Killing Katie (An Affair With Murder) (Volume 1) (25 page)

I thought I’d been exhausted of all emotion for one lifetime, but the sentiment raised a feeling that I hadn’t expected. That was the way it should be. We should have a finite amount of emotions that can be spent in one lifetime. That way, we could dispense with the saddest first and never be bothered by them again.

“Please dispose of this note properly.”

I folded the note and put it back inside the box with the ring, then stuffed them both into my jacket. I had something new to add to my secret box. After all, there would be room now—I had the Killing Katie designs to fetch and burn. I’d cremate them, just like my friend would be in a few days.

“Thank you,” I said aloud, starting the car. The evening fell from the sky, covering me in darkness as a few blurry stars began to show. I swallowed the dryness in my mouth, craving a taste of White Bear Whiskey. Maybe I wouldn’t go back yet. Maybe I’d take a trip for a shot of the homegrown stuff.

T
HE SMELL OF
fuel and exhaust. The sound of idling truck engines and of men chiding each other back and forth with sarcastic banter. I’d sweated enough this hot August night to tire while waiting, motionless. But I’d fallen asleep again, and now the man was above me, his smell filling the car. Their voices moaned in rhythm, coming to a peak. I hadn’t made the belt loop yet but I held the buckle in my hands, tracing its winged form with my finger. My dad always liked belt buckles shaped like airplanes. “They’re so hard to find,” he’d said, telling us how he stopped at nearly every roadside stand while traveling for work.

“I’m going to come,” I heard rain down from above me. The heavy buckle slipped from my small fingers as her voice lifted too, rising in pitch—she was getting close. I threaded the leather through the hinged loop as fast as I could, nervous urgency eating my insides like acid.

I can’t miss it again.
She’d be so mad
.

I succeeded, throwing the noosed belt around his neck just as the first grunts sounded from his mouth.

“Swing,” I whispered as I jerked the strap with all my weight, hanging, bobbing up and down as the sound of two lovers became one. When I peered up, I saw the balding man’s dome glistening with sweat, his head twitching as he died.

And then
her
face was above me, eyes finding mine, her body collapsing onto his.

“Shush,” Katie said, her finger to her lips, the bullet hole in her head festering with maggoty death.

“Katie!” I screamed, vaulting upward in bed, panting. I searched the fuzzy gray light, wondering which part of the dream I was in. When I shivered and felt a bead of sweat roll down to the small of my back, I knew that I was home.

“You okay, babe?” Steve asked, his voice groggy. “Amy?”

I shuddered and cradled my face in my hands and cried, trying to understand what the dreams meant.

And why now? Why had they started now?

There was so much detail—familiar, like a recent memory—but then the details were gone again, lost in a sleepy haze.

Steve’s hand encouraged me to lay back down, facing away from him so that he could wrap his arm around my middle. I eased into him, shaping my hips and legs to match his. We fell into one another and before I could stop it, I confessed the unthinkable.

“I killed a man.”

There were no words—only the interruption of his chest rising and falling. He stayed still for what seemed forever, for what felt like an eternity.

“What did you just say?” he asked me, his voice having lifted out of the sleepy fog.

“I killed that man,” I repeated. “The homeless man. The one you and Charlie were talking about.” Steve remained still—his arm around me, his chest pressed firm against my back and his hot breath becoming heavy against my neck.

“I know,” he answered, surprising me. “I’ve known since the night we drove to Romeo’s.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” I asked, craning my head over my shoulder. “You could have—”

“Could have what?” he interrupted. “You’re the mother of my children, my wife. What was I supposed to do?”

“But you never said anything.”

He propped himself up on his elbow so that we could face each other. “And say what?” He cupped my chin and softly caressed my cheek with his finger. “I did the only thing I thought was safe—nothing. Which is why the case is still open.”

“Steve, I’m so sorry that I put you in that position,” I told him, my words sincere as a pang of guilt hit me. For the first time, I thought of what could have happened to
him
. “It happened so fast, and then I . . . I just panicked and wanted to hide.”

Steve sat up then, and even in the darkness I could see that he was nearly nude. There was no badge, no golden shield, no mystical powers that harnessed a magic from the heavens. I wasn’t talking to a cop, I was talking to my husband.

“What happened?” My hands went to his neck. I held him as I brought myself to his lips and kissed him. The urge to kiss him was strong, the need to kiss him was stronger. And maybe deep down I thought that once I shared the truth with him, it would be the last time that we ever kissed. He put my hands in his and slipped them away from his neck until I was lying back down. “What happened?” he repeated.

“I was at the library; that part was true. And when I was on my way back to my car, I heard this voice calling out for help. Crying almost. I thought someone had been hurt bad.”

“The homeless man,” Steve added. I nodded, agreeing. “That’s what the other girl said too. Only we never shared that part with the newspaper. It’s a ruse, a trap that he used to lure his victims.”

“Anyway, when I went to help him, he attacked me with a knife. Steve, he was going to rape me . . . and . . . and I think he would have killed me too.”

“Babe,” he said and brought me into his arms. “I’m sorry that happened to you. But you should have told me what happened that night, or even stayed at the scene and called the police.”

“But I’m telling you now,” I answered, pushing against his chest, separating us. But he was shaking his head and I could tell by the look on his face that there was more. “What is it?”

“Amy, it doesn’t look like self-defense. Not anymore. It might have started out that way, but the wounds . . .” He stopped talking, and my mind flooded with pictures of the man’s head cocked to one side, half of his neck cut open.

“I cut him,” I said blankly. “When I had the opportunity, I shoved his head into the bricks and took his knife.” By now, I was crying, but I didn’t even know when I’d started. A rasp came into my chest that forced me to take a shaky breath. Steve continued to waver, telling me it was all wrong without saying a word.

“You killed a man when you could have just run away,” he said, his voice as choked up as it had been in the kitchen when he begged to have my blouse. “The buttons torn from your blouse—they were in his hand. They can put you at the scene. I’ve been sitting on them, but Charlie wants the crime lab to try and pull prints.”

My mind raced, searching for a way out. I felt like a mouse in a maze, but there was certainly no cheese reward waiting for me at the end. There was only life, protection from the cat chasing me. I couldn’t get my mind to work fast enough. It felt like the world was closing in on me. I was suffocating.

“My fingerprints?” I said, asking. “I’ve never . . . my fingerprints aren’t . . .”

“The school,” Steve said abruptly. More images swarmed in my mind, image of Snacks and fingerprinting the children in her school. I had been the first to volunteer, showing them that it was safe, that it was like a game.

“Tell me what to do,” I begged, sounding desperate. But not because I was working him, because I
was
desperate.

“You can’t come forward. It’s way too late for that now, and there is no way to explain it as self-defense, not with wounds like that.”

“But it was!” I nearly yelled. Steve touched my mouth. It was three in the morning and the house was quiet. “Steve, he was going to rape me. Kill me.”

“If you’d run or even cut him just enough to get away, then yes. But now?”

“What do
we
do?” I begged, but this time I paired him in with me, wanting to see if he was with me or not. It was a huge risk. He said nothing but continued to shake his head. “Steve? Babe?” A dark notion stirred, taking flight in my gut like the thousand blackbirds fleeing the coming night. Sadly, there was no
we
in this, after all.

Steve came forward, taking my face in his hands as he kissed me. “I don’t know how much I can lie, how much I can hide. I’m not going to say this will pass, because, babe, I really just don’t know.” He began to mumble to himself then, spitting words about keeping the case open and how long it could stay open. There was a mishmash of other detective jargon that I would never even attempt to try and understand. The dark notion felt like a bullet slowly burrowing through me. I needed to scream.

Steve finally came back to me, his eyes clearer than before, as if an epiphany had been discovered like a gold nugget by a desperate miner. “We can do this. We can keep the case open. As long as it stays my case I can leave it alone. It will become another unsolved dust collector. Just don’t
ever
tell me what happened to the knife. Eventually, we’re going to have to find a way to close the investigation, though—quietly too. I mean close it so that it stays closed forever.”

My eyes welled up, and I clutched Steve, squeezing his body until he groaned uncomfortably. I hardly registered his plans, but I did hear one word. He said
we
.

“F
LIP IT,” STEVE
said, pointing at the stove. My mind had wandered, thinking of Nerd and Katie and what I could do to fix things. Everything had fallen apart. There was a very good chance the plans for law school would become another one of our forgotten talks. But starting over without Nerd seemed daunting. Formidable, even. And I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted to start over with anyone else. Without law school as an option, Steve was going to step into Charlie’s shoes and never look back. “Babe. Flip Snacks’s grilled cheese before it burns.”

“Damn,” I snapped as smoke drifted up, catching my eye with a sting. I choked the pan’s handle and slid the spatula beneath the sandwich. Hot butter spat back and popped, flying out of the pan. “Sorry, I got it. My mind’s elsewhere.”

“You’re going to your mother’s today?” Steve asked, grabbing his coat to leave. But I didn’t answer, choosing instead to ignore him as cheese oozed from between the bread and seared on the hot pan. I left the cheese to burn, letting the sound be my answer. He stopped and waited. I could already sense his vibe whenever it came to discussing my mother. “Amy, she’s your mother. You should spend some time and talk to her about Katie—”

“She already knows about Katie,” I interrupted. “I called her the morning after it happened.”

“But you should go see her. I’m sure she’d appreciate it. Michael and Snacks can go with you.”

“They just got home from
your
mother’s yesterday,” I added, feeling selfish, feeling justified. “Plus, I was just there.” I kept my head down, eager to give the grilled cheese more attention than our conversation. But when I heard Steve drape his coat over the door handle and come back into the kitchen, I knew I’d already lost.

“For Katie and you, not just the kids,” he said softly, holding me. He’d said
we
last night, and I was only now beginning to understand what that really meant.
We
knew about the homeless man.
We
knew there was incriminating evidence. And
we
knew that I’d murdered someone. Yet Steve was with
me
and wanted to protect our family.

But what if he knew about the rest? What if he knew who killed Todd Wilts and triggered the events that led to Katie’s death?

I overheard Steve giving Charlie an updated status—he was planning to interview Nerd, bring him into the station, intimidate him. Would Nerd hold up? Would he tell Steve anything? I thought of the flash drive and of Nerd’s confession. “Digitally signed,” he’d said.

But what did that mean exactly? And could it actually help me if I needed it to?

“Earth to Amy. Better flip it again.”

“Seems like I was just there,” I added, turning the sandwich over one more time before taking it off the burner. My mouth watered at the smell of the butter and melted cheese and the toasted bread. I cooked it in extra butter, after all, just the way Snacks liked it. I’d been losing weight since Katie’s death but would steal a bite before she dug into it.

“Babe, that was a few weeks ago.”

“You keeping tabs on me?” I scolded, but shrugged it off jokingly. “It’s sad being there, Steve. You should see it. All of Dad’s things are boxed away. She even had his oak tree chopped down. Said it would open up the yard and help with the resale value.”

Steve leaned over my shoulder, sneaking a bite of our baby girl’s sandwich. He devoured a corner, a moan slipping from his mouth. “Damn, that’s good. But hot!” he said, waving at his mouth. “I’m not taking sides, but your mom is probably right. I mean, she’s got to be lonely and probably wants to find folks her own age. Maybe an over-sixty-five community?” And as he finished, he stole another bite.

“Babe!” I yelled, but eagerly joined him, eating up the other corner. “I can make her another one.” We shared the rest of our daughter’s sandwich, saying nothing about my confession. I’d been preparing to answer any of his questions, expecting him to have been in detective mode from the moment I heard the shower come on. Instead, I found Steve—the father of our children, the husband I married, the man who asked what music I liked and then scoffed when I had danced to a country tune. Maybe my confession had changed something, and maybe it changed everything.

God, I hope so.

What Steve was doing was illegal. I knew that. Exactly which laws were being broken, I didn’t know.

Obstruction of justice, maybe? Or tampering with the evidence? What exactly could he be charged with? What if Charlie discovered Steve was sitting on my buttons, stalling the case until it was forgotten? And if we were both arrested, what then?