by Brian Hodge
“A mate isn’t everything,” I said.
“It’s something,” Martha said. “And I think about it. I won’t kid you. But I know it isn’t possible. I’ve been around, seen some things, had some interesting jobs. But I haven’t really made any life for myself. Not so it feels like one. And you know what? After all these years, Jasmine and you are my only real friends, and in your case, Plebin, I don’t know that amounts to much.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You could get a wig,” Jasmine said.
“I could have these whiskers removed,” Martha said. “But I’d still be a blimp with a bum leg. No. There’s nothing for me in the looks department. Not unless I could change bodies with some blonde bimbo. Since that isn’t going to happen, all I got is what I make out of life. Like this mystery. A real mystery, I think. And if Waldo is a murderer, do we let him go on to the next town and find a victim? Or for that matter, a victim here, before he leaves?
“We catch this guy. Prove he’s responsible for murders, then we’ve actually done something important with our lives. There’s more to my life than the bookstore. More to yours Plebin than a bad name and unemployment checks. And… well, in your case Jasmine, there is more to your life. You’re beautiful, smart, and you’re going places. But for all of us, wouldn’t it be worthwhile to catch a killer?”
“If he is a killer,” I said. “Maybe he just hates mannequins because they look better in their clothes than he does.”
“Women’s clothes?” Jasmine said.
“Maybe it’s women’s clothes he likes to wear,” I said. “Thing is, we could end up making fools of ourselves, spend some time in jail, even.”
“I’ll chance it,” Jasmine said.
“No you won’t,” I said. “It’s over for you, Jasmine. Martha can do what she wants. But you and me, we’re out of it.”
Martha left.
Jasmine got out her sleeping bag and unrolled it, went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. I tried to stay awake and await my turn in there, but couldn’t. Too tired. I lay down on the bed, noted vaguely that rain had stopped pounding on the apartment roof, and I fell immediately asleep.
I awoke later that night, early morning really, to the smell of more oncoming rain, and when I rolled over I could see flashes of lightning in the west.
The west. The direction of the dump. It was as if a storm was originating there, moving toward the town.
Melodrama. I loved it.
I rolled over and turned my head to the end table beside the bed, and when the lightning flashed I could see the mannequin head setting there, its face turned toward me, its strange, false eyes alight with the fire of the western lightning. The paint around the mannequin’s neck appeared very damp in that light, like blood.
I threw my legs from beneath the covers and took hold of the head. The paint on its neck was wet in my hands. The humidity had caused it to run. I sat the head on the floor where I wouldn’t have to look at it, got up to go to the bathroom and wash my hands.
Jasmine’s sleeping bag was on the floor, but Jasmine wasn’t in it. I went on to the bathroom, but she wasn’t in there either. I turned on the light and washed my hands and felt a little weak. There was no place else to be in the apartment. I looked to see if she had taken her stuff and gone home, but she hadn’t. The door that led out to the stairway was closed, but unlocked.
No question now. She had gone out.
I had an idea where, and the thought of it gave me a chill. I got dressed and went downstairs and beat on the bookstore, pressed my face against the windows, but there was no light or movement. I went around to the rear of the building to beat on the backdoor, to try and wake Martha up in her living quarters, but when I got there I didn’t bother. I saw that Martha’s van was gone from the carport and Jasmine’s car was still in place.
I went back to my apartment and found Jasmine’s car keys on the dresser and thought about calling the police, then thought better of it. Their memory of my body in
the trunk stunt was a long one, and they might delay. Blow off the whole thing, in fact, mark it up to another aggravation from the boy who cried wolf. If I called Sam it wouldn’t be any better. Twice in one night he’d be more likely to kill me than to help me. He was more worried about his pecker than a would-be killer, and he might not do anything at all.
Then I reminded myself it was a game of “What If” and that there wasn’t anything to do, nothing to fear. I told myself the worst that could happen would be that Jasmine and Martha would annoy Waldo and make fools of themselves, and then it would all be over for good.
But those thoughts didn’t help much, no matter how hard I tried to be convinced. I realized then that it hadn’t been just the rain and the humidity that had awakened me. I had been thinking about what Martha said. About Waldo picking a victim later on if we didn’t stop him. About the mannequins being a sort of warm-up for what he really wanted to do and would do.
It wasn’t just a game anymore. Though I had no real evidence for it, I believed then what Jasmine and Martha believed.
Waldo the Great was a murderer.
I drove Jasmine’s car out to the trailer park and pulled around where we had parked before, and sure enough, there was Martha’s van. I pulled in behind it and parked.
I got out, mad as hell, went over to the van and pulled the driver’s door open. There wasn’t anyone inside. I turned then and looked through the bushes toward the trailer park. Lightning moved to the west and flicked and flared as if it were fireworks on a vibrating string. It lit up the trailer park, made what was obvious momentarily bright and harsh.
Waldo’s truck and trailer were gone. There was nothing in its spot but tire tracks.
I tore through the bushes, fought back some blackberry vines, and made the long run over to the spot where Waldo’s trailer had been.
I walked around in circles like an idiot. I tried to think, tried to figure what had happened.
I made up a possible scenario: Martha and Jasmine had come out here to spy on Waldo, and maybe Waldo, who kept weird hours, had gone out, and Jasmine and Martha had seen their chance and gone in.
Perhaps Waldo turned around and came back suddenly. Realized he’d forgotten his cigarettes, his money, something like that, and he found Jasmine and Martha snooping.
And if he was a murderer, and he found them, and they had discovered incriminating evidence…
Then what?
What would he have done with them?
It struck me then.
The dump. To dispose of the bodies.
God, the bodies.
My stomach soured and my knees shook. I raced back through the tangled growth, back to Jasmine’s car. I pulled around the van and made the circle and whipped onto the road in front of the trailer park and headed for the dump at high speed. If a cop saw me, good. Let him chase me, on out to the dump.
Drops of rain had begun to fall as I turned on the road to the dump. Lightning was crisscrossing more rapidly and more heatedly than before. Thunder rumbled.
I killed the lights and eased into the dump, using the lightning flashes as my guide, and there, stretched across the dump road, blocking passage, was Waldo’s trailer. The truck the trailer was fastened to was off the road and slightly turned in my direction, ready to leave the dump. I didn’t see any movement. The only sounds were from the throbbing thunder and the hissing lightning. Raindrops were falling faster.
I jerked the car into park in front of the trailer and got out and ran over there, then hesitated. I looked around and spotted a hunk of wood lying in some garbage. I yanked it out and ran back to the trailer and jerked open the door. The smell of dogs was thick in the air.
Lightning flashed in the open doorway and through the thin curtains at the windows. I saw Martha lying on the floor, face down, a meat cleaver in the small of her back. I saw that the bookshelves on the wall were filled with Harlequin romances, and below them nailed onto the shelves, were strange hunks of what in the l
ightning flashes looked like hairy leather.
Darkness.
A beat.
Lighting flash.
I looked around, didn’t see Waldo hiding in the shadows with another meat cleaver.
Darkness again.
I went over to Martha and knelt beside her, touched her shoulder. She raised her head, tried to jerk around and grab me, but was too weak. “Sonofabitch,” she said.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Plebin,” she said. “Waldo… nailed me a few times… Thinks I’m dead… He’s got Jasmine. Tried to stop him… Couldn’t… You got to. They’re out… there.”
I took hold of the cleaver and jerked it out of her back and tossed it on the floor.
“Goddamn,” Martha said, and almost did a push up, but lay back down. “Could have gone all day without that… Jasmine. The nut’s got her. Go on!”
Martha closed her eyes and lay still. I touched her neck. Still a pulse. But I couldn’t do anything now. I had to find Jasmine. Had to hope the bastard hadn’t done his work.
I went out of the trailer, around to the other side, looked out over the dump. The light wasn’t good, but it was good enough that I could see them immediately. Jasmine, her back to me, upside down, nude, was tied to the inside of the nearest derrick, hung up like a goat for the slaughter. Waldo stood at an angle, facing her, holding something in his hand.
Lightning strobed, thunder rumbled. The poodles were running about, barking and leaping. Two of the dogs were fucking out next to the derrick, flopping tongues. The great black hammerhead of the oil pump rose up and went down. Fires glowed from beneath debris and reflected on the metal bars of the derrick and the well pump, and when the rain hit the fires beneath the garbage they gave up white smoke and the smoke rolled in the wind like great balls of cotton, tumbled over Jasmine and Waldo and away.
Waldo swung what he had in his hand at Jasmine. Caught her across the neck with it. Her body twitched. I let out a yell that was absorbed by a sudden peal of thunder and a slash of lightning.
I started running, yelling as I went.
Waldo slashed at Jasmine again, and then he heard me yelling. He stepped to the side and stared at me, surprised. I ran up the little rise that led to the derrick before he could get it together, and as I ducked under a bar on the derrick, he dropped what he was holding.
A long paint brush.
It fell next to a can of dark paint. Rain plopped in the paint and black balls of paint flew up in response and fell down again. One of the dogs jumped the can of paint for no reason I could determine and ran off into the rain.
Jasmine made a noise like a smothered cough. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a strip of thick, gray tape across her mouth, and where Waldo had slashed her neck with the brush was a band of paint, dissolving in the rain, running down her neck, over her cheeks and into her eyes and finally her hair, like blood in a black-and-white movie.
Waldo reached behind his back and came back with a knife. The edge of the blade caught a flash of lightning and gave a wicked wink. Waldo’s face was full of expression this time, as if he had saved all his passion for this moment.
“Come on, asshole,” I said. “Come on. Cut me.”
He leapt forward, very fast. The knife went out and caught me across the chest as I jumped back and hit my head on a metal runner of the derrick. I felt something warm on my chest. Shit. I hadn’t really wanted him to cut me. He was a fast little bastard.
I didn’t invite him to do that again.
I cocked my piece of wood and let him get as close as I could allow without fear taking over, then I ducked under the metal runner and he ducked under it after me, poking straight out with the knife.
I swung at him, and the wood, rotten, possibly termite ridden, came apart close to my hand and went sailing and crumbling across the dump.
Waldo and I watched the chunk of wood until it hit the dirt by the derrick and exploded into a half-dozen fragments.
Waldo turned his attention to me again, smiled, and came fast. I jumped backwards and my feet went out from under me and dogs yelped.
The lover mutts. I had backed over them while they were screwing. I looked up between my knees and saw the dogs turned butt to butt, hung up, and then I looked higher, and there was Waldo and his knife. I rolled and came up and grabbed a wet cardboard box of something and threw it. It struck Waldo in the chest and what was in the box flew out and spun along the wet ground. It was half a mannequin torso.
“You’re ruining everything,” Waldo said.
I glanced down and saw one of the mannequin legs Sam had pulled from a box and tossed. I grabbed the leg and cocked it on my shoulder like a baseball bat.
“Come on, asshole,” I said. “Come on. Let’s see if I can put one over the fence with you.”
He went nuts then, dove for me. The knife jabbed out, fast and blurry.
I swatted. My swing hit his arm and his knife hand went wide and opened up and the knife flew into a pile of garbage and out of sight.
Waldo and I both looked at where it had disappeared.
We looked at one another. It was my turn to smile.
He staggered back and I followed, rotating the leg, trying to pick my shot.
He darted to his right, dipped, came up clutching one of the mannequin’s arms. He held it by the wrist and smiled. He rotated it the way I had the leg.
We came together, leg and arm swinging. He swung at my head. I blocked with the leg and swung at his knees. He jumped the swing, kicked beautifully while airborne, hit me in the chin and knocked my head back, but I didn’t go down.
Four of the poodles came out of nowhere, bouncing and barking beside us, and one of them got hold of my pants leg and started tugging. I hit at him. He yelped. Waldo hit me with the arm across the shoulder. I hit him back with the leg and kicked out and shook the poodle free.
Waldo laughed.
Another of the poodles got hold of his pants legs.
Waldo quit laughing. “Not me, you dumb ingrate!”
Waldo whacked the poodle hard with the arm. It let go, ran off a distance, whirled, took a defiant stance and barked.
I hit Waldo then. It was a good shot, clean and clear and sweet with the sound of the wind, but he got his shoulder up and blocked the blow and he only lost a bit of shirt sleeve, which popped open like a flower blossoming.
“Man, I just bought this shirt,” he said.
I swung high to his head and let my body go completely around with the swing, twisting on the balls of my feet, and as I came back around, I lowered the blow and hit him in the ribs. He bellowed and tripped over something, went down and dropped his mannequin arm. Three poodles leapt on his chest and one grabbed at his ankle. Behind him, the other two were still hung up, tongues dangling happily. They were waiting for the seasons to change. The next ice age. It didn’t matter. They were in no hurry.
I went after Waldo, closing for the kill. He wiped the poodles off his chest with a sweep of his arm and grabbed the mannequin arm beside him, took it by the thick end and stuck it at me as I was about to lower the boom on him. The tips of the mannequin’s fingers caught me in the family jewels and a moment later a pain went through me that wasn’t quite as bad as being hit by a truck. But it didn’t keep me from whacking him over the head with everything I had. The mannequin leg fragmented in my hands and Waldo screamed and rolled and came up and charged me, his forehead streaked with blood, a poodle dangling from one pants leg by the teeth. The poodle stayed with him as he leaped and grabbed my legs at the knees and drove his head into my abdomen and knocked me back into a heap of smoking garbage. The smoke rose up around us and closed over us like a pod and with it came a stink that brought bile to my throat. I felt heat on my back and something sharp like glass and I yelled and rolled with Waldo and the growling poodle. Out of the corner of my eye, in mid-roll, I saw another of the poodles had caught on fire in the garbage and was running about like a low-flying comet. We tumbled over some more junk, and o
ver again. Next thing I knew, Waldo had rolled away and was up and over me, had hold of six feet of two-by-four with a couple of nails hanging out of the end.
“Goodnight,” Waldo said.
The board came around and the tips of the nails caught some light from the garbage fires, made them shine like animal eyes in the dark. The same light made Waldo look like the Devil. Then the side of my neck exploded. The pain and shock were like things that had burrowed inside me to live. They owned me. I lay where I was, unable to move, the board hung up in my neck. Waldo tugged, but the board wouldn’t come free. He put a foot on my chest and worked the board back and forth. The nails in my neck made a noise like someone trying to whistle through gapped teeth. I tried to lift a hand and grab at the board, but I was too weak. My hands fluttered at my sides as if I were petting the ground. My head wobbled back and forth with Waldo’s efforts. I could see him through a blur. His teeth were clenched and spittle was foaming across his lips.
I found my eyes drifting to the top of the oil derrick, perhaps in search of a heavenly choir. Lightning flashed rose-red and sweat-stain yellow in the distance. My eyes fell back to Waldo. I watched him work. My body started trembling as if electrically charged.
Eventually Waldo worked the nails out of my neck. He stood back and took a breath. Getting that board loose was hard work. I noted in an absent kind of way that the poodle had finally let go of his ankle and had wandered off. I felt blood gushing out of my neck, maybe as much as the oil well was pumping. I thought sadly of what was going to happen to Jasmine.
My eyelids were heavy and I could hardly keep them open. A poodle came up and sniffed my face. Waldo finally got his breath. He straddled me and cocked the board and positioned his features for the strike; his face showed plenty of expression now. I wanted to kick up between his legs and hit him in the balls, but I might as well have wanted to be in Las Vegas.