“I’d rather not,” I said. But I did it, breath held, hands shaking. Scratch marks from my nails raked the corpse’s waxy cheek. “Do you think he could’ve stolen my keys, climbed in my trunk, and suffocated himself by accident?” This sounded immensely preferable to the alternative—that I’d killed him myself.
“Oh, babe,” Layna said. “We’ve been over this before. Somebody clearly hit him over the head and stabbed him with your scissors. So no, I don’t think he suffocated himself.” She handed me his unlocked phone and slammed the trunk shut.
“I’ll turn off auto lock so you don’t have to do that again.” With trembling hands, I went into the phone’s settings. “It’s not working!”
“Give it here.” Layna stabbed at the phone with her index finger.“Glitchy piece of crap. Auto lock won’t turn off. But I changed it from ‘thirty seconds’ to ‘five minutes.’ That’s something.”
I grabbed the phone and hit play on the voice memo.
“Hey, buddy.” Whoever had left the memo sounded like he smoked two packs a day and ate gravel for breakfast. “Your payment arrived. I haven’t been able to get ahold of Errol for a few days. Confirm you can meet his girlfriend, Baylee, at Burgdorf on Saturday at one for the handoff. She’ll have the potato mashers and plans for Day of the Rope. A full layout of the capitol building with targets. We’re twenty-one days out.”
“Saturday at one,” Layna echoed. “A potato masher is a hand grenade.”
“Jesus! Seriously?”
“One of the many things I learned from being a DA’s wife. And Day of the Rope—that’s an attack on the capitol.”
“An attack? On the capitol? I work at the capitol!” I wailed. It was one thing to know, vaguely, that political violence had been on the rise for years. Another to know people were actively planning some kind of dystopian assault on the state house. “Also, how could anyone possibly think the politics here aren’t right-wingenough? Insane!”
“I kept saying I was sick of being bored. I need to be careful what I ask for.” Layna rubbed her hands together to keep them warm. “The only Burgdorf is the hot springs, right?”
“Yup,” I said. When I was a kid, Burgdorf Hot Springs was my summertime happy place. My mom would take me there for the weekend and we’d stay in one of the historic cabins surrounding the warm soaking pools. “And a woman named Baylee will be there? The dead guy sent Baylee a picture of his junk.”
“So maybe Baylee’s been cheating on her boyfriend with the mansicle,” Layna said.
Miserable with cold, I stomped my feet, wishing for warmer socks. “I mean, white supremacist gangs? A plan for a domestic terror attack on the capitol? This is bigger than just this one dead guy.”
I thought of my coworkers at the Capitol Grill. Wendy the cashier,who had big square glasses, a necklace of giant moles, and a dream of going to cosmetology school. Fry cook Sammy, who was saving up to buy an amplifier for his boyfriend’s birthday. Nancy, a server who made the best meatloaf and had seventeen grandchildren. “I think I need to go to the authorities about all this.”
“But Tilly,” Layna said, “what if you did it?” The words lingered in the air before she rushed to fill the silence. “I mean, not you. But your pole alter ego, Nikita.”
Not that the cops would get the distinction. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “No. I couldn’t have done it.” I needed to convince us both. But how the hell had I ended up wearing the dead guy’s hideous teal vest?
“Not to be a total downer,” Layna said, “but the cops could charge you with murder, set your bail at half a million, send your kids to foster care.”
I’d been thinking the same. “Even if I’m not convicted in the end, my kids would be traumatized. Maybe for life.”
“The voice memo’s gone,” Layna said. “And one thing we know, if we tell the cops, they’ll already have a prime suspect.” She gestured at me.
I moaned. “But what if we tell them about this handoff at Burgdorf?”
“Cops are not going to remote hot springs accessible only by snowmobile with zero evidence other than the word of a woman trying to wiggle out of a murder charge,” Layna said, running her hands down her hair extensions, as if still getting used to them. “Besides, Burgdorf is in Valley County. They don’t even have a PD. They have a sheriff’s department that may or may not be full of white supremacist sympathizers. Boise PD calls them up and asks them to go to Burgdorf? They’ll bust a gut laughing.”
My innards seized. In the interest of the public good, I should go to the police and tell them about the IDIOTs and their possible plans for an attack on the capitol. In three weeks! But I needed to be selfish right now. For my kids’ sake. Turning over the body would be like handing the authorities a murder conviction—against me! There had to be a betteroption. “How do you know all this?” I asked. Layna’s husband was the DA. But that didn’t explain just how much she seemed to understand about this stuff.
“When I was in my twenties,” Layna said, “I wanted to be an investigator. But I would’ve had to start as a beat cop. Too dangerous, the douchebag said. A good mother would stay home full-time. I didn’t need to work, he said. He’d take care of me. What he really wanted was for me to run his life. And I did. But I lived vicariously through his work too. Studied the details of every criminal case he prosecuted.”
So I had an armchair expert on my side. It wasn’t nothing. “Okay, so what’s my plan B?” I said. Connor’s phone buzzed in my hand. Layna huddled near me as we bent over the glowing rectangle.
This is Baylee from a burner. Sorry I went dark.
“It’s Baylee!” I cried, as the three gray dots reappeared.
Baylee:Errol found out about us Sunday. he was pissed. texted me saying he was gonna kill u. LMK ur ok. I can’t wait to wank ur noodle on Sat at Burdorf.
“We’ve got a cuckolded hothead threatening to kill Connor. That’s good!” Layna said. “Keep her texting.”
My heart fluttered and my thumbs flew across the screen. I spoke the words out loud as I typed. “That asshole! can’t wait on the noodle wank.” I hit send.
