I hadn’t understood that dozens of smaller choices lead to those big moral decisions, as if each step were a point along an invisible map leading to what only feels upon arrival like a surprise destination. As I stood in my garage, seriously contemplating killing another human being, I finally realized the truth of what my brother had been saying.
We no longer had a gun, a knife was too risky and messy, and there was no time for poison even if we’d had access to some, which we didn’t. Who had we become, standing around discussing how to kill someone with such dispassion? I wasn’t one of those people, I couldn’t be, yet there I was standing in my garage, holding a baseball bat. It was Michael’s—silver aluminum, graying sports tape wrapped around the grip, scratches and dents from years of play. An intramural team in college, if I remembered correctly. Is that when he’d gotten it? It wasn’t from his Little League days, was it? I’d found the bat stuffed in a bin with other sports equipment. There had been an afternoon sometime last year when he’d hit balls around with Matthew and Lucy in the backyard. I swallowed hard, remembering George barking and chasing after the balls that Michael threw, while Matthew and Lucy laughed as they took turns hefting the bat. They hadn’t pulled it out since. Would any of them notice it was missing?
We waited to reply to the blackmailer’s text until Julie made sure that there were no showings scheduled for her listing at the vacant house in the new subdivision. Sarah composed a message that we thought struck the right balance between informing our blackmailer that this was where he or she could get the money and nowhere else, while managing not to push them into calling the police. To our surprise, they agreed to the house drop-off after we rejected a single threatening text demanding that we meet at the cemetery again.
Unlike the last time, we didn’t spend the few days we had searching for money. We weren’t planning to deliver anything remotely close to the $20,000 the blackmailer had pocketed before. We gathered together approximately $300 in twenties, tens, and ones, and wrapped it around bricks of paper money that we took from some kids’ games. It looked real if you didn’t examine it too closely. We were determined that whoever the blackmailer turned out to be, he or she wouldn’t be pocketing any more of our money. Once we had the bills stuffed in another cheap duffel bag, we were ready to go.
The plan was simple. While we drove to the subdivision, Heather would head to the police station with her lawyer to ask for an update on the investigation. I was nervous about Heather going to the police, afraid that she might screw up and accidentally reveal something. I knew that if that happened she’d throw us under the bus to save herself, but we needed her to distract the detectives, so we had no choice but to trust her. At least she had a believable motive; the insurance company wouldn’t pay out until the investigation was done and “favorably resolved.”
“I think she should give us some of that settlement,” Sarah suggested as we drove to the drop spot ahead of Julie. We’d stuck with the same basic plan, except this time Julie would carry the money to the house at the agreed-upon time, while Sarah and I would already be there, in position.
“If she ever gets that payout,” I said, turning fast onto Backbone Road and keeping up my speed while watching out for police. The irony of the street name wasn’t lost on me. It was a Tuesday, early afternoon. We’d wanted to meet earlier, but the blackmailer had balked at the time. We’d made that one concession; we hadn’t really had a choice if we wanted them to show up at the house.
“Look, no drinking tomorrow, okay?” I’d told Sarah the night before. “We need to be alert.”
“If you mention AA again I’m not going with you,” Sarah said, obviously still offended. “I am not an alcoholic.”
It was tempting to argue with that, but we needed to work together, so I didn’t respond. My comments must have shamed her, because I didn’t smell alcohol when she got in the car, although I couldn’t tell if that gleam in her eyes was from excitement or the bottle. She seemed clear enough, talking about how she thought we deserved to be paid for being sucked in by Heather’s “neediness.”
“You seem more concerned about the money than whether or not Heather lied to us,” I finally said. This was something I was still unsure about, the terrible certainty I’d felt when I’d found those receipts wavering in the face of her teary denials. I knew Julie didn’t believe our friend had lied. She’d been cool to me since I’d pretended to hit Heather, but Sarah had never shared Julie’s blind optimism.
“Look, she might have lied about Viktor’s first wife, but those receipts don’t prove anything,” Sarah said. “Do you really think Heather trashed her own kitchen? Are you one hundred percent certain that you got the dates right?” Seeing my momentary hesitation, she quickly said, “I didn’t think so.”
I wondered if she was really dismissing the facts or dismissing me because of my comments about her drinking. “Well, I don’t give a damn about being paid back, I just don’t want to go to prison,” I said, which essentially shut down the conversation. I’d found an extra-long yoga bag to hide the bat in, though it was narrow enough to look like a rifle case, which wasn’t exactly less noticeable. Sliding the bat into the backseat felt surreal, as if I were playing some enforcer in a Mafia movie. We’d agreed that I would wield the weapon because it made the most sense. I was taller than both Julie and Sarah, so I could be more of a physical threat, but that didn’t mean I wanted to do it. I’d taken a few practice swings in the garage, but when I imagined hitting somebody, all I could hear was that distinctive crack that a bat makes when it connects solidly with a ball.
The new subdivision was on the border of Edgeworth and Leetsdale, on a hilly piece of scrub property that no one had thought worth developing until recently. Low stone walls marked the entrance, and an overproduced brass sign announced in cursive that we’d arrived at Paradise Hills, a name that struck me as more appropriate for a cemetery.
“Paradise, huh?” Sarah said with a snicker as we drove up past barren lots with dead weeds poking through remnants of snow, and cookie-cutter houses sitting on small plots of land. The asphalt road through the development was slick in spots with gray slush. FOR SALE signs stood in front of some of the finished homes, but few of the yards were more than frozen mud pits, with barely any grass, even frozen winter yellow grass, visible.
As planned, we circled the subdivision several times, on the lookout for other people and cars, for anything odd. Just like the last time, we’d arrived over an hour ahead of schedule. If we saw anyone, we could masquerade as prospective home buyers, but as we drove up and down the streets it looked like we were the only people there.
“What if he’s watching us right now?” Sarah said as she parked in front of a small cluster of semifinished homes. Their backyards abutted the yards of the houses on the next street, one of which was the house where Julie would arrive soon to drop off the money. She’d chosen that house because that street dead-ended, so the blackmailer would have to go back out the same way he came, and in some vehicle, we assumed, because unlike the cemetery, there was nothing right over the hill to reach on foot.