Empty Promises

to be twenty-five hundred up front,” Stout said, explaining that no hired gun in his right mind would pop someone for nothing. What assurance would he have that she wouldn’t run and spend her insurance payoff in some foreign country?
    Sandra nodded.
    “And it would have to be twenty-dollar bills.”
    From what she’d read in books and seen on television, this was the way it was done, and she nodded eagerly. After all, if her husband was killed, she would have the insurance, and two homes. She could easily afford the $5,000. It was a bargain. “But it will take me a week or so to get twenty-five hundred together,” she explained, “and I don’t know if I can get it all in twenties, but I’ll try.”
    Now that she felt the financial terms were set, Sandra began to set her ground rules. As for the murder itself, she didn’t want her husband killed in their home. “I have children at home,” she said, “and Burt’s hardly ever home alone. I wouldn’t want them to see it.”
    She had a plan, however. Her mother had died recently and left Sandra and Burt a home in the Oakbrook section of Tacoma. The house was full of valuable antiques. It was a sitting duck for burglars, so the family made sure someone was there all the time. Sandra’s daughter, Claudette, had lived there for a while but had recently moved out. To protect the antiques, Sandra and Burt had been taking turns sleeping there until they could find a trustworthy tenant.
    “I’ll see that it isn’t rented again until Burt is killed,” she promised Walt Stout. That would make it very convenient for Burt to be taken care of on one of the nights when he was sleeping at the Oakbrook house. “We can drive by there now,” she said, “so you’ll know where it is, and you can get familiar with the floor plan.”
    Walt Stout, who knew every inch of Pierce County by heart from his days on patrol, pretended to need Sandra’s directions to find the Oakbrook neighborhood. It must have been Sandra’s night to sleep there because the house was empty. She led him through the rooms that were indeed packed full of armoires, fragile-looking chairs, tables, paintings, china, and figurines. Stout wasn’t an expert on antiques, but the stuff looked valuable. He wondered to himself if she was going to warn him not to accidentally put a bullet hole in any of these treasures when he shot Burt.
    Even though Walt Stout had been in law enforcement for many years, it felt almost surreal for him to be in this house, which still had the sense of the old woman who had lived here and who had obviously cherished it. Listening to Sandra Treadway outline her plans, he found it hard to believe that she could be plotting her husband’s violent death so casually and coldly.
    There was no doubt in Stout’s mind that Sandra Treadway intended to have her husband killed. She told him she would have the money by August 15, and they agreed to meet again at the Villa Bowl in the Villa Plaza. She promised to bring along a picture of Burt Treadway and detailed information about him so “Doug” could begin his plans to murder him.
    Walt Stout breathed a sigh of relief. For the time being, at least, Burt Treadway was safe. Until the fifteenth, anyway. Sandra believed she had hired a real killer.
    Their next meeting was set for 10:00 P.M. on the fifteenth. Early that evening, Stout met with Chief Criminal Deputy Henry Suprunowski, whom his men called Ski, and Detective Terry Murphy, at the Pierce County West Precinct. They would coordinate their movements so there would be three witnesses to Sandra Treadway’s plan to kill her husband.
    Stout would drive the Chevy convertible, the same car he’d used during his first meeting with Sandra. There was a relatively thin barrier between the trunk compartment and the backseat. Detective Terry Murphy would hide in the trunk where he would be able to hear every word of the conversation between Stout and Sandra Treadway.
    Suprunowski would park a short distance away where he could observe the car. On Stout’s signal—a light touch on his brake lights—Suprunowski would be alerted to the fact that the money for the hit had actually been exchanged, and Ski would then move in for the arrest.
    At a quarter to ten, Stout and Murphy pulled up behind a hardware store near the Villa Bowl, and Murphy crawled into the car’s trunk. Then Stout drove to the meeting place where Sandra Treadway would be waiting—if she hadn’t changed her