Witness

by Denise Gwen

  Margie stood there and watched him, but instead of saying anything, Randy removed his bifocals, rubbed them absently with a handkerchief, then put them back on the bridge of his nose. “Last I heard,” he drawled, “I thought she left him.”

  “Yeah, I thought so too,” she said, and forced a smile. “But that’s all changed.”

  “How interesting.”

  “Apparently, Rob went back to her, begging her to take him back . . . he even drove down to Nashville, Tennessee last weekend to see her and the kids, and he spent the weekend with her, did you know that?”

  “No,” he said evenly, “I didn’t.”

  But Margie had been working for this asshole long enough to know when he was lying, and she knew it now, from the way he stared blankly at her, as if challenging her to contradict him. The bastard knew exactly where Rob Billings was. And she didn’t adore Rob Billings—he’d been mean to her good friend, Kathryn McGlone—but he was a decent enough fellow, and besides all that, he had children, for Pete’s sake. He was the father to two small children, and if Rob died, then what in the world was Shelley going to do? Randy had done something awful to Rob, she just knew it, and it took all of her reserves of patience not to let loose and really tell him, once and for all, what she thought of him.

  But he probably already knew.

  “Yeah, well, they got back together, and she said he was going to call her when he got back home on Sunday night, and when he didn’t call her by ten o’clock, she started worrying, and now she’s convinced he’s been kidnapped and killed.”

  Randy folded up his meaty hands and placed them on his bulging belly and she longed to walk right up to him and slap him across his complacent, cocky face. He must’ve noticed this, or sensed it in her expression, for he looked away and stared at the opposite wall.

  “What am I gonna tell her?” Margie asked.

  “I’ll call her back,” he said.

  And she knew what that meant—never.

  A few hours later

  But Rob’s wife was more tenacious than Randy realized, and she started calling everyone she could find; the prosecutor’s office, the city police, news stations, etc. A news reporter called him at one point to ask for comment, and he hung up on her.

  Women.

  They were all a bunch of dumb, lying cunts.

  9

  Wednesday, April 17, 10:55 a.m.

  Kathryn wore her crisp white officer’s uniform, black slacks, and a badge affixed to her name-monogrammed front lapel, as she clocked in at the Casino. She walked with an especially ebullient gait. Things were finally starting to look up for her, and she might, just might, get a chance at the interim Sheriff’s job, once Randy finally did what the party had been pressuring him to do, ever since Miranda’s death, and resign. He’d bull-headedly held on for a good long while, but the pressure upon him was proving too unwieldy, and he was talking of resigning. If she succeeded in being named as the interim sheriff, she’d be in a good place to run for the job itself when the Board of Elections opened the application process in January.

  Her heart swelled with joy.

  Thing were looking up for her, at last, at long last.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a man walking with a staggering gait away from the blackjack table and toward the east Casino door. He stumbled and nearly fell, then righted himself, and, with a lopsided gait, proceeded to the exit. Her former deputy sheriff skill-set kicked in, and she longed to perform some field sobriety tests, because she knew, she just knew, this idiot was going to climb behind the wheel of a car and attempt to drive away. She could call in his erratic driving to the local Broward County Sheriff’s Office, or the Greensburg Police Department, but she no longer had the authority to charge someone with driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

  She pulled her company cell phone out of her back pants pocket and followed him out the door. She wasn’t about to let this moron kill someone; she planned to detain him, talk him into hiring Uber or Lyft to get a ride home, and come back for the car when he was sober.

  “Sir,” she called out, as she chased after the man as he staggered out into the bright sunshine and loped across the parking lot, “sir, would you please stop a moment?”

  He fell onto the pavement, then picked himself up and proceeded to stagger again. It didn’t look as if he’d heard her.

  “Sir,” she called out.

  Damn, this guy was moving fast. She ran to catch up with him, and when she saw the car he was heading toward, her heart plummeted. It was a balmy spring day, the temperature in the high fifties, but even so, out in this bright sunshine, a closed and locked car could get mighty hot very fast, and when she saw three small heads peering out over the backseat window, her heart burned at the sight.

  He left his children in the car? What kind of an idiot does that kind of thing?

  “Sir?” she called out. “Sir?”

  “Ain’t gonna cause no trouble,” the man said, slurring his words.

  She pulled the Casino-issued cell phone out of her left back pants pocket and dialed the Greensburg Police Department on the secret number known only to other police officers. “Hello, yes, hello?”

  “Yes, what can I do for you?”

  “I need you to call out a police officer to the Sunshine Grand Casino, stat, and I also need you to make a call to Childrens protective services.”

  “Who is this?” a voice asked suspiciously.

  “What, oh, I’m sorry. This is Kathryn McGlone.”

  “McGlone? What the fuck is a Rowan County Deputy Sheriff doing out at the Sunshine Casino? That’s Broward County.”

  The voice sounded eerily familiar.

  “Who is this?” she asked.

  “This is Brett Maas.”

  “Brett? Geezil Petes, how are you?”

  “I’m fine, but what the hell are you doing out there?”

  “I lost my job at the Rowan County Sheriff,” she said, shamefaced.

  The man had pulled out his key and was jamming it into the lock.

  “Well, I’ll be god-damned,” Brett said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Look, Brett,” she said. “I’d love to chat and catch up with you, but I need you to call this in before this dumb-ass gets into his car and drives away.”

  “Okay,” Brett said. “I already did it. Someone’s on the way.”

  “Thanks so much, Brett.”

  “That Casino’s a pit of hell,” Brett said.

  “Don’t you know it,” she said, not really listening.

  “And what with Randy’s gotten himself caught up in—”

  “Oh, yeah?” she asked.

  “No, I mean it,” Brett said. “Randy’s been doing all kinds of crazy shit out there, and—”

  The man had climbed behind the wheel. “Sir, sir,” she cried out. “Stop, please stop.”

  “I cracked the windows some,” the man said. “Believe me, they been hotter than this.”

  She jammed the cell phone back into her pocket ran forward, yanked the door open, grabbed the keys out of the ignition, and held them out of reach as the man started cursing. “Hey, you fucking bitch, let go—”

  “Sir, you can’t drive, not in the condition you’re in, and you’re putting your children in danger.”

  “Fuck you,” he slurred, and he lunged to punch her, but lost his balance and fell, sprawling, out onto the tarmac.

  “Whatcha doin’ to my daddy,” a filthy little girl screamed from the back seat. She vaulted over the back seat, jumped out of the car through the driver’s side door, and bent down to wrap her arms around her father’s head. “You fucking cunt,” she screamed at Kathryn.

  “Oh, dear God,” she said.

  In the distance, she heard the unmistakable sound of a police siren, and she sighed with relief. Thank the Lord, help was on the way, but she wished like hell she was the one performing the arrest. It singed her ass, it really singed her, the way this asshole was behaving. She longed to sla
p the handcuffs on him, and then call Childrens protective services to perform a removal and then charge this asshole with child endangerment, along with a driving under the influence charge.

  “God, I love this stupid Casino,” she said aloud.

  “We’re all guaranteed job security for the rest of our lives,” a disembodied voice said.

  She grabbed her cell. “Brett? You still there?”

  “Yes, the cruiser’s on the way.”

  “I can hear it. Thanks, Brett.”

  She clicked off.

  Two Greensburg Police cruisers arrived a moment later, and Kathryn, knowing all was well, walked back into the Casino to finish her shift.

  It wasn’t until later, much later that day, that she recalled Brett’s words.

  No, I mean it, Randy’s been doing all kinds of crazy shit out there, and—”

  What did Brett mean, she wondered?

  10

  Tuesday, April 16, 11:00 p.m.

  With his precious yet dangerous cargo on board, Manuel white-knuckled the windowless van all the way through Cincinnati and got onto the I-275 highway headed south and got off at the Milano Exit and drove down the lonesome road to the Anderson Ferry, arriving at the Ferry at two in the morning, and pulled up next to the ramp leading into the Ohio River. Not a soul in sight for miles around. He idled the engine for a little while, just sitting behind the wheel, musing and thinking. When at last he decided to proceed, he backed the van down the ramp, put it into park, and pulled the parking brake.

  Again, cautiously, he looked around him, then, when he finally felt secure, jumped out of the van, ran around to the back, threw open the van doors, grabbed Rob by the lapels on his jacket, and hauled him, a sodden lump, out of the van. The body hit the concrete with a sick thud, sending shivers of horror up and down Manuel’s spine. The body felt heavy, so very heavy, and he heaved and hoed and at last, got the body face-first down the ramp, into the water. The injection the Sheriff gave him was only meant to knock him out, but Manuel would’ve been just fine if it’d done more than knock him out and just gone ahead and killed him. It would’ve made the last hundred miles or so less stressful, but he’d nearly accomplished his goal, and he was nearly there.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he shivered suddenly at a movement, and when he glanced up the river, he saw the head-tip of a barge heading his way.

  Better hurry.

  He bent down to his haunches and grabbed the man by the underside of his shoulders and pulled and pulled. It took him a few minutes to get a good momentum going, and when at last, he did, the body slid with a sudden effortlessness and the man’s torso pressed down upon Manuel and drove him underwater and Manuel, gasping, choking for air, fought the body off him and shoved it over and the body went, head-first, into the murky water.

  “There you go,” Manuel muttered.

  But the body must’ve hit a rock or some other obstruction, for now the legs stuck out from the water like a weird mannequin display in a store window of a mannequin drowning, oh, wasn’t that funny, with the legs stick out of the water like that, and for sure, for one sick, horrifying moment, Manuel thought he was gonna get caught, because it sure as fuck didn’t look good, did it, to have a pair of legs sticking straight up out of the water like that, and he pushed, hard, on the feet, and tried to get the legs to topple over, but they did not budge.

  Better fix it, fix this problem.

  He scrabbled over onto the concrete ramp and looked around wildly, trying to find anything that he could use, and he saw a rock, and he scuttled over and grabbed the rock and banged the legs with the rock for a few seconds, when something below the water, maybe the man’s back, or his neck, perhaps, snapped, and the body suddenly bent and the legs went into the water without even making a splash, it was that smooth.

  Dear Jesus, my almighty Father.

  Great.

  But the body was still lodged, stuck in some crevice, he thought, right next to the ramp, for goodness sakes, and if there were a drought, which was being projected, then, once the water level dropped, the body would be easily found.

  He’d covered the body under the water, but he needed to do more. He set the rock down and wandered around, looking for a good, thick stick, and when he found the stick, he pressed it down into the water where he could not see, but where he could sense the head had lodged, and as his fingers brushed up against the crevice that the head had lodged into, a thrill of horror rippled through him as his fingers brushed over the man’s raven black locks, and he remembered, suddenly, how handsome this man was—or had been—and a tiny bead of sorrow opened in his heart.

  But still.

  He pushed the stick deep into the crevice, probably crushing the man’s skull, and effectively killing him, although Manuel had a funny idea the man had died the minute his neck snapped, and he used the pressure of the head and the stick together to leverage the head out of the crevice.

  The body floated, head up, to the surface of the water, and the man gazed up at him sightlessly, his brown eyes opaque and milky, and Manuel pulled the stick from the crevice and used it to push the man’s torso, now emerging from the water, out into the river.

  Okay, this was bad, this was very bad.

  If someone were to come across him this second, it’d look just like what it was; a Mexican without papers, pushing a dead man out into the river.

  His heart filled his throat and his bowels loosened, but he did not pay attention, because at that moment, the barge emerged.

  He gazed out helplessly at the body floating away, still bobbing on the surface of the water, and he prayed and threw the stick out across the water and it landed on the body’s torso and that was the final thing to do, because the body began to drift below the surface of the water, and as the barge pulled up alongside Manuel, as he stood, sweating and loose-limbed on the ramp, the barge captain saw him and waved and he waved back.

  The barge motored past.

  Huh. In the nick of time.

  Manuel noticed a stink rising from his shorts and realized that, yes indeed, he did shit in his pants. Well, that was a first, that was a first. He shook out one leg, then the other, and watched bemusedly as clots of shit slid down his legs, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care one bit. He walked back up the ramp to the van, slammed the back doors shut, jumped behind the wheel, threw the gear into drive, and pulled up the ramp and drove away.

  The van couldn’t be used anymore; no matter how hard they tried, no matter how careful they were, to clean it up, the van would always have some trace evidence of Rob Billings, so he was taking it to a friend’s scrap-yard where it was going to be smashed to bits.

  And when he got to his friend’s place, he knew, his friend would loan him a clean pair of shorts.

  He hummed a tuneless melody as he drove away on Highway 50.

  11

  Tuesday, April 16, 8:05 a.m.

  The following morning, Rob approached Randy’s closed office door and knocked. “Come in,” Randy called out, and Rob entered and closed the door behind him.

  Randy looked up from his laptop. “What happened to you? You missed a run.”

  “Yeah, I know boss. I’m sorry.”

  “What’s going on, Rob?”

  Rob sank to a chair and put his head in his hands. “Shelley left me. I came home the other night, and she’d left. She took the kids with her.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Honest to God, Randy, she doesn’t know a thing about our side business, but she’s gotten suspicious, and she thinks I’m doing something illegal.”

  Randy gazed at him for a long, dangerous moment. “How does she think that?”

  “Dunno. But people are talking. Word is starting to get out, despite our best efforts to keep it all under wraps.”

  “Hm. I’ve been thinking we needed to change our base of operations.”

  “I think it’s time, boss.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, I drove down to Nashvi
lle for the weekend,” Rob said, and Randy registered surprise, which wasn’t a good thing.

  “You missed the exchange, Rob,” Randy said darkly. “Josie had to call me from the Casino, and I had to run over there to supervise. And I ran into that bitch, McGlone.”

  “What was she doing there?” Rob asked.

  “She landed a job as security at the Casino.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Rob.”

  “Well, boss, I gotta tell ya, I went down to Nashville this weekend, like I said, and I saw my wife and kids, and she’s willing to give me a chance, but I gotta go to her and put this all behind me.”

  “Okay,” Randy said evenly.

  “I’m sorry to let it go like this, and I’ll waive my share of the fee from this last run, to make it up to you.”

  “You’re leaving me kind of empty handed here.”

  “I’m sorry, Randy, I really am.”

  “So, who’s gonna handle the exchanges from now on? Who’s gonna handle the security?”

  “Josie, I suppose, but I gotta go back to my wife right now, or she’ll leave me.”

  “I understand.”

  “I wanted to talk to you, in person, so you knew. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “I do want to share your last pile of money with you,” Randy said, “but I can’t give it to you, here.”

  “I’m happy to let you keep it, boss.”

  “No, I want to give it to you, but I can’t do it here, for obvious reasons.”

  “Boss, it’s not necessary.”