The Pain of Others

“I went to Victor.”
“Good. We’re still thinking tomorrow, yes?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I understand you have a son?”
“Skyler. He’s seven. From a previous marriage.”
“I want you to go out with your son tomorrow morning at ten. Buy some gas with a credit card. Go to Starbucks. Buy a coffee for yourself. A hot chocolate for Skyler. Wear a bright shirt. Flirt with the barista. Be memorable. Establish a record of you not being in your house from ten to noon.”
“And then I just go home?”
“That’s right.”
“Can you tell me what you’re going to do? So I can be prepared?”
“It’d be more natural, your conversations with the police I mean, if you were truly surprised.”
“I hear you on that, but I’ll play it better if I know going in. It’s the way I’d prefer it, Arnold.”
“Where does your wife typically shower?”
“Upstairs in the master bath, right off our bedroom.”
“As you’re stepping out of the shower, is the toilet close?”
“Yeah, a few feet away.”
“You’re going to find her on the floor beside the toilet, neck broken like she’d slipped getting out of the shower. It happens all the time.”
“Okay.” Chase exhaled. “Okay, that’ll work. I like that. Then I just call the police?”
“Call Nine-one-one. Say you don’t know if she’s dead, but that she isn’t moving.”
“The police won’t suspect I did this?”
“They may initially.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Then don’t have your wife killed. It’s not a neat, easy transaction, and you shouldn’t do business with anyone who tells you it is. The husband will always be suspected at first, but please understand I am very good at what I do. There will be an autopsy, but assuming you hold it together, it’ll be ruled an accident. Now what does your wife do for a living?”
“Not really anything now. She used to be a registered nurse. Why?”
“Just a little piece of information that helps me to prepare.”
“That manila folder in the briefcase contains a recent photograph of Daphne. Address. House key. Floor plan. Everything you asked for. And I’ll make sure the third window to the right of the front door is unlocked.”
“I’ll need your help distracting her while I’m getting inside. I want you to call her at precisely 10:15 a.m. Tell her you can’t find your wallet. You got a bedside table?”
“I do.”
“You say you think you might have left it there, and would she please go check. That’ll get her upstairs, give me time to get in.”
“I should write this all down.”
“No. Don’t write anything down.” The black-suited man rose to his feet. “I’m exhausted. I’m going to grab some shut eye.”
They came toward her, and Letty realized that Chase was the tanned and moneyed specimen she’d seen in the lobby.
“Once you walk out the door, Chase, there’s no going back. You need to understand that.”
She watched them shake hands and then Arnold opened the door and saw Chase out and came back in and closed and locked the door.
He went past the closet and sat down on the end of the bed. Pulled off his shoes and his black socks, and as he sat there rubbing his feet, it occurred to her that he still wore his jacket, that he would want to hang it in the closet. Arnold stood and took off his jacket and started toward the closet.
The vibration of his phone stopped him. He flipped it open. Sighed.
“Yeah…no, it’s fine.” He unbuttoned his white Oxford shirt.
Letty’s hands trembled.
“The floral pattern, Jim.” He lay his jacket across the dresser and turned his back to the closet. “Remember we talked about this?” His pants fell to his ankles, followed by his boxer shorts. He stepped out of them, climbed onto the bed, and lay on his back, his feet hanging off the end. “No, Jim. With the daffodils.”
Already forty-five minutes late for work, Letty peered through the slats, saw Arnold’s chest rising and falling, the man otherwise motionless and perfectly silent. She’d been standing in the same spot for almost ninety minutes, and though she’d abandoned her heels, the closet didn’t afford room, with the doors closed, for her to sit down or bend her knees to a sufficient degree of relief. Her legs had been cramping for the last half hour, hamstrings quivering.
She lifted her duffle bag, and as she pushed against the closet door, a rivulet of sweat ran down into the corner of her right eye. Blinking through the saltwater sting, she felt the door give, folding in upon itself with a subtle creak.
She stepped out into the room, glanced at the bed. Arnold hadn’t moved.
At the door, she flipped back the inner lock, turned the handle as slowly as she could manage. The click of the retracting deadbolt sounded deafening. She eased the door back and stepped across the threshold.
She sat in the lobby, now noisy and crowded with the onset of cocktail hour. In her chair by the fireplace, she stared into the flames that roasted twelve-foot logs, the BlackBerry in her right hand, finger poised to press talk.
She couldn’t make the call. She’d rehearsed it three times, but it didn’t feel right. Hell, she didn’t even know Daphne’s last name or where the woman lived. Her story would require a leap of faith on the part of the investigating lawman, and when it came to credibility, she held a pair of twos. She couldn’t use her real name, and meeting face-to-face with a detective could never happen. Letty had been convicted three times. Six years of cumulative incarceration. Her fourth felony offense, she’d be labeled an habitual criminal offender and entitled to commiserate sentencing guidelines at four times the max. She’d die in a federal prison.
So seriously, all things considered, what did she care if some rich bitch got her ticket punched? If Letty hadn’t hit room 5212 when she did, she’d already be at the diner, flirting for the big tips and still glowing from the afternoon’s score. She tossed the BlackBerry back into her duffle. She should just leave. Pretend she’d never heard that conversation. She stole from people, innocent strangers, every chance she got. It never kept her up nights. Never put this torque in her gut. She’d get out of there, call in sick to work, buy two bottles of merlot, and head back to her miserable apartment. Maybe read a few chapters of that book she’d found at the thrift store—Self-Defeating Behaviors: Free Yourself from the Habits, Compulsions, Feelings, and Attitudes That Hold You Back. Pass out on the sofa again.
    
 And you’ll wake up tomorrow morning with a headache, a sour stomach, a rotten taste in your mouth, and you’ll look at yourself in that cracked mirror and hate what you see even more. 
  
She cursed loud enough to attract the attention of an older man who’d dolled himself up for the evening, his eyes glaring at her over the top of the Asheville Citizen-Times. She slashed him with a sardonic smile and got up, enraged at herself over this swell of weakness. She took two steps. Everything changed. The anger melted. Exhilaration flooding in to take its place. In the emotion and fear of the moment, it had completely escaped her.
Room 5212 contained the manila folder with Daphne’s photograph and address, but also a briefcase holding $25,000 in cash. Steal the money. Steal the folder. Save a life.
Even as she scrounged her purse for the master keycard, she knew she wouldn’t find it. In those first ten seconds of entry into Arnold’s room, she’d set it on the dresser, where she imagined, it still sat. She could feel the heat spreading through her face. The barkeep and the bellhop, her only contacts at the hotel, were already off-shift. There’d be no replacement keycard.
She started through the lobby, wanting to run, punch through a sheetrock wall, do something to expend the mounting rage.