CHAPTER 22

SECOND THOUGHTS

Caleb went back to his apartment knowing that Anni would show up soon, and he wanted to fool around with his new camcorder first. His desk was right in front of his bed, so he got a gym bag, cut a hole in it, put the camera in, and pointed it towards the bed. He just had to remember to turn it on before Anni arrived.

At about 10:30, he heard a knock on the door. He made sure the blinking red record light was hidden, then welcomed her in.

Anni sighed as soon as she saw him. “Hey. I’ve been excited all day—I am so looking forward to this.”

“Well, wait no longer. Here I am!” he said with a flourish. She dropped her dress, and like always, she didn’t have anything on underneath it.

When they were done, they lay resting on the bed, talking.

“I’m hearing lots of good things about you as a football player from the coaches, Caleb.”

“Oh yeah? That’s nice. I’m working hard.” He put his arm around her waist. “You want anything?”

She lay quietly for a moment. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I want to try some of that heroin you talked about. I’ve been so stressed out, and I just need a good night’s sleep.”

“Really?” Caleb said, a little taken by surprise. “Okay, but just a little; I don’t want you to like it too much.”

“Oh Caleb, I just love the way you protect me.” She nuzzled closer.

He had never had a woman ask him to take heroin for the first time. And it seemed so not like her.

He was starting to have second thoughts about this. He hadn’t thought this all the way through yet, and he knew how dependent and unreliable a heroin addict could be. It could screw up his plan to get all that money out of that bank vault if Anni got fired. When he first offered it to her, he didn’t know her whole story, and now that he did, this seemed like a bad idea.

Caleb got up and went to the bathroom. He rolled another joint and put some PCP on it. This should knock her out for a few hours, he thought.

“Well, sorry,” he said as he reappeared in the bedroom. “I thought I had some in there, but I haven’t looked in three months and there isn’t any. Let’s just smoke again and relax like that.”

Anni looked disappointed, but she just shrugged and said, “Okay, that’ll be just fine.” She lit up, and within minutes, she was out like a light, babbling to herself about who knows what. Anni woke up 5 hours later, around 3 in the morning, and quietly left Caleb’s apartment and went back to her office to sleep. He never heard her leave.

When he got up the next morning, he took out the tape, dated it 8/26/81 A., and put it up. He wanted the rest of that money from Anni, but he needed to be careful not to strong-arm her or try to blackmail her right now. She was very smart and would counter anything like that. Caleb knew he had the upper hand on her right now with the pictures, video, and her infatuation with him, but he also knew her passion would deteriorate over time. Anni would stop the affair at some point, or it would just slowly fade away. Caleb had to take his time and think this out. How was he going to get that money, and just how far and at what cost to Anni was he prepared to go? He figured he had four years to chart it out. Right now he just needed to get ready for the game on Saturday.

Caleb had changed since killing Lillie. It was as though all the anger he had built up over the first 18 years of his life came out of him when he murdered his mother. Since then, Caleb had acquired this new, strange thing called a conscience, in which he wasn’t used to dealing with.

He was starting to actually care about how other people feel.