The Good Kind of Bad

by Rita Brassington

  The skyscrapers turned to suburbs and the townhouses became trees as the city faded in Evan’s mirrors. This was the first time I’d left Chicago since returning from Mother and Father dearest. Even if there’d been no reason to come out to the sticks and stare at nothing, the lawlessness of the world outside Chicago was consoling, in the exiled state of nature beyond the city walls. Here I could pretend, pretend Joe was still breathing.

  The city was imposing, impersonal, an incessant sensory bombardment. Over the flat horizon of the cornfields you could stare forever and nothing would change. It was almost comforting, until I remembered why we were here, and moreover, who was in the boot.

  Denial propelled me on. Joe was watching the Kansas City Chiefs get their asses whooped from the TV chair. He was guzzling beer and bellowing at the screen. He wasn’t cold and lifeless in the back of the car. That wasn’t the sound of his body hitting the side each time we reached a stop sign.

  Evan didn’t kill him. He wasn’t capable. He was a good man, a police officer, the brave and loyal beneficiary of promotions and citations. He’d also been so matter-of-fact, so forthcoming with the plan. It had to be shock that provoked him to drive a body out to the country. There’d been some hesitation, sure, but what he was thinking, what was really going on behind those eyes, had to be something else entirely.

  There was no point denying it, it was time for the cold, hard, uncomfortable truth. Evan had killed Joe, and now we were hiding the evidence.

  Though I was here, albeit as an unwilling passenger, I wanted no part in Evan’s plans. Silent tears fell as Joe whispered his last three words for me, that one line, to leave only the regret and remorse and the pain of wishing he’d been a better man. I was still a good person. I was allowed to think this was wrong, even after the kicks and fists and threats. Wasn’t I?

  At first I assumed they were scarecrows in rimmed hats and black cloaks, fluttering on the breeze. There were so many of them, and they all pointed west along the highway. When I glanced at Evan, I knew he was blind to them, and when I looked back they were gone.

  I smiled. No longer able to trust my eyes or my thoughts, there was one thing I was sure of.

  ‘Stop the car.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop the car!’ I ordered, gripped by panic.

  The tyres screeched to a halt, leaving a hot trail of rubber on the deserted Keslinger Road.

  ‘I cannot do this, Evan. I can’t watch you bury . . .’ My voice rose to a crescendo before stopping dead. ‘I can’t act like this is normal, like we’re out for a drive, and like there’s nothing in the boot to feel guilty about.’

  ‘The boot?’

  ‘The boot, the trunk, whatever. He’s still in there, isn’t he? He’s still dead!’

  ‘I know that,’ Evan murmured, palming the steering wheel. ‘No one said this was normal. I sure don’t think it is.’

  ‘You put a body in your car. You put Joe in your car. Last night he was breathing, last night Joe was alive . . .’

  ‘Last night Joe tried to kill you; shit, he tried to kill me! He threw you out of a moving car! He wasn’t a saint; the man was as far from holy as you could get. Someone had to stop him and we both know he got what he deserved. You said so yourself, he had to pay for what he’d done. You even told me to kill him. You’re acting like Joe deserved more than this. How long were you going to give him? Before he found you, beat you too bad . . . before he killed you?’

  Evan’s words slipped like poison down my throat. In a seething rage I’d said those words, in pain of an ending most feared, though the reality of murder in the first degree made my blood run cold. Illinois had the death penalty, and the lethal injection at that.

  ‘How can you be so calm about it, so cold? It’s like you don’t care. Like this is normal to you.’

  ‘Do I look like I’m calm? Were you not there, in the apartment? I’m freaking out, all right? I’ve killed a man. I’ve put my whole life, career, everything on the line. Like I said, I didn’t know what else to do. Do you know what would have happened, if I’d left him there? I nearly did. I spent hours just looking at him, thinking how I could climb out of the goddamn hole I’d dug myself into. I was going to walk out, leave you there. Leave you with the mess, the questions, the arrest. That’s how much of a coward I am. You might not think we’ve done the right thing, hiding him, carrying him here, but it’s better than the alternative. Don’t you get it? We can make this, him disappear. We can pretend this never happened. We can get away with it.’

  I’d heard enough. I kicked open the door and sprinted down the interminable road, running hard, though wasn’t carried far by the binding dress and towering heels. Besieged by Illinois farmland, I was blinded by the climbing sun before I sensed Evan behind me, grasping me before I fell.

  I tore at his shirt, trying to escape him, but kept on crying. I didn’t know how to do anything else. On the lonely road we stood locked in the embrace as my body shook. I fought in Evan’s arms as the tears came but I was held fast, eventually staggering back to the car with Evan’s arm locked to my waist.

  We drove further into the nothingness, field upon field dotted with the odd house or empty farm before the weather began to change. Away from the heat of the city, the rain cleansed the earth, pouring out from the blackened clouds. Like a child fascinated by the mundane, my fingers traced the raindrops carving their course along the glass, our silence remaining just that.

  After another ten miles or so, Evan turned off the road, brought the car to a stop and turned off the engine. We were parked down a dirt track off Highway 88, beside a small wood.

  ‘Why have we stopped?’ I asked through the window, after Evan moved outside.

  ‘This is the place.’

  Taking the shovel from the back seat and blinking away the rain, I watched him check up the dirt path for onlookers, the hair already matted to his scalp. After appearing satisfied with our solitude, he turned to the black cherry and white ash of the wood.

  Following at a lagging pace, I circumvented the fallen branches and small ferns in my skyscraper heels. I should’ve worn flats. I made a mental note. Yeah, for the next time I had to bury a body.

  After reaching a clearing of sorts, at least a quarter of a mile from the car, he began digging. It lasted an age ‒ the shovel scraping the earth as the rain pummelled the leafy branches. In silent vindication I stood by the deepening hole, more grave-like with each fresh shovel of soil. The sweat dripped. Evan panted. And I was ready to wake up.

  Once deep enough, Evan leant on the spade handle, visibly exhausted, dirt soiling his jacket as he cast the tool aside. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Are you going to help me or stand there looking pretty?’

  ‘Help with what?’ I murmured, peering into the hole. A pool of water had begun to gather at the far end.

  ‘They don’t call it a dead weight for nothing. We’ve got to move fast. He’ll start stinking if we don’t bury him soon,’ Evan called over his shoulder as he marched back to the car.

  I didn’t help Evan. Taking one last look at the hole, I turned and stumbled further into the woods, to find a hiding place all of my own.

  Crouching beside two ferns in my ripped and bloodied dress, I covered my ears and shut my eyes, any composure moving further from reach as the guilt throttled me one breath at a time. I was without hope, alone in the woods with the rain my only confidant. There was the dank smell of earth as the raindrops traversed my back. Lifting my head to the heavens, the rain blended with my tears, though I let them fall no longer. I waited until I knew it was over, until Evan had dragged Joe’s lifeless corpse across the muddied ground and rolled him, and the carpet, into the two-by-eight-foot hole.

  Evan, the honest cop.

  Our return to the city was quiet. Evan supplied the silences with empty questions and idle talk, though I wasn’t listening. I was deafened by the strangeness of it all. The gunshot still sounded, his whisper echoing
on. Joe wouldn’t have a funeral. No one knew he was gone. His departure from the world had been violent and quiet, our terrible secret never to tell.

  Evan had done this. Evan had saved me. Evan had taken a life, bundled the remnants into his car, and buried him below ground. This man beside me, chatting crap, was capable of that. Maybe it’d been instinct for him to reach for the gun and shoot, maybe an accident that he’d aimed too well, but it felt wrong, all of it. Good people didn’t do this. Evan should’ve called the police from the get-go, called for backup once Joe appeared in the garage. He would’ve been locked up and I could’ve moved far, far away. Joe would never have found me, or had the money to try.

  There had been another trail of breadcrumbs through the forest, but we hadn’t taken it. I’d chosen to go with Evan, knowing he had Joe dead in the back of his car. Now that I’d helped conceal murder, there was no running to the police.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes from Evan’s tainted hands as they gripped the wheel. Smeared with a mixture of mud and blood, it looked like he’d crawled out of his own grave.

  ‘I know you don’t want to talk, but this has to be said.’ Evan stopped at the lights at Ashton and Glendore, back within the protection and surveillance of the city. ‘This thing ends, and ends now. This is the last time we talk about it. Joe is gone, he left you, and that’s all anybody needs to know. AMF, do you understand?’

  There was unease in his voice, an understandable nervousness. I knew he was lying, to me and himself. There was nothing to do but talk about Joe, though for today we could pretend. Pretend we were strong. Pretend we hadn’t done what we’d just done.

  My gaze from the window didn’t falter. ‘I understand. This never happened. AMF.’

  TWENTY

  Seven days passed. Seven pretty shitty days.

  I was pushed to the edge of my sanity and beyond in the week following. Each morning, to maintain our cover story, I dragged myself into work. My make-up sat untouched, I barely combed my hair; nothing mattered anymore.

  Unbeknown to Evan, each night I forewent my suite and instead ventured back to the old apartment, first to check if any rumours were circulating, if there were witnesses, an investigation, cameras or evidence to freak out about; but in Armanti, another shot in the night hadn’t raised suspicions. Instead I made it my mission to eradicate every trace of blood and scour the floor until the tiles of the kitchen turned from black to grey.

  After I failed to answer his calls, it wasn’t long before Evan arrived at the hotel. His calls through the door were relentless, while in the corner of the lounge I huddled with Sybil, my head hidden, patiently praying for solitude once more.

  I knew Evan had grown anxious at my radio silence. On Tuesday, he’d waited across the street from Faith Advertising Co., to avoid identification by co-workers or CCTV. He gripped my arm and begged me to confide in him, telling me how his own conscience had almost gotten the better of him, but he hadn’t caved. I could confess my guilt all I wanted, so long as he was the only person to whom I told my sins. We were in this together, he said. We had to stay strong. I didn’t need to be afraid.

  My reaction to Joe’s death was more than extreme, according to Evan. Even after the beatings, lies and emotional blackmail I still felt sorrow for my abuser, but it was for the man before, for the promise of our first life, that I cried.

  Even in death, Joe’s presence remained. I’d run into the woods and cried tears over a man who’d done such terrible things. Evan’s attempt at justification, maybe to navigate his own guilt, tainted Joe as the man who’d got what he deserved, and maybe he was right. Though through all the anger, I knew Evan was the true focus of my grief. His actions were not those of a righteous man, though on the fourth day I let him in, allaying his fears of rejection and confession of the soul. I no longer punished myself. I couldn’t do it on my own. Evan knew the secret. Evan had been there too.

  I knew time would quell the frayed emotions, memories one day nothing but a reverie. Conversations would become hazy, arguments forgotten and Joe Petrozzi would be consigned to history. An unemployed drunk with little family to speak of and a social circle comprising of gambling associates wouldn’t be missed in a hurry. Guys like him disappeared all the time. The past couldn’t be changed and for a week it’d been written in stone.

  It was time to forget.

  It was Sunday again when I braved the still kitchen on South Evergreen. When Evan discovered what I’d been doing, he warned against my repeated visits, but I didn’t care. I needed the closure. The echoes of a life, painted in blood; the laughter, tears, violence . . . the life I was happy to forget.

  I’d closed the door before rattling the handle and locking it tight, back to the solitude of my suite. Evan was on a date with Brandi, in some gastro-experimental pop-up restaurant where you cooked your own food. It had been Brandi’s idea, apparently. Evan had pandered to me for most of the last week, though once he’d secured my trust, namely that I wouldn’t blab to the cops, his calls became sporadic at best.

  I should have been in hijinks over Joe’s death, planning the celebratory cortege announcing the demise of the man who’d ruined my life. I was safe, Joe was gone, but nothing about it felt right.

  Maybe acting as Evan’s consort to murder had something to do with it, coming face to face with the macabre, and maybe it was Evan himself that failed to fill me with glee. Like Nina said, I was a nice girl. Murder wasn’t part of my repertoire. However much I’d thought I wanted Joe dead, the reality, and hiding that reality, wasn’t something I was equipped to deal with.

  At least Nina was back. She turned up one day at work, back from Missouri and tending to a cancer-stricken mother. I’d spied her one morning in the lobby, a dinner date then arranged through a muddle of half-told stories.

  Tonight marked our long-awaited catch up at Bemo’s, and tomorrow I’d scheduled in a spot of apartment hunting. With Joe truly gone, I could stay in Chicago. I could make a life here, and a real one this time.

  The apartment address? 413 Redemption Square.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Crossing Harvelle Street that evening, through the front windows of Bemo’s I saw George entertaining a laughing Nina with some story that involved the wild flailing of arms.

  As I entered and headed for the booth, Nina had already risen from her seat, greeting me with a hug as George moved over to tend a table of empty dishes.

  Nina was in a leopard print jump suit and cropped denim jacket. No wonder George had been tending her table so closely. ‘I’m so glad you came!’ she said, while sliding into our replacement booth and dropping her head to the far side of the diner. ‘Look what happens. We skip our dinner reservation for a couple of weeks and our usual booth’s been taken by a bunch of soccer moms.’

  ‘Bitches,’ I hissed, laughing while I slid in opposite. ‘Don’t they know that’s our spot?’

  Then she reached her hand across the table, her face softer. ‘Hey, let me start off by apologising.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘You know what, not calling. It was a weird time. My mom’s responding well to the chemo, but the doctors say it’s a matter of time.’

  I smiled warmly, squeezing her hand. ‘Don’t apologise, and I’m sorry about your mum. Though you had me worried for a minute.’

  Her eyebrows met in the middle. ‘Worried?’

  ‘You know, with all the Victor stuff you’d told me about?’

  ‘Hey, not buried in a shallow grave, definitely alive and kicking,’ Nina announced with a mocking fist pump.

  My heart jumped a little at the grave part. All week I’d been counting on the denial while languishing in my freedom from Joe. It felt good to breathe easy, but when I remembered the truth, the part about Joe being a corpse buried in only the shallowest of holes? Denial wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

  From Shannon we ordered the molto grande platter and a bottle of Verdiccio to share. We could both afford to dine higher up the food chain than
Bemo’s, quaffing notably better than house wine while we were at it, though Bemo’s did have its upsides. There was no bending over backwards to impress the staff, or to ensure our fellow diners deemed us worthy of their company. Not like K2.

  I’d never dream of returning to the French eatery now, not when there was good, hearty, family-style grub right here. I was pained to admit it, but maybe Joe had rubbed off on me. And as for the Verdiccio? When in Rome, I suppose.

  When Shannon approached, precariously balancing too many dishes in front of her, I knew it would end in disaster. Upon reaching the booth, our bottle of wine slipped from her hand, touching down on the tiles with a smash.

  ‘Girls, I am so sorry,’ Shannon muttered, kneeling under the table for the broken shards. The spillage was met by a raucous cheer from most male occupants of the diner, save steely eyed George.

  ‘Here, let me help you with that.’ Nina slid out from her seat, her jumpsuit marked with sticky traces of alcohol.

  ‘No!’ Shannon warned, stopping her with her raised palm. ‘I mean, I don’t want you cutting yourself on the glass, honey. It’s not worth the insurance claim.’

  Nina retook her seat like a scolded child, folding her arms with a huff. ‘That’s what you get for trying to help people,’ she snorted.

  Shannon’s head sunk as she hurried past a less-than-impressed George, who was already limping over to our booth.

  ‘Angry restaurant owner at six o’clock. Quick, get into grovelling mode, girl. We could score a free meal out of this,’ Nina exclaimed, trying miserably for discreet.

  ‘Like we need anything gratis, Nina.’

  Then George arrived, with a flurry of a bow. ‘Ladies, please accept my apologies, she is useless. I should never have hired from outside the family.’ Following George’s glare over to Shannon, we saw she’d already removed her apron and released her blond ponytail. ‘Anton, tell her to get her things,’ George shouted over.