Kate looked at her watch, 5:40 am.
The mine. The old Olympus Mine. Less than a half-mile from where she stood right this second. No one would ever find the body or the bike. She and Val had explored there some years ago, back when they were kids (everything with Val had happened some years ago, she reflected), and she recalled a fairly wide road in with a drop-off down into an impenetrable blackness. Once Val got here—she hoped he would run, get here fast, every second TJ lay in the road was time a car could come—they could take TJ to the mine. No one would find him there.
She popped the trunk open. Looked at TJ. Looked at the small trunk, with its dirty gray carpeting. If his blood got on the carpet, which it would, and the police linked it back to her, she and Val both would be in a world of hurt. She kept a dirty Indian blanket in her trunk. That should work. Doubled up, the blanket covered the gray carpeting of the car’s trunk. Or should she wrap his body? That seemed more respectful.
This wasn’t the time to cry. She blinked back tears. The pink had almost melted off the clouds overhead, they no longer looked like floating cotton candy. Shouldn’t it be raining for this kind of thing? Thunder and lightning?
Sucking in a wavering breath and stifling a sob, she slid her hands under his armpits and hefted. Fuck. He’d needed to lose weight, and now that it was dead weight—even missing most of his left arm—she began to doubt her ability to do this. She had to wait for Val. She couldn’t get him from the ground to the trunk of the car, he was too heavy. His blood stained her hands, and she wiped them on his jeans, the muscles underneath feeling so…inanimate.
She stepped away from him, to where she could breathe again. She listened to the bugs and the birds, the happy morning choir all around her.
And something heavy moved among the trees.
Her breath, almost a sob, caught in her throat as she whipped her head towards the noise. She wanted to call out Val’s name but she couldn’t make the sound come. What if the killer was back? Did it-he-want to claim TJ’s other arm? Should she hide? She realized she was simply standing still, holding the blanket in her hands. The car wasn’t too far, surely she could make it there before—
Val stepped out of the trees, wearing the same black T-shirt from the night before and his jeans.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
“Who else did you think it would be?”
“Someone killed him. They could still be out here.”
Val walked over to the body and pulled a pair of leather gloves out of his pocket. She saw something flicker in his eyes, the downturned corner of his mouth. She didn’t think about gloves at all, but it made sense. The expression on his face passed, and he stretched like a cat. In the quiet morning she could hear his back crack.
“What do you propose?” he asked. His tone, his face…both were so cold.
“What?”
“You called me out here to do something, presumably with this body, what do you propose?”
“The mine.”
His silence goaded at her. It made her angry to watch him contemplate the body. “They’ll think you did it! Where did you get the blood on you last night? Where were you?”
“Back your car around so we don’t have to lift him so far. He wasn’t a little guy.”
Walking to the driver’s side door she found herself mad at Val. Hadn’t she called him because she knew he would get shit done? He was getting shit done, but she also wanted kind words. A hug. Something. Poor Kate, you must be so scared. That kind of attitude wouldn’t come from Val, and she knew it.
Val directed her back and told her when to stop.
“Should we wrap him in the blanket?”
“If we wrap him in the blanket I can’t get a grip on him. Line the trunk with it, I’ll get him in.”
She did as she was told while Val got his hands under TJ’s armpits. She thought dead bodies were supposed to be stiff, but TJ’s stump waggled pathetically, and he bent obligingly at the waist.
“Get his feet, please,” Val said.
“Sorry,” she said, stepping in and reaching for his boots. The leather didn’t have blood on it, and she reached for it.
“Wait,” Val said. “Don’t touch him with your bare hands. They can pull prints off anything. Do you have gloves in the car?”
“No.”
He threw a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves at her. “Enjoy.”
She pulled them on, not enjoying the plastic feel up her arms, but she supposed this was smart. Too much to think about.
At some point, poor TJ had shit himself. She hoped, as she sort of hooked his ankles over the lip of the trunk and paused to pant in the building heat of the morning, it had been a post-mortem shitting. Though she would not deeply mourn his death, she didn’t want to think of him being so afraid of something that he couldn’t control his bowels.
She kicked dirt over the bloody spots in the gravel of the road. A look at the sky suggested it wouldn’t be raining any time soon. She kicked harder, trying to spread it as much as possible, looked at the heap that was TJ in the trunk, reached out and folded a corner of the blanket over his ruined face, then slammed the hatch shut.
“It looks like he was riding to your place,” she said, looking at the bike.
“Mmmhmm,” Val said. “Your knight in shining armor.”
Or so it seemed. What did she know? “Goddamn it, TJ,” she muttered under her breath, still somewhere between crying and not.
“I’ll follow you on the bike,” Val said.
Swallowing tears, she asked if he needed help picking it up.
“I think I got it.” She waited to see if he did, and he used his knees to do it, turning his back to the bike and getting it up on its wheels easily. She started the car, and Val followed her. The car bounced down the rutted road, long unused, grown over in places with scrub brush, past a large no trespassing sign as per the orders of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, wishing she had Val’s pickup instead of her own little car.
She skidded to a stop in front of an old metal gate which reiterated this was private property, a few pieces of steel across the road on a locked hinge. Val braked hard behind her, the dirt bike wobbling. They could walk around it, of course, the bike could get around, no problem, but carrying TJ’s body? She got out and studied the lock. It was a simple padlock, looking quite rusted. She debated slamming through with the car, but the car was very yellow, and the gate was gray, and it seemed like that paint swap would make everything easier for the Otero County Sheriff’s Department. If they got this far, she didn’t want to give them any help.
Val came up behind her, off the bike now, with a rock in both gloved hands. She could see the muscles standing out in his arms from carrying it, and it only took him two hits to break off the lock. He tossed the rock off to the side.
Already in the heat, she was slick with sweat. Val walked the gate open, and she went back to the car. He followed on the bike. The opening to the mine faced west and in the morning light it looked like a gaping black mouth in the side of a hill. For at least a few hundred yards the road was wide enough to get a dump truck in. She anticipated no problem turning the car around and getting out. She took a moment to ponder the possibilities if she were to get it stuck. It was easier not to think about it until it became an actual problem. Her headlights illuminated the cavernous room. She stopped the car near the edge of a drop off. Pulling a large flashlight from the backseat, she shone the light down. Val turned the bike off, the only sound was the idling car. Bats fluttered near the roof, irritated by their interruption.
Kate opened the trunk. If they pulled him out by the feet, would the remainder of the blood in him come pouring out of his savaged head and arm, into the trunk? Was there any blood left? Val, looking peaked in the little light from the trunk, reached for the arm pits.
“Is this a good idea?” she asked.
“Not the right time to ask. We’re long past the point of no return.” Val floppe
d TJ’s chest and arm over the lip of the trunk, she could tell Val was getting tired, and he heaved and dropped the body onto the dirt by the edge of the drop off. Kate picked up the flashlight again, and looked into her trunk. She pulled up the blanket.
There was some kind of dark stain there that she was fairly sure hadn’t been there before. Using the heel of her hand to wipe the sweat out of her eyes, she closed the trunk. Its echoes ricocheted around the cavern. Val rolled the body the last few feet toward the edge then gave a final shove. She followed him down with the flashlight, but he dropped out of sight and she never heard a thud. Done.
Sweat beading on his forehead, Val started the bike again, filling the mine with deafening noise. Kate covered her ears with her hands. He walked the bike to the edge, then used its own propulsion to send it over the edge. It took a long time to land, but when it did there was a bright flash, a pop and silence somewhere far away.
“Let’s get out of here,” Kate said.
Val, in a shadow, said nothing.
She turned the light on him. He pressed his hands to his temples, his head down. “You really don’t hear that? Feel it?”
“Feel what? Are you all right?”
“Yeah. No, I don’t know, it’s that humming. It’s like I’m underwater, the pressure.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
He took his hands away from his face and in the dim light of the flashlight she could see blood coming from his nose.
“You’ve got a nosebleed.”
He looked at his hands, slow and stupid. He looked up at her, and she saw dark streaks on his face. Dirt? No, dark tears. She blasted him in the face with her flashlight, and he recoiled, smearing the blood on his cheeks, reaching out with bloody hands to stop the light. The streaks on his face: tears of blood.
“Val—” she said…a whisper.
Val brought his bloody hands to his temples and didn’t answer. His nosebleed showed no signs of slowing. And his eyes...what did that even mean with the eyes? At least there was less blood coming from there.
“Tilt your head back,” she said. “Get in the car!” Now the front of his shirt was soaked. Could someone die from a nosebleed?
“It’s like my head’s in a vice,” he said. He mumbled, and his walk was unsteady.
They weren’t alone in the mine. The knowledge crawled over her, making her skin tingle, and she looked around into the dark, not daring to shine the flashlight. She didn’t have any real reason to think there was something else with them. No warning jangle of the reptile part of her brain, no feeling of being watched.
“Come on, let’s get you home,” she said to Val, her voice quiet. She went to him, positive someone (no, not someone, something) was watching them. He leaned on her. Well, here was her hug she was looking for. When he took his hands from his temples she saw he’d left dark blood smudges there as well. She had to have something, an old T-shirt, in the car, something to catch the blood.
She told herself it was the bats as she led him to the passenger’s side. She opened the door, found a sweatshirt, not an old one, but one she rather liked, and handed it to him. She walked back around the car, making sure the trunk was shut. Something vibrated. Something down in the hole. Bats. It had to be the bats. There were a lot of them, when their wings flapped it must sound like this. The taillights illuminated everything red back here, and she heard something in the darkness, something heavier than a bat. She sprinted the few feet to the driver’s side and slammed the door behind her. She accelerated too hard at first, spraying gravel.
She took a breath through her mouth (breathing through her nose she smelled the sharp copper of Val’s blood, which looked malignant and black in the green light from the dashboard) and tried to clear her head. She did better this time, keeping even pressure on the gas, but as soon as they broke into the blinding sun Kate started to cry. Val put a bloody hand on her shoulder, and that made her cry even harder.
7
Val quit bleeding as soon as Kate hit State Highway 12, about the same time the hum went away. He didn’t notice it had stopped at first—it seemed so quiet in his head, blissfully empty. For a moment he sat, enjoying it, then Kate asked him if he was all right, panic in her voice. He pulled the sweatshirt she’d given him from his face. It was soaked with dark, red blood. She insisted he go to the ER anyway, and he agreed. He didn’t think the doctor needed to know about the hum, or how the pressure down in the mine felt like it was destroying him, far worse than anything he’d felt the night before, his eyes, his ears, his skin feeling too tight all over. He was pretty sure pressure caused the bleeding, but Kate seemed unaffected. It didn’t make sense. How could one person feel something like that, something that didn’t even affect someone standing right next to them?
A hospital seemed too much like jail, and he didn’t want to go back there.
The clinic even looked like a jail, another long, flat brown building on the outer edge of town. While Kate parked, Val pondered fight or flight. He followed her in, dragging his feet, keeping his eyes on the floor. He checked in, mumbling his name, then dropped to a chair, crossing his arms over his chest.
Val wondered how he was supposed to pay for this, his first medical expense in six years, but decided he’d figure it out later. It would be nice to know what was wrong.
He could feel the dried blood around his nose and eyes as he stood to go to the bathroom.
“Where are you going?” Kate asked, holding his arm.
“The john, I’ll be right back.”
She looked suspicious, and he kissed her forehead before he left. He wanted to go home. He wiped some of the blood off his face, the little bits by his ears. He could hear okay, so he guessed nothing had ruptured...he shivered at the thought. The whites of his eyes were pretty red. In the corner of his left he’d popped some blood vessels, leaving a dark red spot. Gross. It made the light blue of his eyes seem even lighter and more unusual. He raked his hands through his hair and left the bathroom without trying to make it lay down flat.
There was barely time to skim a three-month-old issue of People before a nurse came out to get him. The nurse took his blood pressure, which she said was normal.
“Bullshit,” Val said. “Try it again.”
She looked at him as if he’d grown a second head.
“Do it again. I don’t have normal blood pressure. It’s through the roof.”
Kate put a hand on his shoulder to still him, and he wanted nothing more in that moment than to shove it away. He felt like an idiot. His body seemed to want to make a fool of him.
The nurse sucked her breath in through her teeth, pulled out the blood pressure cuff and repeated the procedure. “It seems all right,” she said. Frowning, she showed him the dial and spouted some meaningless numbers at him.
With a little light-up tool she looked in his ears, nose and throat. Then she peered at his eyes and he could feel his pupils shrinking in the light. This was fucking jail all over again. How was his blood pressure not high? The nurse stood up and began to lead him towards the scale to get his height and weight. A vacutube dropped from the desk nearby. The sound of shattering glass made Kate jump and shriek. Val felt himself relax, though, a deep exhalation of tension.
She must have hit it with her hip...but he didn’t think she had.
“You should be heavier for your height,” she said, not looking at him, marking something on his chart before she called in an orderly to sweep the glass into a dustpan. In the slanted sunlight that shone through the small, high, prison-like window, the glass glittered and sparkled against industrial pink plastic.
“Thanks,” he said. He felt better but not great. With some of the anxiety about the bleeding gone, flushed out by the joy of watching Kate recoil from the broken glass, he thought about TJ. The nurse told them the doctor would be in to see him soon, and left them. Kate looked pissed and worried. He looked down at the shallow slices on his arms. TJ carried a knife. If he’d done something to TJ, he would’
ve gotten deeper cuts than this. And plus the layout of the bike and the body...he couldn’t have done it.
When Kate said something he had to ask her to repeat it.
She looked wounded, all big brown eyes.
“Sorry. I was thinking.”
“I thought we could get breakfast after this. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’ve got a lot on my mind.” He knew this would be an opportune time to reach out to her, to hold her, to say he was sorry, not because he actually was sorry, but because that was what she needed to hear. But instead he looked at the few glittery chips of glass left on the tiled floor. He could almost hear her waiting for him to say something, but he kept his mouth shut.
The doctor who bustled in was Mexican, Dr. Villanueva, and Val wondered if she’d been educated in America or Mexico. He supposed it didn’t matter. She looked at his ears and eyes, at his chart, and put him on a saline drip because he was dehydrated. It took three stabs to find his vein, but he didn’t hold it against her, they were always a bitch to find.
“Your chart says you were released yesterday from the New Mexico State Penitentiary?”
Why phrase it as a question if it’s written right there on the chart, Val wondered. He nodded.
“How are you doing?” she asked in a soft accent that would have been soothing if it wasn’t steeped in condescension.
“I’ve been out for about fourteen hours and I’m in the ER ‘cause most of the holes in my head are bleeding. How does it sound like I’m doing?”
“You have a lot of anger.” The soothing voice didn’t help any.
“Is your PhD in the obvious? Tell me something I don’t know. Like why I’m bleeding.”
Trinity Page 5
