by Blake Crouch
“So it turns out your wife’s a bitch after all, and you want her dead. That’s so original.” Letty had a strong desire to take the Beretta 84 pistol out of her purse and jam it into Chase’s ribs, make him come along with her, rub his face in whatever he’d done. Instead, she climbed down from the barstool, said, “Have a wonderful night of freedom, Chase. It may be your last.”
9
Letty parked her 4Runner in the cul-de-sac and walked up the driveway toward the Rochefort residence. The rain had further dissolved into a cold, fine mist, and all she could see of the Victorian was the lamplight that pushed through a row of tall, arched windows on the second floor. At the front door, she peered through a panel of stained glass, saw a sliver of the lowlit hallway—empty.
She knocked on the door and waited, but no one came.
The third window on the covered porch slid open. She lifted the shade, saw the living room illuminated by a sole piano lamp on the baby grand. Climbed over the back of the upholstered sofa and closed the window behind her.
“Daphne?”
The hardwood groaned under her footsteps as she moved through the living room and up the stairs. The bed in the master suite looked slept in, covers thrown back, sheets wrinkled, clothes hanging off the sides.
Letty went downstairs into the kitchen, and as she stared into a sinkful of dirty dishes, noticed the music—some soothing adagios—drifting up from a remote corner of the house.
She walked around the island to a closed door near the breakfast nook.
Opened it. The music strengthening.
Steps descended into a subterranean level of the residence, and she followed them down until she reached a checkerboard floor made of limestone composite. To the left, a washing machine and dryer stood in the utility alcove surrounded by hampers of unwashed laundry that reeked of mildew.
Letty went right, the music getting louder.
Rounded a corner and stopped.
The brick room was twenty-by-twenty feet and lined with metal wineracks, the top rows of bottles glazed with dust.
Beside an easel lay a Bose CD player, a set of Wusthof kitchen knives, and boxes of gauze and bandages. Hanging from the ceiling of the wine cellar by a chain under her arms—Letty’s eyes welled up—Daphne.
Then the lifeless body shifted and released a pitiful wail.
Letty recognized the tattoo of the strangling hands as Arnold LeBreck painfully lifted his head and fixed his eyes upon Letty, and then something behind her.
Letty’s stomach fell.
She spun around.
Daphne stood five feet away wearing a black rubber apron streaked with paint or blood and a white surgical mask, her black hair pinned up except for a few loose strands that splayed across her shoulders.
She pointed a shotgun at Letty’s face, and something in that black hole suggested the flawed philosophical underpinnings that had landed Letty in this moment. No more hating herself, no avoiding the mirror, letting her father whisper her to sleep, no books on learning to love yourself or striving to become something her DNA could not support. She was facing down a shotgun, on the verge of an awful death, not because she was an evil person, but because she wasn’t evil enough.
Letty thought fast. “Oh, thank God. You’re not hurt.”
Daphne said through the mask, “What are you doing here?”
“Making sure you’re okay. I ran into Chase—”
“What’d he tell you? I warned him to let me have a week with Arnold, and then I’d be out of his life.”
“He didn’t tell me anything, Daphne. That’s why I came over. To check on you.”
Arnold moaned and twitched, managed to get himself swinging back and forth over the wide drain in the floor like a pendulum.
“That man was going to kill me,” Daphne said.
“I know, honey. I saved you. Remember?” The smell was staggering, Letty’s eyes beginning to water, her stomach to churn. “Well, I see you’re okay, so I’ll slip out, let you—”
“You shouldn’t have come back.”
“I didn’t see anything in the papers about your husband or Arnold. I thought something had happened to you after I left last Sunday.”
Daphne just stared at her. The facemask sucking in and out. At last she said, “You think what I’m doing is—”
“No, no, no. I’m not here to…that man was going to kill you. He deserves whatever happens to him. Think of all the other people he’s murdered for money.”
“You saw my painting?”
“Um, yeah.”
“What do you think?”
“What do I think?”
“Do you like it?”
“Oh, yes. It’s … thought-provoking and—”
“Some parts of Arnold’s portrait are actually painted with Arnold.”
Daphne’s arms sagged with the weight of the shotgun, the barrel now aligned with Letty’s throat.
“I saved your life,” Letty said.
“And I meant what I said. I won’t ever forget it. Now go on into the wine cellar. Just push Arnold back and stand over the drain.”
“Daphne—”
“You’d be a lovely subject.”
Letty’s right hand grazed the zipper of her all-time favorite score—a Chanel quilted leather handbag she’d stolen out of the Grand Hyatt in New York City. Thirty-five hundred in Saks Fifth Avenue.
“Get your hand away from there.”
“My BlackBerry’s vibrating.”
“Give it to me.”
Letty unzipped the bag, pulled out the BlackBerry with her left hand, let her right slip inside. Any number of ways to fumble in front of a gaping shotgun barrel.
She said, “Here,” tossed the BlackBerry to Daphne, and as the device arced through the air, Letty’s right hand grasped the Beretta and thumbed off the safety.
She squeezed the trigger as Daphne caught the phone.
The shotgun blasted into the ceiling, shards of blond brick raining down and Daphne stumbling back into the wall as blood ran in a thin black line out of a hole in her throat.
Letty pulled out the pistol—no sense in doing further damage to her handbag—and shot her three times in the chest.
The shotgun and the BlackBerry hit the limestone and Daphne slid down into a sitting position against the wall. Out from under her rubber apron, blood expanded through little impulse ripples whose wavelengths increased with the fading pump of her heart. Within ten seconds, she’d lost the strength or will to clutch her throat, her eyes already beginning to empty. Letty kicked the shotgun toward the washing machine and walked to the edge of the wine cellar, breathing through her mouth; she could taste the rotten air, now tinged with cordite.
She looked at Arnold. “I’m going to call an ambulance for you.”
He nodded frantically at the pistol in Letty’s hand.
“You want me to . . . ?”
He let out a long, low moan—sad and desperate and inhuman.
Arnie,” she said, raising the Beretta, “I’m not even sure you deserve this.”
10
Letty walked down the long driveway toward the 4Runner. The rain had stopped and the clouds were breaking up, a few meager stars shining in the southern sky, a night bird singing to a piece of the moon. For a fleeting moment, she felt the heart-tug of having witnessed a beautiful thing, but a crushing thought replaced the joy—there was so much beauty in the world, and in her thirty-six years, she’d brushed up against so little of it.
At the bottom of the driveway, she took her BlackBerry out of the ruined handbag, but five seconds into the search for Chase Rochefort’s number, powered off her phone. She’d done enough. So very much more than enough.
The alarm squeaked and the 4Runner’s headlights shot two brief cylinders of light through what mist still lingered in the cul-de-sac. Letty climbed in behind the wheel and fired up the engine. Sped away from that house, from lives that were no longer her problem. Felt a familiar swelling in her chest, that core of inner
-strength she always seemed to locate the first night of a long bit when the loneliness in the cell was a living thing.
And she promised herself that she’d never try to be good again.
Only harder, stronger, truer, and at peace, once and forever at peace, with her beautiful, lawless self.
II - Sunset Key
1
Letty Dobesh came in from the cold to the smell of cooking eggs, bacon, and stale coffee. The Waffle House was in College Park, a bad neighborhood in south Atlanta near the airport. She wore a thrift-store trench coat that still smelled of mothballs. Her stomach rumbled. She scanned the restaurant, dizzy with hunger. Her head throbbed. She didn’t want to meet with Javier. The man scared her. He scared a lot of people. But she had $12.23 in her checking account and she hadn’t eaten in two days. The allure of a free meal was too much to pass up.
She had come twenty minutes early, but he was already there. He sat in a corner booth with a view of the street and the entrance. Watching her. She forced a smile and walked unsteadily down the aisle beside the counter. The points of her heels clicked on the nicotine-stained linoleum.
Sliding into the booth across from Javier, she nodded hello. He was Hispanic with short black hair and flawless brown skin. Every time they’d met, Letty thought of that saying, Eyes are windows to the soul. Because Javier’s weren’t. They didn’t reveal anything—so clear and blue they seemed fake. Like a pair of rhinestones, with nothing human behind them.
An ancient waitress sidled up to their table with a notepad and a bad perm.
“Get ya’ll something?”
Letty looked at Javier and raised an eyebrow.
He said, “On me.”
“The farmer’s breakfast. Extra side of sausages. Egg whites. Can you make a red eye? And a side of yogurt.”
The waitress turned to Javier.
“And for you, sweetie?”
“Sweetie?”
“What would you like to order, sir?”
“I’ll just eat her fumes. And a water.”
“Ice?” The way she said it sounded like ass.
“Surprise me.”
When the waitress had left, Javier studied Letty.
He said finally, “Your cheekbones look like they could cut glass. I thought you’d come into some money.”
“I did.”
“And what? You smoked it all?”
Letty looked at the table.
She held her hands in her lap so he wouldn’t see the tremors.
“Let me see your teeth,” he said.
“What?”
“Your teeth. Show me.”
She showed him.
“I’m clean now,” she whispered.
“For how long?”
“A month.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Four days.”
“Because you ran out of money?”
She looked toward the open grill. She was so hungry she could barely stand it.
“Where are you staying?” Javier asked.
“Motel a few blocks away. It’s only paid for through tomorrow.”
“Then what? The streets?”
“You said you had something for me.”
“You’re in no condition.”
“For what, a beauty pageant? I will be.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Jav.” She reached across the table and grabbed his hand. He looked down at it and then up at her. Letty let go like she’d touched a burning stovetop. “I need this,” she whispered.
“I don’t.”
The waitress returned with Javier’s water and Letty’s coffee, said, “Food’ll be right up.”
“It’s only day four,” Letty said. “Another week, I’ll be as good as new. When’s the job?”
“It’s too big to risk on a strung-out puta.”
Anyone else, Letty would have fired back with some acid of her own.
Instead, she just repeated her question: “When is it?”
“Eight days.”
“I’ll be fine. Better than.”
He watched her through those unreadable eyes.
Said finally, “Would you risk your life for a million-dollar payday? I’m not talking about getting caught. Or going to prison. I mean the real chance of being killed.”
Letty didn’t even hesitate. “Yes. Javier, have I ever let you down?”
“Would you be sitting here breathing if you had?”
Javier looked out the window. Across the street stood a row of storefronts. A pawnshop. A hair salon. A liquor store. Bars down all the windows. There was no one out under the gray winter sky. The roads had already been salted in advance of a rare, southern ice storm.
“I like you, Letty. I’m not sure why.”
“You’re not going to ask me why I do this to myself—”
“I don’t care.” He looked back at her. She could see he’d made a decision. “Letty, if you fail me—”
“Trust me, I know.”
“May I finish?” He reached into his water and plucked out a cube of ice. Pushed it around on the table as it slowly melted. “I won’t even bother with you. I’ll go to Jacob first. And when you see me again, I’ll have a part of him to show you.”
She drew in a sudden breath. “How do you know about him?”
“Does it matter?”
The last two months of this crystal bender, she hadn’t allowed herself to think about her son. He’d been taken from her just prior to her last incarceration. He lived in Oregon with his father’s mother. Six years old. She pushed the thought of him into that heavy steel cage inside her chest where she carried more than a little hurt.
The food came. She wiped her eyes.
She tried not to eat too fast but she had never been hungrier in her life. It was the first time she’d had real food on her stomach in days. Waves of nausea swept over her. Javier reached across the table and stole a strip of bacon.
“Bacon tax.” He smiled and bit it in half. “Have you heard of a man named John Fitch?”
She didn’t look up from the scrambled eggs she was shoveling into her mouth. “No.”
“He was the CEO of PowerTech.”
“What’s that?”
“A global energy and commodities company based in Houston.”
“Wait, maybe I did see something about it on the news. There was a scandal, right?”
“They cooked the books, defrauded investors. Thousands of PowerTech employees lost their pensions. Fitch and his inner circle were behind it all. A month ago, he was convicted for securities fraud. Sentenced to twenty-six years in prison.”
“What he deserves.”
“Says the thief. He’s out on a seventy-five million dollar bail. Scheduled to report to a federal prison in North Carolina in nine days.”
Letty set her fork down and took a sip of black coffee. She hadn’t had caffeine in weeks, and already she was feeling jittery. “Where’s this going, Jav?”
“Fitch’s family has abandoned him. He has no one. He’s sixty-six and will very likely die in prison. I happen to know that he’s looking for some female companionship for his last night of freedom. Not a call girl from some—” Letty was already shaking her head. “—high end escort service. Someone very, very special.”
“I’m not a prostitute,” Letty said. “I’ve never done that, never will. I don’t care how much money you wave in my face.”
“Do you think I couldn’t find a woman who is younger, more beautiful, and more...experienced...than you if all I wanted was a hooker?”
“Charming.”
“Letty, this could be the score of a lifetime for you.”
“I’m not following.”
Javier smiled, a terrifying spectacle.
The entire restaurant shook as a jet thundered overhead.
“It’s not a trick,” he said. “It’s a heist.”
2
The last work Letty had done with Javier had involved stealing from high rollers in Vegas.
He’d hooked her up with universal keycards and supplied surveillance to let her know when a mark had left their room. That job had presented a degree of risk for sure, but nothing beyond her comfort level. Nothing like this.
She cut into a waffle, said, “Gotta be honest—I’m not over the moon about the word ‘heist.’“
“No? It’s one of my favorites.”
“It sounds like something you need a gun for. And a getaway car. The type of job where people get killed.”
She swabbed the piece of waffle through a pool of syrup and took a bite.
“See, that’s the beautiful thing about this job, Letty. It’s high return on a low risk venture.”
“You just asked me if I’d be willing to risk my life for a million-dollar payday.”
“I didn’t say there was no risk. Just that it’s low considering the potential payout.”
“Do you have any idea how many times I’ve heard that, and then the opposite proved to be—”
“Are you accusing me of glossing over risk in our prior dealings?”
Letty realized with a jolt of panic that she’d insulted him. Not a wise course. Javier didn’t get angry. He just killed people. The stories she’d heard were the stuff of legend.
“I guess not.” She backtracked. “It’s just that I’ve been burned in the past. But not by you. You’ve always been on the level with me.”
“I’m glad you see that. So would you like to hear me out, or should I leave?”
“Please continue.”
“Fitch is spending his last days on his private island fifteen miles south of Key West. Most of his property has been lost to forfeiture to pay back the victims. However, I have a man in Fitch’s security detail. He tells me there’s something of great value at Fitch’s residence in the Keys.”
