, like Nerd suggested? Or was he a biker or maybe even a student—no expiration date on that these days. I’d guess the former, and that the room above the bar was just an address all the bikers shared. After all, the road was their real home.
I turned my car off, committing to my first field trip. The engine rumbled before shutting down and spouted some motor ticks while it cooled. I gave myself a look in the rearview mirror, hoping that I could blend in. This was my homework. I needed a mental map of the place—though I suspected I wasn’t about to find anything overly complex. If I could get away with it, I’d try to snap a few pictures with my phone. And delete them later, of course.
I guessed I could pass as a college kid’s parent. I smoothed some lip gloss on my mouth and pushed my hair up and over—I wanted to create an older version of myself. Rocking my head from one side to the next, I grew wary of what the mirror showed and questioned if I could pull off the look. Another push, farther back this time. I added a hair clip, and the college mom came into view. I’d have to do a lot more work to prep myself for the visit to kill Todd Wilts, but for now, the college mom would do. In my gut, I wished I could try and get away with being an older college student—a grad student, maybe.
The road was damp and puddly. I walked over crushed cigarettes and avoided broken bottles littered around. I stepped onto the sidewalk and then onto the first of the bar’s crooked steps, listening to the crunch of an errant piece of glass beneath my heel. When I walked through the door, the cozy smell of the tavern swept over me like a warm blanket. But the mysterious and dangerous biker bar that I’d expected died in my imagination.
The interior of the White Bear was bathed in a honey-golden light. It immediately gave off a warm appeal, like a cozy ski lodge with a massive fire at the center. The single room centered around a large bar surrounded by high-backed seats. The old biker I’d seen earlier lifted the point of his narrow chin from behind the bar and fixed me with a short look before pouring a drink for an elderly woman with harsh red lipstick that glowed garishly against her ghostly skin. She picked it up quickly and set her lips to the glass. She found my silhouette, squinting against the outside light, and tried to focus. Her curiosity lasted for less time than it took her to take a puff on her cigarette, though, and she went back to the freshly poured drink in her hand.
The familiar sounds of rowdy college students came from a far corner. I followed the noise and found a group of young men huddled together in a large booth, two pitchers of beer at the center of their attention. They raised their sloshy mugs and sounded off sporadic clinks, toasting the end of their semester and the beginning of winter break.
“Congrats again,” the bartender called out, holding up a shot glass. He slugged it back in one smooth motion. “You guys deserve the break, but keep your celebrating down to a low roar.”
The boys laughed and raised their mugs again. “To Sam and keeping it down!” they shouted, tapping their glasses. “Two more pitchers, Sam.”
“Nope, nope,” Sam countered. “Not till you finish what you’ve got—and no fucking puking in my booth either. Tired of that shit.”
“To puking!” they toasted.
I wanted to laugh at the banter. Memories flooded back as I made my way over to the bar’s curvy run of finished wood. I took one of the seats and placed my hands on the smooth wooden top.
Sam waved another shot glass in the air toward the boys and gulped it down.
“What can I get for you?” Sam asked me. I didn’t know what to order. The shelves beneath the bar were lined with bottles of every color, shape, and style.
“Whiskey,” I blurted, and then shrank back, surprised at myself. It was the first thing that came to my mind; and it didn’t seem to faze Sam. He threw his arms beneath the bar to grab a glass. He pulled a bottle off the shelf behind him, and then stopped.
“Neat?” he asked. I nodded. He skipped the ice and water and placed a thick-bottomed glass in front of me. “Something to warm you?”
“You might say that,” I answered. Having never had whiskey, I expected the drink to be unpleasant, like cough medicine or something only burly men with gravelly voices would drink. But I forced a sip and let the taste sit in my mouth until the toffee flavor numbed my tongue. Sam watched for my reaction. I squirmed, uncertain of how I should act. I wasn’t used to a bartender waiting around.
“Good, isn’t it?” he asked, encouraging me to agree. “Distilled right here.”
“Delicious,” I managed to answer, wanting to be polite. Steve would have been better at this. “You make your own?”
“We have a label. Small one,” he answered, pouring me another. He held up a pretty round bottle, a creamy white label showing a picture of the building. The name White Bear was emblazoned across the top. “Free one for you. Pass the name around.”
“Sure thing,” I answered. “Would be glad to.” Sam dipped below the bar for a moment and then resurfaced, producing some cards. He handed them to me. Then he moved away again, easing back to the other side of the bar to pour another pitcher for the boys.
The door opened and the outline of a man appeared in it. Harsh light cut a path across the bar, piercing it with a narrow swath of light that caught the shimmer of dust. He grunted once and stomped a foot before entering, announcing himself in the kind of way I’d expect.
It was Todd Wilts. Even with his face in shadow, I could tell that it was him. My mouth went dry.
I took a big sip of the whiskey and swallowed. My belly warmed immediately from the spirit. I kept my head down but followed my first mark out of the corner of my eye as he made his way to the bar. Sam greeted him and lined up two shot glasses. They chased their shots with one more before Sam placed a set of keys on the bar.
“Delivery truck is out back,” he told him. “Full tank, filled it this afternoon. And the delivery is Delaware.”
“Got this,” Todd answered in a low baritone voice. “Back by eleven.”
“Watch the state line,” Sam hinted with a wink.
“One more?” Todd asked, lifting his shot glass.
Sam shook his head. “Long drive,” he said and then tapped his head. “Keep your head clear, got it? You can have all you want when you get back.”
“Line ’em up for me at eleven,” Todd instructed. “Got that?”
“How could I forget?” Sam answered with a joking frown. “Don’t I every night? Listen. There’s gonna be other jobs. Delivery is what I got for now.”
“Whatever,” Todd scowled. “Be back by eleven.” He scraped the keys off the bar and said nothing more.
I’d finished my whiskey by the time Todd passed me again. I dared a broader, riskier, look then, turning enough to face him. But he didn’t notice me. He didn’t even see me. My stomach hardened. I was disappointed. My plan was only going to work if I could offer him something he wanted to see.
“You’ve got some work to do,” I mumbled to myself, glancing down at my outfit. “A lot of work.” But I had gathered a lot more information than I thought I would have gotten. He worked for Sam, delivery or something, and returned to the White Bear in the evenings around eleven. I celebrated with another shot of White Bear whiskey, and even bought the bartender a shot. He appreciated the gesture but told me it wasn’t necessary since he was the owner. He drank the shot with me anyway, talking up how it was the best whiskey this side of the Mississippi and maybe the best in the entire country.
I realized something else when I eventually made my way back to my mom-mobile. I liked the taste of whiskey. White Bear Whiskey.
TWENTY
THE GRAY POUCHES were back. It had been a few days since we’d last met so, selfishly, I’d expected to find a fresher face. It was still fleshy, puffy, and carrying Nerd’s bloodshot eyes. His hair was messier too�
��something I didn’t think was possible—a scraggly knot of misplaced locks, torpedoing in different directions. A new pair of heavy creases cut across his forehead, aging him a decade. I began to wonder if a decade’s worth of troubles had suddenly found their way onto my new partner’s lap. What was going on that could put him in such as state? Or was this normal for the younger generation? What was it they were called? Millennials, Gen-X’r? I didn’t know one from the other.
The look of him told me something had him worried. It couldn’t be anything we were doing, surely. We’d only just started. At first glance, I thought he’d maybe tied one on, but he didn’t come off as the type to drink anything stronger than Mountain Dew. Or maybe he’d just picked up a nasty flu bug.
“You okay?” I asked. My question was met with a plea in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. He wanted to talk. Rather, he needed to talk. But selfishly, I only wanted to work on our planning. I just had two hours and didn’t want to waste a minute of it. “One too many last night?”
“Nah,” he answered and raised his flash drive.
I quickly brought out mine, raising it with a touch against his in a mock-ceremonial cheer, hoping he’d laugh, but his face remained unchanged. I sank my flash drive into the computer’s port. The screen came alive, mounting the drive and then popping up the collage of green, yellow, and red links. Immediately, my soul filled with an empty hunger that urged me to grab the mouse and begin clicking at random.
“Just some personal stuff—” he said.
“I don’t have to know,” I said, interrupting in an annoyed tone. “And probably best that I don’t know. And that you don’t know about me.”
“Less is better,” he agreed, but his eyes looked hurt. He shrugged the sentiment off and returned to the work in front of him. I must have a look about me that invites people to open up. I thought I only had that effect on Katie, but had begun to wonder over the years. If they only knew how much I’d like to kill them rather than listen to them.
Affair with Murder The Complete Box Set Page 12