by Warren Court
SIXTEEN
I’m spent. I fall back almost to the ground but I stagger back up. I’m sobbing, sucking in deep breaths so I don’t pass out. I’m still holding the club. It’s red now, and dripping with Waltz’s blood.
“You asshole,” I say, spitting the words out one at a time in between breaths. “Why’d you do that? Look at you. Huh, tough guy? Happy now?”
I drop the club in the trunk and straighten up and look around. We’re a good way away from the light of the front doors, and with the angle his car is parked at I don’t think anyone can see us. I have to act quickly, though. I grab Waltz under the arms and lift. He’s heavy. Dense weight, lot of muscle. He would have done the same thing to me if he could, I figure.
I lift him half into the trunk then pick his legs up and shove him in. His eyes are closed, thank god, and there’s blood down half of his face. I drop the bloody car lock club on top of him. His body is jammed in there at a weird angle, but I know he won’t mind anymore. I reach in his pocket and pull out his fob and then I close the trunk.
I search the ground around Waltz’s car as best I can but it’s so dark out. I pat myself down, check my belongings. I have my wallet and my phone and my own car keys; they didn’t fall out in the scuffle. I get in Waltz’s Honda and leave.
I pull over in the parking lot of a small strip mall to think things out. My car is back at the arena. I weigh the odds of leaving it there all night. I don’t think it will get tagged or towed, but I will have to go back and get it at some point. how? What am I going to do with Waltz and this car? I decide I need to ditch them both.
If Waltz is reported missing, the police might start looking at him for the Lent murder. If Marco goes to Waltz’s house, snoops around in his closet, he might see the shirt with the emblem on it. That clue and Waltz’s disappearance should put Marco on to him as the killer. Then maybe if Waltz’s body is never found, they might think Waltz committed suicide, or at the very least is on the run.
I pop the trunk of his car and get out. His eyes have opened slightly now and I see the black circles staring at me through half-closed lids. I root around in his coat and come up with his wallet. I close the trunk and get back in the car and start going through the wallet. There’s a picture of him and his wife. Him and his wife and baby. I feel sorry for them; they’ve lost a husband. A father.
I turn on the car radio to get some music going. He would have done the same to me, I tell myself again. To protect all he had. Sure, he would have. If he had gotten on top of me, he would have killed me. Because I knew his secret. I take some comfort in that. It was him or me. And it’s still me. Now I have to deal with his body and this car.
The half-hour drive back to Burlington allows me to clear my head. Again I keep to the speed limit, make all the signals. I just pray that Waltz has an up-to-date sticker on his licence plate. I park Waltz’s car on the street parallel with Laura’s and walk over. I doubt she’s even taken notice of what kind of car I drive.
When she lets me in, we embrace. She hugs me hard.
“This is a nice surprise,” she says. She looks me up and down. “What the hell? Same shirt?”
“Yup. God, I have to get some clothes.”
“You can strip those off. I’ll put them in the wash. Those pants washable?”
“Yes, they are.”
“You can use my bathrobe.”
That strip-down session lasts a little longer than needed. Afterwards, I’m lying in bed, and Laura takes my clothes and puts them in the wash.
“What’s this on your pants?” she asks from the hall where her machines are.
I shoot up from the bed, instantly alert.
“What?”
She comes back into the room with my dark blue pants. She’s holding them by the knees and I can see a dark stain.
“Crap, it’s motor oil,” I say. “My car leaks. I was putting in some oil and dropped the filler cap. It went under the car and I must have knelt down in some of the spilled oil.”
“It’ll be hard to get it out.”
“Here. Let me,” I say, and buck-naked, get out of bed and reach for my pants.
“No bother. This is – what is that thing Darryl is always calling a special handling?”
“Value-added service,” I say.
“Right. The washing is value-added service. We’re here to please.” And she leans seductively against the doorjamb.
“No, seriously, I’ll handle it.”
“No bother.” With pants in hand, still in her nightie, she heads down the hall to her machines. I don’t follow; I sit clutching the sheet around me, paralyzed. She comes back.
“I put some stain remover on it. I’ll put the white load in next. Your shirt is ready to get up and walk around by itself.”
I lie back in bed, my mind racing. Are there stains on the shirt too? They won’t look like oil stains on a white shirt; they’ll look like blood. I pretend to doze. Laura says she can’t sleep and reads with a night light on. A murder mystery; she has a stack of them next to the bed. Great.
The washer buzzer goes off and she grabs my shirt and stuffs it in a laundry bin full of other white articles. I raise my head as she leaves and, again, the few minutes it takes her to switch the laundry and put the white load in seems like an eternity.
I roll back over, away from her, as she comes back into the room. She yawns, turns out the night light and gets back in bed. She puts her hand on my shoulder to see if I’m awake, a signal she wants more loving. I stay rock still, my back turned to her. Eventually she removes her hand and soon afterwards, I hear light snoring coming from her.
SEVENTEEN
In the morning, Laura brings in the newspaper. She’s wearing her bathrobe. I’m in my pants and shirt; she had gotten up after the white load had run last night and hung my shirt up. It’s wash-and-wear and looks good. My pants are free of blood stains, too. But maybe there is residual blood in her washing machine or dryer. I should burn her house down, remove the evidence. Get a grip, I tell myself. She hands me half the paper to read while we eat eggs and toast.
There’s an article on the front page about Lent, with a nice picture of her; she’s looking right at me. I almost drop the glass of orange juice I’m holding. I try to keep it together as I read the accompanying article.
Police have no suspects. Officers are still interviewing witnesses and are appealing to the public to come forward with any information.
“Oh, is there an update on the murder in that section?” Laura asks. She takes the paper from me without asking while nibbling on a piece of toast with marmalade.
“No suspects,” I say.
She munches and reads. I watch her closely; my hand subconsciously moves to my knee where the blood stain had been hours earlier. A brutal thought flashes through my mind for a second: if she suspects me, what will I do? Can I do to her what I’ve done to Lent, to Waltz? I remember that he’s mouldering out in the trunk of his car just a block away. It was stupid coming here; I should have dealt with him last night. And my car – it’s still up at the arena. No doubt Mrs. Waltz has called the cops, told them his last known whereabouts was the arena. They’ll write down all the plates of cars still left there. It won’t mean anything to them at the time, but they’ll eventually hook Waltz’s disappearance up with Gillian’s death, and my name will resurface. Bam – I’ll be in jail in time for Christmas turkey.
“I can’t stay.”
“What?”
“I have to go.” I wolf down my toast. I am actually really hungry.
“Okay.”
“Yeah, I have to get to Niagara for nine.” I look at the clock on the wall; it’s just after eight. I kiss her. “It’s a corporate sit. I’m doing it on my own. Rick doesn’t know about it…”
“Don’t worry. Last thing I would do is tell him.”
“I know. I need to change my suit. My jacket is wrinkled.”
“All right, then. It’s wham, bam time, is it?”
“No,
don’t be crazy. I can come back tomorrow night if you’d like.”
“No, I have plans with the girls from work. It’s Susan’s last week with us. We were going to do something tonight but she was busy. So we pushed it to Thursday.”
“Sounds like fun. I’m really sorry.”
“Your shirt is still damp.”
“No worries. I can make it home and change and get down there for nine. Might be a half hour late. I’ll blame it on traffic.”
“Going the opposite direction from Toronto?”
I shrug.
I walk to the top of the street where Waltz’s car is parked. It’s still there, unmolested. I see no cops around. Maybe they’re hiding in the bushes. My heart pounds as I approach it. I look around and blip the door and slide in quick. I fiddle with the key in the ignition. There’s barking. A police dog? No, a fit young woman with a Shih Tzu is at the rear of the car. The dog is barking but the woman is texting. The dog smells Waltz. I get the car started and peel out of there.
I park Waltz’s car two blocks away from my building and race up to my apartment. I strip out of my work clothes and change quickly into a pair of track pants and a t-shirt. A baseball cap and dark sunglasses complete my look. I grab my mountain bike and a spring jacket on the way out the door.
I carry the bike downstairs, trying to make as little noise as possible. My apartment is in an old converted house and there are five units. My bike barely fits into the back seat of Waltz’s car and a couple of spokes get bent when I jam it in. The front wheel is jammed up between the two front seats and it’s difficult to put the car into drive but I manage. It’s not like I could put it in the trunk.
The rain-slick streets of Hamilton give way to Highway Six south. I head towards the Mount Hope airport. The change in elevation blankets the highway in dense fog and I slow down and creep along, barely able to see twenty feet in front of me. A car barrels by at the eighty-kilometre speed limit. Idiot. I’m doing fifty and I don’t feel safe. Last thing I want to do is run it off the road or smash into someone.
I turn off for the airport. A big cargo plane comes in over a farmer’s field toward the runway. Past the airport I go until I come to a random side road. The gravel pings off the underside of the car and I cringe at the damage being done to the paint, but then I realize this isn’t my car.
I crest the top of a hill; ghostly patches of fog lie in the fields below me. It’s spooky. I take another random turn onto an even narrower and rougher country road. Am I deliberately trying to get myself lost? Finally, I pull over and shut the car off and wait. Then I get out and listen. The only sound is of leaves rustling in the trees as the wine picks up. I wait ten minutes by the side of Waltz’s car, acting casual. If someone comes along, I’m going to tell them I’m lost. Which isn’t entirely a lie.
Finally, I pop the trunk and there’s Waltz, still looking up at me through half slits. The sight of his dead body, stuffed in at that uncomfortable angle, his skin going grey and drying out, scares me. Will I be able to get him out? Is he stiff? I don’t think I can handle that.
Hey, buddy, awfully sorry about all this. I pull at him; he’s still pliable. I know nothing of rigor mortis and this is the only lesson I want in it. I pull at him some more and out he comes. There’s a strong smell of urine and feces coming from the trunk. I tug him halfway out of the car and see the seat of his pants is soiled. I dump him on the ground quickly and close the trunk. Not too hard; just enough for the lock to catch.
I drag Waltz down the culvert running alongside the road and up onto the bank on the other side. My socks are cold and wet now. It doesn’t bother me. Ditch everything, I tell myself, even the shoes I’m wearing. I’m getting smart about this. What a real killer I am.
There’s a stand of trees on the other side of the ditch. It’s not very thick; I can see a farmer’s field beyond it and in the distance the dark shape of a barn and a farmhouse, I presume. It’ll have to do. I’m not about to put Waltz back into that trunk and drive around until I find the perfect spot.
Should I have brought a shovel? Sure. But what guy in an apartment in the city owns a shovel? I could have bought one. Yeah, then they’d have a nice video recording of me buying one. The soil is full of roots anyway. I would have to spend hours out here.
There’s a slight depression in the ground in the centre of the stand of trees; that’ll have to do. I can’t see why that farmer would ever come over this way, or anyone else for that matter. The road is rough; I doubt anyone has used it for years. Few people probably even know it is here. No one will find him. If they finally do, he’ll just be a pile of bones by then.
Now to the gruesome task. I start to strip off Waltz’s clothes. It’s not an easy thing, but I don’t take care with the garments. They get ripped, and I tear them off until he’s naked. His stark white body contrasts frighteningly with the dark soil. I set his clothes aside and start to scoop dead leaves on him. I pile them up until they’re a foot high and stand back to admire my handiwork. No one will see him from the road. I know that eventually animals will get at him, but I just want time. Time to think this through, time for the cops to focus on Waltz and forget about me. Time for witnesses to forget my comings and goings.
I gather up his clothes and put them back in the car. I drive for another hour, along more side roads, until I see a concrete sewer pipe sticking up by the side of the road. The air is heavy with the smell of sewage. The tube rises up about three feet out of the ground. On top of it is a rusty manhole cover. I try and pry it off, but it’s not budging. A quick root around in the trunk of Waltz’s car produces a lug wrench with a crowbar attachment on one end. A bit of grunting and pushing and up comes the manhole cover. The smell is nauseating and I almost puke, but in ten seconds I have Waltz’s clothes down there, in with the slop. I toss the bloody anti-theft device in too, and the manhole cover goes back on.
EIGHTEEN
Of course, now I am well and truly lost. It takes me forty minutes to get back to the main road by the airport. I could have used the GPS on my phone but I am fearful that would leave some kind of trace. I’m not entirely sure it isn’t tracking me anyway.
I should be at work by now; it’s almost noon. Hopefully I don’t have any appointment cards on my desk for this morning. I’m surprised the office hasn’t called. Maybe they don’t care, want me to continue to screw up so they can get rid of me easier. I should call them but I don’t want my cell phone making a call anywhere near where I dropped Waltz off.
I have one more stop to make. The place I’m looking for is miles away from where I laid Waltz down, up near the town of Milton. Fastest-growing city in Ontario. Any time I do a sales call up there I say that, and the homeowner smiles and nods, and together both of us collectively think Who gives a crap?
When I get up to Milton, I skirt around the edges of the town, far from the main street. I don’t want Waltz’s car showing up on any closed-circuit TV footage. Eventually I’m back out in the country; it’s nice out here. I know exactly where I’m headed.
When I pull over to the side of the road, I hear the sound of the rushing water. The river is through the trees and down a hill. This is where I parked for lunch three months ago; it was a nice reflective moment. I had gone my third straight week without a sale and was contemplating what I was going to do with my life. The water and the surrounding woods were comforting. I made up my mind to keep trying, to go to that last appointment and really put all that sales training stuff I had learned into practice. I remember driving away from the idyllic setting with my mind made up to make a sale, a big one. Of course I didn’t get it. The lady who showed me around was on her cell phone the entire time and barely said a word to me when I left the estimate on the coffee table.
And now here I am again. I take my bike out of the back seat and lean it against a tree. One final check of the car and I point it towards the river, put it in neutral and push it from behind. It’s heavy and takes all of my strength, but when the front wheels
hit the downward slope it starts to pick up speed, and I watch as it goes crashing down through the brush into the fast-moving water.
After a quick check to make sure it’s gone into the water, with only the rear bumper exposed, I hop on my bike and start pedalling.
I’ve never ridden so far. The cold October air tightens my lungs. I head back to the main street of Milton, close to the GO Bus station. I pull in behind a plaza full of auto body and muffler shops and leave my bike leaning up against a brick wall. I can get another one. I look at myself; I’m covered in burrs and my clothes are streaked with mud. I look like I just hauled a dead body into the woods. I pick off the burrs and leaf bits and wipe the now dried mud off as best I can. With ball cap tightly pulled down and sunglasses on despite it being an overcast day, I walk the three blocks to the GO station.
On the twenty-minute bus ride from Milton to Brantford, using a round-trip ticket I paid for in cash, I realize how stupid I am. I should have parked Waltz’s car a couple of blocks from the arena and gone and moved my car somewhere else, then dealt with the dead guy’s automobile. Now I have to go back to the scene. I imagine an army of cops swarming over that car park with Marco in charge.
Halfway between Milton and Brantford I call Ida at Henderson. It’s noon now so I get her voicemail; she’s at lunch.
I tell her I’m not coming in, that I’m sick. That she should take any cards on my desk and give them to Kevin and John to do, or rearrange them for tomorrow. I’ll be back in by then, I’m sure.