What Doesn't Kill You

by Aimee Hix

  I squished down farther in my seat and willed myself invisible when the door to his second-floor apartment opened. Clad in another version of manual chic menswear, he pulled the door shut behind him and slowly scanned the area around the motorcycle parking section. He’d always been a careful guy—getting ambushed by a running back upset over the loss of his girlfriend had made an impression—but his body language was too stiff for a longtime habit. He took his time ambling down the stairs and around the landing, eyeballing everything. I had to lean forward to keep him in sight as he crouched down to check something on the bike. Looking for sabotage?

  Seth was actively looking for something or someone. I doubted he was keeping an eye out for me looking to exact revenge for his awfulness yesterday. I wanted to regret hitting him. I just didn’t. He’d said terrible things designed to hurt and humiliate me, but he’d crossed a line saying I’d used Michael’s death. I couldn’t ever forgive him for that. Or for being a psycho killer.

  After an interminable amount of time checking the bike, he stood, scooping up his helmet, and finally roared out of the parking lot, the bike’s engine an animal-like growl.

  I counted out the seconds for a full five minutes, adding Mississippis to each count, before I nonchalantly got out of my car and sauntered to the stairwell. I, too, took my time, following Seth’s path in reverse and keeping my eye on the entrance to the lot without making it look like I was acting guilty. Or, I hoped I was. Still seeing nothing, I pulled the key out of my pocket and slid it into the lock. Having never used the key before I held my breath, worrying that it would stick or that the lock had been re-keyed. I felt rather than heard the lock click open and let the breath out slowly.

  I don’t know what I expected but the place looked exactly the same as the last time I’d been there—bleary-eyed, half-dressed in my funeral clothes, frantically looking for the keys to Michael’s car so I could escape before Seth woke up and I had to actually look him in the eye. Funny how much worse a hookup looks in hindsight, you know, when hindsight is viewed with the murderer lens.

  One last look at the parking lot to make sure I wasn’t going to get busted, and I slipped into the apartment. Seth and Michael had spent little actual time as real roommates due to deployments. I had probably spent more time here with Michael than Seth had. I remembered the Coen Brothers movie marathons we’d have so we could bring Ben over to watch them too. And we’d pop popcorn and drink soda—even health nut Ben would have one—and we’d tangle into a pile of limbs and blankets and lose ourselves for hours in movies. And Michael would sneak Ben down to the pool after hours so he’d be wet and smell like chlorine when we brought him home so Mom and Dad wouldn’t know we hadn’t been swimming with him the whole time. They were happy memories. Mostly. I wasn’t quite sure how to have happy memories after someone had died. Maybe there was no such thing as happy memories, just memories of happy times.

  I felt a little stab in my heart at thinking of Michael, but I had to shove it down. I couldn’t search the place all weepy and grief-stricken. I had a job to do. I reset the deadbolt and vowed to remember to do that when I left. Seth never had to know anyone was here. I’d been here enough to know where the big things needed to land when I was done looking. The little stuff he’d never remember.

  I swept the living room left to right. There weren’t too many places I could think of to hide contraband, but I pulled out the electronic components and DVDs. And found the first gun. Fully loaded magazine, a round chambered. What was Seth doing that he needed to be ready to shoot while watching TV? I added a check mark to the Guilty as Hell side of the tally. I put the gun back where I’d found it and slid the DVDs back in place. Fireplace mantel was next. I checked the back of all the picture frames but found nothing. That wasn’t a big surprise since that was an amateur hiding place. I’d expect better of Seth just for having been a teenager.

  I looked under the couch and the space was empty. There wasn’t even a dust bunny. No crumbs or coins in between the cushions either. The place was ridiculously clean. Did he have some kind of maid service for criminals? So far this break-in—I mean, authorized and legal entry—was a total bust. One gun didn’t make him a criminal even if he’d been storing it a little oddly.

  I spotted a laptop on the dining room table but doubted I’d be able to crack the password even knowing him as well as I did. Or as well as I thought I had. I really wanted a look inside.

  I moved on to the kitchen and, out of a sense of obligation, checked the fridge and freezer. I was relieved to find nothing unusual, if only so I didn’t have to be embarrassed for him. Ditto under the sink. None of the cans were any of those lame hide your valuables even though the only person you’re fooling is yourself with a can labeled Windex things. The glasses and plates were all neatly stacked, cartoon character mugs with pithy sayings on their own shelf—some I’d given him or Michael.

  The dishwasher was free of either clean or dirty dishes. Geez, Seth was the tidiest low-life I’d ever come across. Criminals usually had disgusting homes. My last tetanus shot had come courtesy of a sweep that revealed a rusty knife stuck down the back of a recliner. My thoughts flitted back to the laptop. Password protection usually offered you three shots before it locked down. I could give a few of the less obvious but still relevant options a shot. Nudging aside a pot on a shelf just above my head earned a clunk, and I pulled it down to reveal a second gun. For the eggs and bullets combo platter, clearly. Living room gun, kitchen gun. Did I go for the trifecta of bathroom gun to add to the rapidly expanding pile of overly paranoid weapons stashes or try the laptop first? Since I was loathe to leave any DNA or obvious fingerprints all over what was sure to be, based on the rest of the house, the sparkling washroom, laptop it was.

  I opened it up and bombed out with my first three options. Locked. That wasn’t a great turn of events, but I had my own computer expert on speed dial.

  “Benjy! What’s up, baby bro?”

  “Uh, study hall, Will.”

  I kept forgetting about that stupid high school thing. The only reason I’d come back from Santa Fe was to make sure Ben had an adult around while my parents were on their trip, and I wasn’t even capable of remembering why he needed that adult.

  “Shit. Sorry. So, I just had the quickest question about computers. If I’ve gotten the password wrong a few times and I’m locked out, what do I do?”

  I heard rustling and movement. He was probably going someplace he wouldn’t get into trouble for being on the phone. The teachers had been pretty pissy about it when I was there.

  “No big deal. I was just fixing Mr. J’s phone.” Of course. He was probably in the teacher’s lounge teaching them how to do their taxes too.

  “So you locked yourself out of Dad’s computer, huh. You know he keeps the passwords in the Rubik’s Cube, right?”

  “I’m asking for a friend.” Lamest line in the history of lies; it never works, even on the most gullible people.

  “Uh huh, a friend, sure. Does this have to do with the Horowitzes?”

  “Can you get me in?”

  “Not if you don’t know the password.”

  “Don’t you have some dohicky that cracks passwords?”

  “Dohicky? What kind of word is that? No, I don’t have a dohicky or a program or an app. Isn’t that the kind of stuff you guys don’t want me doing, anyway?”

  “Well, if you want to be technical about it, yes, this is probably the kind of stuff we don’t want you doing but, for practical purposes, if just this once you wanted to tell me how someone would go about it, I—or rather, my friend—would be the one doing it.”

  “Will, you’re not getting past any password. It would take a while. Even with a dohicky.”

  “I really want in this computer, Ben. What are my options?”

  “Can you just take it?”

  I considered that for a second and discarded it just as qui
ckly. My goal was to get in and out without Seth knowing anyone had been here. He would definitely notice his laptop was gone and I would be his first stop, without passing Go or collecting two hundred dollars. Too bad there wasn’t a card that sent him straight to Jail.

  “Not an option.”

  “I have a thought, something I’ve been wanting to try. Give me a few minutes.”

  “Did I mention I’m mildly breaking and entering, Ben?”

  “Jeez, Will, this isn’t TV, okay? I need two minutes. Kill some time snooping somewhere else. Like the dirty clothes hamper.”

  “This isn’t TV, Ben.” I refused to admit it was a decent idea and I shoved the phone in my pocket after putting in the earbuds so I was available when Ben was done. Rummaging through a possible murderer’s dirty clothes. I jammed my hand down into the bathroom hamper, ignoring the idea that I was likely going to be coming into contact with underwear, and grabbed the jeans. There was only two days of clothing in the hamper, including the stuff he’d worn for our makeout session. I shuddered and forced myself to put it out of my mind. So I’d screwed a shady asshole. I wasn’t the Bonnie to his Clyde, so all I was guilty of, besides breaking and entering, was bad judgment. Which put me in with every other damn person on the planet.

  I held the jeans and scanned the rest of the bathroom. So all I’d found was that he was a homebody felon who liked cleaning and laundry? His Internet dating profile had to get the weirdest hits. I searched the pockets and pulled out a scrap of paper with a series of digits on it. I had no idea if it was a code or password so in my pocket it went. He’d never miss it.

  “Patch the kernel, mint.”

  “What kernel, Ben? I don’t have any mints. What are you—”

  “Will? Shut up, okay.”

  “I wasn’t the one talking to myself.”

  “Yes, you were, but I wasn’t going to ask whose underwear.” Apparently, we’d both inherited the thinking out loud trait from Dad. I was supremely grateful I had only mentioned the boxers.

  “Okay, I’m going to text you a link. Click on it and the program will download to your phone. Then all you need to do is plug your phone into the computer’s USB port. This will let you boot the computer and copy all the files onto your phone.”

  “Seriously? That doesn’t sound possible.”

  He sighed. “I’m offended. Deeply. I’m hanging up on you now.”

  “Wait, plug it in with what? I didn’t break in with my phone charger, Ben.”

  “No, but you have one in your car.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes, I made sure you had one because I know you. Anyway, study hall is ending so text me back if you need more help. And you’re welcome.”

  “Thank you, Benjy.” But he’d already disconnected. So if I wanted in the computer I needed to go back out to the car. It was a risk but one I was willing to take. I forced down the impulse to scurry down to get the cable and back like a mouse afraid the cat was coming back any second. Acting suspicious looked suspicious. I was just another suburban twenty-something who’d left something in her car. I nodded hello to the few lucky souls who had later schedules. I waved to the maintenance worker picking up debris on the grass ringing the parking spaces.

  I checked for the text Ben had promised and followed the link. I tried not to panic at the transformation on my phone. At this point, the only thing I was certain of was that my brother knew what he was doing. It was nice that at least one of us did.

  Back inside the apartment, I plugged the phone in and followed the instructions. The screen on the laptop came to life, the password box gone, and a dog’s face appeared. That didn’t look like Seth’s wallpaper so I had to assume whatever Ben had set me up with was working. I dragged the folder for the C drive over to the copy box. A status window showed five minutes to completion. That was more time than I wanted to stick around in the apartment. I’d already been here twenty minutes, which felt like a lifetime. Most of it had been wasted time from a straight search perspective but if I got some useful information off the laptop, it was worth it.

  I had nothing better to do while my phone was copying the files so I hit the room that seemed the most promising: Seth’s bedroom. I had half expected dirty clothes all over the floor and pizza boxes on the stationary surfaces even considering the fastidious appearance of the public spaces, but everything was military perfect. Even the picture frames were aligned with the edges of the dresser. Orderly had taken on a pathological bent. There was a picture of me and Michael at a substation picnic from a dozen years before. We were both fifteen and awkward as hell, just beginning to look like our adult selves, braces glinting. Seth’s awfulness confused me even more in light of the fact that every morning he woke up and saw me as the girl he once knew. Fifteen was the year my crush on him had caught Michael’s attention and I had been warned that he was not cool with me dating his brother. It was the only time we’d fought.

  I shook off the memories and started searching. Gun number three was in between the bed and the nightstand in one of those Call in the Next Fifteen Minutes and Get Two for the Price of One TV commercial remote holders. Clever use for what had always seemed like the laziest of all products. As with the other two, locked and loaded. If shit went down at Edgecombe, Seth was prepared to shoot his way out.

  So he had an alias, a new career, a pending conviction for Accessory to Murder, and what one could generously term a small arsenal.

  “Hello? Seth?” A woman’s voice. I barely had time to be irrationally jealous.

  Shit, shit, shit. Who the hell was that? My fingers twitched to grab the gun I had just put back, but that was a worse idea than sticking around so long had been.

  I busied myself with pretending like I was finishing making the bed when the woman popped her head in the open bedroom door.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone was here.”

  Time for the best acting job of my life. “Hi. Um, who are you and why do you have a key to my boyfriend’s apartment?”

  Best defense, good offense and all that. I made sure my face showed only annoyance and none of the deep, buzzing terror that I felt. Please don’t let her be his real girlfriend. Please god, don’t let her be a wife I’ve never heard of. Illogically, I figured she couldn’t be because otherwise why was he making out with me the other night? Like somehow being a cheater was beneath him but being a murderer was cool. Logically, I knew she couldn’t be a serious connection because the apartment was devoid of any signs of her, but panic does set the brain to spinning in all different directions.

  “Your boyfriend?”

  Shit, she was his girlfriend. Why in the hell weren’t there any pictures of her in the apartment? My brain grasped for … Yes!

  I wandered over to the dresser and picked up the photo of me and Michael, showing it to her. “Yup. We grew up together. It got romantic just recently.”

  “Oh.” Only disappointment showed on her face. Praise the heavens. She wasn’t the girlfriend but she was interested. When she saw his face on the evening news after his arrest she’d be embarrassed that she was ever hot for him.

  “And, again, why do you have a key to my boyfriend’s apartment?”

  “Oh, right. I’m the office manager for the apartment complex. I was just doing a run-through of the apartment before we bring in some potential renters to check the place out.”

  “Right. That makes sense.” I forced myself to laugh. “Since we’re moving into our own place.”

  She nodded, a puzzled look on her face. “Um, right. I guess. Anyway, I’m really sorry. I didn’t know anyone was here. You’ll be out by ten?”

  I heard my cell phone beeping frantically in the dining room and forced another smile. “Just finishing charging my phone and then I’m off to work.”

  Chapter

  12

  Buoyed by my relative success searching Set
h’s place, I decided to stake out some of Joe Reagan’s known associates. I should have taken my win and gone home. I had no idea what I was looking for other than some clichéd bad behavior, but they all either had day jobs or hangovers. One of them had a business truck backed into the driveway but I saw no signs of life at the house, not even when a delivery had to be left with the neighbor.

  I gave the three most likely suspects an hour each of surveillance but abandoned the last one just shy of a full hour when I got a call from Susan. My presence was requested. Defeated and feeling stupid, I drove home and trudged across the side lawn that separated our house and the Horowitzes’. I didn’t exactly drag my feet, but I wasn’t skipping, either.

  Susan greeting me with a smile and hug was unexpected, to say the least. “Willa, come in. I just pulled cookies out of the oven. Jasmine tea?”

  I had expected her and David to be annoyed, disappointed, angry. I was not going to question cookies and tea.

  I sat at the kitchen table, where David had a newspaper pulled up in front of his face. So Susan wasn’t on team Willa Sucks but David was still the captain. Fair enough. Time for the mea culpas.

  “I just wanted to say how sorry I am that this case is changing our relationship. I’ve been a little rough on you. I haven’t enjoyed it. My only excuse is that I know you both would never forgive yourselves if Violet was even charged for this murder.”

  The newspaper twitched down an inch, maybe two.

  “Don’t be silly, dear.” Susan placed a teacup and plate of cookies in front of me. The smell of warm snickerdoodles caused my mouth to water. My favorite. And only Susan made them right. I’d tried dozens of different kinds, and they were all worthless compared to the buttery, cinnamony, sugary, crisp-edged, velvet perfection that were Susan’s cookies.

  As my teeth sank into the first cookie, still warm, I almost moaned. It was impossibly light. The aroma of the jasmine tea was heady combined with the rich scent of cookie. Susan slid into the chair next to me before I started chewing.