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Jet waved to the doorbell camera, waved to her laptop back at Billy’s apartment, waved to whoever might watch this footage after the end of this week, waved beyond the grave and even farther than that.
She slotted her keys in and pushed open the front door. It still smelled too clean in here, a chemical bite to the air even after three days. Billy coughed behind her.
A skittering of claws on the polished wood and Reggie rounded the corner.
He yipped when he saw Jet, speaking to her, yelling. Something like: Where the fuck have you been, hi, hi, hi, I forgive you already.
He jumped up, scrabbled at her legs. ‘Hello handsome Sir Reginald the Woof.’ Jet dropped to her knees, left hand scratching behind Reggie’s ear. ‘Who’s a good boy, huh?’ His tail wagged his whole body, climbing up on her thighs to reach her face, nudging her lifeless arm with his nose. ‘I can’t do the double scritches anymore, bud, I’m sorry.’ Jet scratched even harder with one hand, Reggie leaning his head into it, eyes hooked on hers, almost the same shade of hazel. ‘You’ll have to ask Billy very nicely.’ The dog squeaked. ‘But Billy is nice, so he’ll say yes.’ Reggie looked up at Billy, tail smacking Jet as he rested his head on her shoulder. She hugged the dog with one arm. ‘It’s better this way,’ she said quietly, resting her chin on the dog’s fur. ‘I thought I was going to have to watch you die someday, after I stole you from Mom and Dad, obviously. Now I’ll be the one checking out first.
Sorry, bud. I would’ve missed you, and I know you’ll miss me.’ Billy bent over them, cupped both hands behind Reggie’s ears and scratched away, his knuckles grazing Jet’s neck.
Reggie closed his eyes and groaned.
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‘Yeah.’ Jet smiled. ‘That’s the good stuff, huh? Told you Billy will look after you. He’s good at that, huh? Better than me?’ ‘Could never be better than you.’ Billy smiled too, drew back. ‘OK.’ Jet’s knees cracked as she straightened up, Reggie circling between their legs. ‘Come on, Reg. We’re on a mission, to see if my sister-in-law has been poisoning me for months.’ She headed toward the stairs, Billy and Reggie following closely behind. ‘You really think Sophia’s been trying to kill you?’ Billy asked, still taller than her, even though Jet was two steps up. ‘Well, someone tried to kill me.’ Jet gestured to her messed-up head. ‘Maybe there was a first plan, to do it slowly. Then it got ex-exp-ex – fuck.
You know that word, when something needs to happen sooner.’
‘Sped up?’ he guessed.
‘No, smarter than that.’ ‘Accelerated?’ Jet pursed her lips, reached the landing. ‘No, but that will do. Then the plan got accelerated, swapped pills for a hammer.’ Jet paused outside her bedroom, the door shut. It was never normally shut. ‘But why would Sophia want to kill you?’ Jet grabbed the handle. No, thought about grabbing the handle, with the arm that no longer worked, still dominant even though it was gone. Used her left hand instead, overriding instinct, scolding herself. ‘I can think of a reason,’ Jet said darkly, ushering the two boys into her bedroom. ‘Sophia cares about money, always has. When you’re fifteen, you tell each other everything; she grew up with parents who couldn’t afford much, always argued about money, and she said she would never live like that. She wanted to be like us, the Masons. I always thought that’s why she really went for Luke. But, hey, I’m no romantic.’ She paused. ‘Maybe Sophia found out that Dad wasn’t going to leave the company to Luke, because it wasn’t fair on me. Well, if you get rid of me, you get rid of that problem.’ ‘That’s dark,’ Billy said, looking around. ‘I think motives for murder usually are pretty dark. But it is my first time.’ ‘Looks different in here.’ Billy gestured toward the bed, and the walls.
Plain walls with dark baseboards, light cotton sheets, and neutral-patterned
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cushions. ‘Yeah.’ Jet followed his eyes. ‘I guess you haven’t been in here in like –’ ‘– Fourteen years,’ Billy finished. ‘No more frog wallpaper.’ Jet clicked her tongue. ‘And the green bed is gone.’ ‘Don’t tell me you got rid of Mr Rabbitson, the Fifth Earl of Woodstock?’ ‘I’m not a monster,’ Jet scoffed, heading for the bathroom. ‘He’s in the closet. One of his arms fell off, though. Ooh, foreshadowing.’ Jet pushed the bathroom door open with her shoe, flicked on the light. ‘OK. They’re in here.’ She approached the mirrored cabinet above the sink, her reflection drawing closer, that strange dilated eye, like it was lost in terror, always ready in fight-or-flight. Billy watched her face too, not his own – she caught him.
Jet opened the cabinet and banished both of them, reaching for the white pill bottle on the bottom shelf, her left arm getting tired, doing all this extra
work. ‘Here we go.’ The pill bottle rattled as she carried it over to the toilet. She flipped the lid closed and sat on the floor, resting her elbows on top of the closed toilet.
Billy joined her, sitting on the opposite side, his knees grazing hers around the toilet bowl.
Reggie settled himself across the threshold, giving them some space, standing guard … lying guard. Facing the wrong way, actually.
Jet clenched the pill bottle in her fist, stared down at the childproof top. A push-down-and-twist kind of lid. She blew out her cheeks. ‘Need me to open it?’ Billy asked. ‘Kind of feels anti-feminist if I let you do that.’
‘No one’s watching.’ ‘Apart from Reggie.’ ‘He won’t tell,’ Billy said, leaning forward, placing one hand over Jet’s on the bottle, the other on the lid, pressing down and twisting it off. ‘There, you did most of the work. I just finished it off.’ ‘Don’t humor me.’ Jet looked inside the bottle. ‘Yeah, you humor yourself too much already.’ Jet tipped the bottle and poured the contents out against the white toilet lid. Little yellow capsules rolled everywhere, a small mountain gathering
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together in the center. Tiny black writing printed on each one: Lotrel 2260. ‘What do these pills actually do?’ Billy asked, picking one up to study it.
Jet did the same, pinching it in her left hand. ‘It’s a calcium-channel blocker,’ Jet said, quoting from the packaging, long ago memorized from the times she’d forgotten to bring her phone to the bathroom with her, had to find something else to read. Shampoo bottle also worked in a pinch. ‘Treats high blood pressure, a side effect of PKD, which can make our kidneys worse, me and my dad. That’s why we gotta take these. See anything strange?’ Jet brought the capsule closer to her eye, picked up another one instead. They both looked normal, no dents, the top half aligned with the bottom. ‘Not really,’ Billy said. ‘But you’re the one who’s taken them every day for years. You see anything strange?’ ‘Not really,’ Jet repeated him. ‘Can you open one up, pour out the powder?’ Billy screwed one of the small capsules between his fingers, working one end away from the other, splitting it into two halves, the powder sitting inside the bottom part. He bent forward and tapped the white powder out onto the toilet seat. ‘Is that what it’s supposed to look like?’ Billy asked, his breath tickling the powder, scattering some.
Jet lowered her head, bringing her eyes down to the level of the powder, studied it. ‘Don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve never opened one before.
What does it taste like?’ Jet licked her left index finger and pressed it to the pile, the powder clinging to her damp skin. She stuck out her tongue and swiped her finger across, tasting it.
Her mouth filled with saliva to wash out the sharp taste. ‘Not good?’ Billy watched her face, tasting some too. ‘I don’t know,’ Jet said. ‘Tastes chemically. Chalky. Tastes like medicine, really.’ ‘So maybe they aren’t tampered with?’ Billy pulled the same face, retracting his tongue. ‘Well, I don’t actually know what poison tastes like either. Probably chemically and chalky too.’ ‘They don’t look tampered with.’ Billy picked up another one. He unscrewed the two halves and then tucked them back together into a whole.
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‘See, it doesn’t look perfect now. There’s a dent there, and that line isn’t exactly aligned. It’s hard to make it right again without denting it more.’ He tried. ‘I think we’d be able to tell if she’d opened every one and replaced the medicine with something else.’ He held out the evidence to Jet and she picked up the slightly deformed capsule. He wasn’t wrong. ‘But we literally saw her taking my pills away, then coming back to plant them an hour later. What was she –’ Jet’s mind got there before her words did, not even a close race. At least that part of her brain still worked. ‘Not my pills,’ she hissed, scattering more powder, capsules rolling away from her. ‘My dad takes the same ones. It was his pills Sophia took. Come on.
Can you –?’ Jet gestured to the mess on the toilet seat.
Billy understood perfectly, scooping the capsules with both hands, sliding them into the open bottle. He blew to clear away the last of the powder, re- screwing the lid and handing the bottle to Jet. Wrong hand. He blushed. Jet
didn’t. ‘Come on.’ Jet rattled as she left the bathroom, pill bottle swaying at her side, stepping over Reggie. He got up to follow immediately as they headed out of Jet’s room, down the hallway toward her parents’ bedroom.
The bed was immaculately made, always was. Old hardcover books on the wall-mounted shelves that weren’t actually for reading, display only.
The large French double doors leading to the balcony that looked out over the garden, over the pool.
Jet veered left, toward their en suite bathroom. ‘His and hers sinks,’ Billy muttered. ‘Nice.’ Jet smirked at him, through the ornate art deco mirror hanging in the center. She approached the sink on the left – his – placed her pill bottle on the counter, and reached up to open the wooden cabinet above. Her fingers closed around the matching bottle of Lotrel, and she turned to hand it to Billy, no speaking this time, no need to.
Billy pushed down and twisted the bottle open with a clack that echoed around the tiles. ‘Here,’ Jet said, clearing space on her mom’s dark oak vanity, pushing away bottles of perfume and makeup brushes.
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Billy followed her over, tipped the pill bottle, and let the yellow capsules tumble out. More than had been in Jet’s bottle, almost a full pack. Dad must have picked up his prescription last week sometime.
Jet pinched one carefully, raised it to her eye. There was a small dent in the capsule shell where one half met the other. The two white bands against the yellow background didn’t quite line up as she rolled it between her thumb and finger. ‘Shit,’ Billy said, studying a different pill, noticing the same thing. ‘These don’t look like yours did. They look –’ ‘– Tampered with,’ Jet agreed, picking up a few more to be sure. ‘Open one, Billy.’ He was already doing it, unscrewing a capsule, the job easier this time, like it had already been done once before.
He tapped the open capsule out, white powder trickling down against the dark wooden surface. It had a different texture than hers, the grains of white a little larger, a little shinier, like tiny crystals. ‘That looks different,’ Billy commented, putting the empty shell down. ‘That is different,’ Jet agreed. She dipped her finger into the powder. ‘The taste test might not be useful.’ Billy watched Jet’s finger move toward her mouth. ‘If she swapped it out with another medication, how would you be able to tell?’ Jet flicked her tongue out, pressed it to the powder.
It soaked through, disappearing in her mouth, the taste immediate and bitter.
Jet coughed. ‘I know exactly what that is. It’s salt.’ Her eyes met Billy’s. ‘Table salt. Try some.’ Billy took a pinch, placed it inside his mouth. Swallowed. ‘Yep.
Definitely salt.’ Like it stung his eyes too. ‘Salt,’ Jet gasped, the taste sinking in, and the meaning behind it. ‘What?’ ‘That’s, like, the worst thing you could give someone with PKD,’ she
said. ‘Open some more, check them.’ Billy did. ‘Salt,’ he said. ‘Salt again. And here. They’re all salt, Jet.’ Her gut twisted, made a break for her spine, hairs reacting, standing up. ‘We’re supposed to follow low-sodium diets,’ she said. ‘Can’t even have the good fucking cheese. Salt increases your blood pressure, and if Dad
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hasn’t actually been taking Lotrel for months, but a whole bunch of salt instead … oh my god.’ Jet leaned against the wall, hand slipping on the tiles. ‘You’ve seen him. That’s why he’s det-de-d – got so much worse this year. His kidneys have started to fail, doctors talking about transplant or dialysis soon.’ She took a breath, hardened her voice, coming out of shock, finding rage on the way. ‘Because Sophia has been poisoning him. She’s been killing him.’ ‘Fuck,’ Billy hissed, tucking his hands under his armpits. ‘Fuck.’ Because no other word would do. ‘Fuck,’ Jet said too, kicking out at the legs of the vanity, making the yellow pills judder and roll. ‘Seems there was more than one murder going on in the same fucking house. And if Sophia is willing to kill one in-law, then …’ Jet pointed to herself, thumb screwing into her chest.
Billy gestured to the pills. ‘What should we do? Take these to the police?’ ‘Fuck the police. No offense to your dad.’ She sniffed. ‘They’re convinced it’s JJ. I don’t have time to wait around un-convincing them. This is for me, not them. I will deal with Sophia. And I don’t want my dad taking any more of these.’ Jet scooped up as many pills as she could in her left hand. ‘Grab the rest,’ she told Billy, heading toward the toilet.
She dropped the yellow capsules in, floating and twirling in the waiting water, keeping just one, sliding it into her back pocket.
Billy followed her, double-handed, with the rest.
Jet flushed and the pills disappeared in a rushing whirlwind, Billy’s hand skimming hers as they watched, side by side. ‘To Sophia’s house?’ he asked.
Jet cracked her neck, bit down on her back teeth. ‘There’s going to be a lot of yelling, isn’t there?’ ‘I’ll go in alone,’ Jet said. ‘I’ll get more out of her alone. You wait down
the street.’ ‘But –’ ‘– Don’t worry, I won’t turn my back on her, in case she has any more hammers lying around. I want to see her face when she realizes that I know.
That she’s been killing my dad. Should have just kept you as my best friend, huh, Billy? You’re not the poisoning type.’
Billy sniffed. ‘Yeah, you should’ve.’ ‘One more thing.’
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Jet walked back to her dad’s sink, picked up her bottle of Lotrel pills, untampered with. She placed them in her dad’s cabinet, in the exact same spot where his had lived, closed the door.
Her final gift to him. Jet didn’t need the pills anymore. And maybe it wasn’t too late for her dad.
She caught herself in the mirror again, the fire behind both eyes, filling that endless black pit and whatever lay underneath, held together with screws and wire mesh. ‘To Sophia’s,’ Jet said. ‘I am going to … fuck … her … u–’
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