Rosalind

by Stephen Paden

His eyes widened like silver dollars. Shit. He hadn’t thought of a very simple yet plausible scenario: what if Susan found out too soon? Before he could explain how he had done all of it so she could have the child she always wanted, or whatever? He could kill a man and even a young girl, but could he kill his wife? He supposed that he could, but it wouldn't be in his best interest to raise his son alone, and he knew for a fact that he could never kill a baby. At least not yet.

  He went upstairs and to the bathroom, grabbed the soap and ran some hot water in the sink. After scrubbing his arms and chest for a few minutes, he dried off and went to his bed where he slept like a bear in winter; a bear who had just eaten a horse.

  Chapter 42

  Susan woke up and John was gone. John had snored all night, which was something he had never done in the history of their marriage. Susan nudged him a few times but when she saw that he wasn't going to wake up, she just rolled over and closed her eyes.

  A few moments later, Rosalind came down the stairs and sat on the couch, her belly aimed at the ceiling. Susan sat next to her and if one were to look at the two straight on, one would think that they had been on a bender.

  "I couldn't sleep good," Rosalind said, rubbing her eyes.

  "You heard it too?" Susan said.

  "It sounded like a pack of dogs outside my door. There was always a pack that hunted by my house."

  "I need to go into the office today. I haven't been all week and I know that poor man needs my help. I figured the both of us could go and then afterwards we could get an ice-cream or something."

  "I really been wanting some ice-cream," Rosalind said.

  Susan patted her leg and said, "Of course you have."

  After they had both had a cup of coffee (which Rosalind didn't like but Susan told her it would wake her up) they left the house and prepared themselves for a long walk into town. But when Susan stepped out onto the front porch, she saw that the car was in the driveway. She looked back at the house and then at the car. Then she looked at the barn door which was standing wide open and she closed her eyes. "Maybe he's getting rid of it today," she muttered to herself.

  They piled into the car, Rosalind feeling like a sardine in a tin can just squeezing into the passenger's seat.

  By the side of the road just before the right turn on Main Street, Susan saw an empty Plymouth Belvedere. A car whizzed by at higher than normal speed and Susan's attention was diverted. She didn't think about the car until she got to the station.

  They arrived at the station a few minutes later and when Susan went to open the door, she noticed it was locked. She pulled her key from her purse and opened it and went to her desk. Rosalind sat down on a padded chair and arched her back, wincing a few times. Susan shuffled papers on her desk and grabbed the mail that had been delivered through the slit in the wall. She opened a few pieces, one addressed to Lincoln County Jail: c/o Susan Byrd from the electric company, one was a flyer from a new appliance store in Hampton informing anyone and everyone they could be the proud owner of a Maytag washer and dryer for the low, low price of $168.99 for the washer, and 175.99 for the dryer.

  She tossed the flyer into the round file cabinet next to her desk and took the bill into Sheriff Hanes' office. She sat down at his desk, looking for any notes that she would need to transcribe. She didn't find any, but she did find a paper that said Application for Warrant at the top. She pulled it out from the mail she had just put on his desk and read over it, thinking she was in for more work.

  It read like any other warrant application she had seen, but when she got to the last name, her body became cold and she started to shake. She moved her eyes to the right and saw that the first named confirmed her fears.

  A warrant for John? What!

  The door to the station swung open, startling Rosalind, and a hefty man in his late sixties walked in, took his sheriff's hat off and scanned the office. He looked over at Susan sitting at Joe Hanes' desk and smiled. He walked into the small office.

  "Joe, you sure got better lookin' since the last time I saw you," he said with a laugh.

  "Excuse me? Oh hi, Sheriff Wilkes," she said, casually flipping the warrant over on its printed side.

  "Well it ain't noon yet, but I had an appointment with Joe. Is he in yet or is he still in bed?" Wilkes grinned like a car salesman who had just sold an Edsul to a four-year-old.

  "I'm not sure, he's usually here at 9 A.M. on the button."

  Wilkes looked at his watch. "It's going on 10," he replied. "Tell you what, I'm gonna cool down a bit on those seats over there, why don't you give the old man a call."

  "Sure, sheriff," she replied. She looked down at her hand and realized that all of the blood was leaving it because she had been pressing down so hard on the warrant. She released it and the color started coming back. She grabbed the phone's receiver and dialed the sheriff's home phone number.

  One ring…

  Two…

  Three…

  Four…

  The hair on her neck stood up. Where was he?

  Six…

  Seven…

  She had noticed something on the way to town.

  Ten…

  Eleven…

  A car…a Plymouth…

  Fourteen…

  Fifteen…

  Her heart pounded. The car on the side of the road was…it looked like…

  Eighteen…

  Nineteen…

  Twenty…

  She slammed down the phone. It was Joe's car. He didn't drive it much because he used the cruiser most of the time—perk of the job, he would always say—but she remembered laughing at it when she saw it. She had told him how frumpy it looked.

  She felt sick to her stomach. Was he out there right now? On her property? Looking for what? Why? And why was John's name on this warrant application?

  Sheriff Wilkes rose from his seat and walked to the doorway of the office. "Everything okay? I can just as easily drive by his house rather than t'bother you anymore," he said. He was looking at her like a sheriff would someone who wasn't being forthcoming. "If I miss him there, tell him I'll stop back by at noon," he said and then left.

  Susan exhaled. She didn’t realize that she'd been holding her breath, but it felt good to let it go. The knots in her stomach were tightening, however. What was he doing out there? What did John do? And why was Sheriff Wilkes on this side of the county line?

  Too many questions.

  She grabbed the application and folded it in half. "Let's go, Rosalind," she said, coming back into the main office and sticking the folded warrant in her purse.

  Susan turned off the lights. She locked the door to the station and looked down the street at Regional Tire. John always parked on the street right in front of the business, but the truck wasn't there. "Thank God. He parked it around back," she said to herself and then got in the car. She hoped he had parked it around back. Rosalind could see that she was nervous about something.

  "Is everything okay?" she asked.

  "Fine," Susan replied.

  She put the car in gear and sped home.

  Chapter 43

  John had gotten up when it was still dark, his wife still half-awake. He threw on his suit and tie, but packed some spare clothes in a small bag that he hid from his wife's view as he left the bedroom.

  He closed the door to the house as quietly as he could. Any noise that morning amplified the fragments of guilt he felt from killing Joe.

  Guilt was the wrong word.

  Fear of getting caught was more correct. He had come this far and he didn't want to watch his small empire razed to the ground by the tiniest of fuckups. Besides, he told himself, leaders don't fuck up, they improvise.

  He walked to the barn and to the back of the truck, felt around the damp, rotten hay, and felt the sheriff's body. The faint smell of decay was already starting to mix with the hay and the motor oil that the truck had been leaking over the past few days. It was the sweet smell of death and he inhaled it proudly.
>
  John hopped in the cab and put the small bag on the passenger's side. He crossed his fingers and prayed that he wouldn't get stopped between here and Bryce Quarry, but then he laughed and slammed his wounded hand on the steering wheel repeatedly. How could he get pulled over when the only man to pull him over was dead in the back of his truck?

  He cackled maniacally for a few more seconds, then threw the stick into gear. It backfired, but he didn't care. He knew that Susan was awake.

  When he got close to Hampton, he was careful to take the back roads heading south down to Bryce Quarry. He would go around town rather than through it.

  The levels of water in the quarry, he hoped, would be deep enough to where he could submerge the truck—sheriff and all. He got to the dirt road that kids always used to go drink or screw or whatever they did up here, and twisted around for a few hundred feet and then stopped his truck about twenty feet from the edge. He got out and walked to the precipice, taking careful baby steps to make sure he still had earth under him. He stuck his right foot out and then pressed down but it found air. He caught himself, pulled back and then squatted down. It was still too dark to see if this was the best place to dump it. He needed a drop that went straight down so the truck wouldn't hit something on the way and explode, or the very least wake up the entire quarry. It was an isolated area, but people always came up here at all hours and the last thing he needed was a witness. He closed his eyes for a few minutes to get them used to darkness and then he opened them, but it didn't help.

  He stood up and started to walk back to the truck. The engine started and revved after a few sputters. He pushed in the clutch and said a prayer. Jumping out of the truck at the right moment weighed on his mind. It had to be exact or he would be, at best, treading water with broken legs.

  He took a few deep breaths, let out the clutch and slammed in the accelerator. The truck jerked and took off. He counted to two and then jumped out of the truck and rolled in the grass and dirt, scratching his left elbow on a sharp rock. When he knew he was safe and hadn't fallen into the drink, he looked up at the truck and for a brief second he saw it's silhouette tumble down into the pit.

  It had slowed by the time it got to the edge because he had forgotten to put a rock on the gas pedal. He had thought about that, but shook his head at how much time that would leave him to jump to safety. When he heard the loud bang, he wished he had.

  If it had been going faster, it would have missed the outcropping fifteen feet below the drop, but it wasn't and it smashed into it and turned the truck into a fiery blaze. John ran to the edge, almost slipping off of it. He caught his balance and looked down. The truck had indeed struck an outcropping; a rock sticking out that he couldn't see. But he could see some of it now; the orange protrusion sticking out of the quarry wall with scattered splotches of fire all over it. The truck finally hit the bottom of the quarry and made a wsssshhhhhh! sound as the dark pool below gulped up every hint of flame from the burning vehicle.

  He looked down at the whitewash from the waves and how the blackness in between each one held the distorted reflections of the stars above. He couldn't quite tell if the truck had completely submerged. He looked around at the rim of the quarry and tried to see if he could detect any dark shapes, any witnesses that might have seen the show. He didn't see any.

  He brushed the dirt off his legs and walked back to get his bag.

  The bag!

  He dropped to his knees and started scanning the rough ground blindly with his hands. His wounded hand started to hurt, but he kept at it.

  I left my suit in the cab! he thought. Wallet…wallet! He searched his back pocket and was relieved when he felt it. He panicked again when he thought about the registration and title, but remembered that he kept all of his paperwork in his desk back home. But there was the matter of the VIN number, which sent him into a smaller panic. He dismissed the thought. Who would be searching for a truck in the middle of a quarry?

  Good ole Joe, he thought. He'll be searching the bottom of it for a very long time.

  He turned from the quarry and started walking back to Whispering Pines. He'd come here a lot as a kid so he knew the way, even in the dark. And even without a vehicle.

  He reached the road about an hour later, twisting through the dirt paths like a navigator sailing a familiar sea. The sun was peaking over the horizon, the clouds a gradient of purple and orange. It was a two hour walk to town, so he had time to think of an explanation for why the truck was gone. And he would do it just like he solved all of his problems. He was the man with the answers. And if Susan didn't believe him, he'd take care of her too.

  Chapter 44

  He walked all the way back to Whispering Pines without incident. The sun was in his eyes for the last forty-five minutes of the trip, but he was able to sneak back into town and enter Regional Tire from the rear. A few of the drivers were waiting at the back door, and when John walked up looking like he'd been boxing in the alley, they laughed and ribbed him. Joe Easterling had said I didn't know Barney kept the bar open all night, and Fred Hancock had remarked that he looked like a French whore had beaten him for failure to pay, not that anyone there believed for one red minute that Fred Hancock had even seen a whore, let alone a French one. John just waved them on saying, "Truck broke down, fellas. You know how it is."

  Smooth, Johnny. Smooth. Keep it up.

  He let them into the warehouse. They went through each aisle and counted the tires; Fred Hancock consulting his clipboard to start assigning routes. John went straight to the bathroom and washed up. He was washing his arms when he felt a slight sting on his elbow. He looked at it and it was cut deep enough to see the bone. He went back out to the warehouse and opened the first aid kit hanging on the wall next to the cargo bay door and pulled out some gauze. He took it back to his office and started dressing his wound. He would have to call Susan and have her bring him a suit.

  He looked out the window and down the street and saw his car parked outside the station. Susan was already at work. How was he going to explain the suit and the truck? He could say that the truck broke down on the way to the junkyard and that his suit was ruined. Yes. That sounded good. And she wouldn't even question it. She never questioned anything he did. She was a good wife. She knew her place.

  A few minutes after John had spotted their car in front of the police station, Susan and Rosalind got in the car and left. She came to their road and turned down the road to the Byrd farm and slammed on the brakes when she came to the Belvedere. Susan hopped out and ran around to the driver's side door of the Plymouth. She put her hands around her eyes as she pressed her head to the window. She slowly stood up, her face a horror of recognition. It wasn't common practice to memorize every facet of a person's vehicle, but she knew this one belonged to Sheriff Hanes. And she wondered why he had parked so far away.

  She had never been inside of the sheriff's car, but she knew that it was his. The fact was that no one else in town had a Plymouth Belvedere. It could have been a random traveler who had broken down, but with the warrant she found on the sheriff's desk and the proximity of what appeared to be his car to her home, she knew it was his. But where was he?

  She walked around to the driver's side of her car and got back in.

  "What's wrong?" asked Rosalind.

  "I don't know. Let's get home," Susan said. She didn't know what was wrong, but she knew that something wasn't right. The sheriff was filing an application for a warrant for her husband, she found the sheriff's personal car a mile from her house, and John—

  Blood, she thought. John had blood on him when he came in last night. What did that have to do with anything? Why was she thinking about his bloody hand? He was working on the truck, and wasn't much of a mechanic to her knowledge. She wanted to pound her fists on the steering wheel, but she didn't. What would it accomplish? This was all circumstantial. And none of it added up. She wasn't a police officer and she knew that she had no training to put together the pieces she had found so
far.

  Susan closed her eyes and rubbed her temples then drove home.

  Rosalind struggled against the shape of her belly to get the car door open. Susan didn't go inside right away. She walked to the barn. She didn't know what she was hoping to find, but she pushed the barn door open and looked inside at the empty space where the truck usually sat. Everything around the perimeter of the bay looked in order (at least the way she remembered it looking the last time she was in here, which was three years ago). She looked at the ground at her feet and saw a large, black oil spot with a few drops that looked fresh. She stepped over it and walked to the middle of the room. She looked down to her right and saw that there was another spot, but while it was dark like the oil spot, it did not have the shiny, black hue to it. She bent down and put her finger in it, but only came up with an light red colored dirt.

  This must be where John cut himself, she thought.

  But she looked again at the shape and size of it. John had sliced his hand. She wondered if someone could even stand after losing this amount of blood. When she stood up and compared the two dark spots on the ground, the reddish one was twice the size of the oil spot.

  She brushed the dirt from her hands onto her skirt and looked at her watch.

  11:06.

  Sheriff Wilkes would be returning to the office at noon to meet with Sheriff Hanes. What would she tell him if the sheriff wasn't at his home? In a bigger city, she thought, it would be easy to say that he was running errands, checking up on some lead somewhere, getting his oil changed. But in a small town, none of those things would hold up. Running an errand in Whispering Pines meant walking a block to pay a utility bill or return a library book. Checking up on a lead meant walking down to the barbershop and asking around. And getting his oil changed meant doing it himself or taking to the Chuck's Garage near the interstate. If Sheriff Wilkes meant to talk to him, he could easily follow up on any excuse Susan could give him.

  11:10.

  She threw her arm to her side and stormed back to the house.