The Poet (Samantha Jazz)

“The gift will be the day you pay me to kill that other Jazz. The girl.”

My lips thin with his sinful words, words that solidify why he must be ended. “You’ll have to settle for what I left for you now.” I hang up and remove the SIM card and pour bottled water over it before tossing it in a trash bag in my truck.

In all of sixty seconds, Richard bursts from his door and heads out on foot to retrieve his prize. Once he’s out of sight, I quietly cross the terrain and enter his trailer through the back entry that he never locks. I move to the spare bedroom, where I wait, a crack in the door allowing me a full view of the tiny living room and kitchen. Richard returns quickly, and it’s not long before he’s sitting at his kitchen table with the cash and his gun on the table, downing the whiskey I’ve left him. He didn’t even notice the bottle was open. The sedative I’ve included inside is fast-acting, and he’s knocked out in minutes.

I exit the bedroom and remove the superglue from my pocket, squeezing the substance onto the gun as well as his hand before I press the steel into his palm. Once it’s solidly attached to his skin, I rest both on the table. I set the bottle of glue next to the stack of money. I want this to look as if he did it himself, like the money just wasn’t enough to make him happy. Once the setup is in place, I stick a couple of acid tablets, which I bought down at the border, under his tongue, pills laced with a little something extra. That something extra is well known on the streets and won’t look suspicious. It’s killed others, as it will kill Richard tonight. It also cost me a pretty penny, but money is of no consequence. I’ve been blessed with the financial freedom to allow my judgments. Finally, I set a handful of pills on the table, the same sedative that I put in the bottle. Pills that don’t mix well with acid.

If I’ve done my job well, and I have, the police will think he was trying to get the courage to kill himself with the gun, then resorted to an overdose instead. They’ll believe anything about a cop killer. They want him dead. Even more so if they find out he used this very gun to kill Detective Roberts. If they ever find Detective Roberts. That creek Richard left him in isn’t exactly a family-friendly location.

My cell phone rings, and considering the late hour, my lips purse, but I grab it from my pocket. It’s my wife. Of course, it’s my wife. I answer quickly. “Hi, honey.”

“How is the proposal coming?”

The proposal is a big project I’ve already locked down for my company, but she doesn’t know this. She believes I’m slaving over a PowerPoint presentation at this very moment. Richard starts to convulse. Beautiful. He’s dying. “Almost done,” I say, “I’m about to head out. You think you might have time to read it in the morning?”

Irritatingly, Richard begins jerking about, making some guttural noises. I move out of the range of the gun. I wouldn’t want to get shot by a moron in his last moments of life. “Of course,” my wife says. “You know I will. I know how important this contract is to you.” She hesitates. “What’s that noise?”

“Janitor,” I say quickly. “Fool is singing. Kool and the Gang, I think.” I lower my voice conspiratorially. “I do believe he thinks he’s good. He’s not.”

She laughs. “Obviously. Hurry home.”

“Leaving here in about half an hour. Do you need anything?”

“It’s midnight, baby. You just need to come home.”

“Right. Holy hell. I didn’t realize it was so late. Love you. I’m hurrying out of here.” I hang up and slide my phone back into my pocket. Richard goes still. I check his pulse. There isn’t one, but there’s plenty of disgusting foam hanging out of his mouth. This was messier than I prefer but necessary to cover my tracks and clear a path for my real judgment and punishment.

About done here, I grab Richard’s phone and dial 911.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

With his phone far from my face, I whisper, “Help. Riverside—Trailer—Park.” I don’t give them the exact address and then drop the phone on the ground and leave.

I return to my car and drive away, but I park on a side street in a neighborhood just outside of the trailer park and wait for the EMS vehicles. It takes them ten minutes to arrive. My job here is done. The only thing left to do is find a spot to pull over where I won’t be seen, bag my cover-up clothes for Goodwill, and get rid of my incidental trash.