The Guilt We Carry

by Samuel W. Gailey

  She pressed her eyes closed and dug gnawed-down fingernails into her palms hard enough to leave tiny crescent moons, and waited for her head to clear. It took a minute. Maybe two. When she opened her eyes again, she glanced around at the crappy, thin walls and flimsy door and the curtainless windows. Then she noticed the duffel bag stuffed in the corner of the bedroom next to Terry’s side of the bed.

  Terry’s side of the bed. That seemed a stupid thing to think. Like they were a couple or something.

  She kept staring at the Army surplus–style duffel bag. Olive green; a black serial number inked into the fabric. She glanced back over at Terry, whose head was tilted to the left and seemed to be gazing at the duffel bag as if he were keeping an eye on his property. It must have been the last thing he looked at right before his heart stopped beating.

  Alice stared back at the duffel bag, zipped up tight. She wiped the sweat from her upper lip, scooted closer to the bag, suddenly very curious about its contents.

  Need to call the cops.

  But Alice didn’t particularly want to call the cops just yet. That was something she didn’t really feel like dealing with right now. There’d be questions. There’d be some digging into her past, a hornet’s nest she didn’t feel like kicking. Not now. Not ever, if possible.

  She kept staring at the duffel bag—mesmerized like it was a piece of artwork. Something about a zipped-up Army surplus duffel bag begged to be opened. She would have to call the cops. Alice knew that. What choice did she have?

  Maybe one peek into the bag. Terry, being dead and all, wouldn’t give a damn. Alice rubbed at her face. She needed a few minutes to clear her head, drink some orange juice or whatever Terry kept in the refrigerator, and try and get her story pieced together.

  And, oh yeah, to also look inside the duffel bag. That was going to happen. Like a free shot of whiskey sitting in front of an alcoholic, begging to be tossed back. It wasn’t a question of if, merely when. Alice tucked loose hair behind her ears, pulled the bag onto her lap, and eased the zipper open. No big surprise. No socks or blankets, no boots, no survival supplies. Nothing like that. Instead, it contained baggies full of coke. A lot of them. Alice was no expert in weight or the street value of cocaine, but she’d been around the stuff enough to know that there was probably ten, maybe twenty thousand dollars’ worth of blow inside the duffel bag.

  But that wasn’t all.

  Alice dug deeper and found a few bottles of pills. Amphetamines, Quaaludes, Vicodin. And one bottle of Rohypnol.

  “God damn.”

  Alice didn’t particularly enjoy partaking in pills—vodka, whiskey, or tequila suited her just fine—but she knew enough about them. Rohypnol. Roofies. Terry must have laced her drinks last night.

  Alice glanced back over at Terry, her fear transforming into a wave of dull rage and disgust with herself for letting this happen. The thought of the scumbag being inside her made Alice feel like puking again, but her stomach was all tapped out.

  White powder still clung onto his nostril hairs. Served the cokehead right. He got what he deserved. She noticed the cut on Terry’s upper lip, swollen up and eggplant purple. He also had a nasty bruise under his left eye—a mark about the size of a set of knuckles. Despite her belly full of tequila and roofies, she must have fought him. Got in a few good shots before … if anything happened. Maybe the asshole OD’d before he had the chance to do anything to her.

  Alice kept digging through the duffel bag and her fingers grazed against something else at the bottom. Another bag—a kid’s brown lunch bag—jammed down under everything else. She pulled out the paper sack, about the size of a small shoebox. Taped up real nice and neat.

  Alice ripped open the bag like a child tearing into a present on Christmas morning and stared at its contents. She licked at lips that went dry in a moment’s time, and her heart almost felt as if it stopped beating altogether. Alice didn’t budge for twenty seconds, and it was then that she noticed how deathly quiet the trailer seemed.

  It was only when something hard whacked against the metal side of the trailer that Alice finally flinched. Another thud, then again, followed by the sound of juvenile laughter.

  As Alice peered through the window, she clutched the paper bag tight between trembling hands and watched the pack of bullies sling snowballs at the dead man’s trailer. The metallic reverberation went straight through her. She wanted it to stop. Needed it to stop. She hated that particular kind of sound—it triggered the awful memories of discovering Jason—but the kids were too caught up in their sadistic glory and had no intentions of stopping anytime soon. So, the sound continued, on and on, with no letup in sight.

  Thud, thud, thud.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NINETY-ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS.

  Stacks of bundled twenty-dollar bills were spread across the kitchen table amidst a collection of beer bottles, a plate of cigarette butts, and empty cans of Skoal. As Alice fingered the crumpled brown paper bag, the amount of money kept repeating in her head. The number was truly staggering. More money than she had ever seen before, and would likely ever see again.

  Alice stared at all that cash and sipped at a glass of Mountain Dew spiked with vodka. Terry didn’t have orange juice after all, but plenty of vodka. Alice was currently on her second glass. The first had steadied her nerves and stopped her hands from trembling. The second cleared up her head a little and made her feel emboldened, and that was when she decided to count the money in spite of the fact that there was a dead man in the back of the trailer.

  Ninety-one thousand dollars could sure get her out of her dead-end existence. Could get her back on her feet. A clean start somewhere. Anywhere. A new beginning. No more desperation jobs pouring cocktails for drunk assholes.

  When Alice had searched the trailer earlier, she’d found her purse and jacket discarded next to the sofa, along with her boots that Terry must have been kind enough to remove. Now, along with the cash, Alice’s purse sat on the kitchen table as well. Terry—true gentleman that he was—must have been kind enough to bring it from the bar. Not counting the change, there was exactly forty-three dollars in her purse. She knew. She counted it after tallying the ninety-one thousand dollars. Didn’t take as long to add up the money in her wallet, though. Other than the clothes she owned—and those were nothing to write home about—Alice had no car, no credit cards, no checkbook, not even a driver’s license. At the age of twenty-one, she was worth all of forty-three dollars and couldn’t even legally drive a car.

  Forty-three bucks barely covered two nights at the crap motel she’d been staying at for the last few months. The Comfort Manor—minus any degree of comfort and about as far from a manor as a cardboard box—did the majority of their business on a by-the-hour basis, but Alice had made arrangements with the front desk guy. Ernie What’s-His-Name. She gave Ernie What’s-His-Name twenty bucks cash every day and let him drink for free at the Frisky Pony a few days a week in exchange for the discounted room rate, no questions asked.

  The Comfort Manor’s walls were paper thin, giving Alice an unwanted front-row seat to the obligatory moans of prostitutes banging their johns in the rooms on either side of her. The roaches were the size of rats in the summer, and rats the size of cats in the winter. The only redeemable thing about the place was that everybody left her alone. No one bothered her or stayed around long enough to get to know her. No nosey neighbors. No one ever asked what her name was—no one except for Ernie What’s-His-Name. The dude acted like a freaky little perv, but he seemed harmless enough. He would usually sip on a few Seven and Sevens on the same barstool, stare at the parade of tits up on the stage, too meek and afraid to speak to a soul, then go back home to wherever he laid his greasy head.

  Alice wished she could remember more about the previous night. Beyond what Terry may have done to her—that didn’t really matter right now. What she really wanted to recall was if anyone knew that Terry took her home. That was the ninety-one-thousand-dollar question: Could she be connected
to Terry Otis?

  The only reason she bothered to count the money and tried connecting the dots about what transpired last night was because she happened to be putting some pretty serious thought into taking the money and leaving Harrisburg behind her.

  And why not? Terry OD’d. She didn’t do anything to him. He snorted his way to an early grave. She just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Or the right place at the right time.

  It’s drug money. Someone will come looking for it.

  Alice drank some more of her Mountain Dew and vodka. A pretty good buzz started to kick in, right on the heels of the buzz she had woken up with.

  She got drunk at the Frisky Pony. Terry was there. They left together. Tia and Naomi must have seen them leave. Unless Alice and Terry were the last ones at the club. But even if that were the case, the last time that Terry would have been seen alive was with Alice. Two dots. Connected.

  Alice sucked down the rest of her cocktail and poured another.

  The sensible way to play this thing was to call the cops. Tell them what she knew, stick to the facts and hope that they wouldn’t try and blame her for Terry’s death. Just tell them the truth. She got drunk, the sick bastard slipped her some roofies, and when she woke up, Terry was dead. That was it. The whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  She topped the Mountain Dew with a little more vodka. Looked over at the front door. She could just walk. Leave the money behind and forget it ever happened.

  The dots are connected.

  For whatever trouble she would face for being involved with Terry, the shit would hit the fan ten times harder if she walked away from this mess and they eventually caught up with her. She was with Terry when he OD’d. The guy was in possession of rock cocaine and almost one hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, the police would want to talk to her, ask her some questions. Probably try and blame her somehow for what happened.

  Alice sipped on her cocktail. Sipped it until the glass ran empty. She mixed another, even stronger than the first three. She kept drinking, thinking about using the victim card, playing out the conversation with the cops, but instead of feeling better about how this thing would shake out, she felt like she was slipping deeper down the rabbit hole.

  * * *

  Alice heard the crunch of tires pulling over the gravel driveway outside. Kind of a nice-sounding noise, like the slow drizzle of rain or popcorn popping from a few rooms away. She had collapsed on the couch and let her eyes fall closed a little while ago. Seemed like just a few minutes, but it could have been longer. Hard to tell, being as drunk as she was. She slammed another drink after she placed the call—or maybe it was two. She didn’t give the dispatcher her name, or the fact that she possessed a duffel bag containing a boatload of drugs and cash. That would come later. Her voice had slurred a little. She even practiced what she would say beforehand, but she still slurred and hated the sound of her drunkenness. She informed the 911 dispatcher that she discovered a man’s body in the trailer. Those were the only details she offered. Then she gave the dispatcher the address she found on an envelope from the kitchen counter—a bill from Hustler magazine. After she gave the dispatcher the home address, she hung up the phone, then left the receiver off the hook.

  Alice ran out of Mountain Dew, so she drank vodka and water, heavy on the vodka. All the cocktails filled a recently emptied stomach, bringing forth a pretty intense buzz. She knew better. She found herself in a situation that wasn’t exactly a normal everyday predicament, but she decided to tie one on before the cops showed up. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And if not a good one, one that she elected to do anyway.

  Two car doors slammed shut and Alice’s eyes snapped open.

  Okay. Here we go.

  She glanced over at the kitchen table. The pile of cash was gone. Poof. The nice neat stacks no longer there. Alice’s first thought was that Terry must have taken it back. That he wasn’t dead. That she was drunk and mistook the asshole for dead. He woke up and took his money back.

  Alice stood up quickly. Too quickly. Drunker than she thought. She swayed on her feet for a moment before flopping back down on the sofa. She wasn’t in any kind of condition to talk to the cops. She’d be lucky to string together a few coherent sentences.

  Then the thud of a fist on the front door nearly made her head pound harder.

  She tried again. Stood up and braced her hand on the wall for support. Put one foot in front of the other and managed to avoid tumbling over the coffee table. She stumbled back down the hallway and stuck her head into the bedroom. Terry was still in bed. Still dead. The duffel bag sat in the corner of the room where she found it in the first place.

  Right. She put it back there.

  The fist pounded on the front door again. Harder this time. The cops were impatient. She guessed that when they receive an anonymous call about a dead man in a trailer, they might want to get some pretty fast answers.

  Alice staggered back into the kitchen, noticed the nearly empty bottle of vodka sitting on the kitchen table. She grabbed the bottle and tossed it under the sink.

  The fist thudded again.

  “All right. Jesus. Coming,” she slurred and it sounded like, Ahh it. Jeseth. Cummin.

  The panel window on the front door stood frosted white, so all she could make out were two large silhouettes. She glanced around the room again, tried to clear her head. No use. Screw it. She swung the door open to let the cops inside and get it over with.

  Two men stood on the front porch. But they weren’t cops. Far from it. They were both large, well-fed men. Both carried unkind faces; cold eyes that offered no mercy. The smaller of the two—his birth name was Clark, but people, including his parents, called him Pig—was a beat-up looking thirty, and wore an old-school track and field sweat suit, pumpkin-orange that matched his pumpkin-orange sneakers. His hair was parted down the middle, feathered carefully, and styled with hairspray. His left eyelid hung half-closed over a mud-brown eye.

  The other man appeared much older and looked like he could be Pig’s uncle—in fact, everyone referred to him as Uncle Henry. He had a buzz cut, accentuating the folds of neck fat that squeezed out from the buttoned-up collared shirt that he wore under a camouflage hunting jacket. His jowls were flushed red, more from poor circulation than the bitter cold outside.

  “And just who the fuck might you be?” Pig asked. His droopy eye stared past Alice and into the trailer.

  “Alice,” she responded like it should mean something.

  Both men slipped their hands into their jackets at the same time to conspicuous bulges.

  “Okay, Alice. Where the fuck is Terry at?” Pig asked, eyes still searching the trailer behind her.

  “Terry?” Alice repeated, tongue thick in her mouth.

  “Yeah. The fucking guy that fucking lives here.”

  Alice tried to close the door a little before Uncle Henry’s size-thirteen brown boot shot forward and propped it open.

  “Uh-uh,” Uncle Henry grunted.

  “I’m gonna ask you one more time, Alice. Where the fuck is Terry?”

  Alice noticed that Pig kept licking his lips like they were smeared with chocolate. “I don’t know. He went out.”

  “Went out?” Pig jabbed his thumb over his shoulder toward the black Chevy truck in the driveway. “For a little nature walk, or did he forget his fucking truck?”

  Alice tried again to nudge the door closed, but Uncle Henry’s boot wasn’t going anywhere. “He didn’t really say.”

  “He didn’t really say.” Pig sighed and glanced over at Uncle Henry for a second, then glared back at Alice. “You Terry’s fucking girlfriend or something?”

  Maybe it was due to being drunk or maybe it was the fact that she woke up next to a dead man, but whatever the reason, Alice finally snapped. “Why don’t you kiss my ass?”

  Uncle Henry chuckled at Alice’s quip, almost making him look harmless. Almost. Pig, on the other hand, didn’t even crack a smile. />
  “Well, Alice, this ain’t no social call. We got some things to discuss with Terry, so either tell us where the fuck he’s at, or take a step back and shut the fuck up.”

  Uncle Henry chuckled again and started to unzip his camouflage jacket.

  Alice didn’t budge. Just held her ground.

  “No.” “No to what?” Pig asked.

  “No to both, asshole.”

  Uncle Henry stopped chuckling, and when his mouth drew straight, Alice felt her first twinge of fear.

  “You got a mouth on you, Alice. Quite a mouth. You better be pretty fucking good in the sack to have to put up with that kind of shit. Christ. Have it your way.” Pig’s arm shot forward, and he slapped the palm of his hand over Alice’s face and shoved her back with enough force to knock her flat on her ass.

  Alice grunted and bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood.

  Both men stepped inside the trailer, closed and locked the door behind them. Once inside, they withdrew pistols from inside their jackets. They were big, almost comically big, but Alice wasn’t laughing. This was real.

  Pig kept his good eye peeled on the hallway toward the back of the trailer. “Don’t be a dumb bitch, Alice. Stay on the floor.”

  Alice couldn’t pry her eyes off their pistols and decided to take Pig’s advice to stay on the floor and keep her mouth shut. She didn’t feel so drunk anymore. Adrenaline had seen to that.

  Pig nodded to his partner—the two men communicating non-verbally—and Uncle Henry squatted down next to Alice with a grunt, knees popping from the effort of lowering his considerable mass. He pressed cold steel into Alice’s ear and shook his head at her. “You’re in the wrong place this morning, sweetheart,” he whispered.

  “Look. I’m—”

  “Hush now, sweetheart. You’ve said enough. We’ll take it from here.”

  Pig took a careful step toward the hallway, his pumpkin-orange sneakers sliding across the carpeted floor quite nimbly for a man so large. He pressed up against the television and stereo console, gun clutched in his hand. “Up and at ’em, Terry. Nothing funny. We got your smart-ass bitch with us. Come on out.” Pig spoke clearly and calmly and waited for a response, but got none. He waited for another few seconds, listening for signs of movement from the back.