A Degree in Murder

Chapter Twenty: Plotting And Scheming

What the hell am I doing?

Eleanor had been on the road for four hours before finally arriving at her destination: a rundown shack of a house on the outskirts of Greensborough, a small town located in the next state. The purchase of the house was made on the cheap using a fake ID she bought over the internet. It was surprising how quickly you could get one in this day and age. The owner did not question the authenticity of her ID, obviously more interested in offloading the property.

She parked her rental car along the street outside the house, took out a bag from the back seat and quickly entered the house. The inside was no better than the outside. It looked like nobody had lived here in months. Eleanor moved towards a light switch and flicked it on. No surprises there. Damn it. The power was out as expected. Not that it mattered anyway but she was hoping to at least get something out of it.

There was only one reason why Eleanor bought this house and she was staring right at it. A battered gray door stared back at her. She removed a lantern from her backpack, turned it on and opened the door. The stairs creaked with every step she took, making Eleanor very uneasy. When she reached the bottom of the staircase, the rest of the room was illuminated. A boiler sat in the far right corner of the room but that was not what caught her attention. A small metal desk sat on the far left of the room with a filing cabinet adjacent to it. Eleanor took out some cleaning supplies and began cleaning the area around the desk, a task which would her close to an hour.

Satisfied with her work, Eleanor sat back in the chair while staring intently at her bag. The plan, which was inspired by a novel Eleanor spent the early parts of her suspension reading, was both straight forward and complicated. The first part of this incredulous idea involved obtaining a general anaesthetic drug without it being traced back to her. General anaesthetics were not drugs a person could get by simply waltzing into a pharmacy with a doctor's prescription. Stealing said drug from her work place was well out of the question because the risks far outweighed the benefits.

She removed a small laptop and a wireless router from her backpack, placed them on the table and fired them up. There was one other way she could obtain what she desired. Eleanor turned on the VPN application and set her location to Caixas do Sul, Brazil. If anyone tried to track her location, they'd have to put in some elbow grease. A few keystrokes later and Eleanor found herself surfing the dark web. She typed the name of the drug in the search bar and the results flooded the page. Methodical as always, she went page by page looking for the best deal as well as a payment and delivery method that would best suit her. Twenty minutes later she found the perfect one: Delivered at her doorstep and payment strictly in cash. No paper trail to follow. Both sides protected.

I'm glad that's sorted.

However the elephant in the room was yet to be addressed: how would she be able to sneak in undetected, commit the crime of the century, escape, and return to work like nothing happened. The last updateshe got on Truss was almost a week old, more than enough time for things to change. There were two people Eleanor could obtain this information from but only one she trusted outright: Liam Gallagher.