Cover Your Tracks

by Daco Auffenorde

  Nick’s father grunted and leaned over in his chair, fire in his eyes, but he backed off when Nick’s mother put a hand on her husband’s forearm.

  “You saw this, and you didn’t report it?” the cop asked.

  “I mean, yes, I should’ve reported it, I guess,” Nick said. “But I really don’t want to get involved. You know Donnie can’t … never mind.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass,” Nick’s father said.

  “Don’t.” “Donnie can’t what?” the officer asked.

  “He can’t stay out of trouble,” Nick replied. “I don’t think I have to tell you that he’s been in juvie more times than I can count. I didn’t want to get him into trouble.”

  “We’ve never liked Donnie Hollis,” his mother said. “My Nick has always felt sorry for the boy.”

  “I can’t lie,” Nick said. “Donnie Hollis has been talking about killing animals since he was twelve, thirteen years old. I remember going to his house, and his mother had this beautiful black cat, and Donnie hated the cat and said he’d like to skin it. The cat disappeared not too long after that.”

  The police exchanged another glance.

  “What do they say?” Nick continued. “The killer always returns to the scene of his crime? Donnie keeps asking me to go see these things. I hadn’t gone before yesterday, when I finally gave in. He said it was like going to a slasher movie, weird entertainment. I’m sorry I went. Earlier this week, he asked me to double-date with him and his girlfriend, Debbie, and some other girl he said he went out on a limb to fix me up with, but if truth be told, I don’t like the reputations of these particular girls and, anyway, I’d had to come home to study. It pissed Donnie off. Still, I can’t believe Donnie would …” He shrugged. “It’s strange that Donnie knew about these dead animals. I asked him how he knew, and all he said was that everyone knew about the skinnings. Then he kind of grinned. I hope I don’t get Donnie in trouble.”

  “You think he’s behind these animal killings?” the officer asked.

  Nick shrugged. “I told you about his mother’s black cat, but all I can say is that he gets weird ideas. You know.” He paused. “I wonder if …”

  “What do you wonder?” one of the cops asked.

  “I wonder if it was Donnie who reported me because I wouldn’t go out on that double-date. He said if I went along it would help him get laid by his own girlfriend, you know what I mean? So when I didn’t go, he was really pissed at me. Said I was cock-blocking him. So maybe he reported me for revenge. He does stuff like that. Who else but Donnie would claim I was at the Little League field alone?”

  The cops nodded at this explanation. They asked some follow-up questions, most of them repetitive to try to trick Nick into saying something inconsistent. When he didn’t contradict himself, the two officers conferred.

  “That’s all we need,” the older officer said. “Animal control is on the way to remove the squirrel.”

  “That’s all right,” Nick’s father said. “My boy here is going to take it down. It’ll be a reminder of who his real friends are. Won’t it, son?”

  Nick didn’t look at his father, just nodded at the older cop, who nodded back. It was obvious the cop realized what Nick had known for years—his father was a limited, insignificant man, bitter and useless. Nick was also sure his own life would be quite the opposite. He would do something significant.

  As soon as the police left, Nick’s father called him back into the kitchen. On the table was the large fancy glass-cut ashtray, the one that sat at the center of the living room coffee table when an occasional guest visited. This couldn’t be good. “Sit down, man,” his father said.

  His mother, standing near the stove, knitted her brow and said, “This is for your own good, Nick.” Then she high-tailed it out of the room like the wimp she was and watched from the door to the living room.

  His father started to speak but then looked at his mother. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

  “Get it over with,” she replied.

  “The cops did you a favor in not pursuing the underage smoking that you did down at the ballpark,” his father said. “Five hundred in fines and up to thirty days in jail. Well, your mother and I are going to impose our own penalty.”

  Nick sat down. “I don’t follow.”

  His father tossed a pack of his Marlboro cigarettes onto the table. “Oh, I think you do. Open the pack.”

  Though Nick had the physical advantage of youth over his father, one visit with the police had been enough. He was not about to involve the authorities in their messed-up family life. If he’d wanted to do that, he would’ve made it happen years ago. He opened the pack and set it back down on the table.

  “No, take one,” his father said.

  Nick shook his head. “Jesus, you got kids out there doing heavy drugs, and you’re pissed off over cigarettes? Unbelievable.”

  “Take one.”

  Nick did as his father asked. He would play the game, but he would do so according to his own rules. His father walked over to him, opened the matchbook, pulled one off, and lit the match.

  “Put the cigarette in your mouth,” his father said, and held the flame to the end. “You want to smoke? You’re going to earn the privilege. Now start smoking the goddamned thing, and when that one is finished right down to the very end, keep going. You finish the pack right here and now, you earn that privilege.”

  Nick smoked six cigarettes, one right after the other, making sure to blow as much smoke as possible into his father’s face. He liked seeing his father’s outrage combined with his unwillingness to get physical. Nick’s head hurt the more he smoked, he felt sick to his stomach, and if he smoked one more, he might hurl his innards. But it was all worth it, and he continued until he’d smoked the entire pack. He pushed his chair back to leave and he noticed his father holding up another pack of cigarettes. He’d had enough. Nick pushed the ashtray toward his father, stood, and said, “I never liked them anyway. Keep ’em for yourself.”

  “Your smart-ass attitude will get you in trouble once you’re out in the world. You’ll be shoveling other people’s shit your whole life.”

  Nick stared at the jerk. Shoveling crap—that was exactly what Nick’s father had been doing his whole life.

  CHAPTER 17

  Margo cowered, her eyes shifting between Nick and the attacking coyote. The baby shifted, and her heart bounced erratically in her chest as if it were a ping pong ball made of lead.

  “Stand back, Margo,” Nick shouted and dropped whatever he was carrying except for a long stick.

  She stumbled back but managed to stay upright. She retreated farther while keeping a vigilant eye on Nick and the animal.

  Nick growled an ungodly sound and raced inside the shed and toward the rabid animal with his upper lip curled in a sneer and his eyes aflame—not a sight Margo had ever witnessed. The coyote wheeled around and confronted Nick, then snarled in return and advanced, baring its teeth. The animal feinted right in what seemed like a taunting move. Instead of shrinking back, Nick advanced on the animal, brandishing the stick as if he, too, were taunting his antagonist.

  As Nick engaged the animal, Margo filled her pockets with more rocks and moved toward the fight. She was preparing to throw a rock when Nick reared back, dropped to one knee, and in a smooth, almost balletic motion speared the animal clean through the throat, like a fisherman harpooning his catch. It happened so fast that all she heard were the sounds of bones fracturing. In its death throes, the animal gagged, jerking its head back and forth at odd angles. For a moment it looked as if Nick was smiling with pleasure. She shivered. No, he must only have grimaced. She wanted to turn away from the gruesome sight, but was too stunned to move.

  Nick kicked the coyote’s flanks hard, and it fell to the ground. The sharp point of the stick protruding from the back of the animal embedded into the earth. A moment later, Nick grasped the coyote’s head and broke its neck. If it hadn’t already been dead before, it was now. Al
most casually, Nick wiped his hands on the ground and stood up.

  He looked up at Margo and said, “Pretty gruesome. But you’re a doctor, so you’re used to blood.”

  “Blood. Not violent death.”

  “You’ve had patients die, right? Or do you save everyone?”

  “As I said, I’ve never been there to witness the violence. Only the aftermath. And I still hate to see people die.”

  “It still bothers you?”

  What an absurd question to ask. “Every time.”

  “What was the first?” Now he’d asked a morbid question. He seemed fascinated, engaged, a strange reaction for a man standing over the carcass of an animal he’d just killed.

  She didn’t want to talk about this, but she also wanted to erase this gruesome attack from her mind. This was also one of the few times Nick had reached out to her to communicate—an important development in their ability to survive, perhaps. So she told Nick the story of her first day as an emergency-medicine resident. She’d walked into the hospital in Evanston, Illinois, not knowing what to expect, even though as an intern she’d been treating patients for some time. Residency meant responsibility. The ER was packed on that first day, but the cases were routine—a child who had fallen off a swing and needed stitches, people with influenza, a high school athlete with torn knee ligaments.

  Her shift had ended at eleven p.m. She walked into sterilization to clean up before leaving the hospital. Matthew McCann, the supervisor of emergency medicine, was there scrubbing his hands before attending to another patient.

  “Dr. McCann, I’m Margo—”

  “I know who you are, Dr. Fletcher,” he said without looking up. His tone was abrupt, all business. “I’m one of the staff doctors who hires the new residents. How was your first day?” Under his green bouffant scrub cap, his dark-blue eyes bored into her.

  “My day was long. Interesting. Everyone was racing at two hundred miles an hour, and I was going seventy.”

  “You started getting the knack of it by the end of your shift.”

  She hadn’t realized he was watching her.

  “Word of advice,” he continued. “Don’t overanalyze. Read the situation and react.”

  She nodded politely, accepting both the compliment and the advice. “Are you still on shift, Dr. McCann? You came in before I did.”

  “I’m supposed to be done. But an eight-year-old boy fell off his bike and cut his knee on some broken glass, so I’m going to patch him up. Won’t take long.”

  The sirens of approaching ambulances sounded in the distance. They both stopped and perked up their ears.

  “More than one,” he said. “We’re shorthanded. I assume you’ll work past your shift.” It wasn’t a question, but it also wasn’t quite an order. She was dead tired. Not only had they been unusually busy for a Wednesday (according to the nurses), but first day jitters had taken a toll. She feared she wouldn’t be at her best. Still, even if she had a choice—and that wasn’t clear—she wanted to stay. This was what she wanted to do with her life. She began scrubbing in.

  There had been a multiple car pileup on the interstate. Matthew assigned her the less severe cases—level four triage. Her first patient was a six-month-old infant with a head laceration. The EMT had applied a bandage to the right side of his head to stop the bleeding. A minor injury—until the child stopped breathing just as the orderlies were about to wheel him into a room. As the attendants rolled the stretcher, she took the child’s hand to measure his pulse. The hand was like ice.

  She looked up at the EMT. “How long have his hands been cold?”

  “They weren’t until now.”

  She checked the child’s respiration. There was none. Read and react, Matthew had said. She turned to one of the nurses. “We need to intubate.”

  The nurse sprinted out of the room and soon returned with an infant intubation kit. Because of the child’s age, it was difficult to choose the proper-sized instrument. Margo carefully inserted the tube past the tongue and down the baby’s windpipe. The baby’s chest began rising and falling. Success—the baby was intubated and receiving an adequate flow of oxygen. The infant reached out, and she placed her index finger in his palm; his fingers wrapped around it.

  She left the examination room, walked into the hallway, and was about to enter the next room when someone shouted out her name. She hurried back to the baby. A yellowish fluid—cerebrospinal fluid—was seeping from the baby’s right ear. An indication of a cranial fracture. Why hadn’t she seen it before? Trying not to panic, she sent the baby to pediatrics. Now it was up to the pediatric neurosurgeons. She wanted to get on that elevator and follow the baby, but that was impossible. There were other patients in the ER to treat. She watched the elevator doors close and walked back to her post, shaking off the feeling of futility.

  She treated more patients that night, and at shift’s end she met up with Matthew McCann again in the scrub room.

  “Thanks for hanging around, Fletcher,” he’d said. “Go home and get some sleep.”

  She marveled at Matthew’s calm throughout the night. He never raised his voice, never lost control. It was four in the morning before she clocked out. On the way to her car, Matthew called out, “Margo, hold up a minute.”

  It took her a moment to recognize him, because he was no longer wearing his scrub cap, and his thick, straight, flyaway dark hair fell into his eyes. When he caught up, he flipped the hair out of his face. The mannerism was youthful, so different from the person she’d been working alongside for hours. “You got out the door before I could catch you,” he said.

  “Everything all right, Dr. McCann?”

  “No. I have to tell you something. You did an excellent job with the baby who suffered the cranial fracture, but the injuries were too severe. The pediatric team did all they could.”

  She nodded slowly, but hearing this news was like taking a knife to the heart. She’d learned early on in her internship that there were patients who would make it and others who wouldn’t. She’d seen death, had already learned to view it as the worst part of the job. But never had she witnessed a baby die. She would never forget his tiny hand wrapping around her fingers. She willed herself not to cry, the restraint taking every ounce of emotional strength she had.

  “Do you ever get used to this part?” she asked.

  “Never. And you shouldn’t. It helps to talk about it though. Let me buy you a cup of coffee later this week. Someplace else where no one can call ‘stat.”’

  “Yeah, later in the week would be good.”

  Matt McCann was right—she’d never gotten used to death. And unlike Nick, she wasn’t used to killing.

  Now, Nick brushed the dirt from his hands.

  “Sad story,” he said. “I’ve seen those close to me die. Comrades in arms.” He shrugged. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “I owe you my life, Nick.”

  “You owe me nothing. I defend what’s mine and ask nothing in return. I learned a long time ago life is simpler that way.” He relaxed his brow, the lines disappearing. “You should rest.”

  What an odd thing for him to say: “Defend what’s mine.” Was he implying that she belonged to him? Or was this just an expression of a former soldier sworn to defend his country and its citizens? Regardless, she had a better understanding of what it was like to be a soldier, always on the ready for the next horrific attack, willing to kill or maim almost by reflex, and then when the threat was gone, return to normal as if nothing had happened. Doctors had to be detached, but they also cared about life. It wasn’t only a matter of reacting to friend or foe—doctors treated everyone, even murderers. How odd their connection. They shared a common thread yet were attached to opposite ends. Nick’s brutality, his ability to kill, lingered a beat too long in her thoughts.

  “Rest,” Nick repeated. “Take care of the baby.”

  He was right. The baby came first. She gestured at the coyote’s body.

  “I’ll get rid of it.”
>
  “Are there more out there?” She laughed, though nothing was funny. “Of course there are.”

  “After I dispose of the animal, I’ll light a fire. I’ll leave the carcass close enough so that the others know we’re dangerous. I think they’ll get the message.”

  She looked around for the best place to rest, glad not to have to worry about the ground shifting. She’d take the hard ground over that any day.

  “Where are we going to build the fire?” she asked. “I’ll clear the area.”

  “You should rest.”

  “I need to help. It’ll help me unwind, and that’s good for the baby.”

  He paused but then nodded, pointing to a spot. “Close to the entrance. It’ll keep away other animals.”

  She walked over and began clearing the rocks with her feet while Nick carried the dead animal outside. It must’ve weighed forty pounds, and despite its emaciated state, there was plenty of flesh on its bones. Nothing they could eat, not if the coyote was rabid. Her stomach churned, and not only from disgust. Strange that she should’ve felt hunger. No matter, the baby wouldn’t go hungry, not as long as she was alive.

  When Nick returned, she said, “That coyote was sick. Don’t you think?”

  He nodded, his eyes and face expressionless. That’s it? No comment or explanation? No emotion?

  Her stomach grumbled again, and she remembered what she wanted to ask him. “What’s in that bag you’re carrying?”

  “Dinner. You have anything against eating hare?”

  How delightful that sounded, a surprise but somehow not unexpected. She wanted to shout with joy but couldn’t. That damned coyote wasn’t the first animal he’d killed out there.

  CHAPTER 18

  A few days after the police questioned Nick about the dead animals, he took a ride down to the army recruiter’s office on South Woodlands Village Boulevard. Nothing had ever been easier than signing on the dotted line. Two weeks later, he passed the physical examination and got the results of his background check—no problem. He was in. He wouldn’t receive his uniform until he went to basic training, but he found a military surplus store and bought used army fatigues, a pair of Oakleys, and a dog tag. A barbershop was nearby, so he walked in with long hair and out with the shortest buzzcut.