Chapter Thirty #3
“Twenty-five years is not enough. He killed Tyler. He killed him.” Helen dropped her head into her hands.
“Tyler is gone. He’s not gone for twenty-five years.
He’s gone forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever .
. .” She had no idea how many times she said the word ever, but Calhoun let her say it ten times, twenty times, a million times.
When Helen finally stopped and looked up, Calhoun’s eyes were a little shiny. But that didn’t do anything to make Helen feel
better, because the monster was getting a deal. Tyler was dead, and the person responsible would be out of prison before he
even qualified for Denny’s fifty-five and over menu.
Helen first slept with Wade the same night that Calhoun told her about the plea deal. What she really wanted to do was kill
a specific man. So instead she fucked a different one.
She had already decided she would wait outside the courthouse on the day of the masked man’s sentencing—she refused to think
of him by his name—and she would shoot him. If she was able to escape from the scene, getting out of town with Wade would
be a good option. And if they caught her outside the courthouse, she’d be going away to prison for a long time. So she may
as well have sex while she could. Wade had started to awaken something inside of her, and she was curious. She’d started to
imagine him on top of her and inside of her. She was a widow, but she was still a woman too. In true crime shows, everyone
always thought the spouse was guilty of the crime if they dated someone too soon after the murder. But all those vipers judging
from their comfortable couches had no idea what it felt like to be truly torn to pieces. You would take almost any scrap that
gave you comfort.
So she went home and cried in the shower as she shaved her legs, cutting herself three times. The first two times were accidents;
the third time she wasn’t sure.
And then she called Wade. “Can I come over tonight?”
The line was silent for a moment. She suspected it wasn’t the question that had given him pause but the way she’d asked it. It was impossible to miss the urgency in her tone.
“Yeah, of course,” he finally said.
So she went to his apartment, and when he answered the door, she put her hands on him. They didn’t talk. They just kissed
and grappled with each other as they walked backward into the room, falling onto the couch.
She didn’t come that night, but later, when she was home alone, she touched herself as she thought about how she’d made him
come. Even if she was dead inside, she could still make others feel alive, and that had to count for something.
Three blocks from the courthouse, there was a small alley with no security cameras, a bunch of crates stacked up, and two
large dumpsters. Helen turned in a slow circle, taking in the dark passage. One side was the back of a laundromat, the other
the back of a restaurant. The few windows were small and high, with bars on them. So as long as nobody took a smoke break,
she’d be fine.
The masked man’s arraignment was in three days. Helen could park her car farther away in the neighborhood and walk to this
spot. Here, she could stash her coat and swap it out for a second one she’d carry in a plastic grocery bag. Change her shoes
too. That way, if security cameras on the street caught her going to or from her car, “the shooter” would appear to be a different
woman from the one who walked from the neighborhood. Should she change her gait between her two personas? Maybe she should
limp slightly from her car to and from the alley. She’d obviously be running as fast as she could from the courthouse after
the shooting.
Helen was going to wear sunglasses and a gray flannel neck gaiter pulled over her nose and mouth.
She’d keep her hood over her head. She hoped it would be drizzling on the day, because from her car she planned to carry an umbrella to further obscure her from security cameras.
She’d stash the umbrella here with her coat before she proceeded to the courthouse.
Her goal was to grab the items on her escape back to her car.
If she couldn’t do that, she’d be at risk of the police finding them before she could come back to retrieve them.
But she figured if she’d made it three blocks without capture, she’d probably already outrun them in the first place.
She used to be fast, but since Tyler’s death she hadn’t been working out.
The night before, she had put on her running shoes and gone for a test run.
She’d sprinted down the sidewalk, and too quickly she’d felt the burning in her lungs and the lactic acid pooling in her thighs.
Most cops were out of shape these days though, and she’d have adrenaline on her side.
It seemed like a good plan. Not foolproof. But better than some of that shit she’d seen the idiots do on Dateline and 48 Hours Mystery.
The only problem was, if they caught her, there would be no way she could plead second degree. This was, without a doubt,
going to be a first-degree murder.