She drank half, left the rest. The liquid splashed into her stomach, landing next to the vodka from the night before.
Not the best sensation.
She realized a man had been watching her the entire time. Cessy wanted to tell him to look somewhere else, but decided against it. She’d already made a bad decision by calling Anthony last night, even if she’d been drunk when she dialed. She didn’t want to make another. No reason to be combative.
Cessy headed home.
She went through the rest of Hector’s clothes when she got back to the apartment. Went through his nightstand and took out his guns, a pair of surprisingly heavy Glocks. Found a set of knives. Wondered if she should just throw the whole nightstand away and tried to lift it.
Something rustled inside.
Cessy frowned at the nightstand and opened the two drawers again. Empty. She pulled the nightstand toward her and pushed it back. Again, that sound.
She took the drawers out, looked behind them. Turned the nightstand on its side, wincing because she expected to find a dead mouse underneath. Nothing.
Cessy jostled the nightstand again. Pinpointed the sound and kept the nightstand on its side. She tapped the bottom, pressed it. Realized a small square of soft wood was stapled to the bottom. The thin board indented under her fingers, eventually snapped.
A blank, business-sized envelope fell to the floor.
She opened the envelope, pulled out a flash drive.
“Hector,” Cessy said to herself, “what kind of disturbing shit is on this?”
She plugged it into her laptop, apprehensively opened a folder containing a group of photos.
Cessy cringed again, assuming she’d see some bizarre, probably illegal, pornography.
Or truth about the affair she’d originally suspected but hadn’t wanted to pursue. Hadn’t wanted to chance a complication of her feelings.
The first picture was blurry, taken at an odd angle, showed a group of shadowed people milling about. Looked like they might be on a street at night, or maybe a theater stage. Cessy couldn’t quite tell. But they were all gathered around something.
She opened another picture and saw more of the same. More shadowed figures, all staring down at something she couldn’t make out.
Cessy scrolled through the thirty or so thumbnails, trying to find one that was clear.
She stopped scrolling.
Stopped on a picture that showed two things clearly.
The first was a man holding what appeared to be a gun. For some reason, the camera had decided to make the gun its focus, and the weapon came in clearly. But that wasn’t what drew Cessy to the photo.
It was the color red, the blood under a man lying on a bed. His hands were over his chest, his lower body halfway off the bed, eyes open.
Cessy had seen dead bodies before, but it took her a few moments to understand what she was looking at.
A group of men standing around a corpse.
Why would Hector have a photograph of an execution?
Cessy went through the rest of the photos.
Make that six executions.
“What can you tell us about Hector’s associates?” the cops had asked the night he’d been killed.
“He hasn’t worked for a while,” Cessy had told them. “He doesn’t have associates.”
At least, not that she knew.
Cessy blinked, stood, held on to the sides of the desk. The world was moving too fast, like it was a story told in a language she could barely decipher.
Now, Cessy realized, as she hurried to the bathroom, was the right time to finally throw up.
CHAPTER
5
AFTER HER HUSBAND’S funeral, Deb went with Kim to a friend’s house, a colleague of Grant’s who owned a multimillion-dollar home in Ashburn, a small town on the manicured edges of Northern Virginia. Sandwiches and fruits and vegetables lined a long buffet table, and guests shuffled along, filling their plates. The guests made normal conversation now, in contrast to the service at the church, when their voices were lowered to whispers.
At least, the conversations were normal until people saw Deb. And then their faces and voices dropped, as if ashamed that anything other than her dead husband was on their minds.
“It’s a good thing Kim’s in college,” a man told Deb, speaking with a grimace. “It’d have been awful if this had happened when she was younger.”
“Why?”
“You having to raise a child after this happened. All on your own. It’d be so much harder.”
You’re right. Why didn’t I look at the bright side? Dumb fucking me.
But Deb didn’t say that. She couldn’t say that. She just nodded and walked away.
“When I heard what happened with Grant,” a woman told Deb, her eyes wet, “I was so scared. I’d been in an argument with Jeff, and I called him that same day and said I was sorry. You never know what’s going to happen. Life’s too short to waste arguing.”
I’m so glad that my husband’s murder helped your marriage.
Again, Deb didn’t say that. She merely nodded.
“I’m so sorry for what happened.”
“I’m so sorry for what happened.”
“I’m so sorry for what happened.”
To all of them, Deb said, “Thank you.”
She wondered how Kim was doing, saw her daughter sitting on a couch by herself in the corner, staring down at her phone. No one bothered her, and she suspected that’s why Kim was doing it.
Smart girl. Deb envied her.
Deb was tired of pity, tired of support. And just tired. This type of exhaustion had hit over the past couple of days, particularly as the funeral approached, like a blanket of sleep rising from her feet to her legs, to her waist, to her eyes. When Deb slept, it seemed like she could sleep endlessly.
She didn’t want to be awake, remembering Grant was gone. In sleep, he was with her.
“Let’s get out of here,” someone told her.
Deb turned and saw Nicole Boxer, her best friend, holding her coat.
“Can we?” Deb asked.
Nicole gave her a weird look. “Of course we can. When’s the last time you ate?”
Deb wiped her eyes. “I’m not sure.”
“I’m going to buy you some food,” Nicole decided. “Lots of food. Unhealthy shit. It’s important that you learn how to eat your feelings.”
“Can I come with you?” Kim asked.
Deb hadn’t realized her daughter was standing next to her. “You don’t want to go back home?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Kim replied hesitantly. “Not yet.”
Twenty minutes later, Deb could tell that the staff at Wegmans grocery wasn’t thrilled that she and Kim and Nicole were standing at the front of the grocery store, solemnly dressed in their funeral black while a clerk filled Nicole’s order. It wasn’t the kind of thing they usually did—having a clerk fetch their food—but after barely leaving their house for a week, the bright lights and busy crowds were overwhelming.
Still, Deb felt better being somewhere completely different. Somewhere with life, with people who had other concerns. Somewhere not filled with memories of Grant.
Deb hadn’t realized how desperately she needed a break.
“Have you started online dating yet?” Nicole asked.