Джеффри Дивер - Nothing Good Happens After Midnight - A Suspense Magazine Anthology

“Saw you kill that man, George,” Reeker says, smiling by pushing both lips together in the middle and up. No blinking. His slow tone and cool demeanor changes when he lunges sideways for the tree stump and grabs the long serrated knife. He holds the handle with one hand and keeps the point poking into the palm of the other. He does that weird mouth middle push up thing again, watching George, who’s struggling and failing to lift his legs and step away. George keeps sinking.

“You threw him right in the river, George,” Reeker says. He slow blinks. Takes a step to George, and George counts the time it takes for Reeker to reach him: three snowshoe steps in three seconds. And in those three seconds, George’s body takes over, acting on pure instinct. He falls to his ass, which hard tree fall frees his feet, like a heavy redwood falling and dislodging its root ball: physics. As Reeker lunges down to follow George, leading with his long knife, George sets his spiked cleat feet to Reeker’s hip joints and pushes. George pushes the entire weight of his grief, of his guilt, in the thrust, sending Reeker to shimmy backwards — just far enough. Puncture holes from the cleats spray blood on the snow, quickly covered by more falling snow.

In this very second, a roar interrupts, something louder than the water and the wind. A dim light grows brighter through the trees, but blurred, as all is blurred in this blizzard. Out of the trees, a snowmobile bombs out of what was a blackened trail and straight into Reeker, punting him to the river’s edge. The snowmobile stops. Backs up. Revs and shoots forward, plowing Reeker into the river.

The river sucks Reeker’s circle-stacked body in, greedily dunks him, drowns him, bobbing, screaming and swallowing water, crashing his round skull into boulders, and freezing his balls off in fatal hypothermia in ten seconds flat.

George is on his ass stunned.

The snowmobile driver stands with her legs straddling the snowmobile seat. She takes off her helmet, releasing her sun-drenched California hair.

She looks over to George. “Oh, thank God, George. Thank God. The news kept escalating warnings. They pieced together his name, this guy, he didn’t even try to hide his identity. Reeker’s the Spine Ripper! I tracked you both by your walkies. They got the upgraded GPS, thank God. Thank Goodness I got here in time, George. I love you!”

“I love you, Karen! I love you!” George yells. He yells it over and over, a gorgeous unending song of I love you’s as he cries in the snow, on his lumberjack ass, in a blizzard, professing his love for a woman who saved him. He cries, too, with relief that she didn’t see him kill the first killer, for that is a tall tale George will never tell, not to Karen, not to those muggers at Malforson’s. Nobody’s ever going to find either body; this roaring river swallows bodies into deep glacial canyons, pinning them under any of thousands of sunk logging trees, dozens of feet deep. That’s why the forest rangers won’t let anyone kayak it, no matter their skill. Everyone will hear about Reeker, for Karen and he will tandem tell that tale, but Reeker’s gone and no witness no longer to George’s crime. As for Kyle, everyone will think he slunk off in the night, disappeared himself into a new identity.

Ayup.

This Kyle tale stays with George, and probably with his ghost overseer, Martha, who protects him from their heavenly displacement, above these gorge streams, and in her afterlife dog, walks on mountain trails. She’s with Cope all right. She is Cope.

Yes, for sure, George doesn’t want any mugger to know about Kyle. So he better go find that damn robot head and get rid of it for good. And to punctuate that thought, to underscore that objective, a howl overtakes all noise. George turns to see Cope howling at the blurry moon, right there, within the trail Karen bombed down. When done, Cope bends her head and picks up a leather book in her teeth. She runs off to join her coyote pack.

“Don’t I know you?” the guy seated across from Venn on the A Train headed uptown toward 207th Street wondered.

Venn tried not to regard him, avoided meeting his eyes. Could be the guy had been a trick in weeks or months past. Somebody he’d picked up in a bar like Tubby’s Tavern where he was headed right now, after midnight like always. Venn didn’t remember faces like that and didn’t want to remember this one either.

“I don’t think so, man,” he said, not quite regarding the guy and not smiling.

Barely regarding him, in other words, which was normally all it took guys who’d paid him for sex at one time or another to move on in their minds. Sometimes they wouldn’t let it go, maybe even wanting more of the same which Venn sometimes provided. He figured he should have been grateful that he remained attractive at the ripe old age of twenty-two.

A glimpse caught in the subway car window across from his seat revealed the tousled hair that swam to his shoulders, mostly brown with some natural blondish streaks. His eyes were the same middle shade, more of a hazel, and a flash of his perfect smile could make any potential trick melt, even the straight ones or ones who at least thought they were straight. Of course, he was also blessed with a great ass which the reflection didn’t show, but that Venn regaled in catching guys, and girls, grab stealthy glimpses of that always lingered a bit too long.

Tubby’s Tavern wasn’t a college bar per se, but its location in a trendy uptown neighborhood was populated by a mix of young professionals, many associated in some respect with nearby Columbia University. A convenient place to gather or stop by alone for a drink.

“Are you sure?” the guy across from him started up again. “Because... ”

“You teach at Columbia?” Venn asked, still not fully meeting his gaze. “Maybe you’ve seen me on campus, something like that.”

“Oh, you’re a student.”

Venn nodded, calculating how many more minutes were left before the train’s final stop at 207th and Broadway came up. “Junior.”

“You look older.”

Ouch, Venn thought. Of course, he couldn’t say exactly what he’d looked like when he was younger, since foster homes, group homes, and shelters were not known for keeping photo albums. Venn had grown up in an assortment of those. His was a classic American tragedy, like homeless veterans and that sort of shit. He chose not to dwell on his past — or his future, for that matter. “Live in the moment” was Venn’s mantra, out of necessity as much as choice.

There wasn’t much glamorous about being a hustler, but Venn had been the subject of a profile in New York Magazine and was included, anonymously as well, in the New York Times Magazine too. One trick he’d done claimed to be a film producer who wanted to base a movie around him. Venn had pretended to be excited and given the guy a disconnected number, because Venn thought he was full of shit. Months later, the same New York Magazine issue containing the article on him included the guy’s picture in a story on Hollywood up-and-comers, meaning he’d been legit.

If that didn’t beat all.

The train slid into the station and ground to a squealing stop, Venn and the guy across from him rising at the same time.

“You have yourself a nice night,” the guy said, a forced smile accompanying his words.

“You, too. Be safe.”

The man’s face played with a smile, like he knew something he didn’t want to share. “I was just going to say the same thing to you.”

Now Venn was regarding him closer, the man’s features appearing formless, not quite the same as they’d appeared before, but not really different either.