Your Murder is 3 Stops Away
The algorithm doesn't care about the body count. It only cares about the rating.
The ultimate camouflage isn’t a ghillie suit or a high-tech cloak. It’s a twelve-dollar polyester vest and a box of Tide pods. We’ve been trained to treat the person on our porch as an extension of the app—a moving GPS coordinate that occasionally drops a package and a notification. We don’t look at their faces. We look at the status bar.
But when you stop seeing the person, you stop seeing the threat.
Stop 42
The app pulsed blue on the dashboard mount.
Stop 42. You are 4 minutes behind your Prime window.
The Driver watched the countdown. He didn’t look at the house. Every second the van idled, a red bar lengthened on a dashboard somewhere far away. He pulled a heavy box from the rack. Rough cardboard sucked the moisture from his fingertips.
The cutter sat in the side pocket of his vest. Same place it always sat.
Outside, the pavement smelled like wet asphalt and dryer sheets. A porch light flickered. The front door opened before he reached the walk.
“Hey there!” the man called. He wore a team jersey and clean sneakers. “Saw you on the map. Thought I’d save you the walk.”
The Driver stopped. His heart hit the wall of his chest. The man came down the driveway, smiling, hands already out.
“Heavy one today, huh?”
The Driver looked at the man’s throat. A pulse jumped there.
“I can take it from here, man. No worries.”
Their fingers brushed.
The Driver dropped the box. It hit the man’s toes with a dull thud. The man winced and laughed, a short, automatic sound.
“Whoops.”
The Driver slid the tab forward.
Click.
Click.
The blade jammed against a piece of grit.
“You shouldn’t have come out,” the Driver said.
He stepped forward grabbing the man’s shoulder. The team jersey felt thin under his palm. The man’s mouth opened, but only a wet clicking sound came out.
The Driver swung the cutter in a short, horizontal arc across the man’s throat. Resistance was minimal.
The man slumped onto the box. Dark liquid soaked into the cardboard. The Driver grabbed the box by the corner and dragged it three feet to the left. He needed a clean background for the app. He angled the phone to keep the man’s twitching legs out of the shot.
The flash popped.
Package delivered.
Stop 43
The Driver wiped the blade on his cargo pants. He watched the polyester darken. The steel retracted with a single click.
The app chimed.
Stop 43. 0.4 miles away.
The van rolled forward. He turned a corner. A beige house sat at the end of the block. A heavy ceramic planter stood by the door, filled with plastic hydrangeas. He took a padded envelope from the shelf. It weighed almost nothing.
The porch boards sounded hollow under his boots. A blue ring lit around the doorbell.
The front door opened. She leaned out, one hand on the frame. The other held her phone.
She raised a finger. Her lips moved, silent and sharp. “I’m on a call.”
The Driver didn’t stop.
He caught her by the throat and drove her back against the siding.
The blade of the box cutter was a short, silver tooth. He pulled it across her throat in one clean motion.
“I’m just saying, I don’t think the husband actually loved her,” a woman’s voice said from the phone’s speaker. A chorus of light laughter followed.
The phone slipped from her hand. It landed face up on the welcome mat. The screen stayed bright.
She reached for her neck. Her fingers slid in the wetness. Red flooded her white collar. It pattered onto the porch boards.
“Does anyone else need a refill?” another voice asked. The clink of a bottle against glass came through the speaker. “Sarah, you’re being very quiet. Did you finish the chapter?”
She slumped. Her head hit the siding with a soft click. Her heels drummed the boards once. Then they stopped.
The book club continued on the mat.
“Next month we are definitely doing something lighter,” a voice said. “No more dead wives.”
The Driver set the envelope on the planter. He stood on his tiptoes to get the right angle for the photo. He framed the woman’s body out of the shot. All the app saw was the padded mailer and the decorative ceramic pot.
The flash bleached the porch white.
Stop 44
The interior light flickered when he opened the van door. His safety vest was soaked. The fabric felt heavy against his ribs. In the dimness the blood looked like old paint.
Stop 44. Last stop.
He parked in front of a bungalow with an overgrown lawn. Dandelions sprouted in the driveway cracks. He took out a heavy box. He didn’t use the dolly. He wanted the weight on his shoulders.
A worn-out mat on the porch said: PETS WELCOME. PEOPLE TOLERATED.
He waited longer than the app liked. A fat orange cat eyed him from the window. He watched the shadows behind the lace curtains. No one moved. He dropped the box on the concrete. The sound of breaking glass came from inside the cardboard.
He kept waiting. His thumb rested on the tab of the cutter.
Click.
The door stayed shut. No one came out to save him the walk.
He took a photo of the box. The flash bleached the siding pale.
Back in the van, the door shut with a sharp metallic snap. The app chimed, bright and musical.
Route complete. 44 of 44 stops delivered. Stop 44 sent a “Thank My Driver”! You earned a $5 bonus. Top 1% performance today. Keep it up!
The Driver stared at his reflection in the dark glass of the phone. He touched the gold banner on the display.
He didn’t reach for the wet wipes. He didn’t try to scrub the stains. He just ran his hand over the yellow vest. The polyester was beginning to stiffen as it dried.
“Five dollars,” he said.
He looked at the high-vis yellow in the rearview mirror. He was part of the landscape now. He could stand on any porch in the zip code. As long as he held a box, the world looked right through him.
He patted the dark, wet spots on his chest.
He put the van in gear.
THE END.
While this story is a work of fiction, in early 2024, a man dressed in a UPS uniform used a cardboard box as a prop to gain entry to a home in Coon Rapids, Minnesota. He carried out a triple homicide while a 911 call recorded the background noise. Like the Driver, he was part of the landscape until it was too late.
The Reality Check: Coon Rapids Triple Homicide
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It’s part of my short story collection, Farrago: Volume 1. Purchase the twenty-two story collection here:
Yikes! Great read!!! Have a great weekend...