FORTY-TWO
After John Babington had vanished into the darkness of the hell hole, Angela tossed the gun down after him. She watched it fall, glance twice off the granite walls on the way down, and finally fade away into the darkness until she could no longer see it. She had learned long ago not to bother waiting to hear things hit bottom.
Once she had used a gun to kill someone, that gun became forever tainted with the potential for all kinds of trouble. There was forensic evidence she could only begin to imagine—blood spatter, serial numbers, as well as distinctive marks left by the magazine, the firing pin, and gun barrel rifling.
Once she had used a gun on someone, that gun would never be used again. It always went down the abyss along with the killer. Owen was the only man so far that had not ended up in the hell hole. Of course, the knife she had used to kill him had, along with everything she’d been wearing that could have had any blood evidence on it.
Angela could easily have enticed Owen to her house and spent several days initiating him into hell. But it had been more important to her that Carrie’s remains be found so that her family would have closure than it was for Owen to be sent down the hell hole. She hoped that he was in hell, the real one, for the rest of eternity.
Angela removed her boots, with her knife and sheath inside the lining, and tossed them down into the hell hole. Like the gun, they could potentially have a wealth of forensic evidence on them. After her boots, she removed her shorts, underwear, and her top and threw them in as well.
Even if they never found John Babington’s body, a bullet penetrating the skull created internal pressure that often blew blood droplets, as well as tiny specks of brain matter and hair, back away from the hole. It was inevitable that some of that, even minuscule amounts, would end up on her clothes. He’d had his hand in her pants; they could probably find skin cells from his fingers on her thong.
If any tiny speck were to be found on her clothes, the police forensic department could test DNA from his relatives and tie it to Babington. Even without a body, they could probably still convict her of killing him on circumstantial evidence alone.
Truly evil men often got away with their crimes because of legal technicalities, or things like Babington dropping the charges for political reasons. Even when politics weren’t involved, the victims were routinely ignored as unimportant while thugs like Boska were granted favors and leniency. Time after time they were let go for any reason someone could come up with. Rap sheets of violent crimes grew to multiple pages with nothing done to stop, much less punish, the violent criminal. Babington was part of that whole corrupt system. It took something like a minivan to finally end the injustice.
But Angela knew that if it was her they would go to the ends of the earth to make sure she spent the rest of her life in prison. They couldn’t have people killing prosecutors, no matter how much they might deserve it. That’s the way government officials were. Protect their own at all costs.
So, rather than try to outguess what forensic scientists might be able to find on her shorts, or underwear, or top, or boots, or gun, or knife, everything she had on when she executed Babington went down the hell hole along with his body. Her best protection was to make sure there was never any evidence to be found.
She sometimes wondered if an archaeologist tens of thousands of years in the future would discover the hell hole and all the remains of predators at the bottom. She could only wonder at what theory they would come up with about what it all meant.
Angela knelt and went through everything Babington had emptied out of his pockets. She tossed the change down the hole. He had nearly five hundred dollars in his wallet. She pulled the cash out. She couldn’t see the point in throwing away cash. She looked through the photos. There was a picture of a boat, and a photo of a middle-aged woman, presumably his wife.
“I just did you a big favor, lady.”
Angela tossed the wallet down the hell hole. She threw his whole four-leaf-clover key ring full of keys down into the darkness. His luck at getting away with the things he did had run out. She stuck her little finger through the key ring with his car keys and remote and set them up on the counter.
After she had thrown everything of no use or potentially incriminating down the abyss, she took the garden hose off the wall and thoroughly washed down the floor to get rid of any trace of blood. The water was freezing cold on her bare feet. She promised herself that after she was finished she would take a hot shower. She also needed the shower to make sure that any speck of blood or brain tissue was washed out of her hair.
After winding the hose back up on the reel at the end of the basement, she took a new pair of boots out of the lower cabinet where she kept a dozen pair. She’d used two pair between Owen and then Babington. She made a mental note to order some more. She pulled out a new knife, in its new sheath, and slipped it into the pocket she had already created between the lining and the leather of the right boot.
Once she had new boots prepared, she took a new Walther P22 out of its box. She tossed the box, with the serial number and the shell inside from the manufacture’s test firing, down the hell hole.
She loaded one new magazine with ten rounds, the second with nine. They were supposed to hold ten rounds, but she had learned over years of practice that the magazines didn’t always feed reliably with ten rounds. If she was just target-practicing, she might load ten rounds. It gave her practice at clearing random jams. But when her life depended on the reliability of the gun and magazines she carried, she loaded those spare magazines with nine rounds.
She shoved a magazine loaded with ten rounds into the gun and cycled the slide to chamber a round, leaving nine in the magazine. Having one chambered and nine in the magazine gave her ten rounds the first time around, and nine thereafter if she needed to reload with a fresh magazine to keep firing.
So far, with the murderers she had killed, she’d never needed a second magazine, but she always carried extras just in case. Her grandfather always told her that you could never have too much ammo.
Naked, holding new boots loaded with a new knife under her left arm, her holster and a few full magazines in her left hand, and her gun in her right hand with her finger along the side of the slide, she went upstairs to take a shower.
As she clicked off the basement light and then the living room light switches with the back of her hand, she heard a car drive up.
Angela froze.
No one ever drove up uninvited past all the no-trespassing signs. She remembered that she had left the cable down after Babington had driven in, so it was always possible that it wasn’t trouble arriving at her door. It could be some innocent visitor looking for directions.
Angela didn’t think she could be that lucky.
She dumped everything she was carrying, except her gun, on the couch. The hall light was still on, but otherwise the place was dark.
She peeked out the door. The beige, four-door Toyota Camry that she knew all too well was just coming to a stop.
Angela held the gun behind her back and stepped out onto the porch, naked.