Билл Пронзини - In an Evil Time

Getting the body out of there and into the wheelbarrow was a grim struggle. It had stiffened in full rigor and he couldn’t unbend it from the S curve. Wielding the pick and shovel had weakened his arms and back, so that he was unable to lift the deadweight as easily as he had at Rakubian’s house. He jerked, pulled, finally got it over the lip, but when he tried to lower it, it slipped down and upended the barrow with an echoing clang. Blank period after that. He had no memory of righting the carrier, hoisting Rakubian into it; he was halfway to the excavation, wheeling his heavy load, before he came back to himself.

The hole was too narrow. He realized that as soon as he pushed the wheelbarrow alongside. A sound like a hurt animal’s whimper came out of him. More digging, another foot or so of width before the bent and bag-wrapped remains would fit into the hole.

Upturn the barrow, body thumping on plywood. Pick. Shovel. Loose dirt onto the side pile. Clods, chunks of rock into the carrier. Pick. Shovel. Dirt, clods, chunks. Wide enough now? Almost. Pick, shovel, dirt, clods, chunks. Pick shovel dirt clods chunks. Climb out and take up the handles and wheel the barrow out of the way.

Roll the dead thing into its grave.

Prod and pull until it was wedged on its side.

It fit in there, just barely. Tight squeeze. The Sarouk carpet still had to go in, but that shouldn’t be a problem because the hole was deep enough and overlong by a couple of feet. Plenty of room to spread it and tuck it around the corpse.

He went and got the rug, stumbling a little on enervated legs. Untied and unrolled it and covered the body, working to find room along the sides, wadding its fringed ends into the two-foot open space. He was panting when he finished; he couldn’t seem to take in enough air. He looked at the shovel, said “No” aloud, and crawled over to the side wall and sat motionless with his legs extended, trying to breathe.

Sat there.

And sat there.

Outside somewhere, a night bird made a low screeching sound. It roused him from an exhausted near-doze. His chest ached but he had his wind back. He heaved upright and picked up the shovel, a lead weight in his hands. He plunged the blade into the pile of loose earth, began to fill in the grave.

He had no idea, afterward, how long it took. The pile shrank, Rakubian and the Sarouk and the sides of the hole gradually disappeared. And the cellar floor was once more pounded flat and even. He leaned on the shovel, staring down. Gone. Dead and buried and soon to be gone forever. Not to be forgotten, though, not until Jack Hollis was ready for his own fine and private place.

He felt like puking again.

Still work to be done. Screw the push broom handle into the base, sweep the section of earth so it looked as though it had never been disturbed. Replace the two plywood sections. Sweep out the remaining loose dirt. Carry the tools outside, then shine the lantern around to be sure there was nothing to make Pete Dulac or anyone in his crew suspicious. It seemed all right, but how could he really be certain? So tired, used up — he had no judgment left. Have to take it on faith. They had no reason to suspect anything wrong, did they?

Take the barrow out to the dump, empty it, leave it where he’d found it. Disassemble the broom, load it and the pick and shovel into the trunk. Gloves off, galoshes off, overalls off and into the trunk. Take out the blanket, get his pullover and jacket from the front seat, find his away across to the trailer. Water hookup there, fed by the well that had been dug on the property. He stripped to the waist and splashed icy water on his face and upper body, gasping and shivering, to rid his flesh of the stink and residue of his grave digging.

He dried off quickly with the blanket, yanked on the pullover and jacket. Back at the car, he started the engine, put the heater on high. Sat hugging himself as warm air began to flood the interior. Kept on sitting there because he did not trust himself to drive yet.

What time was it? He held his watch up to peer at the dial. After ten. Three hours up here. That was how long it took to bury the dead — three hours.

He sat. The chill in him was bone deep; the heater did no more than warm his skin, make him drowsy. His arms and legs, his torso, tingled with fatigue. He shut off the engine — low on gas and he couldn’t chance running out on the way home. But his eyelids stayed heavy, his mind dull with torpor. Don’t go to sleep, for God’s sake.

He slept.

Jerked awake, slept a little more, woke up and stayed awake. Reaction, regeneration: still exhausted but with the edge off, no longer sleepy or muddle-headed. Good because now he was ready for the drive home; bad because his thoughts were focused again.

I did it. I did this. How could I have done a thing like this?

The fear still lived in him. Revulsion, too. And now something close to self-hatred.

He shrank from the thought of facing Eric, Cassie, Angela. If he had to do it tonight... His watch told him he’d slept for ninety minutes; it was 11:45. Four and a half hours up here. It would be 12:30 by the time he got home. The kids would likely be in bed, but Cassie? Worried that he was out so late, that he hadn’t called, she might wait up for him. Could he hide the truth from her? Not a question of could — he had to. Bad enough what he’d done tonight, but what Eric had done... keep that from her at all cost.

He’d be all right in the morning, clearheaded and able to deal with the situation. Just get through the rest of tonight the best way he could. The worst was already over... almost over.

Wasn’t it?

Except for the porch light, the house was completely dark. So Cassie had gone to bed, too. Even if she was still awake, it would be easy enough to plead exhaustion and go right to sleep.

Dark house, uneventful drive home... he should be feeling better now, safer. Instead he felt... strange. So drained he’d had to open the window, turn the heater off and the radio on to keep himself alert, but inside he was still wired tight. The tingling that had been in his limbs earlier seemed to have passed by some weird osmosis through skin and flesh, become an internal sensation like a steady, low-voltage electrical pulse. He could feel it in his throat, his chest, down low in his belly.

He let himself into the house. No light in the hall; that meant Cassie was angry as well as anxious. The ticking of the grandfather clock seemed overloud to him; the odors of cooked meat, furniture polish, air freshener, Cassie’s perfume were strong in his nostrils. As if his senses had become heightened somehow. He took the stairs in an old man’s climb, one riser at a time. Paused in front of Angela’s door, resisted the urge to look in on her and Kenny, and moved ahead to the open door to his bedroom.

Cassie was a motionless blob of shadow on her side of the bed. He could hear her breathing and knew from the cadence that she was awake. Not ready to talk to him yet, though; she lay silent as he crossed to the bathroom.

He shut the door, turned on the light. The strange feeling had grown even more pronounced; the inner tingling was urgent, as if any second now his hands, his body would start to twitch and jerk. He imagined himself in a kind of uncontrollable fit, beginning to foam at the mouth; the image, gone in two or three seconds, left him cold all over. He stripped naked, threw his clothes into the hamper, turned on the hot water in the shower. The thought came to him then, standing there next to the toilet, that he hadn’t had to urinate since he’d stopped on the road into the Paloma Mountains after the incident with the cop. Nearly five hours up there, the drive home, even now standing here... no pressure at all.

In the shower, under a stream as hot as he could stand it, he scrubbed himself with a thick lather. Hands, face, arms, underarms, upper body. The soapy washcloth took away the last of the sweat-stink, but he didn’t feel clean. And now his skin seemed too tight, sensitive to the touch, prickly on the surface again — sensations that had nothing to do with the steamy water.