by John Moralee
“Someone could have stayed behind with the bodies.”
“They were not going anywhere,” Will said.
“We were cowards,” Nadia said. “It makes us sound like cowards.”
“No – it makes us sound human.”
“Yeah, right.” She turned to stare out of the window.
“We did what we thought best,” Evan said. “I remember walking into their bedroom and finding Larry’s laptop left in plain sight, on the dresser, where it was sure to be discovered. Larry’s suicide note was on the screen. It explained how he had discovered his wife was having an affair so he had decided to kill her and himself.”
Evan stopped talking.
Now he was the one who didn’t want to speak.
*
Evan thought of how Larry and Angela had regularly dined at the dean’s house, but he and his wife had never been invited. He remembered when Larry had become the youngest head of the English department ever.
After a few years, Larry rose to a non-teaching position the board of directors, leaving a space for his wife as his replacement. Nobody else stood a chance of getting the job, despite being better qualified. Angela took advantage of her new powerful position by unloading her responsibilities onto the others and running the department as her personal fiefdom. She granted favours, like research grants, to her favourites.
Good lecturers who would not go along with her plans were denied tenure. But Evan and Nadia and Will and Michelle were her friends, so they did not complain (too much) when they benefited at the expense of others. Evan had found himself with a great new office, twice the size of the one he’d had before. He received a research grant to give him more time to finish a book.
He had not wondered why Angela was so generous until one night last year.
As a designated driver, he had taken Angela home from a Christmas party at which she had drunk too much. Larry had disappeared somewhere during the party, he recalled, gentleman that he was, leaving it up to Evan to escort Angela home.
That was a night he hated remembering.
It had been a moonless night, the road empty, the street lights passing with a regularity that plunged him into a zombie-like state. The thing that had woken him – the thing that had almost caused a crash in itself – was Angela’s hand sliding over his thigh, touching him like only a lover should.
Waking up, he had seen a curve ahead and pushed Angela away. She said later she had slipped onto him, blaming the rum punch, but he had seen the sleepy, hungry look on her face as she touched him and known it was no mistake. She had meant to seduce him. She had not been nearly as drunk as she acted.
Afterwards, Evan had tried to avoid her, though he did not tell Nadia or anyone else what had happened, to protect Angela from embarrassment. He had made sure they never took a ride alone. But he had seen that hungry look again, many times, when Angela showed up at his office wearing something short and sexy, supposedly there to ask him something work-related but dripping with sexual innuendo. He had heard rumours of her having affairs with members of staff, but had dismissed them until she chose him as her next seduction. Her flirting had been so outlandish it felt sad and pathetic.
He rejected her. He was not surprised when his funding for next year was cancelled. Surprise turned to annoyance when his and Nadia’s lectures were tabled for unsociable hours.
“Why is she doing this to us?” Nadia asked him one evening, when she was so exhausted she was close to tears. “Have I done something to hurt her?”
“No – I have,” he said, and he told his wife everything.
“There’s got to be something we can do,” she said.
“I could threaten to tell Larry.”
“Larry? He’s the last person I’d tell.”
“Why?”
She was suddenly crying.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“About Larry … Last year, at the lake, on that really, really hot day, I was swimming when you were in the lodge, resting. I swam all the way across to the other side, where I picked a nice warm rock and sunbathed in that sexy red swimsuit you love. I didn’t hear Larry until he sat down next to me. He had a really creepy look on his face. He started talking about marriage and relationships and sex, saying how complicated things were these days. I nodded just to be polite. Then he asked if he could ask a personal question.”
“What did he ask?”
“He asked … He asked if it was true most women secretly wanted to be raped.”
“He said that to you?”
“Yes! He was staring right at me when he said it, like he was thinking about it, thinking about raping me. I was really scared, Evan. Really scared.”
“Did he …?”
“No. I told him it wasn’t true. I got up and got back in the lake, saying I was going to swim back. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t tell you later because when I got back, Larry was already there and he was acting like nothing had happened. I started wondering if it had even happened. I mean, it was so weird, him asking a question like that. But I wonder. I really wonder. If you told Larry his wife wanted to sleep with you, he’d get you fired because that’s the kind of man he is, Evan.”
*
In the wet light ahead he could see two grey figures standing by the road, a young man and woman. Hitch-hikers. No cars slowed down to pick them up. They had to be freezing to death out there. They also had to be the final two optimists in the country. He looked at them closely as he passed. They held each other’s hands as if very much in love. They looked like students wanting to go home. He considered stopping, but knew he could not. He looked back as they diminished behind him.
“Larry hated hitch-hikers,” he said, half to himself. “I was driving him to the campus one morning when we saw a hitch-hiker. He had punk hair dyed white and red, a nose-ring, tattoos everywhere, and a Charlie Manson T-shirt. Larry saw the hitch-hiker and asked me to pull over. I said no, of course. I wasn’t going to let someone looking like a serial killer in my car. Larry grinned mischievously. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘I know how to fix him. We’ll pick him up, act really friendly, then throw him out the door at fifty. He can fly home.’ I think Larry really intended to do it. He begged me to pull over. I didn’t stop, though, so I never found out if Larry really meant it. But I can’t forget the evil look on Larry’s face. It made me wonder if he had stopped for hitch-hikers before and if he’d thrown someone out.”
“Larry always was too damn good-looking, like a movie star,” Will said. “Mr All-American, the best looking professor on campus. When he was teaching he had the female students totally in love with him. I heard rumours of him sleeping with his favourites, but at the time I didn’t believe it. There was a girl in one of his classes who committed suicide. I wonder if he pushed her into doing it. Did you know he stole my idea for his book?”
“It’s true,” Michelle said. “Larry stole Will’s idea. It was going to be his big break.”
“I was finally going to achieve something important. But Larry wrote his book first based on my research. He claimed it was all his work, of course. Who wouldn’t believe him? He oozed charm and he knew it. He couldn’t resist the urge to be witty at someone else’s expense. He could schmooze like a politician, too. How else did he become a board member? He was also the youngest professor to get tenure because he was sleeping with the dean’s wife. I know that because he told me. He was proud of it. There was nothing he’d stop at to get his way. The man was psychopathic. I won’t miss him.”
They all fell silent, staring out at the rain and the houses.
Their destination was in sight.
Larry and Angela’s home.
Evan stopped. He tooted the horn. Larry and Angela stepped out of the door, smiling, waving, carrying their suitcases and climbing equipment.
Evan sighed. “Okay. Here they come. We’ve rehearsed our stories for the police. Now let’s get on with the plan. Everyone smile like we’re happy to see them ...”
Fever Pitch
&n
bsp; George said, “Stop at the ravine.”
Coming around the curve, I slowed and parked as near to the edge as I dared. George opened the glove compartment, grabbed my best pair of sunglasses and slid them on his face and grinned. He was up to something. He stepped out of the pickup, taking deep gulps of the mountain air. “Good day for a murder, little brother.”
“What?” I said, not believing that I’d heard right.
George walked to the edge of the ravine, teetering on the brink, his alligator boots swishing in the red dirt as if he were a ballet-dancing Houdini. But no ballet dancer had ever looked like George. George must have been lifting weights in prison, for my brother was 220 pounds of hard muscle and raw anger. It was his first day on the outside since 1987, and he had been acting strange all during the ride back to Dark Pine. Talking about killing. There was a scar on his wide neck where he had almost become a victim of a prison riot. Prison had hardened him, turned him from an auto thief into someone I didn’t know, someone I didn’t like. He had the thousand-yard stare of a Vietnam veteran. The veins and arteries in his arms were a grotesque roadmap underneath blue and black tattoos that bulged when his hands formed fists. “Very good day for a murder.”
I thought he was joking. He had to be joking. But George’s idea of a joke was pulling the legs off a spider. He was serious. I jumped out of the driver’s seat and moved as close as I could to the ravine’s edge without being in George’s reach.
“Murder’s for idiots, George.”
The sky was deep blue over the mountains. It was streaked with vapour trails, criss-crossing like a spider’s web. George was looking at it, sighing. Unnaturally green pines on the opposite side of the ravine hid Dark Pine from here, but I could see George staring at where the town was as if he could penetrate the forest with X-ray vision. It was an ugly stare, full of pure hate.
“You calling me an idiot?” he said.
I could hear the river far below. I wanted a cigarette, but I’d promised Susie I’d given them up. “No. I’m not calling you an idiot. But murderers are idiots.”
George picked up a large rock. I flinched. I just hoped he wasn’t planning knocking me out and pushing me off the edge to see if I could fly. But he turned and threw the rock into the ravine. It sailed through the crisp air and missed the river by a couple of hundred yards, landing on the mud bank.
“You see the speed of that?”
“Yes,” I answered. George had the arm for pitching hard ones - really hard ones - but he never took into account gravity. He liked to throw things so fast they did not have time to be effected by gravity before they hit their target. Savage power with little accuracy. When we were kids, he’d tried out for the Blue Swallows, our local baseball team, but he had been rejected by Coach Wilkins. Coach Wilkins had said that he had no need for a guy who could knock down a barn door but couldn’t hit it. Instead of trying improve his aim, George had quit baseball. Then he’d quit everything else, too. I knew George somehow blamed the coach for his decline into crime. Coach Wilkins was the only guy George would want to kill.
“You teach kids, huh?” George said suddenly.
“Uh-huh.” He knew that. He was fishing. Testing the water.
“You must see Coach Wilkins every day.”
“I see him around.”
George grinned an evil grin. There were too many teeth in his square jaws, all as sharp as scalpels. “What’s he driving these days?”
I had to think. “A red Land Rover. Why?”
“Good suspension on a Land Rover.” He hunkered down, selecting the largest rock he could pick up one handed. His knees cracked when he stood up. “It would be real bad if Coach Wilkins’s Land Rover skidded off this here cliff.”
“George,” I said, “don’t even think about it.”
George pitched the rock. It went even farther than the first. “Would I do a thing like that?”
“George -”
He laughed. “Come on, little brother. Figure we need a drink and a game of nine-ball. You got to tell me what I missed all these years.”
“I don’t want any talk about killing Coach, okay?”
George wiped the earth on his jeans, given me a look that prickled the hairs on my neck.
“I won’t talk about it.”
*
I drove us back to Dark Pine, to Dawson’s bar. I bought the drinks. George said nothing about murder, but I could feel the tension in him. After a few beers he told me his parole officer had arranged a job for him as a mechanic at Joe’s Autos.
Joe’s Autos was one step up from a chop shop. Joe sold second-hand vehicles as well as fixing up ones that should have been scrapped. It was the perfect job for George. George loved cars. He loved cars so much that age 17 he’d taken the Greyhound to Las Vegas to fulfil his fantasy. He’d stolen Ferraris, Porsches and Lamborghinis from outside hotels and driven them on wild rides into the desert. George had pretended to be a valet to get the cars - until his luck ran out and he was arrested for grand theft auto. Ironically, now he was 27, a free man, George wasn’t allowed to drive a car himself - he’d never had a license. So he was going to repair them. It was the nearest thing.
“Inside I learned a lot in the workshop about engines. I can fix just about any engine you name.” He finished his third beer, gasping. “I can make an engine purr like a pussy, or roar like a lion. I can do some things you won’t believe.”
“I don’t know anything about my pickup except where to put the key.”
“Maybe I should show you some stuff?” His enthusiasm was infectious. I nodded. Then he said: “You know, I can even fix a Land Rover engine.”
My beer settled heavily in my stomach. Why had he mentioned Land Rovers? He wasn’t still thinking about Coach Wilkins, was he? I was about to saying something when a couple of guys George knew from way back came over and congratulated him on being released. Bill and Henry, a couple of drunk deadbeats. George forgot about me and went with them to get some more beers.
*
The next day George started work at Joe’s Autos. I returned to teaching History, but I kept my eyes on the car lot most of the day. I was worried about Coach Wilkins. Now George was an expert at fixing cars, I could picture him tampering with the coach’s Land Rover just to get his bizarre revenge. Coach Wilkins always parked his Land Rover in the same spot, the space reserved for him nearest to the baseball ground. It would be easy for George to come along when Wilkins was busy and do something to the vehicle. Luckily, there was a clear view through the classroom windows. Nobody went near the car all day.
I watched Coach Wilkins’ Land Rover for a week. It was getting so the students were starting to notice my lack of concentration.
It was impossible to keep watching all of the time. I considered telling Coach Wilkins to be careful driving, but then he’d want to know why. I could hardly tell him my brother wanted to kill him. What I did instead was suddenly find excuses to talk to Coach. We didn’t have much in common - he was into sports and I was into reading and writing history books - but I pretended an interest in football.
I sat on the bleachers, eating nachos. Under Coach’s instructions one group of huge guys tried to pound another group of huge guys into the ground. After the blood letting was over, I congratulated Coach on an excellent game.
“I prefer teaching baseball, but the school board’s got me teaching football to them no hopers.”
“Yeah, but you were excellent. With a good team you could tear a strip off the best of them.” I saw him nodding in agreement. My lies were working. “You want a beer, Coach?”
“Only if you’re paying.”
So that was how I oozed myself into his confidence. Bribery.
Wilkins was an ex-football jock. Big. Arrogant. Loud. His hair was white these days, cut in a military style, like stubble. He moved around town like he owned the ground he walked on. He was due for retirement at the end of the season, but apart from arthritis in his left knee he said he could outrun a guy half
his age. I remembered him from my own days in high school - the memories were mostly of him shouting at everyone to do their best, dammit - and I felt awkward trying to be friends with a guy whose personality was as sharp as a razor. Everything was black or white with Wilkins. This is good. This is bad. Don’t disagree with me, son. I’m right. You’re wrong. The rest of the world was changing, but Coach Wilkins was a rock around which other people either moved to avoid or crashed into. My brother had crashed into him. Coach Wilkins didn’t like me much, and I was trying to be his buddy! Maybe he saw through my sincerity. Anyway, I could understand why George hated him. I hated him, too. It cost me several beers to find out. He was quite a drinker, Coach Wilkins.
Coach Wilkins enjoyed spitting tobacco onto people’s shoes. My shoes especially. After two weeks of being friendly to him, he’d ruined my three best pairs of loafers. Maybe deliberately, as a hint to go away. He never apologised even once. Then Wilkins started asking me why I was being friendly. Accusing me. As if I were up to something suspicious. So, I stopped the bodyguard routine, figuring he could look after himself.
Meanwhile, George seemed to behaving exemplary at his job. Maybe he’d given up on revenge and was a reformed man? I didn’t want to put my own brother back in jail for nothing. As long as George’s parole officer watched him half the time and I watched him the rest, he would not have the opportunity to mess around with the Land Rover. Coach Wilkins lived up in the mountains, a good ten miles from Dark Pine. There was no way George could do anything to his car when it was there - and little time when it was in Dark Pine.
But ... but the thought was still there that George might do something.
One Saturday I was driving by Joe’s Autos when I saw the familiar white hair of Coach Wilkins. Curious, I slowed the pickup. He was standing outside the garage, shouting and waving his fists at George.