Joe Lansdale - The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

“In the case of the bodies, both were found after the circus passed through,” Martha said, “but from the estimated times of death the papers gave, we’ve been able to figure they were killed about the time the circus was in town. And my guess is those missing women are dead too, and by the same hand.”

“Waldo’s?” I said.

“That’s right,” Martha said.

I considered all that.

Jasmine said, “Pretty coincidental, don’t you think?”

“Well, yeah,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean —”

“And the two bodies had been mutilated,” Martha said. She leaned against the counter and reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out the fold-out I had found. She smoothed it out on the counter top. “Body parts were missing. And I bet they were cut up, just like this fold-out is marked. As for the missing body parts, eyes and pussies, I figure. Those are the parts he has circled and blacked out.”

“Watch your language,” I said to Martha.

No one seemed to take much note of me.

“The bodies were found in the town’s local dump,” Jasmine said.

“It’s curious,” I admitted, “but still, to accuse a man of murder on the basis of circumstantial evidence.”

“One more thing,” Martha said. “Both bodies had traces of black paint on them. Like it had been used to mark the areas the killer wanted to cut, and I presume, did cut. That’s certainly a lot of goddamn circumstantial evidence, isn’t it?”

“Enough that we’re going to keep an eye on Waldo,” Jasmine said.

I must admit right now that I didn’t think even then, after what I had been told, there was anything to this Waldo the Great as murderer. It struck me that murders and disappearances happen all the time, and that if one were to look through the LaBorde paper carefully, it would be possible to discover there had been many of both, especially disappearances, before and after the arrival of the circus. I mean that paper covered a lot of small towns and communities, and LaBorde was a fairly large town itself. A small city actually. Most of the disappearances would turn out to be nothing more than someone leaving on a trip for a few days without telling anyone, and most of the murders would be committed by a friend or relative of the victim and would have nothing to do with the circus or marked-up fold-outs.

Of course, the fact that the two discovered bodies had been mutilated gave me pause, but not enough to go to the law about it. That was just the sort of half-baked idea that had gotten my ass in a crack earlier.

Still, that night, I went with Martha and Jasmine out to the trailer park.

It was cloudy that night and jags of lightning made occasional cuts through the cloud cover and thunder rumbled and light drops of rain fell on the windshield of Martha’s van.

We drove out to the road behind the park about dark, peeked out the windows and through the gaps in the trees. The handful of pole lights in the park were gauzy in the wet night and sad as dying fireflies. Their poor, damp rays fell against some of the trees — their branches waving in the wind like the fluttering hands of distressed lunatics — and forced the beads of rain on the branches to give up tiny rainbows. The rainbows rose up, misted outward a small distance, then once beyond the small circumference of light, their beauty was consumed by the night.

Martha got out her binoculars and Jasmine sat on the front passenger side with a notepad and pen, ready to record anything Martha told her to. They felt that the more documentation they had, the easier it would be to convince the police that Waldo was a murderer.

I was in the seat behind theirs, my legs stretched out and my back against the van, looking away from the trailer most of the time, wondering how I had let myself in on this. About midnight I began to feel both sleepy and silly. I unwrapped a candy bar and ate it.

“Would you quit that goddamn smacking back there,” Martha said. “It makes me nervous.”

“Pardon me all to hell,” I said, and wadded up the wrapper noisily and tossed it on the floorboard.

“Daddy, would you quit?” Jasmine said.

“Now we got something,” Martha said.

I sat up and turned around. There were no lights on in the trailers in the park except for Waldo’s trailer; a dirty, orange glow shone behind one of his windows, like a fresh slice of smoked cheese. Other than that, there was only the pole lights, and they didn’t offer much. Just those little rainbows made of bad light and rain. Without the binoculars there was little to observe in detail, because it was a pretty good distance from where we were to Waldo’s trailer, but I could see him coming out of the door, holding it open, the whole pack of poodles following after.

Waldo bent down by the trailer and pulled a small shovel out from beneath it. The poodles wandered around and started doing their bathroom business. Waldo cupped his hands over a cigarette and lit it with a lighter and smoked while he noted the dog’s delivery spots. After a while he went about scooping up their messes with his shovel and making several trips to the dumpster to get rid of it.

Finished, he pushed the shovel beneath the trailer and smoked another cigarette and ground it hard beneath his heel and opened the trailer door and called to the dogs. They bounded up the steps and into the trailer like it was one of their circus tricks. No poodle tried to fuck another poodle. Waldo didn’t kick anybody. He went inside, and a moment later came out again, this time minus the poodles. He was carrying something. A box. He looked about carefully, then placed the box in the back of his pickup. He went back inside the trailer.

“Goddamn,” Martha said. “There’s a woman’s leg in that box.”

“Let me see,” I said.

“You can’t see it now,” she said. “It’s down in the bed of the truck.”

She gave me the binoculars anyway, and I looked. She was right. I couldn’t see what was in the bed of the truck. “He wouldn’t just put a woman’s leg in the back of his pickup,” I said.

“Well, he did,” Martha said.

“Oh God,” Jasmine said, and she flicked on her pen light and glanced at her watch and started writing on her notepad, talking aloud as she did. “Twelve-o-five, Waldo put woman’s leg in the bed of his truck. Oh, shit, who do you think it could be?”

“One could hope it’s that goddamn bitch down at the county clerk’s office,” Martha said. “I been waiting for something to happen to her.”

“Martha!” Jasmine said.

“Just kidding,” Martha said. “Kinda.”

I had the binoculars tight against my face as the trailer door opened again. I could see very well with the infra-red business. Waldo came out with another box. As he came down the steps, the box tilted slightly. It was open at the top and I could see very clearly what was in it.

“A woman’s head,” I said. My voice sounded small and childish.

“Jesus Christ,” Martha said. “I didn’t really, really, believe he was a murderer.”

Waldo was back inside the trailer. A moment later he reappeared. Smaller boxes under each arm.

“Let me see,” Jasmine said.

“No,” I said. “You don’t need to.”

“But…” Jasmine began.

“Listen to your father,” Martha said.

I handed the binoculars back to Martha. She didn’t look through them. We didn’t need to try and see what was in the other boxes. We knew. The rest of Waldo’s victim.

Waldo unfolded a tarp in the back of his pickup and stretched it across the truck bed and fastened it at all corners, then got inside the cab and cranked the engine.

“Do we go to the police now?” Jasmine said.

“After we find out where he’s taking the body,” Martha said.