A Cold, Fine Evil

by A. C. Alexander

  “That’s dramatic.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He was, and if she moved closer, considering the conversation, she’d think he was a pervert that got turned on by the conversation because he had an erection. It was her closeness, he’d swear, not the subject. He wasn’t certain of what had happened earlier, but there would be no excuses for a repeat performance.

  “I’m sure of the facts anyway.” He rolled over onto his side. “Let’s talk about it in the morning. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired as hell.”

  “I’m pretty tired too. This hasn’t been the most peaceful week ever. I know it’s a touchy subject, but what do you think happened to Amy Walda?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  She spooned into him and her hand traveled over his hip and he was worried that she’d feel his arousal, but her breathing quieted almost at once into the cadence of sleep.

  No rest for the wicked. His arousal kept him up for at least another hour before he dozed off. This entity, for lack of a better word, chose people. It had chosen Murray, and a hundred years later, it had chosen Larimer.

  He was asleep when Alicia shook his arm.

  “I need to tell you something. I saw you kill him.”

  Her whisper brought him to instant awareness. “What?”

  “I saw you kill your stepfather with that shovel.”

  No.

  He could swear his pulse went to a place where people no longer needed beating hearts. “I didn’t. He moved away after my mother died.”

  Alicia shivered. “No, he didn’t. You killed him. I watched it all. I was still there when you and George carried him out, talking about how to get rid of the body.”

  If this night could get more bizarre, he wasn’t sure how. “What are you talking about?”

  “Why do you think he was in that barn?”

  He groped for an answer, struggling to breathe. That night was a blur. “I don’t know. He’d driven my mother to suicide or he’d hung her and I was just following him.”

  “And he was following me. As many girls that had disappeared that year, we were all paranoid. He was following me and I couldn’t lose him in my car. I ducked in hoping to manage to hide. I’d decided to take off on foot. It isn’t a guess you saved my life.”

  Chapter 16

  The sexes are always at war with each other. Our entire life we live in an armed camp. Enemies bound to each other but constantly at battle, facing off in our subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. By their very existence, women invite male fascination.

  Some men react in a visceral way to this force. I think it is just our nature. Like when a well-fed cat sees a scurrying mouse, he instinctively pounces anyway.

  Women are maybe more crafty than men ever aspire to be. They talk to each other, they whisper in groups, and if you think you have a secret, think again.

  Their solidarity has never ceased to amaze me. At the end of the day, my last day, it did me in.

  Alicia couldn’t believe she told him.

  It isn’t like it hadn’t been something she’d carried around for years. She’d never told Gary—he wasn’t worthy—but, especially this evening, after talking to George, after a sexual encounter she couldn’t quite define because it had been borderline violent but she’d been part of it too, this was probably not the right timing.

  No one knew where she was.

  And she’d told this man she knew he was a murderer.

  Jon said nothing at first. They were there together, bodies touching, and he didn’t move a muscle.

  It didn’t ease her mind very much.

  “I’ve obviously never said anything to anyone.” She thought about some sort of intimate gesture, her fingers on his cheek, putting her hand on his shoulder, but for some reason, his unfathomable expression maybe, she decided against it.

  He finally spoke. “Why aren’t you more afraid of me?”

  More. That implied he knew she was at least a little.

  “You have no reason to hurt me.”

  “I do now.” His voice was very quiet.

  A small chill touched her, like a kiss of a cold wind, but she shook it off. “I’ve never told a soul and never will. There goes your reason. Listen to me, you saved my life.”

  She remembered it so vividly. Realizing she was being followed, the car trying to run her off the road, her intense panic, the final decision to ditch her car and run through the woods, the silhouette of the barn…

  “I’m no hero. I didn’t even know you were there.”

  “Does that matter?”

  Jon sat up, his breathing uneven. “Look, Alicia, I want you to promise me you won’t trust me, won’t trust anyone in Black Lake. I left Chicago because I knew I was on the verge of a breakdown. I still probably am. I’ve fought suicidal thoughts my entire adult life. As my marriage disintegrated, I thought about killing my wife, too, but just couldn’t do that to my children. I’m so not in a good place, and looking back, I never have been. All the success, the available women, the expensive house with the beautiful wife…none of it made me happy. George thinks I should see a psychiatrist. I’m convinced he’s right, just too apathetic to do anything about it. I don’t know if I’m capable of being happy. In my life it is a concept enjoyed by others, not a reality for me. I can recognize a beautiful sunset, but I don’t appreciate it.”

  She wondered if he wasn’t right. That being born so gifted with physical beauty, athletic ability, and intellectual capacity wasn’t a mix any human could handle well. The confession he’d thought about killing his wife wasn’t comforting, but then again, he wouldn’t be the first and it didn’t make him a monster. He hadn’t done it. That alone said something.

  “The warning is duly noted.”

  He sat there on the edge of the bed, his head lowered. “Still not afraid?”

  She was. She was afraid he believed it too much. That there was a self-fulfilling prophecy at work and if there was one thing she had learned in this life, it was that there was no formula for a magical existence. He was wealthy, successful and could probably take home every woman between Black Lake and Chicago if he wanted, but he was haunted and bereft, and she was a fairly contented divorced clerk in a small liquor store making barely more than minimum wage.

  How odd she was the lucky one. Comparing her to Jon, she was bologna and he was caviar. However, reflecting on it, she liked bologna but the one time she’d tried caviar she hadn’t been impressed.

  This time she did reach out to touch his shoulder. “You try too hard to make sense out of life when it isn’t possible. The world you crave has order, but the one we live in doesn’t. I was a terrified teenaged girl when I saw you kill Larimer Hanson and he so deserved it. I knew why you did it, and the eye for an eye made sense to me at the time, and it still does. Thinking about killing your wife is not the same as doing it. George could be right about you seeing someone, but then again, in my inexpert opinion, you’re saner than you think you are.”

  “I would so like to believe you.”

  “I would so not like to believe your entity theory.”

  He sank back down on the mattress. “If that is sane, explain to me how. The government also has alien corpses stored in Roswell, New Mexico, and Loch Ness has a monster, right? Let’s not forget Bigfoot. I surely believe in all that, too.”

  “Do you?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “Me neither, though I’m kind of on the fence on the Bigfoot thing.”

  That won her a faint smile.

  Alicia put her arm around his waist. It was strange to realize that though they’d slept together multiple times, eaten dinner, had coffee, and so on, this was maybe the most companionable moment. “Jon, we’re all nuts on some level, but I saw that face looking in my window. I wasn’t hallucinating, I wasn’t even asleep yet. I don’t believe in ghosts, but it looked like Larimer Hanson. When you so carefully walked around the fact you knew h
e was dead, that thought had crossed my mind already. Now who’s insane? If you remember, at the time I said it didn’t look normal.”

  He brushed back her hair and peered at her face. Outside the moonlight spilled over the lake view. He said jokingly, “Don’t try to make me feel better by pretending to be more delusional than I am. That just plain isn’t possible.”

  She laughed, which considering their conversation, was a miracle. “It isn’t a contest I want to win.”

  His hand slid up under her shirt. “Could we…I mean, I don’t want to think about it anymore. I wanted to earlier but you seemed tired and I wasn’t exactly considerate back at the cabin, but I want you now.”

  The boyish vulnerability in his expression moved her, and she also wanted to erase that memory if possible.

  This time it was completely different, he was so careful she had to urge him to move faster with both body language and whispered words, but the result was mutual pleasure unlike ever before.

  Confession was truly good for the soul, and apparently the body. She was free from hiding that she’d witnessed that murder so many years ago. She was free from being unable to say she was grateful for it.

  She was also, she thought, as they moved toward an exhausted sleep, in love with a very troubled man.

  Not good news.

  * * * *

  Jon woke up and realized he was alone in a strange bed, but he could hear the sound of the shower once his foggy mind cleared and registered the noise.

  He lay there and thought about sex with Connie. Not something he’d really analyzed before. Sex was sex, it felt good and so people did it. When they’d done it the first time, he knew his ex-wife wanted to bind him to her, a ring, a wedding; there had been a goal. When she’d wanted to get pregnant, he’d obliged.

  He was very familiar with selfish sex. Selfless sex was a new experience. He had no idea what Alicia wanted. All his life people had wanted something from him. He didn’t know how to deal with this situation.

  He looked up at the popcorn ceiling of the old motel room, the sheet drawn to his waist…it was too warm, the heater was permanently set to high, he’d tried to adjust it but couldn’t get it to budge.

  Alicia was the sole witness to something that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. George knew, but George hadn’t been there. George was also culpable because he’d helped get rid of the body, but that was not the same as murder by any stretch. He was an accessory after the fact at best. Besides, the body wasn’t there any longer…

  He could never prove Larimer was responsible for all those disappearances. It bothered him, like a fly buzzing at a window, but Alicia’s story could send him straight to hell, or it could support his actions as justified manslaughter. He was sure, and her version of that night supported it, but proof was a different matter.

  He’d been waiting for that ax to fall for two decades but he’d never regret it.

  “You’re awake.” She came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel.

  “Haven’t slept that long in a while.” He added, “Thank you.”

  “As far as I know I don’t have the power to make you sleep.”

  “Apparently you do.” He watched her pick up her clothes. “Do you have to work today?”

  She nodded. “At eleven. Do you mind? We have to go.”

  “Of course I don’t mind.” He slid out of bed and fifteen minutes later they were in the car, driving back south. He was trying to figure out how to bring it up when she said it instead.

  “This entity thing…Larimer…as absurd as it sounds we are even discussing it, where do you think it went? You killed him.”

  He owed her the truth. “I only think I killed him. His body isn’t there where we buried it. When all of this started to happen, George and I went to look. No grave. But the bank had washed away. I just can’t be sure.”

  Her eyelashes fluttered down. “Oh, shit.”

  “That sentiment is shared by at least two other people.”

  “He was in the liquor store, remember?”

  Pine trees flashed past. He kept his voice carefully neutral. “The best way to get at me right now is through you. Can you call in sick?”

  “I could. I’ve probably used the least amount of sick days of any employee since the doors opened. Tell me how that will help.”

  He was awash in memories, none of them healthy. Jon wanted to desperately go back to Black Lake, and then never wanted to see it again.

  Alicia worried about her weight, he knew it, but she’d looked pretty great that morning when she bent over to pick up her plain slacks. No, her stomach wasn’t completely flat but who cared. Those soft, round curves had embraced him more than any woman he’d ever taken to bed.

  So part of it was lust.

  The other part was he liked her.

  That hadn’t happened often in his life. Oh, he’d loved Amy a million years ago and now she was missing, and he was tied to George, and there were a few colleagues here and there, but he didn’t really remember his father except in photograph snatches. He’d loved his mother, but Connie was a lost cause from the beginning…

  It was a simple story, and all about him, so he told it simply. “I like you.”

  “Thanks.” She gave him an ironic look.

  “Don’t discount the compliment.” That was too simplistic, so he gave her more. “I don’t actually like very many people.”

  Now he sounded as if that was a self-important standard to be measured by, so he tried again. “I swear I’m doing my best, God help us all. One more time. I think you’re pretty, sexy, and spending time with you is the only thing that has any meaning in my life right now. I want to protect you, and if that means sitting next to you at the liquor store on a stool near the cash register, I will, but I’d prefer a different venue.”

  “Like?”

  “You pick. Miami? Virginia Beach? Santa Fe, New Mexico?”

  “Black Lake, Minnesota.”

  “Were you this stubborn as a child too?”

  “I’ve mellowed with age. I sent the owner a text. I’m off for the day. Now what?”

  “We need to at least stop by the cabin. I wouldn’t mind not wearing yesterday’s clothes.”

  Neither one of them was very enthusiastic about it.

  It looked the same with the ordinary mossy roof, the glistening water of the lake, glassy windows, the woodpile stacked with logs. He pulled in and parked and they both saw it at the same time.

  Alicia asked, “What is that?”

  Murray’s headstone was parked this time against the front door, leaning directly on the bottom wooden panel.

  As a calling card, it was very effective. “It seems like someone might have stopped by.” He got out and slammed his door. He didn’t even want to tell her, so he left out the identity of the person it was dedicated to, but he certainly recognized it.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, Alicia came around and grabbed his arm. “Jon.”

  He was furious, tired of being baited, and fought the urge to shake her hand off. None of this was her fault. “What?”

  She pointed into the woods. “When did someone rent the cabin next door?”

  He followed and saw there was a car down the hill at the closest cottage, sitting there in the driveway. It was a small place like his, and to his knowledge no one had leased it.

  Especially with the encroaching winter. He was the person who did that sort of hermit thing, but most people were sane. “I wasn’t aware anyone did. Let me go in and get some clean clothes and we can—”

  “I might be wrong, but that is Amy Walda’s car.”

  He thought his hearing had malfunctioned. “What?”

  Her voice was a whisper. “She comes in at least twice a week…and that is what she drives. I can’t say it is her car for sure, but it looks like the right make, color and model.”

  It couldn’t be.

  It could be. There was the headstone.

  He shook his head and rubbed h
is hand over his face. “You can’t be serious.”

  “We have to go look.”

  Chapter 17

  Manipulation is such a delicate matter. It requires the skills of a hunter and the finesse of a fencer or in other words, a true swordsman. Advance and retreat, parry and use sharp blades.

  Finesse is crucial if you wish to kill and escape unnoticed. It can be done crudely, but that leaves evidence behind almost inevitably. There are some who manage it by just walking away and going elsewhere, but I am bound to hell, so I cannot do that.

  My very blood is in this soil and so here I stay, and must work with what is available.

  The vehicle had been left at a slight angle, parked by a stack of railroad ties on a small graveled section of driveway.

  Even though his apprehension had been growing since the moment he realized she was gone, Troy walked up to the car with a feeling of the surreal, like life was flashing by and he was just sitting in a theater, watching it.

  The utter silence didn’t help. No one wanted to say anything, and he didn’t really blame them. In the same circumstances, he’d feel the same way.

  Definitely his wife’s car. Hammond had hardly been able to say the words, but stuttered out they’d run the plates.

  Definitely.

  There was blood. It was in dried splotches on the driver’s seat and he didn’t need forensics to tell him something bad had happened, but he’d known it anyway. Day one she’d just left, he’d reasoned. Day two, she was working it out, weighing her options, not ready to talk to him. Day three, she was a missing person.

  There was no body. For that he was grateful and at the same time ice cold and filled with dread.

  “You know your jobs,” he said into the sympathetic quiet. “We need to comb these woods, crime scene needs to gather samples…we all understand our duty as law enforcement and we know there’s a killer out there. So go.”

  No one knew what to say to him, and he sure as hell had no idea how to respond, so it was an even equation. Peter finally said, “Yes, sir.”

  Blood in Amy’s car, no word from her in days, and it was parked next to the cabin rented by Jon Palmer.