Asger, finished now with removing the organs of the upper chamber, hefted the torso to the bandsaw. He powered it on.
“Think it through,” Wayman said. “The goal isn’t to get rid of the body. The goal is to be as close to zero risk as possible. You don’t do that by rushing through a routine to get rid of evidence. You do that by taking each step in terms of how much risk is involved, and where the risk comes from.”
“I’m not following.”
“So this girl, she was ready to move at noon today. That’s when the knife went through her heart. Should I have thrown her over my back, carried her out on the sidewalk, and said, okay, no evidence inside the Butcher Shop?”
“No.”
“Of course not. The goal isn’t to get her out of here. It’s to get her out of here with as close to zero risk as possible. That means, we don’t move her in a state that allows her to be identified. Not as whatever the fuck her name was. Identified even as a person.”
“I don’t get it.”
“If we threw her in a body bag into the truck, a chance stop by a cop, the whole gig’s up. So we turn her into sausage to feed the homeless. And we mix her guts with hogs and cattle guts. And hooves. Bones. It all gets ground up, dried, turned into meal.”
Finished at the bandsaw, Asger stepped to an adjacent room and rolled a giant wheeled trash bin, like for recycling.
“Ah, refrigerated guts,” Wayman said.
Asger pushed the container to the butcher table, opened the lid, slid the bones and guts into the bucket.
“In a few hours that’ll be covered with hog and cow entrails.”
Asger placed the meat they’d removed from the girl into a giant tray. He then began an apparently practiced routine. He opened the bandsaw guards, removed the blade, hosed the saw, sprayed with an Oxy compound, and hosed again. Then he placed a new blade on the saw.
The grit of bone and meat washed from the saw went down the drain.
“What’s next?” Finch said. “I’m ready for the blowjob in the hot tub.”
“Nope.” Wayman said. “Now we make sausage.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They stood at the grinder, grease and blood slimed on their hands. The job was done: the product lay in a plastic tub.
“When we make the sausage, we always do it ourselves. It’s the same problem I keep mentioning. Who do you trust?”
Wayman unbuckled his belt and pulled it from his pants.
“Don’t your employees think it’s weird the boss comes in and makes sausage late at night?” Finch said.
“Actually, no. They think it’s part of my roots. I wear denim and flannel. I own a nightclub but look like Grizzly Adams. I haven’t sold out. Coming in at night to work as my daddy and granddaddy worked ... it fits the theme.”
Wayman untucked his shirt, began unbuttoning it from the bottom. “Now remember what I said about moving bodies. You drive around with a corpse in the trunk, get pulled over, you’re thinking, now I have to kill a cop. This way, with the girl in the cooler, the cop sees I’m supplying sausage to a homeless shelter. I get a fucking tax deduction. That’s why we don’t move bodies.”
Wayman removed his shirt. Unbuttoned his pants and slid down the zipper.
“Last step, everything gets clean. There’s still risk in the procedure. Not so much of someone accidentally seeing what’s going on and recognizing it. The only risk we have is someday, one of our clients flips on us, or someone gets curious about what’s on the top floors of the building, and starts watching us too closely. Eventually, almost any enterprise can be found out. At that point it comes down to gathering evidence. Well, if there’s nobody saying someone’s missing, no body, and no DNA, and no murder weapon, it’s hard to prove a murder. The only way we go down is if someone on the inside goes rogue.”
Finch looked at the trash bag containing bloodied bed linens, furniture covers, the murder weapon.
“Yep. You got it. We strip, put our clothes in the bag, clean the table, grinder, then hose ourselves too. Walk the bag to the incinerator in the basement, and then go to the dance floor. You’ve earned your five-thousand-dollar blowjob.”
The wire!
“Yeah, cool. I can handle it. Can I get a cheeseburger or something first? I’m about to pass out. Low blood sugar. All the excitement.”
“That’s the thing.” Wayman pointed at Finch’s shirt. “You got blood all over you. We can’t risk you leaving DNA everywhere you go. That’s why we have procedures in place.”
“I’m not walking out of here naked.”
Wayman shook his head. “Your pecker too short?”
Wayman dropped his pants. Dragged his wife beater over his head. Pulled off his socks. Underwear. Opened the bag and placed the clothes inside.
Finch turned. Asger was naked as well.
Without looking at them, Finch remembered the knives on the wall. The garden hose. People hang themselves with garden hoses all the time. It’s a weapon.
Wayman studied him.
Every move. Your life depends on every move.
The recording device was supposed to look like a band aid, and it did, so long as no one looked too close.
But Wayman had been talking about trust. The right people. And the whole evening was obviously a test.
I’m totally dead.
Which knife? The one with the longest blade. If he pushed aside Asger he could grab it from the wall. Misdirection would help.
Misdirection.
Finch exhaled.
A new idea arrived. He smiled.
He thought of tits. Perfect, not giant, not small, just medium perfectly drooped boobs. Bouncing, rubbing up against his face, dragging over his chest, hanging free, jiggling, glistening in oil and sweat. With milk dripping over them like a waterfall over a cave. He imagined breasts in his mouth, pressed against his cheeks—both cheeks, his face squeezed between. He thought of Michele—the best lay of his life—bending over and swinging. He thought of her mouth, that first moment, the flicker of her tongue on him ....
And Finch unbuckled his pants. He dropped them.
Wayman looked at the bulge pressing Finch’s underwear.
“Well, that explains a lot.”
Asger snorted.
Wayman choked. “We’re straight, little brother.”
Finch turned away.
“You been queer this whole time? Is that it? The drugs, the lifestyle? All ’cause you go with men?” Wayman laughed. “Oh fuck, that explains it.”
His back to both Wayman and Asger, Finch lifted his shirt. He dragged his fingernail over the bandage-like edge of the recording device. Catching the corner, he pulled. The strong adhesive tore out hair. It had to have left a red mark. Would they notice?
“Shit, I guess we better get you to the Range Rover dealer.”
Finch lifted his shirt and t-shirt over his head and with the recording device inside, rolled them and placed them in the trash bag. The evidence would be incinerated.
Wayman said, “Put your underwear, shoes, socks, everything in the trash bag.”
Finch kept his front angled away from Wayman and Asger.
“Follow.”
Wayman pushed the giant stainless-steel sausage grinder to the tiled area with a massive drain and plastic walls. He lifted a hose, turned a spigot and sprayed the grinder while Asger disassembled the parts. Again, Asger produced a jug of oxy cleaner.
“Why don’t you use bleach?”
“It doesn’t get rid of the blood. Oxy pulverizes that shit.”
A clump of meat fell from the basin to the tiled floor in a cascade of sudsy water. Wayman sprayed the hose directly on it and drove it drainward.
Asger nodded to Wayman.
“All right,” Wayman said. “Your hands get cleaned with Oxy. The rest of your body, soap and water.”
Asger stood next to the wall and Finch warily stepped next to him. Wayman hosed them, top to bottom.
“What’s that on your chest?”
/> “Ringworm.”
Asger shifted away from him. Shook his head.
“I’m taking something for it. Supposed to be gone in a week.”
“Turn around.”
Asger and Finch faced the wall. Wayman sprayed them again, top to bottom.
“Asger, you wanna hit me?”
Wayman gave Asger the hose and submitted to the spray.
When they were clean and rinsed, Wayman stepped to a steel work area with cabinets above and below. Opened the one at his knees, and withdrew a paper bag. “You’re my size. Here.”
He passed the bag to Finch. Inside, a towel. Finch lifted it, and saw clothes underneath.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Mae sat naked on the bed with a glass of white wine in one hand and an empty cereal bowl next to the other. Hershey’s syrup smudged her left areola.
“I’m satisfied about every way I can be,” she said.
He’d made lobster mac with a box of spirals, a bag of shredded Mexican blend, heavy cream, and a couple of lobster tails from the freezer.
“You want the last strawberries?” he said.
“I couldn’t.”
“I’ll toss ’em in the trash.”
“Gimme.”
He passed her the bowl.
Long before they crawled into bed, he’d given her a tour of the buried house’s three stories. Kitchen, dining area, den, on the lowest level. The den was actually more of what she imagined the Situation Room at the White House might look like. Television monitors everywhere. Computers, side by side, cables, keyboards. Even with nothing on there were little lights flashing all over the place. She’d said, You could run Arizona from here, and his eyes had narrowed slightly, and he’d grinned.
Arizona? ...
The second floor was bedrooms. The third, above surface, was the cabin with the sideways table. He’d said a niche construction company out of Idaho made it for him. After the tour, she’d noticed it just so happened the biggest television was in the bedroom, and the most comfortable way to watch it, in bed.
She ate the last strawberry. Gulped her last wine.
“You want to open another bottle, or will that do for the evening?”
“That’ll do. I hate to scrog and run, but I have kids to get back to. Their grandmother’s watching them, and I don’t want to leave them in her hands too long.”
“Yeah,” Cinder said. “Ruth Creighton.”
Mae froze.
“Don’t worry. But yeah, I figured out who you and your clan are.”
My gun!
It was in her purse on the floor, tipped over.
She locked eyes with him.
“Did it live up to your expectations? What, you thought you’d feel like Clyde if you screwed Bonnie? Something like that?”
He laughed. “Easy, now. I already looked into the whole thing. I don’t know if you’ve been following your own case, but there’s been a couple of sympathetic reporters writing a series on Baer and all the corruption he exposed by poisoning half North Carolina. Most folks—and this is key—most folks think if you mess with a man’s dog, you got shit coming.”
“So, you figured it out just from talking to me? You haven’t seen me with Baer.”
“No, but I met him this morning. Same accent. Same pissy attitude.”
“I don’t have a pissy attitude.”
“Endearingly blunt nature, then. Anyhow, I tend to stay on top of the news, since I’ll need to convince a lot of people in a couple years I’m smarter than I am. Every cable show had your photo up for a week. Baer looks different with a buzz cut and clean shave, but a face like that, it don’t matter what you put around it. And you should have dyed your hair or something. You look same as that prom photo they had up.”
“I hate that photo.”
“Does your rack justice.”
“Well, priorities.”
Cinder sat on the edge of the bed. “I suppose if you want I’ll take you back.”
“I better.” She remembered being blunt with him before entering the cabin. She’d said she wasn’t trouble, but looked like it. She’d said he wouldn’t want her to be near him if he ran for governor, and he just now admitted he was running.
“I have a question.”
Cinder twisted to her.
“You’ve as much said you’re running. I told you a couple hours ago, I’m trouble. There’s no way this is going anywhere, is there?”
He held her look a long time, his mouth flat. “You’ve got the wrong idea about politics.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It isn’t where the clean people go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Wayman led Asger and Finch to the basement and watched as Asger placed the garbage bag inside the incinerator. He’d felt a little more at ease about his brother since learning he was gay. Somehow, it made his life choices coherent and explained the tension he always seemed to carry with him.
But Wayman needed more.
“You don’t leave anything to chance,” he said. “You watch every detail. You either do what is critical yourself, or you observe it. Always. Asger has been with me six years. Not a single failure, ever. But I observe everything that is critical. It’s not about trusting people. It’s about distrusting fate. Remember that.”
They walked toward the elevator. “You’re done for the night, Asger. I’m going to have a drink with my brother. See you tomorrow.”
Asger nodded. He stayed on the elevator when Wayman and Finch got off on the third floor.
“You met Amy, on the fourth floor—the bitchy girl, likes to take charge? Asger’s poking her.”
Finch appeared thoughtful. “How does the whole thing work? I don’t see anyone going up there.”
“You don’t need to know that, yet. You may never. The bottom line is our clients pay through the nose, and almost all our business is repeat. We only take new clients after we stick a microscope up their asses, and we only bring them up stairs if we already have something on them.”
“What do you mean, on them?”
“Evidence that’ll put them away a long time if they fuck us.”
They entered Wayman’s office. Below them, the nightclub flashed and bodies throbbed. Women in tight dresses, men in polos. Grinding, touching. Wayman thought of Claudia, how he missed her body.
How he would test her loyalty.
“Fuck.”
Wayman picked up his phone, hit a speed dial number.
“You see that beefy dago there against the wall? Prick’s not doing his job.”
The man pressed a bluetooth device at his ear.
“Tony, what the fuck? Sofa, ten o’clock.”
Tony looked up at the mirrored glass and nodded. He pushed through the writhing bodies and arrived at the sofa. He pulled a girl off a man.
“You can’t have shit like that,” Wayman said. “I own half the cops in this city and most of the judges, but little shit like that just invites trouble.”
“I didn’t see. What was she doing?”
“Head.”
“Ah. By the way, are you going to say anything to Dad?”
“About you being what you are?”
Finch blinked.
“I doubt it. Dad’s from a different time. Check this out.”
Wayman wiggled his computer mouse. Wayman sat in the high-backed executive leather chair and motioned for Finch to come around behind the desk. He nodded at the screen.
“Fucking Microsoft. Wait a minute. Miracle. Okay, it’s on. See this? Video of every room on the thirteenth floor, and the fifth. Pedos on the fifth. The black squares are cameras in rooms that are dark right now. But the rest ... You can see for yourself.”
The monitor display was broken into sixteen squares, seven without images. The rest contained full color, crisp, moving scenes.
Wayman moved the pointer to the sidebar and clicked on Floor 13, room 4. All of the images were replaced, now, with four camera angles, each showing a
different view of the same room.
“This is where you heard the girl scream,” Wayman said.
Finch looked at the images. A girl on a bed, not tied to the bedposts like the other. She was curled on her side as if asleep. Another angle showed her eyes were closed. Another camera showed the man who’d bought the privilege of murdering her. He sat on the toilet, elbows on knees, head drooped.
“You own these people,” Finch said. “Not just the cash they pay you. You own them the rest of their lives.”
Wayman nodded, searched his brother’s face. Was it admiration in his voice? Fear? He pulled open the bottom desk file drawer and withdrew a bottle of Maker’s Mark and two glasses.
“Grab the ice tray out of the freezer. It’s inside the cabinet, under the Keurig.”
Finch opened the wood cabinet, then the refrigerator inside, and withdrew an ice tray from the freezer portion. He twisted it and the cubes popped free. He dropped two in each glass and his brother poured.
“I own them, and that’s important. But it doesn’t make the business run. The return on investment comes from one thing.” Wayman drank whiskey. “They pay a hundred grand not because we remove the risk. And not because we provide the girl. They pay it because we provide those things in a package that says what they do is okay.”
“You can’t—that—are you serious?”
“Yeah, yeah. They’re not monsters. They’re normal. See, killing’s the most natural thing a man can do. It didn’t take one page in the bible before men started killing men. But they’ve been taught it’s evil. Something that wells up natural out of the soul of man, and they’ve got all these neuroses built up around it. We silence the discord. We take it away. All value is perceived in the head, and revolves around wants. In men, there’s only two: fucking and killing. That’s why we’re sitting on top of the biggest business in the history of man.”
Finch replaced the ice tray. Received his glass from Wayman.
“Remember what I said earlier about every decision. Now I have a question and need a damn compelling answer.” He lifted his glass. “Would you say that’s half full?”
Finch swallowed his Maker’s Mark in one long pull.
Pretty Like an Ugly Girl (Baer Creighton Book 3) Page 12