Patricia
I could have quit. I considered it. I really did, for at least a day after. I mean, killing a person isn’t quite like killing a turkey. It’s a little more complicated, both in terms of planning and execution. Morally, I knew should feel worse about killing a human than a bird, but when I thought about it, that didn’t make sense. Turkeys haven’t done anything wrong or evil, except maybe breed too quickly and take over people’s yards. Someone hasn’t died because of a decision made by a turkey. Turkeys, unlike humans, are innocent. Still, I’d shoot a turkey every fall, clean it, and serve it for a large Thanksgiving gathering—Ashley, me, and our extended Vermont family. We all ate it. Including Ashley. Until she didn’t. She became a vegetarian when she was in college and asked me to stop hunting. I didn’t serve her turkey anymore and didn’t hunt when she was there. Still, it was free meat, and anyway, the turkeys I shot died quickly and had led better lives than the turkeys raised for the Thanksgiving table.
I’m pragmatic. Always have been. That’s why I still killed turkeys, even if Ashley asked me not to. There’s a balance of nature to be maintained, even if it means an innocent animal dies. Too many turkeys, and they’ll eat up all the available food. Then they all die of starvation.
Balance. Pragmatism. Those were the two principles I upheld.
My pragmatic side was mostly why I thought about stopping. Tom Martin’s death had been declared a suicide, which meant that no one would be looking for me. Which made it a good time to quit. If I kept going, if I killed more of the people responsible, how long before someone realized that Martin’s death wasn’t a suicide?
How long until I became the hunted?
But quitting meant going back to Vermont and the farm infused with Ashley’s presence—her room, her books—while knowing that I would never see Ashley again. Quitting meant that people responsible would be free to kill someone else.
Tom Martin wouldn’t be the reason another young woman died. Thanks to me.
I had one day of satisfaction after shooting him. And it was satisfaction. Not enjoyment. It’s hard to explain, but there is a difference. Yes, I felt good. Yes, I had an emotional boost. It was the best I’d felt since Ashley died. But it wasn’t enjoyment. It was a feeling of a job well done, of a task completed. Not a thrill kill. I didn’t kill Tom Martin because it was fun or because I felt compelled to kill. I did it because he deserved it.
Because Ashley didn’t deserve what happened to her.
Balance restored.
But Martin wasn’t the only one who deserved it. And balance demanded that I continue. There were others. Some were not directly involved in the decision to let her die. They were on my list, but lower down.
I’d get there.
But I had someone higher on my list. I first knew about her because of David. At Ashley’s funeral, when I could barely speak for grief, he gave me both names and described what they did. He told me he was going to sue them.
As if suing would be sufficient punishment.
As if the courts would care.
They are supposed to restore balance. They don’t.
Tom Martin had confirmed what David told me when I removed the gag, just before I shot him. When he begged for his life and tried to blame someone else. Said he’d had no choice, which was a lie.
He’d had a choice. He just took the choice that was best for him personally. He had a choice that Ashley didn’t.
The same with Brenda Phillips.
I just had to come up with a plan. That is, unless I decided to quit, return to Vermont, and let it go.
And let Ashley be unavenged.
Balance and pragmatism. I believe in both. I can be pragmatic and achieve balance. If I’m careful. Which I am.
Quit?
Like I said, I did think about it.
I started doing my research. Funny how people think that a farmer like me would be totally inept online. Funny how many stereotypes people have about rural people. About middle-aged women.
I found her address, a description of her family, her job title. The next step would be a plan, but an opportunity presented itself. If I believed in God or fate, I’d almost say that it was a sign.
Maybe it was.
Brenda Phillips needed a housekeeper. The duties described were cooking, cleaning, and babysitting. After I got the job, if I got the job, I could figure out the best way to kill her without anyone tying her death to me.
I hoped that no one else would beat me to the housekeeping job. Still, even in Texas, there wouldn’t be THAT many applications. The salary was something of a joke, and that they included room and board wasn’t all that tempting, given that living-in meant unending working hours.
Still, someone else might be desperate enough to apply. I had to get there first.
My next step was a visit to the dark web. You can buy almost anything online. Ashley had taught me about the dark web. Here’s the thing about the dark web, though: You can’t navigate through it. You have to know where you’re going.
I did.
Fifteen minutes after the ad for a housekeeper appeared, I was perusing possible alternative identities for sale. I looked for someone around my own age, my own ethnicity, with work experience that would be appropriate for someone applying for a housekeeper job.
The trick was to find and buy an identity without revealing my own.
But I was already using a fake identity. I just needed to trade it in for a new one. It’s a little sad that it was so easy. Within an hour, I had a new identity, paying in bitcoin.
Mindy Black. Housewife from Minnesota, two grown children, recently divorced, and in need of money. I just needed to add my own touches to her story. Why she—I—was in Austin applying for a housekeeping job.
I came up with a story about living in Austin as a young woman but going back to the dark and cold of Minnesota for my husband’s job. Not true, but not easy to check. Now that I no longer had any reason to remain Minnesota, I had returned to a city to rediscover the magic of my youth.
I should have been a novelist.
Maybe after I’m done—that’s what I’ll do. Write a novel.
I filled out the application and sent it off. In two hours, I had a response. Brenda Phillips asked to interview me.
We met on Zoom an hour later.
You can tell a lot about a person by how they do a Zoom call. How much time and energy do they put into it. Do they dress up? What kind of background?
Brenda called me from her office on her lunch break, or so she said. She wore expensive jewelry and a designer suit. From her biography, I guessed that she was somewhere in her forties, but time hadn’t caught up with her.
And it wouldn’t either.
I could see myself on the screen. A dumpy middle-aged woman, overweight, mousy long brown hair with streaks of gray, tied up in a bun.
I didn’t put up a background. I just had the white wall of my cheap hotel behind me. Nothing that could identify my location.
She didn’t put up a background either. The image on the screen was her office. Her diplomas, her bar admission, pictures of her with prominent Texas politicians, including two former presidents. All intended to impress.
Like I said, you can tell a lot from a Zoom.
“Mrs. Black,” she read my application while I waited, “you did housecleaning before. In Minnesota.”
“And babysitting. My own and other children.”
“How old are your children?”
“Thirty and twenty-five.” I only had one child. Ashley had been thirty.
“They live nearby?”
“No. Sadly. They have their lives, and I have mine.”
A brisk nod. She was clearly pleased that my children wouldn’t be a problem. Ironic, wasn’t it? My child was going to be a very big problem for her.
She asked me more questions. Why was I in Austin? I had that answer. Why did I want the job? I had that too. She asked me my religion. It’s illegal to ask, which she would know as an attorney but apparently didn’t give a damn. I answered Episcopal but not much of a churchgoer.
I’m not. But Mindy Black was. I checked.
It wasn’t even ten minutes before she offered me the job.
I wondered if she’d even checked the references. Of course, without a photo of me accompanying the query, the references should have worked.
But that probably wasn’t the decisive factor.
I was white, middle-aged, not particularly good-looking, working class, and Christian. The perfect employee for a white upper-class conservative Texan household.
I could be trusted with her expensive house and her family. Which I could. Neither her family nor her house were in any danger from me.