The Bullet

by Mary Louise Kelly

  I raised the gun again. Through gritted teeth: “Where. Do. You. Keep. Rope?” She didn’t move. We were standing eight, maybe ten feet apart. “I’m begging you not to make this harder than it has to be.” Still she didn’t move. Okay, I take it back. Maybe I would shoot a defenseless old lady. Just in the foot, just as a warning. It’s true what they say. It gets easier after the first time.

  In the end we went with duct tape.

  I dragged a chair into the laundry room, forced her to sit on it, and went to work on her wrists. Then her ankles, securing them with loop after loop of tape to the legs of the chair. Before slapping a strip over her mouth, I asked, “What are you doing here? Ethan said you were at the lake.”

  I didn’t expect her to answer. But her face crumpled. “I play tennis on Wednesdays. Every Wednesday morning, for years now. I’ve told him a million times. He never remembers.” Tears spilled from her eyes.

  And there it was, in twenty words, a portrait of a marriage. Of the toll that decades of jealousy and resentment can take. It occurred to me that she had retched, but she had not actually cried at the sight of his body. What had broken her, what had brought her to tears, was the admission that he didn’t care where she was on a Wednesday morning. Or any other morning, presumably, and that he hadn’t for years. Had she heard his dying words? About Sadie Rawson being the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen? For a moment, just a moment, my heart broke for her.

  But the drumbeat was back: Get out of here.

  “Are you expecting any visitors today? Betsy?”

  She had her eyes shut and her head down.

  “Betsy, I’m sorry, so sorry. You can’t imagine how sorry. But this is important. When will someone come looking for you or Ethan?”

  “I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I was going to drive up to the lake after I showered.”

  “When does your housekeeper come?”

  No answer.

  “Betsy!” I lifted her chin. “Do you have a regular cleaning lady?”

  She sniffled. “Thursdays.”

  “So tomorrow? Are you sure? Is she reliable?”

  Betsy nodded.

  That meant I had, maybe, eighteen hours before the body was discovered. I wiped Betsy’s face with a tissue and forced her to swallow a sip of water. Covered her bare legs and shoulders with towels I found in the dryer, so she wouldn’t get chilled. I felt awful leaving her there, far guiltier than I did about having just shot her husband. But what choice was there? I taped her mouth shut and pulled the laundry-room door closed behind me. I wedged another chair under the doorknob, so it would be tough to open from the inside, even should she manage to wriggle free.

  Ethan Sinclare’s body was sprawled grotesquely across the tiles. I stepped around it in as wide a circle as possible. Turned off the lights. Wiped clean the switch. Stole an Atlanta Braves cap from the hall closet and tucked my hair beneath, hid my eyes behind sunglasses. My head was down and I was thinking fast as I strode up the street.

  There was a witness. Everything had changed. I would have to run.

  • • •

  THE FACTS, AS I saw them, were as follows:

  I had shot and killed a man.

  Murdered him.

  He had deserved it. What I had done to Ethan Sinclare represented a pure, shining biblical justice. An eye for an eye. Unfortunately, that didn’t make it legal.

  I could turn around, give myself up, argue that the shooting had been self-defense. But it hadn’t been, not really. I had created this situation all by myself.

  I had thought to swipe Ethan’s wallet and maybe a knickknack or two. Police would reasonably surmise that an intruder had broken in, that Ethan had come home and surprised him, and that a struggle had ensued. The random-burglar theory. It had the benefit of simplicity. And I liked the parallels to thirty-four years ago. Another kitchen, another gun, another set of police assumptions about a burglary gone wrong. The investigation into Ethan’s death would play out in similar fashion to the investigation that he himself had set in motion, back in 1979, back in the house on Eulalia Road.

  It was perfect. The very definition of justice.

  But Betsy Sinclare had upended this plan. As soon as she was set free—whether that happened in the next hour or not until tomorrow and the arrival of her housekeeper—she would finger me. She would describe how she had watched Caroline Cashion slaughter her husband. Within minutes, my name would be all over CNN. There would be a manhunt, for Christ’s sake.

  Then it would all unravel. They would trace the gun. They would discover I had bribed a stranger in a parking lot to illegally purchase it for me. They would match the bullets in Ethan’s chest to my revolver. God, the irony. I would be charged with homicide. I was no expert on Georgia sentencing guidelines, but it was a safe bet that the pre­meditated murder of a prominent local attorney wouldn’t be looked on kindly.

  I didn’t want to go to prison.

  That wasn’t the way this was supposed to end.

  If you were suddenly a fugitive, where would you go?

  • • •

  THE TRADITIONAL ANSWER to that question is Mexico. Run for the border.

  But in an astonishing stroke of bad luck, I had already told everyone to look for me there. I had a plane ticket booked, to Cabo San Lucas, leaving from Washington Dulles on Friday morning. I’d given my name and credit-card information to a hotel there, a lovely hotel on the beach, where I’d been very much looking forward to staying. I was telling the truth when I said I was planning quality time with a pitcher of margaritas. When I’d made the reservations, my instinct had been that however things turned out with Sinclare, I would need time on my own to calm down. To wait things out. Now those reservations guaranteed that every passport officer south of the Rio Grande would be on the lookout for me. Mexico, alas, was out.

  You heard of people in such situations hopping over to Cuba. But you needed a visa to get in, and I didn’t have time. Same with Morocco, same with Russia, same with every other country I could think of that wasn’t likely to have signed an extradition treaty with the United States. Where could I flee to, tonight, on a direct flight? A city big enough that I could disappear? The answer, when it came to me, was obvious.

  I felt around the bottom of my handbag for an object I’d thrown in days ago and forgotten. Please let me not have taken it out. There. My fingers closed around cold metal. This would come in handy.

  Fifty-one

  * * *

  It’s harder than you might think to get rid of a gun.

  Sure, you could toss it in a Dumpster, or into thick undergrowth by the side of the road, and hope for the best. But if you want to maximize the chances of that gun’s not coming back to haunt you, then the disposal site of choice has to be deep water.

  In Atlanta, that meant the Chattahoochee River.

  Hunched down on the back of the bus, speeding away from the Sinclares’ house, I opened maps on my phone and identified a promising spot. The Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area was only a short drive from my hotel. The website described a three-mile hike called Indian Trail, along the “lesser-frequented eastern banks of the river.” There appeared to be a small parking lot, and from there several paths forked off to various vantage points above the river. On a Wednesday afternoon in November, I hoped they might not be frequented at all.

  When I eased my rental car into the Indian Trail lot an hour later, I was wearing the blonde-bombshell wig again. Also, a sweatshirt that I’d bought in the hotel gift shop, pale pink with HOTLANTA spelled out across the front in cursive rhinestones. Inconspicuous it was not. On the other hand, if the goal was to avoid being recognized, I could not have been dressed less like my usual self.

  Only one other car was parked in the lot. A pea-green Prius. The owner was nowhere in sight. I climbed out and selected the muddiest trail, on the theory that othe
r hikers might be discouraged. Ten minutes later I arrived at a high bluff overlooking a bend in the river. I glanced around. Spotted no one. In the red clay where I stood were boot prints, and paw prints from a dog. They could have been five minutes old, or five hours, or five days. I took a deep breath, hollered out, “Hello?”

  My voice echoed across the water. No one answered.

  I considered, hollered, “Help! I need help!”

  No answer. Good.

  I pulled the Smith & Wesson from my purse and hurled it as far out as I could. The river was wide here and I lacked the strength to hit anywhere near the middle, where the water was presumably deepest. It would have to do. The gun splashed and sank. I held my breath, half expecting a SWAT team to jump out from behind the pine trees and cuff me on the spot. No one appeared. Next I threw the cardboard box containing the remaining forty-five bullets. Then Ethan Sinclare’s mobile phone. I’d already had the presence of mind to crush the SIM chip beneath my boot, in case police were already tracking it. In case they were already hunting for me. That left my own phone. I turned it over in my palm, weighing the pros and cons. I needed it until I was away on that plane tonight. But the risk of giving away my movements was too great. I flicked my wrist and sent it flying. It sliced into the water at least twenty feet farther out than my previous attempts. My aim was improving.

  My next problem was money.

  Thanks to Boone and Sadie Rawson and the wonders of compound interest, I was rich. But once police started searching for me, I would need to stay off the grid. I wouldn’t be able to access my bank account. My credit cards would be useless. I couldn’t just withdraw half a million dollars cash, throw it in a suitcase, and check it on the plane. So how could I take my money with me?

  I mulled this dilemma as I sped back up the trail, turned the car around, and drove to a local branch of my bank. The teller didn’t bat an eyelid at the size of the check I was depositing. I asked her to place the money in my checking account, then asked for $10,000 in cash, in $50 bills. That would tide me over for a while if I was frugal. She counted out the money with inch-long, fake fingernails painted hot pink.

  “Loooooove your top.” She slid the money through the hole at the bottom of her Perspex window. “Are those rhinestones? I like a little bling-bling. You got the whole diamonds-are-a-girl’s-best-friend thing going on.”

  I stared at her. A moment passed.

  “You need something else, sugar?”

  “Actually . . . yes. Do you have a phone book back there? I want to look up something in the yellow pages.”

  She drummed her talons on the counter, click click click, then nodded and made to stand up.

  “And I’m going to need another cashier’s check.” I tilted my head, running the numbers. “Made payable to me, please. For two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  • • •

  TIP-TOP DIAMONDS IS in southeast Atlanta, on a long, dreary road otherwise dominated by car dealerships and drive-through hamburger joints.

  I’d selected it because the ad in the yellow pages bragged about having the city’s largest selection of certified loose diamonds. Also, because it wasn’t Tiffany’s. I didn’t need pretty blue boxes. I needed a place that knew to shut up and not ask questions when a broad in a rhinestone HOTLANTA sweatshirt rolled in, looking for a bulk discount on a quarter million dollars’ worth of bling.

  Inside was a waiting area with peach-tinted, wall-to-wall carpeting and a shiny leather sofa. No gems in sight.

  “May I speak with the owner?” I asked the woman who had buzzed me in.

  “Certainly, madam. Did you have an appointment?”

  “I’m looking to make a significant purchase.”

  “Ah. Okay. Just one minute.”

  She was gone for nearly ten. I squirmed on the sofa. I needed to be out of here in half an hour if I was going to make it to the airport, drop off the car, and catch my flight. I had no time to try another store. It was here or bust.

  At last an exceptionally thin man in a flashy suit appeared and introduced himself as Juan. Affixed to his lapel was a metal button that read BUYING A DIAMOND? DON’T PAY RETAIL. Beneath this hung another button: CUT DIAMONDS. CUT-RATE PRICES.

  Classy.

  “Juan.” I hit him with my most bewitching smile. “May I cut to the point? I’m interested in buying a number of your best diamonds. In fact, all of your best diamonds. And I’m in a hurry. I need to be walking out your front door with them in twenty minutes. Do you think we can make that happen?”

  He looked me up and down, took in the trashy sweatshirt, the muddy boots, the rental-car key fob dangling from my hand.

  “You pay cash?” was all he said.

  Velvet trays appeared. I selected a two-and-a-half carat stunner of an engagement ring and popped it on my finger right there. The rest I took in loose stones. The female assistant darted back and forth, matching appraisals and lab certificates to gems.

  Juan had his calculator out, keeping a running total. When he hit $200K, he looked skeptical. “Keep going?”

  I checked my watch. No time. “No, thanks. That’ll do it.” I turned to the woman. “Would you excuse us for a second?”

  She hesitated, glanced at Juan. He nodded.

  When we were alone, I patted the padded velvet sleeve in which he’d been placing the diamonds. “I’m not an expert in diamonds, as you’ve probably guessed. But I will be. One day, when I’m not in quite such a rush, I’ll take these and get them appraised. If you have cheated me—if a reputable dealer examines the contents of this bag, plus this ring, and finds them to be worth less than two hundred thousand ­dollars—I will find out. And I will come back here, and I’ll shoot you. Just so we’re clear.” I smiled sweetly. “Do you need to make any adjustments?”

  He blanched. Stiffened. Reached behind him, picked out two good-size rocks from a tray, and dropped them in with the others I had selected.

  “Excellent.” I pulled the cashier’s check from my purse and flipped it over. “Want me to endorse this to Tip-Top Diamonds or to you personally?”

  He reached for the check to inspect it. Held it up to the light, ran his fingers over the watermark. “Caroline Cashion’s not your real name, is it?”

  “Actually, it is. You’ll have to trust me on that one. The check’s legit. Although I wouldn’t wait too long to cash it.”

  Now he was squinting at the amount. “This check’s worth two hundred and fifty grand. I can’t make change.”

  “Consider it commission for a job well done. And for keeping this transaction between us.”

  He still looked uncertain.

  “Juan. I need to go. Do we have a deal?”

  He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and pushed the check across the desk to me. “Endorse it over to my buddy Chuck. He helps with the accounts.”

  What did that mean, in dodgy-diamond-dealer-speak? That Chuck was the guy who laundered the money? I shrugged and wrote my signature on the check.

  Traffic was surprisingly light on the drive to the airport. I squealed into the Hertz return zone an hour and fifty-two minutes before my flight was scheduled to depart. Before climbing out I reset the GPS unit. Delete all recent destinations? Y/N? it asked. Yes. A backup file was probably synced to some server, somewhere, but no reason to make it easy to retrace my steps.

  An attendant materialized at the window. “Evening, ma’am. Read the mileage for me, if you would?”

  I checked the odometer and told him the number.

  “Returning it with a full tank?”

  “Didn’t have time.”

  Tutting noise. “That’ll cost you. Next time select the prepaid-fuel option.”

  I nearly laughed. It would be difficult to explain to this man quite how far down my list of sins having failed to fill my gas tank would rank. Committing murder has a way
of putting one’s other trans­gressions in perspective.

  As I made my way toward the airport train, a smile lingered on my face. On the one hand: I had killed a man today. A man who, whatever his flaws, was someone’s husband. Someone’s father. I had terrorized an old lady and locked her in her laundry room. I had deliberately destroyed evidence relevant to a felony. I was about to try to smuggle $200,000 worth of undeclared diamonds out of the country. I was on the run, was possibly looking at life in prison.

  On the other: I hadn’t had this much fun in quite some time.

  • • •

  IN THE ATRIUM of the main terminal, I stopped to watch a television tuned to CNN. The volume was muted, but judging from the graphics, the anchor was parsing the Dow’s having hit another record high today, closing at 15,747. If only I’d had time to sock my money in stocks instead of diamonds.

  Next up—Celebrities Caught in “Catfishing” Hoax, announced a banner scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Also ahead, five things you needed to know about New York’s new mayor. I was not news yet, then. CNN was headquartered in Atlanta; they would be all over the murder of a wealthy local lawyer. Sweet Betsy must still be locked in the laundry room.

  Delta was inviting first-class passengers to preboard when I reached the gate. That meant I had ten minutes or so. I retraced my steps to a cluster of shops that I’d passed. At Emporio Armani I picked up the plainest, beigest sweater I could find. Also two outrageously overpriced white T-shirts and a pair of black jeans that looked more or less my size. At Coach I made a beeline for a pair of sensible, rubber-soled, mahogany-­brown boots. No more stilettos for me. Nothing that might attract attention.

  The departures screen displayed my flight’s status as FINAL CALL. I ducked into DKNY, grabbed an oversize pair of dark sunglasses, threw several bills on the counter, didn’t wait for the change.

  They were shutting the doors to the gangway as I hurtled up to the desk. A cranky flight attendant scanned my boarding pass, then my passport. No red lights lit up. No alarm sounded. No Homeland Security agent burst forward, screaming for my arrest.