All Due Respect Issue 2 by Owen Laukkanen Page A

Roger’s chest rise and fall, a line of drool had dried a crusty white from the corner of his mouth down to the bed sheet.
    Dottie couldn’t stand it anymore. She moved into the room and came to a stop beside Loraine.
    “Go ahead,” she said.
    “I can’t.”
    “What do you mean you can’t? He killed your husband.”
    “I know that, but…I’m not a killer.”
    “If it’s not you, it’s just gonna be some guy flipping the switch on the chair a few months from now. Don’t you believe in an eye for an eye?”
    “I do, but…” Loraine stood still, her eyes zeroed in on Roger’s neck—the pulse visible through his skin.
    “Oh, for God’s sake,” Dottie said. She reached down and took the razor from Loraine’s hand. She elbowed Loraine out of the way as she leaned over Roger and placed the blade just under his right ear.
    “Be ready to roll him if any starts to leak over the side. I don’t want to have to burn the rug too.”
    Dottie pulled downward. The razor carved a line across Roger’s throat. His eyes sprung open, but his voicebox was already cut. The blood came immediately.
    He stared up at Dottie, confusion and panic cutting through the alcohol. Loraine turned away, putting her face in her hands.
    Dottie gripped a fistful of his hair and kept his head from moving side to side.
    “Get the pillow and mop that up,” Dottie said to Loraine. “Don’t let it get on the rug.”
    Loraine was frozen.
    “Hurry up, damn it.”
    Loud sobs came from behind Loraine’s hands.
    “God damn it!” Dottie let go of his hair and ripped the pillow out from under his head. She made a barrier at the edge of the mattress for the growing pool of blood to soak into the white pillowcase and absorb into the down feathers inside.
    In a matter of seconds his movements slowed. The hollow, airy sound in his open throat hissed away to nothing, and his eyes closed again. Moments later, Roger was dead.
    6.
    G ETTING LORAINE TO LIFT Roger’s legs so they could move his body to the bathtub took some effort. Dottie tried to be soothing at first, cooing to her that it was “all over now.” When that didn’t work, she went merciless.
    “We had a deal. You came to my door with a gun. You came after my husband with murder in your heart. You don’t get to change your mind after it’s done.”
    As the rest of Roger’s blood ran down the drain, Loraine sat and cried in a heap next to the toilet. Dottie got to work rolling up the sheets in a ball. She stripped off his clothes and piled them in the middle of the top sheet, put the blood-soaked pillow in, and then wrapped it all up in a bundle.
    She took the bloody sheets down to the incinerator to give Loraine a few more minutes to get it together. When she returned to her apartment, Loraine was standing at the kitchen counter with a half empty glass of scotch. Good for her, Dottie thought, and joined her in a drink.
    Loraine was drowning her sorrows. Dottie was celebrating.

    Dottie knew Loraine would have no stomach for what needed to be done in the back room of the butcher shop once they got Roger’s body downstairs, so she sent Mrs. Zucco home and told her to have a few more drinks. It would all be clearer in the morning.
    Dottie fulfilled the part of the plan meant to seal their alibi as she slammed the apartment door at 11:35. She saw a light come on in Mrs. Eastway’s room. Satisfied, Dottie went back to the butcher shop to get to work.

    Over the next two weeks Dottie helped out at the store. Loraine did most of the work, having picked up the gist of it from Anthony over the years. Dottie ran the register, got the pre-cut chops and steaks out of the refrigerated case, and tried to put a happy face on the business-as-usual to counteract Loraine’s pained expression.
    Dottie went out late on the third night and dropped one of Anthony’s hands in a creek by the fire station. She left it up on the bank so it wouldn’t get swept away in the water. She wanted people to find