Page 117 of Don't Tell Me How to Die

I woke up that Sunday morning determined to confront Connie, to throw her criminal past in her face, to threaten her, to bargain with her if I had to—I was ready to do anything to drive her out of our lives.

No, not anything. I hadn’t planned on killing her.

That afternoon I taunted her with everything I’d unearthed about her, every crime she’d committed, every lie she’d told, every trust she’d violated, but she didn’t go down easily. She laughed in my face, challenged me, and threatened to have me arrested for breaking and entering.

But I kept at it, exercising my budding litigation skills, my harangues beginning to sound less and less like toothless teenage tirades and more like serious threats of exposure that could result in dire consequences.

And in the end, she buckled under. I’d won. She agreed to leave town. But she couldn’t go gently. She lashed out at me by prodding the rawest nerve in my body. She attacked my mother.

“Finn McCormick couldn’t possibly have fathered a piece of shit like you,” she said. “My best guess—you’re the product of some lowlife dirtbag who fucked your worthless tramp of a mother. I hope she rots in hell.”

Those were the last words she ever spoke. Tears streaming down my face I lunged at her, hurling her backward against the fireplace. I could hear the crack as her skull met stone. I think she was dead before she sank to the floor.

I knew in an instant that my life was over. College, a career, my entire future gone in a moment of blind rage. Unless...

I paged Johnny. He knew what to do. First, we wrapped the body in plastic bags and dragged it to the garage. Then we cleaned up the blood.

“Don’t they have some kind of chemical that can tell you if blood was there even if it’s wiped up?” I said.

“Luminol,” he said. “You spray it, and if there’s any trace of blood, it glows blue in the dark. Right now this place looks clean, but I guarantee you it would light up like a Christmas tree.”

“Then we’ll get caught.”

“Only if they spray it, and they won’t. Connie is a grifter, a con artist. She’s going to steal a bunch of shit from your father, and then she’s going to take off. The cops are going to have a warrant out for her arrest. They won’t be coming around here spraying the place with Luminol. Any other questions?”

“Just one,” I said. “What do we do with the body?”

“You’re right!” he said, smacking his forehead like he’d forgotten one small detail. “We can’t leave her wrapped up in the garage. Sooner or later, she’s going to start to stink up the joint.”

“It’s not funny, Johnny. If they find her, I’m going to go to jail.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re not going to jail. Next year this time, you’ll be in college.”

“Are you sure?”

He flashed me a smile. “Trust me,” he said. “I got it all worked out in my head.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I owe you one.”

Ten years later, at a crime scene on East Shore Road, while the four-hundred-pound body of a drug dealer named Sammy Womack was being pried out of the wreckage of his Escalade, I broke every ethics code in the book and finally made good on my debt.

SEVENTY-THREE

three days after the funeral

Van was waiting for me at the Dragon Heart Restaurant. He was sitting at a booth when I arrived, a notepad in front of him, pen in hand. There was a glass of white wine waiting at my seat.

“Are you planning on taking notes?” I asked, pointing at the pad.

“It’s a prop,” he said. “I thought it would be better if this looked like a business meeting, instead of what it really is.”

“What itreallyis?” I said, toying with him. “And what might that be, Chief Vanderbergen?”

“I have no idea, Mayor Dunn. You’re the one who invited me to meet you here. But it did dawn on me that to the best of my recollection it’s the first time you and I have had dinner in public together since high school.”

“And whose fault is that? To the best ofmyrecollection, you’re the one who moved to Korea. Jotthatdown in your little notebook, Chief.”

He began writing, narrating as he wrote. “Mayor Dunn... is busting... my balls. I wonder... what she... really... wants.” He put the pen down. “Something is on your mind. Go ahead, I’m listening.”