“Never,” I say. “Shoot me if you want.”
He watches me a moment, considers that. But he doesn’t pull the trigger. He’s not here to kill me. If he was, he’d have already done it.
“Well, now, that’s interesting,” he says. “But you know what? I don’t care what your real name is. Let’s just cut to the chase, Vicky. Your marriage is a fraud. You got married under a stolen identity. And if that little nugget of information were to come out, you don’t get a dime of that money.”
My legs start to give out.
“So I want half,” he says. “Or you get nothing. November third. That’s the date you get your hands on the money, right?”
I can’t speak. I try to nod, but the gun is basically imprinted on my forehead.
“November third,” he says. “I come to you. And you transfer half to me. Ten million dollars. We’ll keep it a nice, round number.”
“How—how?” I whisper.
“Don’t worry about how. I’ll handle how. So between now and November third, Vicky, you be awfully nice to that husband of yours. That’s just two days. Keep him happy. Spread your legs nice and wide for him. You have a lot of practice doing that, right?”
He shoves me hard, the fence contracting with my weight. I fall to the ground, on my hands and knees, next to some old moving box and a bag of fast food.
“If you run, Vicky, or fuck with me in any way, I’ll tell Simon everything. All those ten years you’ve worked for this money will be down the toilet. And don’t even think about doing to me what you did to Nick. Nick didn’t see you coming. I do.”
“It’ll look... suspicious,” I say. “Three days after she’s dead, I transfer ten million dollars to an anonymous account.”
He kicks me in the ribs. I buckle under the pain, landing face-first into the dingy alley.
“I don’t give a fuck what looks suspicious,” he says. “That’s your problem. You can decide, Vicky. What do you prefer, a little suspicion? Or never seeing one nickel of that money? That’s not a hard choice. You’ll think of something. Oh,” he says as he walks away, “and Happy Halloween.”
84
Simon
I step around the shattered bowl of Halloween candy, move around Lauren’s dead body, and take the stairs up to the second story of Lauren’s home, making sure to stomp my feet and make the boot impressions as I go up. It’s a bit awkward, wearing this long robe. Hell, it’s been awkward all night, walking around with size thirteen boots on my size eleven feet.
I reach the second story. There is blood on the floor, not far from where the rope is tied around the whirls and shapes making up this ornate wrought iron bannister. Is this bannister going to hold, with Lauren hanging from it? Probably so. It looks well-made. Not that I care either way.
I can’t waste time. Every second counts. Maybe someonedidcall the cops, and maybe theyareon their way, but if I get my work done in just a minute or so, maybe I can get out of here before they arrive.
Start with the most important thing, the pink phone. If nothing else, the pink phone.
The blood on the floor is where the struggle occurred. Whatever happened, however it happened, it happened here. I imagine it. Yes, I imagine the struggle, her terror, her pain.
There’s a small brown table with curved legs here in the hallway. On top is a vase of fresh flowers and a framed photo of Lauren and her husband, Conrad.
There is a shelf below the top of the table.
If I leave the phone just sitting out, the cops will wonder why the killer didn’t take it with him. It needs to be out of sight.
It needs to have slid away during the struggle. And Christian,panicked, not thinking straight, either never thought to look for it or didn’t want to spend the time.
I squat down, careful to avoid the blood, and gently place the pink phone on the wood floor. I slide it hard toward the table.
Shit. It stopped short. Okay, well, then I guess there was more of a struggle and it somehow got whacked again.
I reach down and put my gloved finger on the top of the pink phone. I slide it again, this time making sure it slides all the way under that little table, obscured by that bottom shelf.
There. So that works. In his haste, in the heat and confusion after killing the woman he loved, Christian didn’t see the phone, and he was too panicked, so he just ran.
But I’m not quite ready to run yet.