All Due Respect Issue #2 (11 page)

“Right. What time did we get back?”

“Eleven thirty.”

“I’ll go down and slam that door shut real hard around then. Old lady Eastway is sure to note the time so she can lodge a complaint. I’ll have everything in the incinerator by then and we’ll be home free.”

Loraine looked pained. Dottie put a hand on her arm.

“Look, chances are slim we’ll even need a story like that. Who’s gonna file a complaint about a missing husband, me? No one will even know he’s gone. Lord knows we got no kind of social life. Who’s gonna miss him?”

“Dottie, I don’t know if—”

“What’s to know? You just go in there and take care of the guy who chopped your husband with a cleaver. You didn’t forget that part, did you?”

Loraine slowly shook her head. “No.” Dottie watched her bring the razor out of her pocket. Loraine took slow, shuffling steps toward the bedroom.

Dottie had left the lights out. Only the deep neon red of the Zucco Meats sign lit the room. Better to hide the blood, Dottie thought.

Dottie waited in the doorway and Loraine made her way deliberately to the side of the bed. Roger’s drunken snores filled the room. Between deep, rattling breaths the only sound was the buzzing of neon through the glass.

Dottie wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to watch. She chewed a fingernail as Loraine got closer.

Loraine thumbed the handle on the razor and it unfolded in her hand. Roger’s head leaned half off the pillow, his passed-out pose making his neck a perfect open target for her. She had thought about whether or not she’d have to lift his chin to get at his neck, or if she’d have to roll him over on his back.

What she got was a pig ready for slaughter.

Loraine stopped, looming over the sleeping figure.

Dottie clenched her fist.
Just do it, already
.

Loraine didn’t move. The razor hung loosely in her hand. Her breathing started to match the steady rhythm of Roger’s.

Dottie shifted her feet. The red glow and faint buzz started a headache behind her eyes.

Loraine watched Roger’s chest rise and fall, a line of drool had dried a crusty white from the corner of his mouth down to the bed sheet.

Dottie couldn’t stand it anymore. She moved into the room and came to a stop beside Loraine.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t? He killed your husband.”

“I know that, but…I’m not a killer.”

“If it’s not you, it’s just gonna be some guy flipping the switch on the chair a few months from now. Don’t you believe in an eye for an eye?”

“I do, but…” Loraine stood still, her eyes zeroed in on Roger’s neck—the pulse visible through his skin.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Dottie said. She reached down and took the razor from Loraine’s hand. She elbowed Loraine out of the way as she leaned over Roger and placed the blade just under his right ear.

“Be ready to roll him if any starts to leak over the side. I don’t want to have to burn the rug too.”

Dottie pulled downward. The razor carved a line across Roger’s throat. His eyes sprung open, but his voicebox was already cut. The blood came immediately.

He stared up at Dottie, confusion and panic cutting through the alcohol. Loraine turned away, putting her face in her hands.

Dottie gripped a fistful of his hair and kept his head from moving side to side.

“Get the pillow and mop that up,” Dottie said to Loraine. “Don’t let it get on the rug.”

Loraine was frozen.

“Hurry up, damn it.”

Loud sobs came from behind Loraine’s hands.

“God damn it!” Dottie let go of his hair and ripped the pillow out from under his head. She made a barrier at the edge of the mattress for the growing pool of blood to soak into the white pillowcase and absorb into the down feathers inside.

In a matter of seconds his movements slowed. The hollow, airy sound in his open throat hissed away to nothing, and his eyes closed again. Moments later, Roger was dead.

6.

G
ETTING LORAINE TO LIFT
Roger’s legs so they could move his body to the bathtub took some effort. Dottie tried to be soothing at first, cooing to her that it was “all over now.” When that didn’t work, she went merciless.

“We had a deal. You came to
my
door with a gun. You came after
my
husband with murder in your heart. You don’t get to change your mind after it’s done.”

As the rest of Roger’s blood ran down the drain, Loraine sat and cried in a heap next to the toilet. Dottie got to work rolling up the sheets in a ball. She stripped off his clothes and piled them in the middle of the top sheet, put the blood-soaked pillow in, and then wrapped it all up in a bundle.

She took the bloody sheets down to the incinerator to give Loraine a few more minutes to get it together. When she returned to her apartment, Loraine was standing at the kitchen counter with a half empty glass of scotch. Good for her, Dottie thought, and joined her in a drink.

Loraine was drowning her sorrows. Dottie was celebrating.

Dottie knew Loraine would have no stomach for what needed to be done in the back room of the butcher shop once they got Roger’s body downstairs, so she sent Mrs. Zucco home and told her to have a few more drinks. It would all be clearer in the morning.

Dottie fulfilled the part of the plan meant to seal their alibi as she slammed the apartment door at 11:35. She saw a light come on in Mrs. Eastway’s room. Satisfied, Dottie went back to the butcher shop to get to work.

Over the next two weeks Dottie helped out at the store. Loraine did most of the work, having picked up the gist of it from Anthony over the years. Dottie ran the register, got the pre-cut chops and steaks out of the refrigerated case, and tried to put a happy face on the business-as-usual to counteract Loraine’s pained expression.

Dottie went out late on the third night and dropped one of Anthony’s hands in a creek by the fire station. She left it up on the bank so it wouldn’t get swept away in the water. She wanted people to find it. And they did.

Loraine’s natural tendency toward tears since the night with Roger served them well when the police came to the shop.

“Mrs. Zucco, when was the last time you saw your husband?”

“About a week ago. He and his employee went fishing together. Why?”

Dottie watched from the back room.
Good girl, Loraine. Keep it together
.

The police showed her a set of fingerprints and a ring. Anthony’s wedding ring. She let loose the flood of tears she’d been holding back. They took one of his knives to pull prints from, but everyone in the room knew the severed hand was his.

That night, Dottie left two more body parts about a mile away from each other. When the cops returned the next day to tell Loraine the fingerprints matched, they told her about the other parts. One of them was his head.

Dottie told Loraine to bring the paperwork to cash in Anthony’s life insurance right away.

Two days later, Dottie parsed out several of Roger’s parts for the police to find. The sleepy town had never seen anything like it. Dottie watched the faces of the detectives who came to her door and she knew there was a hint of glee at getting to work such a big time case as this.

Dottie broke down when they brought her the news. She first buried her face in her hands, then pulled a tall homicide detective close to her and cried into his lapel. The men stood stoically, waiting for her to regain her composure, which she did with scripted timing.

“Do you have any idea who might have wanted your husband and Mr. Zucco dead?”

“Have you ever worked in the meat business, detective?” He shook his head. “It’s a real cutthroat industry.”

They offered their sympathies, vowed to catch the killer, and also admitted they had no leads. She thanked them for their service to the community.

Loraine moved around the shop like a rat in a room full of traps. Dottie scolded her after work one night.

“If this was gonna come back and bite us, it would have already. Now would you calm down? No one is looking for him. Either one of them. They went for a fishing trip and never came home. That’s all.”

“I know, I know. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“I don’t know.”

Dottie thought about slapping her, trying to get her to come around. It was like having Roger back again.
What’s with these people and their murderous intentions, and then they can’t handle it?

“Look, maybe we should close the shop for a few days. We can look around to hire someone. This isn’t my racket and it ain’t yours. We’re owners now. We got to learn how to act like it.”

Loraine nodded her head. “Yeah. I could use a break.”

“We both could.” Dottie put a hand on Loraine’s knee. She tamped down her desire to slap the woman across the face. “It’s all over, Loraine. We did it. Scot free.” Dottie patted her knee. “Have you heard from the lawyer about the estate?”

Anthony had been well insured. Dottie was holding off on drafting an official document that made them equal partners until after the dust had settled.

“Yeah, I spoke to him yesterday,” Loraine said. “The check cleared.”

“What? Why didn’t you say so?” Another strong urge to slap her came and went. “We should definitely take a few days off then. We’ve got cash now. We don’t need the two-bit nickels and dimes from a pile of ground chuck. We’ve got prime rib sitting in that bank. How much is there?”

“Four hundred thousand.” Loraine said, barely above a whisper.

Dottie almost choked. That was four hundred thousand more than she got off Roger.

“Then it’s settled. We’ll take a week off, find a new butcher, and we can relax.”

“I guess you’re right.” Loraine managed a weak smile. Who says money can’t buy happiness? “I suppose I should take all these receipts to the bank in the morning.”

“Aw, it’ll keep.”

“No, I’ve been putting it off. Anthony used to handle all the banking.” At the mention of his name, Loraine started to tear up a little. She reached into the desk drawer and took out weeks’ worth of bank deposits. Dottie’s eyes went wide.

“How long have you been sitting on those?”

“Since Anthony went missing. I told you, he handled the bank.”