Yesterday he had stolen a truck, driven to Utah, stolen a dead body, and returned to Front Range Meat Packers, where the body now lay dead; slowly warming in the back of truck 24. He'd come back to the house because of Helen. Dear Mother-in-law Helen.
It was this last tidbit that had awakened him to the drumming of Thumper's feetâthis bit about Helen. He could not allow Helen to see him. And that was a problem because Helen was close. Imminent. Maybe at the bedroom door right now, waiting for the sound of his stirring.
He grabbed the khaki slacks and shirt he'd thrown off last night and pulled them on. For the second morning in a row he faced the task of leaving the room as though he fully intended to return. He made a quick circuit, rubbing some toothpaste on his teeth with his forefinger and tossing the tube in the drawer; throwing the covers loosely over the bed, half made; moving the Grisham novel forward a few pages. And he did all of it without knowing precisely what he was doing.
No matterâHelen was coming.
Kent cracked the door and listened for the sound of movement downstairs with stilled breath. Nothing. Thank God. He slipped into the hall and flew down the steps two at a time. In a matter of sixty seconds flat he managed to pull out the orange juice, slop some peanut butter on a bagel, down half of both, and hopefully leave the general impression that he had enjoyed a leisurely breakfast on a Sunday morning. He snatched up a pen and, taking a deep breath to still his quivering hand, wrote over the note he'd left yesterday.
Hi, Helen.
Sorry I missed you. Had a great day fishing. All too small to keep. If not home by six, don't wait.
Kent
Kent laid the note on the counter and ran for the entrance. The microwave clock read 9:30. He opened the front door carefully, begging not to see Helen's smiling mug. Sunlight stung his eyes, and he squinted. His Lexus sat idle on the street. Helen's yellow Pinto was parked in the garage and a third car, a green Accord, sat in the driveway behind the Pinto.
A friend's car. In the house? No, he had not heard a sound. Helen was out walking with a friend who owned a green Accord. Which meant Helen would be walking down the street with said friend, ready to run off to church. And church started at ten, didn't it?
Kent pulled the door shut and walked for his Lexus, head down, as nonchalantly as possible. If they were down the street, he would ignore them. Had to. Why? Because he just had to. He'd awakened with that realization buzzing through his skull, and it hadn't quieted just yet.
He brought the Lexus to life without looking up. It was when he started the U-turn that he saw themâlike two figures on the home stretch of the Boston Marathon, arms pumping. He knew then what it felt like to jump out of your skin, because he almost did. Right there in the tan leather seats of the Lexus. Only his frozen grip on the steering wheel kept him from hitting his head on the ceiling, which was good because they might have seen the movement. You can't just throw your arms up in surprise and then pretend not to see someoneâ it just doesn't come off as genuine. Kent's foot jerked a little on the accelerator, causing the car to lurch a tad, but otherwise he managed to keep the turn tight and smooth.
He had a hard time removing his eyes from Helen. She and the man were about a block off, leaning into their walk, waving at him now. She wore a yellow dress that fluttered in the breeze, clearly exposing those ridiculous knee-socks pulled up high.
Should he wave back? It was obviously a
Stop-the-car
wave by its intensity, but he could pretend he'd mistaken it for a
Have-a-good-day
wave and return it before roaring off into the sunset. No, better to pretend not to have seen at all.
Kent's foot pressed firmly on the gas pedal, and he left them just breaking into a run. His neck remained rigid. Goodness, what did they know? They pulled up and dropped their arms.
“Sorry, guys, I just didn't see you. I swear I didn't see a thing. You sure it was me?”
But he wouldn't be asking that question anytime soon, would he? Never. He glanced at the dash clock: 9:35. He had ten hours to burn.
It took Kent a good ten minutes to calm down, nibbling on blunted fingernails, thinking. Thinking, thinking, thinking. In the mirror his face stared back unshaven and wet. He should have cleaned up a littleâat least thrown on some deodorant. Only a slob or a man in a great hurry would neglect basic body care. And he was beginning to smell. Kent sniffed at his armpit. No, beginning was far too kind. He reeked. Which would not present a significant problem unless he ran into someone who took note. And even then what could they do? Call the local police and report the reeking swamp thing tooling about town in the silver Lexus? Not likely. Still, it might leave an impression in some clerk's head.
“Did he appear normal to you?”
“No sir, officer, I daresay not. Not unless you consider walking around with radishes for eyes and smelling of rotted flesh at thirty feet normal.”
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad.”
Kent decided he would drive to Boulder for a burger. He had the time to burn, and on further thought, he needed the miles on his car. It had just gone on a fishing trip.
Two hours later he pulled into a truck stop ten miles south of Boulder, where he managed to splash some water under his pits and purchase a dry sandwich without incident. He spent three hours on the back lot mulling over matters of life and death before pulling out and cruising back toward Denver the long way. And did he use his credit card? No, of course he didn't use his credit card. That would be brain dead. Stupid, stupid. And he was done being stupid.
Darkness had enveloped Denver by the time Kent nosed the Lexus back into the industrial park holding Tom Brinkley's dead body.
Matters were considerably simpler this time around. He shut off his lights, thankful for a three-quarter moon, and idled through the alleys to the back fence. Truck 24 sat faithfully next to its two cousins, and Kent squeezed his fist in satisfaction. “You'd better be there, baby,” he whispered, staring at the truck's roll door. “You'd better be right where I left you.” This, of course, was spoken to the dead body, hopefully still lying in the plywood box. And hopefully not yet rotting. Things were smelling bad enough already.
Kent backed the Lexus to within two feet of the truck, hopped out, and popped the trunk. He pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, unlatched the Iveco's door, and yanked up. A heavy musty smell filled his nostrilsâmusty more like wet socks than musty like a dead body, he thought, although he'd never smelled musty like a dead body before. Still, it was not the smell he'd read about.
The back of the truck opened like a yawning jaw, dark to the throat, with a tongue resting still and brown in the middle. Only the tongue was the box. Kent exhaled in relief.
He pulled a crowbar from his trunk and jumped into the truck. The coffin had been screwed shut, making the prying-open part of the plan a little noisy, but within three minutes the lid lay at an angle, daring him to topple it off.
The sensations that struck next had not been well rehearsed. In fact, not planned at all. Kent had his hand under the lid, ready to flip it casually off, when it occurred to him that he was about to stare into the face of the fish. But it wasn't a fish at all. It was a dead body. He froze. And he wasn't going to just
stare,
but he was going to touch and lift and hoist that cold, gray flesh around. A chill cooled his neck.
A few seconds tripped by in silence. He should get the plastic first.
Kent jumped from the truck and grabbed a roll of black plastic from the car's trunk. He climbed back into the truck and stood over the coffin.
Now or never, buddy. Just do it.
He did it. He kicked the lid off and stared into the coffin.
Tom Brinkley lay gray and slightly swollen with a hole the size of a fist in his gut. His hair was blond, and his eyes were open. For a full five seconds Kent could not move. It was those two eyes staring at him like marblesâglinting with life in the moonlight, but dead. Then the scent wafted past his nostrils. Faint, oh, so very faint but reaching right through to his bones, and his stomach was not responding so happily.
By the looks of it, Tom Brinkley's stomach had not responded so happily, either. It appeared as though he'd used a bazooka to end his life, judging by the size of that hole. His message to the funeral home flashed through his mind.
Not a problem. Will pick up as is.
Now he was staring at
“as is,”
and it
was
a problem.
Kent spun away and grabbed the metal shelving. Goodness, this was not in the plan.
It's just a body, for heaven's sake! A dead thing, like a fish, with a big hole in its stomach. Get on with it!
And what if he couldn't get on with it? What if he simply did not have the stomach to slump this body around? He stared at the gloves on his hands; they would shield him from any lingering disease. Any danger he imagined was only in his mind. Right?
The thought forced Kent into a state of bumbling overdrive. He grabbed a lungful of air, whirled back to the body, reached into the coffin, and yanked Mr. Brinkley clean out in one smooth motion.
Or so he'd intended.
Problem was, this cadaver had lain dormant for a good forty-eight hours and was not so eager to change its position. They call it rigor-mortis, and the dead man had found it already.
Kent had not aimed his hands as he dived into the casket; he'd just grabbed, and his fingers had closed around a shoulder and a side of ribs, both cold and moist. The body came halfway vertical before slipping from Kent's grip. Mr. Brinkley turned lazily and landed on the edge of the coffin. His stiff upper torso slipped clean out and landed on the truck's floor boards with a loud, skull-crushing thud. Now the body slumped over the casket, belly down and butt up in the moonlight with its hands hanging out of the rear as though paying homage to the moon.
Kent swallowed the bile creeping up his throat and leapt from the truck, grunting in near panic. If there really was a God, he was making this awfully difficult. None of the books had made mention of the clammy, slippery skin. Had he known, he would have brought towels or something. Of course the books had not featured chapters on the preferred methods of lugging around dead bodies. Usually these things stayed peacefully on their tables or in their caskets.
Standing on the ground, he glanced up at the body in the back of the truck. It was gray in the dim light, like some kind of stone statue memorializing butts. Well, if he didn't get that butt into the trunk soon, there'd be a dozen cops shining their flashlights on that monument, asking silly questions. Questions like,
“What are you doing with Mr. Brinkley, Kent?”
He turned gruffly to the job at hand, clamped his hands around each wrist, and pulled hard. The cadaver flopped out of the box and slid easily enough, like a stiff fish being dragged along the dock. He pulled it halfway out before bending under its midsection. The thought of that hole in Mr. Brinkley's stomach made him hesitate. He should have rolled the old guy in plastic.
The plastic! He'd left it by the coffin. Dumping the body into the Lexus without covering it would most definitely be one of those idiotic things Stupid Street criminals did. If they ever had an inkling to look, forensics experts would have a field day in there. Kent shoved the body back into the truck, snatched the plastic, and spread it quickly along the trunk floor, draping it over the edges. He bent back into the truck again for the wrists and yanked Mr. Brinkley's naked body out again.
In a single motion, refusing to consider what that hole might be doing to his shirt, Kent hoisted the cadaver onto his shoulder, turned sideways, and let Mr. Brinkley drop into the trunk. The body flipped on descent and landed with a loud thump, butt down. The head might have put a dent in the metal by that sound. But it was covered with plastic, so no blood would smear on the car itself. Besides, dead bodies don't bleed.
Sweat dripped from Kent's forehead and splattered onto the plastic. He glanced around, panting as much from disgust as from exertion. The night remained cool and still; the moaning of the distant highway filtered through his throbbing ears. But there were no sirens or helicopters or cop cars with floodlights or anything at all that looked threatening. Except that body lying exposed beside him, of course.
He quickly forced the head and feet into the trunk, careful not to allow contact with the exposed car. The legs squeaked and then popped on entry, and he wondered if that was joints or solid bones. Had to be jointsâbones would never break so easily.
The eyes still stared out of Tom Brinkley's skull like two gray marbles. By the looks of it, his nose might have taken the brunt of that face plant in the truck. Kent yanked the black plastic over the body and shut the trunk.
Then there was the matter of the casket. Yes indeed, and he was prepared for that little problem. He pulled a blanket from the backseat, threw it over the car, retrieved the plywood coffin from the Iveco, and strapped it onto the top of his car with a single tie-down. Not to worryâit was not going far.
He quickly tidied the truck, closed the rear door one last time, and drove off, still guided by moonlight alone. He unloaded the casket into an abandoned storage bin, two down from where he'd parked the Lexus earlier. Whoever next braved the cubicle would find nothing more than a cheap plywood casket ditched by some vagrant long ago.
By the time Kent hit the freeway, it was almost 9 P.M.
By the time he made his first pass of the bank it was closer to ten.
He told himself he made the pass to make sure the lot lay vacant. But seeing the bank looming ahead as he made his way down the street, he began reconsidering the entire business, and by the time he reached the parking lot, his arms were experiencing some rigor mortis of their own. He simply could not turn the wheel.