No, her quiet neighborhood would be better.
The evening of music has relaxed you. But after driving back and parking in the diner’s lot again, walking the dark, dank residential side streets with their droopy, mossy trees — some of these homes are really crummy — you feel your stomach twitch and jump. Can’t help it. You are human. Anybody would be nervous in your place.
She isn’t back yet. You’d had no way to research what her work hours are — she’d never been that specific on Facebook — so you just tuck yourself under the carport, toward the back.
Maybe that was a bad idea, because when she pulls in and her headlights wash over you, you can — despite the glare — make out her wide-eyed shock at seeing someone there.
When she emerges from the vehicle, you are the shocked one — she has a little pistol in her fist! She is firm-jawed and her eyes are narrow. Your presence hasn’t stopped her from moving forward, the gun probably encouraging that. Then her expression turns puzzled, and she speaks your name, adding a question mark.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” you say. You smile just a little and gesture toward the gun. “You really think you need that?”
“I’m a woman living alone,” she says, adding your name to that, a decided — and you think quite uncalled for — edge to her tone. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m in town for a convention,” you say. “Just thought I’d look you up. Say hello.”
“Okay, hello. Goodbye.”
You raise your hands as if surrendering. “I know we left it in a bad place, all those years ago.”
“We didn’t leave it in a bad place. It was always a bad place. You really need to go.”
You hang your head. “Okay. All right. The real reason I’m here? I want to make amends. I want to apologize.”
“Little late for that.”
You risk a tiny grin. “‘Better late than never’ is a cliché, I know. But they say all clichés are rooted in truth.”
“Do they.”
“Could we sit and talk?”
“Inside?”
“On your stoop, inside, outside, I don’t care.”
She studies you. She sighs. Nods. She always was a soft touch for you. She puts the gun away in her bag and fishes out her keys.
Then you two are sitting in her small, very clean kitchen. She makes coffee. You tell her about your life, your marriage, your kids, your job, and how much it all means to you. She mostly just listens.
Finally she gives you a cup of coffee and — her remembering you find touching — slides a sugar bowl over to you.
“And you like cream,” you say.
No smile. She sits. She looks pretty, and pretty tired. “I like it black these days. Strong, even bitter.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
She squints suspiciously at you.
You say, “There is nothing in that but simple curiosity.”
“What you did is wrong.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
She sips the coffee. Isn’t looking at you. “I don’t hold a grudge. I take ownership of my mistakes.”
Is that what you are? A mistake? But you say, “You don’t blame me?”
“I guess... I guess I blame us both.”
You sip the coffee; you’ve sugared the bitterness out. “Going to the reunion, I see.”
“How do you...?”
“Facebook.”
She pauses. Nods. “I am. You’re planning to attend?”
“Well... yes. Why shouldn’t I?”
Her eyebrows rise but her wide eyes look past you. “I guess if you don’t know, I can’t tell you.”
“... I just want to ask one small favor.”
“You think you deserve one of any size?”
“No. But I hope you’ll do it anyway. Please. What happened... can you please keep it to yourself? And not talk about it with anybody?”
The bitterness of the coffee touches her smile. “Not even... you-know-who?”
You swallow. “Nobody.”
She shakes her head. “No promises. Look, it’s nice that you have regrets. I like hearing you apologize. But I’m not sure an apology quite... cuts it.”
“What would?”
You have thought about money, and she could clearly stand to have some; but that is such a bad road to go down. Anyway, Sue is a lot of things, but a blackmailer? No. You won’t insult her.
“Nothing,” she says. “Some things an apology can’t make go away. I do appreciate the effort. The sentiment. And I have no intention of broadcasting what happened.” She shrugs. “But if certain people bring it up... who can say? Some wine, some mixed drinks — who knows? No promises.”
Your turn to nod. Your mouth twitches a smile. “I understand.”
“Good. That’s a start, right there.”
You rise, smile again. “I appreciate being heard out. Sitting down with me, like a couple of civilized people.”
She summons a little smile, nods once, then nods again, toward the door.
That is your cue. She works at a theater, doesn’t she? She knows all about the theatrics of life.
You walk quickly through the muggy night — it is almost cold, despite being late summer — and the sidewalks, the side streets, are empty. You are back at the diner now. You look around — no one in the lot, just a few cars. People in the diner windows eating, but otherwise you are alone. And you are parked away from those windows.
You go to the trunk of the car, open it and put on the black hooded raincoat and rubber gloves. You know you probably look odd, with no rain even predicted, and the only bad thing is if someone sees you, they might remember.
Can’t be helped.
You walk back, quickly. Walk past the Prius under the carport awning and knock on the kitchen door. Doesn’t take her long to answer. Maybe she is fixing herself a little something.
Framed in the doorway, she looks out at you, with a startled frown, but very pretty still, blue eyes, red hair, and says, “What the hell?”
You begin stabbing her with the butcher knife, in the chest, surprised by how little blood gets on you, considering all your preparation. But after she falls, her mouth open in a scream that never finds its way out, when you step over her to go in and clean your prints from the coffee cup, you almost slip in the stuff.
Two
Chief of Police Krista Larson pulled her dark blue Toyota into the reserved spot at the head of the slanted lot that started below on Main and ended just under Bench Street. She stepped out into sunshine that felt more like November than February, her tense expression belying what was an exceptional day for this time of year.
What awaited her on the upper floor of the rough-hewn limestone-block two-story building — which supposedly dated back to mining days, before it became a power company building and then city hall — was about as inviting as being called to the scene of a bad accident.
Krista at twenty-eight was a tall blonde (hair short though not mannishly so), her athletically slender but shapely figure somewhat hidden by the white blouse of her uniform — her long-sleeve polo (with badge-like insignia) a size up to downplay the natural beauty of her Danish genes. The weather required only a navy windbreaker today; her holstered .45-caliber Glock 21 rode high on her right hip, a badge pinned to her belt at left, her cotton slacks navy, her steel-toed shoes black.
She took the nine steps hugging the building up to street level, where a black wrought-iron fence separated the parking lot from a space for a couple of patrol cars. She went around front to the station’s Bench Street door under the two-tiered white-pillared overhang, and stepped inside. In the entryway, she glanced left at the steps down to the PD’s former quarters, which she and the other eleven officers still referred to as “the Dungeon.”