The man accidentally killed the woman during an argument. He gave her a light shove and she fell down the stairs. He knew the woman’s brother was a low level enforcer in a gang. The man put the body in his car and buried it in the woods by the highway.
After a few days of the woman being missing, the enforcer brother started looking for her. He asked around. Some people had seen her with the man. The enforcer visited the man. The man had hoped the enforcer wouldn’t come by. The man had hoped the enforcer wouldn’t know to look for him.
The man opened the door a crack, with the chain on. The enforcer asked if the man knew what happened to his sister. The man said they had spent some time together at a bar and then parted ways near a bus stop. The enforcer asked if he could come in. The man said he would meet the enforcer in public if they wanted to talk more. The enforcer said sure, and they decided to meet up at a bar down the street later that night.
The enforcer planned to hang out around the man's house and when the man left, the enforcer would break in and look around. The man left for the bar, bringing pepper spray if he needed to protect himself. The enforcer picked the lock and looked around. He found a piece of his sister’s fingernail on the carpet by the stairs—she had a distinctive design that the enforcer had seen her sporting, swirls of glittery paint on the nail. He called the bar and told the bartender to tell the man something came up and the enforcer would have to meet him another time. Then the enforcer hid in the apartment and waited for the man to come back.
When the enforcer hadn’t shown up at the bar, the man, already fearful, got more so. He came back to his house and went to unlock the door. Normally he only locked the bottom lock and not the top one, but just unlocking the bottom lock didn't work. He unlocked both locks and the door opened. He then felt intense fear. He went out back and sneaked in the back window. He got out his pepper spray. He then went through the dark apartment as quietly as possible, seeing if he could spot someone hiding in wait.
He got to his bedroom closet and opened it and the enforcer sprung out. The man blinded the enforcer with pepper spray and the enforcer fell down. The man grabbed a barbell from the bedroom floor and bludgeoned the enforcer over the head, killing him.
The man put the body in his bathtub and cleaned up the blood. He tried to figure out what to do. A missing enforcer would warrant an investigation by his gang. They might come by if they knew what the enforcer was up to.
The man should throw them off the scent by providing them with an alternative story of what happened: the enforcer got killed by their rival gang. There had been peace between the gangs but back in the day the rival gang would sometimes send a message by killing an enemy gang member and slashing an x across his face, then leaving him in a public place. The man decided he would do this.
He slashed an x across the face of the enforcer and then in the dead of night drove the body to a public park and left the body in the parking lot, face up. The next day the body was found and the police were called. The local news picked up the story. The media and cops and the enforcer's gang interpreted his death as a message from the rival gang.
A gang war exploded. By the time it cooled down, the body count was 10 people total, and 3 innocents killed incidentally during a gunfight.
No one from the enforcer’s gang came by the man’s house. No police officers came by either. He had been careful to remove any obvious evidence that could be traced back to him, and the evidence of a gangland hit was so overpowering that the cops and the enforcer's gang didn’t look in other possible directions.
The man lived out his life undiscovered. He kept the secret to his end.