He did…and he didn’t. Something here seemed off; there was something about his neighbor that didn’t feel quite right. But Rich acquiesced when Jorgensen opened the gate and motioned him into the yard, and the two of them walked up the short driveway to the garage. He tied Sprinkles’ leash to a faucet on the side of the house, then followed Jorgensen to a small door at the back of the garage. The other man took out a key, unlocked the door, then walked inside, flipping a light on as he did so.
“There she is.”
It was an interesting contraption and unlike anything he’d ever seen. Seven feet tall, it took up the entire center of the garage, a smooth boxy metallic device with lighted buttons lined up above two joystick levers, one red, one green. To the right of these controls was a square opening roughly the size of a front-loading washing machine’s door. Differently sized glass tubes protruded from the top of the device.
How had Jorgensen’s cousin gotten it here? Rich wondered. It was much too big to be sent through the mail. Maybe it had come in pieces and Jorgensen had put it together. Apparently, he was far more skilled than Rich could have guessed.
“How does it work?”
“Simple. You put the body in here…”
He heard nothing after that. The body? He’d felt uneasy ever since his neighbor had surprised him from the other side of the fence, had been wary walking onto the man’s property, but now there was a real reason for the uneasiness. The body?
“The body?” he said.
Jorgensen chuckled. “I know. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But it works, by God. Want me to show you? Here…” He led Rich around to the other side of the machine, and there on the floor, atop a black plastic tarp, was the dead body of a homeless man. Rich recognized him instantly. He was the crazy person who sat on the steps of the post office and called everyone “Steve.”
He felt as though he’d been punched in the gut. What had he walked into here?
“Now watch this.” Proudly, Jorgensen opened a door in the board maker, taking out a looped chain that he pulled over the homeless man’s head and arms. He hurried back to the other side of the machine, and with surprising quiet, the chain and body were drawn inside.
“Come here!”
Rich walked hesitantly around to where his neighbor stood pressing buttons. From deep within the machine came an efficient whirring.
Seconds later, a bundle of boards pushed halfway out of the opening.
Jorgensen pulled down on the red lever. “Done!”
“That was a man,” Rich said finally.
His neighbor nodded. “Yes,” he acknowledged.
“You killed him.”
“I did him a favor. He’s much more useful this way.”
“But you killed him.”
“I didn’t come up with it. It’s a Swedish system.”
“But they can’t…”
“Can’t what?”
“I mean, in Sweden. They don’t kill people to make boards.”
“Of course they do. Why do you think those Scandinavian countries are so clean? They don’t have a homeless problem because they’ve found a way to make use of the most useless members of society. These people are contributing to the betterment of their country. Death gives them purpose.”
It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. But when Rich tried to recall if he’d ever seen a photo of a Scandinavian homeless person, or a street where people were sleeping on the sidewalk, he couldn’t. A few years ago, he remembered, in Denmark or Norway, there’d been protests by nationalists over Muslim refugees seeking asylum. He’d never heard the outcome of that, but the problem was no longer in the news. What had happened to those refugees?
Had they been made into building materials?
That was crazy.
Only it wasn’t. The proof was right in front of him.
He couldn’t help reaching out and running his hands over the boards. They were smooth and pleasing to the touch, satisfyingly warm.
“Lucite flash-sealed,” Jorgensen said proudly.
Rich pulled his hands quickly away. “I’d better go,” he said.
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do.”
Jorgensen frowned. “You’re not thinking of…?”
Calling the police? That’s exactly what he was thinking of doing. But there was an implicit threat in his neighbor’s trailing sentence that made Rich try to read the man’s face.
He could be made into boards, he realized.
And no one would know.
No one would believe it.
“I’m supposed to be walking the dog.” Rich played the you’re-a-man-you-know-how-it-is card. “My wife’ll be on my ass if I’m gone too long.” The unstated implication was that if he didn’t return soon, he would have to explain to Phyllis why he was late.
The approach seemed to work. His neighbor smiled. “Well, don’t be a stranger.”
Rich nodded, starting for the door. “Thanks,” he said, “for—” He glanced furtively toward the boards. “—everything.”
He was not able to breathe freely until he and Sprinkles were back on the sidewalk. He hadn’t exactly been holding his breath the entire time he’d been in the garage, but there’d definitely been tension, and he didn’t realize until he was out of there how nervous he had been.
How could he not be nervous?
Ted Jorgensen had made his fence out of dead bodies.
Just like the people in Sweden.
It was almost impossible to wrap his head around. He felt overwhelmed, and he hurried back home, where he locked the front door before going from room to room, quickly closing all of the windows. He met up with Phyllis in the bedroom.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Making sure all the windows are closed and locked.”
“But it’s hot tonight—”
He turned on her. “All the doors and windows need to be locked!”
She was taken aback, clearly surprised by the vehemence of his reaction, and she stood back as he frantically checked the last of the rooms.
“What’s going on?” she said.
“Nothing!”
“Something.”
“Let’s just go to bed,” he told her.
“It’s only eight o’clock!”
“Well, I’m going to bed. I’m tired.”
She went back out to the living room, but, true to his word, he took off his clothes and got under the covers. Ten minutes later, he was dead asleep.
In his dream, he was on a narrow street in war-torn Rwanda. To his left were nicely maintained homes with perfect fences. To his right were piles of slaughtered African children. In the center of the street stood a smiling Ted Jorgensen, his machine working at full capacity, taking in bodies, churning out boards.
****
“The Jorgensens invited us over for a barbecue this Saturday,” Phyllis said.
Just home from work, his mind focused on going into the kitchen and getting himself a beer, Rich didn’t register what she’d said at first. “Huh?”
“The Jorgensens have invited us over for a barbecue.”
He heard her this time. “No,” he told her.
“I already said yes.”
“You didn’t even ask me!”
“I knew you’d say no.”
“So, you said yes.”
“It’ll be a chance for you to admire their precious fence up close.”
Don’t even joke about that! he wanted to yell at her. But he kept his calm. “I’m not going.” He opened up the refrigerator, pulling out a Heineken, and headed back out to the living room, where he plopped down on the couch.
“Oh, yes you are,” Phyllis told him.
“Oh, no I’m not.”
“Well, I am.”
“I thought you said they were snobby…”
“Well, I want to see for myself. And I’ll be sure to tell them how you want to put up a fence like theirs—”
“Stop it with the
fence!”
She stared at him, taken aback by the vehemence of his response. “What is with you? What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” He gulped down a huge swig of beer.
The doorbell rang at that moment, and rather than escalate the argument, Phyllis went to answer it. Rich turned on the TV, tuning in to the local news. Behind him, he could hear one of the Caldwell kids asking if he could get the baseball his brother had accidentally hit into the back yard. “Go ahead,” Phyllis told him. “The gate’s open.”
“I’m going to lock that gate,” Rich said after she’d closed the door. “I don’t want those little bastards back there.”
“Why don’t you build a new fence to keep them out?”
“Enough with the fence!” he shouted.
“Jesus! What’s up with you?” Phyllis stormed off into the kitchen, and seconds later he heard the slamming of cupboards, the banging of pots on the stove.
He considered telling her about the fence, about the Swedish machine, about the homeless guy—
Hi Steve!
—but Phyllis was not someone who could keep a secret. She would blab to everyone she knew, and if she did that, Rich was not sure what Jorgensen’s response would be. Maybe she’d end up as part of his patio. Maybe they both would.
On the other hand, Phyllis might go directly to the police, and they would find out what was going on, and Jorgensen would be arrested.
It was impossible to say what would happen. Which was why his plan was to completely avoid the man, and hope that Jorgensen and his wife moved far, far away.
****
They both ended up going to the barbecue.
Rich couldn’t find a way to get out of it.
It had been his hope that it was a neighborhood barbecue, that there would be others there and he could spend as little time as possible with Ted Jorgensen, but that was not the case. They were the only couple invited, and of course the wives paired off, leaving him stuck.
His strategy was to avoid any subject that might relate back to the machine, to keep the conversation on safe superficial topics, then to eat quickly and leave for home as early as possible. But it was Jorgensen who, after placing four steaks on the grill, walked over to the garage, opened the small side door and motioned for Rich to follow him.
He hesitated only briefly before accompanying his neighbor inside.
To his relief, nothing seemed to have changed. The boards that had been made earlier in the week were piled in the same spot, and nothing new had been added. The machine sat there dormant, and as they walked around it, Rich was glad to see no black tarps on the floor.
“Work’s been kind of slow,” Jorgensen joked. “I’ve been thinking about actually going to Lowes or Home Depot to buy boards.”
The words were music to his ears, but he found himself asking, “What about animals? Can you make boards out of animals?”
“You can, but, surprisingly, they’re not as good. People just have all the right elements the machine needs. Unless something turns up soon, though, I’m going to have to pause on my plans for back yard renovation.”
Unless something turns up soon.
The man was a serial killer. That was the truth of it, although the thought had not really occurred to him, at least not so clearly and bluntly, until now. Jorgensen continued to talk reasonably, again bringing up the Scandinavian countries where this was supposedly common practice, but the only thing Rich could think about was the fact that this garage was where his neighbor brought the dead bodies of the people he killed.
How was he going to extricate himself from this? The two of them lived on the same street. And now they were socializing! Were he and Phyllis going to have to move in order to break free?
From outside, the scent of cooking steaks met his nostrils, and though it smelled good, the idea of eating meat this man had grilled made him gag. Who knew what kind of steaks those were?
“Time to turn ’em over,” Jorgensen said, grinning. “Let’s head back out.”
They got through the rest of the evening without incident. No one mentioned the fence, the machine or Sweden, and conversation remained on the superficial level of gossip. Rich ate too little and drank too much, but they’d walked here, so he didn’t have to worry about driving home. Back at the house, Phyllis wanted sex, but he didn’t, and she angrily stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her, as he went around the house making sure all of the doors and windows were locked.
****
He had never been anything other than a social drinker, but during the week following the barbecue, Rich found himself stopping off at a bar near his work before going home each day and downing a few just to “take the edge off.” It was the biggest cliché in the book, the rationalization of an emerging alcoholic. He knew this, but he didn’t care. Driving home sober, passing the Jorgensens’ house, seeing that perfect white fence, made his stomach knot up and his muscles tense. It was a weight too heavy to carry, and he considered going to the police but realized how crazy his story would sound. There was proof—they could test the DNA of the boards—but he knew that no judge would ever approve such a request.
So, he drank.
Should he have told Phyllis? Maybe. But he wanted to keep her out of it, didn’t want to burden her conscience.
And a small petty part of him didn’t want to admit to her that he’d been wrong about the fence.
On Friday, with the prospect of the weekend looming before him, he stayed at the bar one scotch longer than usual. Unlike drinking establishments depicted in movies and on TV, there were no friendly barflies here, no affable group of regulars, only solitary individuals lost in their own thoughts—which suited him fine. He wasn’t here to make friends; he just wanted to dull his senses and stay away from his neighborhood for as long as possible.
Since his encounter with Ted Jorgensen, he’d been walking Sprinkles down the sidewalk in the opposite direction each evening. And he knew that he could spend both Saturday and Sunday having no contact with either Ted or his wife. But each time he had to drive to the store, he would have to pass their house, and even if he locked himself inside all weekend, he would still know that their house was there.
With its fence made out of people.
And the machine in the garage.
He actually felt a little unsteady as he left the bar, but it was a good feeling, and as he got into the car, he thought it would be nice to feel this way all the time.
No.
He couldn’t go down that road. He had to keep it together. He couldn’t let Jorgensen’s fence completely derail his life.
He drove extra carefully, hyper-aware that his perceptions were altered, that his reaction time was compromised. He drove slowly around the corner, onto his street—
—and crashed into a kid who ran out from a driveway, chasing a dog.
He slammed on the brakes. The impact had been hard, solid, and he knew even before he got out of the vehicle that there was very little chance the kid was alive. Rich was shaking, and he bent down next to the crumpled bloody body lying just in front of his bumper to see if the boy was dead. He heard no sound, saw no sign of movement. It was one of those bratty Caldwell kids, though he didn’t know which one, and he glanced up to see if any of the brothers were around or if anyone else had witnessed the accident.
He saw Ted Jorgensen walking over.
This nightmare was never going to end. That serial killer was going to live happily ever after in his Swedish-clean suburban paradise, while Rich would spend the rest of his life in jail because of one stupid accident—
Jorgensen picked up the Caldwell boy’s body. “Open it,” he said, kicking the car’s passenger door.
Too stunned to disobey, Rich did as he was told. Jorgensen threw in the body and closed the door. “Park in my driveway,” he ordered. “I’ll meet you there.”
He started walking down the street back to his house.
Filled with panic, knowing this was the
wrong thing to do but not thinking clearly enough to do the right thing, he put the car into gear, drove to the Jorgensens’ house and pulled into the driveway. Ted arrived just at that moment, opened the passenger door, took out the Caldwell kid as though he were unpacking groceries, and carried the boy to the garage.
Now Rich knew what was going on.
There wasn’t even time to sort out how he felt about it. Part of him was absolutely horrified—
Was the Caldwell boy even dead?
—but part of him was thinking that if this worked, he would be in the clear and wouldn’t have to face jail or any consequences.
The machine was on.
The body went in.
Boards emerged white and smooth and pleasantly warm.
The machine was shut off, and the two of them looked at each other across the garage. Rich didn’t know what to say.
It was Jorgensen who spoke first. “Two more and you’ll have enough to make a new dog house for Sprinkles.”
That sobered him up. “Two more? It’s not like I’m going to be—”
Jorgensen looked at him flatly. “Two more.”
Rich’s mouth was suddenly dry.
“I’ll keep these boards here until you have enough. Then they’re all yours.”
It was a threat, but he still wasn’t thinking clearly enough to be able to determine how or why it was a threat. The other man seemed to sense this. “Go home,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later. And hose off your bumper,” he added. “There’s probably blood on it.”
Two more.
A half hour later, after a surreptitious car wash in the dark, he tried to sneak into the house.
Two more.
Phyllis was waiting for him. “You’re actually drunk this time, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
He blinked, said nothing.
“I’ve had about enough of this crap! You come home late every day, won’t tell me where you’ve been—”
“I’m not…”
“Shut up! You’re going to listen for once! I don’t know what’s going on with you, but for the past week…”
Tuning out her voice, Rich looked at his wife.
Walking Alone Page 16
