Dark Horse

by Doug Richardson

  He was hyperventilating. He had to get out of the car. Get air. He pushed open the door and stepped out into the misting rain, circling back around to the sidewalk. There he saw the flat tire and realized, that much, he could do.

  That much, he could fix!

  The flat tire. It was punctured just inside the first row of tread. And there was the obstacle of Mitch’s broken hand. His next inclination was to call the auto club from the car phone. They’d surely answer and come fix the damn thing. It’d been years since he’d changed a tire. Hell, he wasn’t even sure there was a spare in the trunk. Had he ever even looked, for God’s sake?

  Back inside the car, he dialed information to get the auto club’s number. South Texas Mobile Express put him right through. Only then did he catch a dim look at himself in the rearview mirror. The reflection revealed a red rope burn that traced his neckline just above the collar. And when he shifted his focus to the car seat, he noticed blood from the prick at the base of his neck, smeared all over the gray leather.

  That and his hand was throbbing. The medication was wearing off.

  The car was a mess. So was he.

  “Auto club,” answered the voice.

  He hung up again, briefly pausing before diving into the glove box for the owner’s manual, written for luckless morons who had bought the fine Swedish car, but knew not a singular iota about the difference between a lug nut and a tire jack. With the manual in hand, he chose to suffer the rain and change the damn tire himself. He’d think better at home once he’d knocked back another Percocet with a shot of Absolut.

  In the dimness of that side street, Mitch would’ ve had to feel around for the trunk lock had it not been for a lost load of tourists in a rental car that turned up the street. He hurried, fumbling with the keys to try and open the lock. Then, there in the wash of headlights, he saw the first traces of blood smeared upon the lid. Red on silver. He froze and the car passed without stopping.

  My blood from my hands. Mitch, get a fuckin’ grip!

  He inserted the key into the lock and popped the lid. The springs unloaded. The trunk yawned and ignited with two panel lights placed right and left. Mitch gulped back the rise of sour acid his stomach fired upward.

  Jesus, Gina…

  Twisted, bloody, and horribly dead. Gina Sweet’s eyes were fixed and screaming, just as they’d been when Shakespeare drew the knife across her soft neck. Her mouth, gaping and wide as she had tried to make a shriek, only to gag on her own blood.

  He felt his knees weaken before an autonomic electrical shock coursed through his body. He tumbled into the rainfilled gutter, crawling backward to the curb.

  Jesus, God…

  His eyes bugged and kept to the trunk, half expecting to see Gina come crawling out, laughing it up in some sick Halloween joke she’d cooked up with Shakespeare McCann.

  She never crawled out. She was oh so dead in the car’s trunk, lid up, the rain washing away at the sticky, dried blood.

  Another piece in the puzzle dropped into position. The colossal negative from which Mitch would never recover. His wife’s best friend. His car. The knife. A flat tire. What was next? It had to be the police.

  His mind raced ahead through all the culminations, combinations, ramifications. A domino effect of calamity. The media would crucify him before trial. The police would leak the evidence. The exposure would demand a first-degree prosecution. The evidence would compel a jury.

  Mitch Dutton had motive.

  Mitch Dutton had access.

  Mitch Dutton had his fingerprints on the murder weapon.

  Most important, Mitch Dutton was violent, as witnessed by the thousands who’d seen the debate, only twenty-four hours earlier.

  Think, Mitch! Think!

  Nothing came. He didn’t move. He wanted a way out. He wanted to call the police. None of it jibed, though. None of it spelled s-o-l-u-t-i-o-n. It all spelled disaster.

  Time’s wasting, dummy!

  That’s what he was doing. Wasting time. Sitting on his hands and waiting for the police to take him away in handcuffs. Mitch would never recall how long he sat on the curb, staring back at the open trunk in utter and confused shock. One minute. Two, three, four. Five minutes. The rain soaking him. He was in his own head. Moving from conclusion to resolution to prosecution, and back again.

  I am truly alone now. Nobody can help me. Not Fitz. Not Connie. Not the police. And unless I do something now, something quick, I’ll lose Connie. I’ll be dead or in prison! Now, Mitch! Now! Do something now!

  He had to get off his ass and change the fucking tire, is what he had to do. He had to change it fast and get off that fucking side street. That meant moving Gina’s body. Suddenly he found himself back on his feet and rushing to the car. His legs were wobbly. His hand throbbed. And the damn drugs weren’t helping the matter.

  Don’t operate heavy equipment, it said on the bottle. Don’t drive or change tires or move dead, stinking bodies.

  At the trunk, Mitch whirled two quick three-sixties. Just to see if anybody was watching, if cars were coming. After that, he stood over the body, his chest heaving once, then twice.

  Just change the damn tire!

  “One-eight-one?” chirped the radio.

  “One-eight-one,” responded Officer Mark Alan Lucas of the Cathedral PD. He was alone in his radio unit, eastbound on the Strand. It was 8:39 p.m.

  “Got a cell-phone call from a Mr. Samuel Torres. Says he spotted Mitch Dutton trying to change a flat tire off on Howard Street.”

  It was a slow night. Rain had a tendency to drive away potential crime-doers. And Officer Mark Alan Lucas, after the enthralling debate the night before, welcomed the opportunity to shake the candidate’s hand. Even if it meant he’d have to get his hands dirty changing a tire.

  “One-eight-one en route to help with that flat tire up on Howard. ETA less than one minute.”

  The dispatcher crackled back, “While you’re kissing the fellah’s ass, see how he feels about wage hikes.”

  “That’s a ten-four,” shot back Officer Lucas.

  Any excuse to switch on the lights atop the car was excuse enough for Officer Lucas. The stoplights went faster that way. He’d only have to slow, then roll on through. Code two, they called it. The police handbook specifically designated code twos as urgencies. Not to be confused with emergencies. That would’ve been a code three. Sirens would then be in order.

  One block up and to the left was Howard Street. The officer swung the car wide right before making the turn. This way he wouldn’t have to switch on the flood lamp fixed next to his driver’s-side window. As he cranked the wheel to the left, the police cruiser’s headlight beams swept up the short hill that was Howard Street. Officer Lucas braked midway up.

  “Dispatch, this is one-eight-one.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Parked up here on Howard. And I don’t see a damn thing. No car. No flat tire. Can you check the address again?”

  “Checking,” responded the dispatcher. “Howard Street. One block north of the Strand.”

  “I’m on Howard. And I’m one block north. All I got around here is dark.”

  Dark. That was it. A dark street. A dark sidewalk with rain running down the gutter. Parked in the middle of the street with his headlights pointed north, Officer Lucas was surely disappointed. There was no Volvo with a flat tire. No candidate Dutton in need of help. Zip. There went his story for the wife. There went his handshake.

  Backing his cruiser out onto the Strand, Officer Lucas didn’t see the prima facie evidence. He was only looking for a car with a flat tire. And clearly there was none. If he’d made a closer inspection, gotten off his wide ass and out of his unit and run a flashlight up the sidewalk, he might’ve seen the tire jack the candidate had left behind. Or the blood smears on the walkway, slowly diluting and spilling into the gutter with every drop of rain. Mitch had caught his first break.

  TEN

  KEEP THINKING, Mitch. Just keep thinking.

&
nbsp; Crossing the bridge to the mainland, he chanted his new mantra as he carefully held to the speed limit. Now, if the tire would just hold for another twenty miles. He swallowed another two pills.

  Thinking, thinking, thinking.

  Back on Howard Street, he had almost lost the game, attempting to pull the spare tire loose from underneath Gina’s stiffened body. With only one good arm, it proved impossible unless he could find some way to lift the body clear from the trunk. That begged two stupid questions. What if someone drove by and saw the body? And if that didn’t happen, how the hell would he get the body back in the trunk? So he risked his right hand, successfully sliding the jack from underneath her dead weight and frozen muscles. But the tire, it wouldn’t budge. That’s when he looked her right in those dead eyes of hers and cursed. “You fucking bitch!”

  Then he saw the aerosol canister.

  It was wedged underneath her head. Fix-a-Flat was the brand. One of Connie’s Price Club “impulse buys.” She’d bought a canister for each car, tossing them into the trunk for emergencies. Forever forgotten. Until Mitch needed it.

  Wonder product or rip-off? he thought.

  He was about to find out. He shook the can and spun himself around to the right rear tire, unscrewed the cap on the flat’s stem, and connected the can. Miraculously, the tire inflated.

  Sonofabitch! The damn stuff works!

  In mere seconds he was back behind the wheel, ignition engaged and flooring it. The tires slipped against the wet pavement, caught some traction, and lurched up the hill. The headlights were an afterthought. Had he switched them on before making the right-hand turn onto Ocean View Avenue, Officer Lucas might’ve caught a glimpse of the silver Volvo when he’d turned his radio car onto Howard.

  It was that close. And Mitch would never know.

  The Span touched the mainland and split. The Gulf route to the east. The Interstate to the north. Mitch swerved left onto the Interstate for the second part of a plan that was still forming in his head. He must get rid of the body. McCann’d surely called the police with some anonymous report. Candidate with a flat tire needs help and votes. It was brilliant, with Mitch in de facto possession of a dead body.

  Route 64B, otherwise called Owens Road. It was Cathedral City’s gateway to a remote landscape made up of gravel roads and dry gulches that flooded in the slightest rain. The geography was a legendary boneyard for transients, rape victims, and failed kidnappings. And the guilty, well, they clearly knew where to go when there was dirty laundry to be washed. The Old Boneyard off Owens Road.

  Mitch picked his turn off the highway. The drugs had kicked in once again, but all they did was fog his vision. His hand still hurt like hell. Headlights off, he rolled down the window so he could hear the gravel underneath his tires. An old trick his father had taught him during duck hunts. That way a hunter’d know he was on the road without spooking the fowl. Quentin Dutton never knew that driving with the headlights off spooked Mitch.

  The smell hit him harder the second time. When the odometer clicked at the quarter-mile mark, he stopped and popped the trunk. Death. It had a warm goo to it that stuck inside his sinuses like spoiled milk. He wanted to puke. But after stepping away to suck back a lungful of clean air, the candidate rallied and, reaching into the trunk with his left hand, tried hard to forget that he was grabbing hold of Gina Sweet. He bit bis lip, grasped the body by its sleeve, and tugged. Her shoulder cleared the trunk first. Then he went for the right leg. It swung free, but the left leg was hyperextended, stiff and wedged into the corner.

  Gina’s bloodied party dress was pulled all the way to her neck. And when Mitch grasped a bundled hold of satin to lift the body out, the fabric simply ripped away. Her bra was all that was left for a handle. An underwire contraption that was designed to show more breast than lace. He slipped his only good hand under the strap, praying it would hold the deadweight. With that, he’d touched her skin. It was cool and felt like smooth rubber. Inhuman. With a three-count in his head, followed by a mighty tug, he lifted, the wedged limb swung free, and the body tumbled from the trunk to the gravel. With his feet he finished the job by rolling Gina into the ditch.

  The retch he’d been holding back surfaced, and he was on his knees, puking.

  She’s dead, Mitch. And there’s not a Goddamn thing you can do about it but save your own ass. Get onto part three and save your prayers. You ‘re gonna need ‘em.

  As he hurried through the darkness, on his way to his next destination, the candidate’s mind wandered briefly to a faraway place he’d once called the high ground, a vision as distant as the Himalayas.

  Romantically speaking, Mitch was a dead issue. And with only days left in the campaign, the best Rene could muster was some hard work between the hurt and the hangovers. So she tasked her way through her daily duties of turning him into a congressman. That required hours upon hours of late nights, churning out media-friendly copy, spinning the day’s events to match the candidate’s platform, and pimping media relationships into positive propaganda. And lately when she needed a break from all of it, she’d begun drinking French champagne while packing boxes in her loft above the Strand Bicycle Shop. A week and a half until November third. On November fourth, Rene wanted to be history.

  After early cocktails and dinner with Kevin Cronyn, Brad Pustin, and Fitz, she’d settled in front of her PowerBook with a flute of bubbly and a plan to e-mail her revised resume.

  The phone rang.

  “Hello,” she answered on the half ring. Whoever it was, she wanted to get the caller off as quickly as possible. She had but one line. And tonight it was dedicated to her modem. That was until she recognized the voice and the crackle of a cell phone.

  “Mitch?”

  “I have something I want you to do. And I want you to do it right now. No questions asked,” Mitch said over the dubious Route 64B connection. If he’d had any kind of time, he’d have stopped and used a hard line. But the risk of recognition was more dangerous than a bad cell connection wherein some unwitting caller might hear his conversation.

  “Listen, Mitch. Unless it relates to the campaign, I’m off the clock tonight and—”

  “Do you love me?”

  The query caught her between the eyes. “Mitch, I…”

  “If you do, you’ll help.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then God help me.”

  He was asking her to give a piece of herself that she knew he wouldn’t give back. Hadn’t she given enough already?

  “What do you need?”

  “I need your promise to follow my instructions to the absolute letter.”

  “Okay,” she said flatly. “Do I need to write this down?”

  “I want you to drive to my house. I want you to tell Connie that, on my instructions, she’s to pack a bag and fly to San Francisco. It’s for her own safety. And I promise you, she’ll understand.”

  “Mitch. What’s this about?”

  “No questions, Rene. Just do it. Do it now,” he urged. “Promise, Goddammit, you’ll do it now!”

  “I have to ask, Mitch. Why not Fitz or Murray?”

  “Because I’m asking you.”

  “You trust me with your wife.”

  “My wife and our baby.”

  Baby?

  “That’s as much as I can say. The less you know, the better for you. But I need you to do this now! Just go. Hang up and go!”

  Rene found herself saying okay and doing just as Mitch asked. She hung up the phone, but didn’t leave right away. She was still trying to make some kind of sense out of it.

  Hang up and go?

  Go to Connie? Was Mitch mad? He was talking about the wife. He hadn’t said she was pregnant. And why didn’t he call Connie and have her go to the airport herself? Was the phone off the hook? She picked up the phone and dialed Mitch’s number. Two rings. And Connie picked up. “Hello?”

  Hang up and go!

  Rene hung up. This time she stopped figuring and started movin
g.

  Connie was frightened by the last hang-up. The day had been chock-full of strange and eerie circumstances. The urgent calls the night before from Gina. Followed by Connie’s unreturned calls to her. Then there were the hangups. The phone would ring. She would race for it, hoping it was Mitch, only to hear the caller hanging up. Just like the last one.

  When Mitch finally reached her by eight, he’d promised no stops or delays. And now the dinner she’d cooked was gelling into a tasteless lump in the oven. It seemed obvious that Mitch was roped back into the campaign despite his clear and heartfelt resolve that very morning.

  All that and she was pregnant.

  A smooth glass of Chardonnay would’ve been a tonic while she waited. She couldn’t turn on the TV or radio without being overrun with political attack ads. So she was stuck with nonalcoholic beer, People magazine, and a hopeful prayer that Mitch knew what he was doing. It was raining. There was always that fateful, awful chance…

  Headlights washed across the downstairs windows. Connie sighed, tossed the magazine, and went to the kitchen to see if she could rescue the meal. But instead of keys in the door, she heard the bell. The dogs started barking. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Shit.”

  Bad news. It’s gotta be bad news.

  She shut the dogs in the kitchen and flipped on the outdoor light to see who it was.

  Rene Craven?

  Swinging open the door, Connie wanted to say a simple “hello.” But the worry in her stomach could only shovel up something less friendly. “Listen, he’s not here. He’s supposed to be, but…”

  Rene was waiting for her to stop talking.

  “Mitch called me. He asked me a favor. He said you’d understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  Rene struggled. “That you…Something…”

  “Excuse me?” asked Connie.

  “He said it’s not safe.”

  “Where was he?”