“Have you been thinking about it, about how it should be done?” I asked.
“I have, a lot,” she said, and slid her wineglass away from her, so that it lined up with my pint glass. “We have a huge advantage and that advantage is me. I can help you, and no one knows that we’ve ever met. I’m an invisible accomplice. I could provide you with an alibi, and since no one knows we know each other, the police would trust me. We have zero connection, you and I. And there are other ways I could help you, as well.”
“I don’t expect you to do the killing for me.”
“No, I know. It’s just that, with me helping you, we can greatly reduce the chances of getting caught. That’s the hardest part. Committing the crime is easy. People do that all the time. But most people don’t get away with it.”
“So how do we get away with it?”
“The way to commit murder and not get caught is to hide the body so well that no one will ever find it. If there was never a murder, then there can’t be a murderer. But there are many ways to hide a body. You can leave a body out in the open but make it look like the opposite of what happened actually happened. That’s what needs to happen with Miranda, because if she goes missing the police will keep looking until they find her. When the police look at her body it needs to tell a story that has nothing to do with you. It needs to lead them down a road where you’ll never be. I have a question for you. How do you feel about Brad Daggett?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you have an opinion on whether he should live or die?”
“I do have an opinion. I want him to die.”
“Good,” she said. “That’s going to make this a whole lot easier.”
CHAPTER 6
LILY
When Chet came back out of the apartment and joined me in the yard, I was glad that he had put a shirt on underneath his overalls. He still smelled bad, like apple cider that had turned sour. I told him that I had found something in the meadow on the other side of the woods and needed his help. I told him that I would have asked my father but he was busy. Chet grunted in solidarity, as though he knew that my parents were reuniting in their bedroom.
We entered the narrow band of pine forest that separated my parents’ property from the derelict property next door. “Have you been over to the meadow?” I asked. He was behind me, stumbling slightly, holding up a forearm, as though branches might suddenly lash at his face.
“I took a walk down to the old railway tracks when I first got here,” he said. The tracks were in the opposite direction of where we were going.
“The meadow’s cool,” I said. “It’s behind an old farm that no one lives in anymore. I go there all the time.”
“How far is it?”
“Just through the woods here.” We clambered over the toppled stone wall that lined the edge of the woods. A ghostly light from the low sun turned the meadow’s scattered wildflowers into electric colors. The sky above was transforming from pink to dark purple.
“Beautiful,” Chet said, and I felt a brief, unreasonable annoyance that he was sharing my meadow.
“Over here.” I began to walk toward the well.
“You, too. You’re beautiful, too.”
I forced myself to turn and look at him.
“Sorry,” he said. “I told myself . . . But, God, just look at you. You don’t even know how beautiful you are, do you, little Lil? You don’t mind, do you? Just if I look.” He swayed a little, one hand rubbing at his unruly beard.
“It’s okay, but I need you to help me first. There’s an old well and there’s something down there attached to a rope and I can’t pull it up.”
“Cool. Let’s go take a look. How’d you find a well out here?”
I ignored his question and led him across the meadow. I’d known about the well for years. It wasn’t too deep. With a flashlight you could see the bottom, nothing down there but pieces of rock, and sometimes standing water if it had rained. I wasn’t even sure it was initially a well, so much as a deep hole, maybe the beginning of a well that had failed. I had come across it when I was probably nine years old, running back and forth across the meadow. One of my footfalls had made a hollow, wooden sound and I pulled away dry, yellow weeds to discover the well cover, a rotted wooden square that looked like it had been put there just to keep someone like me from falling in. It barely covered the rectangular well hole and was easily pulled off. The sides of the well were lined with layered rock. I didn’t have a flashlight with me then, so I dropped rocks down to judge its depth. They hit something solid after only a second or so, so I knew it wasn’t that deep. At the time, I thought maybe it was a hiding place for treasure, or a clue to a larger mystery. I raced back to get a flashlight, but I ended up disappointed. The well hole was just that, a hole in the ground, collapsing in on itself.
When I showed Chet the well, he said, “Hey, look at that. When did you find this?”
“About a week ago,” I lied. “I spotted the rope first and then pulled off the well cover. It isn’t deep, I think, but I can’t pull the rope up myself. There’s something heavy on the other end.”
Putting the rope down the well had been part of my preparation. I had found the rope, a weathered-looking length, in the cellar of our house, along with an old metal stake, and had brought both to the meadow days ago. I tied one end of the rope tightly around one of the larger rocks I’d unearthed from the meadow, and lowered that end down the well, then staked the other end deep into the earth. I didn’t think it looked particularly genuine but it didn’t matter. All I needed was for Chet to want to find out what was on the other end of that rope. That morning I’d gone into my parents’ bathroom and found something in the cabinet, a small tub labeled POMADE. I’d brought it with me earlier to the well and rubbed the hair goop all over the first few feet of the rope, making it hard to hold. I had been worried that the rope would be too easy to pull up and that Chet could manage it from a standing position. I needed him to kneel in front of the well hole. As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry. Chet, acting like an excited little boy, dropped to his knees in front of the well and took hold of the rope.
“Ugh, what’s on this?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Some sort of muck.”
He put his fingers to his nose and smelled. “It doesn’t smell natural. Smells like shampoo.”
“Maybe someone doesn’t want us to pull it up.” I had moved so that I was standing directly behind him. He craned his neck to look at me. I could see one of his wet, puffy eyes stare at my chest. My skin tightened, goose bumps breaking out along my arms.
“You like butterflies?” he asked, his eyes still on the embroidered front of my tank top.
“I guess,” I said, and involuntarily shifted backward. I felt a sudden revulsion, plus anger at myself, that I had brought this man with me to my secret meadow. Of course he wouldn’t care what was down the well. Of course all he cared about was sex. He’d want to stick his penis in me before pulling up the rope. I’d been foolish. I tried to think of something to say, but my brain had emptied out and my mouth had gone dry.
But then Chet asked, “You didn’t tell your parents about this?”
“No,” I said. “They’d just get mad at me, and if they found anything cool down there they probably wouldn’t let me keep it.”
“Might as well take a look,” he said and turned his eyes back toward the well hole. “Now, what’s in it for me if we find a treasure chest down there?”
He was doing what I hoped he would do, working his way down the rope to get a better grip. He ducked his head partway into the hole and shifted forward on his knees. “Don’t fall in,” I said. It was something I had planned on saying, to make him feel more safe.
“How far down is it?”
“Not that far, I think.”
Chet made a couple of whooping sounds into the well that echoed back up.
“Let me hold on to you.” I had planned this as well, wanting to get him used to havi
ng my hands on his back. I didn’t want to just try and push him in and have him rear back suddenly and fight me.
I grabbed the fabric of his overalls with both fists, just as he said, “I got it. It’s coming up.”
I conjured all the strength I had and shoved as hard as I could. He tried to lift his head but it was in the hole and he banged the back of it on one of the layered stones that lined the well. His whole body tilted forward, falling, and for a moment I thought I was going to go down the well with him, a possibility that hadn’t even occurred to me. But somehow he managed to jack his legs out and stop his forward progress. I rolled to the side, listening to his surprised scream. One of his heavy boots was jammed between two of the flat rocks that lined the well entrance. “Jesus,” he yelled. Then: “Help me.” I heard a clattering sound as something struck the bottom of the well. His glasses, I thought.
I stood. One of my fingernails had snagged on his overalls and torn. I only noticed because I had reflexively shaken my hand and flecks of blood had spattered me in the face.
“Lily, God, help me.”
I crouched near where his foot was lodged between the rocks. It was pretty clear that it wasn’t going to hold him, and that he would fall anyway, but I took hold of the edge of the worn sole and shoved it forward. Chet made a grunting sound, then I heard the sound of scraping followed by a loud crash as he hit the bottom of the well. I expected to hear him yell some more but he was quiet. There was only the sound of falling dirt and debris still pattering down the well, plus two crows cawing at each other on the other side of the meadow.
I pulled the penlight I had brought out of my back pocket and twisted it so it turned on. It didn’t produce a very powerful beam but it would be strong enough for me to see into the darkness of the well. I thought my hands would be shaky but they weren’t. I felt focused, and lost in my own brain, the way I felt when I was reading a good book and the afternoon disappeared. I peered over the edge and pointed the beam of the flashlight down toward the bottom. I was so sure that Chet would survive the fall and would be begging me to help him up. I had been prepared for it. Instead, he lay still at the bottom of the well, on his back, his legs against the side, and his neck at a funny angle. I stared at him for a while. My penlight beam was weak and the well was filled with shifting dust, but it didn’t look like he was moving. Then I saw an almost unnoticeable shift and heard a low sigh that could have come from Chet or could have come from something settling in the disturbed well.
I stood and walked the few feet to my low pile of heavy rocks that I’d been collecting. I selected the largest, a jagged hunk of gray stone with a vein of quartz running through it. I had to carry it with both arms so I gripped the penlight in my teeth. Waddling like a penguin I came back to the well, straddled it, and bent at the waist. Pointing the penlight into the darkness, I lined up the rock as best I could and dropped it straight down toward Chet’s head. I didn’t watch the rock after I dropped it but I heard the noise it made when it struck Chet’s head. It was a sound like a watermelon cracking open. If Chet had still been alive after the fall he wasn’t anymore.
My arms ached from carrying the rock and I stayed crouched for a moment. A crow watched me from his perch on a dying maple tree on the outskirts of the meadow. I wondered if he could smell the death in the air, and thought that he probably could. He dipped his head, ruffled his black wings. I felt like he was welcoming me to a special world.
After turning the penlight off and returning it to my pocket, I pulled the stake out of the ground, dropping it and the greased-up rope into the well. Then I walked back and forth from my pile to the well and dropped about six more large rocks down toward Chet. I would cover him more later but figured that it wouldn’t hurt to get a head start on the process. I would have kept going but the light in the sky was fading, the clouds now purple and dark, the meadow and the surrounding woods losing their color, fading into grainy variations of gray. My initial plan had been to return to the apartment above the studio, and start packing up Chet’s things, bring them back through the woods to the well and dump them in. Then I would cover everything over with rocks and re-cover the well hole. But as I walked back through the blackness of the woods, my penlight’s beam only carving out a small patch of forest floor in front of me, I decided that I could pack up Chet’s things now, and move them to the well in the early morning. I knew that my parents would sleep late.
I was very familiar with the small apartment above the studio. It was one of my favorite places when it was empty, but I hadn’t seen it since Chet had moved in at the beginning of the summer. I had been worried that he would have a lot of stuff that I would need to pack up, but he didn’t. He was still living out of a large army-green duffel bag that was spread open by the single bed. I began to search the place using the penlight, then realized I could simply turn the lamp on. On the off chance that either of my parents looked out their bedroom window toward the studio they would hardly be surprised to see a light on in Chet’s apartment. In fact, they’d be more surprised if there wasn’t a light.
The lamp cast dim yellow light across the whitewashed walls and the wide, bare planks of the floor. There was very little furniture in the studio apartment, just my beloved beanbag chair, looking deflated, and two upholstered chairs, each with rips in its fabric, foam coming out. The chair with the pastel sprigged print was another of my favorite reading spots. I was glad to see that Chet had used it to stack some books. It meant he hadn’t been sitting in it.
There were some clothes scattered around the cot, a couple of T-shirts and a pair of white underpants. I used one of the T-shirts to scoop the underwear off the floor and put both in the duffel. A stale, itchy smell of body odor came out of the half-filled bag, but the apartment didn’t smell as bad as I thought it might. Mainly turpentine and ash. In the center of the floor was a coffee can nearly filled to the brim with cigarette butts. I picked it up, and tried to think where to put it, then realized I could dump it in the duffel. Chet would not be wearing his clothes anymore.
From the bathroom I grabbed Chet’s toothbrush, a nearly empty tube of toothpaste, a white crystal stone in some packaging that said it was a deodorant, a bright green bottle of Pert. I left behind the sliver of hairy soap in the dish. From the kitchen—really a corner with a sink, a few cabinets, and an electric hot plate—I grabbed two packages of ramen noodles and a large plastic bottle of Popov vodka. I dumped the vodka down the sink and left the bottle in one of the cabinets. I suddenly worried that I was leaving my fingerprints all over the apartment, that I should be wearing gloves. But I would have time tomorrow to wipe things down. Besides, if things went the way I thought they would, then no one would suspect that Chet had been killed. It would simply look as though he had taken off. It was hard to imagine that anyone would miss him.
After filling the duffel, I zipped it closed and lifted it, making sure I would be able to carry it in the morning. It was heavy but manageable. All that was left of Chet’s in the apartment were his painting supplies. There were four canvases, three that were leaning against the wall, faced so that I couldn’t see what they looked like. The fourth canvas was still on the easel. It was in the early stages, just a few blocks of color over some pencil marks, but I could tell that it was of the swimming pool at the back of the house, and that a figure had been sketched in the corner of the pool. There were no details but I knew it was me. It was a pretty small canvas, not a lot bigger than a normal TV screen. I took it off the easel and twisted it so that its fragile wood frame snapped, then I put it on the floor, and stacked the other canvases on top of it. I barely looked at them but they all seemed like finished paintings. Abstract splotches of color with, here and there, something that resembled a figure. I could have painted them.
The easel was Chet’s, since I was pretty sure there had never been an easel in the apartment. It was small, with three telescoped legs supporting it. I collapsed it and folded it into itself till it was the size of a small briefcase, a bloc
k of stained wood with a handle to carry it. I added it to the pile of paintings.
I looked around the room, thinking that I had gotten everything. Even if something was left behind it would merely look as though Chet had left it himself.
My finger throbbed where I’d torn at the nail. I looked at it closely. The blood had clotted, turning brown and sticky, and I didn’t think that I had splattered anything in the apartment. Suddenly, I wanted to get out of there, and be back in my bedroom. And I was hungry. Unless my parents had gotten to it, there was leftover shepherd’s pie in the fridge.
I set my alarm for six the next morning. But when my owl-shaped clock whoo-whooed I was already awake, out of bed, and half-dressed. I’d slept some, but it was the kind of sleep where you are aware of every squeak and click and scrape that old houses make, where you think you haven’t slept at all and then realize that the strange thoughts in your head were actual dreams, and that the pulled curtain is glowing slightly, that dawn has broken.
It took three trips to bring everything from the apartment to the well. I brought the duffel bag first and that was the hardest. I had to drag it for a while when it got too heavy to carry. The meadow was covered with a cool dew that dampened the bottoms of my jeans. I peered down into the well before dropping the duffel in. Chet was still there, buried under the rocks I’d dropped on him. A few clumsy blackflies batted around his body. On the next trip, I brought the three larger canvases. They weren’t heavy but they were awkward, and I had to break one of them to get it down the well. On the last trip, I brought the small backpacker easel and the painting that Chet had started, the one of me in my pool. After dropping them down the well, I grabbed the rest of the rocks I’d been unearthing and dropped those in. It was satisfying, especially as I watched all evidence of Chet disappear under a pile of rocks. I had used an old rusty trowel to pry some of the rocks loose. It was still in the meadow and I used it to dig up clumps of dirt, dumping them down the well until it looked as though there was nothing down there except dirt and rocks. I knew it wasn’t perfect but I was satisfied.
The Kind Worth Killing Page 6
