Never Coming Home

by A.R. Wise

  * * *

  Lincoln Pierce hadn’t dreaded a Monday morning in years because he hadn’t worked a regular job for that long, but he was becoming reacquainted with the idea as he waited in line for a coffee before heading to the office. “Give me the biggest size you’ve got, and fill it all the way to the top.”

  The barista worked fast and had the frown and patience of a coffee-addict on the wagon. She was an example of a common denizen of Boulder, overestimating her own self-worth and convinced she was the only one in the room who mattered. Her tip jar was overflowing with bills handed over from people who must’ve felt five dollars was too little to pay for a cup of coffee. Lincoln didn’t share that opinion.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” said a familiar voice from behind Lincoln.

  “Bentley,” said Lincoln as he saw the young man in line. He took out his money clip again and turned to the barista. “I’m paying for his too. What are you having?”

  “Just coffee, same as you.”

  Lincoln paid the girl behind the counter and watched as she ‘harrumphed’ her way through the apparently arduous task of pouring yet another cup. Bentley thanked Lincoln for the coffee, and then headed over to the counter with the cream and sugar. He sweetened his coffee while saying, “I’m not used to being up this early.”

  “You and me both, kid. I hardly ever go into the office these days. It runs just fine without me. Better even.” Lincoln studied the young man’s attire and asked, “New suit?”

  “Yeah,” said Bentley, a little ashamed. “I told my uncle what you said and he took me over to a tailor on Spruce.” He shot the cuffs and asked, “Do I get your approval?”

  “No, but the suit’s nice.”

  “Uncle Danny made me promise to listen to whatever advice you gave me.” Bentley reached into the inside pocket of his jacket to take out an ultra-thin wallet. “He told me you used to get paid the big bucks to advise corporate folks. And that you were like a motivational speaker or something. He said that you could teach me a few things.” He picked up his coffee and they headed for the door.

  “That was a long time ago,” said Lincoln as they went out onto Pearl Street and then walked towards the office. “If you’re hoping to work for your uncle, there’s not much I can teach you. I don’t know a lot about his line of work.”

  “He doesn’t want me involved in that side of things. He wants me to help get this business rolling, and then move on to do something else that’s legitimate too.”

  “Hate to break it to you, but what he’s planning here isn’t legitimate either. This is a money laundering scheme he’s setting up.”

  “Eventually it will be,” said Bentley, “but not at first. He wants everything above boards at the start.”

  Lincoln sipped his searing hot black coffee and winced. “What did you do before your Uncle got his hands on you? Did you go to college?”

  “For a couple years, but I dropped out. I’m more of a hands-on sort of guy. You know?”

  “Yeah sure,” said Lincoln, disinterested, as if already giving up on his attempt at small talk with the young man.

  “I thought I’d get stuck working for Uncle Danny as a bookie, but he said I’m better suited for the big leagues, not the small time stuff.”

  “Is this the big leagues?” asked Lincoln as they arrived at the front doors of the office building. “My agent forgot to tell me.”

  “Not this,” said Bentley. “This is a stepping stone for me.”

  “Is that right? My business is just a stepping stone?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” said Bentley. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got your sights set high. That’s not a bad thing.” Lincoln stopped at the top of the stairs, in front of the glass door that opened to his office. Bentley paused on the stair below, looking up as Lincoln continued, “Just remember the people in here are working hard at a job they do for eight hours a day, five days a week. The last thing any of them want is to have a person floating around who looks at their jobs as a ‘stepping stone.’ That’s a sure fire way to make people feel like garbage.”

  “Understood,” said Bentley.

  Lincoln looked over at the identical staircase that led to the office on the other side of the hall. The vestibule below was open for the first two floors, with dual staircases on either side that led to office doors that faced each other. Beyond the vestibule, the offices widened until separated by just a single hallway. All of the walls were made of glass, allowing everyone in the offices to see what was going on across the hall from them. The space across from Lincoln’s side was gutted, with wires hanging from the ceiling and the carpet ripped out to reveal the cement floor.

  “You’re going to be managing the crew we hire over there, right?”

  “As far as I know, that’s the plan.”

  “And my job is to make sure things move along smoothly?”

  “And to teach me how to be a good manager,” said Bentley.

  Lincoln held the office door open for Bentley, inviting him in as he said, “Don’t get your hopes up. I’m not a miracle worker.”

  “Bossman,” said a Latino man wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with a heavy metal band’s logo. He was overweight and had shoulder-length, curly black hair that, if it could talk, would be screaming for a shampoo and comb. “What’re you doing here?” He was walking out of the break room with a massive coffee cup that dwarfed his chubby hand. The side of the cup had a ruler on it that measured his level of attentiveness depending on how much coffee was left inside.

  “Hey there, Hector,” said Lincoln as he set his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’m just popping in to see how things are going. Have they had their morning meeting yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Hector before looking over at Bentley. “Who’s the new blood?”

  “This is my friend, Bentley,” said Lincoln. “Bentley, this is Hector, our resident computer genius.”

  “You’re too kind,” said Hector as he reached out to shake Bentley’s hand.

  “Hector handles IT, and web design, and all the other stuff that might as well be magic as far as I’m concerned. Bentley’s going to be managing a crew across the hall for me.”

  “No shit?” asked Hector. “I heard they sold that space. What sort of business are you opening over there?”

  “No clue,” said Lincoln, following up with a quick laugh and a long sigh. “But I’m sure I’ll need your help setting up the computers and everything, if you’re up for it.”

  “Of course, Mr. P., but you’ll have to hurry up and let me know what you need because I’m going on vacation next week.”

  “Oh yeah? Where’re you headed?”

  “Arizona,” said Hector. “It’s actually more of a work vacation.” They walked over to the conference table together. “My IndieStarters campaign got funded.”

  “What’s that?”

  Bentley answered before Hector could, “It’s one of those crowd-funding sites, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said Hector as he sat across from Bentley while Lincoln sat at the head of the table. “I started one to fund me taking a trip down to the border. I take videos of myself driving through the checkpoints on I-10 in New Mexico and Arizona. I know my rights, and those checkpoints are illegal as all hell.”

  “What checkpoints?” asked Bentley.

  “They’ve got checkpoints all up and down the highway where they pull you over and ask all sorts of questions. They’re trying to nab border-crossers, but it’s illegal search and seizure. Last year I took some videos of myself getting in fights with the agents out there, and some folks convinced me to go back and do it again. I set up the IndieStarters campaign to see if I could drum up some money for it, and in no time I had people from all over the country sending me donations.”

  “They’d better be careful getting their good name mixed up with a radical like you,” said Lincoln, jibing his friend.

  “They aren’t that stupid,
” said Hector with a laugh. “Most of the donations are anonymous.”

  “No kidding?” asked Lincoln as he sat up straighter, taking interest. “Random people just gave you money for that sort of thing?”

  “Yeah,” said Hector. “If you can get enough attention, you can get cash from all over the world.”

  There were other salespeople beginning to arrive at the office, meandering between their desks and the break room as they waited for the morning meeting to start.

  “And they’re all anonymous donations?” asked Lincoln.

  “Some of them are, but not all,” said Hector. “They pay to reach different donor levels, and they get something for each level they reach. I can show you how it works if you want.”

  “I’d like that,” said Lincoln, and he looked over at Bentley with a raised brow. Perhaps this could prove to be a better money laundering scheme than anything Daniel Barr had planned.

  Arthur

  There’s a shocking amount of blood inside a human body. It needs to be drained before a corpse can be dealt with.

  The prostitute was strung up in his basement, nude and upside down, nylon rope tied to her feet and looped through a hole he’d drilled into a support beam above. He anchored the rope with free weights, and then slit her carotid to let the blood gush down into the drain on the cement floor.

  The rope creaked as the body made slow, partial revolutions. Her hair was soaked and still dripping, the ends nearly reaching down to the drain. Arthur sat at his computer, taking orders and setting up shipments. Every now and again he would look back at the girl, but his sense of excitement about the murder had faded. Now all she represented was a chore that had yet to be finished.

  He would have to dispose of the body before it began to rot.

  A fly buzzed by him, and he swatted at it uselessly before it zipped away. This wasn’t a good sign. It didn’t take long for flies to lay eggs, and that would initiate the first stage of rot that would cause his entire house to stink if he didn’t hurry up and deal with the body.

  Making a person disappear in the mountains of Colorado isn’t difficult, but he didn’t want to get sloppy. He couldn’t just dump her out in the wilderness whole in the hopes of nature taking care of the remains. There were too many avid outdoorsmen hiking through even remote areas. Someone might spot the sun-bleached bones of his victim. Arthur would have to cut the prostitute up and deposit her in pieces around the state. He was determined to do this right. He wanted to make a fun trip out of it. This was a good time of year to see the leaves changing around Colorado, and a drive down to Pueblo would be a welcome retreat. Along the way he could sprinkle bits and pieces of his victim, but he would have to crush some of the bones first.

  Many of the bones in the human body are identifiable, even from a distance. He would have to pulverize the hands, feet, skull, and ribs.

  A sledgehammer was propped up against the wall, waiting for the grisly task.

  Arthur sighed and got up. He walked over to the hanging body while putting on a pair of yellow rubber gloves that were designed to protect the wearer from caustic chemicals. He grasped the dead prostitute by her ankles and then slid his hands along her stubbly legs, the gloves squeaking as they descended. He did it again, as if massaging her, and squeezed tightly. Blood oozed from the wounds in her neck like he was getting the final bit of toothpaste from a tube. Some of her blood had started to clot, and fell in globs that plopped against the drain like chunks of cottage cheese. He used his boot to force the bits through the drain, grimacing as he did.

  He moved on to her buttocks, then abdomen, and got to her arms. Her fingers had already started to turn purple from the blood pooled there. She was still fresh enough that rigor mortis hadn’t set in, but she was starting to get stiff. He strained to get her arm up to her waist in an attempt to drain the blood. It didn’t seem to be working, and he decided on an easier approach. He released her arm and walked over to the workbench nearby. As he retrieved a knife, her stiffened arm slowly descended back to the position it’d been in before. To someone unfamiliar with the early stages of rigor mortis, it might appear that she was still alive and intentionally moving her arm slowly. He returned and pulled her arm forcefully down before sticking the tip of the knife into her wrist and then slicing up along her forearm. The pooled blood flowed easily out, and he spun her to do the same to her other arm.

  “I think that’s about as good as it’s going to get,” he said as he inspected her. The body was a grotesque caricature of what she’d been in life. Her formerly gaunt appearance was now even more exaggerated by the draining, leaving her as little more than a skeleton with barely any musculature left to prop up the flapping, wrinkly skin.

  He used a hose to wash the remaining blood down the drain, and then untied the rope. She fell hard, like a stiff board, striking the cement head first and then barely crumbling before the rest of her slammed down, splashing water up against the drywall box in the center of the basement that had once been her prison.

  Arthur hefted the sledgehammer and then walked back over to the body. He pressed his foot down on her left wrist, and raised the hammer up above her hand, the head facing the ground. He squinted, wary of smashing his own toes, and then moved his foot back up her arm a little. He sent the hammer’s head down like a medieval warrior driving a sword through a felled opponent, and the prostitute’s delicate fingers crushed beneath the weight. He would have to do this several more times to mash the bones up, and then he would have to do the same to her other hand and her feet. After that, he would sever them and stick them in a weighted bag to be thrown into the reservoir. He would poke holes in the bag, to entice fish to nibble at it. This way the meat could be eaten while the tiny fragments of bone would drift away. No one would ever identify a sliver of white bone found on the shore as human. They would surely mistake it for a piece of a fish or other animal.

  Dealing with the head would be more time consuming. He’d have to extract the brain, mash it, and then demolish the skull. There were too many parts of a human skull that were instantly identifiable, even when broken apart from the rest. Even a child could recognize the orbital socket, nasal cavity, and teeth as human. He couldn’t leave anything to chance. He had to crush the skull to dust.

  Arthur had studied serial killers since a young age, although for many years he refused to label himself as one. He’d made mistakes, but refused to be defined by them. He convinced himself that his sexual appetite wasn’t linked to a desire to kill, and that the prostitutes he’d formerly strangled had been accidental deaths.

  Something changed in him with his most recent kill. The dam finally succumbed to the pressure building behind it for years. There was no denying it anymore. He enjoyed killing; he would do it again; he was good at it.