Killing Katie (An Affair With Murder) (Volume 1) (16 page)

“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.

T
HE 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.

What an ironic twist.

“So,” Nerd began. “What did you learn on the field trip?”

“I saw him,” I said, trying to contain myself. “He
is
big. The pictures online didn’t show us just
how
big. I can do this, but will need to get close.”

“You saw him?” Nerd asked. “Did he see you?”

I shook my head. “I stayed for a drink, watched him talk to the bartender, and then I went home.”

“What’s he doing there?” Nerd chirped, his cheeks turning red. “Is the apartment his?”

“One at a time,” I answered, raising my hand to calm him down. “I don’t think anyone lives upstairs. According to the bartender, also the owner, most of the building is used as a distillery for White Bear Whiskey. He even gave me a card.” I fished one out from my purse and handed it to him.

“This is good,” Nerd said, speaking more to himself than to me. He flicked the card with his fingers and added, “They’re legal, so there will be plenty to find online that I can check out.”

“Why?” I asked, and then shook my head. “Never mind that. Our mark works for the distillery. He drinks there too, but delivers in the afternoons. If I can get his attention, get a few drinks in him . . .”

“How?” Nerd asked. “I mean, no offense, but you’re not exactly his type.”

“What do you mean, not his type?” I asked, frowning. Till now, I’d always thought of myself as being
any
man’s type. “And how would you know his type?”

“What I mean is that he likes them young, really young. Makes sense, right? Think about what he did, why he got locked up in the first place.”

“Yeah,” I answered, remembering the pretty girl with the sunny highlights. I suddenly felt old and passed over. I tossed my hair to one side and added, “But you haven’t seen me.
Really
seen me.” Nerd shrugged with a laugh and then brought his backpack around, resting it between us, perched like some grand prize waiting to be shared.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes . . .” I answered, uncertain to what he was referring.

“Say the word and I can toss what’s in my backpack away. Never to be seen again. Otherwise, there is no turning back for either of us.”

I felt my neck stiffen, realizing the line I was about to cross meant some of the risk was on my shoulders too. I moved to the edge of my seat, eager to see what he’d brought. “Show me,” I insisted.

“Committed!” Nerd said flatly as his hands disappeared inside the backpack. A moment later, he held up a clear plastic sandwich baggie with a syringe and a stout glass vial inside: brown, slender, a metal hat on top with a dim blue-rubber cap. And inside the vial, a liquid that could have been any color and made up of anything. I knew it was the strychnine. “This is it. I even managed to swipe a syringe from my dog’s vet . . . well, you don’t need to know that part.”

“How did you get it so fast?” I asked, feeling inspired by Nerd’s efficiency. “Wait, I don’t want to know. That’s another area we’ll keep to ourselves. Safer that way and—”

“Less incriminating,” he finished for me.

“May I?” I asked. My fingers clutched at the sandwich baggy like a jeweler would a rare gem. “How much?”

“Three grand,” he said, and at once my eyes bulged. I winced. “That’s not a bad price, considering the form.”

“Considering the
form
?” I asked. I had assumed the cost would be a few hundred. Nerd turned the bag over to show the label on the brown bottle. It was in a foreign language, but I’d seen the writing enough on television to recognize it. “Is that Russian?”

“It is,” Nerd answered excitedly, his voice pitched high. “Liquid. Potent. A good call, don’t you think?”

“And that’s why it is more?” I asked, still not understanding.

“Look at this. We’re not talking about crappy, powdery stuff that’s been cooked up in some schmo’s kitchen,” he explained. “This is
manufactured
. A high-potency injectable. One shot of this and Wilts is down in under ten minutes.”

The syringe’s needle seemed sturdy enough, but I was still going to have to get close. The image in my mind of Todd Wilts suddenly made me nervous. Not so much a fear of
him
, but the dangerous possibility of the hit going terribly wrong. I touched the syringe through the clear plastic and tried to see the needle through its cover. If it was too thin, there was the risk of it breaking before I got to use it. But if it was thick enough, I’d be able to plunge it, sink it like a knife, and deliver the poison.

But then I saw the problem and let out an impatient huff.

“What? What’s wrong?” Nerd asked as he began to inspect the bottle.

“How are we supposed to get the poison into the syringe safely?” I asked, answering his question with a question. “I don’t think we want to chance that rubber cap. Do you?”

Nerd raised one brow, then winked. The expression didn’t seem natural for him, but I understood the sentiment. He held up a finger, telling me to wait. Then he produced the biggest sandwich baggie I’d ever seen. Identical to the smaller one, but the size of it was comical.

“We’ll use this,” he said. “Probably overkill, but that’s the point. We want to be safe.”

“What are we supposed to do with that?”

“Observe,” he instructed, placing the vial and syringe into the larger bag and zipping it closed. “With a five-gallon bag, you can fill the syringe, put the caps back on, and reseal, all through the plastic. No need to touch anything directly or risk getting some of it on you.”

As Nerd spoke, I could see that whatever was bothering him was steadily moving on, clearing from his mind like a passing fog. His mannerisms had become more animated, more normal, more of what I’d grown accustomed to seeing. And that made me more comfortable too.

“Or . . .” I began, then dug into my purse to show him one of my own tricks. “We could use
these
.” I flashed him a pair of latex gloves that I’d swiped from Steve’s car.

“Yeah, that’d work too,” he grinned, peering down at the bag in his lap. “Not sure how old this is. Might be best to use both.” Nerd handed me the bag—then the corners of his mouth turned down as though he’d just stepped into a pile of dog shit.

“So, you’ll add the three grand to the forty percent?” I asked, hoping the job paid more. “You know, we took a bit of a risk buying inventory before knowing if we got the job.”

Nerd shook his head. “We got it!”

“We did?” I yelled, clapping my hand over my mouth. I tipped my head back and quietly stomped my feet with excitement. “How much?”

His face soured, and I felt a twinge of disappointment. “Only eighteen.”

“Eighteen hundred?” I asked, dropping my shoulders and foolishly wondering if there was a return policy on the strychnine.

Who was I kidding? My first job and I’d already put us in the red.

“Eighteen
grand
,” he announced and then pitched his eyes up, moving his lips without saying a word. “So that makes my cut a little over ten and yours a little under eight.”

“That’s doable,” I said, realizing how much money we’d earn for a few hours’ work.

Eight thousand to me. What kind of dent in law school tuition would that make? Was that how much a life was worth?
I shook off that last question.
After all, the mark meant nothing. The act meant nothing.
This is work. No emotional connection. A paycheck going to a greater cause.

“You thought it should have been more?”

“If I’m right,” he began as he pointed toward the red links. “We’ll find marks for thirty grand, maybe even some for fifty grand.” The numbers sounded staggering.

Why so high? How much was there to gain by someone else’s death?
And then I thought of all the murder-conspiracy and thriller novels I’d read over the years.

A sense of relief came over me. If fiction was based on real life, then our potential market was huge.

“I guess fiction is real, and fairytales
can
come true.”

“Huh?” he asked.

“Never mind,” I answered, waving off what I said.

“When?”

I took a deep breath and answered, “Tonight.”

T
ONIGHT WAS THE
first night of the rest of my life—that is, a life after Todd Wilts. But Steve had other plans for me. We’d just finished dinner when somehow the conversation wrapped back around to a mention of my blouse and the night of the homeless man’s death. That is the way Steve put it, “the man’s death.” He didn’t call it what it was: murder. I rushed to clean the dishes, hiding in the invisibility of being busy—a cue he usually took as my being on the fringe of caring. Like I said, I could be a bitch sometimes. And always when it worked in my favor. I needed it to work in my favor now.

I watched the clock, knowing the hours Todd Wilts would likely be at the tavern. He’d told the bartender that he wanted to get shit-faced drunk after he was done for the night. I wanted to be at the tavern before eleven. Late for a Thursday evening, but still early from a college student’s perspective. They’d be filling the White Bear, cooking up the start of a long weekend by then.