The Devil's Wire

by Rogers, Deborah

  His sleeping face is turned toward them in the half-light. He is snoring. The sound rattles Lenise's nerves and she fights the urge to strike him or roll him over or pinch his nose in order to stop it.

  She glances at Jennifer who has remained quiet since they had bound his wrists. She has made a meal of her fingernails and is beginning on the quick. She had done well, though. Lenise hadn't been entirely sure Jennifer wouldn't crack.

  "It's after 12," says Jennifer, getting up to look out the window.

  "Ron's a professional. He'll be here."

  Jennifer folds her arms across her chest. "I don't like this."

  "Be patient."

  Jennifer continues to savage her digits. Another ten minutes passes. Then twenty. Still no sign of Ron. Lenise joins Jennifer and stares at the empty street.

  "There'll be a good reason why he's late, I'm sure of it," says Lenise.

  "Call him."

  "Ron said not to, in case things could be traced back."

  Jennifer nods toward Hank. "What if he wakes up?"

  "He'll be out for another hour at least."

  Jennifer looks at her watch. "It's 12:45. I think you should call him."

  "Alright. Don't get your knickers in a twist," snaps Lenise.

  She pulls out her cell phone and dials Ron's number. Straight to voicemail. She clicks off.

  "Something must be wrong," she says.

  "Maybe he had an accident."

  "Possibly."

  Jennifer stares at Lenise. "He's not coming, is he?"

  "For God's sake, will you cut it out."

  Lenise tries his phone again. Leaves a curt message. Call me.

  "He's taken the money and run," says Jennifer.

  "Ron wouldn't do that."

  "Why not? He'll beat someone up for cash but won't swindle a couple of stupid women? I bet he's laughing at us right now. We were easy pickings."

  "You don't know what you're talking about."

  "Take a look around you, Lenise. Where is this knight in shining armor?"

  Hank groans.

  "Oh God, he's waking up," says Jennifer.

  "That's impossible."

  "Well, I'm not imagining things, Lenise. You can see him as clearly as me."

  "Did you put the entire amount in the wine?"

  "Yes."

  "You couldn't have."

  "I did!"

  "You must have made a mistake," says Lenise.

  "Me? What about you? Did you work out the correct dosage for his weight and height?"

  "There was enough to sink a ship."

  "Apparently not," says Jennifer.

  Hank moves his legs.

  "We don't have long," says Lenise. "Where's the gun?"

  "What!"

  "We need it."

  Jennifer shakes her head. "No."

  Lenise pushes past her. "Stupid woman."

  She opens the cutlery drawer and takes out the biggest knife.

  "What are you doing?" cries Jennifer.

  "We haven't got a choice. He's going to wake up and there's nothing we can do about it."

  Lenise stands over the groaning Hank. Jennifer steps in front of her.

  "We have to let him go," says Jennifer.

  "Let him go? Are you crazy? You untie him, he kills us. Even if he doesn't do it now, he'll come back."

  "I'll tell him he hit his head and passed out."

  "That's ridiculous."

  "I'll say I drugged him but I was an idiot for doing it."

  Hank is raising himself off the floor like a punch-drunk fighter. Lenise holds out the knife to Jennifer.

  "It will be self-defense," she says.

  Jennifer takes a step back. "No way."

  "Don't be weak."

  "I won't do it."

  He is on his feet, shakes his head thickly. He looks over his shoulder at his zip-tied wrists.

  "What the fuck…" he slurs.

  He looks at Lenise, confused to see her there. His eyes jump to the knife in her hand. Fear clouds his features, then rage. He growls and stumbles as if to grab the knife but forgets about his bound hands and loses balance and goes down, falling forward, straight into Lenise and the knife.

  It feels, to Lenise, as if a sack of rocks has been leveled at her, and she lies trapped beneath the weight, unsure in that moment whether the knife has plunged into him or her. She can hear screaming. Stupid Jenny, she thinks, then realizes the noise is coming from inside her own head. She tries to shout but her mouth is pressed into the bone of his shoulder.

  She feels release and sees light. He has somehow hauled himself up and is standing above her, the knife stuck in his ribs like some sort of ghoulish Halloween trick. He looks down at the knife in disbelief then lurches across the kitchen, bumping into the table, the cupboards, the fridge.

  "What have you done!" yells Jennifer.

  "Quick, help me up. I've hurt my arm," says Lenise.

  Hank figure eights in an expanding pool of blood.

  "Hank, you're hurt, you need to stop moving," implores Jennifer.

  He tries to talk but it comes out as a whistle.

  "Hank please do as I say."

  His movements are slowing, becoming exaggerated, his breathing strangled and faint. Jennifer tries to go to him but Lenise holds her back.

  "Wait," says Lenise.

  "Let me go!" Jennifer struggles against Lenise. "We need help!"

  "Just wait."

  They watch color leach from his face and he stumbles and falls. He lies in the red mess on the floor still and silent, the knife in his side like a handle. They wait for him to get back up but he doesn't. Lenise kneels down and checks his pulse then stands up and looks at Jennifer.

  "What a fucking disaster," she says.

  27

  It was an all American house. A wagon wheel out front, stars and stripes flapping from a sixteen foot flag pole, a bespoke birdhouse, blue with white trim. If you looked in the distance behind the house, there was a church steeple too. Tuesdays and Wednesdays were Jennifer's days. She took the different bus route from school. Her mother insisted she not be in the house alone but come here to Mrs. Baker's instead.

  At twelve, Mrs. Baker said Jennifer was old enough to look after the young ones so homework was left undone. Instead there were snotty noses to wipe and dirty diapers to change. Jennifer never told her mother what went on there, how they would be made to sit in the hard-backed chairs and listen to Mrs. Baker preach and thump the black leather bible as if it was the behind of one of the naughty boys.

  And Jennifer never told her mother about the time when she got up from Mrs. Baker's prickly molasses sofa to warm a bottle for one of the under-twos and left a melon-sized starburst of red behind. Mrs Baker had called her back to look. "Sinner." She made Jennifer pray on her knees beneath the wooden crucifix on the back wall. "Louder, sinner." The other children did not even glance her way and continued to watch cartoons on the old television set that showed everything in a flickering green and yellow hue.

  Afterward, Jennifer had run to the bathroom to check under her skirt and cried when she saw the bloody starfish that was her hand. She was certain she was dying from the inside out.

  "Hey."

  And there was that smell, like rust.

  "Hey. Wake up."

  And the sound of Mrs. Baker banging on the door, yelling for her to come and clean up her mess.

  "Jenny."

  Jennifer opens her eyes. Lenise. Who has a red starfish of her own smack in the middle of her chest.

  "You fainted."

  "What?"

  Then she smells it, the blood, and turns to look. Hank is an island in a sea of crimson.

  "Oh God, it isn't true."

  "Get up," says Lenise.

  "I'm going to be sick," says Jennifer.

  Hank has one eye open and it's looking directly at her.

  "No, you're not. Get up."

  Lenise hauls Jennifer to her feet and Jennifer runs to the sink but nothing come
s out then suddenly waves hit her but amount to no more than two slippery strings of bile. She reaches for the tap and slaps water on her face. It is blessed and cold and bracing.

  "You killed him," she says, turning to Lenise.

  "He did it to himself."

  Lenise's eyes are unnaturally bright.

  "You got the knife," says Jennifer.

  "He would have killed us."

  "I'm calling the police."

  "They won't believe anything you say when they find the medication in his system. They'll think you've planned everything."

  "I'm not taking the blame for this," says Jennifer.

  "I'll deny it and there's nothing to say otherwise," says Lenise. "I did you a favor."

  "You're joking!"

  "I did you a favor and that was not without risk to my own life."

  "I didn't ask for any of this!" cries Jennifer.

  "Neither did I. You saw what happened."

  Jennifer buries her face in her hands. "How could I have been so stupid to go along with this?"

  "You think this is easy for me? I was betrayed too."

  They fall silent and stare at the body. Blood is beginning to tighten in places.

  "We need to work together," says Lenise. "No fighting. It's the only way."

  "Oh God, what are we going to do?"

  Lenise sits down. "We have to get rid of the body."

  "Lenise, we can't. This is beyond us."

  "There's no other choice."

  "I can't believe I'm hearing this."

  "Well, believe it."

  Jennifer shakes her head. "This is already way out of hand. We need to own up."

  "Own up? Are you crazy? We're not talking about a Snickers bar you might have stolen at the corner store when you were eight. This is homicide. A felony. We know it was self-defense but they'll say it's murder. You think if you tell them the truth – that you didn't mean it – they're just going to let you off the hook? No way – there's jail time here anyway you look at it."

  "I wasn't the one holding the knife."

  Lenise leans in close. "You don't seem to get it, Jenny. You're in this as much as I am, whether you want to admit it or not. There's a highly illegal surgical grade sedative in his system because of you."

  "I don't care," Jennifer gets to her feet and picks up the phone. "This insanity stops right now."

  Lenise snatches the phone from her hand.

  "You will spend the rest of your life in prison. McKenzie will have no one. Is that what you want?"

  Jennifer feels faint again. "Of course not."

  "Are you on board, then?"

  "This isn't some real estate deal, Lenise," says Jennifer.

  Lenise slams her hand into the pantry door. "You know what," she spits, "maybe I should walk away right now, leave you with this mess, because I could do that Jenny, I could do that right now and where would that leave you?"

  Jennifer glances at Hank's body and swallows. "Don't," she says.

  "Don't what?"

  "Don't go. I'll do it."

  "Good," Lenise calms down. "Like I said we need to work together."

  She takes a glass from the cupboard, fills it with water and drinks the entire thing.

  She turns to Jennifer. "We better get started."

  28

  At first Lenise suggests the backyard given the practical benefits – it's close, convenient and easily controllable. Dig a hole in the ground. Put him in it. Job done. But Jennifer vetoes the idea. A grave where they had once held 4th of July BBQs and made snowmen at Christmas was way too sinister. And there were also the associated risks. What if Jennifer sold the house and the new owners wanted to put in a pool or add an extension? Imagine their surprise when they unearthed the remains of an adult male, all traceable back to Jennifer.

  Then Lenise suggests weighing him down in a lake or some other waterway. It's an attractive idea. But Jennifer says no. While in theory it seems viable, in practice, there's too much risk – bodies stay submerged for a time but also have a habit of eventually rising to the surface.

  Jennifer says no to a staged suicide too. The stab wound mean an autopsy could reveal an unexplained knick to a rib bone or some other injury that would give them away.

  "You can't just say no to everything," says Lenise.

  "I'm not."

  "Well, I don't hear any ideas."

  "We're overthinking this. We need to get back to basics," says Jennifer, "a grave in the forest. Natural decomposition. Throw in some lime to speed things up. Jesus, I can't believe I'm saying this."

  "We don't want to be caught on camera buying compost at 3am," says Lenise.

  "There's lime in the garage."

  "Good. Are we agreed then?"

  Jennifer is silent.

  "Jenny?"

  "Yes."

  *

  From the garage, Lenise retrieves six large black polyurethane trash bags, a bottle of bleach, scissors and rags. When she returns, she throws Jennifer a pair of kitchen gloves, and puts on a pair herself.

  "We've got to wash him down to get rid of our DNA, just in case they find him, which they won't, but it's best to be thorough."

  First they needed to drag him out of that pool of blood.

  "You push, I'll pull," says Lenise.

  Lenise covers the blood puddle with trash bags and tucks her hands under his belt while Jennifer braces herself at the small of his back.

  "Go!"

  He is heavier than they could have ever imagined.

  "You're not pushing hard enough!" says Lenise.

  "You need to pull more."

  They try again but he could be super-glued to the floor.

  "No wonder they cut bodies up," says Lenise.

  They make another attempt. Movement. Just a bit. They get a rhythm going, shifting him an inch at a time, slowly but surely.

  "That's enough," says Lenise, breathless.

  The body is about two feet clear of the blood, an ever-decreasing red smear rainbows out from the spot where he fell to where he is now.

  "How are we going to get him out of the house?" says Jennifer.

  "We'll think of something. Give me the scissors." Lenise cuts off his clothes and the zip ties and shoves them in a bag. "I'll burn these later."

  Then she soaks two strips from an old towel in bleach and gives one to Jennifer.

  "Start from the bottom, I'll work from the top."

  But Jennifer can't bear to touch him. The nakedness under the harsh kitchen light is disarmingly explicit. The body is like a poorly filled human suit. It's Hank, but it isn't. An imitation of the real thing. Jennifer has stepped into a dual universe.

  "I can't do this."

  "Yes, you can." Lenise kneels down and gets ready to begin.

  "Wait," says Jennifer.

  She goes to the cupboard beneath the sink, lifts a clean dishtowel from the drawer and places it across Hank's face.

  They work steadily and methodically. Big toe. Buttocks. Chin. Clavicle. Earlobe. Elbow. The harsh solvent stings their eyes but they continue on until they are sure to wipe every part of the body. When they are done, they roll him onto three clean trash bags sliced open like tarps and get ready to wrap him. But Jennifer stops Lenise with her hand.

  "What about the knife?"

  "That's a point," agrees Lenise. "Away you go, then."

  "Me? I'm not doing it."

  Lenise shakes her head. "Oh, for heaven's sake."

  Lenise reaches over and grips the plastic handle and pulls out the knife leaving behind a tiny chasm and a stream of claret. Lenise puts the knife in the same bag as his clothes for later disposal and they wipe him down again then remove the dishtowel covering his face, and fold the plastic around him, tying it in place with Home Depot garden twine until he looks like a trussed side of beef.

  "How are we going to move him?" says Jennifer. "He might as well be a half ton of cement."

  "I've got an idea," says Lenise.

  She disappears and r
eturns with the Aztec rug from the living room.

  "It's a trick I learnt when I had to move a refrigerator on my own."

  She lines up the rug next to the body then looks over her shoulder at Jennifer.

  "Well, don't just stand there," she says.

  They roll the body onto the rug and lie it flat on its back.

  "Now we pull," says Lenise.

  They each grab a corner and are soon out of the kitchen, down the hallway and into the garage. Lenise opens the trunk of the car.

  "He'll be way too heavy to lift," says Jennifer.

  "For God's sake, Jenny, try and be a bit more constructive would you."

  Lenise bends down and wraps the body up in the rug as tight as she can, and together they angle the package upright next to the lip of the trunk.

  "Push," says Lenise.

  They both shove and the cylinder tips inside the trunk cavity.

  Jennifer wipes sweat from her eyes and looks at Lenise. "Now what?"

  29

  "I don't like leaving McKenzie alone like this," says Jennifer, reversing out of the garage. "What if she wakes up and finds nobody's there?"

  "It's a risk we have to take. The sooner we go, the sooner we get back."

  They drive in silence through empty streets and it's not too long before they reach the entrance to Pine Ridge Forest. Someone has thrown a clod of mud at the sign and grey muck has dripped down to look like a reverse exclamation mark. Multiple unsealed roads lead to different parts of the forest – Horseshoe Lake, Sweetheart's Peak, a rocky outcrop called the Crow's Nest – but there's one spot Jennifer remembers from the early days when she went on a trek with Hank, McKenzie in a baby-pack strapped to his back. She angles the car onto the narrow gravel road and turns left.

  Jennifer follows the unsealed road and a canopy of trees fish-bones around them. It's like driving into a cave. Trees either side are impenetrable and the further in they go the more impossibly dark it becomes. The car is an icebox and Jennifer reaches over to turn on the heater, but Lenise shakes her head.

  "I wouldn't. Heat and bodies don't mix."

  That's right, thinks Jennifer, there's a body back there in the trunk, her husband's body, she had almost forgotten. She glances at Lenise who is staring straight ahead through the windscreen. There's a dark smear across her neck and over her t-shirt. Jennifer examines her own face in the rearview and sees blood on her chin. She reaches to wipe it.