And not, she prayed, to the nightmares that visited her all too often.
Ten minutes later, the lid of darkness shut over her supine body.
Setting the stage was as crucial as it was easy. All one had to do was think like a crime scene investigator or a cop. Maybe a little like a nosy mother-in-law. The woman pondering that scenario had had a few of those to contend with, too. Ultimately, she knew that no detail was too frivolous. Even the mundane had to be considered, very carefully. The point of setting the stage was to ensure that she was in the final act.
The act that had her getting everything she ever wanted.
The plasma screen over the fireplace was playing The O’Reilly Factor. The man glued to the TV loved the political commentator’s take on politics, business, and culture. He even drank from a “Culture Warrior” ceramic mug.
The woman considered the TV analyst an insufferable blowhard.
A chime from a grandfather clock sounded.
The woman felt the chill of the air from an open window as she stood nude behind the sofa.
“Babe, how about a piece of that pie?” he said, his eyes fixed on the screen.
“Right here,” she said.
Yet there was no pie.
She put the barrel of the pistol to the back of his head and fired. Blood spurted like from a stomped-on ketchup packet. Specks of red dotted her glove-covered arm. There was likely more blood than she could see with the naked eye, but that was fine. She knew how to handle it. She’d planned for it. He gurgled a little, but it wasn’t the sound of a man fighting for his life. That was over. It was the sound of air oozing from his trachea. He slumped over.
She made her way to the shower, which was already running. She pulled off the glove and set it inside a trash can lined with plastic. The water was ice cold by then. Even for her, it had taken considerable effort to summon the nerves to do what she had wanted to do.
Gunfire was messy.
Blowback is hell.
Spatter matters.
And only time will tell.
It was a kind of verse that she’d conjured that moment, and she allowed a smile to cross her lips as the icy water poured over her. She looked down at her legs, long, lovely. Flawless.
But not for long.
The water had gone from crimson to pink to clear, swirling down the drain between her painted toes. She turned off the shower and reached for a towel. As she patted her face dry she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
Still lovely. Still rich. Even more so at that very moment than she’d ever been in her life.
She poked her arms through the sleeves of a sheer white nightgown and let the filmy fabric tumble down her body. This was part of setting the stage. Her augmented breasts—not freakishly so, just enough to arouse a man when she needed to—would protrude only slightly. She’d act modest and embarrassed, but if the cops on the scene were under fifty, they’d be looking where they shouldn’t.
A distraction. One of many.
She poured a plastic cup of bleach down the shower drain and ran the water while she counted to ten.
Taking the trash can liner that held the glove and the empty plastic bleach cup nestled inside, she hurried back into the living room and surveyed the scene. Exactly seven minutes had passed since she pulled the trigger, propelling the slug into her unsuspecting . . . pie-wanting . . . TV-WATCHING . . . husband. It was important to get on with it. The pool of blood around his head would congeal, and her story would not seem so plausible. She knocked the contents atop the coffee table to the floor. Using her hip, she pushed over a potted button fern. A trickle of black soil scattered over the rug. A drawer in a sideboard was pulled to the floor. Knives fell like gleaming Pixy Stix.
It looked like a struggle. Not much of one, but one that could have taken place in the moments that she’d later describe.
Next, she put on a second rubber kitchen glove—the long kind that ran from fingertips to elbow—and picked up the gun. She was grateful for all the things that money could buy just then. Pilates. Yoga. Tai chi. She’d taken all those courses with the other rich bitches. They never accepted her, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t there to get to know them. She was there to limber up. She bent down and twisted her shoulder as she pointed the gun at her leg and fired.
She didn’t cry out.
Instead, she bit her lip and started toward the door. She was no longer concerned about blood and where it fell. In the throes of her imagined escape, there could be blood anywhere. His or hers. She left the door open, and started to pick up the pace by the koi pond that had been a labor of love, apparently, of the previous owners. She didn’t love anything or anyone. Except, of course, a brimming bank account. She bent down, her nightgown now more red than white. She’d missed her femoral artery, of course. But she hadn’t expected that much blood.
Good thing Darius is still up, she thought, looking up the walkway of the property across the street. The violet light of a TV slashed through the manicured foliage framing the window.
She tucked the gun into the plastic bag, dropped in a three-pound lead weight, and deposited all of it between lily pads in the pond. She dropped the bag containing the gloves into the storm drain on the street—it was a risk, but one that she’d take.
Each time she moved her leg, she let out a yelp. Then a scream. Finally she turned on the tears.
One notch at a time.
She caught a glimpse of a figure between the house and the hedge, and she smiled.
Lainie’s eyes fluttered, struggling to open, weary slits reacting to light they wanted to avoid. She looked at her phone. It was now 4:00 A.M. She felt the chill of the early morning air and pulled up the sheet. Groggy from the pill, she had a million things to do in the morning ... and she was going to look like hell. She reviewed her list as she tried to find her way back to slumber. Just fifteen minutes more. Only fifteen. There was an interview to conduct for an article she was writing for a blog, an overdue errand to the dry cleaner, and a ferry ride over to meet with the high school class reunion committee in Port Orchard. She exhaled, closed her eyes.
The dream shook her. They always did. Dark. Violent. Specific and ambiguous at the same time. They always led back to thoughts of her sister. Her heart pounded. She knew her dream had been a nightmare, but there was no way to analyze what it might have meant. If, that is, she was still the kind of woman who would do that sort of thing. She could not recall much about it . . . except the gun, the figure running . . . and the face that was hers when she looked in the mirror.
CHAPTER THREE
Tacoma
Police and ambulance sirens serve to warn others that danger is near. Stay away. Move aside. Let us through. Get the F out of here! In truth, the shriek of the siren only ensures that people will congregate toward the commotion. A siren is like a rising curtain and the switch on the panel of stage lights. There is no stopping the casual onlooker when the siren screams. People can’t help themselves.
Everyone wants to see what the fuss is all about.
Everyone wants to see the show.
It was surely that way that cool spring night in Tacoma when Tori Connelly and her bloody nightgown arrived on the front porch of Darius Fulton’s North Junett Street home. Without waiting for a second, Darius reacted with the instinct that comes with the injection of adrenaline into the bloodstream. He comforted her and dialed the police, who in turn called the paramedics.
Darius had flipped the switch.
Woman