“Why can’t we be violent before they are violent towards us?” Catherine said fiercely. “Why is that so goddamn unfair? Why do we have to wait to be a victim?”
“I’m not going to.”
“Good. I didn’t think so. So, let’s consider what we can do.”
Ashley nodded her head in agreement.
Scott looked at several small piles of items collected in the living room. “You’ve been shopping.”
“Indeed,” Sally said.
“You want to go over it for us?” Scott picked up and fiddled with a box of ammonia-based Handi Wipes. “Like these?”
Sally was quiet, even-toned. “If one thought they had left a DNA sample in a compromising location, they could swipe it down with these, eradicating any trace evidence.”
Scott blew out his cheeks. He was almost dizzy. Handi Wipes, he thought. Part of a murder weapon.
Sally watched her ex-husband and could feel him wavering. She continued solidly, “As best as I can deduce, what we have agreed to do is bring O’Connell and his father together. We can do that. Scott more or less inadvertently has given us a way. And I think we can presume they will have words. We’ve been over that. Then we must find a way to steal O’Connell’s own weapon, use it, as he presumably would, on his father, and return it to O’Connell’s hideaway before he realizes it is missing.”
“Why not just leave it at the, ah, crime scene?” Scott asked.
“I thought of that,” Sally replied. “But it will be the crucial piece of evidence. The police and the prosecution just love finding the murder weapon. It’s what they will build their theory around. It will be the item that is incontrovertible in a court of law. To be sure, it, more than anything else, needs to be discovered in his control.”
“What are these other things?” Hope asked.
Sally looked over at the gathered items. There were several cell phones, a tube of Super Glue, a portable computer, a size-small men’s coverall, two boxes of surgical gloves, several pairs of surgical bootees that could be pulled over a pair of shoes, two black, tight-fitting balaclava face and head cover-ups, and a Swiss Army knife. “They are what we need, as best as I can tell. There are some other things that would be really useful, as well, like some hair from a comb in O’Connell’s apartment, maybe. I’m still fitting pieces together.”
“What’s the computer for?” Scott asked.
Sally sighed. She turned to Hope. “That’s the same make and model that you saw in O’Connell’s apartment, right?”
Hope examined the machine. “Yes. As best as I can tell. At least, that’s what I remember.”
“Well,” Sally said, “you said that his computer contains encrypted material about Ashley. And about us. This one doesn’t.”
Hope nodded. “I think I see.”
“The police will seize his computer. I’d rather have it be one that we’d prepared for that circumstance.”
“Switch them?”
“Correct. It will just erase a link between us and him. He’s probably got backup somewhere, with all the stuff about Ashley and us, but still…Timing will be critical.”
She handed each of them a sheet of yellow legal-pad paper. At the top she had drawn a timeline.
Hope stared down at the paper. Sally had delineated tasks, events, actions, but had marked each with an A, B, or C. When she looked up, she saw that Sally was watching her.
“You haven’t assigned roles,” Hope said. “You’ve got three people doing interrelated things, but you haven’t yet said who does what.”
Sally leaned back in her chair, trying to remain composed. “I have tried to think of this from the position of a modern police officer,” she said. “You have to consider what they will find, and how they will interpret it. Crimes are always about a certain logic. One thing should lead them to the next. They have modern techniques, like DNA analysis and forensic weapons studies and all sorts of capabilities that we only know about peripherally. I’ve tried to think of as many of these as I could and remember what screws up investigations. Fire, for example, makes a mess of things-but it doesn’t necessarily destroy firearms forensics. Water compromises all sorts of wounds and DNA, ruins fingerprints. Our problem is that we want to commit a crime, a violent crime, but we want to leave a trail. Not a perfect trail, but enough of one that leads in the direction we want. The police will, if we’re careful, do the rest, even without a confession from O’Connell.”
“What if he points the police in our direction?”
“We must be prepared for that. We can, to some degree, create alibis for each other. But mainly, we must make it seem unreasonable. That’s the trick. Far better that the police simply not believe anything he says-which is what they will be inclined to do-and try to ride out any attention that comes our way. Don’t underestimate how unlikely it is that we are doing what we are about to do. And police, well, they really like simple answers to simple questions. Even simple questions about death.”
Sally paused, staring first at Scott, then Hope.
“But I don’t think he will,” Sally said.
“Will what?”
“Point the police at us. If we do this right, he won’t know.”
Scott nodded. “But, you know, I was there, asking questions. Someone is likely to remember me.”
“That’s why at some key point you will have to be miles away doing something in someone else’s presence. Like using a credit card and making a complaint someplace where there is a video camera. But on the other hand, it’s probably critical that you’re close by, as well.”
Scott sat back hard. “I see that, but…”
“The same is true for Ashley and Catherine. Although they will have a role to play.”
Again the others remained silent.
Sally took a deep breath. “Which brings us to the crucial question. The actual crime. I’ve thought about this, and I think it will have to be me.”
She waited for someone to say something, but no one did.
“I’ll have to get the gun,” Hope said. “I’m the one who knows where it is. I’ve got the key.”
“Yes. But you were there once before. You have the same problem that Scott has. No, someone else has to get the gun. You can tell me where.”
Hope nodded, but Scott shook his head.
“That’s, of course, assuming it remains where you saw it. Which is a big assumption.”
Sally coughed, then said, “Yes, but if we cannot recover the gun, we’re only partially committed. We can still pull back, then come up with a secondary plan on a new day.”
Scott was still shaking his head. “Okay, if we steal the gun. And then get it to you…what makes you think you can handle a weapon? Especially under these circumstances?”
“I’ll just have to. It’s my job, I think.”
Hope shook her head. “I don’t know about that. It seems to me that there is a certain danger-I’m trying to be like you, Sally, and think like a policeman-in Ashley’s mother committing the crime. That might make sense to a cop, you know. Protecting your child. But I doubt that any cop would think that the mother’s partner would perform this act. In other words, my distance from Ashley, her not being my own child, my own blood, protects me from inquiries, don’t you think? And I’m younger, quicker, and stronger, in case there is some actual running involved in all this.”