“Wait. What?” I said again.
“How’d you get it off him? You let me take a pic, remember?” He held up his phone. Absolute dread gripped me as Layna and I leaned into inspect it. In the damning photo, I stood alone in the same exact spot, my eyes lit up red like a possum’s in the headlights—and I was wearing the dead guy’s teal vest.
Shock rippled through me, of the sort you feel in the instant of a car wreck, when glass flies, metal crunches, and you can’t yet fully assess the damage done. Because when Mr.Neck Tattoo sidled up to me at the bar, he’d been wearing that vest. The image of his dead body in my trunk was burned into my brain. I’d been able to see the bloodstain on his checked flannel shirt. Because the vest was gone.
I’d been keeping my suspicions at bay, but now they slammed into me like a pack of roller derby girls on a banked track. Maybe I did it. Maybe I killed him.
“I sent that pic to the whole staff,” the dishwasher said. “Seriously, you’re a legend.”
I let out an agonized groan.
“Did you and that guy like kiss and make up? Or did you kick his ass and take the vest off him? You wouldn’t say.”
My queasiness worsened. “Was I with anyone?” I managed.
“I heard some woman yelling your Uber was here. You stumbled out of the alley. That’s the last I saw of you.” He repeated his one-vape-ring-into-two-vape-rings trick and paused to give us a chance to admire his talents.
“Jesus, kid. Get a real cigarette,” Layna said.
His face fell. “Anyway, I gotta hit the dish pit.” The alley door slammed in our faces.
“This is not good,” Layna said, turning to face me.
“Not good” did not begin to cover it. I’d been trudging through life, miserable, depressed, grief-stricken. But I’d been with my kids, able to take care of them. I had actually been in heaven all along, and I hadn’t even known it. But what I was facing now was literally hell. “I’m gonna have to go to the police, right? What else can I do?” The strip-club back alley with its dumpster, looming telephone poles, and gray sky held no answers.
Layna looked at me sadly. “So, the douchebag. He’s the district attorney, right?”
The douchebag. Her soon-to-be ex-husband. I nodded.
“There were four unsolved murders in town last year,” Layna said. “Before we split up, the douchebag was always saying Boise PD needs a good murder with a slam-dunk conviction. Something to make them look competent.” She gestured at my trunk. “I’m not saying you’re guilty. I’m saying that—unless you come up with a solid alibi—it looks like a slam-dunk case to me.”
“But I’m a mom!” I shouted the words like an incantation.
Layna’s shrug said that the justice system didn’t give a shit.
I started pacing, the snow crunching below my feet. “Okay. Okay. I need a pro/con list.”
Layna nodded furiously. “That’s right.”
“Going to the cops. Pro—they’ll get the corpse out of my trunk.” I couldn’t make a Costco run with that body in there. “Pro—I’ll look helpful. More innocent, right?”
“Maybe?” Layna said, her voice pitching high. “Cons?”
“Con—the police have a murder weapon with the dead guy’s blood and my name and fingerprints on it.”
“Major con,” Layna agreed. “Con—the entire staff of this strip club now has a photo of you in this alley wearing the dead guy’s vest at four a.m.”
This pro/con list was not going well. “I have no idea where I was last night. And I’m a single mom. I get put in jail . . .” I trailed off. I couldn’t even say the rest out loud.
How long would I be in jail? I didn’t have bail money, not for a murder charge.
And who would take my kids?
And what if they ended up in foster care?
And what if I’d really killed this man?
“I can’t go to the cops,” I said. “At least not until I have more information.”
