A dark night, the two of you alone in a bedroom: in the gutter, when you take someone out, it means a whole other thing.
The Trophy Wife Keeps A Secret by Robb T. White
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The woman had to go. That’s all there was to it. Knowing
and proving were two different things as far as cops went. He planned for that
night before they could build a stronger case. Prosecutors could indict a ham
sandwich—an old but true saying. She’d buckle once they had her in that tiny
room. He wasn’t going to wait for them to offer her partial immunity to get to
him.
He followed the same route as that other night and
parked in the same spot. He waited for all the lights in the large house to go
out before checking his watch. Two hours passed before he got out, stretched,
checked his clothing; he worked the slide on his .25 Beretta, a habit. No
silencer because he was going to knock her out while she slept, drag her to the
bathtub, fill it up, and slit her wrists. He’d done that before with a male
he’d been contracted to remove. It would be easier with a woman. Women get
emotional under pressure.
He entered the same way through the patio doors. Up
to the master bedroom more slowly without the moonlight to guide him as before.
Three in the morning, she’d be dead asleep. Soon, for real.
He cracked the first door and listened for the
sound of breathing. Nothing. She must be in the other room at the opposite end
of the hallway.
The carpeting allowed him to walk faster, a little
surer of his movements in the near dark. Sensor lights placed near the floor
picked him up at intervals, but she’d be used to her dog setting them off
during the night. That was his secret and made him so successful at home
invasions, his first career, with dogs in the house. Dogs loved him; some
pheromone he gave off. They’d approach, some snarling, and soon they’d be licking
his hand.
He pushed the door open an inch and waited. No
sound here, either. He was used to the sounds of people asleep. He opened the
door a couple feet and slipped through.
He approached the lumpy shape under the covers. The
blow would show up in the coroner’s report but it would be attributed to the
fall.
He stood over her in the bed and let his fingertips
graze the top of her head as lightly as a butterfly’s wings. He felt hair. He had
the right place in his mind’s eye; one blow, no more. He raised the club for
one overhand blow but stopped his forward motion in mid-air. Wrong—the hair was wrong. He recalled
the soft sheen when they sat in the booth at the diner agreeing to the final
terms of their arrangement to kill her husband.
When the lights came on, a store mannequin stared
at him with a made-up woman’s face beneath a wig. He pivoted . . .
The Taser darts were already stuck to flesh blasting
him senseless.
He came to, groggy but aware.
Her. Set up by a dim-bulbed trophy
wife. Not happening. . .
She smirked,
the Taser in one hand, his billy in the other.
She thumped him once, hard, across the temple and
he fell into a black vortex.
When he came to this time, he was nauseated;
something sticky was wrapped across his mouth. He was bouncing in the dark—a
car trunk from the feel of it. His hands were cuffed behind his back and his
legs bound at the ankles. When the trunk lid popped open, he squeezed his eyes shut
against the flashlight’s beam. A pair of hands jerked him upright and hauled
him to the lip of the trunk. The gag was ripped from his mouth.
“I’m sthenic,” she said. “Know what that means,
killer?”
He had
discipline. He wouldn’t overreact.
“It means you’re free of your husband, thanks to
me.”
Not brilliant but good enough under the
circumstances.
“It means I’m abnormally strong.”
As if to prove it, she clutched him by his
windbreaker and leaned him over the edge until gravity tipped him over and he
hit the dirt. His head was a balloon of pain.
She pulled him upright against the bumper.
With as much calm as he could inject into his
voice, he said, “I have money.”
The kick that smashed him in the face and broke teeth
was a construction worker’s boot. He swallowed shards from the impact. Other
pieces embedded themselves into his lips. He was swallowing blood so fast he
was certain he was going to choke to death. His vision blurred. Another kick
from Trophy Wife broke his jaw. His talking done.
She dragged him by the legs while red waves of
pain rolled through him too fast for him to think clearly. His life depended on
words now. All those smooth words he used on women like her—what to say? He was
covered in filth and cockleburs by the time the moving stopped.
Then he heard her voice. “That cop, Vukcevic, he’s
breathing down my neck. I’m afraid you’ll talk. I can’t have that.” She stroked
his swollen cheek. “Sorry,” she said, “but, hey, them’s the breaks, killer.”
He wanted to say, No, no, he wasn’t the one who would break, never—
His body was rolled and then he dropped, landing
hard, his breath pounded from his lungs. The first shovelful landed. A grave. His
grave. Oh fuck me.
Then the second one, followed by a rhythmic thunking—until blood-flecked spittle
washed any words back down his throat.
The shoveling woman loomed above, no more a petite
blonde with buttery hair. She disappeared beneath a hazy, tear-blinded curtain
of dirt.
Before he found the right words to stop all this, more
clotted dirt landed and covered his mouth. He heard a giggle from far off.
