Emery woke up after I’d stolen a cleaning cart and a larger laundry cart. I had the bodies wrapped, one in the shower curtain and the other in Kym’s fancy tablecloth. I’d shoved them both inside the laundry cart. I was far away, in the place you have to go when you have to contort dead bodies into small spaces. I scrubbed the carpet with bleach water, trying not to think of Kym’s dark, bloody hair. “Good thing the carpet is white,” I muttered as Emery sat on the edge of the bed, naked, not sure what to do. I thought enough to give her something to do, so she’d stop staring at me. “Coffee would be nice. Kym’s kitchenette is stocked. I can’t eat but you ought to. I don’t need your help yet, but burying two bodies would go quicker if I had your help later.”
On autopilot, I cleaned meticulously, making sure to erase every splatter of blood and tissue. The sheets were soaking in cold water, and I made the bed with fresh ones. Going over the carpet one more time, I realized Emery was telling me coffee was ready. A hot cup of coffee warmed my hands, and I could think again.
“So what now?” Emery asked as she ate a bowl of cereal.
“We wait until night and get these bodies in the truck. Find somewhere to bury them. Pick up my bike and that fifty grand you owe me,” I started but all I could think of was that Amun had known Emery, Mrs. Jenkins, he called her by her last name, said they had unfinished business. She lied to Kym, had thought enough to with a couple of beers in her, saying her name was Rachel. Hell, she even fired a perfect shot, shooting Kym dead when I couldn’t pull the trigger. All the passion I’d felt comforting her last night blackened, turning to mistrust.
“Then what?” she continued, getting up and clearing the few dishes. She touched my bare shoulder, caressing me and began massaging my tight muscles.
“I guess then I kill you.” I shrugged her off, but she didn’t move very far away.
“Right,” her voice was a whisper.
“Have you changed your mind?”
“About last night,” she began, her voice tender.
“Last night we were both drugged and fucked by a whore in more ways than one.”
“But last night,” Emery tried again, and I didn’t let her finish.
“Who do you work for?”
“No one.” She squealed, looking like I’d killed her puppy.
“You lying bitch!” I snatched her long blonde hair, bringing her face to mine. My voice had been too loud. I had to quiet down, I didn’t need the cops up here. It took some effort as I gritted my teeth. “You know Amun, fall into my lap, into my bed, while I’m trying to kill him. Who do you work for?” I punched the table, making her jump. “What did you do, sell me out?”
“It’s not like that. It’s a horrible coincidence,” she pleaded.
I didn’t believe her but let her go. The thought of killing her now, even if I could, didn’t fit. She scurried off to the kitchen sink. Watching her, in my shirt and nothing else, suddenly I wanted to fuck her brains out. The urge just made me even angrier. “Take of that shirt and put on Kym’s clothes.” I’d saved them for her. “You’re nothing but my whore. You’re alive instead of dying a slow excruciating death because we have a deal, remember that.”
“Yes sir,” she spat, teasing me with rare flicker of fire, only making me what her more. She dressed in front of me, terribly slowly. Emery found Kym’s shoes fit her too and made a big deal of bending over at the waist in them.
The next few hours were a glorified staring contest between Emery and I. She was waiting for my next order, making herself useless unless I told her exactly what to do. I wouldn’t give in to myself and fuck her, I couldn’t kill her and I couldn’t let her walk. Formulating a plan in my head, I stared blankly at her for hours.
When night fell, I couldn’t wait to get out of the hotel room. Even with the smell of bleach, the odor of rotten flesh had taken up residence in my nose. Emery couldn’t smell anything and maybe my senses had gotten ahead of me in anticipation, but it was there all the same, making me gag.
Despite our standoff, Emery followed my directions to a tee, allowing me to wheel the laundry cart into the elevators without anyone noticing. I hid the cart in the bushes before walking to Johnny’s truck and driving back to the hotel. The plan was simple, the best ones usually were. My emergency lights on, my truck idled on the vacant street behind the hotel. Packing the bodies in myself, I shut the truck bed cover, drove to the street over and parked, waiting for her. Missing them all day while cooped up in a non-smoking suite, I lit a cigarette. I spotted Emery in my mirror and was relieved. She could have run.
“So, do I win the Oscar?” She joked when she climbed into the truck.
“You’re a pretty good actress,” I remarked, thinking of how easily she convinced the front desk clerk a maid had stolen something from her room. I’d told her she didn’t need to say what, which room or her name, just make enough of a fuss to get everyone’s attention and then storm off. Emery pulled it off. Her hysterics won them over, just as they’d fooled me for the last couple of days.
Emery stretched down the barely there skirt but it still rode up to her naked crotch. “So where to? I’ve never buried a body.”
I blew out smoke. “Oh, I didn’t tell you? You’re paying me first. We are picking up the fifty thousand dollars you owe me before I bury the woman you killed.”
“Okay, you don’t trust me anymore, I get that.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, I’ve never trusted you. You should know, I didn’t kill either of the fuckers in the back, and I have your prints on the gun to prove it. We’ll bury the bodies after you pay me for killing you. So you can start with directions.”
“You don’t get it do you. I don’t fucking care, I want to die. I don’t care if you trust me or not. I’ll play whore. I’ll even pretend to like it. I’ll save your fucking life. Just keep up your end of the deal, quick, painless and sudden.”
“Don’t worry sweet thing, once I get my money, it’s a done deal. You won’t see it coming neither. I’m a professional.”
We didn’t talk the rest of the way to her remote cabin, where she claimed to have the money in cash, well that was besides Emery giving horrible directions. I’ve been to the middle of nowhere, fuck, I like it there, but as we passed a wooden sign I could have sworn said, bubblefucked, I knew we could find a good place to dispose of Amun and his whore, no shovel required.
When she squealed, “Stop we’re here,” the headlights lit up an overgrown shack of a cabin.
“What the fuck are you doing with such a cozy hideout?”
“It’s not mine. It was Don’s, my husband’s place.”
Was, I thought, but didn’t say it. I holstered my loaded gun, and followed Emery through the dark to the front door. Feeling a few raindrops, I was glad I planned to dump rather than dig. Emery reached up to the doorframe for the key, and I rolled my eyes. It’s the first place I would’ve looked. I’d be lucky if the money was still here. Stepping in, she switched on the lights, blinding us both. Inside, looked nothing like the dingy outside. Just as I thought, the place screamed “hideout” with its modern décor and rich furnishings. No hunting or fishing had been going on here. “I’ve got to ask, what does your husband do for a living?”
Emery headed straight to the wine cabinet and poured herself a glass. “He sold insurance.”
There she was speaking in the past tense again. I expected to turn the corner and see Mr. Jenkins’s skeleton shackled to the wall. I imagined Emery laughing as she chained me up beside him. I shook the silly scene out of my head. “So where’s the money.”
She downed the glass in one gulp before leading the way, and I wondered if she was a lightweight drinker at all. There was something she wasn’t telling me. Emery walking in front of me, dressed in Kym’s whore ensemble, I just wanted to fuck her, period. ATF, murderer, liar, it didn’t matter. Fuck.
Sliding off Kym’s heels, she grabbed my hand, leading me into the back. Instead of the to a safe or a drawer, like I thought
the money would be in, she opened a coat closet, retrieving a set of keys and a big silver flash light. “It’s out back.” Emery opened the glass sliding doors that led to a small deck. I followed her down narrow steps to the shed at the end of the yard. Fixin’ to storm, the wind cut me like a knife; the temperature felt like it’d dropped ten degrees.
Unlocking the tiny building, Emery opened it and searched, waving the tiny spot of light back and forth until I heard a click. She pulled out two shovels, handing one to me.
“I thought we’d dump the bodies but you’re probably right, burying them would be best. But I still want the money first,” I told her, leaning my shovel against the building.
“No, the money’s buried, deep. It’s going to take some work but when we get it at least we will have somewhere to put the bodies.”
“You mean, we are retrieving the money from a body sized hole?”
“Yep.” She walked to the middle of the yard and felt around with her bare foot. She started digging, and I closed my eyes and saw Don Jenkins skeleton hanging on the wall again in my mind. He waved.
We dug for an hour, in silence, me doing most of the work since I could really get under the dirt using my boot on the blade of the shovel while Emery mostly moved the dirt I’d loosened up, before the rain came down hard. “Shit.” It’d been spitting rain the whole time, and I’d been hoping we’d be done before the storm. “How much deeper?”
“We’re almost there.”
Hitting something solid, I wiped at my brow as raindrops pelted me, making sweat run in my eyes. I finally asked, my voice straining to be heard over the rush of water. “You killed your husband and now you want to die?” I chortled. I was exhausted and frankly, confused. “I mean, you were free from him. Why not take the money and run?”
She didn’t say a word, shielding her eyes from the rain with her hand to her forehead. She just directed me to keep shoveling. Even with Emery’s flashlight and the light pouring out from the cabin, my eyes had only barely adjusted enough to make out the box. He was in a fucking makeshift coffin, not something you take the time to make if you off someone. I wondered for a moment if she had coffins lying around and planned to off me next.
We cleared the top of the man-sized box, scraping mud now instead of digging until she bent down and was able to pry the lid open. Inside was a stinking corpse, not much more than a week old and on top of him, an iron skillet and a briefcase. Emery handed me the briefcase and shut her husband back inside. She crawled out of the hole and walked away, into the house. Putting the case under my arm, I followed her, shutting the rain outside, tracking mud inside. My eye’s tracked her muddy footprints, she’d gone into the living room, but I went straight to the kitchen table, opening the case right away. It looked like it might be; but all the same, I dried my dripping hair and my hands with a kitchen towel and counted the money. It was all there.
Taking the briefcase out to the truck, to store under the seat, I ignored Emery, soaking wet and sulking on the couch. There was still work to be done. I didn’t have time to worry about her killing her husband, yet. The rain beat down harder as Don Jenkins gained two new neighbors. I drug Kym and Amun over one by one and threw them on top of Emery’s husband’s strange coffin and pushed the mud back in. Putting away the shovels, I locked the shed with the keys she’d left hanging in the lock. Maybe the rain would wash away my footprints and all evidence of our new grave but just in case I relocated the chairs and the metal fire pit from the deck to set on top, giving the bare ground beneath an alibi.
On my third trip to the truck, I retrieved my bag. It was time to say goodbye to Johnny Stevens for good. Emery still sat on the couch hugging her knees when I walked into the cabin. I dropped my bag beside her but she didn’t react. “I need a shower,” I remarked to get her attention, although if she’d looked at me, she would had seen I was sopping wet and splattered with mud. She pointed to the bedroom with the full bath. I went straight there and pulled off my boots, they were mine. I peeled off my other clothes, Johnny’s clothes, wrung them out and dried myself with the plush sea foam green towel, hanging beside me and wrapped it around my waist. My real clothes were in my bag, and I needed to burn Johnny’s.
Walking back to the living room, I knew I’d seen a fireplace. Emptying my bag beside Emery, I asked, “Where’s your purse.” Emery pointed to the coffee table, and I dug through it until I found her driver’s license, credit cards, checks and blood donor card. Behind her insurance card lied a picture of her with a man slightly resembling the man in the ground. It was further evidence Emery might have been telling me the truth all this time. But something was off; there was something she just wasn’t telling me. Studying the picture, she was smiling, almost looking like a different person. Crumbling all the evidence, papers tracking Amun and documents I used to fake Johnny’s identity, I wadded up the photo with the rest of her identifying documents. Strolling over to the big stone mantle, I moved the screen and tossed them onto the grate. Squatting down, I piled the wood on top. I was thankful Don had kept some inside and flicked my lighter open to set the incriminating kindling ablaze. Next, I piled Johnny’s clothes to the sides, they’d dry out and then I’d toss them on. Back in the bedroom, I searched in the closet for something for Emery to change into and draped a pair of jeans and random shirt over my arm. I showed the clean clothes to her, thinking it would please her. “Care to join me? I could use my back washed.”
“No.”
I walked over to her. “I’m sorry, I asked a question but you don’t have a choice. We are both filthy, and I’m not staying here much longer. I doubt you want to wear a dead woman’s clothes. Come on.” Picking her up, I carried her to the bathroom honeymoon style.
I set her on her feet on the tile floor and started the water. I dropped my towel but she hadn’t budged. “Get naked.”
“No,” Emery barked.
“Suit yourself.” I began stripping off her clothes. She resisted until she wriggled against me, wearing nothing but a necklace, one she hadn’t had on before. On it was a diamond ring and band, I’m assuming hers. Fingering it, I asked, “Why?”
Emery wobbled her head, her wet hair not moving. “I don’t know? Something to remember him by.”
More than figuring out what happened, I had to know for once who in the hell this woman was. “If he left you, why would you care?”
Emery looked past me. “I loved him. He’s the only man I ever loved. He’s the only man I ever plan on loving?”
“But you fucking killed him?” It didn’t make a lick of sense.
She started sobbing. “It was an accident, I swear.”
I seized her face in my hands so she’d look at me. My thumb caressing her mud splattered face, I searched her eyes to see if this was all an act. I didn’t know what to believe anymore but my heart skipped a beat. Emery made me want to believe in something for once. I wanted it to be true. I wanted her not to have lied to me. “Tell me what happened.”
She backed away from me to the sink, wrapping her arms over her naked chest. “He disappeared one day, without warning. Everything was fine but he never came home. I reported him missing. The police said they had to wait before they could help me. Well, Don didn’t show for a week. I was sick, devastated. In my mind, he had to be dead. Don Jenkins was the love of my life. He was all I ever had and he was gone.”
“What about your family?”
“I don’t have any family, except I had Don. Well, I’ve got a deadbeat brother in Reno and one ancient aunt, and her three cats, closer in Miami, but they don’t count.”
I said nothing, only rubbed her arms, wanting her to go on.
“Here, I thought he was dead. My heart felt like it’d been ripped from my chest. Have you ever lost someone… someone who was your whole life?”
“Yeah,” I admitted softly. I knew that feeling all too well.
“The police finally took me seriously and that same day they told me they found him, not dead. He was alive and wel
l. He’d left me for another woman. They suggested I hire a P.I. and a divorce lawyer. So, I found a detective and low and behold, Don had been living another life. The investigator gave me this address. This is where he’d meet his other woman. Those are her clothes, not mine.” Emery pointed to the jeans I’d gotten for her.
“And then what, you came here looking for him?”
“I came here immediately and confronted him.” Her voice cracked as she began bawling hard again. “What a fucking jerk!” She sniffed. “He laughed at me for thinking he was dead. He said I was the horrible one and he had to get away from me. That it was all my fault. I tried to storm off, to leave, but he stopped me. All of the sudden he wanted to talk about it. He grabbed a hold of me, not letting me leave.” Emery clutched her own forearm showing me. “He dragged me back inside, saying he loved me best and wanted to come home. He was frightening me. It wasn’t like him, so I searched for anything in the room I could hit him with, in case things went too far. Our argument went on and eventually, I asked him if he’d slept with her, the woman, Jackie. He said yes, adding that I wasn’t satisfying him, and I couldn’t help it, I hit him with the skillet.”
“You killed him with a skillet?” I asked in disbelief.
“No, he fell back and hit his head on the kitchen counter then on the floor. He never got back up again.” Emery’s face drooped, darkening, remembering the horror I’d felt before, something you just can’t fake. I stepped toward her, taking her into my arms again.
I kissed her forehead. “Why didn’t you call the cops?”
“It’s complicated. I buried him.” She murmured into my chest.
Resting my chin on her head, I looked at us in the mirror. Emery clung to me, and I encased her body with mine. I hurt for her. “You made him a coffin?”
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