He slammed down the shovel, grasped his wife, and stuffed her through the opening.
No screams. No thumps. No splash. No sound except his breaths sawing in and out.
Craig spent an hour beside the sinkhole, listening to crickets, expecting two bloody hands to reach out of the abyss and grab him by the throat. Then he went to bed and dreamed a rerun of his fears.
IN THE MORNING, as Craig sipped at his fourth cup of black coffee, Lionel Eads and his winched truck and a muscular helper arrived to cover the sinkhole with a granite boulder the color of ashes. Lionel looked as if he could use four cups of black coffee, too; he yawned and stared off into space with red-rimmed eyes.
Two days passed. Because he sold insurance, Craig had a home office. He found excuses to be away from it as much as possible. It overlooked the backyard and Karen’s giant grave marker.
Maudie didn’t come home. Craig watched her driveway with the eagerness of a child expecting Christmas.
If anyone asked, Karen had gone to visit friends in California. Craig hoped for an earthquake in which she could conveniently go missing.
“DAD, LOOK WHAT Jimmy and me found!” Rick deposited a muddy truck on the kitchen table, just missing Craig’s pepperoni pizza supper.
“Where you guys been?” Craig scolded like a mother. “Wash up and get it while it’s hot.”
“Yeah, but look, Mr. Longworth,” Jimmy insisted. “We found Rick’s dump truck.”
“Right where he left it, right?” Craig ruffled the two heads of hair, one dark, one orange.
“No!” they said together.
Rick’s deeper voice won the fight to tell. “We lost it down the sinkhole.”
Craig felt for a chair back and eased himself into the seat. “Yeah, I remember now. And where did you find it?”
“In the cow pasture. Over the rise. Down by a little creek.”
“We figure there’s a underground river right under your yard,” Jimmy butted in. “We’re going to dig up close to the boulder and see if we can make more stuff disappear and watch for it to come out.”
“No!” His own voice gave him a headache. More quietly he added, “It sounds dangerous to me. No, listen. You stay away from both ends of it till I have time to check it out. I mean it, now. No sneaking over to the pasture or I’ll tan you both.”
CRAIG SNEAKED OVER to the pasture. The moon glowed nearly as bright as his flashlight. The cool night smelled of damp grass and cattle.
Having scaled the wire fence, he hiked up the long, gentle incline, using the shovel as a walking stick, then down the steeper other side. Toward the bottom, the hill deteriorated into a cliff. Dodging scrub oak, Craig skidded on heels and rear, down to the creek and halfway across it.
Cold water seeped into his shoes while cold dread seeped everywhere else. The flashlight glared on a creekbed full of brown pebbles, some shaped exactly like Lincoln Logs.
Aiming the light upstream, Craig waded toward the rock that hung, cavelike, over the water. Resting a hand on the gritty limestone, he leaned to peer at the spot where the creek percolated out of a ground fissure the size of a bathtub.
He groaned and sat down on the nearest half-submerged boulder. The dump truck had been lost just hours before Karen went into the sinkhole. She must be due any moment now. He pointed the light into the bathtub and steeled himself to wait. His chin slipped off his hand, and he jerked up straight. The gurgling creek had begun to gargle. Trying to steady the flashlight, he peered into a growing whirlpool. When the first sneakered foot floated up, he scrubbed at his face, thinking—hoping—he was still asleep.
An ankle, bloodless as the white shoe, drifted into view. Another foot appeared, the shoelaces trailing gracefully. Legs sheathed in dark blue denim. Knees. Thighs.
Unable to stand the suspense a heartbeat longer, Craig waded into the chilly water, grasped the slick ankles, and yanked. No Ahab ever fought harder to subdue his obsession. Floundering for footholds on the slippery rock, his muscles aching with her dead weight, he finally fell backward, the cold body enveloping him like a nightmare.
Rolling out from under, he sat up coughing—and froze, seeing her still radiant red hair.
He doubled over for several moments, hyperventilating. Wiping his eyes and nose with the tail of his shirt, he dragged the shovel over and used it as a crutch to haul himself upright. Still snuffling water, he reached down unwillingly and tipped her over.
It wasn’t Maudie.
Surprise dropped him onto his hands and knees, and closer up, he confirmed it. Not Maudie.
Mrs. Lionel Eads.
Where did that son-of-a-bee come off using his sinkhole to dispose of his dead bodies?
When the first wave of anger sucked away, he indulged in a few tears of relief that this limp, marble-eyed woman wasn’t Maudie. Then he stomped off into the flatter pastureland, looking for a suitable place to bury her.
Digging through the grass was like digging through woven cloth, and the earth underneath rang like concrete. Craig worked up a sweat and a strength-endowing fury.
“Doing his dirty work,” he muttered, jabbing with the shovel. “Kills his wife and leaves me to clean up the mess. Probably with his sweetie pie right now. Not a worry in the world. Some people just have no consideration for others.”
He planted Mrs. Eads about two feet under, and then he returned to the creek to wait for Karen. Every few minutes he felt the need to throw back his head in a mute, face-wrenching scream.
MORNING ARRIVED before his wife’s body did. He tried to think what to do, which wasn’t easy, his mind being fuddled from lack of sleep.
Finally he hid the flashlight and shovel in a patch of wild raspberries and trudged up the hill to the fence. Crouching behind it, he scouted the peaceful neighborhood before climbing over and striding home.
After the first three cups of coffee, he phoned his sister. Barbara Junior answered.
“Howdy, partner. Let me talk to your mom.”
“Uncle Craig, Rick has been taking my stuff and not giving it back.”
“Okay, I’ll get after him. Let me talk to—”
“He broke the head off my Barbie, and he said he’d fix it, but he never did. And he and Jimmy played keep-away with Fozzie Bear and—”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll talk to him. First I got to talk to Barbara.”
Barbara Junior yelled, “Mommaphone’sforyou!” in his ear.
He had time to chew his left thumbnail to the quick before his sister answered.
“Karen’s gone to California and Maudie’s gone to Cleveland,” Craig said in a rush. “I’ve got the two boys and I’m sick—the flu or something. Okay if I send them over to you for a while?”
“I guess.” Barb sounded as thrilled as Barb Junior would be when she got the news.
The boys weren’t all that thrilled either.
“Their house smells like cats,” Jimmy said.
“And their cats smell like skunks,” Rick said.
THE PASTURE SMELLED of skunk, too, when Craig slipped over into it later in the morning. He struggled to carry a sleeping bag, a gallon thermos of coffee, a brown bag full of ham sandwiches, a bottle of insect repellent, a bottle of aspirin, a couple of paperback books, and a pickax.
He had to force himself to walk straight to the head of the stream and look into the natural bathtub, afraid of finding Karen but wanting her to be there so this could be over. The water rippled empty in the dappled shade.
Maybe she had snagged on a rock or something! Maybe she was too big to fit through the underground stream outlet, and she wouldn’t reappear until time whittled her down to bones. Maybe she was still alive, clawing her way randomly through the endless dark.
He had to watch for a while.
Craig spread out the sleeping bag, ranged the rest of his property along one side, picked up a book, and sat down. A cloud slid in front of the sun, graying the landscape, making him shiver. The pool coughed softly.
The book was short stories. He
opened it at random. Poe. “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
The body arrived just after dark.
A mass of clouds had shut down the moon, and lightning exploded on the west horizon, a little closer every blast. Toward the south, the brush crackled, and bass voices murmured, indicating cows on the prowl. Craig wished he’d brought extra batteries for the yellowing flashlight. His life had become a horror movie.
Like Mrs. Eads’s, this body came feet first and stomach down. As the legs swam into view, Craig stared, trying to decide whether this would be Karen or Maudie. He no longer believed in Cleveland.
The hips undulated free and then an expanse of pale waist where the shirt had hiked up and ripped. Back. Arms. Ringless hands, unnaturally white and puckered. Craig’s eyes burned, unblinking and dry, as he strained for a first glimpse of her hair.
Thunder smashed. Sharp, cold rain began to beat. The neck came into view. There was no head.
Craig sunk down in the pouring rain to cry. It felt as if all the moisture streaming down his face came from inside him, a flood of guilt and grief.
After perhaps five self-indulgent minutes, he moved to haul the body from the stream. Not having the strength to bury it, he squatted on the soggy sleeping bag for another vigil.
AFTER PERHAPS an hour, the dog came out. It was black and sleek, though that was probably because it was wet and dead. In life, it might have been an unsheared brown poodle. Perhaps the one that used to yap at anything that moved, over on Quince Court.
Groaning, Craig waded in to pull him out and lay him beside the headless woman.
“I should have charged my neighbors for the waste disposal service I didn’t know I was running,” he complained.
Renewed splashing signaled something else being regurgitated from the sink. Craig shuffled to the edge. “You speak, and I obey.”
This time boots showed first, heavy combat boots, followed by green and brown blotched pants. Craig blinked rain out of his eyes. Numbed beyond any capability for surprise, he gazed at the muscular arms, the camouflage-shirted chest, the thick neck, the gleaming, piggy eyes.
The soldier gently rocked on his back in the susurrous bathtub. After a moment of studying him, Craig returned to the sleeping bag and sat on its puddled middle.
THE NEXT MORNING, sun sizzled against his eyelids until he opened them.
Like a vision, an angel, Maudie came slip-sliding down the cliff above the creek. She wore white slacks, a yellow blazer, white sneakers, and a shining smile.
“Hey. What are you doing?” she called ahead.
Craig scrambled up and rushed to intercept her.
“Camping out,” he said. “Don’t look.”
“Don’t look at what? Phewie. When did you last have a bath?”
“You really were in Cleveland?” He touched her neck reverently, admiring how it securely attached her head to her torso.
“Where are the boys?” She leaned to peer past him, and he jumped sideways to block her view.
“They’re at my sister’s. Karen’s in California. Maybe there’ll be an earthquake. How did you know where I was?”
“Mrs. Judd saw you and your gear schlumping over here last night.” Maudie laughed uncertainly. “Are you okay? You’re as white as a sheet.”
“No clichés!” He clapped his hands over his ears.
“You’re too weird, Craig. I’m going home and have some breakfast.” She patted one of his hands, which still covered his ear, and, turning, struggled provocatively up the hill.
WHO SHOULD SHE call? Maudie labored through the pasture, unmindful of the stick-tights, the poison ivy, the cow pies. She walked hard and fast and planned to climb the fence the same way, all the while expecting Craig to shout for her to stop.
Who should she call? The police? A doctor? Who do you call when the man you’ve slept with a few times sets up camp in the middle of a field to, apparently, play with toys?
She would let Barbara handle it. “Here’s the deal, Barbara,” she’d say. “I don’t know your brother very well, but being a friend of Karen’s, I feel I have a duty, you know? Craig is around the bend, flipped his lid, off his rocker. He’s hermiting down by the creek with a bunch of Lincoln Logs, a teddy bear, a GI Joe, and a headless Barbie doll, for God’s sake.”
Thank goodness her relationship with Craig hadn’t passed the point of no return. She wasn’t worried that he’d told Karen about their fooling around. You can put a man over a barrel, but you can’t make him drink.
LOREN D. ESTLEMAN
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MIKADO MASSAGE
November 1996
LOREN D. ESTLEMAN’S Detroit P.I. Amos Walker has found a home in seventeen novels to date since 1980s Motor City Blue. A second series features the hit man Peter Macklin. But Estleman also writes Westerns, historicals, and even Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Among the many honors he’s received are numerous Shamus Awards from the Private Eye Writers of America and Golden Spur Awards from the Western Writers of American. This story exemplifies Estleman at his hard-boiled best.
The ironic thing about the night Mr. Ten Fifty-Five died on Iiko’s table was that she was supposed to have that Saturday off.
She’d asked for the time three weeks in advance so she could spend the weekend with Uncle Trinh, who was coming to visit from Corpus Christi, Texas, where he worked on a shrimp boat, but the day before his bus left, he slipped on some fish scales and broke his leg. Now he needed money for doctors’ bills, and Iiko had volunteered to work.
The Mikado Massage was located on Michigan Avenue in Detroit. On one side was an empty building that had once sheltered a travel agency. The Mystic Arts Bookshop was on the other and shared a common wall with the Mikado. There was a fire door in this wall, which came in handy during election years. When the mayor sent police with warrants, they invariably found the bookshop full of customers and the massage parlor empty. On the third Sunday of every month a man came to collect for the service of keeping the owner informed about these visits. Iiko had seen the man’s picture under some printing on the side of a van with a loudspeaker on the roof. Detroit was the same as back home except for no Ho Chi Minh on the billboards.
Although its display in the Yellow Pages advertised an all-Japanese staff, the Mikado’s owner, Mr. Shigeta, was the only person in residence not Korean or Vietnamese, and he was never seen by the customers unless one of them became ungallant. He was a short, thick man of fifty-five or seventy with hair exactly like a seal’s, who claimed to have stood in for Harold Sakata on the set of Goldfinger and had papered his little office with posters and lobby cards from the film. He kept a bottle of Polish vodka and a jar of pickled eggs in a crawlspace behind the radiator.
Iiko had been working there four months. She made less than the other masseuses because she was still on probation after a police visit to the Dragon’s Gate in the suburb of Inkster, which had no fire door, and so she gave only massages, no specials. She kept track of the two months remaining on her sentence on a Philgas calendar inside her locker door.
The man she called Mr. Ten Fifty-Five always showed up at that time on Saturday night and always asked for Iiko. Because he reminded her a little of Uncle Trinh, she’d thought to do him a kindness and had explained to him, in her imperfect English, that he could get the same massage for much less at any hotel, but he said he preferred the Mikado. The hotels didn’t offer Japanese music or heated floors or scented oils or a pink bulb in a table lamp with a paper kimono shade.
Normally, Saturday was the busiest night of the week, but this was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when, as Mr. Shigeta explained, the customers remembered they were family men and stayed home. Mr. Ten Fifty-Five, therefore, was the only person she’d seen since early evening when Mr. Shigeta had gone home, leaving her in charge.
Mr. Ten Fifty-Five was duck-shaped and bald, with funny gray tufts that stood out on both sides of his head when he waddled in from the shower in a towel and sprawled facedown on the table. He often fell asleep the mome
nt she began to rub him down and didn’t wake up even when she walked on his back, so it wasn’t until she asked him to turn over that Iiko found out that this time he’d died.
Iiko recognized death. She’d been only a baby when the last American soldier left her village, but she remembered the marauding gangs that swept through after the Fall of Saigon, claiming to be hunting rebels but forcing themselves upon the women and carrying away tins of food and silver picture frames and setting the buildings on fire when they left. Iiko’s brother Nguyen, sixteen years old, had tried to block the door of their parents’ home, but one of the visitors stuck a bayonet between his ribs and planted a boot on his face to tug loose the blade. Iiko hung on to her mother’s skirt during the walk to the cemetery. The skirt was white, the color of mourning in Vietnam, with a border of faded flowers at the hem.
When Iiko confirmed that Mr. Ten Fifty-Five’s heart had stopped, she went through his clothes. This was much easier than picking pockets in Ho Chi Minh City, where one always ran the risk of being caught with one’s hand in the pocket of another pickpocket. Iiko found car keys, a little plastic bottle two-thirds full of tiny white pills, a tattered billfold containing fifty-two dollars, and a folding knife with a stag handle and a blade that had been ground down to a quarter-inch wide. She placed it and the money in the pocket of her smock and returned the clothes to the back of the chair. The tail of the shabby coat clunked when it flapped against a chair leg.
Iiko investigated. There was a lump at the bottom where the machine stitch that secured the lining had been replaced by a clumsy crosshatch of thread that didn’t match the original. This came loose easily, and she removed a small green cloth sack with a drawstring, whose contents caught the pink light in seven spots of reflected purple. When she switched on the overhead bulb, the stones, irregular ovals the size of the charcoal bits she swept weekly from the brazier in the sauna, turned deep blue.
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense Page 43