Gary Alexander - The Best American Mystery Stories 2010

Cops like to walk slow, I’ve noticed. Maybe it’s because they’re fat, or maybe it makes them feel important to think that someone has to wait for them. He leaned down by my window, bracing his hand on the ledge. “You come here a lot,” he said.

“No, sir,” I said. “I just got lost, that’s all.”

“You got lost last night,” he said. “And the night before that.”

He squatted beside the car, and I noticed the little red mustache strung across his upper lip. Before I could think, I asked him, “Do you have a brother who works at the post office?”

I knew what I’d said before he did. His hand went to his holster, and when he opened his mouth I could see the threads of spit that connected his lips. I opened the door and banged it into his chest. That must have knocked his pistol right out of his mind, because when I got the car turned around he was still kneeling in the middle of the road, one hand on his belly and the other raised as if signing for mercy. I thought of the dog worrying the life raft while I crouched in the wet bushes by the riverbank, and I hit him as hard as I could.

I didn’t tell Milo what I’d done, but he must have read about the policeman’s death and put two and two together because he stopped coming around. I stopped going to work. I slept a lot, and it seemed that whenever I woke up Stanley was standing by the open refrigerator fussing about how we were going to eat. Then I woke up and it was night, and I could hear him down in the laurel hell talking to John the Baptist. I went to the bathroom and on my way back I saw that he had found the little gun Maynard had given me and left it on the kitchen table. I wanted to tell him I would never need to kill myself. I could always go somewhere else; it was he and Milo who were stuck here. Then I tried to think when was the last time I had a conversation with Stanley that actually made sense, and I realized I couldn’t remember.

When I woke again, I thought at first I was still dreaming. I had heard Maynard’s voice in my head before, and this time he sounded just like he did in my nightmares, worried and fretful. But a Cadillac exactly like the Cadillac Milo had pushed off the cliff was parked in the driveway, and when I pinched myself to make sure I was awake they saw me. Theresa ran for the front door, but I got there first and shot the double-bolt. “What have you done with him?” she said. “Where is he, you selfish bitch?”

“Come on out, honey,” Maynard said. “We’re just excited to see you, that’s all.”

While I pulled on my bathrobe, I heard Theresa whisper, “Go around and see if there’s a back door.” But I opened it quick, surprising them. Maynard’s face turned a strange color and he stepped back, feeling with his toes to make sure the ground was still there.

“That’s the one you gave her,” Theresa said. “It’s not even loaded, I bet.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. I had bought the bullets at work and loaded them myself. “Walk,” I said, and they backed up to the cliff edge. I knew I had to do whatever I was going to do, because Milo was coming down the path from his cabin and he was still too far away for me to guess what he was thinking. I looked in Maynard’s eyes, which were as blue as Moses Doe’s, though of course that’s just a coincidence.

“Ashley,” he said. “Please. Don’t do this.” But Ashley is not my name.

The drowned girl drips everywhere, soaking the cheap cloth of the Ford’s back seat. Punter stares at her from the front of the car, first taking in her long blond hair, wrecked by the pond’s amphibian sheen, then her lips, blue where the lipstick’s been washed away, flaky red where it hasn’t. He looks into her glassy green eyes, both pupils so dilated the irises are just slivered halos, the right eye further polluted with burst blood vessels. She wears a lace-frilled gold tank top, a pair of acid-washed jeans with grass stains on the knees and ankles. A silver bracelet around her wrist throws off sparkles in the window-filtered moonlight, the same sparkle he had seen through the lake’s dark mirror, which had made him drop his fishing pole and wade out, then dive in after her. Her feet are bare except for a silver ring on her left pinkie toe, suggesting the absence of sandals, flip-flops. Suggesting something lost in a struggle. Suggesting many things to Punter, too many for him to process all at once.

Punter turns and faces forward. He lights a cigarette, then flicks it out the window after just two drags. Smoking with the drowned girl in the car reminds him of when he worked at the plastics factory, how he would sometimes taste melted plastic in every puff of smoke. How a cigarette there hurt his lungs, left him gasping, his tongue coated with the taste of polyvinyl chloride, of adipates and phthalates. How that taste would leave his throat sore, would make his stomach ache all weekend.

The idea that some part of the dead girl might end up inside him — her wet smell or sloughing skin or dumb luck — he doesn’t need a cigarette that bad.

Punter crawls halfway into the back seat and arranges the girl as comfortably as he can, while he still can. He’s hunted enough deer and rabbits and squirrels to know she’s going to stiffen up, and soon. He arranges her arms and legs to appear as if she’s asleep and then brushes her hair out of her face before climbing back into his own seat.

Looking in the rearview mirror, Punter smiles at the drowned girl, waits for her to smile back. Feels his face flush when he remembers she’s never going to.

He starts the engine. Drives her home.

Punter lives just fifteen minutes from the pond, but tonight it takes longer. He keeps the Ford five miles per hour under the speed limit, stops extra long at every stop sign. He thinks about calling the police, about how he should have already done so instead of dragging the girl onto the shore and into his car.

The cops, they’ll call this disturbing the scene of a crime. Obstructing justice. Tampering with evidence. What the cops will say about what he’s done, Punter already knows all about.

At the house, he leaves the girl in the car while he goes inside and takes a shit, his stool as black and bloody as it has been for months. It burns when he wipes. He needs to see a doctor, but doesn’t have insurance, hasn’t since getting fired.

Afterward, he sits at the kitchen table covered in unopened mail and smokes a cigarette. The phone is only a few feet away, hanging on the wall. The service was disconnected a month ago, but he’s pretty sure he could still call 911, if he wanted to.

He doesn’t want to.

In the garage, he lifts the lid of the chest freezer that sits against the far wall. He stares at the open space above the paper-wrapped bundles of venison, tries to guess if there’s enough room, then stacks the meat on the floor, makes piles of burger and steak and sausage until he’s sure. He goes out to the car and opens the back door. He lifts the girl, grunting as he gathers her into his arms like a child. He’s not as strong as he used to be, and she’s heavier than she looks, with all the water filling her lungs and stomach and intestinal tract. Even through her tank top he can see the way it bloats her belly like she’s pregnant. He’s careful with her as he lays her down in the freezer, careful as he brushes the hair out of her eyes again, as he holds her eyelids closed until he’s sure they’ll stay that way.

The freezer will give him time to decide, time to figure out what lie wants. What he needs. What he and she are capable of together.

Punter wakes up in the middle of the night and puts his boots on in a panic, rushes out to the freezer. The girl’s covered in a thin layer of frost, and immediately he realizes he shouldn’t have put her away wet. He considers taking her out, thawing her, toweling her off, but doesn’t do it. It’s too risky. One thing Punter knows about himself is that he is not good at saying when.