Hurrying now, she drove to Minneapolis and dropped the clothing at four more dry cleaners, then to a Goodwill store where she purchased the five best pairs of size eleven shoes, along with four pairs of athletic shoes. She drove to a St. Paul Goodwill and left the shoes in a drop box.
A sign at the drop box said, “Gently used and new clothing only; no shoes, please.”
That’s because she knew, from an acquaintance, that the shoes’ next stop would be a dumpster, and from there, a landfill; but somebody at Goodwill might remember nine pairs of good shoes, if the cops should go looking for them.
She’d get back to the dry cleaners the next day and drop the clothes off at another Goodwill store, near the house; dry cleaningfluids were generally good at destroying DNA and sending them twice through baths of tetrachloroethylene should get rid of all of it, if the cops should ever go looking for the clothing. As a newly bereaved widow, she simply couldn’t stand to look at Timothy’s clothes hanging in the shared dressing room…
Still sitting at the drop box where she left the shoes, she rubbed her forehead: getting rid of all of Timothy’s DNA might be impossible, but she wouldn’t make it easy for anyone looking for it. She’d soaked the dogs’ collars in rubbing alcohol, then washed them with soap. Timothy watched television from a special recliner chair, and she’d dumped the chair and bought a similar used one from a high-end used furniture dealer all the way across town in Minnetonka.
She’d cleaned the drains in the shower and poured Drano down the trap of the sink he used. She collected all his hats, bagged them, and threw them in a garbage can at a shopping center. Everything he touched got soaked or wiped with heavy-duty household cleaner, including all three of his Rolex watches, his shirt studs, and a turquoise cuff he’d bought in Colorado.
What had she missed? She’d worked sixteen hours a day, getting rid of every trace of him, in the house, in the cars, everything.
And in two days, she’d have at least a hundred people wandering through the house, at the memorial service, leaving behind copious amounts of their own DNA, further confusing things for any possible investigators.
Most likely, none of that work would be absolutely necessary; but she was psychotic and driven and so she did it anyway. She’d keep doing it, over and over again, until any possibility of investigation was gone.
A car drove in behind her at the drop box. She glanced in her rearview mirror and pulled away.
She was on her way home when she passed the strip mall and saw the red, white, and blue barber pole on the outside of one of the storefronts. The idea rang in her head like a bell. She slowed, turned into the parking lot.
She had the idea, but how would she pull it off? She got out of the car, walked over to the barbershop, and went inside. There were three chairs, but only one barber; and the barber was sitting in one of the chairs, reading a free newspaper. He looked over the paper, pushed his eyeglasses up with an index finger, and asked, “What can I do you for?”
“Do you give haircuts to children?”
“Sure…if they’re old enough to sit still.”
“He’s seven,” she said.
“That should be okay.”
“Would it be all right if I sat in that chair for a minute?” she asked. “I want to see what he would see, if he could see himself in the mirror. He’s sort of…a sissy. He’s afraid of things. If he could see himself in a mirror…”
“Go ahead,” the barber said.
Fisk climbed into the chair and spun it around until she could look in the mirror. The barber moved over behind her. “That’s what he’d see.”
“I’ll talk to him. Would we need a reservation?”
“Does it look like he’d need a reservation?” he asked.
Fisk glanced around the empty shop, smiled, and said, “We’ll drop in.”
“Do that. We have a special rate for kids.”
“Higher or lower?”
He smiled at her—she was being a little flirty. “Lower,” he said. “Come back. Anytime. With or without him.”
As she was on the way out, the barber said, “Oh, hey—you got some hair on your jacket sleeve.”
She looked and said, “No problem. I’ve got a tape roll that will take it right off.”
In the car, she carefully picked a pinch of gray hairs off her jacket and rolled them up in a piece of notebook paper.
Now: new mattress to buy. Jepson to think about.
Busy, busy, busy.
