“Hurry,” I said to Cora.
“Do you think this will really work?” she asked.
“The vehicle is made mostly of iron. She’ll sink, believe me.”
When I gave her the word, I shifted the prowler into neutral and together, Cora and I pushed the vehicle over the side. For a brief second, we stared into one another’s eyes while we waited for the tell-tale splash. It was a big splash, let me tell you, and it caused us both to smile. We made our way to the edge of the cliff and we watched the cruiser slowly fill with lake water until it disappeared under the lake’s surface just like the Titanic did in the North Atlantic all those years ago.
Walking back to the road, Cora said, “Won’t the state troopers get suspicious when they find out one of their cars is missing and the lieutenant along with it? I mean, the barrier is busted. They’ll put two and two together and figure out the cruiser might be at the bottom of the lake.”
We walked along the road back in the direction of Loon Lake. Cora was an ex-cop, and presently she was thinking like one.
“They’ll eventually figure it out,” I said. “But when they do, it will have nothing to do with you and me. They’ll just figure Lieutenant Spencer was either murdered by some gang member and his car ditched in the lake, or maybe they’ll even figure he killed himself over something he did wrong…something so bad he could no longer live with himself. He drove into the lake, and the fish got to his body. Let me tell you something, Cora, there’s fish in Lake Champlain that are so big they would scare the daylights out of you.”
“Okay, Kingsley,” Cora said, taking hold my hand. “If I were still a cop investigating the missing lieutenant, I might get suspicious. But what choice did we have but to handle things the way we did?”
“Are you worried?” I asked.
“If you’re not worried, I’m not worried,” she said.
We walked the full four and a half miles back to Loon Lake with our happy faces on, like we’d been out for one of our long, midday hikes in the great outdoors.
The really messy stuff took place later that day down in the onion cellar where we cut the trooper’s body up into manageable parts and then bagged them in Hefty garbage bags. I made a fire in a fifty-gallon drum out back of the tavern, far enough away from the cottages. While the happy vacationing families enjoyed the beach, the fishing, the sail boating, and the hiking on the Loon Lake Trail, we burned up every bit of the body, until all that was left was ash and little fragments of bone and teeth.
Here’s what I also did. I retrieved Lt. Spencer’s wallet from my jeans pocket. I slid out one of his business cards. Then, attaching a copy of the Kennedy family murder video to his state trooper email, I pressed send. I repeated the process with his cell phone address, forwarding the video as a multi-media text. When I was finished, I tossed both his wallet and his smartphone into the still roaring fire. I held on to his semi-automatic and his utility belt, which I would dump in Loon Lake at a later date. Eventually, there would be an investigation into the disappearance of Lt. Spencer, and they would discover the video and the trooper’s complicity in the horrible quadruple homicide. My guess was that when the trooper cruiser was finally discovered lying at the bottom of Lake Champlain, it would be deduced that Spencer had, in fact, killed himself over grief about his role in the murders. It wasn’t a fool-proof conclusion, but it wasn’t totally off the rails either.
Later on, after getting much of the evening’s dinner offerings going, including a hearty homemade creamy mushroom soup and a venison stew (Sonny’s old recipe), I dug a deep hole and buried the ashy remnants of Lieutenant Spencer’s body. As I filled in the hole, I thought about saying a few prayers, but then decided against it. I wasn’t so sure the good Lord above would want to hear from me after the violent manner in which we took the Trooper’s life, but if there was something I wanted to say to God directly, it was this. Yes, Cora and I killed the lieutenant, but it wasn’t personal. It was just business. A God-awful messy business. And what the hell, he had it coming.
After the hole was filled in, I spread corn seeds all around a flat area of land that was maybe twenty by thirty. It was a piece of ground that got plenty of sunlight, and that wasn’t disturbed by the old thick roots from the many pine, oak, and birch trees surrounding the property. I knew I could grow myself a really nice crop of corn there. Not only had I read about a murderer who planted a crop of corn over a woman he’d murdered and then buried in the garden, but I also knew that if customers of Loon Lake tavern loved one thing with their home cooked dinners, it was fresh ears of corn.
Did I fail to mention that Cora is pregnant? She’s going to have our baby in a few months. We’re so excited about the news. We don’t know if it’s going to be a girl or a boy, and being the old-fashioned type, we don’t want to know. We want it to be a total surprise. We’ve begun construction on a good-sized addition to the private cabin beyond the trees. We’re adding a nursery to it, and another full bath, plus a wrap-around porch for sitting outside. But it’s still going to be our cozy home away from it all. A place filled with peace and love. It will be everything I ever wanted. A loyal wife who needs me and a child who loves me.
Life…it can be a wonderful thing. I’ve won some, and I’ve allowed some very precious things to slip through my fingers like fine sand. God knows I’ve been lucky. You might even say I’ve been blessed.
Yes, I just might be the luckiest man alive.
About the Author
Winner of the 2015 PWA Shamus Award and the 2015 ITW Thriller Award for Best Original Paperback Novel for Moonlight Weeps, Vincent Zandri is the New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon Kindle Overall No.1 bestselling author of more than 40 novels and novellas, including The Remains, Everything Burns, Orchard Grove and the The Detonator.
Zandri’s list of domestic publishers include Delacorte, Dell, Down & Out Books, Thomas & Mercer, and Polis Books. An MFA in writing graduate of Vermont College, Zandri’s work has been translated into Dutch, Russian, French, Italian, Japanese, and Polish. Recently, Zandri was the subject of a major feature by the New York Times.
He has also made appearances on Bloomberg TV and the Fox News Network. In December 2014, Suspense Magazine named Zandri’s The Shroud Key as one of the Best Books of 2014. Recently, Suspense Magazine selected When Shadows Come as one of the Best Books of 2016.
A freelance photojournalist and the author of the popular lit blog, The Vincent Zandri Vox, Zandri has written for Living Ready Magazine, RT, New York Newsday, Hudson Valley Magazine, Writers Digest, The Times Union (Albany), Game & Fish Magazine, and many more.
He lives in Albany, New York and Florence, Italy. For more, go to www.VincentZandri.com.
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