She walks around the side door and climbs the three brick stairs to the steel door and tries to pull it open. To her shock, it swings out at her and throws her a little off balance, but she steadies herself, already a little rattled, and steps inside quickly and closes the door behind her, then freezes in the dark hallway she finds herself standing in. A few yards in front of her, she sees stairs that lead down to a basement, where there’s a light on—and she hears the rumble of men’s voices talking. To the right is a closed door that leads into the vape shop, which is dark inside. To her left, there’s a dark hallway that looks like it leads to a small office or supply room as far as she can tell.
What could he have been doing here? Sasha can’t understand it—she can’t even come up with one scenario that makes sense. Maybe if she can silently move down a few stairs, she’ll be able to hear what the men are saying and maybe then she can figure out what’s happening, who they are, what this place really is.
She tiptoes down the first stair and strains to listen, but before her foot touches the third stair, suddenly, she can’t breathe. She can’t scream. Someone has grabbed her from behind and covered her head in a plastic bag, and she can’t even gasp for a breath. The plastic sucks into her mouth and nostrils and she’s never been so terrified in all of her life. She claws and kicks, but the man who has her in his grip is strong, and no amount of fighting is helping—it only rips the small amount of air she had left in her lungs out of her more quickly, and then she starts to see stars and her body feels tingly and weak. Just a fraction of a moment before she loses consciousness, the bag is pulled away and she drops to the floor in a heavy thud.
“Wanna tell me what the fuck you’re doing in here?” a voice asks, and she sees three men she doesn’t recognize standing over her. She opens her mouth but nothing comes out because she still can’t catch her breath to speak. She tries, but he asks again and she only makes a small squeak, and then she lets out a gasp as tears run down her face.
Then one of the men lifts his booted foot and smashes itdown on her hand so hard she actually hears the bone in her pinky finger crack. She finds her breath and a guttural scream of pain and terror escapes her mouth. She curls up into a ball on the floor, holding her head, protecting herself for the next blow, knowing this is the end. This is how she’ll die.
Chapter Fifteen
Andi
I’m losing it. I’m fucking losing it. The woman just wanted to hand me a bag of tampons and KitKat bars I left on the self-checkout station, and I ran away like a nutcase. Good job making sure I don’t do anything to make people think I’m acting odd and paranoid. When I got home last night, nobody even looked at me. They were so absorbed in their show. So I went into the garage and locked the freezer with the new padlock, and now I wait.
It’s Tuesday and the kids are at school and Carson is lounging around the house in socks and boxers, returning emails on his phone and drinking a third cup of coffee. I have to get him out of the house.
When I asked if he was going into the office, his answer was “Maybe.” I know he has a lunch meeting, but that’s an eternity to wait. God help me, I can’t wait another minutewithout losing it. I text Roxie and tell her to watch Dez for a little while after school because I have errands to run. I’ll leave a paper trail. That’s what I need to do. I need to leave my phone at home, because turning it off will look suspicious—so will leaving it, because nobody does that anymore, but not as much as turning it off on purpose. I could at least argue I forgot it in a rush. Turning it off is deliberate and suspicious.
I’ll stop at a few stores and do normal-person stuff so if it’s ever looked at—my movements and whereabouts—it might not be an alibi, but at least people will see me looking completely normal with the right amount of melancholy due to the tragic situation, of course, and with all my spaced-out store receipts, when would I have time to dump a body? I have to plan it down to every last detail.
I’ll just go about my routine—getting the Girl Scout uniforms from the cleaners for the troop like I said I’d do before handing them off to Regan for the event tomorrow. That’s perfect. I’ll pick up some donuts to send along, too, and get receipts for everything before I execute the plan—the only plan I could really think of.
The river. It’s my only way out. Of course, I can’t just drive over there during the day and stay anonymous, because they can track that, with everyone’s goddamn house cameras and surveillance everywhere you turn. I have to—God help me, it’s so hard to really be thinking these terrible, horrific thoughts, but I have to—I have to sink her into the Connecticut River. It’s deep, and today it’s very calm, but the current will pick up with more heavy rain coming in, and Tia will be far, far away from here—even if she is found, she’ll be washed up somewhere way downstream, so it won’t connect to me. I watched a movie once where a girl’s body caught on a treelimb on the bottom of a river and wasn’t discovered for years. Plus, what are my options? It’s not like I wouldn’t be missed if I drove far away somewhere by myself to find the perfect lake or well or something. Where would I bury her? How? How long would it take to even dig a grave by myself? A long time, I think. A gruesome, harrowing long time. It has to be the river.
There’s a Halloween Superstore up that way. I can say I’m going to pick up the kids’ costumes and some decorations for the yard, because I actually promised them I would. Going all the way to that specific store might seem a little strange, but I could say they had the better Freddy mask Dex wants at that location. I could justify going up there by saying Costume World didn’t have it in stock.
I move around Carson, trying to carry on with the things I would normally take care of in the morning. I cut up potatoes and vegetables and put them in a Crock-Pot; I load the dishwasher; I pick up everyone’s socks and plates around the living room from last night that they promised to clean themselves, and then I make a couple of calls to organize the rest of the year’s Girl Scout activities—Jeanie Baker is hosting a STEM outing and Karla Schneider is going to head up the Christmas craft event, and I volunteer to organize the organizers and get everything on the calendar and running smoothly.
It’s definitely normal stuff to be doing today, so I put on a cheery voice and offer some ideas for papier-mâché snowmen and Advent calendars and then, sometime after 2 p.m., Carson finally puts on pants and heads into the office for a few hours. Then I get to work.
The freezer is still lying sideways on the garage floor, and when I open the padlock, Tia’s wrapped body slides halfwayout and rests in front of me, a shapeless mass. The smell of her hits me like a punch in the face. I turn away, almost gagging, but I have to keep moving. I’ve already begun mumbling tearful apologies as I pull her out the rest of the way and open the hatch of my car. She’s a small woman—maybe a hundred and fifteen pounds—but she’s still a lot to lift even though I’m inches taller than her and not out of shape. Still, the only way to get her up from the ground is in a series of labored efforts to hoist her, in a bear hug, and get enough of a grip to leverage her the few feet off the ground and into the hatch. When I have her just at the edge, I get a hold on her legs, bound in tape and painting cloth, and use my knees and back to lift and push at the same time as hard as I can, finally managing to get the weight of her into the car. It will be much easier the other way when I’m just pulling the weight.
Once I have her in the back, I cover her in the blanket I keep in the car for weather emergencies and then I push a few tarps on top of that to try to keep the smell contained, which helps. Then I close the hatch and try to breathe.It was an accident, it was an accident, you’re not a monster, I repeat in my mind over and over again with each horrific action I am taking. I start the car, back up, and call Jerry’s Junk Removal and schedule a pickup to get the freezer hauled away tomorrow. I drive the two-lane road into town, where I will create a little paper trail and make sure to be seen here and there so I am remembered in this moment as being in town in good spirits if they ever track this time frame to the dumping of her body. It can only help, even though I really have no fucking clue what I’m doing and do not have the luxury of googling anything or researching to find a better way. I just need to keep moving and get rid of evidence.
In town, I park in a vacant spot in the town square near all the cute shops and restaurants, and I check my locks three times before I go in and pick up the Girl Scout uniforms from the cleaners and shove the receipt into my pocket. I toss the uniforms into my back seat, lock the car again and nervously, shakily, walk over to the Wild Roast Café to pick up donuts as planned. Then I’ll drive out to the river. There’s an area that gets pretty woodsy and rural ten miles north, and there are places I could pull over unseen. My hands are trembling at the thought of this, so I shove them into my pockets while I wait in the line at the bakery counter.
I hear my name called and turn around to see Regan and her daughter in a booth, with hot chocolate and pastries. She waves me over. Shit. I force a smile and make my way over to them.
“Join us,” she says. “Table service is faster anyway. Melinda Campner just ordered like seventy-five caramel macchiatos, so it could be a while.” But the only thing I see are the contusions and bandage on the side of her head. I sit across from her, next to Hallie.
“What the hell happened to you?” I ask, then look at the ten-year-old next to me and apologize for my language. She giggles.
“I’m okay,” Regan says, and the look on her face tells me she doesn’t want to discuss it in front of her daughter. “We were supposed to come here with Sasha and Chloe after school, but she never showed up. She was supposed to pick me up, but after a day of rest, I feel totally fine, so we are having cocoa and cookies as promised.” She cheerses Hallie’s mug.
“Peppermint cocoa, even,” she adds.
“You’re okay, though, you sure?” I ask again.
“Yes, but I’m glad you’re here because I need the uniforms.”
“Oh, I have them. I can bring them in. I was just grabbing some treats for the event, but they’ve had enough sugar, so no need to spend an hour in line,” I say as I keep glancing out the front window to keep an eye on my car across the street and simultaneously trying not to seem nervous.
“Did you kill that missing lady?” Hallie asks out of nowhere. I see Regan cup her hand over her mouth.
“Hallie!” Regan shrieks, and a couple of people look over. Hallie shrinks in her seat and turns red.
“Sorry, I just heard it at school.”
