When the door opened, Ma followed Julia out then stumbled slightly and dropped her purse. She bent over stiffly and picked it up, then slowly ambled down the hallway behind Julia. Julia opened the door to room 508, and just like that, we had her.
There wasn’t any point in delaying. We knew right where Julia was, and we didn’t want to become fixtures in the place. We had a job to do and we were either going to do it or we weren’t.
I was ready, I knew what to do, but cold sweat formed under my armpits all the same. Now it felt different. Now it was real. This might be justice, but it was also murder. I was not a murderer, at least not yet. Suddenly I wondered if I could do this.
Then I saw Jeri again in the back of that SUV, heard the blast of Julia’s Glock, saw the impossible spray of Jeri’s brains on the back of that front seat, and I was ready again, feeling the sick fury deep in my chest, gripping my heart.
My phone chirped. I answered. Ma said, “Five,” and hung up. I got on an elevator and took it to the fifth floor. Ma was waiting by the elevator when I came out. We walked down the hallway and she pointed wordlessly to room 508.
“You okay?” she asked.
I pressed my teeth together hard to keep them from chattering. “Yes,” I hissed.
“Close your eyes,” Ma said. “Visualize those first few seconds one more time.” Lord, she was tough. We’d talked it over, discussed how to do it. If I didn’t do it, Ma probably would. At least she would try. I gave it a moment, eyes closed, then nodded to her.
Ma gave me a small towel from her purse. I wrapped it around my fist to make a kind of boxing glove. I stood to one side of the door, out of sight of the peephole.
Ma knocked softly. “Mademoiselle?”
A kind of grunt came from within.
“Mademoiselle Odermann?” She spoke English with a heavy French accent. “I have a bill from a shop on Rue Saint Honoré. They say the charge slip was not properly signed.”
That had to work. If it didn’t, we might never get a chance like this again.
But it did. The door clicked, opened an inch, and I hit it with the meat of my shoulder, not too hard, not hard enough to make a lot of noise, but it knocked Julia a few feet into the room. I went in fast, no thought now, just working on what I’d visualized a hundred times in the past two weeks. Before she could cry out I hit her in the solar plexus, a kind of uppercut that paralyzed her breathing, not too hard, but hard enough. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened like a fish, but she couldn’t make a sound. She spun away, tried to run, and I grabbed her from behind, pinned her arms at her sides, lifted her off her feet and carried her into the room.
Ma shut the door behind us, then went past me and stripped the duvet off the bed, spread it out on the floor.
Julia writhed in my arms, but she still couldn’t breathe. A hit like I’d given her would make her feel like she was drowning. She wouldn’t be able to get air for nearly a full minute.
I stretched her out on the floor on the edge of the cover, then held her arms at her sides as I rolled her into the duvet with her head out, swaddling her in a cocoon, trapping her arms. I rolled her twice and left her faceup, straddled her, and looked into her eyes—vicious, evil eyes, devil’s eyes—the eyes of a black widow spider.
“You killed Jeri,” I said quietly. “You murdered my love.”
She tried to cry out, but couldn’t make a sound. Ma got a plastic bag from her purse and handed it to me. I pulled it over Julia’s head, twisted the open end around Julia’s neck, and held it there.
Then we waited.
Julia squirmed. The thin plastic huffed in and out a little. She made muffled animal noises.
At first I felt sick, then elated. Finally I felt nothing.
Julia struggled, tried to kick, but the duvet had her wrapped like a spider might wrap a fly. I sat on her as she rocked from side to side, but it didn’t take long before her squirming grew less intense.
“You got her?” Ma said. Her voice was hard, not a tremor in it. Her eyes were like shiny black stones in her face.
“Yes.”
“I’ll go run the water.”
She went into the bathroom. Julia was almost still, no longer making any sound. I heard water pouring into a bathtub in the other room.
Ma came out and watched. I was still straddling Julia, keeping her pinned. She was quiet now, inert. I could see her mouth, a wide oval where she’d sucked the plastic in half an inch trying to get air.
Murderer.
No. I was a garbage collector with a black crust around his heart, that was all. Murderers kill innocent people. Garbage collectors get rid of trash.
Ma watched the water level in the tub, turned it off when it was half full. We left the bag on Julia’s head another ten minutes to be certain, then I got off and unrolled her. I put the duvet back on the bed while Ma stripped Julia down to nothing. I got Julia under the arms while Ma took her feet, and we carried her into the bathroom, set her gently in the tub. Ma
