Storm Vengeance

by Pamela Cowan

  From that spot, a path where the grass had been pressed down in one direction led Storm to another smaller area where the bent blades of grass seemed to indicate a body had rested, a little farther on was a third, and from it an ever more obvious path led toward a line of trees. Storm was fairly sure what she was seeing.

  Celine must have regained consciousness and scratched her way out of the gravel. Lauren must not have piled on enough, and there must have been a pocket of air. Maybe she’d landed face down, her forearms creating a space. However it happened, she had gotten to her feet but then fallen, leaving the first sign. She’d stood up again and then fallen again, leaving the second depression. Finally, she’d fallen a

  third time, and this time, too weak to get up, had crawled off into the brush.

  “She’s working away from us, toward the road. We have to find her before she gets there,” Storm cautioned. She pointed to the trail, and then hurried to follow it.

  They found her because of the white blouse she wore. As Storm played her flashlight back and forth it picked up the white cloth like a beacon. She was just short of reaching the tree line. If she’d reached that, they might not have spotted her so easily.

  From where Celine had been buried in the gravel, she’d traveled downhill, a natural inclination and probably necessary given her condition. She was splattered with mud, her hands, one reaching out ahead, one resting in line with her shoulders, were smeared with it. But the mud had not completely covered her familiar blond-streaked hair. Storm recognized Celine, the woman who had seen too much.

  It was sad, really. She’d obviously put up a huge struggle. Storm admired the woman’s determination. Maybe there was some way to fix this. What if they got out of here, found a pay phone, and called 911?

  Lauren moved ahead, bumping Storm as she went past. Standing on uneven ground, Storm staggered and nearly fell but managed to right herself with a soft spoken but angry, “Lauren!”

  She swung her light. Even the dim, erratic light was enough to let Storm see the shovel come down, swung like the giant sledge hammer at a county fair. She heard the smack it made as it slammed into the back of Celine’s head. It reminded her of the time she’d dropped an entire carton of eggs on the floor, a muffled wet cracking sound. Then there was another and one more.

  Lauren stood, leaning on the shovel, breathing hard. After a moment she said, “I’ll go get the tarp.”

  Storm nodded. There was nothing more to say.

  They rolled Celine’s body onto the tarp, and then grabbed the front corners and dragged her to the car. She was not a large woman and, with the slick tarp beneath her, the body slid easily across the grass. It was a little harder to lift her into the trunk but with both of them, not unmanageable. Lauren complained about her shoulder but still took her share of the load. There was very little blood. Maybe Celine was already dead before Lauren hit her. Storm hoped so.

  Looking at her cell phone, Storm realized it was much later than she’d told Tom she’d be home. Hopefully he’d gone to bed and wouldn’t realize just how late. It was past ten and they still had to wait an hour before Traynor Chemical’s security was gone for the day.

  “We have to kill some time, but let’s get out of here.”

  “Yes, this place gives me the creeps. It’s spooky,” said Lauren.

  Storm was more concerned about neighbors calling the cops to come out and investigate the strange noises and lights. But whatever the reason, it would feel good to get back to town.

  Because Storm felt they’d draw more suspicion by parking somewhere, they drove for the next hour, from one suburban maze to another. A couple times she thought she’d become hopelessly lost, but eventually they managed to find their way back to a familiar road. In a pinch she could have had Lauren use her navigation program, but getting lost and wasting time was, for once, a good thing.

  At eleven fifteen they pulled into Traynor Chemical’s parking lot. Storm surprised herself by wishing Howard was there. Hauling a body around, even a small body such as Celine’s, was no easy task.

  “I think the fastest way is if I run in, grab one of the carts, and bring it out. We’ll load her in it then get her into the oxidizer.”

  “Okay,” said Lauren. “I’ll wait here until you get back.

  Storm walked swiftly down the sidewalk. Her feet squelched in the puddles left by the rain. Dragging the

  mag key from her back pocket, she passed it over the reader and waited for the red light to change to green.

  Nothing.

  No telltale beep. No change in the light.

  She tried it again. Got the same result.

  “Fuck.” Turning the key over, Storm held it against the reader, tried swiping it from side to side.

  Back at the car Lauren was standing outside near the trunk, waiting.

  “The card isn’t working,” Storm told her, striding back to the car. “They must have changed the locks.” She could hear the panic in her own voice. The final unravelling of this night of bad surprises.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Lauren.

  Storm shook her head. It was after eleven and Tom was probably lying in bed wondering where the hell she’d gone. His suspicions churning through his mind and keeping him awake.

  There was a dead body in her trunk they had to dispose of, and they still had to get back to the hospital parking lot to retrieve Lauren’s car.

  Shoulders slumped, she stared down at the ground, tugged at her frayed cuffs, and admitted, “I have no idea.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “I ALWAYS KNEW they’d get around to changing the locks eventually. I actually thought it would be sooner,” Storm said.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Lauren, sliding into the passenger seat. “I have this funny feeling, like somebody’s watching us.”

  Storm hurried to comply, fumbling to buckle her seatbelt with her left hand while starting the car with her right. “We’re going. I just wish I knew where.” Storm backed the car and drove away from Traynor Chemical for what she was sure was the last time.

  “Any ideas?” asked Lauren. “Maybe we should have left her there, piled some more gravel over her.”

  Storm rubbed her fingers across her lips, went quiet as she thought. “Too public. Someone will buy the land, move the gravel, and find her. We need somewhere private. A place no one goes.”

  “Yeah, well good luck with that. Maybe if we were in Alaska or something, but here there are people everywhere. You can’t even go for a walk on a hiking trail without bumping into crowds.”

  “True,” Storm agreed.

  The list of places she thought she could hide a body was short. Dump her in the ocean? Too far away. A really remote spot in the wilderness? Lauren had called it right. There was nothing truly remote anywhere near. Someone, no, many someone’s had the same idea and would head out to supposedly isolated forestland just to find there was someone there first.

  “Maybe the Columbia River? Head all the way out toward the Dalles?” Storm said, thinking aloud. “But no, that would take a long time, and I just don’t know the area well enough.”

  “What if it wasn’t a place no one went? What if it was a place only one person went?”

  “What?” asked Storm, confused by the convoluted question.

  “You said no place public would work, but what if there was a place only one person went, and that person was me?”

  Storm took her eyes off the road in order to look at Lauren. “Huh?” she asked.

  “The basement,” Lauren explained. “I’m the only one who ever goes in there. The house is in the middle of not much. I don’t ever get company. The landlord lives in Florida, so it’s not like he’s dropping by to check things out. All I ever do is send a check to the management company.”

  “I don’t know,” Storm said, reluctant to agree. Placing Celine’s body in Lauren’s basement would create another connection between them. How much did she actually trust Lauren now? Not as much as she
had. She’d moved well into the Howard zone of craziness and unpredictability. But then, what choice did she have? No bright ideas were coming to her. “As I recall the floor was hard packed dirt. It would be really hard for us to dig up.”

  Lauren jerked forward and smacked her palms against the dash, beating out a short and enthusiastic drum roll. “That’s the cool part,” she said. “When I moved in, they had to dig up the back part of the basement to fix some sort of drain going to the septic system. They put the dirt back and patted it down, but it’s way softer back there. I bet we could do it. I bet we could dig down three or four feet, easy.”

  “But what if they have to dig it up again?”

  “They won’t. The guy said the new pipes would last longer than the house. No one will ever find it, at least not for years. Even if I moved out tomorrow, I bet.”

  Storm steeled herself against Lauren’s confidence. She had to think. Was this the best solution? The clock kept ticking. Tom would either be asleep or getting really worried. She was too rattled to come up with a good excuse. Though she knew she’d need one before she got home. If Lauren were bigger, more like Howard, she could have explained the situation and she could have taken care of disposing of the body by herself. But that wasn’t going to happen. Lauren was too small to move a body, much less dig a grave. No, she’d have to come along, no matter how much time it took.

  “Okay,” she told Lauren. “I can’t think of a better idea. We’ll do it.”

  Storm decided it made sense to take a stab at digging the hole first, before they took the tarp-covered body out of the trunk. It would be easier if they discovered they couldn’t dig a usable hole and had to transport it elsewhere. She took the same two pairs of gloves they’d used before from the trunk and handed one pair to Lauren.

  Acid ate at Storm’s stomach as she entered the house, crossed the kitchen, and headed down the familiar basement stairs. Her finger still throbbed now and then, a flash of nerve pain that she worried might be a new lifelong ache, like the knee that hurt when it rained. She was beginning to understand why old people bitched about their aches and pains so often. They were hard to ignore.

  She was walking ahead of Lauren, who had waved her forward politely, and she was moving fast. She didn’t want Lauren too close behind. The basement was dark and stirred memories of a type of helplessness that Storm had found alarming. She’d never felt the need to kill as strongly as she had in the basement. Did that mean she and Lauren were equals, destined for a strong and lasting partnership, or was their growing friendship just a pretense? Was she destined to follow through with the urge and kill her intern? Maybe, she decided. But probably not today.

  Lauren had turned on the overhead lights and it was enough to help her negotiate the stairs, but as soon as she reached the bottom, Storm turned on her flashlight. The light was dimmer toward the back of the basement, and she was glad she’d thought to put it in her coat pocket.

  It was cold. A damp chill penetrated her coat and Storm shivered, the flashlight she held casting a shaky light. There was nothing much to see. The back wall and sides of the basement had once held heavy wooden shelves. They’d been taken down and piled against one wall. They teetered there, covered in dust and cobwebs. The bolt holes for the fixtures that had once held the shelves showed up as round holes pocking the rough concrete walls. The floor was a wide expanse of tan dirt, packed down fairly evenly. Wooden studs ran lengthwise across the ceiling, and in and around them snaked electrical wire and pipes of unknown purpose.

  Storm stopped and dug her toe into the ground. There was no give. It felt as hard and smooth as cement. “I don’t know . . .” she began.

  “Wait, I’ll get a shovel.” Lauren went back to the stairs, reached under them, and came out with a round nosed shovel and what looked like a long crowbar. “They used this to break up the dirt when they started.” She slammed the chiseled end of the tool into the ground. There was a hollow thump and then a slight reverberation as the tool recoiled into Lauren’s hands. With a puzzled lift to her brow, Lauren moved closer to the back wall of the basement and tried again. This time the business end of the tool sunk deep into softer soil.

  Storm, feeling her confidence rise, stepped forward. Using the shovel Lauren had handed her, she placed it near where Lauren was working, put her foot on it, and jumped, putting every ounce of her weight to use. The shovel slid into the ground with less resistance than she’d expected.

  “It’s not going to be easy,” Storm said, “But I think you’re right. I think this is going to work.”

  Lauren smiled. “Told you so.”

  Storm smiled back and got busy.

  It took nearly an hour to excavate a hole large enough to please Storm. By the time they were done, they were covered in dirt, with rivulets of sweat leaving trails through their skin.

  Storm stretched, easing her aching back. “Ready?” she croaked, her throat dry and choked with dust.

  Lauren nodded.

  The two women went back up the stairs wearily. This time Storm was too tired to seek an advantage. If Lauren wanted to attack, this would be the opportune time. Nothing happened.

  They got to the car and unlocked the trunk. For an anxious second Storm wondered if the body would be there. It had disappeared once, it could do so again.

  This time, it was right where it belonged. Between them, they managed to wrestle Celine from the car. It had been easier earlier. Maybe the adrenaline rush had sustained them. Or maybe their arms and shoulders hadn’t been strained and overworked.

  After a good look around, Storm strained to hear. There were no cars coming that she could tell. Weaving her fingers together, she cupped them under Celine’s neck and was able to lift her shoulders off the ground. Lauren grabbed the corpse’s ankles and struggled but was not able to lift the body off the ground. They ended up with Storm half lifting and half dragging the body while Lauren directed her.

  It could have been a comical routine if they hadn’t been aware of the sobering fact that they’d both go to prison for the rest of their lives if they were caught.

  Together they struggled to get the body through the doorway, dropping it twice. They were sweating hard by the time they’d dragged it inside the house and closed the door. Once inside, the body was easier to move. The two of them grabbed the tarp and dragged it across the kitchen floor.

  When they reached the top of the basement landing they exchanged looks, and then together they each placed a foot on the corpse and pushed. It tumbled down the stairs, slowing until it stopped, only half way down. With an impatient sigh, Lauren hurried down the stairs and pushed and kicked the body the rest of the way down.

  “I know you’ve got to get home,” she said to Storm.

  “I appreciate that,” Storm said.

  They dragged the body across the floor and into the hole. By the time they managed to slide it over the edge, they were both panting. Sweat ran down Storm’s face and into her eyes.

  “It’s sort of on its side,” Lauren said, looking down. “Should we . . .”

  “No, it’s fine,” Storm argued. Long strands of hair had come free and clung to her damp skin. She tucked them behind her ears, stood, and stretched her back

  again. Then, with a resigned sigh, she reached for a shovel and began to dig.

  “Could I use your restroom to wash up?” Storm asked when they were done, the earth firmly packed down around the body.

  “Of course,” said Lauren. “Things sure have changed between us,” she said as she showed Storm the way. “I never would have guessed we’d end up being friends.”

  Storm nodded, gave a weary smile, and stepped into the bathroom, closing the door and locking it behind her.

  The bathroom was a plain, dated room with bubblegum pink walls, white tile on the walls, black and white squares of linoleum on the floor. A row of ceramic fish hung on the wall above the claw foot bathtub, colorful ceramic bubbles floating above them. Her grandmother had a similar arrangement. Sh
e guessed that the house had come furnished and decorated.

  The mirror above the sink was also old, dark gray stains mottling the silver around the edges. Storm twisted the faucet handles, then filled her cupped hands with cool water and splashed her face three times. Taking a towel from a bar, she dried off. The towel smelled like a combination of fabric softener and mold.

  Picking up a bar of yellow Dial soap, she washed her hands, sucking in her breath when it touched an open cut on her forefinger, the same finger Lauren had hit with the hammer. The area under the nail was still dark black at the cuticle, fading to a murky green near the tip. The force of the hammer had driven the edge of the nail into her skin. The wound would begin to heal, and then Storm would catch the nail on something and it would reopen. She rinsed the soap off quickly, then dabbed her finger dry with the towel before drying the rest of her hands.

  Looking into the mirror she mouthed the word friends.

  “Your turn to clean up,” Storm said, leaving the bathroom. “Once you get done, we’ll go get your car.”

  “Okay,” said Lauren, moving past as Storm headed down the hall toward the kitchen.

  “I’m gonna run back down. Make sure we got everything,” Storm told the closed bathroom door.

  A muffled sound told her she’d been heard.

  Storm hurried across the room. She’d seen two things in the kitchen. A roll of paper towels and a bottle of olive oil. Ripping off a couple sheets, she hastily sprinkled oil on them, wiped the bottle, and then raced down the basement stairs.

  She wasn’t worried about what they’d left. She’d checked before coming upstairs. No, what she worried about was at the other end of the basement. Taking the oil filled cloth, she swiftly wiped down the table and the chair. She found the broken strands of wire that had once been wound around her neck, wrapped them around her fingers, and then stuck the small rolls in her pockets. A wad of discarded duct tape on the floor near the chair was quickly snatched up and shoved into another pocket. She didn’t see any blood on the floor. She’d carried most of it with her in her hair and on her clothes. There wasn’t anything she could do about it anyway. Storm was heading back up the stairs when Lauren appeared at the top.