by C.G. Banks
He felt the tight rubber straps across his forearms as the briny cap dripped around his ears. Very soon he would be history, another scratched statistic of the Louisiana penal system. The newspapers and television would follow his story tonight, but two days more and he’d be forgotten. There would be no name on his gravestone, only an insignificant number.
That in itself was part of the problem, the initial spark that fired the wheels into motion. And now the juice would flow and he’d be gone. In the few moments left, his mind turned endlessly on the life he was leaving. Everything was clear, and the cruelty of the situation was that he’d be suddenly aware here, at the end. The gears had turned and finally ground him up.
He wondered if anyone would live in the shack now that he was gone, or if his actions would finally doom the thing for demolition. Of course it had been a dump for a long time (long before he’d ever laid eyes on the place), but it was the closest thing to a home he’d managed in his whole wasted life. His books and magazines would probably turn to moldy pulp before the shack was brought down. There was nothing valuable there. No one would want to save the place, not before him out of disinterest, and not now because of the reputation he’d brought on it. It would finally get what it deserved, he thought acidly, trying to convince himself the crime had initially much to do with the shack’s location.
The ad stuck to the phone pole had stated as much: ‘on-site living,’ but providence had seemed to provide…. What? But he knew. It was simple. A road to damnation chasing the simple inquiry:
How to pull off the master crime?
He’d considered it for years, well before he’d ever taken the job as gravedigger. The curiosity had always been inside him, as far back as his hazy memory would stretch. He’d worked the oilrigs; the construction circuit; he’d even been a civil servant for a while, but his fate had been writ large long before. He recalled his loneliness as a boy, how the neighborhood mothers refused to let their children near him. All those years alone he had plotted.
As the bands got tighter and time got shorter, everything was suddenly crystalline.
And what about ‘Poor Mr. Griffin’? This description from a neighbor had made print days before, but had not reached his ears until this morning. His convictions and eventual obsession had foiled him as assuredly as death. And now the penalty was due.
His fingers gripped the cold metal tightly, trying to break the bonds, trying in vain to dispel everything around him. Only minutes from now the electricity would ride him to oblivion. He’d be gone and the hated newspapers would have their field day over his dead body. Then he’d be forgotten.
He tried hard to remember. At least having something was better than leaving bare…or so it seemed. When was the first time he’d gotten the idea to kill Griffin? It was hard to pinpoint. Perhaps it had actually risen from a story in one of the magazines, some cheap thriller no more than three pages long with a picture of a big-tittied girl in the middle column.
Regardless…
A quick rush revealed every nuance and misstep, slowing down to illuminate his downfall in intricate, clearly delineated pieces. First, seeing the ad and finding himself not far from the address fluttering in the breeze; next, getting hired on the spot the same day; the months of dutiful labor; moving into the shack with his promotion to groundskeeper. Then the idea; the plan; its execution; the arrogance; and now, the finish.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up as if seeking a last minute getaway. His toes curled in morbid anticipation. He could see nothing in the black hell of the hood, but his mind dutifully supplied other images, carefully offering up tidbits that told the whole story.
He had killed Griffin. Killed him just as dead as a poke, and the plan had seemed perfect. Even now, he recalled chuckling to himself in the deep night silence, huddled up to his neck beneath his one thin blanket, fighting the drafts that took over at nightfall. It had all been very simple.
Mr. Griffin often worked late. He usually left his car at home, preferring to walk the several blocks to work so that he could puff himself up with such an excuse of exercise to his subordinates. Oh yes, he’d always been sure to keep everyone abreast of his feeble athlete endeavors. That in itself had rankled the gravedigger.
Early on, he had known no one could reasonably suspect him if Griffin disappeared. The boss and he got along peacefully. There had never been any disagreements or any show of public disobedience. The gravedigger lived on site; the shack had been pushed off to a back corner fellowship with the equipment sheds. Sweet, easy.
The plan only required procuring a new shovel and scarring it at leisure. Of course, he’d paid cash for it at an Ace Hardware all the way across town, and had watched the ticket curl into ash in the gutter while he smoked a cigarette waiting for the cross-town bus. No trail at all. The gravedigger kept the shovel beneath his bed for eight months while his idea simmered.
All the rest had fallen into place like an old key striking home.
Digging graves made the idea irresistible. All those souls lining up unwillingly at the gate lent his mind to countless nights’ consideration. Very soon, there was nothing else to think about: Mr. Griffin had fallen under a death sentence.
The gravedigger walked the empty cemetery many times after dark closed in, always amazed at the stillness, at the utter desolation that stretched the very seams of the thin reality around him. There were never any voices telling him to do this or that, only an unearthly silence that told no tales. He came to love the voicelessness, came to treasure its mute suggestions.
The night he did it was no different from any other. No tumultuous storm brewed angrily in the sky; no ominous portent appeared in the sun or among the clouds telling him what to do. Nothing like that, just a sudden knowledge that the deed had to be done. He’d seen the old man earlier, before retiring to the shack, and knew they were the only ones on the premises. There was a freshly mounded grave situated advantageously, and he knew inside no other time would prove better.
He’d pulled the shovel from underneath his bed, hoisted it onto his shoulder as he walked over to the main building, careful to hide the weapon in a massive shrub by the Garden of Memory. He’d left the second shovel hidden there off and on for the better part of a month. No one noticed misplaced tools when nothing was wrong, and the floodlight was out above the ivied archway. He didn’t even have to unscrew it.
Mr. Griffin had not been startled by his presence; as usual, the man paid the gravedigger little mind. Griffin was a man of his station, willing to relay messages and bark orders, but seeing no more than shadows in those below him. He’d been an easy call from the first day, and the gravedigger had had to carefully control himself so as not to give off any indications. There could be no connections in a perfect crime. That was what all the magazines said and he believed it.
So he called the man out by using the ruse of a problem that needed attention. Hell, now he couldn’t even remember what it’d been. They walked the short distance to the Garden of Memory, Mr. Griffin feeling not the slightest trepidation until he’d seen the gravedigger pull the shovel from the bush and move toward him. At no point did his face fully register the realization of what was about to happen. But the first strike brought him to his knees with a wet moan, and the second sliced most of his face away as he fell helpless across the fresh grave. The gravedigger had been careful to drop him there so his blood wouldn’t stain the grass. The garbage bags were in his back pocket, and the bloodied soil would have to be turned anyway. It might as well have been a postcard.
Once convinced the man was dead, the gravedigger had stuffed his bleeding head into the bag and slipped it down as far as it would go. Then he double-bagged the body before balling it up and rolling it off the grave. It took no more than twenty minutes to displace almost four feet of loose dirt, after which he rolled the corpse over and dropped it into the new, double grave. Then he threw the murder weapon in on top of the body. The small pile of dirt left over was carted off with the shed shovel and
scattered in the remnants of the mustard patch he’d started for just such purpose. At close to five o’clock in the morning he was still down on his knees, meticulously picking at the grass (even after a thorough raking), bending every blade into innocence of the act that’d been committed hours earlier.
There had been no hitch.
During the initial investigation of the disappearance, the gravedigger had actively participated. But that was not uncommon; they’d questioned everyone! Unfortunately there was not much to go on.
Griffin wasn’t at work, and he wasn’t at home. His car was not missing but he was so often seen walking this did not rule out that he hadn’t left without it. However, these sojourns were usually brief and habitual. His frequent haunts were investigated. Then his maid was interviewed, his close relatives also, even though these were neither numerous nor overly friendly. The area was combed thoroughly, and the dogs had never even picked it up. That had been the trickiest part, the part of the Crime most difficult to control, but then again, the investigators had never taken the opportunity to play over the area of the actual crime. That in itself had been the planned perfection, the purloined letter set out in plain sight!
How many more nights had he laughed long after the last car pulled away, leaving him hours to contemplate their confused explanations, their unfulfilled want to lay blame? There was nothing missing from the tool shed (the shovel he’d used to pick up the pile and pat down the mound was back in its long-worn place), and no sign of foul play. Talk filtered through the air that maybe Mr. Griffin (with his known effeminate behavior) had formed a liaison that had proven ill-advised.
Of course, none of these speculations was on the public wire, if so, the Gravedigger would have never come abreast of them. His abhorrence of both newspapers and television was well known and observed. Those who knew him knew what not to mention, not out of fear of retribution for broaching such a subject, but for the endless diatribe that would follow.
After a while, the police visits slowed and then stopped entirely. Calls came in every week or two, but there was nothing substantial to report. Later still the tips merely degenerated to aggravating patter.
Months passed and the Gravedigger worked on.
He’d known while planning that he could not leave after the murder. So he stayed around, his work habits unchanged, willing to work anywhere on the cemetery grounds. In fact, he made it a point to pass by the site of his crime whenever possible. A very old Power surged through him when he got close to the grave, and he watched his gait and gestures carefully for several minutes before and after such a passing. But he was always up to it.
When a year finally passed he felt safe. There had been no visits from the police or detectives for over five months. Mr. Griffin’s house had been on the market and then pulled off (the heirs, it was said, fighting over every square inch of bankable asset in the two-story villa), left to sit there like a flat wheel, the yard quickly growing up to hide it from its preened neighbors.
The Gravedigger began to plan his leave. Even so, he made no further move for another three months. There had been an uncomfortable nagging at the base of his spine, wringing him wet with perspiration when he thought of himself miles away, his crime lying unwatched.
The metal plate screwed to the top of his shaved head proved the truth of foreshadowing. The mystery magazines had used the word until he could no longer plod past it without looking it up in a dictionary. It was a shame only experience could teach a true lesson. Words on a page were for dreams only.
Surely, it would come at any minute.
He had left in the end. What he’d thought was the end. But of course, his leaving came as nothing as clandestine as disappearing in the dead of night, leaving a pile of dirty clothes and unopened mail scattered about. He’d wanted no mysteries and aroused no suspicions. The uncanny discomfort that’d nagged at him for the months of inaction before his resignation had seemingly warned him night and day to be careful, to look after himself. But wasn’t that what he’d been doing all along? Why, the proof was in the careful planning, the long wait when most perpetrators would have been gone. Wasn’t that why he’d been careful, so that no tiny mistake would leave itself to be crept up on? He listened carefully to any hint of danger from his co-workers as the bell warned unceasingly in his head. Surely he thought, mere proximity to those interested in the moldering crime would provide him with enough warning if any seam began to unravel. The only thing he would allow from the media was second hand news; he’d figured it was enough.
After all, the crime had been perfect.
There was no body, no murder weapon, no ransom note, no burglary. No evidence whatsoever that ‘poor Mr. Griffin’ had met with foul play. The man had simply vanished. People did that every day. One need look no further than a milk carton for proof. The Gravedigger had witnessed the investigation with his own eyes, heard all the conversations regarding the mystery with his own ears. He didn’t need the newspapers or television to tell him falsehoods because he already knew the truth. It was buried safely in the back of the cemetery and that had been victory enough. That had been worth committing the crime in the first place.
So when he walked away from the grounds at the end of his two-weeks’ notice, it had been with a somewhat easy conscious. He’d come to pin the worry he felt occasionally to a heightened sense of self-preservation, one that was obviously more advanced in him than in others. It made the rest more sensible: the perfect crime, his steady patience.
He hadn’t gone far, only a short piece up the interstate to the next large town, taking a municipal job he’d said he already had.
The forwarding address he’d left at the cemetery was the coup de grace. It proved his innocence to anyone capable of still holding out any suspicion against him, another purloined letter hidden in plain sight.
Only his had proved his undoing.
They’d come for him while he ate lunch peacefully at the greasy spoon just around the corner from the City Yard. Two uniformed policemen had walked in with his supervisor in tow, and as the Gravedigger looked up munching thoughtfully, the thin, palsied, bald-headed man pointed him out and the Blue Coats came upon him with the warrant for his arrest. When he’d been booked into parish prison no more than two hours later, he was amazed to learn he’d been something of a celebrity for the last day. He’d been in every edition of the news, on the tube.
The crime, they said, had been that bizarre, that calculated.
But, and more importantly, it had gone awry.
The rotted body of the Director had been discovered. The shovel lying right on top of the mess that had become of ‘poor Mr. Griffin.’ This was the story.
The grave that had been innocuously picked simply out of convenience had contained a highway fatality. The initial cause of death had been ruled alcohol-related crash, but the young man’s family had firmly denied any history of substance or alcohol abuse. The autopsy reports had been wrong, they said. Or perhaps, maliciously tampered with, they accused. Politics were involved; the boy’s father had been running for DA against a three-decade incumbent. Said incumbent had been investigated four times by both the FBI and the CIA, indicted twice, all unsuccessfully. And at the ripe old age of sixty-seven this man had intended to hand over the reins to a younger designee. The dead boy’s father went against this faction and it had looked for a time that he just might do it. The polls began shifting…and then the accident. That’s where the race ended.
Only some recent information had suddenly come to light, all of which happened to be fully documented in every major newspaper from Franklinton to Pumpkin Center and even as far as the Covington area. The father’s railing about a conspiracy at first was seen only as the ravings of a distraught father, but very soon his allegations came under closer scrutiny. He was by no means a poor man himself. Improprieties concerning the autopsy became public knowledge; witnesses previously quiet began voicing their claims. Tainted results were hinted in the papers, on the televisi
on. The ghostly conspiracy began to breathe in earnest.
The family worked tirelessly to secure the necessary court order to have the grave opened. Ethics’ policies were bandied about and fought over. In the meantime, even that might have died off and the issue eventually dropped had it not been for the death of the incumbent and the subsequent unexplained vacation of his young lieutenant. Amid such circumstances, the judge ordered the body exhumed two months after the Gravedigger moved on.
So they had him, the perfect crime spoiled by outside contamination. The pieces had not been hard to piece together given the fact that all the searched-for evidence had been lying in a neat pile no more than four feet below ground level. The rest of the matter had been simple.
It was an end now fast approaching. The Gravedigger was oddly relaxed a moment before the switch was thrown. He gave up his mad grasp of the warmed, vacant metal. His feet ceased to drum nervously at the floor. A deep silence added to the darkness within the hood, and when the voltage surged he was strangely, almost contentedly, empty. No remorse, no fear, no hope, no real dissatisfaction.
The witnesses behind the mirrored-glass later remarked to the papers and television crews waiting anxiously outside that the condemned killer had died much the way his history had predicted: silently, unobtrusively. The chair had worked fine, and one savvy column reporter could not help but play upon the fact that it had been this last taking of ‘an eye for an eye,’ that had ultimately been the perfect crime.
Four
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished