by Dale Bailey
No one would come.
For the moment, they were safe.
Sue still pressed against him, her arms wrapped around his shoulders. He looked over at Finney standing dazed and silent, his back pressed against the cream-colored wall. Across the room, Tucker lay sprawled at the foot of the stairs, his face contorted, his eyes crazed, Finney’s handprint in sharp relief across his cheek. He slowly stood.
At Nick’s feet, Pomeroy lay on a bed of glass, his arms and legs flung wide. His face was a soup of blood and bruise, deep creases running like fault lines across his nose and along his jaw line. One eye was half-lidded, the semicircle of smoky pupil cocked off into empty space. Nothing had ever looked deader. Something fluttered deep within Nick, something he associated with the thick wad of bills in his jacket, the verdant swell of the Barrett estate, the sheer heady rush of might. The fluttering grew and Nick swallowed it down—knowing it must not take him—and looked away from Pomeroy’s body.
Finney looked at Nick, his eyes wide and uncomprehending. Lost. Then the Durant composure slowly reclaimed his features.
“Nice work, guys,” he said. He stepped over to Tucker and wrapped his arms around the other boy’s shoulders, the gesture triggering a mirror image in Nick’s mind: Finney dragging Sue to the floor, his arms tight around her as Pomeroy cleared his jacket with the gun. A tiny spark of hatred tumbled into the dry tinder of Nick’s heart. For a moment, he burned.
“Tuck. Hey, man.” Finney slapped him twice quickly on the cheek, without force. Tucker jerked back, his mouth twisting, his eyes filling with panic.
“Tuck!” Finney shook him roughly. Tuck’s head whipped wildly. “Tucker. Pull it together. Stay with us, man.” Tucker stilled and his eyes found Finney’s, panic fading from them as through an unstoppered drain.
“Finney.”
“It’s okay. We’re here, we’re—”
“Get out of my face.” Tucker pulled away from him and walked over to Pomeroy. He looked at the man, his eyes ablaze with hatred. “Fucker tried to shoot me.” He kicked him hard in the side. Tucker glared at Nick, daring him to say something. When Nick said nothing, Tucker said, “Would’ve killed you, too.” He turned and disappeared up the stairs.
“For God’s sake pull some jeans on,” Finney called after him, stooping to retrieve Pomeroy’s gun. He stood silently, the pistol balanced in one hand, seeming to measure its heft. It was a six-shooter straight out of a TV western, all chrome and ivory. Finney fumbled with it until the cylinder popped open, he counted the rounds. “Four bullets,” he announced, flipping it closed and shoving it into the back of his chinos.
“Some Monday night, huh, Nicky?”
Nick pulled away from Sue and stepped over Pomeroy’s legs; he brushed past Finney and walked into the kitchen, letting the door swing shut behind him. He turned on the hot water at the sink. A dog chuffed once, sounding as if it were right below the kitchen window. Nick splashed water on his face and shut off the tap. Blinking water out of his eyes, he fumbled for a dishrag. There was none. Figures. Reaching for a paper towel, he caught his reflection in the window, a negative outline in a block of night. The phantom doppelganger grimaced.
How does this make you feel? Stillman’s puny voice echoed in his head. How does this make you feel?
Nick had refused the flutter of emotion he’d felt looking down at Pomeroy’s body, but it had grown in the darkness of his heart. In the cadence of Stillman’s voice, it took him.
How did it make him feel? Awesome. Invincible. The brutality of his act, the primordial power of it, made him feel as if he could stomp mountains, turn rivers, shit worlds. Adrenaline pumped madly through him, blood roared in his ears. If the deer from long ago had crossed his path this particular early morning, he’d show it both barrels of his father’s shotgun. He’d chase it down, twist its rack until its neck cracked. In this frozen instant of slow time, he’d—
Nick vomited. It leaped out of him in a single gout, all fire and glass and the acrid bite of the wine he’d had with dinner; it spattered noisily in the sink, a meaty slap against the stainless steel.
I have killed a man. The admission was a sledgehammer to his heart. He ran the tap again, splashing the water over his face. Killed a man. With my hands. He leaned over into the sink and drank deeply from the faucet. He shut the water off and dried his hands and face on a paper towel. Killed a man. He leaned over and, with the same paper towel, swabbed at the bile Pomeroy had spewed across his shoes. He stood and stared into the void of night, letting Pomeroy’s death—
—murder—
—roll through him. Then Casey’s face bloomed in his head, her features faint, fuzzy at the edges, as though he could not completely recall her. He watched the bead of blood roll slowly across her translucent flesh, her face twisting as the two masked men moved toward her. And then something worse possessed him, a momentary flash from his nightmare, barely an hour old: the smaller of the two men tearing away his mask to reveal the face he wore beneath.
My face, Nick thought.
Another wave of nausea rolled through him. He leaned over, gripping the counter edge, white-knuckled. The weight of the night bore down upon him, too much wine, the bitter aftertaste of the acts he had committed with his own hands—
Not now, he told himself. I don’t have time to deal with that right now, and abruptly, as though severed at the source, the nightmarish image—
—my face my own goddamned face—
—disappeared. Nick stood again in his quiet world.
He returned to the living room.
Tucker had come back downstairs, clad in jeans and tennis shoes; he hadn’t bothered to change the sweatshirt. With Sue he stood huddled over Pomeroy’s body watching Finney rummage through the detective’s pockets. Finney stood, holding a set of keys. Nick glanced at the body and saw that one of them had closed the half-lidded eye; he didn’t ask which one.
“We’ve got to dump him.” Finney’s eyes were steady, his voice. “Where?”
For a minute, none of them spoke; then Sue said, “What about the old quarry, out Jonestown Road?” Nick knew the place, a gravel quarry that had petered out years ago, now abandoned and filled with algae-tinted water. Some of the students went out there in the summer to swim. Nick never had.
“We could dump the car, too,” Sue said.
Finney nodded, then hesitated. “There’s no road into the water. Trees come right up to the pits.”
“There’s one that comes in from the back, an old logging road.”
Nick stared at Sue, thinking of the unfamiliar cigarettes stubbed out in the ashtray of her Mercedes, the occasional phone calls she took in another room. Things he would never ask about. Sue met his look coolly, then turned away.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“I can’t,” Tucker whispered, backing away, walleyed. “I can’t.”
Nick looked over at Finney and he nodded, a terse, determined motion. Together they stooped and wrapped their arms around Pomeroy. Nick again took the head and again it bore heavily into his stomach as he lifted the body. Pomeroy was lighter than the Aryan, but Nick still stumbled under the weight.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, fine, just move.” They walked Pomeroy across the living room, glass crunching under their feet. A sense of déjà vu swept through Nick, that eerie doubling of time, a veiled recollection of two nights ago, the same clumsy trek with a heavy, lifeless body. Then memory shifted and he saw himself lifting the husk of his father’s body from his wheelchair and into bed, the old man drunk, a lifeless rag doll, all ticking and cloth.
“Sue,” Finney said, “go check outside, make sure no one’s around. And here—” He swung Pomeroy’s legs under one arm and dug the set of keys out of his pocket. Coins rained across the carpet. “Back his car up the drive and open the trunk.”
Sue took the keys and slipped out the door.
“Let’s set him down.” They unceremoniously dumped Pomeroy and his stomach gurgled loudly
, a viscous liquid draining somewhere deep inside. Finney winced.
Nick looked at Pomeroy’s swollen face and thought, I’ve killed a man. And for what? Ten thousand dollars? No, much more than that. For Sue, for Finney, even for that shit Tuck. Mostly for himself, though, and the whole of his life spiraling out before him. He’d had to do it, right? There had been no choice.
Necessity.
Again he felt the electric thrum of the poker’s blow vibrate up his arms and into his chest. He looked away.
Sue stepped quietly into the apartment. “Done,” she said, handing the keys back to Finney. She looked at Nick and with her eyes asked, You all right? He swallowed hard and nodded.
“Let’s go.”
Together he and Finney stooped and lifted Pomeroy. The detective’s thin hair had fallen into his swollen face; his mouth had dropped open, exposing yellowed, mossy teeth. Something tugged at Nick, a feeling he’d forgotten something; the image wouldn’t come, so Nick turned his head and marched blindly in Finney’s wake. The night air took his breath. The fingernail of moon—partially obscured by a scrim of clouds—had slipped low in the sky; the stars had lost their brilliance, only Venus a gleam in the void of space. What time is it? Nick wondered. How much time before light?
College Park remained quiet, dark.
“Hey!”
Nick’s heart stalled, and then slammed into his chest, almost knocking him to his knees. He saw Finney’s eyes go wide at the shout. They both stumbled and almost dropped the body.
“Who you got there?”
Nick looked over his shoulder. One of the Torkelson twins—he couldn’t tell them apart, each as bloated and slovenly and blank-faced as the other—stood in the yard three houses down. He held his penis in his pudgy fingers, having either just finished or just started urinating in the flower bed.
“That your old man, Durant?” Torkelson brayed laughter, a caustic sound as loud as the voice of God.
He’s blasted, Nick thought.
Sue moved past Nick and stood between them and the Torkelson. Finney started down the walk again, Nick following.
“It’s Stu Gardner,” Sue called. “We’re taking him back to the dorm.”
When Nick glanced back, the Torkelson had disappeared. Together, without counting, he and Finney swung the small body up and into the trunk—big enough, Nick thought, for two or three more pummeled, shrimpy—
—dead—
—private eyes. Nick caught a glimpse of Pomeroy’s world in the clutter of the trunk: a collection of fast food wrappers and Styrofoam coffee cups, several out-of-state license tags, a couple of Hustlers, something that looked like an oversized blackjack, a jumble of small boxes, one with a pair of long-barreled revolvers crossed on the front.
Finney gently closed the trunk. Nick heard the snick of the lock catching—but the lid slowly rose, the hinges squeaking like tiny bats. Finney slammed it down again, and this time it stayed.
Again Nick thought of the time and glanced at his watch. He’d forgotten it back at Sue’s, on the end table. Reflexively, his hand patted his jacket, searching for the reassuring lump. The money was there.
Tucker, zombielike, his eyes glazed orbs, pushed between them and climbed into the backseat.
“I’ll follow you in my car.” Sue squeezed his hand and kissed him quickly on the mouth. She hesitated, then kissed him again, harder, her lips warm and soft. She traced his jaw line with a finger, her nail rasping through three days’ worth of stubble. “It’s going to be all right.” As she ran down the street, Nick considered shouting after her, telling her to stay, she’d done enough. Then she was inside her apartment and the night was once again deathly still.
“You coming?” Finney stood on the driver’s side.
“Yeah.” Nick opened the passenger door and his mind bloomed with the forgotten thought, the one that had nagged him earlier. “His hat!”
“Hat? He wasn’t wearing it just now?”
“No—we left it inside.” Nick ran up the walk and into the apartment; they had left all the lights on. He heard Finney crank and rev the Cadillac—it choked and sputtered before settling into a reluctant idle. He scanned the room and spotted the Stetson by the fireplace, a fist-sized bowl denting its crown. He snatched the hat and started back, then hesitated. Turning to the sliding glass doors, he brushed aside the vertical blinds. Beyond the broken glass, three more streets of identical townhouses rolled away, then hills and sparse woodland, giving way at last to the mountains. The image of the Barrett estate flashed through his mind; the gentle slope of manicured lawn, the quick wink of blue. It would be easy: simply walk—and keep walking. Every man for himself—
—you ain’t like them—
—you got to take care of number one.
But for how long? How far? It wouldn’t work—couldn’t. Running was no answer. Might as well wait for death to slink up in her Cadillac-black negligee and sweep him away.
Nick fled the apartment, hitting as many lights as he could. He stopped short halfway to the Cadillac.
Standing behind the car, one paw on the bumper, a gravel-brown mongrel sniffed at the trunk. Nick froze. The dog stood about knee-high; great scabs of mange covered its back and haunches. It pawed at the trunk latch and then saw Nick. Its upper lip skinned back from an endless row of jagged teeth; a string of saliva leaked from its snout. It growled a low, rattling warning and sniffed the trunk again. The growl turned into a whine as thin and sharp as barbed wire.
“Git!” Nick shouted and waved the Stetson at it. The dog backed off slowly, growling, then turned and disappeared into the dark.
“Damn,” Nick said, dropping into the passenger seat and tossing the Stetson into the back. He glanced at the dashboard clock, one of those ancient analogs embedded into the console, stretching from the overflowing ashtray to the knobless radio, its second hand racing in jerks and starts, keeping time with Nick’s heartbeat. 5:07. Not nearly as late as he’d thought. Finney pulled the Cadillac into the road. “Damn,” he said again, staring through a maze of cracks spider-webbing the windshield.
“Damn what?”
“You wouldn’t fucking believe it.”
“I haven’t believed much of the past two days.”
Sue, flashing her lights once, fell in behind them.
Ransom slept.
It was during the moments just before dawn that the small college town reminded Nick of Glory the most. A hush as somber as a pall held the town; the houses were dark, the streets empty, all seeming to lead into the impenetrable heart of nowhere. Ransom seemed lifeless, void of humanity, hope.
The monster Cadillac—as sleek and black as a moray eel—cruised silently through the back streets. Finney, hunched myopically over the wheel, had insisted that to get to the quarry quicker, he’d have to cut across downtown Ransom. Nick had protested weakly and then consented; time was short.
When the Cadillac crossed Main Street, the sudden brilliance startled Nick. He sat up straight, clutching the dash—then relaxed. Christmas lights. The town had strung hundreds of colored lights and bedecked virtually every light pole with an angel or star, turning downtown Ransom into a circus of blinking cheer. Christmas seemed as far away as a distant planet, as cold and barren. For him, the break meant only a return to Glory, another stint unloading crates, endless arguments with his father, now almost constantly drunk, the punches and badgering of Sam and Jake.
They stopped two blocks up at a red light, the Cadillac caught in the penumbra of Christmas lights. Behind them Sue lay on her horn, emitting a blare that shattered the night. Nick whipped around in his seat. “Shit!” he cried. “The trunk’s come open!”
The trunk lid bounced lazily in the night, like a giant hand waving.
Nick clambered out of the car, barking his knee painfully on the armrest; behind him he heard Finney yank the gearshift into park and cut the engine. Nick grabbed the lid with both hands—catching a glimpse of Pomeroy, his body sprawled like a grotesque doll—and slammed i
t. He looked frantically about. A car paused at the intersection on Main, then continued. Another one came through the intersection in front of them. Ransom was waking. Nick turned around and the trunk lid almost caught him in the chin. Finney rounded the back end and together they slammed it. It hesitated, then floated up. They slammed it again and then again. Each time the trunk lid rose, implacable and unperturbed. Each time Nick glimpsed Pomeroy’s body, lying unfazed in a rainbow of light.
“Shit!” Finney half-shouted, a desperate note in his voice. Headlights illuminated them and they both whipped around; a pickup came down the rise and turned onto Main. The Mercedes eased up beside them. Nick turned back to the trunk, studied Pomeroy’s sunken, mottled face. He looked worse; his nose split down the middle, his mouth leaking a yellowish bile, his skin waxen. He heard the electric buzz of the Mercedes’s window.
“Christ! What are you two doing?”
“The fucking trunk won’t shut!”
“Get him in the backseat.” Nick leaned into the trunk and pulled the body’s top half out by the armpits. Pomeroy’s effluvium engulfed him, a combination of dead fish and overripe fruit. Gagging, Nick tugged harder. “Now!” he shouted at Finney. Together they hauled the detective out of the trunk and into the street. Nick felt his grip slipping, but he kept moving; Finney staggered after him, an oily, snake-skin boot stuffed under each arm, Pomeroy’s ass dragging across the macadam. With one arm Nick held the body in a half nelson and with his free hand fumbled open the back door.
Tucker’s moony, pale face stared up at him. “What,” he said.
“Goddammit, get out of the way, Tuck,” Nick said, already moving Pomeroy’s torso into the backseat. Tucker looked blearily from Nick to the body. His eyes grew wide and a strangled chirp escaped his mouth; he scrambled crablike to the far side of the car.
“Fuck you doing!” Tucker’s voice was a squeal, a piglet in pain. “What!”
Finney slipped and fell forward, bending Pomeroy double, forcing his legs into his belly. The body broke explosive wind.
