by E. G. Scott
Initially, I thought murdering Rebecca and putting her body in place of mine offered a perfectly symmetrical ending to this ordeal. The image of Paul hauling the plastic tube to a grave he’d painstakingly dug, thinking it was me, and then discovering Rebecca’s corpse was delicious in theory. But, it was doubtful he’d take the time to unwrap the plastic sarcophagus. However, imagining him realize he’d almost buried his own wife got me through a handful of lonely and disorienting miles of back roads in the dark.
I needed someone who I wouldn’t mind killing, maybe even enjoy. Someone who was roughly my same height and weight. And who had money. I would need a lot of that. Sasha popped into my head almost immediately. And her murder would have the added bonus of ruining Mark’s life. He’d long been on my list. After that decision, everything just came together.
By mile thirteen, I could feel the bleeding blisters and my concussed head screaming in blinding unison. As the sun was beginning to creep up into the nightscape, I realized the sight of a woman matching my description walking along the Jericho Turnpike in the early morning was way more likely to draw suspicion than a truck driver blowing through town giving a lift to some sad girl doing the walk of shame at dawn. I found a ride easily at the first gas station I came to, careful to avoid video cameras, and evaded conversation by pretending to sob into my hands. Few men want to engage with a woman who’s crying.
I got dropped a few blocks away from my house and hobbled to my back door, where I retrieved my emergency key from under a planter. Happily, none of my neighbors were about and I was able to slip undetected into my house for some much-needed sleep and provisions for my new life. I didn’t expect that anyone would be looking for me until I tipped off the authorities. I had that going for me.
I’d forgotten how easy it was to slide out of my existing life without anyone noticing, like a snake shedding its skin and slithering away silently. I’d made it back to my bed from the dead. When I woke I would start over. It wasn’t the first time I’d walked away from my life with barely a glance backward. I was getting pretty good at it.
* * *
I APPROACHED SASHA’S murder in the same way I would an elaborate surprise party. I made mental lists of what I needed to do, and the more I planned, the more I realized how perfect a target she was. Sasha had all of the things I needed rolled into one tight body. I plotted multiple options to land on the best element of surprise and leave the least amount of evidence. I knew Sasha’s schedule better than her husband did, which was hardly at all. I knew she always traveled with a lot of cash and credit cards her husband didn’t even know she had, because of her humblebragging in class. I knew she proudly carried a concealed handgun on her, in spite of New York State’s laws to the contrary. And I knew her husband, Mark, who’d been the deciding factor in my choosing her ultimately, would be easy to frame. I could depend on him not noticing her absence immediately and I had plenty of sordid things on him that I could lead the authorities to when the time was right.
I had to kill her as soon as possible. If she was going to be a convincing body double, she needed to disappear around the same general time that I had. I envisioned a few choose-your-own-adventure outcome possibilities and was more excited than nervous to see how things unfolded, or in the case of Paul, Rebecca, and Mark, how it all unraveled.
It wasn’t hard to get Sasha alone after class. Her car was unmistakable, rich and flashy, like her. She always parked in the same place and was consistently the last one of her happy hour posse to leave the studio on account of her taking twice as long as everyone else to do her makeup and perfect her blowout. She liked to make an entrance. I’d already surveilled the parking lot for CCTV cameras and the only ones I could find in shooting distance were pointed in the direction of the adjacent Best Buy.
I waited for her to walk to her car and paced behind on the passenger side. I adjusted the wig I was wearing, the same exact blond shade as her hair, which was lighter than mine, and smoothed the outfit I knew she’d wear, a tight black top, skinny jeans, and suede booties. She unlocked her car remotely and dropped her bag in the back seat. I sped up and slid into the passenger seat just as she was getting in on the driver’s side.
I felt the heaviness of the club hammer from my neighbor’s garage in the small Sephora shopping bag on my lap. Its short handle made it perfectly and conspicuously portable.
Her enormous brown eyes were almost black in the dark car. She was startled and then irritated.
“Um, excuse me? Who the fuck are you?”
I calibrated my voice a few octaves higher than normal, not that she’d live to recount any details of what I was about to do.
“Oh my God!” I laughed. “I totally thought this was my husband’s car. He was supposed to pick me up and you have the same exact model. Isn’t that hilarious?”
Her smug smile didn’t have more than a moment to change into a perfect O before I withdrew my weapon with gloved hands and brought it squarely down on her skull.
She rocked forward and landed on my shoulder. If anyone had walked by, we would have looked like old friends embracing.
The blow to her head didn’t kill her, so she and I had that in common. And it wasn’t my intention that it would. The cause of death would be a gunshot wound, inflicted by her own gun, which was registered to Mark. Once suicide had been ruled out, which would be immediate, Mark would be suspect numero uno. I just needed her unconscious long enough to get her to Cold Spring Harbor.
Luckily, on the drive there, Sasha never came to, but I rode with her loaded gun in my lap just in case. It was remarkable how easy it was to get firearms from my neighbors. She provided the weapon of her destruction, the handgun she proudly kept in the front pocket of her fire-engine-red concealed-carry gun purse. It was custom-made in the style of a three-thousand-dollar Fendi bag she’d wanted, retrofitted with the side-zip front gun pocket. She boldly defied the concept of concealed when she did show-and-tell with it after class one day, not even caring who overheard her.
She was much heavier than she looked, and it took more time and strength than I’d anticipated to pull her out of her car. I figured it was less messy to shoot her outside, and laid the plastic tarp I’d been wrapped in along the ground nearby and rolled her on top of it. It was my first time firing a gun outside of a firing range, something I’d done on an early date with Daniel and been surprisingly excited by, and the unmonitored, open-air target practice on Sasha was more exhilarating than I had imagined. And much louder.
After it was over and the barrel was cooled, I placed her gun in my own purse, just in case. I rolled her up in a fraction of the time it had taken me to free myself from the same tarp, and pulled her to the bulkhead doors leading to the basement under the foundation, around the side of the property. I opened them with a little bit of a struggle and pushed her below with a thud. It wasn’t hard to drag the plastic coil to the back of the basement where I’d been stowed, and I was happy that I’d paid attention to my distance and placement when I was escaping. I felt confident that my changeling was exactly where she needed to be for when Paul returned. If my luck held, he wouldn’t realize that one corpse had been replaced by another.
fifty
REBECCA
HE’S GETTING READY to kill me. This morning when he was still asleep, my bottle of pills from Mark was missing. I knew Paul had confiscated them, and I was jonesing badly. I looked everywhere I could think of—in his gym bag, his pockets, and his desk—before it occurred to me to look in his car. I didn’t find the pills, but there in his glove box was the red bandanna–wrapped gun. I left it where it was and tried to calm myself as the morning continued.
On his way out the door, he said, “Madoo, what do you say we go for a drive this weekend, like we used to? Saturday?” He stressed Saturday like it was especially important.
The words are glass in my mouth. “Sure, babe. That sounds great.”
“It’s a date then.” He practically skipped out the door.
I’m officially afraid of my husband.
* * *
I SIT IN MY CAR and process how bad things have become before I make the drive to Mark’s. I take in our little house. I’ve never spent much time looking at it from this vantage point. From the outside it looks like a lovely cottage with all the possibilities of happiness dwelling inside. And it was that once, when the promise of something grander and more mature awaited us. I wonder how different my view would look right now if we’d succeeded with that dream. The devastating reality is that Paul has plans for a completely different dream with Dana.
I’m cycling through the present and the far past. Silvestri and Wolcott’s circular questioning yesterday has gotten me thinking about the night my parents died. Sitting in a similarly claustrophobic room, but one with a worn, colorful rug and some kids’ toys strewn around, a female social worker asked me questions as I tried to recall everything I had seen. A man sat with us but didn’t speak. I’m just realizing now that he was a detective.
I was still wearing my pajamas, the ones with the moons and stars on them. Someone had put my shoes on and tied them for me.
“Rebecca, do you know what happened tonight?” The social worker’s voice was sweet and she smiled warmly. The detective did not.
“My parents hurt each other.”
“Yes, that’s right. Do you know why they hurt each other?”
“My mom said something and my dad got very mad.”
There was a carton of chocolate milk on the table in front of me that I kept my focus on. It was easier than meeting the eyes of the two adults. I knew by their expressions that I’d done something very bad and I was in terrible trouble.
“And then what happened?”
“I hid in the closet. They thought I was asleep in my room.”
“And what could you see and hear from your hiding place?”
“I could hear things breaking. Dad opened the drawer in their room. Mom started yelling for help. There was a very loud noise and I couldn’t see her until she lay down on the floor.”
The detective was a large man, maybe twice the size of my dad. He was sitting in a chair that was too small for him. The image would have been comical under different circumstances. He wasn’t talking, and when I looked up from the chocolate milk to his face, his eyes were red. He kept wrinkling his nose like he was about to sneeze.
“Rebecca, what happened after your mom lay down?”
“My dad went into my room.”
“And what did he do when he didn’t find you in there?”
“He called my name and started looking around the apartment. He came to the closet, but I’d buried myself all the way in the back behind the coats and covered myself.”
“Why didn’t you come out when he called?”
“I knew I was in trouble. So I stayed really quiet and small.”
“And then what happened?”
“I closed my eyes. I pretended I was somewhere else. I think I fell asleep; I can’t remember.”
“And what woke you up?”
“I heard another loud noise. I didn’t hear anything else for a while and went to see what happened. Dad was lying down near Mom. I think they were really tired from all of the fighting. I couldn’t make them wake up. Then the police broke the door down.”
“That must have been very scary.”
“It was . . . I’m really sorry.”
I began crying and the detective pushed the chocolate milk closer to me. I lifted the carton to my mouth and took a sip from the straw. The milk tasted salty.
“What are you sorry about, sweetie?” His voice was deep and soothing.
“I did something bad.”
I had done something bad. And I wanted to tell the detective. But I couldn’t.
“Sweetie, was your dad sleeping when you came out of the closet?”
I’d only nodded. I couldn’t speak anymore, or I wouldn’t be able to stop.
“How did you hurt your arm, honey? Who yanked on it?”
My memory is interrupted as my phone buzzes next to me on the seat.
Showing a house out in Bridgehampton and then out with Wes. Won’t be home until later, go ahead and have dinner without me. Love you.
The tracker on his phone shows that he is at her house again. My anger renews a sense of motivation and replaces the exhaustion. I’m happy to be brought back to the present. I start the engine and head toward Mark’s to get what he promised me in our deal, and then some.
* * *
WHEN I NEAR HIS HOUSE, I’m jarred to see that Mark is being led out in handcuffs. He thrashes around in his robe, his hair and eyes are wild like a feral animal’s. I can barely look away. I was assuming that he’d be home as usual and I would have to improvise in order to convince him, but now, I think luck might be in my favor today for once. Mark’s, not so much.
I don’t speed up or slow down as my car glides past. Luckily, none of the men are looking in my direction. In an incongruously tender gesture, Silvestri is guiding Mark into the back of their car with a hand on his head. I drive around the corner, park a few blocks away, and watch in my rearview for their car to pass before I retrace my steps back to his house on foot.
I figure I have a few hours at best to get what I need before the property is crawling with cops.
I make my way through a backyard one street away that I know shares a property line with Mark and Sasha’s. There aren’t any cars in the driveway, but I prepare a story of a runaway dog in case any of the inhabitants emerge and confront me.
When I reach his backyard, I cut over to the guesthouse. I hadn’t thought about it when I came to visit Mark, but it is so obvious to me now that this is where he’d be keeping the drugs. I’d only ever been in the guesthouse twice, and only briefly, when I’d been desperate and picked up pills from Mark outside of office hours. Of course we’d never actually fucked in the guesthouse like I’d told Wolcott and Silvestri, or anywhere else for that matter. The thought made me sick to my stomach.
The sun is getting high in the sky and some gray clouds are gathering around it. I edge myself along the periphery of the yard, as close as I can get to a straight shot to the small house sitting back from the pool, in the shade of numerous trees. I am surprised at how lucid and energetic I feel, then realize that I haven’t taken a pill yet today.
The lock isn’t difficult to crack and I’m inside in less than two minutes. As expected, the guesthouse is on the same digital alarm system as the main house. The electronic keypad immediately inside the door chirps confirmation after I enter Sasha’s birthday. There is enough daylight coming in from the windows that I don’t have to turn the lights on. The interior is one large room with a loft above, accessible by a ladder. A couch, coffee table, and flat-screen take up the majority of the space, and a bar is set back from the sitting area. There is a small bathroom off to the side.
I move to the bar that Mark has modeled after some circa 1970s home-basement man cave, complete with a neon “Miller Time” sign against the backdrop and differently shaped glasses hung from above. I open some cabinets and drawers half-heartedly but know that he considers himself too clever not to have a dedicated hiding spot. I knock on the walls for any hollow sounds, toss the couch cushions, and lift the throw rug to reveal any floor safes. Nothing. I scan the walls for a safe-concealing piece of art, but the gray walls are naked of any photographs or paintings.
The sun has been overtaken by fast-moving dark clouds, and a gloomy light settles inside the guesthouse, making it feel much later than it actually is. I use the flashlight on my phone to guide me. The bathroom door is shut, and I’m floored by the smell of chlorine when I open the door. I can barely fit inside because the small space is nearly completely taken up by a large industrial pump, which I’m only able to identify
because of Paul’s building days and a few anxiety-ridden cases of flooded properties. It strikes me as an odd thing to be keeping in the bathroom instead of the garage, but a few cursory knocks on the metal body and I’m convinced it isn’t housing any pharmaceuticals. I don’t realize how powerful the smell of chlorine is until I step back out and have to sit down from the dizziness.
I venture up to the loft. The light casts a spooky glow as I move it around the room from above. The loft itself is really too small for much beyond a few boxes marked “Records,” which I open to find a collection of vinyl as advertised. I’m getting frustrated now and feeling the effects of the lifting adrenaline giving way to craving.
I stand at the top of the ladder and examine the space below me for any signs of something being out of place or a container in disguise. Maybe Mark knew it was only a matter of time before people came looking, or got spooked when the cops started coming around and got rid of his bounty. He could have moved it, or maybe I’m wrong and his hiding place is in the main house or his garage. There is still a lot of potential square footage to search, and who knows when the police will be coming back. I’m starting to feel frantic.
The small window in the loft looks onto the pool and the main house. I accept that what I’m looking for isn’t in here. I’ll have to go in if I’m going to get what I need.
When I exit, the smell of chlorine seems to have followed me outside even after I’ve closed and locked the door. I walk around the path encircling the pool, imagining countless parties that have taken place here starring Sasha. I doubt there will be any more celebratory gatherings for a long time. As I make my way across the yard to the house, I notice that in spite of the warm weather, the pool cover is still squarely secured to the surface.
I walk about five more paces toward the house before I turn on my heels and decide to walk around the perimeter of the pool after all. I know it is risky to be so out in the open, but something is pulling me in the pool’s direction.
