Wounded Animals

by Jim Heskett

  I drove past the highway turnoff to my house and into the suburb of Commerce City, into the industrial district. I couldn’t bury her; I had no way to dig. No pick or shovel, and the thought of dropping by a Home Depot to buy one nearly turned my stomach.

  Commerce City was home to an abundance of old warehouses and junkyards and lots of places to stash things that would remain hidden. I saw an overpass and drove toward it. Might be a good hiding place, or I could at least take a break and consider my options.

  I found a spot to park in the grass just beyond a barrier, a couple hundred yards from the overpass. Before me was a massive concrete bridge, with angled ramps on either side approaching the metal supports underneath. The ramps didn’t look too steep to climb. At the top of each ramp, where it met the bridge, were a few dark cubbyhole-like areas.

  If I could get Keisha up a ramp, I could put her body in one of those big cubbyholes. They might never find her. Amazing how detached I could become from such a terrible thing, once I started focusing on the logistics of it.

  I killed the lights and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. The only people I might have to worry about would be some homeless, and I didn’t see anyone. No other cars near the bridge.

  Got out of the car, opened the back seat. As I dragged her body out, I had trouble maneuvering her already-stiff limbs. She was a big girl, and I was already exhausted from one of the busiest and most chaotic days of my life. I pulled her a few feet from the car and dropped her, my chest heaving.

  My seats were covered in blood and guts, forever ruined. I went around to the glove box and took out my pocket knife, then cut up my back seats, trying to remove anything with blood. I took off the top layer and a layer of spongy fabric beneath it that also appeared stained through.

  My first thought was to fold the fabric and tuck it under Keisha’s blouse, but that might tie her directly to me. I didn’t know much about DNA evidence, but it seemed reasonable that the police might be able to link the fabric back to me somehow.

  I grasped under Keisha’s armpits and started pulling her across the field. Slow going, and my back hurt immediately.

  “That your wife?”

  I froze. The voice had come from behind me. My knees started shaking, and I couldn’t hold on to Keisha’s body anymore. She fell from my hands with a whump.

  I spun around and took in the man standing before me. Short and thin, with long scraggly hair jutting from a beanie. Matching beard peppered with gray. I couldn’t see him well in the moonlight, but his clothes looked dirty. Homeless guy. No idea how I could have missed him when I was checking out the area.

  “No, she’s not my wife.”

  He removed a hand covered with a fingerless glove from his coat pocket and stroked his beard. “Girlfriend, then?”

  “No, not my girlfriend.” I was entranced by his stare.

  “What did she do to piss you off, then? I’ve seen a few of them like this before, and she’s cut up pretty good.”

  The paralysis broke and I jumped back a step. “I didn’t do this. I found her in my car.”

  “Well, if this was one of them cop shows, I would say that the evidence seems… ah, what’s the word? Indisputable?”

  I looked down at the corpse of the woman I’d known for only a few days. “I know, it doesn’t seem good.”

  “You married?”

  I nodded.

  “That makes it look even worse, then. Might be hard to prove this ain’t your girlfriend, if you ask me. On the other hand, though, plenty of times I wanted to kill my wife. If she hadn’t left me and taken the kid with her, I might’ve gotten around to it.”

  I was standing underneath a bridge in Commerce City, opposite a homeless man with a dead woman between us, and he wanted to talk about his family. He probably needed payoff money to keep quiet, but I didn’t think I had more than fifteen or twenty dollars in my pocket. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my wallet.

  He dropped to one knee and looked her over. “Do you need some help moving her?”

  “What?”

  “I guessed you’re taking her up the ramp, to stick her in one of them wells under the big metal struts. Am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Figured you might need some help.”

  I replaced the wallet and grabbed her legs. My new friend threaded his hands under her arms and clasped them over her chest, then heaved her up.

  “Sweet Jesus, she’s a big one.”

  “Thank you for doing this,” I said, almost to the point of blubbering. My life was starting to feel like a nightmare, something I wouldn’t even be able to believe was happening to someone else.

  As we pushed and pulled toward the ramp, he started wheezing. “How did you come upon this girl?” he said.

  “I know her. Someone is trying to send me a message.”

  “That’s one hell of a message. I’d tell them you got it, loud and clear.”

  Dragging Keisha across the grass to the concrete supports nearly made me pass out. I had to rest for a minute to keep myself upright. But I managed to get a second wind and press on. We went up the sloped support, and we stashed her body at the top, into a crevice between the concrete and the metal section of the bridge.

  Out of breath, aching, and lightheaded, I slid down the ramp a couple feet until I was staring at the underside of the bridge. It roared and shook as cars thundered above us. “Thank you,” I said.

  “If I ever get to see my daughter again, first thing I’m going to do is hug her until she can’t stand it no more. Seeing stuff like this, makes you think about a lot, don’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got any kids?”

  I looked at him above me, leaning against a column, his chest pumping up and down. “No.”

  “That’s a shame. Then you don’t know what it’s like to love something so much you’d do anything in the world to protect it. Even something that seems crazy, like killing someone.”

  “I didn’t kill that woman. Honestly.”

  He shook his head. “It ain’t none of my business. Since I’m already up here, think I might grab some sleep. It’s warmer up by the highway than it is on the ground.”

  I took the bills from my wallet and passed them to him. He thought about it for a second, then stuffed them into his shoe. “Much obliged, friend. You go on home now and get some sleep. Put this behind you.”

  I wanted to ask him why he’d helped me. He had no reason to trust me, but he had anyway. Instead, I stared at him as he climbed onto the edge of a cubby hole and closed his eyes.

  I stumbled back down the slope, close to hyperventilating. Could this really be my life now? Hiding a body with a homeless man, cutting up my back seat, with my wife missing and someone or some people watching my every move? All of this seemed like a dream to me.

  I found a Bic lighter in the glove box and burned the pieces of back seat, next to the car. The flames warmed my face and reminded me how exhausted I was.

  The interaction with the homeless man began to feel like a dream. The way he talked, it all seemed too staged. I couldn’t trust anything in my life anymore.

  I needed to get home. I needed sleep. Once I got back to the car, I slipped a hand into my pocket and retrieved the business card Shelton had given me.

  During my forced hike, when Thomason had talked about me being ready to cooperate, he hadn’t said who I was supposed to inform that I was ready. But he must have meant for me to talk to Shelton.

  If I called the number and told him I’d do whatever they wanted, would it really put an end to all this? Would I really get my life back in order?

  Somehow, I doubted it. Maybe all this chaos had nothing to do with me. Maybe it was all about something else, and nothing I could do would stop it.

  I needed to find Martin, and somehow save his life.

  Chapter Fourteen

  WHEN I ARRIVED home, I didn’t even make it to my bed. I was so exhausted, I passed out on the couch. Dream
ed of ladybugs, a swarm of them crawling up my arm, like wearing a collection of writhing red bracelets.

  I woke up to Kitty purring in my ear, kneading my chest with her prickly claws.

  Every part of my body ached. The cut on my back felt like my flesh had been stretched. Still, I had to get up, so I lifted the cat off me and set her on the floor. She trotted toward her food dish, and I followed. Mixed the wet food, scooped some dry food, gave her some circular back scratches as she ate.

  Checked my watch, I still had a couple hours until the office would open. My keycard might let me in early, but I’d never tried that before.

  I’d intended to go back upstairs and nap some more, but something in the baby’s room caught my eye as I neared it. A squirrel outside the window, perched at the end of a long branch. It chirped at me as I entered the room.

  Once there, I felt an urge to sit in the nursing glider, so I settled in and rocked it back and forth, imagining what Grace would look like in this chair with our son at her breast.

  The day she’d told me she was pregnant was the same day IntelliCraft had announced they were closing down our local office in favor of hiring a whole new team in Dallas. I’d been in a foul mood, nervous about the future, resentful at them for disrupting the lives of so many good people. I wanted to be alone to stew in my anger, but Grace came home early with a pizza and a mischievous grin on her face.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said with a sneer.

  “This is an extra special pizza. It’s got aged pepperoni. You’ll love it.”

  “I said, I’m not hungry.”

  She shoved the pizza box under my nose, gave me the puppy dog eyes. “Please, baby. Try the pepperoni for me.”

  When I flipped the box open, they’d arranged the pepperonis so they spelled out BABY in greasy circles across the face of the pizza. Took me a few seconds of ignorant staring to figure out what was going on. I could make out the letters, but I didn’t equate it with her miles-wide grin right away.

  When it dawned on me, I gulped in air. My eyes shot wide open. She tossed the pizza box on the counter and leaped into my arms, planting kisses all over my head and neck.

  We’d wanted a baby for nearly a year. Or, to put it more honestly, she’d wanted a baby for more than a year. We’d only been married for three, and I still wasn’t sold on the concept of parenthood. Add to that the fact that I’d learned I had a hard date to the end of my job, and therefore, the end of health insurance to pay for sonograms and pediatric visits… I didn’t take the news well. I grew distant. I started spending more time at dive bars like the one I’d met supposed-magical man Kareem Haddadi, going for long drives, often finding other excuses to be anywhere but home.

  Would I be a father like my own? Would I take a passing interest in my son, signing permission slips then disappearing into my home office for the rest of the evening, then running out on the family before he’d even become a teenager?

  Now, rocking back and forth in my wife’s nursing glider, I realized how distracted I’d been over the last few months. How I hadn’t been reading the pregnancy books she’d asked me to read and how I’d missed a couple of our doctor’s visits. Poor Tucker, always focused on himself and his own problems, not able to be bothered to pay attention to the woman who loved him and was growing their child inside her.

  I’d been a selfish jerk.

  After Keisha had appeared dead in my backseat, I could no longer believe that Grace had run out on me. The timing of both that and the recent deaths were too much in parallel. But, given what I now understood about my emotional absence over the last several months, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had left me.

  But how were Grace’s disappearance and these recent deaths related? I couldn’t find a connection.

  Checked my watch again, and I still had too long to wait until I could go into the office. Maybe a walk through the neighborhood would clear my head.

  I threw on some clothes, hat, and gloves, then ventured outside. The sun hadn’t come up yet, but I could see the dark sky beginning to soften. I made my way out of the cul de sac and down the street, which ended at the top of a hill and descended into a grassy open space of ten acres or so. The open space ran into a city park on two sides and a warehouse parking lot on the other, but the pure grassy area was truly open. Home to groundhogs, bunnies, and sometimes the occasional coyote. A little bit of the woods in the middle of a city.

  I liked to come to the open space to think sometimes, and I’d been out here a lot since I’d learned I was going to become a father. The mountain view of my adopted home had always given me so much peace.

  As I descended the hill, taking in the dim outline of the mountains to the west, I caught a whiff of something, a little too similar to what I’d smelled in my bathroom two days ago and the back seat of my car last night.

  A gravel jogging trail cut through the grass near the bottom of the hill, and a couple hundred yards away, I spied a mangy dog. Some kind of mix, furry like a husky but forward-leaning like a pit bull or a boxer. It made eye contact as it trotted along the trail.

  I looked in the direction it was heading and put a visual to the smell I’d already found. Dead coyote, laying on its side in the middle of the gravel. Its stomach had been torn open, with entrails and blood splayed out in an arc around the body. A puddle of red on the patchy snow.

  The dog moved right past me to get to the coyote. When it reached the carcass, it sniffed and prodded various body parts with a nose. I was grossed out by the prospect of the dog eating dead coyote bits, but I also couldn’t seem to look away.

  Growling. Not from the dog, but from somewhere around the curve of the hill, which I couldn’t see.

  The mutt trotted back a couple steps. Looked at me.

  From over the hill, a pair of pointed ears materialized. Then, a furry round head and an elongated snout. Before I took in the size of the body, my first thought was wolf. But no, this was another coyote. Maybe coyotes were smaller than wolves, but I didn’t want to discover if they had the same brand of razor-sharp teeth.

  Kept my head low and did not make eye contact. I was ten feet from the stray dog, who was next to the carcass. The live coyote was thirty feet past that, and slowly rounding the curve of the hill toward us.

  The dog eyed me, and then the approaching beast.

  The dog left the dead animal and backed toward me, growling at the approaching coyote and putting itself between us. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  The coyote’s eyes flicked between the two of us, still approaching. Bared its teeth. Snarled right in tune with the mutt, who was now growling so hard its entire body was shaking.

  They came face to face, eyes locked, only a couple of feet apart, and still ten feet away from me. I took a step back, not wanting to run and trigger some prey chase instinct.

  The coyote snapped the air in front of the dog but did not close the space between. Looked like some kind of prison yard no, you back down first contest. The dog stayed in place, with a constant low rumble of a growl. Its teeth were bright white.

  The coyote lunged, and the surprise movement knocked me off my feet. A blur of dark and light fur flashed in front of me. Teeth and snarling and yelping and snapping.

  I scooted back and looked up the hill to the houses overlooking the open space. I knew I should have run for it then, but I couldn’t move. I had to see what was going to happen.

  The blur normalized when the coyote pinned the dog to the ground, by the neck. The dog, trapped, met my eyes. There was fear there, some kind of desperation or paralysis. At that moment, I understood the wild beast’s pain. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do but wait for death.

  I expected the coyote would bite down and rip through the dog’s neck. This mutt had probably done the same thing to the dead animal near them. Like it was a stone cold coyote hunter, ridding the world of those pests one at a time.

  I didn’t wait any longer. I scrambled across the hill and threw a shoulder into the coyote
, knocking him off the mutt.

  The coyote leaped back, yipped once, and ran around the hill where it had come from. Just me, the dead coyote, and the dog remained. A sudden silence pervaded the open space as the sun crested the houses behind us and lit the grassy hill.

  The dog took a few crooked steps away then faced me. A string of bloody saliva dripped from its mouth. One of its ears had been mangled and half-chewed.

  The dog shook, flinging blood and spit in a vicious circle, then it paused a moment. With a snort, it trotted down the hill toward the park.

  I was alone in the quiet of the open space. I stood up, wiped some mud off my gloves, and started back up the hill. Everything had happened so fast, but I knew I’d just endangered myself to save the life of a stray dog, for reasons I didn’t understand.

  I hopped in the shower, grimacing as the soap ran down my back wound. It might have needed stitches, but it was too late for that now. I didn’t have any desire to spend several hours in the emergency room, trying to come up with an excuse that didn’t involve me being sliced up by some crazy guys at the top of Eldo Canyon.

  Their threat that I wasn’t to talk to the police probably extended to hospitals. Who else would turn up dead if I brought attention to myself?

  So I’d have to grin and bear it. Which I did as I dressed for work. Not that I was planning to do any actual work, but I had to go there so I could look up Martin and warn him. No doubt in my mind that he was next on the hit list.

  As I picked up yesterday’s pants, I found Shelton’s card in the back pocket. My eyes danced over the number listed at the bottom.

  They’d told me they would work with me when I was ready to cooperate. So I was supposed to call this number and say I admitted defeat.

  But if I did that, there was no guarantee of receiving any answers. Maybe I would call, but not until I found a way to get Martin to safety.

  All dressed up, I walked out the front door just as Alan, clad in a bathrobe, was bending over to pick up his newspaper. He must have been the only person I knew under the age of fifty who still got a physical copy of the paper every day.