Jonas Saul: The Ruse

I couldn’t believe it. What was I doing?

Everything was set. I had two shots of scotch whiskey, looked at my watch, and started getting ready for my date with destiny.

I pulled into the parking lot of the butcher shop ten minutes early. Everything appeared normal. I’d thought of all kinds of scenarios. If there was a gun involved, I was toast. I didn’t know CPR, so I hoped the intended victim didn’t have a heart attack or something. I went through as many scenarios as I could come up with on how I would save someone’s life. I also thought about my client. I wondered who Jessica had gotten to show the house.

At 3:00pm exactly I was standing in front of the butcher shop. Nothing happened at first. All my senses were on full alert. I watched anybody and everybody. I watched where they were walking in case a car was coming too fast. I especially watched older people. The area quieted down a little. I looked at my watch.

3:08pm.

Nothing happened. I started getting angry. What if the text sender was a real estate agent and at that moment they were showing the Garrison house to my client? I decided to believe in the validity of the text. I had nothing else to go on, and they had come true twice. No one could’ve known my sister would show up at the butcher shop at the same time as me. I remembered it clearly. So the texts had to hold something greater than my ability to understand.

I decided to stand there, and wait. At 3:30pm, my cell phone rang. Call display said it was the office. Maybe my client wants to put an offer in, I remembered thinking.

“Yeah.”

“Hi.” It was Jessica. She was broken up. It sounded like she was trying to catch her breath. “How did you know?”

“Know what?” I asked.

“The house.” She could barely get it out. “The house is gone.”

“Gone? He bought it?” I asked, hoping that was the case.

“No, gone. As in destroyed.”

What is she talking about? “Destroyed? What’s going on Jessica?”

“They think it was a natural gas explosion. The house you were supposed to show at 3:00pm has been leveled. It blew up like a bomb hit it.”

I remember dropping to my knees so hard that little pebbles on the sidewalk left bruises. “Is anyone hurt? Who showed the house in my place?”

“When I called your client, he said they would view it when you were ready. They only wanted to deal with you. The owner of the house and his workers weren’t there because they had expected the showing. I didn’t call them because I was trying to get another agent in. At any other time, several people would have been there. Because you booked it for 3:00pm, and then didn’t go yourself, you saved a lot of lives today. You saved yourself.” I heard her stop, catch her breath, blow her nose, and then clear her throat. “But I killed someone. I’m so sorry.”

What the fuck is she talking about now? I dodged a bullet here. I’m alive, in one piece, and Jessica is talking her shit again.

“I killed someone,” she repeated.

“Is this about your parents, because if it is, you have really bad timing. I could’ve been killed today. I saved myself. It isn’t always about you Jessica. Get over it, already, geez.”

“I killed someone you know intimately.”

“What? Are you mad? I didn’t know your parents.”

I was completely confused. Most of the phone call, I was in another reality, another field somewhere, stupefied at my good fortune that I was still alive.

“I killed… I killed your sister, and now I have to die.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I was getting mad. I had no idea the woman was this fucked up.

She blew her nose again. “Your sister called here looking for you this morning. When you told me to take messages and tell you them tomorrow, I didn’t say anything about her. You cancelled the 3:00pm booking. I couldn’t call her back anyway. She didn’t leave a number.”

“Where are you going with this? How could you have killed her? As far as I know, she has cancer. She’s probably dead already.”

“She asked where you’d be today so I told her about the Garrison house. But you canceled. She was there, she was there.”

Her twisted logic hit me.

“Were there any casualties at the Garrison house?” I asked.

“Yes. One. Your sister. I killed her by sending her there and now I have to kill myself. Goodbye.”

She hung up.

Shit. I couldn’t have a dead secretary in my office; that kind of thing was bad for business.

I ran for my car, all the while attempting to raise Jessica on my cell phone.

I was tired of the bitch. If she wanted to off herself, that would be one less person to eat the last apple turnover at my favorite bakery. One less person to take a seat on the bus from an old lady. One less person to nab the numbered ticket before me at the butcher shop.

I just couldn’t allow her to do it at my office.

When I pulled into the parking lot, there was no indication a suicide had taken place, raising my hopes that she had gone home to do it, or some ditch on the side of the highway.

I unlocked the front door and stepped into my office’s foyer, acting as if nothing could bother the savvy real estate broker. It’s not every day you have a dead sister and a secretary who wants to die.

“Jessica?”

The lights were all out. The blinds had been drawn.

“Jessica?”

I heard a police siren in the distance. After a few seconds, the siren drew closer outside. I realized they were stopping out front.

“Jessica, did you call the police?”

I stood in the main office, not venturing down the hall. If she did off herself, I didn’t want to find the body. I wasn’t willing to have bloody dreams for the next fifty fucking years.

The woman of the hour stepped out of my office. She had a gun in her hand. She raised it and aimed it at me.

“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to hide the fear I instantly felt.

“Do you want to die with me?”

Oh, my shit. Every one of her marbles were on the floor, because she had definitely lost them.

“I think I’ll take a pass. Living is much more fun and the possibilities are endless. Did you call the police?”

She nodded. “I can’t kill myself. I’ve tried too many times and failed. I have to die like my parents did. Like your sister; indirectly. Death by cop is indirect suicide or whatever you want to call it.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

She turned her head sideways and looked at me with an expression that showed her madness quite clearly. In the little light I had, I could see her eyes were completely bloodshot.

“Are you serious? I did not expect you, of all people, to try to save me.”

Her condescending tone pissed me off. The world would be a better place without people like her, littering it with their demented sicknesses.

There was a loud knock on the front door.

“Police! Open up!”

“Umm, Jessica, we’re going to have to get that.”

“Why? You worried they’ll bust the door down? That could get expensive.” She raised the gun, butt end extended to me. “Here, shoot me and this ends now. Or get out of the way so I can open that door and have them shoot me. Either option you choose, I die today, and the blood stain will be on your carpet. It was here that I directed your sister to her death, it’ll be here where I direct my own.”

“Can we talk about this?” I was getting even more pissed off now. “Go home. Do it there. You have to ruin me in the process?”

Jessica moved forward. “You don’t get it, do you? This is all your fault. If you felt love, even for one day, you would understand what was happening here. But you don’t.”

She walked past me and touched the door handle, the pistol in her other hand.