by Brian Hodge
Waldo bent down by the trailer and pulled a small shovel out from beneath it. The poodles wandered around and started doing their bathroom business. Waldo cupped his hands over a cigarette and lit it with a lighter and smoked while he noted the dog’s delivery spots. After a while he went about scooping up their messes with his shovel and making several trips to the dumpster to get rid of it.
Finished, he pushed the shovel beneath the trailer and smoked another cigarette and ground it hard beneath his heel and opened the trailer door and called to the dogs. They bounded up the steps and into the trailer like it was one of their circus tricks. No poodle tried to fuck another poodle. Waldo didn’t kick anybody. He went inside, and a moment later came out again, this time minus the poodles. He was carrying something. A box. He looked about carefully, then placed the box in the back of his pickup. He went back inside the trailer.
“Goddamn,” Martha said. “There’s a woman’s leg in that box.”
“Let me see,” I said.
“You can’t see it now,” she said. “It’s down in the bed of the truck.”
She gave me the binoculars anyway, and I looked. She was right. I couldn’t see what was in the bed of the truck. “He wouldn’t just put a woman’s leg in the back of his pickup,” I said.
“Well, he did,” Martha said.
“Oh God,” Jasmine said, and she flicked on her pen light and glanced at her watch and started writing on her notepad, talking aloud as she did. “Twelve-o-five, Waldo put woman’s leg in the bed of his truck. Oh, shit, who do you think it could be?”
“One could hope it’s that goddamn bitch down at the county clerk’s office,” Martha said. “I been waiting for something to happen to her.”
“Martha!” Jasmine said.
“Just kidding,” Martha said. “Kinda.”
I had the binoculars tight against my face as the trailer door opened again. I could see very well with the infrared business. Waldo came out with another box. As he came down the steps, the box tilted slightly. It was open at the top and I could see very clearly what was in it.
“A woman’s head,” I said. My voice sounded small and childish.
“Jesus Christ,” Martha said. “I didn’t really, really, believe he was a murderer.”
Waldo was back inside the trailer. A moment later he reappeared. Smaller boxes under each arm.
“Let me see,” Jasmine said.
“No,” I said. “You don’t need to.”
“But…” Jasmine began.
“Listen to your father,” Martha said.
I handed the binoculars back to Martha. She didn’t look through them. We didn’t need to try and see what was in the other boxes. We knew. The rest of Waldo’s victim.
Waldo unfolded a tarp in the back of his pickup and stretched it across the truck bed and fastened it at all corners, then got inside the cab and cranked the engine.
“Do we go to the police now?” Jasmine said.
“After we find out where he’s taking the body,” Martha said.
“You’re right,” I said. “Otherwise, if he’s disposed of all the evidence, we’ve got nothing.” I was thinking too of my record at the police station. Meaning, of course, more than my word would be needed to start an investigation.
Martha cranked the van and put on the park lights and began to ease along, giving Waldo the time he needed to get out of the trailer park and ahead of us.
“I’ve got a pretty good idea where he’s going,” Martha said. “Bet he scoped the place out first day he got to town.”
“The dump,” Jasmine said. “Place they found those other bodies.”
We got to the street and saw Waldo was headed in the direction of the dump. Martha turned on the van’s headlights after the pickup was down the road a bit, then eased out in pursuit. We laid back and let him get way ahead, and when we got out of town and he took the turn off to the dump, we passed on by and turned down a farm to market road and parked as close as we could to a barbed wire fence. We got out and climbed the fence and crossed a pasture and came to a rise and went up that and poked our heads over carefully and looked down on the dump.
There was smoke rising up in spots, where sounds of burning refuse had been covered at some point, and it filled the air with stink. The dump had been like that forever. As a little boy, my father would bring me out to the dump to toss our family garbage, and even in broad daylight, I thought the place spooky, a sort of poor-boy, blue-collar hell. My dad said there were fires out here that had never been put out, not by the weight of garbage and dirt, or by winter ice or spring rainstorms. Said no matter what was done to those fires, they still burned. Methane maybe. All the stuff in the dump heating up like compost, creating some kind of combustible chemical reaction.
Within the dump, bordered off by a wide layer of scraped earth, were two great oil derricks. They were working derricks too, and the great rocking horse pumps dipped down and rose up constantly, night or day, and it always struck me that this was a foolish place for a dump full of never-dying fires to exist, next to two working oil wells. But the dump still stood and the derricks still worked oil. The city council had tried to have the old dump shut down, moved, but so far nothing had happened. They couldn’t get those fires out completely for one thing. I felt time was against the dump and the wells. Eventually, the piper, or in this case, the pipeline, had to be paid. Some day the fires in the dump would get out of hand and set the oil wells on fire and the explosion that would occur would send Mud Creek and its surrounding rivers and woodlands to some place north of Pluto.
At night, the place was even more eerie. Flames licking out from under the debris like tongues, the rain seeping to its source, making it hiss white smoke like dragon breath. The two old derricks stood tall against the night and lightning wove a flickering crown of light around one of them and went away. In that instant, the electrified top of the derrick looked like Martian machinery. Inside the derricks, the still-working well pumps throbbed and kerchunked and dipped their dark, metal hammerheads then lifted them again. Down and up. Down and up. Taking with them on the drop and the rise, rain-wet shadows and flickers of garbage fire.
Waldo’s truck was parked beside the road, next to a mound of garbage the height of a first-story roof. He had peeled off the tarp and put it away and was unloading his boxes from the truck, carrying them to a spot near one of the oil derricks, arranging them neatly, as if he were being graded on his work. When the boxes were all out, Waldo stood with his back to us and watched one of the derrick’s pumps nod for a long time, as if the action of it amazed or offended him.
After a time, he turned suddenly and kicked at one of the boxes. The head in it popped up like a Mexican jumping bean and fell back down inside. Waldo took a deep breath, as if he were preparing to run a race, then got in his truck, turned it around, and drove away.
“He didn’t even bother to bury the pieces,” Jasmine said, and even in the bad light, I could see she was as white as Frosty the Snowman.
“Probably wants it to be found,” Martha said. “We know where the corpse is now. We have evidence, and we saw him dispose of the body ourselves. I think we can go to the law now.”
We drove back to town and called Sam from Martha’s bookstore. He answered the phone on the fifth ring. He sounded like he had a sock in his mouth.
“What?”
“Plebin, Sam. I need your help.”
“You in a ditch? Call a wrecker, man. I’m bushed.”
“Not exactly. It’s about murder.”
“Ah, shit, Plebin. You some kind of fool, or what? We been through this. Call some nuthouse doctor or something. I need sleep. Day I put in today was bad enough, but I don’t need you now and some story about murder. Lack of sleep gives me domestic problems.”
“This one’s different. I’ve got two witnesses. A body out at the dump. We saw it disposed of. A woman cut up in pieces, I kid you not. Guy named Waldo did it. He used to be with the circus. Directed a dog act.”
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br /> “The circus?”
“That’s right.”
“And he has a dog act.”
“Had. He cut up a woman and took her to the dump.”
“Plebin?”
“Yes.”
“I go out there, and there’s no dead body, I could change that, supply one, mood I’m in. Understand?”
“Just meet us at the dump.”
“Who’s us?”
I told him, gave him some background on Waldo, explained what Martha and Jasmine found in the LaBorde newspapers, hung up, and me and my fellow sleuths drove back to the dump.
We waited outside the dump in Martha’s van until Sam showed in his blue Ford. We waved at him and started the van and led him into the dump. We drove up to the spot near the derrick and got out. None of us went over to the boxes for a look. We didn’t speak. We listened to the pumps doing their work inside the derricks. Kerchunk, kerchunk, kerchunk.
Sam pulled up behind us and got out. He was wearing blue jeans and tennis shoes and his pajama top. He looked at me and Jasmine and Martha. Fact is, he looked at Martha quite a while.
“You want maybe I should send you a picture, or something?” Martha said.
Sam didn’t say anything. He looked away from Martha and said to me, “All right. Where’s the body?”
“It’s kind of here and there,” I said, and pointed. “In those boxes. Start with the little one, there. That’s her head.”
Sam looked in the box, and I saw him jump a little. Then he went still, bent forward and pulled the woman’s head out by the hair, held it up in front of him and looked at it. He spun and tossed it to me. Reflexively, I caught it, then dropped it. By the time it hit the ground I felt like a number one horse’s ass.
It wasn’t a human head. It was a mannequin head with a black paint mark covering the stump of the neck, which had been neatly sawed in two.
“Here, Jasmine,” Sam said. “You take a leg,” and he hoisted a mannequin leg out of another box and tossed it at her. She shrieked and dodged and it landed on the ground. “And you that’s gonna send me a picture. You take an arm.” He pulled a mannequin arm out of another box and tossed it at Martha, who swatted it out of the air with her putter cane.
He turned and kicked another of the boxes and sent a leg and an arm sailing into a heap of brush and old paint cans.
“Goddamn it, Plebin,” he said. “You’ve done it again.” He came over and stood in front of me. “Man, you’re nuts. Absolutely nuts.”
“Wasn’t just Plebin,” Martha said. “We all thought it. The guy brought this stuff out here is a weirdo. We’ve been watching him.”
“You have?” Sam said. “Playing detective, huh? That’s sweet. That’s real sweet. Plebin, come here, will you?”
I went over and stood by him. He put an arm around my shoulders and walked me off from Jasmine and Martha. He whispered to me.
“Plebin. You’re not learning, man. Not a bit. Not only are you fucking up your life, you’re fucking up mine. Listen here. Me and the old lady, we’re not doing so good, see.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. Toni has always been so great.”
“Yeah, well, you see, she’s jealous. You know that.”
“Oh yeah. Always has been.”
“There you are. She’s gotten worse too. And you see, I spend a lot of time away from the home. Out of the bed. Bad hours. You getting what I’m saying here?”
“Yeah.”
He pulled me closer and patted my chest with his other hand. “Good. Not only is that bad, me spending those hours away from home and out of the bed at bedtime, but hey, I’m so bushed these days, I get ready to lay a little pipe, well, I got no lead in the pencil. Like a goddamn spaghetti, that’s how it is. Know what I’m saying?”
“Least when you do get it hard, you get to lay pipe,” I said.
“But I’m not laying it enough. It’s because I don’t get rest. But Toni, you know what she thinks? She thinks it’s because I’m having a little extracurricular activity. You know what I mean? Thinks I’m out banging hole like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Hey, I’m sorry, Sam, but…”
“So now I’ve got the rest problem again. I’m tired right now. I don’t recover like I used to. I don’t get eight hours of sack time, hey, I can’t get it up. I have a bad day, which I do when I’m tired, I can’t get it up. My shit comes out different, I can’t get it up. I’ve gotten sensitive in my old age. Everything goes straight to my dick. Toni, she gets ready for me to do my duty, guess what?”
“You’re too tired. You can’t get it up.”
“Bingo. The ole Johnson is like an empty sock. And when I can’t get it up, what does Toni think?”
“You’re fucking around?”
“That’s right. And it’s not bad enough I gotta be tired for legitimate reasons, but now I got to be tired because you and your daughter and Ma Frankenstein over there are seeing heads in boxes. Trailing some innocent bystander and trying to tie him in with murder when there’s nobody been murdered. Know what I’m saying?”
“Sam, the guy looks the part. Acts it. There’s been murders everywhere the circus goes…”
“Plebin, ole buddy. Hush your mouth, okay? Listen up tight. I’m going home now. I’m going back to bed. You wake me up again, I’ll run over you with a truck. I don’t have a truck, but I’ll borrow one for the purpose. Got me?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Good night.” He took his arm off my shoulders, walked back to his car and opened the door. He started to get inside, then straightened. He looked over the roof at me. “Come by and have dinner next week. Toni still makes a good chicken-fried steak. Been a while since she’s seen you.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. Give her my love.”
“Yeah. And Plebin, don’t call with any more murders, all right? You got a good imagination, but as a detective, you’re the worst.” He looked at Jasmine. “Jasmine, you stick with your mother.” He got in his car, backed around and drove away.
I went over and stood with my fellow sleuths and looked down at the mannequin head. I picked it up by the hair and looked at it. “I think I’ll have this mounted,” I said. “Just to remind me what a jackass I am.”
Back at the apartment I sat on the bed with the window open, the mannequin head on the pillow beside me. Jasmine sat in the dresser chair and Martha had one of my rickety kitchen chairs turned around backwards and she sat with her arms crossed on the back of it, sweat running out from under her wool cap, collecting in her mustache.
“I still think something funny is going on there,” Jasmine said.
“Oh, shut up,” I said.
“We know something funny is going on,” Martha said.
“We means you two,” I said. “Don’t include me. I don’t know anything except I’ve made a fool out of myself and Sam is having trouble with his sex life, or maybe what he told me was some kind of parable.”
“Sex life,” Jasmine said. “What did he tell you?”
“Forget it,” I said.
“That Sam is some sorry cop,” Martha said. “He should have at least investigated Waldo. Guy who paints and cuts up mannequins isn’t your everyday fella, I’d think. I bet he’s painting and sawing them up because he hasn’t picked a victim yet. It’s his way of appeasing himself until he’s chosen someone. Akin to masturbation instead of real sex.”
“If we could see inside his trailer,” Jasmine said, “I bet we’d find evidence of something more than mannequins. Evidence of past crimes maybe.”
“I’ve had enough” I said. “And Jasmine, so have you. And Martha, if you’re smart, so have you.”
Martha got out one of her little cigarettes.
“Don’t light that in here,” I said.
She got out a small box of kitchen matches.
“I can’t stand smoke,” I said.
She pulled a match from the box and struck it on her pants leg and lit up, puffed, studied the ceiling.
“P
ut it out, Martha. This is my place.”
She blew smoke at the ceiling. “I think Jasmine’s right,” she said. “If we could divert him. Get him out of the trailer so we could have a look inside, find some evidence, then maybe that small-town idiot cop friend of yours would even be convinced.”
“Waldo’s not going to keep a human head in there,” I said.
“He might,” Martha said. “It’s been known to happen. Or maybe something a victim owned. Guys like that keep souvenirs of their murders. That way they can fantasize, relive it all.”
“We could watch his place tomorrow,” Jasmine said, “then if he goes out, we could slip in and look around. We find something incriminating, something definite, there’s a way to cue the police in on it, even one as stubborn and stupid as Sam.”
“I’m sure Waldo locks his doors,” I said.
“That’s no trouble,” Martha said. “I can pick the lock on Heaven’s door.”
“You’re just a basket of fine skills,” I said.
“I used to work for a repo company, years back,” Martha said. “I learned to use lock jocks and keys and picks on car doors and garage doors. You name it, I can get in it, and in a matter of moments.”
“Listen, you two,” I said, “leave it be. We don’t know this guy’s done anything, and if he is a murderer, you damn sure don’t need to be snooping around there, or you may end up on the victim list. Let’s get on with our lives.”
“Such as yours and mine is,” Martha said. “What have I got to look forward to? Selling a few books? Meeting the right man? Me, a gargoyle with a golf club?”
“Martha, don’t say that,” Jasmine said.
“No, let’s call a spade a spade here,” Martha said. She snatched off her wool cap and showed us her bald head. I had seen a glimpse of it a time or two before I went to work there, when she was taking off and adjusting her cap or scratching her head, but this was the first time I’d seen it in all its sweaty, pink glory for more than a few moments. “What’s gonna pull a mate in for me? My glorious head of hair. I started losing it when I was in my twenties. No man would look twice at me. Besides that, I’m ugly and have a mustache.”
