Killer. I was a killer.
"I don't even know where to start. Do you not have a mass grave you use? Certainly a gang has protocols for shit like this," I countered.
"You're the true crime expert. What would you do if you were a serial killer?"
I let out an exhale, my mind suddenly running through a range of scenarios. There were so many variables. It was impossible to narrow it down.
"Where'd they pick him up from?" I asked in a shaky voice.
"River Boat Casino," Anthony replied easily, a hint of curiosity in his tone.
"Shit. You might as well have waved an enormous flag with your home address on it," I cursed. "Casinos have the most sophisticated facial recognition software in the world. Once word gets out that he was last seen there, it's only a matter of time before they trace him here. Did you at least get into an unmarked car?"
"Of course. We're not complete idiots," Anthony replied with a grin. "And the casino won't be a problem."
"You can't be cocky about this. The casino is an enormous problem."
"We own the casino," Anthony replied before digging in his pocket for a toothpick and putting it between his teeth. "All footage has been deleted. He was never there."
"What about his family?" I asked.
"His wife showed up at a PTA meeting with two black eyes three days ago. She won't be looking for her asshole husband. If any cops come snooping, which they won't, she'll inform them of his very extensive affair with a call girl from Vegas. Nicholas already paid her for her troubles and cooperation."
My brows raised. "Where's his car?" I asked.
"Chop shop. Bastard drove a BMW." He shifted his weight between his two feet. "Can I just say, the fact that you're thinking through all of this makes me hot?"
"What was his name?" I croaked. This was the personal part. I needed to know who he was. Even if he was a shitty human, knowing who he was painted a picture of guilt that I needed to hold on to so I could at least maintain a semblance of my humanity.
"I'm not going to tell you," Anthony replied. "It'll do you no good. Don't learn their backstory. Don't personalize them. Don't remember them. Take what you did today and shove it into a tiny box, then put that box in a bigger box. Then chain that box shut and drop it in the bottom of the ocean and pretend that it never existed."
Yeah. That didn't exactly sound like a healthy coping mechanism. Anthony looked at me for a lingering moment. "Is that what you do?" I asked.
Vulnerability flashed through his expression, a softness that reminded me of Vicky. "No. I thrive in the darkness, babe. You could tell me to chop off his arm and then jack off with his hand, and I would."
"That’s a really specific example, and I really don't want you to elaborate," I interjected, making him laugh.
"You weren't born in this world, so I'm going to go easy on you. Nicholas will coach you. William will save you. I'll just accept you where you are. And right now? You're in no place to hear this asshole's name or know his backstory. It wouldn’t make any difference anyway. So drop it and tell me how we're going to get rid of his body."
I let out a shaky breath. I didn’t want to be coached. I didn’t want to be saved. At this point, I wanted to be left alone. This felt like the start to something inescapable. Anthony had a point, though. I wasn't sure I could get through the rest of today if I was obsessing over the consequences of what I'd done. I needed to be a robot. Emotionless. "Do you have access to a crematorium?" I asked. Burning him seemed like the best course of action.
"Nope," he replied, popping the p. Shit, I was really hoping they had one. I thought about episode thirty-four of my podcast and grimaced.
"I suppose we could do what the drug cartels do," I murmured speculatively. "Do you have any sodium hydroxide? Or lye. If we heat it up to three hundred degrees, we can liquify the body in about three hours," I offered before shivering. "Some bones might survive the process, but we can always grind them up into a fine powder. Then we can just...pour the liquid down the drain once it cools." Anthony's brows raised in shock as I continued. "We'll need like a fifty-five-gallon drum? Lye is really cheap. It's $15 at a farm supply store. Eight pounds of it can dissolve at least three bodies. It's almost economical." A hysterical giggle burst past my lips. Was this real?
Anthony held his hands up. "Okay. So, like, you're full on psycho. Cool, cool. I was joking about the crematorium thing. We actually have a funeral home on our bank roll. We just gotta get him into the hearse and drop him off. But, like, cool for having a Plan B—a terrifying Plan B. That just feels like a lot of work, man."
So this was the line? I observed Anthony for a moment. He was completely at ease next to the dead body. Was he desensitized, or was it something else? He didn’t have the same authoritative energy as the others, but he still had a powerful presence. He was contradictory, quirky, and unique.
"You asshole," I finally replied before stomping my foot. My body jiggled from the movement, and his eyes zeroed in on my barely contained tits. My cheeks flushed as his teeth sunk into his bottom lip, and his sweeping eyes looked me up and down.
"Please put the dead prostitute’s clothes on. I'm about to pop a boner in the torture room, and I was told I wasn't allowed to be sexually aroused around dead bodies anymore."
The fact that Anthony had to be told this was fucking terrifying. Yeah. Okay. Dead prostitute's clothes it was.
5
Standing outside our tiny house, I spent a long time watching the world go by. My bare feet clung to the hard concrete as I stared at the living room window where Grams had left the light on for me. It was late at night, the moon hung high overhead, cradled by a blanket of clouds and stars. It would have been a nice night, and I might have enjoyed the serene moment, had the last twenty-four hours not been so traumatic.
I smelled like death, the stench permeating my skin and the clothes I wore. It clung to my hair, which was a tangled curtain over my right eye. I was drenched in evidence that could lock me away for the rest of my life.
Disposing of my nameless victim was a lot easier than I imagined. Years of researching true crime conditioned me to believe that murder was this complex thing that was grim and terrifying, but when you had the network the Kansas City mob had, it was easy. They simply flashed a stack of cash, and the entire world bent to their whims. The hardest part was wrapping his sloshing body up in the tarp and lifting it onto a cart. We used a shovel to scoop up parts of his brain and skull. If my stomach wasn’t completely empty, I would have vomited everywhere. My only saving grace was that I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch yesterday. We rolled up to the funeral home, slid the body into the furnace, locked the door, and walked away.
Throughout the entire journey, Anthony kept his chaotic mind to himself, mumbling under his breath occasionally. I could sense that something was on his mind, but when he wasn’t coordinating with the funeral home, he was watching me with an inquisitive stare, as if I was some complex problem he wanted to figure out. The ease with which he conducted himself made it all feel so ordinary. I was shocked and calmed at the same time. It made me sick.