“How’s she doing? We haven’t seen her in a while.”
Satterfield shook his head sadly. “She’s really gone downhill since my stepdad died,” he said. “Just can’t get out and about anymore.” Both statements were true. After Satterfield had moved her to Knoxville, filed the change-of-address forms, and brought her into the bank to open the joint checking account, he’d strangled her in her bed, the very night they’d set up the account. “You let that sorry husband of yours treat me like shit,” he’d said, her eyes bugging and her mouth gaping, like those of a fish dying on a dock. “Your own kid. What’s that Bible verse you always loved to quote? ‘Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it’? Well, here I am, Mama, all trained up. I settled up with him, now I’m settling up with you.” There was now only one last account he needed to settle—one other person who’d done him grievous wrong—and Satterfield’s plan for vengeance, which had led him to Knoxville, was already showing much promise for creating intense and prolonged suffering.
Satterfield smiled again at the teller. “I’ll tell Mama you asked about her,” he said. “That’ll cheer her up. She remembers you.” He leaned forward and added in a low, confiding tone, “I always tell her I saw you, even when I don’t. She likes the idea of a pretty woman being nice to her son, you know? Once a mother, always a mother.” She raised an eyebrow, a half smile twitching at one corner of her mouth. She is eating this up, he thought. “You got kids?”
“Two.”
“How old?”
“One in high school, one in college.”
“Get outta here. You?” His eyes slid down her body, then back up. “You’re messing with me. I see twenty-year-olds at the gym who’d kill to look like you.”
She slid his deposit slip across the counter, leaning over farther than she needed to, giving him a peek down her blouse.
A stocky middle-aged woman—possibly no older than Sheila, but packing a lot more weight and a lot less heat—bustled up beside the teller, her face a mask of officiousness and disapproval. Her nametag read MELISSA PEYTON, HEAD TELLER. What she said was, “And how are you today, sir?” What she meant was, “Stop it, both of you.”
“I’m just fine, Melissa,” Satterfield crooned. “Your staff is always so nice. You’ve obviously done a good job training them. Leadership by example, we called that in the Navy.” He flashed her the smile, then nodded and lifted a hand in farewell to both women as he turned to go. Once he was sure Sheila’s boss couldn’t see, he gave Sheila a private wink, which she returned.
HE’D PARKED THE MUSTANG on the far side of the parking lot, the side closest to Blockbuster Video, where the bank’s employees were required to park so that customers could have the good spaces. He’d parked next to Sheila’s car, a red Celica fastback—hot woman, hot car—and as he walked behind it, he stroked the rear spoiler with his fingertips, leaving tracks in the dust. Through the tinted windows he glimpsed the beads hanging from her rearview mirror, five strands of cheap iridescent beads, shimmering pink and purple in the light. Bet she goes wild at Mardi Gras, when she’s someplace where nobody knows her.