He also offered to help Hector find a good job for his family. Some healthcare for his mother. A decent car for his father to get to work.
Doing good didn’t always mean you had to be good all the time.
I put the binoculars down. “Are we ready?”
“As we’re ever going to be,” Bastian said, zipping up his overalls.
The overalls we were all wearing had a logo for Fishy’s Pool Services, and we were armed with a story that Hector had called us in for a clog he couldn’t get out of the filter and it was making it hard to clean.
I turned the engine over on the white van with the same logo on a magnetic sheet on the side, and drove around to the front. I parked in the driveway and shut the van back off. Fischer put on his hat, glasses, and cheap stick on moustache. Since she knew his face, we had to be careful with that.
The pavers on the side of the drive led around the back of the house, and Bastian just popped the latch on the gate and walked us in. We followed the house around to the back and rattled all the fake equipment we had with us just as we entered the pool area.
“Oh, my God!” Worth yelled, jumping back and yanking her suit in strange directions. She wrapped the flimsy robe around herself. “Who are you? What the hell are you doing on my property?”
“Hector called us,” I said with a smile. “He said the filter has been giving him some real problems lately.”
The man in question, merely nineteen years old, leapt off the lounger he had been pinned on and made a beeline for us. “Si, yes, Senora Worth. I was having a lot of trouble with the filter. I needed some help.”
He was playing along, which meant he was either desperate or hopeful we were really here to help him, not the filter.
Worth narrowed her eyes at him. “Hector. You should have cleared this with me.”
“I didn’t know they would be here today, senora. I thought they would be here in the afternoon.”
“Come on, Hector.” Fischer took his elbow and led him toward the pool house. “Show me where the pumps are. You can tell me where the issue is.”
“Si, thank you.” He went willingly with Fischer.
The filter that we were targeting was right next to her, and I moved to pull the lid up. She looked disgusted that we were even there, ruining her afternoon delight.
“Can’t this wait until tonight? Or this weekend?”
“No, ma’am, you don’t want this to back up too much,” I answered.
“What’s wrong with the kid?” Bastian put down his toolbox. “He looked a little iffy, kinda infected.”
“He’s just my pool boy, how should I know?” She huffed and adjusted her robe..
“I don’t know.” Bastian smirked. “Kinda looked like you were enjoying him a bit before.”
She sniffed.
Arrogant bitch.
“Is this going to take a long time? My husband is coming home at five.”
“We don’t know what the problem is yet.” I glanced up at her and did an assessment of visible sins. She was covered. The simple black that most people had on their fingers covered her hands and up to her elbows. She was slashed with cuts, and dotted with deep purple bruising. There were festering sores, complete with maggots.
Just as bad as Fischer had said. She was up to way more than just screwing the pool boy. If I was reading them right, and who the hell knew if I was, she was also defrauding her husband, the women’s club she belonged to, as well as helping herself to cocaine and uppers on a regular basis. She was also contemplating offing her husband.
She was an absolute peach.
“Ma’am, are you going to stay here?” Bastian asked.
“I was planning on taking a swim.” She was mad and indignant, and also slightly crazy for wanting to swim in mid-September with the chill in the air.
Liar.
I had an idea. It was not a good one, and if I could go to hell as a punishment, I was definitely going to be spending some time there.
Bastian caught my eye, and nodded.
Do it.
Did I hear that? Did he say that? Was that in my mind or out loud, or just what I implied from his look. Jesus.
But we didn’t have time.
“Ma’am, this is going to take a while. I wouldn’t recommend getting in the pool at this point. Even though my coworker is shutting off the power, there’s a chance this could electrify the water.”
Looking down at me, she scoffed and huffed. “Make sure it doesn’t. That’s your job.”
“Ma’am,” I started.
“Just do your job,” she snapped and walked to the shallow end.
Bastian knelt down. “You good with this?”
“I’m going to see if we can just shock her good,” I answered.
My phone buzzed with a text message in my pocket and I pulled it out.
Unknown: No. Take her down.
Staring at it for a minute, I turned it to Bastian and let him read it. He jerked a bit after reading it.
His phone buzzed a second later, and he read it with a shocked look. Turning it, I could read it.
Unknown: Guys, trust me. I’d say you were doing the Lord’s work, but…wrong Lord?
Bastian and I stared at each other.
Wrong Lord?
Was fucking Lucifer texting us?
The devil texted?
“He has a cell phone?” Bastian whispered.
“He has reception?”
Neither of us could stop the laugh that burst out, and it took a long minute for either of us to calm down. I stared at my own message, and finally tucked the phone away. “We’re the sins. If that’s true, we’d be agents of Hades, right? And Lucifer is the overseer of Hades, so that makes him our boss.”
Nodding, Bastian tucked his phone away as well. “That all makes sense, as much as anything has made sense. If he says go, we’ll go. Grim Reaper duty, I guess.”
“Forgot my scythe,” I grumbled.
As I dug into the filter, and started to look for the wires that ran it, I guessed I should feel guilty about this in some ways. It was murder, and it wasn’t right, and shouldn’t have been acceptable in polite society. Or any society.
Though, just like all the asses that ran the Pipeline, and were trying to gear it back up, this woman brought suffering to those around her. She didn’t care about the fact that Hector was probably going to have lifelong psychological trauma. That he could possibly be suffering from physical effects of this disease for years. We’d do what we could for him, but he was already damaged, and there was no guarantee he could be healed completely.
“Do you know anything about electrical systems?” Bastian asked, kneeling down next to me and peering into the filter box.
“Not a goddamn clue,” I answered.
“See that large cable running to the big black box?”
“Yep.”
“Power cable. Looks like a 200 amp DC, too. Nice.”
“Nice?”
“You only need one amp to kill, and direct current works much better.”
I stared down into the box. “We’re just going to kill this woman?”
“Well…”
Sitting back on my heels, I looked at Bastian. “This feels like it’s not the right way to do this. I feel like…we should ruin her. Take away her money, her cars, her privileges. Bring her down.”