Linwood Barclay - The Accident

“Doug,” I whispered. “You set him up… right? Put those boxes in his truck, take the heat off Theo.”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Glen. It’s all very painful.”

“How… wait a… fuck no… you killed Theo. That was you.”

For the first time, I thought she actually looked sorrowful. She rubbed her eyes. “I only did what I had to, okay? Like right now. I’m doing what I have to do.”

“Your… fiance…”

“He phoned me from his trailer, saying he couldn’t stay quiet any longer. Said he had to tell Doug it wasn’t his fault. I said, Theo, don’t do anything till I get there, and when I did, I said okay, call Doug, invite him over, tell him in person, that was the honorable way to do it. And as soon as Theo got off the phone, I walked him into the woods. I’d brought one of my dad’s guns.”

A tear ran down her cheek.

“I hid my car, then parked Theo’s truck down by the road so Doug would have to walk in. When he was looking around the trailer, I slipped the gun into his car. Betsy’s car.”

I was just able to understand it, but my brain was getting cloudy.

“The thing is, Glen, I’d rather be single, and on the outside, than married and sitting in a jail cell the rest of my life. You have to get up.”

“What?”

She got off the chair and knelt down beside me. She held on to the gun with one hand and grabbed my elbow with the other. Yanking on me, she said, “Let’s go. Up. Up!”

“Sally,” I said, on my knees now and weaving, “you puttin’ me on an off-ramp, too?”

“No. It has to be different.”

“What… how?”

“Come on, please, Glen. You can’t change how this is going to go. Don’t make it hard for both of us.”

She pulled hard and got me off my knees. She’d always been in good shape, and had the edge on me in size. Plus she had the added advantage of being sober. I tried to get my wrists apart but Sally had done a good job taping them. With enough time, I might have been able to free them. “Where are we going?”

“To the bathroom,” Sally said.

“What? I don’t have to go to the bathroom.” I thought a moment. “Maybe.”

I swayed. I was definitely drunk.

“This way, Glen. Just take it a step at a time.” She walked me patiently out of the kitchen, through the dining room, where I bumped into a chair, and into the hall that led to the bedrooms and the bathroom.

I didn’t know what, exactly, Sally had planned, but I had to do something. Try to make a break for it.

Suddenly, I threw my weight into her, ramming her into the wall with my shoulder. She knocked a commemorative Wedgwood plate, adorned with a profile of Richard Nixon, off its hook and to the floor, where it shattered.

I turned to run, but my feet caught on the carpet runner and I went down. Without hands to break my fall, I landed on my cheekbone. Pain rocketed through my jaw.

“Damn it, Glen, stop being such an asshole!” Sally shouted. I turned enough to see her standing over me, the gun pointed at my head. “Get the fuck up, and this time I’m not helping you.”

Very, very slowly, I got to my feet. With the gun, she pointed to the door to the bathroom. “In there,” she said.

I stood in the doorway of Sally’s refinished bathroom. Theo’s handiwork was everywhere. The toilet, sink, and tub were gleaming white porcelain. Uneven black-and-white checkerboard tiling covered the floor. Some of the grouting was chipped, and there was a glimmer of the heating cable beneath the tile. It hadn’t been properly covered.

The new tub had fresh caulking about halfway around. The tub, I was guessing, had never been used.

But it was full of water.

“Down on your knees,” Sally said.

Even in my drunken stupor, it was starting to become clear. Like Sheila, I was going to be found dead in my truck, with a very high blood-alcohol count. But they weren’t going to find me on an off-ramp.

They were going to find me in the water.

If I was doing this to someone, I’d run them off the road at Gulf Pond. Put my victim behind the wheel, roll the truck into the water, and let it sink. Hoof it home from there. When they hauled out the body, the lungs would be full of water.

“It… it won’t work, Sally,” I said. “They’ll put it together eventually.”

“On your knees,” she said again, sounding only a little impatient. “Face the tub.”

“I’m not doing it. I’m-”

She kicked me, hard, in the back of my right knee, and I dropped like a stone.

The tiles were hard beneath my knees. Even through my pants, I could feel warmth radiating through them. My left knee straddled two uneven tiles. One made a crunching noise beneath my weight, an indication that the tiling job was a joke.

If the tiles were cracked, if water could seep through, then -

It all happened very quickly. Sally tossed the gun onto the counter next to the sink, then pounced on the upper half of my body. She threw all her weight onto my shoulders, forcing my head over the edge of the tub.

All I managed to say was “Jesus, no-” before my head went into the water.

I guess I was expecting it to be warm, like bathwater, but it was ice cold. My mouth and nose filled instantly. Panic at not being able to breathe overwhelmed me.

I knocked her off me for half a second, raised my head above the water and gasped. But then Sally was on me again, one hand grabbing hold of my hair to keep my head down, the other grabbing hold of my belt at the back of my jeans, trying to tip me forward. Even though I didn’t have my arms free, water was being splashed everywhere.

Let it splash.

My mind was racing. With what little mental faculties and oxygen I had left, I was desperately trying to figure a way to get out from under Sally. The edge of the tub was acting as a lever for her, helping her keep my head under the water. She was expecting me to fight her, to try to push back, and she was well positioned to keep it from happening. I wondered if I could throw her off if I suddenly stopped resisting and allowed the rest of my body to fall into the tub.

I gave it a try.

Suddenly, I let my head go forward even deeper into the tub. My forehead banged the bottom. I felt Sally’s hand slip free of my belt, and then I twisted around and rose up, bringing my head above water. Now I was sitting with my butt on the bottom, my back against the wall.

I gasped again, trying to get as much air into my lungs as quickly as I could.

Water swelled and coursed over the edge of the tub, spreading across the floor and dribbling down into the heat vent and the numerous cracks between the tiles. I threw my body around, forcing more water out of the tub. Not only would that make it harder for Sally to submerge my head, it was getting the water out where I wanted it.

Fingers crossed that Theo’s work was consistent.

I pulled my legs back, then shot them forward, catching Sally hard in the chest. The motion knocked her back onto the floor and tipped me sideways into the tub. One of my legs was still dangling over the edge of the tub.

Sally had thrown her hands back to break her fall. Her palms landed flat on the tile surface, water nearly up to the top of her knuckles.

Something happened.

There was the sound of sparking. Suddenly, Sally seemed to freeze. Her eyes opened wide.

Then the lights in the bathroom shorted, then went out. But there was faint illumination from a hall light. Enough to see Sally’s body fall onto the floor with a soft splash.

She lay there, staring at the ceiling, not moving a muscle.

The heated floor. The water had shorted it out and electrocuted her.

That sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen if it was wired in correctly, if the proper parts were used. If the tiling was any good.