She wasn’t. The house was empty.
I headed to the basement.
Unfortunately, the basement floor was a concrete slab. I couldn’t bury Rose here unless I broke through the concrete. And even if I could do that, then what? I couldn’t mix and pour a concrete slab to repair the damage.
Another idea came to me, and this idea was proof of just how out of my depth I was. I wondered if I could dissolve Rose’s body like I’d seen Jesse do in Breaking Bad. That’s right—I was desperate enough to consider lifting ideas from the plots of TV shows. But in that episode, Jesse, the character tasked with dissolving the body, had badly botched the job because the acid used to dissolve the body had required using all sorts of safety gear, which he didn’t have. So not only would I have to track down the acid, I’d have to track down the required safety gear.
Why couldn’t Abel have offered to liquefy Rose?
I dismissed the Breaking Bad plan.
Instead, I decided to go with the most old-fashioned way to get rid of a body: I’d bury it in the ground, right here on the property. The property was big, and shielded from the neighbors, and there were many secluded spots. I had no idea how long it took to dig a grave, but I decided that if I wasn’t finished by morning, I’d take Rose’s body’s into the main house, revive Wendy, wait until Wendy left the property, and then finish the job.
My plan required a shovel. Since I was already in the basement, I searched it first, but found nothing. I checked the garage next, entering through an interior door. Inside, along with an old Mercedes, in mint condition, I found a full complement of gardening tools—including a shovel.
I grabbed it, went back to the guesthouse, and used the shovel to measure Rose.
Then, under the light of a waxing moon, I scouted the back yard, looking for a good spot to dig the grave.
The best place turned out to be north of the guesthouse and driveway, close to the Leyland cypress trees that bordered the yard. Not only was this spot well hidden from neighbors, it also couldn’t be seen from the guesthouse or from the main house. In addition, it was separated from the rest of the property by a flowerbed that hadn’t been tended for a while. Plants and weeds grew wild there, obscuring the patch of land immediately behind it. The patch of land that would soon be Rose’s gravesite.
Using the shovel as my measuring tool once more, I laid out the dimensions of the grave. Then I stripped away small patches of the lawn, creating my own sod, which I’d place over the top of the finished grave.
Finally, I started digging. I was determined to bury Rose deep, so deep that I’d never think about her again. But I knew this was wishful thinking. I’d think about Rose every day for the rest of my life.
The topsoil was soft, so at first I was making good time. But the deeper I dug, the harder the soil. I kept at it, undeterred, settling into a steady pace. I didn’t let my thoughts drift. I didn’t want to be distracted from the task at hand.
But it was fortunate that one thought managed to rise to my attention. I knew that at some point, Rose’s son, or a friend of Rose’s, or maybe even Wendy herself, would report that Rose had disappeared. And then the cops would search Rose’s house, which meant I had another task to do before leaving Del Mar behind. A task I’d never had to do during my previous assignments.
I needed to wipe my fingerprints off of everything I’d touched in the main house.
I kept digging. When dawn approached, I upped my pace.
By the time full-fledged morning arrived—which meant the time to revive Wendy was almost at hand—I had transformed the patch of land hidden behind the flowerbed into a grave. A grave deep enough to bury Rose.
But it wasn’t deep enough for me. It wasn’t deep enough to hide the crime from myself. And even though there was probably no way I could bury her deep enough for that, I decided I had to try.
If I had buried Rose right then, everything that followed could have been avoided.
But I didn’t bury Rose then. I wanted to dig a deeper grave.
So I walked around the flowerbed, and then to the guesthouse. Inside, I scooped up Rose, carried her past Wendy, still unconscious on the floor, and took her across the back yard and into the main house. I laid Rose out on the couch in her living room. I still hadn’t looked at her face. I couldn’t.
I headed back to the guesthouse, stepped inside, and checked my phone for the time. I’d wait ten minutes before reviving Wendy. That would give her just enough time to get ready for work, but no extra time to dilly-dally. Of course, she might decide not to go to work, but instead go to her doctor to check on her fainting spell. Regardless, as soon as she left, I’d get back to work on digging a deeper grave.
While the minutes passed, I stared at Wendy’s stomach and chest to confirm that she was breathing normally. I half-expected her to die, though that fear was unfounded. I saw the signs of shallow, calm breathing, the kind of breathing I was very familiar with. I’d seen it with all the other targets.
Finally, I took the tin box from my pocket, opened it, and pulled out a recovery capsule. I knelt down next to Wendy and put the capsule in her mouth.
Less than a minute later, I was back in Rose’s house, waiting for Wendy to make the next move. As I anxiously awaited the sound of Wendy’s car starting up, I couldn’t help but glance at Rose a few times.
This is her wake, I thought. There were no relatives at this wake, no loved ones. The only guest was a murderer. The only guest is the man who killed you, I thought.
But Rose had lived a long life, and, judging from her smile, a good life. And it wasn’t like she had wanted for anything. Just one look at her house told you that.
Sure, I was rationalizing—again—but so what? It was true. Rose had not been cut down in the prime of her life.
It was ten minutes into this uneasy wake when I felt like I had to check on what was going on out back. I didn’t want to risk peering out the kitchen window, even if I was partially obscured by the cluster of trees out back, so I headed upstairs to the second floor and found a bedroom with a window that looked down on the guesthouse. The view was still partially obscured, but I was sure Wendy couldn’t spot me.
I waited there, hoping to see some activity.
There wasn’t any.
Maybe she’d called in to work and told them she’d be late. Or maybe she was calling her doctor, trying to get an appointment.
I headed back downstairs, accepting the fact that Rose’s wake would go on longer than I’d expected; it might be a while before Wendy headed out.
But just as I stepped into the living room, I heard a sound—
A sound that made my heart leap from my chest into my throat.
Someone was knocking at the back door.
No, not someone.
Wendy was knocking at the back door. I was sure of it.
But why?
Did she think she’d fainted because of something her landlord was responsible for? Like a gas leak? Or was it part of Wendy’s routine to check on Rose every morning? Maybe that was part of her duty as a tenant. Maybe she got a discount on the rent because of it.
There were a million possible reasons for her to come by this morning. But whatever the reason, I should’ve foreseen that she might. I’d been given an obvious clue that this was a possibility: Rose had brought that meal over to Wendy last night. That meant the two probably had a close relationship. Close enough for Wendy to pay Rose a visit.
Wendy knocked again, this time a little louder. When she stopped, I realized I’d made another horrible mistake: I’d left the back door unlocked. What an idiotic move. What if Wendy decided to come right in and check up on Rose?
As I waited for more knocking, I weighed whether to grab Rose’s body and race down into the basement or into the garage. I had to hide the body in case Wendy barged in and started searching for Rose.
But I didn’t move.
I was no longer making decisions quickly. The exertion of digging the grave had slowed me do
wn.
My mind went blank for a few seconds.
Then, like a loud clap of thunder roaring through the house, the phone rang. The ringing kicked my mind back into gear; I had a hunch as to who was on the other end of that phone call. I stood there frozen, waiting for the hunch to be confirmed.
An old-style answering machine picked up after the fifth ring, and Rose’s voice sprang forth from it—coming from the kitchen. Her message was cheery; I could hear the smile in her voice.
After the beep, a younger voice took over. “Rose, this is Wendy,” it said. “I just knocked at the back door and didn’t get any response. I thought if I called you, you might hear the phone.”
Wendy paused, but not long enough for the machine to hang up. “Are you there, Rose?” she said, then waited again.
The seconds passed. I knew Wendy was standing just outside the kitchen door, waiting.
The answering machine abruptly clicked off. Wendy had hung up.
I heard another click—a doorknob turning.
Like a shot, I took off toward the couch, scooped Rose up, and raced to the garage. The basement was no longer an option; I couldn’t get to it without crossing Wendy’s path.
I moved quickly, but I tried to keep my footsteps soft and measured. I gently opened the door to the garage, then closed it behind me. I scurried around to the back of the mint-condition Mercedes, like a cockroach on the run from sudden light, then placed Rose’s body on the floor and crouched down next to her.
After about a minute or so, I heard Wendy’s voice calling Rose’s name. Wendy was moving down the hallway on the other side of the door. Her voice got louder as she got closer. If she peeked into the garage, she wouldn’t see Rose or me; she’d just see the front of the Mercedes. But if she ventured into the garage, I was a sitting duck.
I heard Wendy call Rose’s name again. She was closer; I crouched down lower. If Wendy was going to open the door, it would happen any second now.
But it didn’t happen.
A minute passed, then another minute. Still nothing.
I stayed in the garage, hovering over Rose’s body, but not looking at it, waiting for a sign that the house was clear. I supposed Wendy continued to search the house, but I couldn’t know for sure, because once she receded from the hallway, I could no longer hear her voice.
Finally, after ten minutes, I heard Wendy’s car backing down the driveway, right past the garage.
I was safe. Though “safe” was a wild exaggeration. I was probably safe from this immediate threat, but I was in danger from every other angle.
As I carried Rose back into the house, I wondered if Wendy had already followed up on Rose’s disappearance. Had she called the police, or Rose’s son, or one of Rose’s friends? There was no way to know.
But I did know this: I wasn’t going to make the grave any deeper. It was deep enough. I needed to bury Rose right now, clear the house of my fingerprints, and get the hell away from here. And if I had any hope of surviving this nightmare and keeping my job—as well as my life—I had to do it all quickly and efficiently.
I carried Rose out to the gravesite and placed her in it. I wasn’t religious, but I still said a prayer. It was more of an apology to her, and to God, and to whoever would listen to my flimsy excuse: that this was a horrible accident.
Then I shoveled dirt over her and packed it down. I completed the funeral—the worst funeral ever—by laying the sod out over the grave. It turned out to be good camouflage.
But I was left with extra soil. Not a lot. Rose was small. Using the shovel, I hauled the extra soil from the gravesite to the cypress trees and scattered it between them. It only took a few trips, and the trees were good cover. They were so tightly packed together that the extra soil disappeared into the shadows under the bushy leaves at their base.
I washed the shovel using a spigot at the back of the guesthouse. I made sure not to get my shoes wet or muddied. Then I wiped the shovel dry by running it back and forth on the grass.
After returning the shovel to the garage, I moved on to the fingerprints. Using a dishtowel, I wiped down the doorknobs I’d touched, and the shovel. I was pretty sure I hadn’t touched anything else. I also checked to see if there were any visible shoe prints on the hardwood floors or area rugs. There weren’t any.
Taking the dishtowel with me, I exited the main house for good. Then I wiped my prints off of the guesthouse’s front doorknob, but because Wendy had locked the door, I couldn’t get inside to wipe them off of the inside doorknob.
I went around back to see if the bedroom window was still cracked open. It was.
But I’d done enough, hadn’t I? It seemed stupid to risk breaking into Wendy’s place again. What if she returned while I was inside? What if I climbed in, and while inside, I accidentally left more evidence that would incriminate me?
All told, I was on the verge of making a clean getaway—or the cleanest one now possible considering how badly I’d botched this assignment. It was time to cruise.
I wiped my prints off the window, stuffed the dishtowel into my pocket, and made my way to the front of the property. I clung close to the south side of the main house, and stopped at the front edge to check out Lunela Drive. It was barren as usual. No cars and no people. But there was no way to scout out what was going on farther down the street on either side. The property’s privacy was now working against me.
If I wanted to scope out the street, I had no choice but to move down to the front of the property.
So that’s what I did.
The street was deserted on either side, and that validated my choice to leave while the going was good.
I morphed into a tourist and strolled down Lunela Drive, with my cell phone at the ready, awed by the views of the Pacific. From Lunela, I made my way down through the wealthy enclave to the town center. There, I called for a cab—I thought using Uber would leave too much of digital trail—and took it to the parking structure.
It was a great relief when I stepped up to my car. I was comforted by its familiarity, and I couldn’t wait to slide in and drive away.
On the way back to LA, I decided I wouldn’t give Abel a blow-by-blow description of how I’d implemented his decree. After all, I had done as I’d been told. I had disposed of Rose’s body. It hadn’t gone perfectly, but it might have gone well enough to get away with it. That would depend on what happened after the police got involved. For there was no doubt that they would. At some point, if that point hadn’t already come, Wendy would realize that Rose had disappeared, and she’d call the police.
And then my fate would largely depend on when Rose’s body was discovered. There were many cases where it took decades for the police, or for anyone, to discover that a victim’s body was buried right on their own property. I hoped this would be one of those cases. After all, there was no evidence to indicate that Rose had even been murdered.
And if the police discovered the body sooner, as in months from now, there still shouldn’t be enough forensic evidence to link me to the murder. At least, I didn’t think there was.
ABEL
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I checked the numbers again, even though I knew they were right. The equipment was in excellent shape; I had nothing better to do than to keep it well maintained. And the numbers confirmed that the latest target had yielded the most potent batch of Kalera yet. It was ninety-one percent pure, which was basically as good as it got. Prior to this batch, the most potent one I’d harvested had been seventy-three percent pure. And that had been a long time ago. Thirty cycles ago.
I took one of the tablets—made from the potent Kalera—and headed up to the second floor of the house. I had a decision to make, but I wanted to think about it a little longer.
As I climbed the stairs, I wondered if this batch was a fluke, or if there were other humans that might yield similar batches. I hadn’t heard of crops on other planets ever yielding anything close to this.
But that didn’t mean it ha
dn’t happened. Earth was so distant from any significant part of the universe that it was hard to get any news here at all. And because I didn’t want to compromise my location, I didn’t troll the galaxy in search of news.
I walked into the master bedroom—a huge, empty room with large windows looking out on the wooded hillside. I hadn’t yet made my decision, but I was getting closer.
I spotted an owl nestled in a nearby birch tree. I’d watched that birch tree grow into the king of the hillside over the last hundred years. But it was the owl that captured my attention for the moment. The owl was another fine example of just how varied life was on this planet. On Tracea, millions and millions of cycles hadn’t produced such a wide variety of life. The bulk of the evolutionary momentum had gone into developing my own species, so there was nothing on my planet as spectacular as owls—or as magnificent as the mountain lions, deer, and coyotes that roamed this hillside.
Surely my species had had no idea that life on Earth would flower into so many forms. If they had, they wouldn’t have seeded Earth with Kalera. But one billion cycles ago, Earth looked no different than millions of other planets that were desolate, yet had the two ingredients necessary to grow and harvest Kalera: the right climate, and a simple life form to act as a host.
On Earth, that life form was cyanobacteria. Or at least that’s what I’d come to believe. I wasn’t a biologist or a chemist, but I’d had plenty of time to study Earth. Still, I couldn’t be certain that my species had chosen cyanobacteria, because so much had changed on Earth since then. In fact, so much had changed that I was lucky to have discovered Kalera had been planted here at all.
As humans were fond of saying—and I liked many of their idioms: I’d “hit the jackpot.” Starting my life again, on this distant planet, had been tough, but finding Kalera here had been my big break. And it wasn’t my only big break. The other was a lucky quirk of biological fate: life on this planet had evolved in such a way as to allow the Kalera seeds to pass from one life form to another. So as the seeds had matured into plants, they had also clung to their evolving hosts.
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