Think Twice

“Please.” She stands and puts her hands out, one holding the book. “Please don’t hurt me.”

You shoot her twice in the chest.

She drops to the floor. You hurry over and check.

Dead.

You remove the tissue from the plastic bag in your backpack. You leave it on the floor. Juries love DNA. They’ve all grown up with TV shows that exaggerate the miracles of the technology. They expect it in a murder trial. If there’s no DNA evidence, a jury wonders about guilt.

You are in and out of the house in less than fifteen seconds.

The gun made noise. No question about it. But most people assume fireworks or backfire or some innocent explanation. Still, there is no reason to hang around. You hurry back to the car. You aren’t particularly worried that someone will notice you running. If they do — if worse comes to worst — they’ll see a man in a baseball cap running back to an Audi registered to him, not you.

It will, if anything, help.

You start to drive. You feel odd about the killing. It is a thrill, the killing part, more for your beloved than you, but you often feel oddly empty right after. It’s a bit like sex, isn’t it? Not to be too clinical about it, but the letdown after climax, the moment the French call la petite mort — the Little Death. That’s how you feel right now. That’s how you feel during the first mile or two of the drive, the shooting replaying in your mind, the way her body dropped to the floor. It’s exciting and yet a little...

Empty?

You check the clock. He should be passed out for another three hours. That’s plenty of time. You drive back to his house. You park the Audi where you found it.

You smile. Here, this part, this is the true rush for you.

This Audi has some kind of tracking system, so the police will be able to see where it went tonight. You enter his house. You hang up the keys. You keep the baseball cap — it may have some of your hairs in it now. No need to take that chance. If the police notice it’s missing, they’ll figure he dumped it after the shooting.

You head upstairs to his bedroom. You put his phone back on the night table. You even plug it into his charger. Like with the Audi, the police will get a warrant for his phone locations that will “prove” he took the journey to that Airbnb at the time of the murder.

You use his thumb to open the hard case. You put the gun back. You debate just leaving the gun next to his bed, but that feels heavy-handed. There is a storage shed in the yard. You take the hard case with the gun and hide it under bags of peat moss. They’ll know that he has a Glock 19 registered in his name. They’ll scour the entire property and find it in the storage shed.

Ballistics will confirm that the murder weapon was his Glock 19.

The Audi. The mobile phone. The DNA. The gun. Any two of the four would convict him.

For her, the horror is over.

For him, it’s just begun.

Chapter One

Myron Bolitar was on the phone with his eighty-year-old father when the two FBI agents arrived to question him about the murder.

“Your mother and I,” his dad said from his retirement condo in Boca Raton, “have discovered edibles.”

Myron blinked. “Wait, what now?”

He was in his new penthouse office atop Win’s skyscraper on the corner of 47th Street and Park Avenue. He swiveled his chair to look out the floor-to-ceiling windows. It was a pretty bitching view of the Big Apple.

“Cannabis gummies, Myron. Your Aunt Miriam and Uncle Irv swore by them — Irv said it helps with his gout — so your mother and I figured, look, why not, let’s give them a shot. What’s the harm, right? You ever try edibles?”

“No.”

“That’s his problem.” That was Myron’s mother, squawk-shouting in the background. This was how they always operated — one parent on the phone, the other shouting color commentary. “Give me the phone, Al.” Then: “Myron?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“You should get high.”

“If you say so.”

“Try the stevia strain.”

Dad: “Sativa.”

“What?”

“It’s called sativa. Stevia is an artificial sweetener.”

“Ooo, look at your father Mr. Hippie showing off his pot expertise all of a sudden.” Then back to Myron: “I meant sativa. Try that.”

“Okay,” Myron said.

“The indica strain makes you sleepy.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You know how I remember which is which?” Mom asked.

“I bet you’ll tell me.”

“Indica, in-da-couch. That’s the sleepy one. Get it?”

“Gotten.”

“Don’t be such a square. Your father and I like them. They make us feel more, I don’t know, smiley maybe. Alert. Zen even. And Myron?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Don’t ask what they’ve done for our sex life.”

“I won’t,” Myron said. “Ever.”

“Me, I get giddy. But your father becomes a giant hornball.”

“Not asking, remember?” Myron could now see the two FBI agents scowling at him from behind the glass wall. “Gotta go, Mom.”

“I mean, the man can’t keep his hands off me.”

“Still not asking. Bye now.”