Tad Williams - A Stark And Wormy Knight

It goes on throughout the night. The blood gets sticky, dries, and when he finds hidden spots he has to scrub harder and harder to get them clean. He brings his spotlight out of the garage to help him see better. The ants themselves are repaid for their searching by being wiped up along with whatever they have found. It doesn’t quite seem fair, but hell, they’re only ants.

At last, sometime around ten the next morning, his eyes red and his head ringing with exhaustion, he sees that the ants are all walking aimlessly. There is nothing left to find. No pieces, no spatters, nothing. The tiny, mindless creatures have done their work. They have saved his life.

Logic, he thinks as he drags the tarp to the garage. He’ll deal with the rest tonight, when it’s dark. Cold, hard, logic, that’s how to do things. Mr. Spock? Damn right.

Sunday has its share of struggles, too. He empties her car trunk and glove compartment, files the vehicle identification number off the engine, removes the plates, then puts what’s left of its former owner in the trunk and, when night-time comes, drives it down to the salvage yard where he used to work. He certainly hadn’t imagined anything like this when he copied the old man’s keys before they got rid of him, but it just goes to show the quality of ideas Karl Eggar has.

As he closes the gate the dogs come at him, growling, hackles raised, but he knows them both, calls them by name, gives them the remains of his lunchtime cold pizza. They wag their tales happily as he drives the car into the crusher. The salvage yard is out by the bay, and the landfill next door is closed. Nobody to hear when he fires up the crusher except for maybe a few migrant fishermen out in their boats. No car lights coming down the bay road, either, so with rising confidence he gets into the crane and pulls out Norah’s car, which looks like a wad of metal gum, then after swinging it over onto one of the piles of wrecks, drops a few of the other smashed cars on top of it so as much of her car as possible is buried. It’ll all be gone to the smelters on Monday night. If not…well, since they’re right beside the landfill, it’s not like the place doesn’t already smell like wet garbage.

He walks home, careful to keep to the shadows and enter the house through the back door. No, he thinks, we don’t want surprise witnesses telling how he went out with Norah’s car and came back on foot.

You the man, Mr. Spock, he thinks as takes a well-deserved beer out of the refrigerator. He’s suddenly single, the house is quiet, and with all this cleaning he’s managed to drive the ants out of the kitchen, too.

Oh, yeah, you the man.

He calls them himself, of course — it doesn’t make any sense to wait. Waiting is like a little kid covering his eyes and hoping he’s turned invisible. Karl calls them Tuesday morning, tells them his wife hasn’t come back since she drove away on Sunday night.

When he opens the door he’s immediately reassured to see two young officers, the kind of square-jawed, just-out-of-the-academy types that always say “Sir,” and “Ma’am,” even to half-naked lunatics they’re arresting for drunk and disorderly. Probably neither of these fellows has even seen a dead body.

“Come in, please.” He tries to sound both pleased to see them and properly worried. “Thanks for coming so soon.”

“No problem, Mr. Eggar,” says the shorter of the two. He’s freckled and has the wide-eyed look of one of those born-again Christian kids in Karl’s old high school, the ones who always studied and never cheated. “Please tell us when you realized your wife was missing.”

“Well,” he says with a humble sort of laugh, “I’m not sure she is missing. To tell the truth, she was pretty pissed off at me when she left. Argument, ya know. I called her sister in Trent to see if she was there, but she hasn’t heard from her.” Of course she hasn’t, unless she can hear all the way to the scrap heap at the salvage yard, but he called her late the previous night to make the timeline look good. Thinking, always thinking. “Hey, come on into the kitchen. I’m just making some coffee.”

He leads them in, holding his breath as he does, although he knows there’s nothing to see. Even a county forensics team wouldn’t find anything, he’s been that thorough, so what are these two bowling-leaguers from the sherrif’s department going to see except a clean kitchen? And not even too clean: he’s given it a bit of a temporary-batchelor look, cereal out, bowls unwashed. He gestures them to two of the chairs at the small table, then lifts the pitcher out of the coffee maker and pours himself a hot, black cup full. “Can I get you some?” he asks. They shake their heads.

“Tell us more about what happened Sunday,” the one who hasn’t spoken before says. He’s tall, mustached, slightly familiar. Maybe he worked in the Safeway or something when he was a kid. That’s one of the funny thing about small towns, the way you keep seeing faces and features. Karl has never liked the idea of other people knowing his business, but Norah, well, you’d have thought it was her own soap opera to hear her go on all the time about everybody else’s private lives.

He works his way slowly into his story about the argument, although now it’s a story about a guy who just wants to drink a beer and his wife who keeps nagging him to chop some firewood.

“I told her, Jeez, it’s the middle of summer, Norah, but she’s all, ‘It’s going to be a cold winter, Karl. You always put things off to the last minute.’ All I wanted to do was watch the ballgame. Anyway, I guess I sorta called her a name. — the “b” word, if you know what I mean — and went off to do it. Better than having her riding my back all day, I figured. But when I came back in the house she was gone. Figured she was just letting off some steam, but then she didn’t come back. When I got up the next morning and saw she’d never been home, well, I called you guys. Do you think she’s all right? I hope she’s all right. It was just a stupid argument.”

He can tell from their expressions, which are already glazing over, that they think this is a waste of their time. A fight, they’re thinking, maybe a bit worse than he’s telling. She’s got a boyfriend — that’s what they’re also thinking — and now she’s shacked up with him, deciding whether to come back to ol’ Karl or not.

Oh yeah, he thinks, and almost laughs. She’s shacked up, all right. But it’s kind of a small apartment…

“Look,” he says to Officer Born-Again while the tall one is writing the report, “you sure you won’t have some coffee? I just made it.”

The small, freckled one shrugs. “Sure, I guess. Been a long morning already.”

“There you go.” He pours it out, hands the officer a steaming cup. “How about you?” he asks the other. “Change your mind?”

The one writing the report shakes his head. “No, thanks, I’m off caffeine. Doctor’s orders.”

Karl nods sagely. “Yeah, it’s probably not good for any of us, but I figure, hey, what’s life without a few risks?” He’s ready to have a good long chat, actually. He’s all but in the clear and it feels good. His new life starts now. Maybe there’s even a way he can collect Norah’s insurance…

The smaller cop looks around absently. “Uh, sorry to bother you, but you got cream and sugar?”

“Milk, hope that’s okay. It’s not expired or anything.” He takes it from the fridge. The sugar he can’t immediately find. “Never use it myself,” he explains, but just then he spots the edge of the sugar bowl. It’s sitting, for some reason, up on top of the refrigerator.

It is only as he grabs it and something wet slops onto his wrist that he realizes it is still sitting in the dish of water he placed it in to keep the ants out of the sugar. The bowl has been sitting up there all this time, ever since…since…