“So we really do sell e-books.” I stated, intrigued. “How in the world did you come up with the idea of selling e-books?” Nerd’s face lit up, his smile broadening as he typed and finally smacked the Enter key.
“I just sent you a link,” he answered. “Found this article about how thousands upon thousands of new e-books are published every day. The number of e-books is in the millions. It’s a river of new books, dumping into an ocean. And where better to hide than an ocean!”
“Ocean? But the buyers . . . how do they know which books to buy?”
“Easy,” he said, waving his hands. “I wrote a script that generates crappy self-help books, publishes them, and then transfers a list to him, along with the Bitcoin. Every sale generates a royalty back to us. And the best part is that we get a tax form at the end of the year.”
“Tax form? How did you—”
“Hope you don’t mind, I filed on your behalf . . . electronically, of course.”
“An ocean to hide in,” I said, muttering. “It’s brilliant, Brian.”
“I thought so too,” he said sounding almost arrogant.
“More cases it is, then,” I told him. “To make up what I need.”
A smile creased his face, the kind that told me he was unsure of what to do next. But I knew what to do next. I refreshed the links on my screen and began searching the listings. Doubling the number of cases was the only way to cut the overhead.
Would that be so bad?
I didn’t think so.
SEVEN
I MISS KATIE. BUT, as they say, she’s alive in my memories. I’ve never subscribed to that saying before, and might even hate it a little. Not that I had occasion to use it before anyway. There has been something going on since her death, and I’m not at all sure whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. What I know for certain is that it is my thing—mine and Katie’s. My car’s tires rumbled onto the bridge over Neshaminy Creek, clipping the side of a dead squirrel.
I slowed the car to a near-crawl at the steely apex and glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure that nobody was behind me. I was alone. Passing over the narrow stretch of water, I sat up as high as I could to catch a brief look at the slow-moving creek. Sunlight bounced from the surface, stirring starbursts, but something wasn’t the same. The creek was dangerously low, I realized. That concerned me enough to want to take a closer look.
The winter thaw had already passed—a fast and steady flow that emptied into the bay, leaving the creek shallow. The pale faces of ancient boulders had surfaced and were drying in the sun, the slow current trickling around them. I’d never been able to see them before. But it was the dry gravel beds that I took as a real warning. The dense river stone was home to a handful of my murder weapons, and with the waters this low, I couldn’t risk throwing anything new over. I thought of the stun gun and Ghoul. I thought of the syringe and the bottle of poison used to kill Todd Wilts. By now the creek had swept them up and crashed them against the rocks, pulverizing them into dust.
“Dust?” I asked, my mind suddenly filled with images of Katie’s gravesite. “Has her body turned to dust by now?”
I knew it wasn’t healthy to think of her as often as I did, but a part of me took comfort in it, took comfort in needing to.
Does time stand still for the dead?
While my life had moved on, hers had stopped. Wondering what happened next needled my thoughts. I knew it was guilt playing with me, teasing, nipping at my emotions, wanting me to lash out.
“I’m sorry, Katie,” I said, apologizing yet again. I moved the car closer to the rail, wanting to get out just for a minute. A car horn blared, breaking my gaze, breaking my thoughts. I waved the car by, but the old man behind the wheel hit his horn again, the woman next to him egging him on, the waddle of her chin swaying while she yelled. Their car lurched forward, crossed the double yellow line with tires squealing on the bridge’s metal decking grate. They fixed me with a stare from behind a dirty window, her crooked finger wagging at me. I prepared a finger gesture of my own, but then decided just to wave, rocking my hand back and forth like a beauty queen in a parade. The old man stomped on the gas and sped across the bridge—after they had passed I let my middle finger peg the sky.
Romeo’s. I heard Katie’s voice in my head and agreed. Romeo’s was where I was headed, and she knew it. She needed to talk.
Maybe she really is alive in my memories. Would that be so bad?
I say that only because I talk to her, and she talks to me. Sounds crazy, even to me. But I do. Some days, like today, I’ll go to Romeo’s and imagine she is sitting across from me. I imagine talking to her like we used to.
All at once, I stopped breathing, my heart in my throat. A choked sound came from my mouth as my knuckles strained and tightened around the steering wheel. I gulped at the air but found nothing. Another panic attack?
You’re fine, I lied to myself, feeling overwhelmed and stricken with grief.
Breathe, I heard Katie tell me, her voice in my head making the guilt even worse. I tried to calm down, tried to settle my racing heart by sheer will. I searched the waterline passing beneath the bridge and found a current breaking over some shallow rocks to focus on. Calming. But the image disappeared when sharp lights flew across my eyelids. My body felt like it was filling with sand; it was pouring into me like an hourglass, filling my legs and chest and lungs and about to reach my throat, to suffocate me.
Breathe, I screamed in my mind. Just a tiny panic attack. Nothing to worry about.
I sipped at the air, blinking away the sharp lights. The attacks were new, coming whenever I talked to Katie. I thought of them as penance for what I’d done, but they were more than that. The attacks were pure guilt, and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
“Are you okay?” I heard a man’s voice call out. I kept my foot on the brake and squinted, trying to focus through the lights bouncing in front of me. “Do you need help?”
I finally got enough air to stop the attack. The heavy sands drained from my body, freeing me of the weight, of the guilt. I could move. On the other side of my car I saw a man in a convertible—the sight of him was surreal, like something out of a magazine. I blinked, thinking I must have passed out, thinking he was a mirage, a crazily dreamed fantasy of handsome features and country-club clothes, driving an expensive sports car. Certainly nothing we’d see around our neighborhood.
“I’m fine, thank you,” I answered, deciding he was real after all. My words broke, cracking. I cleared my throat, which only made me sound worse. “Just felt a little sick.”
“Okay, then,” he answered as he revved his motor. I cringed at my unconvincing reply, but as his convertible rolled back and he shifted it into gear, it was already too late to say anything else. “Just doing my civic duty.”
He glanced back briefly, taking his eyes from the road, giving them to me. Their color was hazel and endless, and I stayed there with him until he winked and turned away. Mr. Country Club let off the clutch, hit the gas, and sped away. I broke my gaze to face the road again, seeking out the other side of the bridge. I had nearly forgotten where I was headed.
“Romeo’s!” I said aloud, feeling better and pretending that Katie was still with me.
Within minutes, I was parking. I heard the turn in my belly—an innocent plea for food. The parking lot was empty and the time on the car’s dash told me it was still a little early, but Romeo’s would serve me lunch anyway, I knew. I was arriving early to get our table like I had a dozen times before. The maître d’ recognized me at once and pulled me out a menu. He held up two fingers, silently asking if anyone would be joining me. I shook my head and suddenly felt a little stupid about planning a lunch date with a ghost.
“The window?” he asked. I nodded. Katie had always picked a table closest to the windows, a favorite of mine too. It warmed me to know she’d sat in the same chair, breathed on the same glass, her wet kisses left behind. I followed the trail of blackbirds swooping down
from the roof as I thought about her.
The maître d’ held my seat out for me as a waitress filled my glass with water. The young woman picked at the settings across from me, clearing the flatware and dishes, piling them on top of each other. I flinched at the glass and metal clacking and raised my hand, motioning to her to stop.
“Could you—” I began, then hesitated, knowing how my request would sound. “Could you leave them?”
“Are you expecting someone?” she asked, her eyes moving from me to the maître d’. He gave her a short shake of his head and motioned to the table, telling her to leave the setting.
“Thank you,” I told her, wondering what she must be thinking.
“Drink, ma’am?” she asked next.
“Whiskey,” I answered, knowing it was early but not caring in the least. I’d already showed the waitress some of my cards. If she was going to judge me, she had already.
As the waitress left to get my drink, I slid my glass of water across the table, pretending it was for Katie. Emotion crept into me like an abrupt storm. I didn’t want to cry so I bit my lip, forcing myself to stay composed. Katie came to me then. She came to me as she had before, sitting quietly and patiently, the light from the window showing her beauty. She raised the glass I had placed for her and sipped the water, tears on her cheeks swallowing the sunlight like a black hole. Her phone rang, and she rushed to hammer a reply on the screen, her nails erupting in a ticking chorus like the ghosts of an ancient typing pool. Only she was the ghost, and I welcomed seeing her every time.
I welcomed the whiskey too, having developed a taste of it after the White Bear—though no whiskey I’d had since had tasted quite as good. The whiskey was something I shared with nobody, save for the playdates I continued having with Skank.
A girl’s got to practice.
I tilted my glass in Katie’s direction. She tilted hers in return, toasting to our friendship.
I ate my meal and drank two more whiskeys, all the while continuing to talk to Katie. The maître d’ stopped by to apologize for the waitress, thinking that she’d made me feel uncomfortable. I shrugged it off, wondering what he’d think if he knew I was talking to dead people on a regular basis.
Does that make me even more psycho than I already think I am? Probably.
I half laughed when he unknowingly nodded in agreement. He offered me a small decanter of wine, insisting it would complement the meal. I hesitated, but accepted when he said it was on the house. I thanked him and raised my glass to Katie a second time. This time, though, she didn’t raise her glass. This time she stared absently out the window, not focused on anything outside. She pressed her hand against the glass. It moved smoothly through the pane. She turned to me with a desperate sadness on her face. I’d seen that look before and loathed what I knew was going to happen next.
The images were coming. I tried to brace myself.
Our conversations always ended this way—in a nightmare.
“You did this to me,” she said. “You took me from my boys.” Her face grew pale. Darkness crept onto her face like a plague. Her eyes sunk into her skull and her cheeks began to look hollow. Her flawless skin tightened and shrank like the peel of a delicious fruit left out to rot.
“No, no, no,” I whispered and shut my eyes, pressing them closed until I saw after-images of her face burning in the emptiness. “You’re not here.” I slipped my hand over the tablecloth, feeling the linen with my fingertips, crawling them along until I reached the heavy base of my whiskey glass. “You’re not really here, so why ruin our lunch? Why do you always have to ruin our lunch?”
“Your lunch?” I heard the waitress ask. “Your lunch was ruined?”
I opened my eyes. Katie was gone.
The waitress shifted uncomfortably. I could tell from her body language and posture that I’d scared her. I shook my head, assuring her that I was fine. I forced myself to look at the bottom of my whiskey glass next and then added, “The meal was very good. Thank you.”
She offered a short nod, saying nothing more. She placed the check on the table before walking away. Her step was a little faster than necessary.
When my time with Katie ended, leaving me sad and with more guilt than I knew what to do with, I found comfort in the line of the sun cresting above the horizon. Sometimes it was the cloud of blackbirds swimming in the sky, swooping across the windows and up over the rooflines. But the blackbirds always reminded me of the last time I had seen Katie alive.
I’m a ghost too, I decided.
The person I’d been when Katie was alive had died too. Killed. Murdered. I decided to leave Romeo’s for the last time. I was done feeling like a ghost.
EIGHT
I LET OUR HOUSE breathe tonight by opening the windows, fanning the stale air. The walls moaned as if alive—the sound filling the quiet with creaks and pops. As I opened a third window another low moan came, and I imagined the house taking a deep breath and letting it out. I told myself that it was just the change in air pressure and considered the months of winter we’d just left behind.
Steve didn’t like the windows open, but I did, and Steve wasn’t home. Maybe it was the cop in him, wary about the dangers, wary about the world’s insanity and the threat of it slicing through our window screens, invading our lives, and bringing a touch of crazy. If he only knew where the real danger was.
I almost laughed when I opened the fifth window. How many warnings had I ignored? Barefoot, wearing loose shorties, and swimming in one of Steve’s old sports tees—my favorite, the thin one with the faded logo, that hung flimsy and sheer. I was alone in the house with the shades open, and while I couldn’t quite bring myself to wander around in the nude, what I was wearing was virtually see-through. I loved the way it made me feel.
The wine is helping too, I thought, catching my reflection in the glass.
Steve’s old tee had never looked so sexy. And right now, a little sexy was what I needed.
It had been too long since we’d been together. I had listened to the doctors, listened to what they said about recovery and even went online to read about post-traumatic stress. But we’d never been apart. Not like this. I was afraid that the separation was growing wider, becoming more comfortable for him, and maybe me too. I didn’t get married because I wanted a roommate. I married the love of my life.
I checked the clock, the second hand swinging around the top of the dial, slipping past the minute hand and stealing time right before my eyes. If I waited too long, Steve and I might not ever get back the time we were losing. He’d be home by nine o’clock. That had become the norm when he worked afternoon shifts. I poured myself another glass of liquid courage, realizing a twist of nerves hung low in my gut, fluttering like a bad case of butterflies. I hadn’t felt nervous around Steve since we’d first started dating.
What if there’s more going on? More than healing from a gunshot wound. What if he’s lost interest in us? Or worse, found it somewhere else?
The drapes caught a short breeze and wafted up, the ends softly snapping inside the living room. I closed my eyes to the outside sounds of crickets and the distant murmur of tree frogs. Another wind rose and bare tree branches clacked, most of them still shy of their first spring buds. I’d wait for Steve, pounce on him when he came through the door, and see what buttons I could push . . . so to speak.
I was used to seeing Steve bring work home with him. I was used to a stack of cases on his desk, waiting to steal his time from us. He never knew I liked to read them, though, or that I missed reading them. The shooting took the cases away, leaving his desk empty, leaving the office to look eerie, as if he’d moved out. But since his return to work a few cases had showed up—a file or two, most of which I’d already seen—older cases waiting for a trial date or an appeal or any one of a dozen next legal steps. Charlie remained the head of the department and kept Steve at arm’s length, setting limits, encouraging him to take time away, time to heal. Of course I was grateful to Charlie, but the cases
were like candy to me, and I had a craving.
“Well, hello,” I announced to the tall stack of files that I found unexpectedly on Steve’s desk, feeling silly and a little giddy at the prospect of a night of reading. I hadn’t expected to see anything there. I flipped open the first—the folder was new and crisp to the touch, and I eagerly pinched the corner to reveal all the pages. The case involved a group of college students—freshmen and sophomores—and a website for trading cafeteria vouchers. I let that case go, and gravity closed the file like a yawn. Boring. “At least he is off the streets,” I sighed.
I knew that case had to be associated with the new position Charlie had offered Steve: to remain a detective, but to work most of the investigations from his desk. I wouldn’t have to worry about what door he was knocking on or what neighborhood he was patrolling. I wouldn’t have to worry about suddenly becoming a single mother or having to tell my children their father wasn’t coming home.
“Good for law school too,” I reminded myself, trying to find a benefit to the disappointment of his first case file. Working in front of a computer and out of harm’s way would be a blessing for the kids and me, but I think Steve hated the idea of it a little. Cyber crime was new to him, and it just wasn’t homicide. I’d seen him reading, though—nearly every night. And I supposed that was good. He’d even commented on the forensic side of the cyber crime division and what they were doing to profile and lift fingerprints. I’d smile, encourage him like Charlie had, but I could tell he missed his old job. And now I saw the plainness of the cases. “But not exactly something to sink your teeth into.”
I decided to give the case a second chance. I opened the folder again and leafed through the pages. The case sounded innocent enough—until I read the part about hacking into the cafeteria system. There was no mention of murders, but plenty of computer address spoofing and domain-name hacks that Nerd would have found fascinating. Who knew? He might have even had a hand in developing the code. I dropped the folder, giving up on it.
Affair with Murder The Complete Box Set Page 29