Killing Katie (An Affair With Murder) (Volume 1) (24 page)

Nerd rolled onto his back, his eyes—and pupils—wide. I peered toward the front, but found the librarian still busy with her phone, oblivious to the commotion.

“Wait! Wait, please.” Nerd managed to get out, throwing his hands up to block me, but I ignored his plea and straddled his body, shoving my fingers around his skinny neck. I was going to do this—my new kinship with murder was driving me. I would become the murderer I’d always wanted to be. “I can explain—”

“I don’t want to hear it. Didn’t you think I’d find out who you were and figure out that you’d set me up?” I squeezed and at once his eyes blew open, wider than I thought possible. His face filled with terror. He looked like a child who’d been thrown into the deep end of a pool, unable to swim, realizing death was pulling on his ankles. He kicked and bucked, trying to throw me. I braced my legs around his middle, clutching, hanging on. I stared into his bulging eyes. Nerd’s lips moved wildly, screaming silent words. His hands balled into delicate fists that batted at my arms. He made a feeble attempt, and for a second, I felt sorry for him.

Something was different this time. The way my fingers closed around his throat to strangle the life out of him, the purplish hue that came over his complexion, and his dying gaze that stayed fixed on me. Huge pools of tears welled up and dripped, cutting wet paths down the sides of his face. I was crying now too, suddenly feeling terrified that I was going to crush his neck, that I was going to finish what I’d started. It wasn’t at all like the homeless man or like it had been with Todd Wilts. The electricity, the magic, the passion that came with those murders was missing. I was killing for personal reasons. That meant I was killing for the wrong reasons.

Nerd stopped fighting back. He stopped trying to talk. His mouth puckered in a grim wrinkle as he sucked emptily, starving for the air he couldn’t have. His arms dropped to his sides and his fingers crawled toward his backpack.

Was he reaching for a weapon?

Instinct kicked in, and I tightened my grip. His eyes disappeared, rolling up until they were all white. Thready red explosions appeared in them and turned into bloody pools. My heart sank, and I quickly let go. He gasped and rolled over onto his side, erupting in a violent series of coughs. My hands cramped, trembled, and shook. I glanced above the desk, peering through the computers to see where the librarian was. I could make out the white lines hanging from her ears as she swayed to her music. We were alone.

“Why?” I cried.

But he couldn’t talk. He vomited onto the carpet and then rolled onto his back. He was quiet then—too quiet, and a dark fear hit me.

I killed him.

A gasp.

I tensed up, waiting.

Another gasp and a sudden fit of coughs made his skinny frame buck up and down again as he tried to breathe. When the coughing settled into a steady wheeze, other signs of life returned.

“Why?” he wheezed.

“Do you know what you did? My best friend is dead because of you!”

“I . . . how did you find out?” he asked, spitting and trying to prop himself up on his elbows.

“Do you really have to ask that, Brian Sutherland!?”

“I was so careful—careful so that nobody would know.” His eyes remained stunned-looking from my attack, but slowly cleared. And when he began to shake his head, I knew that he understood the slip he’d made. “Your husband. The dead guy in the alley.”

“Did you think that I wouldn’t find out?” I asked, but I didn’t wait to hear an answer. “Do you know what killing Todd Wilts started?”

“Do you think I care?” he answered abruptly, blubbering. He swiped at his nose.

The color in his face had started to return, giving me a sense of relief. But I could already see the rise of swelling on the skin around his neck. It’d bruise by tonight, but it was his eyes that really gave away what I tried to do. The color was there, but the whites were bleeding red—blown, hemorrhaging.

“Can I show you something?”

I hesitated and then asked, “You mean what’s in your bag?” His gaze fell on it, and he clutched it to his chest like a security blanket.

“Got this for you,” he answered, his voice sounding like a pouty child’s. “Thought you could use it for our next hit.” He took out a small gift and tossed it to me. A flash of neon purple and silver wrapping paper bumped from my one hand to the next as I tried to catch the gift.

“What makes you think there is
going
to be a next time?” I asked, putting his gift down. “My best friend was killed because of what we did. Don’t you
get
that?”

Nerd shrugged and shook his head, fixing me with a look of disbelief. “How?” he asked, “How’s that even possible?”

“Her husband,” I answered, but suddenly felt the emotion choke my words. “Her husband was involved with them—the White Bear, Todd, and his father, Sam. What we did started a war.”

Nerd continued to shake his head, struggling to believe what I told him. “That isn’t what was supposed to happen.”

“Yeah, I know, but it did. And now there are two little boys who will never—” I couldn’t finish. I was done, both mentally and physically. I gave Nerd a hard look then, disappointment reeling inside me like a sickness. “How much of our arrangement was fake? The money?”

He shook his head, again. “I used it to buy the strychnine.”

“There’s no bank account full of Bitcoins, is there? And the job listings?”

“That part is not true,” he answered, his voice breaking. I began to think that I’d damaged his vocal chords. “I mean at first I did set up the link to find someone, someone like you to do the hit on Wilts. But what you want to do, the business, I’m in. I’m all in.”

“I don’t know how I could ever trust you.”

He pondered what I said, thinking hard, as if it were a trivia challenge. “How about I give you something?” I peered at the gift, and then saw him shake his head while getting back up in front of the computer. I sat down next to him and felt the event fall out of me, draining, taking any energy I might have had in reserve. I couldn’t explain anymore, do anymore. Instead I watched as Nerd went to work on the computer.

He attacked the keyboard, his fingers tapping in a blur, the sound of his fingernails scraped against the keys loudly. A flurry of words appeared on the screen like accumulating snow, growing deeper, scrolling, until there were an abundance of sentences. He stretched his arms, continuing the volley of keystrokes; lips moving in a whisper, spouting the words, translating them into mechanical pushes that clicked beneath the keys. The snowfall became a blizzard and the sentences formed themselves into paragraphs and then filled a page. And when he was done, he flicked his hands at the screen and stood up to face me. His eyes were dark and wet, with a deep gray puffing beneath them. But I didn’t know if I was looking at the result of exhaustion from the attack or the grief over his sister.

“That’s my confession,” he said gravely. “All of it. It spells out in complete detail how Todd Wilts was killed. There is evidence in that confession that only the DA, the coroner, and the killer could possibly know. I’m giving it to you. Digitally signed too—incriminates only me.” He rummaged through his bag, came up with another flash drive, and copied the file containing his statement onto it, then handed it to me.

“I don’t know if this is enough,” I told him. “But for now, I think I’m going to need a little time to reconsider our arrangement.” The words stung him. His lip trembled, and he dropped back into his seat, skipping his fingers over the keyboard and lifting his hand, telling me to wait.

“Please,” he asked. “Please understand why.” Images flew onto the screen that immediately made me gasp. It was his sister, but then it wasn’t. What I saw was a gut-wrenching, terrible horror show that made me feel sick and want to turn away. A beautiful girl had been terribly disfigured—a wide ragged scar stretched from the corner of her mouth to her ear and then again from the other side in a sickening permanent smile. Her right eye was half-shut and clouded over with blindness while the other stayed open wide, but askew, like a stroke victim’s. And her jaw had been broken and now closed misaligned. I could only imagine what she must have gone through. I felt for the girl and hated seeing her beauty destroyed. I shook my head, but it couldn’t change how I felt. Not now. Not ever.

“Now do you understand? This is her, this is my sister. Today,” Nerd said. “The person she was died that night. She’ll never be the beautiful woman she was meant to be. The world will miss her. I
miss
her!” he finished as he broke down. I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. After all, I’d just tried to kill him.

I did the only thing I could think of. I left. And as I walked away, leaving the same way I had come in, I heard Nerd stand up. I paused, turning to look over my shoulder in time to see him pointing to the computer.

“If you change your mind!” he said, his voice sheepish, yet tense. “We’ve got something that will work. Partners. I’ll be here.”

I tugged at the air, giving him a short wave, discreet and meaningless. As I left the library, I felt emptier than I’d ever felt in my entire life.

W
HEN I CLOSED
the car door, my gut told me that I would see Nerd come running out of the library, waving his hands, pleading and begging to keep our business going. But I couldn’t think of going on. Not yet, anyway. I was crushed, having been misled and having lost Katie. A desperate emptiness filled me like the silence filled the car. The only sound I heard was my own breathing and the crunch of upholstery as my seatbelt clicked home. A fluttery scurry came from above the car—the blackbirds swarming, I imagined, winding down before the evening began. I dared a glimpse at my rearview mirror and was thankful to see an empty road behind me. I stayed like that for a long time, not wanting to move, not wanting to do anything, hiding in motionless oblivion.

“Maybe I deserve this!” I exclaimed as I picked at the cut on my hand. The kitchen towel had already become stiff with the dried blood. “Eye for an eye—Katie for Todd, right?”

Could that really be how this worked? But I didn’t want to believe that, couldn’t believe that. Katie would be missed, but Todd Wilts deserved what he got. A part of me understood why Nerd did what he did. If it were Snacks? I would have done far worse and would have gladly used anyone dumb enough to get involved. I peered into the mirror again only to see the daylight turning into night. How long had I been sitting there? Long enough for shadows to have crept along the blacktop, becoming monstrously tall before fading with the disappearing sun. A streetlight overhead flickered, catching my eye, and turned on a faint glassy light that became brighter without notice, as if by magic. It was time to go home. Even the blackbirds swooped in and out of the alley a final time, settling down to roost in the evergreen bushes for the night.

Nerd remained in the library, but in my hand I found the gift he’d given me in place of my car keys. I wanted to throw it to the floor of the car, thinking it could be dangerous. It could be something he’d picked up to blow me into a thousand pieces. But that wasn’t his style. He wanted our business and he wanted me as a partner—he needed me more than I needed him. I told myself that, but didn’t entirely believe it.

With the tip of my finger, I needled the corner of the wrapping paper just enough to lift the edge and see what was beneath it. I narrowed my eyes, squinting as I tried to make out what I thought was velvet. Tearing the paper away revealed a black box—a ring box. I lifted the lid. There was a creak and then click as the top snapped open. A folded piece of paper fell from inside, landing in my lap. And beneath the note there was a ring, but it was unlike any ring I’d ever seen before. A sterling silver band, thick around the bottom and with a large oval-shaped stone on the top. Gaudy was the first word that came to my mind, and I hoped for Nerd’s sake that this wasn’t his way of being chivalrous.

I put the ring down to read the note. Handwritten and signed with the name “Nerd,” the note went on to say that he’d found this antique in one of the red links. An odd place for a ring it seemed, but this was no ordinary ring. It dated back to the Cold War era, when the countries were in a never-ending game of Spy vs. Spy. This was an assassin’s ring.

“Turn the stone,” the note instructed. So I did, lifting the ring close enough to my face to see a small inscription engraved on the inside of the band. I turned the stone, instinctively thinking that clockwise made the most sense. The setting didn’t move, and I wondered if Nerd was having some fun with me. Then I heard one soft tick. And then another. The stone easily slid, like the second hand of a clock, rotating around the face until it reached three o’clock. The shank of the ring popped, flicking open and spitting a tiny needle. I jumped, surprised by this sudden appearance. I had nearly stabbed my own hand. I laughed too, realizing at once that the assassin’s ring was a syringe. An assassin’s tool that I’d certainly like.

“Well, he knows my taste.” I tried to laugh. “But where is the plunger?” I wondered, curious. I was actually not at all sure if that was what the other part was called. This ring could be useful—very useful—for dosing a hit’s drink, sticking him or her in the shoulder with a polite pat, or giving a jab in the thigh during an accidental bump. My thoughts bounced around with ideas like a writer’s muse creatively teasing an author working on the next novel. Turning the stone in the other direction loosened it, and I found that I could open the top. With the touch of a surgeon, I carefully lifted it. The tiniest hinge sang a squeaky chirp to me, as if it had been unused in nearly a century. Beneath the stone was a stainless-steel reservoir. Not huge, but large enough to hold a lethal dose of poison if it were potent enough.

“I call her Needle—very
Game of Thrones
, don’t you think?” Nerd went on to say in his note. And while only I vaguely understood the reference, I loved the name. Needle. “She is my gift to you for doing business together. Thank you for the opportunity.”