Page 70 of The Business Trip

Grinning as it came in, I started packing up the motel room. This next phase might be a little accelerated from my original plan, but it was going fine, just fine. There was just one thing left to do, and I would do it that night. In the meantime, I would look up Greyhound buses back to San Diego. If Raven said it was the best place to walk across, that was good enough for me. I knew I couldn’t risk flying to San Diego with a phony passport, US officials being so diligent. That passport would be saved for Mexico. I would buy a Greyhound ticket with cash and without an ID. People did that sort of thing all the time. It would be a long way, but I’d get there and get across the border.

There was a Greyhound leaving at five the next morning. That would work—I needed the overnight hours to plant Steph’s stuff and mine in Trent’s backyard; then I could hang out at the bus station while I waited.

Pulling out the temporary tattoos from CVS, I put a rose on my wrist and a snake on my collarbone, admiring how they added to the overall punk rock look. I organized all of my stuff and made my final list of to-dos on the motel pad of paper.

Another text came in from Robert:

Steph—what the hell is going on? Police went by Trent’s house and no one was there.Where are you?? I’m trying to do everything I can think of. I’m sick with worry.

Sorry, Robert, I thought.I have to ignore this.

It was time to drop another hint to Anna. So far she thought I was with a great guy named Trent McCarthy. She needed a clue that things weren’t going so well. Picking up my own phone instead of Stephanie’s, I texted:

This guy Trent is super sexy but he has a temper. Don’t worry, I can handle myself. Don’t tell Glenn.

I hit send and waited. She wrote back almost right away.

Things have been crazy here. Glenn is in the hospital.

Well, that was good news. He couldn’t hurt me if he was there.

Glenn’s in the hospital? I promise I will send your money soon. Thanks for everything.

Yeah, robbery at the trailer if you know what I mean. He got beat up pretty badly. You’re good though? You don’t need anything else?

I’m good

After that exchange, I got to work on a fake voice message. The most important one: the 9-1-1 call I would need to place tonight that would bring police to arrest Trent after I planted all of the evidence.

I typed these words into the chat box for Stephanie to say:

“Please help me, my boyfriend is going to kill me. He already killed another woman named Jasmine. I’m at 4240 Horizon Lane in Atlanta. His name is Trent McCarthy. Please, please hurry.”

When I played it back, it didn’t have the urgency that such a call might normally have, but it did sound like her voice, so I would have to live with it. It was the best I could do.

To distract myself the rest of the day, I googled towns in Mexico, exchange rates, safe and unsafe places for Americans to go, how to beat Montezuma’s revenge, and anything else I could think of about Mexico on my phone, the phone I would soon be destroying with a garden trowel.

I needed a burner phone, and I wanted to square up with Anna before I left the country. Walking to the motel front desk, I asked the clerk where I could buy a padded envelope and some stamps and where I could get a temporary phone, and he directed me to two places. At the post office, I took $500 in cash and slipped it in the envelope, then addressed it to her and paid for overnight postage. It felt good to send it off. Then I went to the second store and paid cash for a phone that would get me across the country. I figured I’d have to get another one in Mexico that worked with their cell system.

That night I had to wait until after midnight to sneak into Trent’s backyard. I was wearing the black thrift store hat, wheeling Steph’s carry-on with her laptop, robin’s-egg blue purse, wallet, phone, and some jewelry in it, and carrying the ski mask,plus wearing all black clothing. The motel was close to his place, and it was a short walk.

When I got within sight of his condo, I looked around. Conscious of those doorbell Ring cam things, I slipped through the hedges of a neighbor’s house, pulled on my ski mask, and crawled under bushes, dragging the suitcase behind me awkwardly until I was at the side of his building away from the eye of a camera he might have. Then I slowly shimmied and slithered my way around to the back, keeping my body pressed against the building the whole time.

The backyard was quiet and dark, and the lights in all of the condos were off, these people obviously being working professionals who had to get up in the morning. Using the trowel I had gotten at the garden store, I dug two holes in two different parts of the backyard as quickly as I could, then got ready for the final damning 9-1-1 call.

Putting our two phones next to each other, I dialed 9-1-1 on Steph’s phone. As soon as the operator answered, I hit play on the fake voice memo on my phone, and Steph’s voice rang out:

“Please help me, my boyfriend is going to kill me. He already killed another woman named Jasmine. I’m at 4240 Horizon Lane in Atlanta. His name is Trent McCarthy. Please, please hurry.”

It was only a matter of minutes now.

Wiping Steph’s phone with alcohol wipes in hopes of erasing any of my DNA, I hurriedly buried Steph’s wallet, phone, and some of her jewelry in one area and my wallet in another in the dirt, covering both up.

Her phone would be further evidence for the police and would have the photos from around Atlanta on her photo reel,the texts with her family and friends on her text chain. My own wallet would match with my DNA from inside Trent’s condo and make it look as if he had killed two women, thus getting Glenn off my trail. Whatever was going on with him, I knew he would be out of the hospital eventually. It was just the high-profile murder I needed to keep Glenn, my family, or anyone else from looking for me. If Trent could be framed as a womanizing murderer and I was a drifter, it was completely conceivable that we met somewhere and had a fling, and he then killed me too, keeping my underwear and Steph’s as trophies for his work. I put her rolling bag with the laptop in it in one of the garbage cans in the back of the condo.

Done and panting with exertion, I took off the ski mask and walked away as quickly and casually as I could, hearing police sirens approaching. Making my way to the closest Walmart, I went around to the back and used the trowel to smash theGREETINGS FROM HOT-LANTAmug and my phone into smithereens, sprinkling half of them into the dumpster and dumping the other half at a garbage can down the street, just to be sure police couldn’t find all of anything at once and put it back together. I ditched the trowel at a third garbage can.

After walking back to the motel and grabbing my two bags, it was time to check out. I had to walk all the way to the Greyhound station with no ability to call an Uber since my burner phone wasn’t set up for it and there could be no trace of my credit card anymore, but I had so much adrenaline I needed the movement anyway.

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