All The Way Down

by DaveKearns

  I had to get a bag or sheet or something to get the dog out of there. As I turned for the door I spotted the damage to the picture of Michelle. Someone had dipped a finger in blood and drawn a target around Michelle's face.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Then it occurred to me that maybe what I was looking at wasn't a warning but a message, telling me that Michelle and Rosalie had already been killed in addition to their dog. I ran into the kitchen to use the phone, pulled Michelle’s number from my wallet, and dialed. My hands were shaking.

  Michelle's sleepy voice answered. "Hello?"

  "Michelle? Is that you?" I asked.

  "Who is this??? Del?"

  "It's me," I said. "Something terrible happened tonight."

  "What? What are you talking about?"

  "I don't think you're safe. Get Rosalie and get out of there."

  "What? Why? What happened?"

  "Somebody broke into Brick’s house," I said. "They slaughtered Colonel in the living room. There's blood everywhere."

  "Oh my God," she said. "You've brought them down on us, you stupid bastard." Then she hung up on me.

  I sat in one of the chairs at the kitchen table looking at the bloody footprints on the linoleum. I thought about taking a taxi over to Bullard's house and splitting his skull open with a tire wrench, but I decided against it. If I broke into his house while he was there, I was asking for a bullet. I needed a little time to think, but I knew I was going to get him, even if it meant waiting for him in his house with a weapon when he came home from work.

  I went to the sink and washed my hands, then on out to the garage. I got a pair of pliers from the toolbox and then I started in the living room, using the pliers to pull up the edge of the carpet before ripping the bloody carpet loose from the tack strips at the edge of the floor. I shifted the living room furniture into the kitchen to get the carpet up, and an hour later I had the bloody carpet in a big pile out in the garage. The blood had seeped through to the floorboards in a couple of places, but it was still a big improvement.

  I carried a heavy blanket from the bedroom into the hall bathroom and laid it on the floor. I got a firm grip on Colonel's front legs and dragged him over the tub and onto the blanket. After dragging it down the hall and into the garage, I went back into the kitchen and washed my hands again.

  It took me a while to bury Colonel in the back yard. The light through the sliding glass door in the kitchen provided the only illumination, but that was enough. I didn't want the neighbors to see what I was doing anyway. I was as quiet as I was able to be, and if the neighbors heard me working out there I couldn't tell it. An hour later I had dug a pit five feet deep and about three wide. By the time I was done I had a furious sweat going. The ground was dry, and dust clung to the sweat on my face and arms.

  I rolled Colonel into the grave and shoveled the dirt pile beside the hole back over the body. Then I went back inside and took the pail under the kitchen sink and filled it with hot water. I got several towels from the master bath and went through the whole house, wiping as much of the blood off the walls with the wet towels as I could manage.

  The first traces of sunlight were coming though the drapes in the living room when I finished the cleanup. The walls were clean again and the kitchen looked okay. The sofa and the fabric covering the speakers were stained with black dried blood, but there was nothing I could do about that. The ceiling was still spattered with blackening blood, but I had the light fixture clean again. I would have to repaint the ceiling to cover the spots.

  I went out to the garage, stripped my bloody clothes off, and put them in the washing machine. I dumped in detergent and got the load started. Then I went back down the hall into the master bedroom. I guess poor old Colonel had run out of blood before he made it that far because the bedroom was untouched. I picked up the mattress and saw that the pictures Brick had taken were still there.

  I took a long shower, scrubbing the grime and dried blood from my skin. Then I collapsed on the bed and fell asleep within seconds.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I jolted awake a few hours later but I was unsure why. Then I heard the pounding on the front door again. I pulled a pair of jeans on and went down the hall and into the living room. The bare floor and the spotted ceiling reminded me that what I had seen the previous night wasn't just a nightmare.

  I looked through the window and saw Sandy waiting on the porch in her uniform. I opened the splintered door for her and invited her in.

  "Are you okay?" she asked.

  "I'm alive," I said.

  She took a look at the bare floor and the spots on the sofa and ceiling and I heard the air go out of her. "Holy shit!" she said. "What happened?"

  "Your pal Bullard happened," I said. "He threw me in jail last night and while I was in there he butchered Michelle's dog in my living room. I guess he wanted to send a message."

  "Michelle? Your friend from the quarry? My God," she said.

  "This guy is really sick, Sandy. We don't do something about it soon, he'll kill the whole town. I'm surprised he didn't kill me last night. I guess he thought it would be more fun to let the guys in the drunk tank take a shot at me while he redecorated my house."

  "You sure it was him?"

  "Who else would it be?" I said. "He told me he was going to kill me if I didn't leave it alone, and a few hours later this happens. What do you think, the neighbor kids were in a bad mood and took it out on the dog?"

  She was quiet for a few seconds. "I'm really sorry," she said.

  "Sorry doesn't cut it," I said. "Bullard knows about everything I told you. He knows Michelle helped me and he nearly managed to get her fired from her job. Now he's making signs like he's going to kill me, Michelle and her kid. I don't want to hear that you're sorry."

  She sighed. "I told you, I had to tell Internal Affairs where I was getting my information. I didn't expect Bullard to find out." I turned away and looked out the window through the stained drapes. The drapes would have to be replaced, too.

  "You wanted me to do something about Bullard, right?" she asked.

  "If I'd known it was going to get back to him, I wouldn't have told you."

  "I said I was sorry."

  "I need to get my car from the impound lot," I said. "Give me a ride over there." She nodded. I pulled on a pair of jogging shoes and got my wallet.

  We didn't say anything to each other for a few blocks. She made the turn onto the interstate and headed north towards the police station and the impound lot.

  "I'm going to get Bullard," I said. I knew it as plainly as I knew my own name. I might die in the process, but at that point I didn't care.

  "If you're thinking about going over to his house and putting a bullet in him, then I'm taking you to the police station. I'm not going to be a party to murder."

  "I mean that I can prove he's a killer," I said. "I found Ray and I know Bullard killed him." I thought about telling her about Marty, too, but that seemed too fantastic. She wouldn't have believed me. I knew that I had her full attention, whether she believed me or not.

  "You found Ray Archer?" she said. "Where?"

  "Here's the deal," I said. "I know you can't want to get Bullard as bad as I do. But if you want to see him busted for murder, you have to work with me. I know I can prove it, but only if we do it my way. You want to help, fine. If not, I'll still prove it. It'll just be harder."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" she said. "You tell me you found a murder victim, now you're telling me to get lost unless I do things your way? You're nuts! If you're hiding evidence of a murder, you can be charged with concealing a homicide. That's a felony." She pulled the cruiser into the impound lot. I could see the Ford through the chain link fence.

  I spoke through clenched teeth. "That may be, but you won't be able to prove it because you don't know where the body is. You also can't prove anything about Bullard, so why don't you quit threatening me and make up your mind. Help me or don't help me. At this point,
I don't give a shit either way."

  She gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make her knuckles white from the strain.

  "Goddamn," she said. "You're ridiculous!" I didn't say anything. I opened the door and started to get out of the cruiser. "All right!" she said, exasperated. "What do you want to do?"

  "Do you know what shift Bullard works today?" I asked.

  "Three to eleven I think," she said. "But he practically lives at the station."

  "Be in front of my house at eleven tonight," I said. Bullard had given me an idea about how to trap him, and the die was cast.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  It cost me eighty one dollars to get my car out of the impound lot. They didn't have a problem with taking the charge card, and after I signed my name in three different places they said I could take the car.

  I drove over to the sporting goods store near Esto's place that I had passed a couple of times. Black wrought iron bars covered the windows. The building had a nasty pink paint job that was supposed to make the painted cinder blocks look like adobe. It didn't, but I went inside anyway. New linoleum on the floor, new ceiling tiles and new paint on the walls reflected the fluorescent lighting garishly. I wished I'd brought my sunglasses in. It was like being in a brightly lit matchbox.

  The guns and ammunition section was small, but I wasn't choosy. Shotguns and rifles hung on the wall behind locked glass cases and a cash register. A braided steel cable ran through the trigger guards on the rifles. Pistols of various makes were displayed in a glass case. A heavyset man in a tan vest with pepper-colored hair and a trim mustache stepped behind the case and asked me if I wanted help.

  "I'm shopping for a pistol," I said. "Thirty-eight caliber."

  "Revolver or auto?"

  "I haven't decided yet."

  The salesman's vest had a patch over the left breast depicting a pheasant lifting from brush. Under the pheasant, the salesman's name was sewn into the vest. His name was Stan.

  "Try this one out," Stan said.

  I hefted the pistol. It was a Browning automatic, and I liked the way it felt in my hand: solid and substantial. I sighted along the tiny pistol sights towards the fishing section. I thought I could probably hit what I aimed at with it.

  "That is a very fine pistol," Stan said.

  I nodded. "How many shots does it hold?"

  "Eight."

  "How much?"

  "Four twenty-five."

  I stared at Stan for a moment. I knew that once I had the gun there was no going back. He took my silence as the first step towards me leaving without closing the sale and tried to sweeten the deal.

  "Well, tell you what," Stan said. "We're running a special this week. You can have the gun, a box of shells, and a clip-on holster for four twenty-five."

  "Can I see the holster?" I asked.

  Stan smiled. "Sure thing," he said, pulling a cardboard box of clip-on holsters from under the counter. They were tan tooled leather with metal belt clips. The plastic bags that the holsters were wrapped in all had tiny white labels that said "Made in Mexico."

  I dug through the holsters until I found one that seemed to fit the shape of the gun pretty well.

  I laid the holster and the pistol beside each other on the glass countertop. I handed Stan my charge card. I figure at that point it probably had about five hundred dollars credit left on it.

  "Done," I said.

  He picked up the card and ran it through a magnetic reader.

  "I'll need to see a driver's license," Stan said. I handed Stan my license. "Is this your current address?" Stan asked.

  "That's right."

  ''You’re getting a great firearm," Stan said. "That is really a nice weapon."

  He wrote the information from the driver's license in a large accountant's book and handed me back the license.

  The card reader beeped and flashed an authorization code that Stan copied onto the charge slip. He unlocked a cabinet behind the counter and brought out a box of .38 caliber shells and a new Browning pistol in a box. He put the pistol, the holster, and the shells in a heavy paper sack. He smiled as I picked up the bag and left.

  I stopped at a hardware store on the way home. I bought a pair of heavy leather gloves, some coveralls, a roll of duct tape, a pry bar, a box of plastic trash bags, and a tarp made of heavy black plastic.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  I drove back to the house and carried the bag from the sporting goods store inside. I set the bag on the kitchen table and opened the box with the gun in it. I used a kitchen rag to wipe the gun oil off of the pistol and then I opened the box of shells and loaded the clip. I slid the clip into the gun, chambered a round, and put the holstered gun on my belt.

  I found a cotton short-sleeved dress shirt in Brick's closet. I took off my T-shirt and put on the dress shirt. I left the shirt tails out to cover the gun. Then I headed west on the highway to get the ball rolling.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Much later that night I was sitting on the sofa watching the street. It was a few minutes before nine, and I had swapped my dress shirt for the coveralls I’d bought. I had gotten Bullard's address from the phone book and located it on a street map with no trouble. His house was on the fringe of the Alamogordo city limits. The map indicated that Corro Rd. was unimproved and ran a third of the way up the mountain on the east side of Alamogordo.

  When I got to Bullard’s neighborhood there were only a handful of houses along the road. My headlights hit the numbers on the mailboxes as I went past the other homes. His driveway was several hundred yards from the closest neighbor, and when I reached it I backed the car into the driveway and turned off my headlights.

  Bullard's house was impressive and it looked new. It was a big one-story ranch with a bay window in front and a three car garage on the right. A floodlight on a thirty foot pole lit the front yard of the house like daylight. I climbed out of the car and folded my seat down so that I could get the crowbar and gloves from the back seat.

  The front door had diamond-shaped glass inserts in it. I ignored the glass and jammed the pry bar into the door frame by the doorknob, then pulled hard. The door frame splintered, and the door made an explosive sound as it slammed open against the inside wall of the house.

  I stepped inside and turned on the entry hall light. The entry gave onto a family room on the left with an overstuffed black leather sofa, a leather recliner, a coffee table, and a big screen television set. The far wall of the living room was dominated by built-in bookshelves and a large painting of a hunter in a duck blind. I spotted the shiny kitchen floor ahead on the right.

  I went through the living room to the hall that led to the bedrooms. There were two small rooms that he seemed to be using for business and exercise, and a bigger room that was clearly the master bedroom. It had a mirror on the ceiling and a black comforter on the bed. The carpet was red and the bedposts were chrome. I thought about what the stripper had said about Bullard stringing her up, and I didn't have any trouble imagining him tying her to one of those big bedposts and pounding on her.

  My guess was that if Bullard was kinky enough to want sex on top of his nest egg, he wouldn't want to be very far away from the money. If I was wrong, this was all wasted effort, but I checked my watch and I had time to spare.

  I checked the bed, went through the dressers, tapped on the walls, looked for a false floor, and finally wound up looking for the money in the closet. I had never seen a fuse box hidden behind a closet full of clothes before, and when I pulled the fuse box door open I was surprised to find that the fuse switches were old with yellowed labels. There was corrosion around some of the switches, as well. The rest of the house seemed new, so that didn’t make any sense. I switched all the fuses to the 'off' position, and none of the lights in the bedroom went off, so I jammed the pry bar under one edge of the fuse box frame and leaned into it. The whole fuse box popped out of the drywall and landed on the floor of the closet with a bang.

  Bullard had built smal
l shelves in the wall behind the fuse box. I smiled and hooked the pry bar into a loop on my belt. Then I pulled about two dozen three-inch thick bundles of bills from the hole. I tightened the waist band on my coveralls and stuffed the bundles inside my coveralls as fast as I could go. When I had the last bundle I turned and ran.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The sound of my footsteps on the driveway seemed amplified as I ran to the car. I got a trash bag from the car and dumped the bundles of cash from inside my coveralls into it. Then I knotted the bag and tossed it into the back seat.

  I went around to the trunk and popped it open, picking up the utility knife and leather gloves from the trunk floor where they lay beside the black plastic bag. Silver duct tape crisscrossed the plastic from one end to the other, and the edges of the bag were double taped. It looked like a space-age, man-sized cocoon. I slid the utility knife into my back pocket, pulled on the gloves, and grabbed the near end of the bag with both hands.