by Tony Masero
‘Hell, man, we know too much already,’ said the other hippy, lifting up the now stalled motorbike. ‘What do we do with this?’
‘Bury it. Pile stones on top.’
‘The dead people too?’
‘All of it.’
‘Maybe we should hide this dope, you know, come back for it later?’
Dave shook his head, ‘I wouldn’t advise it. You get greedy, that’s when things come apart.’
‘Sounds like you know about these things.’
‘I may not know much but I do know about some things,’ Dave admitted. ‘The important things.’
‘You were over there, huh?’ The fair-headed one asked, suddenly perceptive and watching him with steady eyes. He was kneeling beside his pile of shed clothing and holding out the empty rucksack.
Dave nodded.
‘Not cool,’ said the dark haired one.
Chapter Two
1998
The shower balked.
It was a recalcitrant beast at the best of times and had never wanted to operate fully. The pipes complained loudly with a belch and a rattle before they finally surrendered and a burst of water shot from the showerhead. At first it flowed rust red. Caitlin waited patiently. She clutched the thin towel around her naked body in the chill room and waited. She daydreamed whilst standing at the edge of the cubicle with her eyes numbly fixed on the patch of damp mold in a corner of the bathroom, thinking it looked a lot like the outline of Cuba or maybe it was Bangladesh, she couldn’t decide. When clean water finally flowed, Caitlin stepped through the sliding plastic door of the cubicle and into the water.
She was a slender young woman, pale and bowed. Her shoulders accepted the downpour of tepid water with the humility of a creature used to a long experience of suffering defeat. Caitlin’s drawn features and sad eyes told the whole story. Here was a woman who, in all her twenty-five years, had never seen better days and accepted her lot unsuspecting of anything better to come.
She was pale faced and long featured with dark pouches under her eyes, she never wore makeup and faced the world as nature had intended. Not from any choice on her part but from a necessity of basic economics. Her mousey hair was cut straight across the back of her neck and a fringe hung down below her eyebrows to almost cover her eyes. Yet although of a slight build, her body was womanly and curved in all the right places. She soaped herself with a small wafer of soap, a relic stolen from a motel a while earlier.
When she was done, Caitlin stepped from the shower and straight into a deep pool of water lying across the bathroom floor and she cursed as she saw the pedestal base of the unit had cracked open and water was leaking everywhere.
Bitterly she tiptoed through the flood and made her way along the narrow corridor to her living room.
The cabin was a complex of rooms added piecemeal over the years. It had belonged to an elderly garage owner who had taken her under his wing and on his death she had inherited the cabin. It was little more than a hunting lodge really and was set at the base of a sloping hill and walled in by tall forests of pine. The only access was by a bare-earth track that led in and dead-ended at the rambling house.
Caitlin liked the solitude; she had no love of society or all the ills it bred. She had already tasted enough of those.
Not being a house-proud creature, the living room was full of clutter, with shed clothing lying over chair backs and piles of discarded travel magazines covering the floor. Used plates and mugs filled the low coffee table and a few threadbare rugs covered the bare boards under the spread of magazines. Empty beer cans filled one corner and on the shelves were a few books and ornaments that spoke of disjointed travel. A tacky Hula doll from Hawaii, painted rocks on a wooden stand from the Grand Canyon and a luminous plastic Jesus from somewhere in Mexico. Seedy looking Haitian shell necklaces fought with glass rosary beads and stubs of colored pencils in a mug entitled ‘Bohemian Beer, the Best a Body can Buy in Baltimore’. It was all tourist junk, tasteless and meaningless to anybody but the owner.
Still damp and clothed only in the thin towel around her middle, Caitlin plunked herself down in a large leather easy chair and reached for the phone. There was no cell phone reception out here, not that she could have afforded it if there was one.
She lifted the receiver, then sucked her teeth and dropped it in the cradle. She ferreted around under the telephone, which rested on unstable stacks of National Geographic, until she found a thumbed and out of date Yellow Pages directory.
‘Hi, this is Caitlin May, out on Bulver’s Backlot,’ she said into the receiver, with the directory balanced on her knees and one hand holding onto her towel.
‘Sure, ma’am. How may I help?’ said a male voice at the other end.
‘This ‘The Pipe Man Contractors’?’
‘You’ve got it. We deal in everything from boilers to back flow.’ he answered cheerfully. ‘What can we do for you?’
‘I have a problem with my shower. The base is busted up and I’m leaking water.’
The man at the other end paused a moment as if in sudden consideration. ‘Bulver’s Backlot?’ he asked, his tone altering to a softer more cautious tone. ‘That the plot out beyond Rivers Bend?’
‘That’s the place.’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am. That’s way outside our normal zone of operation. We can do it, but I should warn you that the call-out fee coming up there might be prohibitive for your needs.’
She hung up.
Caitlin knew what he meant. Bulver’s Backlot was a foreign country to most of the locals. In their eyes strange people lived up here in the tangled forests of the backwoods. Most of them trailer trash by the town’s peoples reckoning. Moonshine drinking reservation Indians and various lost and forgotten souls who had found a haven in the backcountry. It was not a place most regular folks would like to visit.
There had been dark stories of robberies and rapes reported. Myths and legends that had grown out of all proportion over the years until Bulver’s Backlot became a sort of Bermuda Triangle. A black hole it was safer to avoid.
Caitlin scanned the pages of the directory again looking for simpler single line ads and avoiding the boxed big company adverts.
‘Cole Junger – all your plumbing needs’
He answered after the first ring, which was reassuring. A hungry man might be prepared to make the trip out to her.
‘Okay,’ he said, once her problem had been described. ‘I’ll come this afternoon. Give me some directions.’
He was quiet spoken and she could hear the sound of birds chirping in the background as if he were speaking in a garden or out on a porch. There was no eagerness in his tone; no avid desire to make a quick buck and she instinctively liked that.
Caitlin dressed. She wore a long knitted skirt with a tasseled hem and a white shirt embroidered with tiny bright roses and silver twists of thorn, another memento of Mexico. Hippy gear. A throwback to something her mother might have worn, if she had ever known her mother.
It was not that Caitlin consciously prepared for the arrival of the plumber but it was so rare that she saw a strange face that she considered it something of an occasion. She even did something to tidy the place up a little. She organized the piles of magazine, although in reality only moving them from one part of the floor to another before a colorful article describing the Brazilian Rain Forest caught her eye. She returned to the easy chair and folding her legs under her, began thumbing the pages.
It was her release. To dream of distant places, to take bold adventures and explore wild places from the safety of her cracked leather armchair. In such a mode she could drift for hours, placing herself in the colored images and imagining the feel of unknown earth under her feet and the breath of different air upon her cheek.
She would communicate with the red-painted and squat tribesmen of the Rain Forest or meet with tall, stony-faced Negros out of north-east Africa, miraculously in her mind able to speak their tongue and in this world of her creation they wou
ld welcome her and she would become a part of something real and tangible to her, even if it was only a private life realized between the pages of a glossy magazine.
For, in truth, Caitlin had never left the State. Her mementoes were garnered from thrift shops and market stalls. She had accrued a tourist world of junk fantasy that hid and overlaid the emptiness of her real world.
Cole Junger arrived in a battered, red Dodge pickup in the early evening.
He had found some difficulty in discovering the place it turned out and she was lighting hurricane lamps by the time he pulled up outside.
A chunky, fit looking man of average height dressed in stained overalls, his greying hair cut short on his head. Rugged features with lines that spoke of some experience on his tanned skin. A broad shouldered fellow in his forties and although of a retiring disposition she was conscious of his solid presence in her house. He seemed to fill the small room with more than his physicality; he wore an aura that placed him there as if he were one of the long established shadows that filled the darkening room. Instinctively she recognized stability in his soft-spoken voice and the steadiness of his gray eyes. Also she was aware of a kind of alone-ness to his personality and in that she felt something of a kindred spirit.
‘You have no electricity out here?’ he asked, noticing the lamps.
‘Afraid not, the generator broke down. Cut me out of TV and everything.’
‘Might be a problem,’ he observed.
‘You think?’
He nodded, ‘For my drill. Things like that, but maybe I can run it off a battery.’
‘Oh,’ she said simply, unsure of where to go from there.
‘Let me take a look at the shower. I’ll know what’s needed then.’
She led him down the corridor. As she showed him the small bathroom, she was instantly embarrassed as she had forgotten to mop the floor and the pooled water lay in a slick reflective sheen.
He splashed unminding through the water and crouched down, peering at the shower pedestal by the light of a small flashlight he carried in his overalls.
‘No,’ he said decisively. ‘You’ll need a whole new setup I’m afraid. This thing’s gone all to hell, there’s no way to repair it. Once these old ceramic ones go then that’s it.’
‘How much will that cost?’
He heard the anxiety in her voice. ‘If I can make a suggestion?’ he asked and she nodded for him to go on.
‘I’d recommend a cement base and a tiled back. We can put up a curtain. It would give you a larger shower area and save on the cost of a pre-made unit. Be a darned sight less expensive.’
‘I….’ she began. ‘I don’t have a lot of….’
‘I understand,’ he said quickly, saving her the explanation. ‘We can fit it to your budget.’ He got to his feet and she heard the pop of his knees as he did so. ‘Let’s take a look at your generator.’
She led him to the outhouse and he gave the machine the once over.
‘Uhuh,’ he murmured. ‘Looks like maybe the filter. Leave it to me.’
‘Okay, if you think you can do something, that would be great. Would you like a coffee? I got a gas stove I can boil some water on.’
He looked at her then, their eyes meeting properly for the first time. Their faces were lit by the up light from the flashlight. Two pale almost ghostlike faces in the darkness, separated and alone in the shadows. Something spoke to her in that look. She would ponder over it then and for long after. It was an unspoken message. A single word. It came to her in an instant. Trust.
‘That would be fine,’ he said.
He blinked and the moment was gone.
As she brewed the coffee she heard the distant clank and grinding whir of the starter motor. It went on for a while. She watched from her window as he went down to his truck and brought back a toolbox. A gray shape moving in the darkness outside.
She poured the coffee into two mugs she had hurriedly washed out in cold water.
The starter motor kicked and spluttered. Once, twice, then the electric light bulb over the kitchen sink glowed, went out, then glowed again and suddenly came to bright life as the generator began its normal chug back to life.
Caitlin placed her fingers over her lips and grinned in pleasure. It was the first time in a long while since she had done that.
Chapter Three
They were drinking their coffee in front of the television set that was now enjoying a new lease of life thanks to the generator pumping away in the background.
Caitlin had cleared enough of her magazines to allow Cole an uneasy seat on the edge of a rickety chair whilst she enjoyed her favorite leather armchair. Half consciously they watched the breaking news as the President’s sexual misconduct with his staff member Monica Lewinsky shocked the country. It was a scandal that was heading towards an impeachment for the President.
‘So, what do you think?’ Caitlin asked. She sat, curled up on her seat, her fingers entwining her mug. She felt at ease even though she recognized Cole’s discomfort. He was staring blankly at the TV screen as a smiling Clinton mouthed denial and Lewinsky showed an impressive array of dentistry.
‘I think the country’s going to hell in a hand basket,’ he muttered, jerking his chin at the screen.
‘No, I meant the shower.’
‘Oh, yeah. Well, like I say, your best bet is what they call a Roman shower, a walk-in type. I can make the base with an integrated trench drain. Give you a lot more space in there.’
‘When can you start?’
Cole looked into his coffee cup. ‘It’ll need some preparatory work clearing out the old unit. I can begin that right away, tomorrow if you like?’
‘Sure that would be great.’
The news had faded and the programing switched to a documentary crime feature. With a fanfare of music the announcer began making loud noises about a mysterious past crime that had been nicknamed the Cascade Killings by the media.
‘Okay,’ Cole went on. ‘I’ll have to bring some equipment up here but once I’ve shifted the old base we’ll need to take a look at the pipes underneath….’ Cole’s attention was drifting as the program caught his notice.
‘The bodies were found by a weekend camper and his wife whilst out visiting the park,’ the announcer was saying. ‘Doctor and Mrs. Elias Williams. What can you tell us, Doctor?’
The screen image transferred to a bald headed man in gold-rimmed spectacles standing on a rocky slope that Cole recognized only too well. ‘There’d been a rock slide,’ the bald headed man was saying. ‘Over there,’ he waved vaguely. ‘We were taking a stroll up from the riverbed. I collect fossils, you see and some of the rocks up here looked rather interesting. It was pretty ugly. There were parts of partially buried bodies visible. They were fresh too, I could tell by just looking. The deaths hadn’t occurred more than twenty four hours before, that is to say, as a rough estimate in my medical opinion.’
Cole’s attention was focused on the screen. Caitlin was speaking to him but her words were lost as he concentrated on the announcer’s voice.
‘Park Rangers were called in and Officer Ray Wareham takes up the story.’
The Ranger was a gaunt, solemn looking man with a buzz cut and a downturned mouth. ‘We found the remains of one male Caucasian victim and one Afro-American male victim. Both had been shot to death. The Afro-American man had suffered fatality caused by two projectiles from a .357 Magnum and the other man by both a shotgun and a smaller weapon. A .45 caliber handgun,’ he spoke in a low boring monotone as if reading from a printed page. ‘There was also uncovered some evidence of drug involvement and we suspected it had been a drug deal that had gone seriously wrong. The white male had received killing shots to the head in an execution style, which added conviction to the idea that it was gang orientated. The shotgun was found at the murder site but the handgun was never recovered. We reckoned the rock slide took that away somewhere and has not been recovered to date.’
‘You interested in this?’
Caitlin’s voice cut across.
‘Mmm?’ mumbled Cole. ‘Yes, I seem to remember it at the time.’
‘That was a while back, wasn’t it?’
‘I guess so,’ agreed Cole, returning his attention to the screen. ‘Over twenty years, I’d say.’
‘Both suspects were swiftly apprehended,’ the announcer was saying. ‘Two young men, Gil Gurns and Randy Elliot Goldstein, both with previous convictions for drug associated crimes. A large amount of money was found in their possession, the proceeds of an earlier raid in the same week carried out on a security vehicle. Although both men denied anything to do with the murders or the robbery, all the evidence pointed substantially towards their guilt.’
Police mug shots of the two longhaired and hippy-looking bearded men appeared on the screen and Cole’s heart sunk as he recognized the images.
Ranger Wareham came back on. ‘We found that one of the perpetrators was in possession of a substantial amount of cannabis which matched that found hidden at the crime scene. That, the money and their earlier convictions made it a pretty surefire case.’
‘District Attorney Bob Carter was also pretty convinced it was an open and shut affair,’ the announcer mouthed over a picture of a sturdy block of a man with a large cigar in the corner of his mouth. ‘Bob Carter is now deceased but an interview exists which the D.A. gave at the time to a national TV network.’
A grainy colored image flashed up and the cigar chewing D.A. bellowed loudly at his interviewer as if he and the viewers were hard of hearing. ‘There is no doubt of the culpability of these two men. You just got to look at them to know that. Killers, hell bent on spreading the poison of drugs amongst our young people. We shall be pressing with utmost severity for the maximum penalty under the law, you may be sure of that. They’ve come up with some cockamamie story about some other fella who did all the killing but no evidence has come to light of such a perpetrator. It is my humble opinion that our great country should be rid of evil specimens such as these two. Vile individuals who seek to spread the loathsome disease of drug addiction amongst the vulnerable and defenseless and benefit by their own greed from such a sorry commerce.’
