A Dangerous Woman

I wrote For Blood or Money in November 2006 as a new challenge for NaNoWriMo. I prepared and planned for two months with dozens of index cards about people, places, and actions that would occur in the story. I was still a little worried about getting my noir voice down, so I wrote a couple of short stories featuring computer forensics detective Dag Hamar. They were just warm-ups but I found that they strongly influenced me regarding Dag’s friends and family, and his current physical condition. During that time, I also traveled to Finland to attend a conference and met two delightful young women who informed me that they wanted to be ‘in the book.’ Peg said she wanted to be a hero. Teresia informed me that she wanted to be a dangerous woman. Peg appeared in For Blood or Money diving into the Chicago River to save Dag. Teresia appears near the end of Municipal Blondes, but the dark secret Dag held in an envelope for her was never revealed. Here is Teresia’s story as told by Dag. ©2010 Elder Road Books.

A Dangerous Woman

I WAS TWO HOURS LATE getting off the plane in Stockholm thanks to a missed connection in Amsterdam. Another 45 minutes to get through customs and I was searching for a dark-haired cousin in a sea of blonde heads. I must have been easy to spot because a raven-haired beauty detached herself from the crowd and waved at me.

“Kusin Dag,” she exclaimed. “Välkommen hemåt an Sverige!”

“Hej, Kusin Teresia!” I said, greeting her with the ritual kiss on each cheek. “It is so nice to see you.” If she was expecting any more Swedish from me, I had news for her. I’d exhausted my entire vocabulary.

“Was it a good flight? You must be exhausted. I’ll get you straight to Mormor’s and you can get a nice nap before everyone else gets there for dinner. Can I carry a bag for you? My car is this way. Do you need a chair? I know you’ve had trouble with your heart.” Language wasn’t going to be a problem. It was obvious that she didn’t even need me to keep up my end of the conversation. She was a bundle manic energy. She was barely shoulder high on my 6'2" frame and her dark hair fell in a no-fuss bob just below her chin.

We reached the car following a non-stop trail of where everyone in the family was at this moment and when they were expected to arrive at Mormor’s (grandmother’s). She said she really didn’t mind that my flight was late because she had read the entire last issue of her favorite magazine. She popped the back of the Volvo sport wagon open and I shoved my larger suitcase in beside a collapsible moped. I pulled my hand back suddenly from the warmth of the exhaust pipe on the little bike.

“That’s my normal transportation,” said Teresia. “This is Mormor’s Volvo. She never drives anymore and told me to take it to pick you up. We knew you would have a big suitcase.” We got in the car and I tossed her student med-kit into the back seat. She had passed her pre-med exams and would be studying to become a doctor soon.

When we pulled up to the exit I handed her a 20-Euro note to pay for the three-and-a-half hours of parking. She’d been there early, even for my scheduled arrival. She handed me the change and we drove off. Mormor is actually my aunt—my moster or mother’s sister. She is going on ninety-five now and insisted that I come at least once more to Sweden before one of us died. It was looking lately like I could be first, so I decided to make the trip. Teresia is my cousin’s step-daughter, which makes her my first cousin once removed by marriage, I think. In other words, nothing but an extremely cute, hyper, and flirty girl driving way too fast for the quick exit she was making. In minutes she’d pulled up in front of an apartment building that was partly draped in sheets of plastic protecting passersby from construction debris.

“They’re renovating some of the old apartments in this area. It makes it noisy and dirty. We wanted Mormor to move to a temporary care facility while they finished the work. There are so many awful people on the construction crew! They make rude comments when they see me pass. I hate it.”

Well, I could understand. I didn’t like it, but I understood. I’d followed Teresia’s online journal for the past nine years, since she started it as a thirteen-year-old. I’m sure she didn’t realize that some of the sage advice she’d received over the past several years was from her dear cousin. I’d been concerned lately, however, about how dark the journal had become. I credited it with the discoveries that one makes when one is about to graduate from the university and be thrown headlong into the “real world.” I fully intended to invite Teresia to visit in the US before she went to med school.

The narrow stairway inside the apartment building was quiet compared to the street noise outside. We reached the apartment door on the fourth floor with only two stops for me to rest. Stairs are murder on me. But Teresia was kind and bumped my big bag up the stairs for me, stopping whenever I needed to rest, and entertaining me with a non-stop description of the pre-med classes she was taking. Teresia sorted through the keys on her grandmother’s keyring to get the right one for the door. She knocked as we entered and called out Mormors name.

There was no answer. A window stood open on the far side of the room and I could see the scaffolding for the construction standing empty outside.

“That’s strange,” Teresia said. “Mormor, where are you?”

She left me alone in the living room as she proceeded down a short hallway. The sudden scream from down the hall had me moving in that direction faster than I had moved in a month. I found her kneeling next to the bed where Mormor, the aunt I had only met once when I visited with my mother, lay with her eyes open, staring blindly at the ceiling. She was already cool to the touch and I could tell she had been dead for at least an hour, maybe two. I closed her eyes gently and led Teresia out into the living room.

She was a sobbing mess and it took me a few minutes to get her calmed down enough to call her father for me. Once he was on the line, I explained the situation and he said he would call the authorities and meet us there in a few minutes.

An hour in Sweden and I was going to have to talk to local police about a dead body. Damn. Why did she have to die before I got to see her? The whole purpose for my trip was cooling on her deathbed in the next room.

Authorities came. The body was removed. The family gathered. All told it was a somber reunion. I intended to move to a hotel, but Teresia’s father, my cousin, Stig, insisted that the room was ready for me here. I should stay where the family would be gathering on Sunday for the wake and reunion. It seemed a little strange to stay alone where so recently there had been a death, but frankly, I was so jet-lagged that I am not sure I could have stayed conscious long enough to move to a hotel. The family left me in the apartment after showing me how to work the shower, stove, and coffeepot. I dropped exhausted onto the bed about 5:00 in the afternoon and was asleep in an instant.

Like jet-lag often does, however, it was just about midnight when my body clock rebelled against sleep. It was dinner time in Seattle. I padded around the house in my bare feet without bothering to turn on a light. I noticed for the first time the draft from the open window. Funny, I thought. I was sure I’d seen Teresia close the windows when the police were at the apartment. I looked out and saw the scaffolding illuminated by the city street light. But for all intents and purposes I would be invisible from the street because of the heavy plastic sheeting draping the work area. I supposed that you could enter and leave by the window and not be seen by anyone unless a neighbor happened to be looking out the window. I closed the casement again and latched it. I stumbled slightly as I turned and jabbed a sharp rock into the ball of my foot. I looked carefully and saw a light trail of plaster and dust leading a few steps from the window.

I froze. Suddenly I was sure I was not alone in the apartment. I returned quietly to the bedroom and flipped open my laptop. I logged onto my VPN at home and cruised immediately to my cousin’s journal. The entry shocked me.

“The old bat is dead. I’m glad. I didn’t even have to help her along. I just want what is mine. She promised. Wicked people should rot in hell.”

I closed the laptop as I heard the scrape in the next room and rose to silently pad out to the living room. The windows were open again and cousin Teresia had one foot out onto the scaffolding.

“Did you find it?” I asked. “Or were you just coming back to make sure she was dead?” At the sound of my voice she spun around and nearly fell as she pulled her foot back into the room.

“Cousin Dag!” she exclaimed. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Surprise. Now answer my question.”

“Don’t be mad at me. I just wanted to check for something I dropped earlier today. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“And since you already knew you could get in through the window you thought that would be easier than knocking. You’d done it this afternoon.”

“What do you mean?”

“You came to the airport half an hour early, even though you already knew my flight was late and I wouldn’t arrive on time. You parked in the garage then unpacked your little moped and slipped out of the ramp and came back here. All the family left at the same time this morning, so you knew Mormor was alone. It was Saturday, so there were no workers beneath the tarp and it was easy enough to conceal your bike and come up the scaffolding without being seen. You unlatched the window before you left this morning so you could get in from the scaffold. Your grandmother was in the bedroom so you slipped up behind her.”

I had her standing open mouthed in front of me by the time I’d gotten this far. I gave her a gentle shove and she flopped back on the sofa. She made no sound but stared at me as though terrified. I sat in the chair opposite.

“Then how did you do it? Did you suffocate her? No. That would show up in an autopsy, you know. Did you simply scare her to death by sneaking up on her? Ah, yes. Your little doctor bag. You injected her with something. What wouldn’t leave a trace? Air? Yes. You pumped a little air bubble into her vein and when it reached her heart, it stopped.”

“I didn’t kill her,” she said, out of breath.

“After you were done, you left the window open to make it look like workmen had come in from the scaffolding. You rode your moped back to the airport and put it in the back of the car. It was still hot when I put my suitcase in the car. Then you told me about the untrustworthy construction workers on the way back so I would have the idea in mind when I discovered the body. You finally decided that I would not take the initiative to look for her when we got here, so you had to make the discovery and put on a terrible show of grief so I would be your alibi. I already knew the car had been in the garage for three and a half hours because I paid for the parking. You arrived at the airport early, even though you knew before you left that my flight was two hours late. You were using me, Teresia.”

“I didn’t do it!” she sobbed now. I could tell that I’d hit on the very means she had intended. “She was dead when I got here. I was going to do it, but I’d already decided I couldn’t by the time I got here. I didn’t even use the scaffold. I came up the stairs and used her key to get in. She was just lying there on the bed with her eyes open. I opened the window just in case something was suspicious. I couldn’t call anyone because I had no reason to have come back. But I didn’t kill her, no matter how much I wanted to.”

“You are a dangerous woman, Teresia. What did she promise you that you thought you could get by killing her?”

“She promised to pay for my medical school tuition. Then she found out about me and said she wouldn’t pay for a tramp to go to school. She promised.”

“The abortion?”

“How do you know so much about me? I confessed it to her because I thought she would forgive me and I couldn’t tell my father.”

“Teresia,” I said. “You came here to kill another person. How does that square with your prospects in med school?”

“But I didn’t do it!” she cried. Then a sudden look of fear came across her face that was deeper than anything she had expressed so far. I knew I had struck a cord. “You won’t tell them, will you Cousin Dag?”

How could I possibly do that? The deed wasn’t done, of that much I was certain. But responding to a disappointment with the intent to murder was not something I could let pass either.

“No, I won’t tell,” I said. “But I want something in return.” I stopped, waiting for her to ask me what I wanted, but she looked at me silently for a moment then stood. She had unbuttoned two buttons of her blouse before I realized what she was doing and a third before I got my tongue out of my throat. “Stop, Teresia!” I said. “I don’t want to have sex with you.”

“Of course you do,” she answered bitterly. “That’s what all men want.”

“What separates humans from animals,” I answered, “is how they respond to their wants. It is a lesson that you need to learn.” She looked at me and sat back down on the sofa. She re-buttoned one of her buttons but left the others open, perhaps in hopes that I would choose the easy route as she had done.

“What do you want then?” she asked.

“I want a signed confession,” I answered. Her head snapped up to look at me with terror renewed in her eyes. “I want you to write, in your own hand, exactly what happened today. Do not leave out calling to check my arrival time. Do not leave out packing your medical kit. I want a detailed description of everything, right up to why you were here tonight—which I assume was to see if there was anything you could sell to make your tuition.” She nodded. “When you have written it all out, I want you to sign it. If ever I hear that you have engaged in any kind of illegal activity, ever again, I will release that document to the proper authorities. It will be enough to turn any evidence they may have against you and ensure your conviction.”

The talkative, flirtatious girl who had picked me up from the airport was now sullen and silent. But she sat at the kitchen table with a notepad that I produced and wrote. She wrote the whole story, exactly as I had described it with a few additional details that I had missed. Then she signed it and handed the paper to me, then hung her head and stood before me as though she expected I would physically punish her.

I felt like shit. I felt cruel. But it was the only thing I could think of that could possibly snap her out of what had been revealed as a lack of concern for anything that came between her and her goal. Perhaps it would ensure enough straight time for her to get in the habit of acting correctly even when she didn’t “want” to. I could only hope. But I still felt like shit.

I embraced her and she fell limply into my arms and sobbed for a quarter of an hour. I made tea and she drank it. By four o’clock in the morning, she was beginning to return to her more lively and flirtatious self. I sent her home against her protestations and told her that I’d see her for lunch with the rest of the family. After she left, I returned to my laptop and sent a message to Riley. I checked my e-mail and messages, then decided it was time to get some more sleep before the family started gathering. Just as I was shutting down, my alerts chimed once more and I saw the gleam of another journal entry from my errant cousin. I debated whether I should go on reading the thing anymore, or if I should consign it to a past life. Well, one more, I decided.

The words surprised me but soothed the cruel shitty beast that I felt myself to be. She had written only one line.

I love my Cousin Dag.

THE END