by John Locke
“Tell me about Nathan,” I say, leading Rick down the hall.
“He’s not really my friend,” Rick says. “I exaggerated that part.”
“You said he wasn’t involved.”
“That’s what he told me.”
“Then how could he send you the picture?”
“Nathan said Ethan and Ronnie took nude pictures of Riley with their cell phones. That night in the car, the guys believed them. But by Monday everyone doubted their story. So Ethan and Ronnie texted some of the photos to their closest friends and told them to keep it quiet. But who could keep that type of secret? It became a status symbol to have the pictures, so I begged Nathan to send me one.”
“And he did.”
“Yeah, but it cost me fifty bucks. And, he sent me the one where she was dressed.”
“I don’t believe this!” I say.
“What?”
“You paid him for a photo after I talked to you.”
He looks down at the floor. Then says, “Like I said, it turned into a status symbol.”
“And you’d do anything to fit in.”
“Don’t judge me. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“If you’ve got a photo, the pictures must be all over the school by now.”
“That’s a cruel thing to say.”
“Whine all you like. I’m disappointed in you, Rick.”
“Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you be? I’m a loser. Ask anyone.”
“Don’t lay that on me. It’s a copout.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you’re a loser it’s because you’re acting like one. Get a grip. You want to change your status? Change your behavior.”
A sound comes from my cell phone. It’s Dillon, shouting, “Eureka!”
Rick and I go back to his room.
“You found the pictures?” I say.
“No, but they’re being sent even as we speak,” Dillon says.
“Explain.”
“When I heard Rick say he paid Nathan fifty bucks for a photo, I live-chatted with Nathan. He’s sending me the rest of the pictures.”
Rick says, “Why would he send them to you?”
“I used your email account. He thought he was talking to you.”
“Why would he send me the photos?”
“You offered to pay him a thousand dollars for them.”
“What? I don’t have that kind of money!”
“Then I guess you’re screwed.”
Rick looks at his computer screen, terrified and excited at the same time.
“Don’t look here for them,” Dillon says. “They’re being sent to a disposable phone.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Rick says.
Dillon places a cheap cell phone next to the one he was using to take my call. “These are pre-paid cell phones,” Dillon says. “They’re anonymous.”
He points to the second one. “I gave Nathan this number and told him it was yours. Except I don’t know what’s taking so long.”
Rick says, “Dani, I don’t have a thousand bucks! What am I gonna do when Nathan asks for the money? He’s gonna kill me!”
I say, “Buy some time. Tell him you can’t go to the bank till Friday to get the cash. By Friday, getting paid will be the last thing on Nathan’s mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“When he sends those photos, he’ll be trafficking underage porn.”
We stand around, twiddling our thumbs for five minutes.
“Something’s wrong,” Dillon says. “I can feel it.”
He punches out a text message, presses the “send” button, and says, “I just asked him to hurry up.”
Another five minutes pass, then the phone vibrates.
“Finally!” I say.
He picks the phone up, checks the screen, says, “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone got to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nathan just sent a message. Said there are no other pictures of Riley.”
“Read me his exact words.”
Dillon reads, “There are no other pictures, asshole. I was joking.”
I shake my head.
“You’re right,” I say. “Ethan called him. I shouldn’t have confronted him. I tipped my hand.”
“Not your fault,” Dillon says. “You didn’t know about the pictures when you talked to him.”
I give Rick a withering look. “If you would have told me about the pictures yesterday, I could have used that to our advantage.”
“We still can,” Dillon says. “It’s just that we won’t have the element of surprise.”
“How?”
“If they were ever taken on a cell phone, we can find them. Eventually.”
It’s dark when I park in Sophie’s driveway.
I’ve got a key to the front door, but I’m so busy digging it out of my handbag it doesn’t dawn on me that most of the lights in the house are off.
Until I’m inside, with the door closed behind me.
By then it’s too late.
The muffled noise and simultaneous pain in my side help me realize I’ve just been shot. I cry out, but before I can react, I’m hit two more times.
Shoulder and stomach.
My knees buckle. I fall to the floor in slow motion, and land in a sitting position. Gravity slowly takes over, forces me onto my back.
In the darkness I hear Sophie say, “You’re still breathing, bitch. I can hear you. But that won’t last for long.”
She gloats, “I can’t believe how easy this was! I don’t mean pulling the trigger. I mean, you just walked right in, stood there like a deer in the headlights. I could have put one between your eyes, ended it once and for all. But this is better. So much better.”
I turn my head in the direction of her voice, but don’t see her.
She says, “I’m going to stand over you and watch you bleed out. When the light comes on, if you’re able to turn your head upward, you’ll see I’m completely naked. Want to know why, bitch? It keeps the blood evidence off my clothes. While you’re lying there helplessly, struggling to gasp your final breaths, I’ll be smearing your blood all over my body. I’m going to bathe myself with your hot, bitch blood.”
I concentrate all my power into forming a sentence. “You’re…completely insane. You’ll never…get away…with it.”
“I could kill you now, bitch. You know it’s true. I have all the power. Say it! Tell me I have all the power.”
I say nothing.
“Say it!” she screams, “or I swear I’ll shoot you right now!”
The light comes on and I see Sophie standing over me, naked, holding a gun.
A nerf gun.
We both pause a moment, then laugh hysterically.
“Hot, bitch blood?” I say.
She laughs, shoots me in the arm.
“Was ‘hot, bitch blood’ too over the top?” she says.
“A bit. Maybe.”
We laugh some more.
I say, “What possessed you to get naked and attack me with a toy gun?”
“You’ve been preoccupied like crazy. I wanted to get your attention.”
“It worked.”
“So,” she says. “You want to fool around?”
“I’m not gay, Sophie.”
“Who said you were?”
She places her hand between my legs, rubs my sweet spot.
I feel my body surrender. She straddles me, unbuttons my shirt. Cups my breast. Lowers her face till our lips are inches apart. I lift my chin to accept her kiss.
We pause to take a breath and I say, “I just wanted to be clear.”
“About not being gay?”
“Yes.”
I put my arms around her, caress her lower back with my fingertips.
We kiss again.
She says, “Noted.”
Thursday.
Dillon’s call wakes me up at two a.m.
“We’ve got a problem.”
I wipe the sleep from my eyes. “What?”
“I got a beep on my tracking program.”
“At two in the morning?”
“It’s Jana Bagger.”
“What about her?”
“Her car just stopped at Fourteen Twenty-Six Riverside.”
“Why does that address sound familiar?”
“It’s her husband’s other house. The one he shares with Darcie Darden.”
“Shit!”
“Should I call the cops?”
“No.”
“Because?”
“Because what if she kills someone and they find the tracking device you put in her car?”
“That would be bad, I suppose.”
“Really? Ya think?”
“What should we do?”
I waste several precious seconds, trying to think it through. Then say, “You’ve still got Max’s car bugged, right?”
“Uh huh.”
“Is he there?”
“Yup.”
“Shit.”
“You said that.”
“I’ll say it again, I expect.”
“Maybe she’s doing her own surveillance,” Dillon says.
“Or maybe she’s waiting for him to come out so she can shoot him.”
“We need to get the tracking devices from their cars,” Dillon says.
“I agree. What are you, fifteen minutes from Darcie’s?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I can be there in twenty.”
“Want me to meet you out front?”
“No. We should arrive together. Park your car two blocks before you get to Darcie’s. I’ll look for you.”
“There’s a convenience store just off the interstate, right-hand side.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you there.
“Dani?”
“Yeah?”
“Bring your gun this time, okay?”
“I can’t.”
He sighs. “Why not?”
“It’s in my desk drawer. At the office.”
“Shit.”
“That’s my line.”
It’s over by the time we get there.
Neighbors are on the perimeter, speaking in hushed tones. Max and Jana are in the front yard, but only one of them is alive.
Max.
“Are you with the police?” he says, as I approach, carrying a flashlight.
“No. Have you called them?”
“Yes.”
I glance down the street where Dillon’s already managed to open Jana’s trunk. We’re lucky she parked a good distance away. But I have no idea what to do about the bug Dillon planted in Max’s car.
Speaking of Max, he’s crying.
“What happened here?” I say.
He points at the shattered glass near the front door and says, “My wife tried to shoot us through the window.”
I look at Jana’s body. “If that’s true, she must be the worst shot in history.”
“She fired twice. The second shot must have ricocheted on something.”
“Wait. You’re claiming she shot herself?”
“She must have. Darcie and I don’t own guns. But neither does Jana.”
“Where’s the gun she used?”
“Next to her body, I suppose. This is as close as I’ve gotten to her.”
“Because?”
“I was afraid she might be faking, hoping I’d come closer so she could shoot me.”
I shine my flashlight on her body. If there’s a gun, it’s under her.
“You’re sure Jana doesn’t own a gun?”
“We don’t believe in them. But she sure as hell had one. This is crazy. It’s crazy.”
He looks at me. Says, “Who are you, exactly?”
“Dani Ripper. Your wife hired me to find out if you were cheating on her.”
Something bubbles up inside him. His face twists with rage.
“This is your fault!” he shouts, and punches my face so fast and hard I fly six feet through the air before my back slams against the ground. He starts coming at me, but thankfully two of the neighbors come running to my rescue.
“Are you all right?” first guy says.
I murmur something.
Second guy asks, “What did she say?”
“She said she hates her job.”
“What’s her job?”
First guy leans closer and says, “What’s your job, hon?”
“From now on? I’m a decoy.”
“You mean like duck hunters use?”
“Yeah. That’s exactly what I mean,” I say, rubbing my jaw.
“What’d she say?” second man yells.
“She says she’s a duck hunter!”
“Dani, hi. Everything okay?”
I’m on the phone with my favorite assassin, Donovan Creed. Yes, I said “favorite.” I actually know more than one assassin.
Impressed?
I say, “Donovan, I’ve got a situation.”
“I love situations,” he says. “How can I help?”
“I need some advice.”
“Oh.”
He sounds disappointed. “Hypothetically, if a friend of yours put a tracking device in a car, and that car is currently part of a crime scene, and your friend didn’t want the cops to find it, what would you do?”
“Hypothetically, where is the car, exactly? On the street, in a driveway, in a garage?”
“Let’s say it’s in a garage that’s attached to a house.”
“In a neighborhood? In Nashville?”
“A ritzy neighborhood in Nashville, where the houses are several hundred feet apart. Hypothetically.”
“Give me a hypothetical address, and within two hours I’ll have my guy blow the garage to hell.”
“Are you serious?”
“Do you really have to ask me that?”
God, I love this guy. It occurs to me to clarify, “No one gets hurt, right?”
He pauses. “Is that how you want it?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll do it anyway.”
Despite the fact she’s a minor, and should be in school, Kelli Underhill’s sitting at the client conference table.
Also present are her mother, Lydia, and their attorney, Allen Roemer.
Roemer motions me to take a seat. I start to, and he says, “Not there.”
I pull out a different chair, and he says, “Not there, either.”
Two chairs remain. I pick one.
“Not that one,” he says.
There are one million two hundred thousand attorneys in this country, which means six hundred thousand of them graduated in the bottom-half of their class. Why do I always wind up with that bunch?
After I sit, Roemer clears his throat and says, “Before I start threatening you, is there anything you’d like to say?”
“Yes.”
“Go ahead, then.”
“On the first day of school, a first-grade teacher tells her class they’re not babies anymore. They have to use grown up words. Then she asks the kids what they did that summer. The first kid says, ‘I got a bad boo boo.” Teacher says, ‘No. You suffered an injury. Use grown up words.’ Second kid says, ‘I rode on a choo choo.’ Teacher says, ‘No. You rode on a train. Use grown up words.’ Third kid says, ‘I read a book.’ Teacher says, ‘Good for you! Which book did you read?’ The kid says, ‘Uh…Winnie the Shit!’”
All three of them stare at me slack-jawed.
Roemer says, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I was telling you a joke.”
“A joke,” he repeats.
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because when I told Lydia her daughter and her friends were drinking Saturday night, she said, ‘Obviously, this is a joke.’ When I told her Kelli let boys in the house, she said, ‘Seriously, Ms. Ri
pper. Is this your idea of a joke?’ And when you called me yesterday afternoon the first thing you said was, ‘Ms. Ripper, is this whole thing some sort of joke?’ I just wanted you to hear what a joke actually sounds like, so you’d know the difference.”
“Don’t give up your day job,” he says.
“Too late.”
Kelli says, “What happened to your face?”
“Let’s just say I lost another client.”
Roemer says, “I saw it on the news. Your client shot herself while trying to kill her husband.”
“That’s what they’re saying.”
“Then he assaulted you in front of numerous witnesses. This morning, he publicly accused you of blowing up his garage. Except that you were being treated at the hospital when the explosion occurred.”
“Is there a question coming my way?”
“Are you planning to file a lawsuit?”
“Why, do you want to represent me?”
“That would be unethical, unless today’s business is quickly resolved.”
“Speaking of which…” I say.
“I want you to stop all this nonsense,” he says. “What were you thinking?”
“The same stuff I’m still thinking. Lydia? Where’s your husband?”
Roemer says, “Out of town.”
“He’s out of town a lot,” I say.
“Thank God for that,” Kelli says, under her breath.
Lydia places her hand firmly on her daughter’s forearm.
I say, “I’m guessing he’s your stepdad?”
She nods.
Lydia says, “How did you arrive at that conclusion?”
“I’m a student of people,” I say. “A master of logic. A professor of deductive reasoning.”
“You asked around,” Roemer says.
“That, too.”
Roemer clears his throat again and says, “Kelli has admitted a small amount of controlled drinking took place at her home Saturday night, and that she did, in fact, allow a small number of classmates into her home to talk about schoolwork. They were quiet and respectful, and left a few minutes later in an orderly fashion.”
I look at Kelli and say, “See? This is why we need lawyers.”
Roemer says, “Is it true you’re claiming a young lady was molested at the Underhill residence Saturday night?”
