Life Is Short and Then You Die

by Kelley Armstrong

  Two doors slammed.

  Footsteps on concrete.

  Pete tensed. The chimney and fireplace weren’t especially wide ones. He’d be hidden from sight as long as the men walked straight toward him, but if they veered off to another part of the slab—the kitchen or the bedrooms—he’d be plainly visible.

  If that happened, he’d run like crazy for his truck. As long as they didn’t have a gun, he’d make it. Even if they had a gun, it didn’t mean they’d shoot at him. Even if they shot at him, it didn’t mean they’d hit him. Most people were lousy shots.

  He couldn’t believe he was hiding behind his dead babysitter’s chimney calculating the odds of getting shot.

  A metallic screech sounded, mere inches from Pete’s head, and he flinched. It was the damper in the fireplace, opening or closing.

  “There’s nothing here,” the first man said. His voice sounded hollow, echoing. He had his head stuck up inside of the chimney, twelve inches or so from where Pete’s face pressed against the hot rough brick.

  “That’s fine,” said the second voice. The calmer one. “We just needed to be sure.”

  “But what if the kid found it?”

  Pete closed his eyes, held his breath.

  “He didn’t. If he had, we’d have heard.” There was something familiar about the calmer man’s voice, but Pete couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was.

  “You’re sure?” said the other man. The anxious one.

  “I’m sure. I told you, I have a backup system in place.”

  “So the fire got it.”

  The far got it. This guy was local, or at least West Texan. The calm man wasn’t. The calm man had one of those neutral accents.

  “The fire,” the calm man said. “Or else it got thrown away in a heap of rubble. In any case, your career can proceed unimpeded.”

  “I wish I’d seen it destroyed with my own eyes. I don’t like loose ends.”

  “Which is why Jerry is gone, and the old woman is gone, and the house is gone.”

  “But not the kid.”

  “The kid can be gone, too, if that’s what you really want. But it won’t come cheap, and it carries its own risks. And I’m telling you, there’s nothing to worry about. I’ve kept a close eye on him every step of the way. You brought me in to fix matters, and I fixed them. Trust me on this.”

  Their voices faded. Their footsteps receded. Car doors opened, closed. An engine started.

  Pete breathed again.

  After the rumble of the Camry faded, after his heart stopped pounding in his ears, he got to his feet.

  “Trigger!” he called sharply, and this time the dog came. They got in Pete’s truck. They pulled out from behind the tractor shed and circled around toward the road, trailer bumping along behind.

  Pete could almost picture the Camry’s license plate. Curvy letters, no sharp ones. Then a string of twos. Then something pointy, maybe a seven.

  A cheery yellow Bug appeared, turning into the driveway. A visitor from another world, from a place where nice old ladies didn’t get murdered thanks to their blackmailing loser sons. Where Pete didn’t stumble over bodies and sleazy photos. Where strangers didn’t threaten to vanish him.

  Katie got out of her car. Her dark hair shone in the sun; her legs were tan, her fingernails and toenails pink-painted.

  She walked toward him. Pete didn’t turn off his engine, and he didn’t get out of the truck. He felt filthy, inside and out. He couldn’t look Katie in the eye.

  “Hey there!” Katie said, coming to stand beside Pete’s open window. She smelled like flowers. “Looks like I almost missed you!”

  Why couldn’t he remember the license plate?

  Beside him, Trigger whined. Feeling Pete’s tension.

  “You look exhausted,” Katie said. Her teeth were white against pink lipstick that matched her nails. “Long day?”

  Pete couldn’t find any words; he just wanted to listen to Katie’s pretty voice, to her smooth, civilized cadences, until he could remember the license plate number of the men who had burned Mrs. Dean.

  Maybe the police could hypnotize him.

  Maybe the police had a list of Jerry Dean’s associates.

  Maybe they’d recognize the man in the photo.

  Maybe they’d recognize the woman.

  Katie rested one elbow on the open window and studied Pete curiously. “Find any new treasures?” she said. “Or did the fire get everything else?”

  The fire.

  Voices. The fire … the far.

  Pete suddenly wanted nothing more than to see his mom.

  “My mother’s name is Debra,” he said. Said it right, not deBRA. “What’s your mother called?”

  “Judith.” Katie seemed faintly puzzled, but willing to go along.

  “And your dad?”

  “Rick Allen. Short for Richard Allen.” Katie drew the name out, making it sound pompous. Trying to tease Pete out of his grim mood.

  “Bet you can’t guess what my mom does for a living,” Pete said. Being awkward, talking through the open window with the truck running. Like some socially inept hick. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. His mouth felt dry.

  Katie’s eyes were clear and untroubled. “Sounds mysterious,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “What does she do?”

  Pete forced a smile. “Sells bras—from a van. Not making this up.”

  “Could be worse.”

  “You think?” He raised an eyebrow. “What do your parents do?”

  “My mom’s a computer geek. My dad’s some sort of consultant. Super boring.”

  For a long moment Pete studied her. Shiny hair, long legs, sun-kissed cheeks. Smooth voice. New in town.

  “I’ve gotta go,” he said abruptly, reaching for the stick shift, stepping on the clutch.

  The truck lurched into gear, knocking Katie’s elbow from the window. “I can’t believe you were going to leave before I got here,” she said, smiling brightly. Not stepping back. “I thought we were partners.”

  “Katie.” Pete looked her straight in the eye. “The job’s over.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at the bare slab, then back at Pete. “Hey, congrats. So … do you want to go to Sonic or something? We could celebrate.” She was trying to act natural, Pete could tell, but she wasn’t dumb, and she wasn’t that good an actress.

  “Not my job,” he said. “Yours.”

  Her eyes met his, and he saw the swift flash of understanding before she covered it with a mask of pretty bewilderment.

  “She didn’t deserve this,” Pete said. “Mrs. Dean. She was a good woman. She deserved better.”

  And he eased off the clutch, stepped on the gas, and pulled away. Toward cell phone range. Toward the police.

  Beneath his seat, a smutty photo.

  In his head, a license plate number.

  In his mouth, a killer’s name.

  In his rearview mirror, the killer’s daughter and accomplice. A backup system. Keeping her eye on the small-town hick, monitoring his finds, ready to destroy evidence should the need arise.

  Katie Allen. Too good to be true.

  Pete should have known.

  He let himself glance back, again and again, as she shrank small in the distance.

  Then she was gone, and all that remained was a redbrick chimney, stark against the wide West Texas sky.

  THE BOY IN THE RED VANS

  By Rachel Vincent

  My cell phone shakes in my hand. I take a deep breath, and the screen steadies enough for me to tap Michael’s name. Except I miss, and the phone begins to call my mother.

  Crap!

  End call! End call! I jab at the red circle, and the ringing stops. But then my phone begins to vibrate in my hand again.

  It’s him. Thank god. I poke the green circle and hold my phone up to my ear.

  “Hey, Ellie, I—”

  “I was just trying to call you.” I sink onto the chair in the corner and lean forw
ard with my forehead cradled in my free hand.

  “Yeah, I just wanted to apologize for what I said. I hope you know I didn’t mean it.”

  “Forget about it. I … um … I’m glad you called. I need some help, and I don’t have anyone else. Can you … Can you come over?”

  The silence echoing from the other end of the line terrifies me.

  “Michael. Please.”

  He exhales. “Of course. If you need me, I’m there. That much hasn’t changed.”

  “Thank you.” I hang up, then I clutch the phone to my chest. God, I love him.

  I shove my phone into my pocket on my way across my room, stepping carefully over the mess. Without looking. In the bathroom down the hall, I wash my hands, then I splash water on my face and dry off with the fancy purple hand towel hanging from the loop on the wall. I’m not supposed to use that one. I’m supposed to use the plain white one folded on the counter. The one that’s easy to bleach, in case of stains. The one my mom throws into the hamper when we’re expecting company.

  But the white towel is gone. I must have already thrown it in the laundry.

  In my room again, I run a brush through my hair and pull it into a ponytail. I should really change clothes. But Michael told me he liked this shirt the last time I wore it, and it is flattering …

  The doorbell rings before I can make up my mind. He’s here. I didn’t even hear the car pull up. I race down the hall and across the living room, where I pull open the front door and throw myself at him.

  Michael catches me, like he always does, and his arms wrap around me. He’s so warm, though the night is frigid. There’s no better feeling in the world.

  “That was fast,” I say into his shirt. Then I look over his shoulder at the street. “Where’s your car?”

  “I walked.” Which means he was already close. “Ellie. Let’s take this inside,” he finally says, and when I refuse to let him go, he lifts me and walks me over the threshold, into the house. He kicks the front door closed and glances at the Christmas tree in front of the window. “Hey, the tree looks great!” I watch the blaze from the fireplace reflected in his bright blue eyes. “Your mom still at work?”

  “Yeah. She has the night shift again.”

  “Okay, so what’s—” Michael sets me down, then stares in horror at the front of his own shirt. “Ellie, what the hell? Is this blood?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I … I didn’t know what to do. But I shouldn’t have called you. That was over the line.”

  “I called you. What happened? Is this yours? Are you hurt?”

  I’m definitely in pain, but … “I’m not hurt. I … Just come see. Please.” I take his hand and tug him down the hall, toward my room, but this time his grip feels different. Slack. Like he’s only tolerating my touch.

  This is not going the way I’d hoped.

  “Oh my god,” Michael breathes from the bedroom doorway. “What happened?”

  My vision blurs, and I swipe tears from my eyes with the back of one hand. “I didn’t mean to. He just … He wouldn’t listen.”

  Michael crosses the room and kneels next to the body, careful to stay clear of the blood. “Oh, Ellie…”

  “I know. It was an accident. I mean, it wasn’t technically an accident, but I didn’t plan it. It just happened. I would do anything to be able to take it back, but…” I can only shrug. “My mom’s going to kill me.”

  “Your mother is the least of your worries, Elodie.” It’s never good when he uses my actual name.

  “Not if you help me. I mean, what’s done is done, and I’m so sorry, but … I have to defend myself, right?”

  He stands, one brow arched in that skeptical look I hate. “This was self-defense?”

  “Well, no, that was just a really bad night.” I gesture at the body, but I can’t make myself look at it. “But this part is self-defense. I have to protect myself from the police. From my mom. You have to help me clean this up. Please, Michael. What am I supposed to do?”

  “I’ve never even seen a corpse.” He runs one hand through his hair, and it stands up on top, making him look younger. Like when we were kids. “How am I supposed to know how to … dispose of one?”

  “We don’t have to dispose of it. We just have to get it out of here. No one knew he was coming over, so—”

  “I knew.”

  “Okay, but no one else knew, and you’re not going to tell anyone. Right? Michael?” But he’s just staring at me again, and that sick feeling makes my guts twist again, like earlier tonight.

  “I won’t say anything,” he says at last. “But corpses talk. The police can analyze carpet fibers, and fingerprints, and all kinds of other evidence.”

  “My prints aren’t on file, and my floor is hardwood.”

  “But your living room is carpeted. So unless he floated in here…”

  “Okay, but if the body isn’t found here, the police will have no way to link it to me. No reason to search my house or test my carpet fibers. Right?”

  Michael shrugs. “I guess. So, what do you need from me?”

  “I don’t know where to take the body. And I don’t have a car. Or a license.” I’m old enough now, but taking the test didn’t seem worth the trouble, when I have nothing to drive.

  “I was really hoping you were going to ask for something more along the lines of moral support, and less like a felony.”

  “Please, Michael. Please, please, please.” I don’t have anything to offer him, except my undying love, and he’s already turned that down.

  “Fine.” He digs in his pocket and pulls out his keys, then tosses them to me. I catch them in both hands, and he turns to study the body. I still can’t look. “I’m parked two blocks over, to the north. Drive my car here and back it into your garage. I’ll get started on … this.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “Ellie,” he calls as I race down the hall, and I go back, my heart beating an oddly staccato rhythm. “Does your mom still have that roll of plastic in the garage? From when we helped her repaint the living room?”

  “I think so. On the bottom shelf, in an empty bucket.”

  “Okay. Be careful.”

  I’m already halfway down the block before I realize I should have changed my shirt. If anyone sees me walking down the street with blood on my clothes …

  But it’s dark, and there aren’t many streetlights in my neighborhood. And if anyone sees me out in the middle of the night, I’ll look suspicious even if they can’t see the blood.

  It takes me a few minutes to find Michael’s car. It’s in a lot in front of the neighborhood playground. As if I’m supposed to believe he was hanging out on the swing set when I called him.

  I mean, when he called me.

  Ginger Evans lives half a block from the playground. Her parents don’t like Michael, so he can’t park in her driveway. Or ring her bell. She doesn’t love him enough to stand up for him. To tell her parents to go to hell.

  I would do anything for Michael.

  His car is unlocked. I slide into the driver’s seat and start the engine, but I have trouble getting the gear shift into reverse. I’ve been in his car a hundred times, but I’ve never driven it. It handles like crap, but I can’t really complain, considering that I don’t have one. And that he’s letting me use it to clean up a very big mess.

  The hard part comes when I have to back into the garage. I haven’t had enough practice to be able to reverse into such a tight space, and I accidentally skim the edge of the shelf. Maybe Michael won’t notice.

  I push a button on his key fob to pop his trunk open, then I punch the button on the wall, on my way into the house, and the garage door rumbles as it closes.

  Inside, Michael has rolled out a layer of black plastic next to the body, but I can’t tell that he’s actually touched it.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Why’d you stop?”

  “Because this is your mess. I’m not going to incriminate myself by touching the body.”
/>
  “But you already touched the plastic. That’s incriminating.”

  “Fine. I’m creeped out by the thought of handling a corpse. I can’t do it, Ellie.”

  I know exactly how he feels. I can’t touch it either. I can’t even look at it.

  I would give anything in the world to be able to take this night back. To just … start over. But if I don’t clean up my mess, I’m going to wind up paying for it not just with my sanity and my guilty conscience, but with the rest of my life. For however long that turns out to be.

  Is this a death penalty state?

  I kneel next to the body and lift his ankles. He’s wearing red Vans. I hadn’t noticed that before, and that detail feels way too real. It was one thing to know what I did. To know what I have to do next. Until this moment, I’ve been able to think about that in the abstract, but now …

  Now …

  “Come on, Ellie. We don’t have all night.” On the edge of my vision, Michael squats near the head, but I don’t look at him, because if I do, I might see the corpse’s face.

  The shoes are real enough. I can’t deal with the face.

  “Pick him up,” Michael whispers.

  I stand and lift the corpse’s legs, my eyes closed, and with a grunt of effort, I swing his lower body onto the plastic. I can’t look, so I only know I’ve hit the target when I hear the plastic crinkle.

  “Halfway there,” Michael says, and I open my eyes to see him circling the plastic toward me. “Go finish it.”

  I keep my gaze on him as I back toward the other end of the body. As long as I keep looking at Michael, I won’t truly see anything else. That’s been true since the day I met him, when I was nine years old. Back when we lived in the same apartment complex, across the landing from each other.

  “Do you remember when we were kids?” he says as I squat to slide my hands beneath the corpse’s shoulders, and I realize he’s thinking about the same thing I am. The past. Back when everything made sense. “My mom used to watch you when your mom worked the night shift?”

  Of course I remember. His mom would make up the couch for me to sleep on, but most nights, after she’d gone to bed, I’d sneak into Michael’s room and curl up in his bed. Some nights, we’d talk for hours. “We stayed up way too late. You’d talk about anything, as long as it was video games.”