A Wicked Plan

by Rod Kackley

  I’m like a one-armed paper hanger with a dead body. That’s what my dad would say.

  The fingers on his left hand were throbbing with pain and were already swelling.

  Time to get busy.

  Tim stood up and walked over to the passenger side to pull Cheryl out.He didn’t look at the Timex on his wrist or the clock on the dash, but Tim knew it had to be after midnight. There had been two other cars with lovers who had better experiences parked about fifty yards away.

  Everybody always does better, Tim thought as he took time to stew over this latest bit of bad luck.

  If only I could turn my mind off.

  Did they see?

  They were gone.

  Why take a chance?

  That’s what I think.

  Tim decided to worry about witnesses, later. He would have to deal with reality, first

  Unfortunately, reality was never his forte

  Escape, tonight would have to wait.

  He knew he was going to have to call Paul.

  Tim opened the door, reached inside, and banged his forehead on the doorframe.

  Damn.

  This was not going well at all.

  This was not going to be easy.

  Cheryl was already turning cold.

  Her eyes were open.

  Good God!

  Tim never expected that.

  She was looking right at him.

  Baby blues burning a hole into his soul.

  He choked back a cup of hot, battery acid vomit, smacked the back of his head on the door frame again, and reeled back into the asphalt parking lot, retching out undigested Bloody Mary, watching it flow downhill, without an umbrella.

  Catching his breath, wiping the tears from his eyes, Tim got back to work and with two fingers closed Cheryl’s eyes.

  She was so beautiful. It was a real tragedy that she broke.

  Tim needed help.

  Now.

  Tim sat Cheryl up in the passenger seat, kicked it back into a reclining position, tried to make her look like she was sleeping, while he started walking.

  Fast.

  Got to call Paul.

  We’ll take care of her, together.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Paul was the kind of kid that the others beat up on in school just for exercise. Short, scrawny, nose bigger than the banana his mom always packed in his lunch and the clarinet he played in the school band.

  Good God, he’s such a loser, Tim thought.

  Paul knew it.

  Tim rescued him from that life by simply letting it be known that they were together, that anyone who messed with Paul would be messing with him, and very few people wanted to take a chance like that.

  He’d taken Paul to bed, too. It took a long time for Tim to admit that to himself, but he had. Well, not bed really. More like out on the banks of the Red Run River when everyone else had gone home. They played around, messed around, Tim led the way, and Paul went along.

  Sometimes things don’t break.

  The night that everything went wrong with Cheryl, Paul was there for Tim.

  “Dude, trouble,” Tim whispered into the pay phone inside the Quick Stop Shop’N Drop.

  Only silence from Paul, Tim heard nothing but his breathing, the static on the line and the hot dogs rolling and spitting on the grill to his left.

  “Something’s wrong with Cheryl,” Tim demanded. “I need you, man.”

  Two hours later they were in woods, with wet, dead leaves of autumn stuck to the bottoms of their shoes as they carried Cheryl’s body wrapped in the black garbage bags Paul had taken out of the garage at his house.

  It was freezing. It was raining. They were shivering with the cold, the wet, the wind, but they were still sweating.

  A stream of perspiration, a river of fear, was dripping down Paul’s face threatening to take his black horn-rimmed glasses with it. Tim’s clothes were soaked with the salty sweat that was shooting from every pore in his body, and he hoped that Paul couldn’t smell the piss that had soaked his jeans when he realized Cheryl would never breathe again.

  Tim and Paul took care of Cheryl, together. Tim’s father always left good, strong, heavy rope in the trunk in case he got stuck in the snow of a St. Isidore winter or the mud of a Swingin’ Izzy spring.

  There was enough rope for Cheryl, with another six feet left over.

  The tree they found in the woods was just high enough. Tim and Paul walked into the forest for at least a mile, far off the paths used by anyone who was up to nothing but good.

  Tim let Paul strip Cheryl naked. Or maybe it was the other way around.

  Tim tied the noose. Together they got her into the tree.

  That should do it, Tim thought as Paul squeezed his hand.

  Their peaceful moment didn’t last long.

  As the boys looked up at the bottoms of Cheryl’s bare feet twisting slowly over their heads, they heard the sound of someone running through the woods. Coming right at them was a young woman, another teenager.

  “Oh crap, it’s Evelyn,” Paul whispered too loudly to Tim.

  “Fuck. Just shut up. I’ll handle it.”

  Goddamn it, Tim’s voice screamed in his head. Goddamn it. Another one.

  Evelyn saw Cheryl and screamed. Tim never bothered to ask her what she was doing out there, or why she had followed them to the woods.

  There was no point.

  They had just enough rope left over.

  The second one was easier, Tim thought as he and Paul walked back to the car. They had Evelyn naked and hanging in the trees in no time.

  Just press that artery on the side of the neck, hold it down and they die every time.

  No one found Cheryl and Evelyn for a couple of months. By that time the insects, birds and whatever else had eaten both girls up pretty good.

  There was an investigation.

  Suicide.

  Cheryl.

  Evelyn.

  And then there was Cheryl’s father, Bob.

  Tim and Paul dragged him into the woods two weeks later and let him see his little girl before they strung him up and shot him with his own Smith & Wesson while the last of his life jerked out of him.

  Target practice.

  Nothing more.

  “His name was Bob,” said Paul.

  “Bob is dead,” Tim said.

  “Goodbye, Bob.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Tim and Paul had go into the woods again a few months later because it had happened.

  Again.

  And, they were back in the forest some years later.

  Two more girls who should have been perfect for Tim had broken, or had been broken, by you know who, Paul said to himself.

  The last time had been worse than any other. These girls, both fifteen, not even old enough to drive their parents’ cars at night, had laughed at Tim and he couldn’t handle it.

  He bought beer for them.

  He talked about the music they loved.

  He gave them cigarettes.

  They only laughed at him, first one and then the other.

  The first girl, Samantha, had even gotten into Tim’s car to get the beer and cigarettes. Tim offered to drive her wherever she wanted to go.

  “Sure, why not?” she smiled.

  Small talk, chit chat. Tim’s mouth was dry. His sunglasses were making it hard to see the road at night. He could feel the sweat under the brim of his baseball cap.

  But he found his way to the same park he had taken Cheryl. The same park where he had gone with the other girls.

  Tim read once that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result.

  Too bad Tim could never remember that when he was with girls.

  Tim was sure this time it would be different.

  It was never any different.

  But this time it was different in a bad way.

  Samantha fought back. This hadn’t happened any of the other times.Tim really had no c
hoice but to slap her.

  He punched her in the face, then grabbed hair with his left hand and yanked, hard. The fingers of his right hand found the artery that ran along the side of her neck and pressed it hard enough for her to lose consciousness and then, to die.

  Tim was breathing hard and the car was a complete mess when he parked it and ran to a gas station with a pay phone to make another call to Paul and get his help with Samantha.

  Paul was not happy when Tim got to the spot in the woods that had become their spot.

  “Again? Are you kidding? Again?”

  “I couldn’t help it. They just broke,” Tim said. “The rope is in the trunk. You tie the noose. I’ll get her clothes off.”

  As the sun was rising and St. Isidore was waking, Tim and Paul had Samantha swinging from the trees, in her next-to-final resting place.

  This would be the next-to-last time that Tim and Paul had to climb the trees. There was one more girl who would need to be taken care of. Samantha’s friend knew that she had driven off with Tim. She had to go, too.

  And, she did.

  “CHERYL WAS THE FIRST,” Tim said. “She was so perfect.”

  Brianna was huddled in the bed. Naked and so excited, listening to this insane story.

  Bree may have only been sixteen, but she knew this guy could do exactly what she wanted. This was a guy who could kill. And he would kill, for her. However, she also understood Tim was a nut case.

  She was in the company of a mad man. Maybe he wasn’t this way when Cheryl was in love with him, but he sure is nuts now, Bree thought.

  Her stepfather was bad. This guy was worse, much worse. This girl he was in love with, this Cheryl, couldn’t have seen it coming. Bree knew she had to be careful or she could be next.

  Steven and Debbie needed to be next, not Bree. She would make sure of that.

  Bree knew she could use Tim to kill her evil parents, but still she shivered when he pulled gently on her shoulders so that she would stand naked before him.

  “You will do better. You won’t break. I will make sure of that,” he said. “I have loved you from the moment I saw you.”

  Bree almost felt sorry for him. She understood he was in pain. Bree might be only sixteen, but she got it.

  She reached up to touch his face. He dropped his head into the palm of Bree’s hand and they both knew that as of that night, they were together.

  They made love or lust or more accurately, desperation, like never before.

  There was no escape for either of them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Tim had never killed two people at once. This would be new territory for him.

  “I know you can do it, baby,” Bree said as they sat in Tim’s truck two blocks away from her home, the house where Steven and Debbie were close to coming to the end of what Bree considered to be their useless lives.

  “You knock at the door, tell them the truck broke down, they let you in, you kill them, set the house on fire, get back in the truck and off we go to your cabin up north,” said Bree. “What could be easier?”

  Tim was having trouble breathing. If this had been happening fifty years ago, his mother would have given him a paper bag to cure his hyperventilation.

  Bree’s hand on his thigh wasn’t helping him control his breathing, but it did help remind Tim of his promise and hers, and the possibilities offered by a future together.

  Tim’s cabin would be the perfect hideout until everything calmed down. When emotions were iced they’d go to Canada or maybe drive all the way down to Mexico. There were no limits.

  Bree’s plan seemed perfect to Tim.

  Bree used a finger to turn his face to hers and give him a kiss of courage.

  “Now we need to go to Walmart and get the rope,” she said.

  “I need a few things, too. Here is the list. I want to make sure I am looking good for you tonight, baby.”

  Another kiss, a hint of tongue, and Tim dropped the truck into gear.

  He was ready.

  Besides a quick shot of tongue-induced courage, Tim only needed three things for this mission; gasoline, rope, and a gun. The gasoline was easy. He would just hit the Stop ’N Go station.

  It was almost as easy to get the gun. His best friend Paul, the guy who had helped him get rid of Cheryl’s body, the cop with a history of hiding murders or mistakes, had a Smith & Wesson that would be perfect.

  Paul was only to happy to lend the weapon to his friend. Tim was only too sad to press his fingers against the side of Paul’s neck, stop the flow of blood to his brain, and get rid of a witness.

  Collateral damage, Tim thought. Bree’s right. I should have done that a long time ago. He was the only witness to Cheryl and the others.

  Tim carried Paul’s body out of the trailer he lived in — Paul was a tiny guy, could have been a jockey, hard to believe he was a cop — dumped it in the bed of his truck, put a tarp over the corpse, on top of the rope, drove though the woods and found a good, tall tree. Perfect for a suicide.

  It wasn’t easy pulling him up the tree, but Tim had done this so many times he was getting pretty good at it. Like the girls, he stripped Paul naked. Not the first time for that, either.

  They’re not going to find you for a couple of days, buddy, Tim thought as he said goodbye.

  TIM WAS STANDING BETWEEN the hedges, later that night, out front of Bree’s home peeking through the kitchen window when he saw Steven hug Debbie and say, “I know you are worried about your little girl, but she will come home. The police will find her.”

  “Like you care.”

  “What? I care. I love Bree like she’s my own.”

  “You love Bree like she’s your own whore.”

  “Bitch. What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “What I am talking about is that I know what you do to my little girl. I lay in bed awake every night that you ignore me and then walk down the hall to see her.”

  “You’re dreaming, woman.”

  “Dream? It’s more like a nightmare. And who are you calling ‘woman?’”

  “I’m calling you ‘woman,’ woman. And you need to back the fuck off and get the hair on your neck, the fuck down.”

  “Fuck you, motherfucker. You’ve been fucking my little girl and I am sick to fucking death of it. You’ve been raping my little girl.”

  Steve leaned back against the counter, took a breath and said the words that Debbie was afraid she was going to hear.

  “You are half-right,” he said. “We were fucking. You are right there. But it wasn’t rape. She wanted it. Hell, she started it. She wanted to kill you for your insurance money, run off with me, and head to Mexico.”

  Slap!!!

  Tim’s jaw dropped and his jeans tented at the sound of someone’s hand hitting someone’s face full force. Skin on skin contact. He was so amazed at the violence coming from little 4-foot, 11-inch Debbie that Tim almost forgot what Steven had said.

  He was fucking my Bree. That motherfucker is going to die, Tim promised himself.

  But first, Tim had to see more of this fight.

  Tim stood up slowly, just enough to see over the lower edge of the kitchen window, just in time to see Steven double up his fist and smash Debbie in the face.

  Full force, nothing held back, it was a punch that shattered Debbie’s nose. It knocked out one of her front teeth and sent her back to the kitchen floor like she’d been hit in the head with an axe handle.

  “Fuck you bitch. Who’s fucked now? You fucking bitch. We were going to Mexico. It was all planned. If she hadn’t gotten herself kidnapped or whatever the fuck happened, we’d be there by now.”

  Tim was so ready to kill Steven.

  “What a bastard! He’s been fucking my Bree, “Tim whispered to himself. “That son of a bitch! If there was ever anybody who deserved to die it is that son of a bitch. Did he really think Bree would go to Mexico with him?”

  Tim knew that couldn’t be true.

  She’s going to Canada with me,
Tim assured himself.

  Bree was just leading Steven on. Tim was sure of it.

  But what if she was just playing Tim for a fool? He had wondered about that. Tim might be a middle-age perv, but he wasn’t a stupid middle-age perv, at least he didn't think so.

  There was one thing Tim knew for sure; no teenage girl was going to make him look like a fool again.

  He decided to find out that night what Bree was really planning.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  “Were you fucking Steven?” That was one of three questions Tim wanted to ask Bree. It would be followed by “Did you like it?” and the question at the back of every man’s mind who finishes second, which is really just first place at the top of a long list of losers.

  “Was he better than me?”

  Tim would have asked all three if he wasn’t afraid of the answers. He wanted to be sure she wasn’t just playing him, but then again, maybe Tim really didn’t want to know.

  Maybe no man really wants to know.

  Instead Tim went for...

  “Why does your mother have to die?” Tim said. “She doesn’t seem so bad.”

  “She is a bitch,” said Bree. “Steven is right about that.”

  Bree was not as upset as Tim thought she would be about her mother’s broken nose or how pitiful Debbie looked when she was on her hands and knees searching for the tooth that Steven had knocked out of her mouth.

  “She loves you. She took on Steven tonight, defending you, got her nose broke and her tooth knocked out. And you still want to kill her.”

  Bree looked up at him as she was rubbing lotion on her bare legs and feet.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know.”“Like what.”

  “Just a lot okay?” She put her hand on Tim’s leg, gave his thigh a squeeze and said, “Just trust me okay, baby. She has to go. They both have to go.”

  There was nothing like a good thigh squeeze to leave Tim speechless. The bare legs helped too.

  “I want to be with you and I don’t want anything getting in our way.”

  Bree kissed Tim and rubbed her hand on the front of his jeans, pulled down the zipper and reached inside.