If you didn’t read the first installment of Second Chance you might want to start there.
Let’s get something straight right off the bat. I am not a killer. Sure, I’ve done some crazy things, some that were pretty cruel. Like one time Sandy got a job at the 7-11 and had me come in at 3 a.m. to stage a robbery. I ended up being a lot tougher on the guy running the place than we had planned. But, it was his own fault for trying to be a hero. My advice to anyone who cares to listen, don’t be a hero for someone else’s money. It’s not worth it. You could end up like Jake, out of work and missing two front teeth.
“So, when will you kill her?” That was just like Sandy. Take it for granted that she’ll get her way, and start making the plans. “Look,” I said, “This isn’t like rolling a drunk and taking his money, this is pretty serious shit.” “Why would I risk everything I have for a measly $1400?” Sandy rolled her eyes in that way she had that always got to me and said, “It’s $1200, and what do you have that you’re afraid of losing?” She had a point there, and she knew it. Everything that I owned could fit into the trunk of my car, a car that was barely running. “There really isn’t any risk anyway; we’re going to make it look like an accident, so how could you get in trouble?”
The rest of the evening, Sandy would come up with ideas of how to make “the wife’s” death look like an accident, and I would come up with reasons why it wouldn’t work. “You could turn off the furnace while she was asleep and then when the house filled up with gas, you could light it.” “Ok,” I said, “so you don’t care if Walter is killed too?” “Oh yeah,” she said, “We should try to avoid that.” “How about if you sneak into her house and push her down the stairs?” she said, “You could leave a toy at the top of the stairs and it would look like she tripped on it?” “They have kids?” I asked. “No, they don’t have kids; it doesn’t have to be a toy dammit!” We had started drinking a couple of hours ago and I could tell that she was starting to get mad, and when Sandy was mad and drunk, it could get ugly fast!
When I first met Sandy, we were just teenagers. A group of us were jumping off the railroad trestle that crossed the river and she came by and watched us. After a while she said, “When the next train comes by, the last one to jump off gets to tell everyone else what to do for the rest of the day.” This could be interesting, I thought that I could come up with a few things that I would like her to do. Well, not only was she the last one to jump off, but I was already in the water watching her wait till the last possible second before she jumped! With the conductor blowing the train whistle and waving like crazy at her, she jumped off, and I swear she reached behind her and touched the train as it passed! She told everyone to split and the rest of the afternoon we spent under the bridge with her telling me what to do and how long to do it.
But that was then and right now I was looking at her getting madder and drunker so I decided to try to calm her down. “I’ve got an idea,” I said, and she looked at me suspiciously. Her look told me that I better be serious if I knew what was good for me. “How about if I follow her around and see what opportunities come up?” I knew that this was way too vague to keep Sandy happy for long, but she seemed to accept the fact that I was at least thinking seriously about committing the murder. But I wasn’t thinking seriously about it, I was still trying to figure out a way to get back together with Sandy. At least this way I could be around when Walter finally kicked her out of the apartment. Maybe I would get my second chance, if I could talk her into moving in with me.
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