Au Pair Fatale

Her eyes went wide with shock.

I pulled the trigger.

----------

Paul was taking notes, nodding along. A knock on the door interrupted his next question.

It was her! They let her in and I rose up and embraced her deeply. I fought back tears as she nuzzled into my neck, the familiar brown hair filling my face as I buried into her head.

"I'm so sorry!" I murmured as I held her, savoring the feel of her in my arms. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, they took me to the hospital as a precaution, but I'm fine."

"Did you say anything to the police yet?"

"Not yet, just what we told them at the scene," she said, staring at me anxiously. "I'm still shook up, but I have to give them a statement soon."

"I wouldn't say anything," said Paul. "I can represent you as well, even if just for now, and I'd just tell the police you need to talk with your lawyer first."

"We've already said self-defense," she said, annoyed. She glanced at me. "I want this over with and Tyler released. I have nothing to hide. My story is straight-forward. I didn't pull the trigger."

"Just be quiet for Tyler's sake until everything gets sorted out," said Paul. "It's the word of both of you against a dead person, and the one angle they've already asked about was whether this was provoked on purpose. If you bait someone into attacking you so you can kill them in self-defense, that is pre-meditated murder."

Paul's warning sent a chill through both of us.

"Fine," she said, nodding at Paul. "We'll do it your way."

"Kit-Kat," I said, squeezing her again as I kissed her. "I love you. I'm so sorry."

"We'll talk about it later," she said. "Lots of talking later, I'm sure."

And with that, the real Kit-Kat, my true wife, left the room and I turned back to Paul.

"One last question," said Paul. "The hidden camera. Did you get any footage?"

"I forgot to turn it on."

"That's too bad. It would have made this an open and shut case."

----------

They wound up letting me go. The detective's intimidation tactic had been an act to see if I'd crack and admit something more nefarious than our story of an insane, blackmailing Au Pair that I'd had to shoot out of self-defense. While, the case was still open, they knew I wasn't leaving the country or otherwise going to flee, so I was released while they continued the investigation.

The detective stopped by our house a week later. He was surprisingly nice now as he sat down at our kitchen table to give us an update on the case.

"Turns out Inga wasn't Swedish. She's Ukrainian, but sex trafficked and in the criminal underworld since she was fourteen. We got her file from Interpol, and she'd lived in Sweden for a couple years. Her name isn't Inga Beckman, but Vira Oliynyk. She assumed Inga's identity for this Au Pair job," said the detective. He slid a mugshot photo of her onto the table. She looked skinny and strung out, like a junkie, and not attractive at all. I almost didn't recognize her. "She was twenty one. The fat photos she used to get the job were photoshopped."

"What about her accomplice, and her sister?" asked Katherine, studying the photo. I couldn't look at it any longer and turned away. Inga's eyes seemed full of hate.

"No sister, but that's a scam she pulled before, getting money from her marks to pay for her poor, abused sister, or sick mother," he answered. "She'd done the Au Pair scam last year in the U.S., in South Carolina. Suckered the guy out of almost sixty thousand dollars before she skipped town. His wife found out and forced him to file a report earlier this year with the F.B.I. that I discovered. It looks like they got a little greedy this time, thinking they could kill Katherine and get even more money out of you without her around. Her "boyfriend" is a Ukrainian gangster, who pimped her out as a teenager and then, when he realized how good she was at acting, set her on doing these extortion scams by posing as a nanny. There are a string of men in Stockholm she's extorted money from before she decided to go the Au Pair route last year since she was getting too much notoriety. Swedish police are looking for the gangster and we've got evidence from the email and wire transfer to tie back to him if they catch him."

"What about Tyler? Is the D.A. still keeping the criminal case open?" Katherine asked.

The detective looked at us thoughtfully.

"No, I came over to wrap it up. You have some friends in the D.A.'s office it seems, and they decided it wasn't worth wasting investigative time on the self-defense shooting of a known criminal," he said, then shook his head slowly. "One thing bothers me still. You two are too smart to have let this escalate to the point... well, to her death at least. I have some questions, off the record. More my own curiosity. I'm not accusing you of anything, and we aren't pressing charges."

"We don't have to answer anything," Katherine said, grabbing my hand under the table and squeezing it. "Why would we?"

"It's just... I've been doing this job a long time and you get good at reading people. That night, after she was killed, you two looked cool as cucumbers. I mean, you were in shock, but not like I would expect, and both of you wanted to talk to lawyers. It made me wonder if you guys were hiding something, as that's the kind of behavior I've seen from conspirators after a crime. A normal couple would be talking my ear off that night."

"Well, we aren't hiding anything. People show shock in different ways," Katherine said stiffly. "Plus I'm a lawyer, so I know it's best to not speak when you're emotional and I told Tyler the same thing."

"Well, I've also seen some pretty fucked up shit, so naturally I wondered if your story might be too simple, too cliché. In scenarios like yours, I think about other possibilities... what if the husband seduced the nanny, instead of the other way around? I mean the texts and video are pretty incriminatory. Then maybe the wife kills her out of jealousy when she finds out. The couple cover it up, disguising murder as self-defense, and then make amends as the husband lies for his wife's benefit. That's the kind of sick shit my mind drifts towards, but maybe I'm just too much of a cynic these days. That kind of thing didn't happen here... right?" He stared at us, the amiable smile on his face at odds with his sharp eyes.

"My husband works in movies, so he might be better suited to discuss a fiction script," replied Katherine, her jaw setting. "You have all the evidence. You just told us her background. There is no juicy Hollywood story here."

"Right, right. It all checks out. The videos, the email, your explanation of the texts, and even the wire. It all fits with your story. Plus we identified her. You guys are covered. There is no chance of charges being pressed as you'd never be found guilty. So, just tell me, Katherine, you really didn't know about the affair until you walked in that evening?"

"No," said Katherine stiffly. "I've already said that."

"I see. I just can't imagine you being the type to go for a gun like that."

"I was very upset. Put yourself in my shoes. I wasn't thinking straight."

"Fair enough. One other thing. Tyler, did you really forget to turn on the hidden camera?" he asked me. "All that planning and you forget to set it to record?"

"Inga distracted me when I came home. I thought I'd have time later."

"Well, that certainly would have made the investigation simple if you had the actual confrontation on video," he said, looking at us each in turn. "Such bad luck it wasn't turned on. I guess we have to just take your word for it, don't we?"

"We didn't set this up, if that's your implication," said Katherine. "Why would I have chosen a gun with blanks, if that was our plan?"

"No, I guess you're right," he said, looking disappointed. "Well, I know this has been traumatic, so I hope you guys are recovering. I'll be out of your hair now and leave you to all the reporters that have been camped outside your street all week. It's disgusting how news programs just feast on this kind of stuff versus more important stories."

Katherine and I looked at each other silently after he left. The mutual relief we both felt was palpable. The investigation was over and we were free.

"Well, I guess that's settled now," she said, giving me a hug. "Now we just have to fix us."

I held her tight and fought back a fresh set of tears. She was still hurt and upset with me, but we'd begun the process of mending our fractured relationship. Inga's behavior that fatal night had made Katherine fully understand just what an insane and manipulative monster we'd let into our household. I was still at fault for not telling Katherine immediately, that first night, but she seemed to believe I had been forced into my actions against my will. Whether she suspected I'd enjoyed my non-stop fucking of Inga while I'd wallowed in guilty indecision, I didn't dare ask. My willingness to "play along" with Inga's sexual demands still made me sick with remorse.

What mattered to Katherine was I had done what I needed to do when it had mattered most, and did it to protect her and our children.

"Yes. I just want this nightmare to be over," I murmured into her hair.

It was over, but the secret Katherine and I shared would linger on. While we hadn't planned on killing Inga, we'd definitely set up the confrontation that led to her violent ending. And we'd gone out of our way to destroy evidence and align our stories to ensure that the official version, that Katherine wasn't plotting with me, was watertight.

You see, the true story was slightly different than what I'd told the police. I'd gone to Katherine at her office two days before that fateful night and told her everything. I even showed her the full blackmail video. She was devastated, but somehow believed me when I explained how I'd been drugged and raped that first night. The threat to our kids kicked her into action more than the threat to her own life, and she buried her anger and pain at my deceit to help me figure out how to solve our problem.

Katherine's a lawyer, a litigator in fact, and hard as nails when it comes to revenge. Merciless might be a good way to describe her, and her anger focused completely on Inga. She was upset with me, livid to be honest, but channeled all her rage at the deceitful slut who had infiltrated our house and destroyed our marriage.

Katherine's plan was simple, and exactly what I told Paul while in the police station, minus her involvement of course. We'd record the confrontation, get Inga to admit her illegal acts, and use the video to get her thrown in jail and, ideally, her Swedish boyfriend arrested for wire fraud and extortion. Katherine didn't want to go to the police without Inga's confession on video since she knew the girl might be able to skate free and blame her ex-boyfriend for the extortion.

We'd worked out the timing for Katherine to arrive earlier than Inga expected that evening, mostly because she didn't want me fucking Inga one more time. Not fucking Inga had been a firm rule, and Katherine had rescheduled her morning fitness classes to eliminate the window of opportunity Inga normally used to have her way with me.

Inga had thrown us for a loop by seducing me earlier than I suspected that evening, and Katherine had truly been enraged when she'd come home and discovered us in bed and naked. Her anger had been authentic, as had been my shame at being caught. Our responses likely helped fool Inga into thinking we weren't in cahoots to double-cross her. Katherine wasn't supposed to get the gun from the closet, that was Inga's role, but Katherine's anger at catching us in the act made her change the plan and decide to try to threaten Inga to get her to talk.

Inga's gun had been a real surprise for me, and I was glad I hadn't loaded both of my pistols with blanks, which had been Katherine's original idea to remove any risk of a fatality. There had been a moment that evening where I had been truly afraid Inga was going to kill Katherine, and that fear was what gave me the courage to pull the trigger and shoot our tormentor instead.

Killing another person, especially one I'd been fucking only minutes before, was a devastating act. I found myself still haunted by Inga's expression of betrayal before I pulled the trigger. She'd been as stunned as Katherine had pretended to be.

After I'd pulled the trigger, Katherine had been the one to snap into damage control mode as I stood in silent shock at my act. Now that Inga was dead, Katherine knew her involvement in setting up that fateful confrontation might be viewed as criminal. The cleaner story was that I had set it up all by myself, but things had gone wrong.

She'd made us review the footage from the hidden camera and ultimately delete it before we called the police. While the confrontation was mostly as I had described in my original statement, there was one line in the video that was damning, plus all the footage of our scheming afterwards as we discussed what to do. If the police heard that one line, they'd wonder if Katherine had known and whether the night had been a vigilante set-up to kill Inga versus self-defense as I'd claimed.

Right before I'd raised my gun, as Inga had laughed at her, Katherine had looked at me and said, "Tyler, We have enough evidence. Shoot this crazy bitch. Now!"

Her encouragement helped me pull the trigger. As painful as it was to take another person's life, I've no doubt now it was the right decision.

Damn, I love my Kit-Kat.