Marcia’s call dragged me awake too early Tuesday morning. In the background at her end I could hear the faint beeping of a garbage truck, then the groaning of its engine as it rolled off. She was outside somewhere, using a pay phone. What did I say? Careful and smart. No way was the call going to be traced to her.
I was still groggy, and I wasn’t prepared for what she tossed at me.
“Do it tonight. He’s working late.”
“What?” I was still trying to clear my head.
“Tonight. He’ll be in the building alone. Do it then.”
“Hey, whoa, you can’t just expect—”
“Do you have a problem?”
“So how do I get in?” I remembered she said the place was always locked up after hours and the doors operated on a code. “Or do I knock?”
She yelled at me, “That’s your problem! You work it out.” And in a more normal voice, she said, “I have my quilting class tonight. It’s the perfect alibi.”
I hung up on her. Screw her and screw her alibi. That’s all that mattered to her—being in the clear while I did the dirty work. I felt sick and dizzy. I slumped on the edge of the bed for a moment with my brain between my knees and my stomach in my mouth. Marcia’s video kept replaying before my eyes. What I saw was not the push that she accused me of, but the moment when I didn’t grab Chico to pull him back. A voice in my head said, Are you crazy? There was no way you could have saved him. You would have gone over with him. Another voice said, You let him go. You’re exactly what Marcia says you are. A killer.
The realization seemed to switch something on in my head. If a killer was what I was, a killer I’d be. I’d be smart and I’d be careful. And I’d get away with it. I squinted at the clock. Seven something. I went into the bathroom and threw cold water on my face. I put on shorts, a T-shirt and runners, slapped on my Ray-Bans, grabbed my iPod and my car keys and headed out.
I left my car on a side street and trotted up to Sutherland’s Appliances. I was a typical jogger out for her morning run. There was no one about. The store didn’t open until nine. I detoured for a little sprint around the building. Sutherland’s was a big square cinderblock of a place. There were keypads at the front and side entrances. The only other way in was through a big service door at the loading bay around back. That had a keypad too. There were big show windows on the street side and a couple of little windows high up on one side of the building, where I figured the toilets were. There were red and black stickers everywhere: Ransom Digital Security.
I strolled down to the Tim Horton’s on the corner and ordered an icing-loaded cruller and a double-double. Jimmy hated my choice of breakfast foods. The sugar hit made my stomach cramp. I called my boss and explained that my broken tooth had somehow morphed into a jaw infection. She didn’t believe me. By the time I hung up, my coffee was cold.
At 8:40 I was standing behind a tree at the back of Sutherland’s parking lot. At 8:50 Stanley’s purple Chevy turned in and pulled into a space between two cars. The color of Welsh’s grape juice, it reminded me of a boxed drink. He didn’t see me as he got out, but I got my first real-life look at him. Balding on top with a little fringe of pale hair lower down. Glasses that glinted in the sun. Small and pudgy like his wife. In fact, they could have been bookends. Even in the August heat he wore a suit and tie. He carried a briefcase and a little yellow nylon bag with a Velcro fastener. I had one like it, only mine was red. Now I knew he packed his lunch, probably ate it at his desk.
He had to walk all of twenty paces to the entrance. It was useful seeing him in motion. There are things you learn to watch for in mud wrestling. How easily does your opponent move? How good is her speed and balance? Stanley walked stiff-legged, like a duck. Not a man who was light on his feet or who could change directions fast. And he had a tobacco habit. Before he went in, he lit up a cigarette, smoked it down to the nub and ground it into the standing ashtray by the door.
Well, I’d had a look at Stanley. I didn’t like him any better than his wife, but I had a hard time thinking of him as my victim. If push came to shove, I knew I could overpower him. But I still wasn’t convinced I wanted to kill him. I was in a sweat to find another way out of my predicament. So my next stop was the Beekland house.
Marcia hadn’t told me where she lived, but all I had to do was look in the phonebook. There was only one Beekland, on Green Street. The house was one of those old brick monsters sitting on a large lot, surrounded by a lot of trees and bushes. It stood between other big, imposing houses, facing a park. There was money on this street.
I drove past, circled around and parked down the block, out of sight of the house but where I had a view of the driveway. Around half past ten Marcia’s car nosed out. I ducked down fast, hoping she wouldn’t recognize my old Honda. Fortunately, she turned in the other direction. I got out of my car and strolled back toward the house.
If Marcia had downloaded the video, that probably meant she had a computer. I wondered if I could break in and steal it or at least trash the hard drive. Except, knowing Marcia, she’d have made plenty of backups. She could even have emailed the video to herself, which meant it was out there in cyberspace, waiting to be viewed. And there was that thing she said about a cd of the video going to the police if anything happened to her. I guessed it would be stored somewhere safe. I thought about taking her signed confession to the cops. That would get her off my back. But then the video would come out. She really had me up against the ropes.
There was no sign of activity at the house. To be on the safe side, I rang the bell. No answer. I tried the door. Locked. I went to the back of the house and glanced around. I heard a dog barking next door, but the shrubbery screened me pretty well from the view of nosy neighbors. I tried the downstairs windows. They were locked too, but I noticed that all the upstairs windows were open to catch the morning air. For a moment I had a fantasy of breaking in and finding something really incriminating against Marcia that I could use to get me off the hook. I knew it was a nonstarter. I wouldn’t know where to look. Besides, I didn’t have a ladder.
I was about to leave when suddenly I heard a wail. It was harsh, coming from the upstairs window directly above my head. It sounded like an angry baby. Could the Beeklands, at their age, have a kid? More likely a Siamese cat, I thought.
I returned to my car and drove away, thinking about Jimmy’s ways of killing people. Bash her on the head, he’d said. I went across town to Home Hardware and bought a hammer.