Only, now he felt like a ballet dancer, a matador, a goddamn iron butterfly! Now he bounced on the balls of his feet like a prizefighter, shadowboxing and weaving around the garage, as if waiting for his opponent to step through the ropes and enter the ring.
Ooooooohhhhhhh . . . They were actually going to finish this house—finish it. Ooooooohhhhhhh . . . That would mean he could walk into an airport, Denver’s airport, perhaps, the one with that crazy white tent-roof, could stroll through security wearing a pair of Lucchese wild-caught gator cowboy boots, a real fresh pair of tight designer blue jeans, a white dress shirt, a dark blue blazer, and maybe a garnet bolo tie. He’d strut right into that airport like he’d flown a thousand times before, like he was the sort of man who’d bought his very own airplane. A nice pair of mirrored Ray-Bans, a sharp haircut, a spritz of cologne, and a wallet full of five thousand dollars cash. Nothing much to weigh him down but a leather tote bag with three pairs of underwear, two bathing trunks, a pair of flip-flops, a few T-shirts, and a toothbrush.
Bart smiled broadly as he hopped around the garage, sorting through the lengths of trim wood. But if he could have seen himself, he would have known that the smile on his face right then looked nothing like those dream-images playing inside his own mind, the ones in which he looked like a 1980s Robert De Niro, all thick long hair, suntanned skin, and smoldering charisma. No, Bart’s teeth were quickly dissolving, while his skin had grayed and become dotted with septic sores. No longer the muscular man he’d started this project as back in August, he was reduced now to mere sinew and bone, a shade in clothes billowing off his frame, his strangely pronounced cheekbones looking vulnerable and too large for his face. But he couldn’t see that, and now, now he was flying around, marking a ten-foot piece of trim for a future cut even as his mind was elsewhere, half-focused on slinging himself into a first-class seat, and the cool press of a glass whisky tumbler nestled in his palm, and then what he imagined as the magical moment of wheels up, when speed and gravity would press him back into his oversize leather chair and for an instant or two, he’d feel like an astronaut, and he would have to play things cool, like he’d done this so many times before it was actually boring.
He could hardly even imagine it. Being so wealthy that flying in an airplane was nothing—like driving to work. And then he imagined Panama, focused on those beaches he’d fantasized about for so, so long. He saw his legs stretched out ahead of him on some chaise and iguanas racing along the sand. Those sunglasses would come in handy, too, because he hoped to find a woman to flirt with, a woman he could ask out to dinner. Wait—he’d need another jacket—a linen one. Yes, and perhaps a pink dress shirt. And she would wear a beautiful dress, a floral-print dress, and she would smell like wet orchids, too, and they’d sit at a small table, the sound of the surf pounding, and light music wafting through the thick, tropical air, and he’d reach for her hand, and she’d reach for his, and she would not see him as the working stiff he was now but as a mysterious wayfaring stranger, a man of means and sophistication. Would he be smart enough for her? he wondered. Maybe he ought to read a book or two. . . . No! No, no, no, no, no. He was plenty sophisticated. He’d helped build this house, hadn’t he? He was a business owner, an entrepreneur. Soon, he would have over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in his bank account, and perhaps after True Triangle sorted through their costs, a lot more than that—hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Ooooooohhhhhhh but did Bart feel energized—and not just energized, but electrified, amplified, felt like his brain was a-sizzle, and with the cold and the swirling snow and Led Zeppelin playing “When the Levee Breaks” . . . he laid the piece of wood on the table, grooving to the bassline, and started the saw spinning.
Maybe it was because of John Bonham’s crashing, sludgy tsunami of percussion, or Robert Plant’s wailing freight-train harmonica, or maybe it was just because of the meth blistering every inch of Bart’s body by then, but he did not even hear Bill pounding down the stairs into the garage, an eight-foot ladder under his arm. Because if Bart had heard Bill, he no doubt would have shut off the saw and offered to help the hirsute mason. At the very least, he would have moved the small stack of boards that he had dragged over near the saw and sloppily left lengthwise across the garage floor.
New table saws often come equipped with sensors that identified the difference between wood and flesh, instantly terminating the saw’s spin and preventing horrendous accidents. But the decades-old table saw owned by True Triangle had been given to the three business owners by Cole’s father, and they were overjoyed to receive the saw as a tried-and-true heirloom gift not only because it saved them money but also because it seemed like the kind of tool, endowed with decades of goodwill and craftsmanship, that might just bring them some good luck; Cole’s father had been an accomplished woodworker himself, after all, and—who knew?—with his saw in their possession, perhaps some of that expertise would rub off, like osmosis. They never thought for a second about its dearth of safety features.
Had Bill actually stood on those stairs for some length of time, frustratingly calling out, in fact, shouting at Bart to shut off the saw and move the boards? No one could say for sure, after it was all over. But one thing was for sure: A doggedly proud man, he wouldn’t have sought help from anyone but his old friend José, who, at that moment, was painting a layer of clear veneer on a corner of the fireplace and certainly would not have been able to hear Bill over the screaming Led Zeppelin. So maybe Bill slipped on that pile of lumber, or maybe Bill accidentally brushed Bart with the ladder . . . Or perhaps it was just Bart himself—Bart who was startled, Bart who wasn’t paying goddamn attention. . . .
Indisputable, though, was the fact that something caused Bart to lose both his focus and his balance, prompting him to arrest his fall into the sawblade by bracing for impact with his left hand. And, because of Bart’s abrupt forward momentum, the saw easily sliced off all his fingers on that left hand, thumb included, spraying a curtain of blood across the garage’s ceiling, floor, and staircase wall.
Bart did not respond with shock. Did not stand still like a victim, no—filled with meth-fueled rage and paranoia, he saw Bill standing before him, looking horrified, maybe even guilty, and for the first time since they’d met him, vulnerable, and in all of Bart’s rage, all that miscalculated rage, he reached with his undamaged hand for a framing hammer and swung at Bill, swung at his head—not once, but two, then three times . . . This goddamn mason was not just Gretchen’s spy—he was an assassin, a fucking stone-cold KILLER.
Bart’s wretched screams certainly did carry up the stairs, and all through that empty house; just as they carried out through the snowy canyon itself, startling the ravens sitting at the apex of an old cottonwood tree and sending them flying through the storm like messengers of doom.
At that moment, Cole, Teddy, and José all dropped their work and thundered down the stairs to discover a phantasmagoria of blood. In his right hand, Bart still held that huge framing hammer, and just inside the garage, in a crumpled heap over the fallen ladder, lay Bill, his head stove-in, a growing puddle of blood seeping out into the snow. Certain details burned into their memories in that moment: tufts of Bill’s dark hair on the hammer, the shrieking, whining music still playing for several seconds until Cole finally bent down to shut it off, Bart’s chest heaving so violently it seemed his heart might explode, and of course the blood, all that blood still pumping out of his mangled hand onto the floor even as Bill’s body convulsed where it lay, bleeding out fast. And the snow, falling down so heavily and white, so very beautiful over it all.
Taking all of this horror in then, José ran off, screaming, into the snow.
“Get a fucking tourniquet on that arm!” Cole yelled at Teddy. “And get him down to the truck!” Cole raced off after José, pleading for the man to stop.
With Bart now collapsed onto the concrete floor, Teddy glanced around the garage and spotted a bungee cord.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” he said, holding his friend’s arm, so sticky and wet with blood. “Oh my god, Bart. Hold on, okay? Just hold on, buddy.”
Teddy tied the cord around Bart’s elbow until the lower half of his arm turned purple, then pulled his injured friend off the floor and dragged him out into the cold.
“Brother, you gotta keep that arm up,” Teddy said, wanting very much to vomit but aware that Bart might die if they didn’t get him to the hospital and fast.
“That fucker tried to kill me,” Bart said hoarsely. His eyelids closed, and he slumped into the snow. “He just pushed me . . . pushed me right into the damn saw.”
Teddy stood helplessly, watching as Cole raced downhill toward José, who, still screaming, turned backward to gauge his pursuer’s distance and tripped, falling just shy of the bridge. Teddy glanced down at Bart; there was no time to get him to the hospital. At least not a proper one. The little hospital in town wasn’t equipped for this kind of carnage and would fly him immediately to the closest metropolitan hospital they could, likely Denver or Salt Lake.
He reached for his phone: no signal. And so, summoning something like superhero strength and imagining his heroes in this position, he squatted down beside Bart, draped his friend over his back, and then, in one jerk, surged upwards, his thighs trembling, the blood vessels in his neck and face popping. He let out a yell and started downhill with Bart motionless on his back, morbidly thankful his friend had recently lost so much weight. Within several seconds, he was charging past Cole and José, to his pickup truck, into which he threw Bart before blasting back down the mountain, cell phone in his hand, frantically searching for a signal that he knew would not appear until he got down to the entrance to Gretchen’s property and the paved highway just beyond it.
Beside the bridge, Cole had leapt on top of José and was struggling with the man, urging him to calm down, calm down—that it was all just a terrible accident.
“Cálmate! Cálmate!” he kept frantically repeating, trying to pin down the younger man. “It was an accident! Okay? Please!”
This was before José rolled over, a fist-size rock in his hands, which he now swung at Cole. The rock hit Cole’s shoulder with an audible popping sound. No longer trying to subdue the man beneath him, Cole intuited in a rush of animal clarity that he was in a real fight, a fight for his own life.
They rolled across the graveled ground, struggling to gain position, tearing at each other’s shirts, occasionally landing a poorly placed punch that skimmed off the other man’s chin, ear, or forehead. But neither one finding a sure advantage, they rolled down the slope of the riverbank and landed in the water, gasping, out of breath. There was a reason most fights took only a matter of seconds, and at most, a few minutes; the most harrowing competition, it was also the most exhausting, with the difference between first prize and runner-up . . . everything. Now the two men stood in knee-deep freezing water, snow falling all around them.
“No me mates,” José said, shaking his head. “No me mates.”
“I don’t want to kill you, bud,” Cole said, “but I ain’t lettin’ you go like this. Look, we ain’t bad men.”
“Déjame ir, por favor,” José said, backing slowly away from Cole and downriver.
This time, Cole did not reply, and José knew to run, though it was already too late. Cole caught the man and shoved him down into the water, then stood over his body and, with one knee on his back, circled his hands around José’s neck, until the man stopped struggling—a gruesome process that seemed to take forever—until José’s body finally relaxed. As Cole stood up from this, José’s body washed a few feet downstream before his clothing caught on a fallen cottonwood, where he came to a stop, the current rippling around his prone form.
Cole stood there, panting, the river running around his calves, snow steadily falling. He was freezing, he realized, and if he didn’t leave the river now, he would rapidly become hypothermic. Glancing once more at José’s body, he decided that the corpse wasn’t going anywhere, and so he picked his way back up the slope of the riverbank and, shivering uncontrollably, pulled off his torn clothing and slipped down into the hot springs to recover.
What a profoundly incongruous swirl of emotions overtook him then. At the very basest, utter relief and animal comfort in the hot water all around him. He ducked his head under the surface and rubbed at his face. Then, rising back up, he glanced toward Gretchen’s house. Through the open garage door, Cole could see the ladder all akimbo and a puddle of blood slowly draining downhill.
He looked back toward the river. He had killed a man. Christ, did that make him a killer?
Cole leaned toward the lip of the pool and vomited out into the inch or so of snow that had collected. Then he dipped his head back into the pool and washed off his mouth and face, focused on steadying his breathing. Surely, this was all just a very vivid nightmare, the by-product of sleeplessness and stress; surely, this was in no way . . . real.
Then, from far off, he heard the whup-whup-whup of a helicopter’s blades.
* * *
—
The second Teddy’s phone had shown a signal, still on Gretchen’s dirt road, he dialed 911, explaining that his friend had suffered a gruesome injury and was in desperate need of immediate medical attention.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Teddy said, peering over at Bart, whose slumped head bounced off the passenger-side window with every pothole, dip, and rise in the road. “And he passed out.” Bart’s skin was a ghostly white, and despite the tourniquet, his mangled hand slowly dripped blood down onto the floor of Teddy’s truck. “There might not be time for an ambulance.”
* * *
—
The helicopter landed on the state highway, right at the mouth of Gretchen’s road. The paramedics grimly loaded and secured Bart after peppering Teddy with the requisite questions as to how the accident happened, how long he’d been bleeding, and whether Bart had any family.
“Not much room in the copter,” a paramedic explained, “but you can ride along if you want. We’ll be takin’ him over to Salt Lake.”
“I’m coming,” Teddy said, wedging himself into the helicopter.
“Hey, wait! You got the fingers?” one of the paramedics asked.
Not immediately understanding the question, Teddy blinked big and slow.
“Your friend’s fingers? You got ’em? They close by?”
The helicopter’s rotors created a furious blur of the snow.
Teddy thought back to the scene at Gretchen’s house: the horrific spray of Bart’s blood, Bill’s dead body, and José racing toward the river with Cole in close pursuit. He hadn’t even considered Bart’s fingers; couldn’t remember seeing the digits on the garage floor amid the sawdust and offcuts. The crushing reality of what had just happened suddenly hit him like an avalanche.
Teddy shook his head. “No,” was all he could manage.
With an abrupt shudder, the helicopter pulled up into the air, awkward at first, and then more assured—away from Teddy’s truck, from Gretchen’s road, over the smallish mountains of the immediate area, and on toward Salt Lake City. Midway through the flight, one of the paramedics noticed that Teddy himself appeared to be in shock and draped an emergency blanket over his shoulders, passing him a bottle of water and a sedative.
26
There was no explanation for what had happened that could plausibly exonerate them. Bill’s skull had been crushed from behind, and José had been killed either by strangling or drowning or both. Bill’s truck was sitting damningly on the driveway turnaround as dusk crept over the mountain. Cole sat in the trailer, trying to puzzle out how any of this could be handled. He needed to somehow move the bodies, though he could not at first bring himself to think of doing so as disposing of them. But the more he turned their situation over and over in his mind, the clearer it became that, yes, i
n fact, that was exactly what he needed to do. He needed to dispose of both men, and Bill’s truck, too. And he needed to do this quickly, before any other subcontractor returned to the site. He gave himself until dawn.
The idea of burying them on or near the building site seemed foolish, obviously pointing to True Triangle. He had considered digging a deep, deep hole, covering the bodies with lime (wasn’t that supposed to rush decomposition?), and then burying them, even going to the trouble of paving over the spot, perhaps with concrete, calling it an additional parking spot or some such. But that wouldn’t change the fact that two men had disappeared from this very spot, and the last people to see them were Cole, Bart, and Teddy. . . . If the police came, they’d spread out everywhere on the premises, and a freshly paved patch of earth would seem more than a little suspicious. To say nothing of the fact that Gretchen had a very specific vision for this place, with every foot of the immediate property accounted for. The added “parking pad” would draw not only her curiosity but also her ire.
He thought about bringing the bodies up into the mountains, thought about disassembling the men, butchering them, and either burying the pieces in some remote grave or leaving their broken bodies to the buzzards, mountain lions, and bears. But there was sure to be an investigation, and any detective glancing from the driveway up the mountains only to spy dozens of vultures wheeling over a spot less than a mile away . . .
The truth was, Cole was no criminal, and this was all simply beyond him; he could think of no way out. No matter how long he wrestled with various solutions, they came up short, every one of them.
Godspeed Page 19