She breathed deeply, in and out, calming herself. Her left eye was beginning to swell, and she put ice on it. That would be explainable, at least. She must have taken a shot to the eye at practice without realizing at the time. It had swelled up afterward. It happened. And it would hardly be the first time she’d been marked by bruises and abrasions. Judo was a contact sport.
What if someone had seen her? She hadn’t gone to the front desk with him, so she was safe that way, at least. But what if the police knew she’d met him at the bar, and asked witnesses for a description? And the marks on his neck—would they know someone had used a judo strangle? That could lead them to the SJSU team. They would see her eye, and ask where she was when the guy was killed. Studying in my room, she would tell them, but would that hold up?
She paced back and forth, naked. She’d tossed the panties in a sewer. Wouldn’t want to have to explain how they’d gotten torn that way. She had marks on her left outer and right inner thigh. That made sense—the guy had been right-handed, and had ripped the panties off right to left. The elastic around the leg holes must have held for a moment and cut her before giving way. Again, explainable as a minor judo injury. Or at least, she hoped, not provable otherwise.
Worst case, she would explain what happened. Claim self-defense. Which is what it had been, of course. At least up to a point. She’d say she hadn’t meant to kill him, but when she’d released the strangle—which she’d been forced to use to save her own life—she couldn’t revive him. She panicked and fled. Not good, but maybe good enough. But even if she avoided prison, the thought of being some sort of campus tabloid fodder was horrifying. People would ask questions. Her past, at least parts of it, would be revealed. Maybe people would even wonder what had really happened to her revered adopted father, whether she was suffering from PTSD. And what would all of it mean for her career prospects as a cop?
She considered every angle she could think of. Maybe she should have taken his wallet, to make it look like a robbery? She hadn’t thought of it at the time—she wanted to touch as little as possible, disturb the scene as little as possible, something she knew about from her classes. She wasn’t sure now which would have been the better course, but she hadn’t considered it when it mattered.
Eventually, her exhaustion and the post-adrenaline backlash began to overwhelm her. Overall, she thought there was a better-than-even chance the body wouldn’t lead back to her. But she couldn’t be sure. She should have been more careful.
Well, next time, she would be.
49—THEN
It was on the news the next night. Parker “Park” Crader, forty, of Campbell, California, was found dead in a motel room. Police believed a sex worker had lured him into the room, where a waiting accomplice ambushed and strangled him. Crader had a record: two charges of rape. Both times it had been a sex worker in a motel room, and both times he had pled down to misdemeanor assault. He’d been out of prison for less than a year. The working theory was that this was payback from a victim who was connected to, or could afford, some kind of muscle for hire. It didn’t seem to occur to the police that a woman could have strangled Crader by herself.
The police spokesman said they were following up leads, but Livia had a feeling he was talking about the women who had accused Crader of rape before, and presumably those women would have alibis, or otherwise be impossible to place in the motel room at the time of Crader’s death. Everyone knew SJPD was overworked—the city had a serious gang problem, among other things. She thought of Rick, of what he’d told her of his job, how he worked leads and prioritized cases. Unless something panned out right away, she couldn’t see a homicide detective spending a lot of time trying to solve the killing of someone like Crader. Her assessment of better-than-even chances of not getting caught went to more like ten-to-one.
She still felt nervous about it, especially late at night, alone in bed. But when a week passed and nothing happened, she started to feel more confident. By the end of the semester, she barely even thought about it anymore.
Except, sometimes, to fantasize about it.