“Yeah.”
When his feet were no longer bound together, I stood up and backed away, the end of the cord in my left hand.
He pushed himself up to his elbows, looked, and saw how I’d fashioned a tether for his left ankle. “Cute,” he said.
“It’ll let you get around.”
“I guess so.” Meeting my eyes, he said, “I can’t say that I blame you for not trusting me.”
I laughed at him. Then I said, “Get up and come over here.”
He made it to his feet, and I led him over to the counter where his plate was waiting. I was careful not to let him get close to me.
“Where do you want me to eat it?” he asked.
“Right there.”
“What about a fork?”
“So you can stab me with it? Use your fingers.”
He started to pick up the plate.
“Put it down,” I said. “Leave it on the counter.”
He set it down. Then, bending over, he started picking up pieces of steak one at a time. He got a couple into his mouth before he really started chewing. “Mmm,” he said. He shoved more in. “Good.”
“I know it’s not human, but it’s the best I could do on short notice.”
“That was Milo’s gig,” he said. The words came out mushy because of the meat in his mouth. “Not mine.”
“You don’t eat people?”
Grinning over his shoulder, he said, “Not that way.”
“Very funny.”
“He was nuts. Milo.”
“He was your mentor.”
“Yeah, but he was a fuckin’ cannibal. I’m no cannibal. Shit, he did all kinds of weird stuff. Not me.”
“Not you. Sure.”
“This is really good steak. Really delicious.”
“You should’ve had it when it was still hot.”
“Well. Can’t have everything.” He shoved more into his mouth.
“I want to hear the rest of your story,” I told him.
“What do you want to know?”
“You said you watched me in your camp last night. When I took care of Milo and stuff. And then, after I left, you killed Judy. Then what?”
“Did I say that?” He gave me another grin. His lips were shiny with steak juice. “I don’t believe I said anything about killing Judy.”
“Yeah, you did.”
“If I said that, I must’ve been mistaken.”
I felt a strange, fluttery tightness inside. I don’t know quite what it was. Hope? Fear? Excitement? In some ways, I wanted Judy to be dead. She was a loose end. She could get me in big trouble. But in other ways…Hell, I liked her.
“You didn’t kill her?” I asked.
“No, no, absolutely not.”
“Bad choice of words, pal.”
“Huh?”
“‘Absolutely not.’ Makes me you think you’re lying.”
“Oh. Jeez. I see what you mean. Protesting too much, huh?”
“What did happen after I left?”
He shoved a couple more chunks of steak into his mouth, chewed for a minute, and said, “How about something to drink?”
“The sink’s right there,” I said.
“A glass?”
“Use your hand.”
So he sidestepped to the sink, ran some water, cupped his hand under the faucet and took a few drinks.
“What about Judy?” I asked.
He slurped some more water out of his hand, and said, “What about her?”
“If you didn’t kill her, what happened to her after I left?”
Steve sighed, wiped his wet hand across his lips, then shut off the faucet and turned around and grinned at me. “I cut her down.”
“You cut her down?”
“The ropes, the ropes. I freed her from the ropes from which she was so cruelly hanging, thanks to you.”
“I didn’t do that to her.”
“But you didn’t cut her down.”
I didn’t need to be reminded of that.
“Are you done eating?” I asked.
“No!” Losing his grin, he turned away and hurried over to his plate and stuffed more steak into his mouth.
“Okay,” I said. “So what happened after you…took her down from the ropes?”
“Plenty.”
“Tell me.”
“Fucked the daylights out of her, for starters.”
I struck him hard across the ass with the flat of the saber blade. He shrieked and arched his back and clutched his buttocks. For a while, he stood there gasping for air. Then he bent forward a little and braced his hands on the counter top. I could see him shaking.
“You forgot who has the sword,” I told him.
“You asked…”
“I didn’t like your answer. I don’t want to hear about that stuff. What else happened?”
“We…we buried the bodies. Milo and Marilyn.”
“Where’d this Marilyn come from, anyway?”
“The tent. Milo had her in the tent.”
“Where’d she come from? Is she from around here? Did you catch her in Miller’s Woods?”
“Huh? No. We grabbed her when we were on the road.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, we spotted her at a gas station. That was a few days ago, when we were up north. We’d stopped for a fill-up, and there she was, pumping gas into her Toyota. A real babe. She wore these short shorts…” He glanced back at me and at the saber. Then he went on. “Anyway, we followed her when she left the station. We wanted her to rear-end us, so we got ahead of her, then slowed down. This Marilyn was impatient, so she tailgated us, trying to get us to speed up or pull over. A real bitch move. So then, when we came to a place where nobody was around, Milo suddenly stomped on the brakes. Wham! She rear-ended us. Well, we all got out to check the damage and exchange information. And that’s when we snatched her. We threw her into the back of the van, I jumped in with her, and Milo drove off.”
“You have a van?” I asked.
“Sure. You’ve gotta have a van.”
“Where is it?”
“Oh, we’ve got it hidden in the woods. Not too far from a road, but far enough so it’s out of sight.”
“So you brought Marilyn here to the woods?”
“Right. And put up our camp and had ourselves…” He gave the saber an uneasy glance. “We kept her as our guest in the camp for a couple of days, and then she died.”
“Died, huh?”
“Well, Milo cut her throat.”
“Milo, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“How many other people have you two killed?”
“Between the two of us? Quite a few. I couldn’t say for sure.”
“How long were you together?”
“Milo and me?”
“Yeah. Traveling around in your van, killing people.”
“A couple of years.”
“My God.”
He grinned at me. “Just doing some population control. Environmentally speaking, over-population is a real…”
“Shut up.”
“Sorry.” He faced forward again.
“So what happened,” I asked, “after you and Judy dug the graves last night?”
“Nothing. Well, we threw Milo and Marilyn in and covered them with dirt, of course. Then we went to sleep. That’s all.” Reaching out, he picked up a single piece of steak. He looked at me, then stuck it into his mouth and started to chew.
“But you came back here today,” I told him. “What’d you do with Judy when you left camp? Where is she?”
“Still there…in camp.”
“Alive?”
He nodded.
“Tied up?”
He grunted, then said, “Tied and gagged. In the tent.”
“And in what condition?”
“Fine. She’s fine.”
“She can’t be fine.”
“I didn’t hurt her.”
“Sure you didn’t.”
“Not much
.” He leered over his shoulder at me. “I’d be glad to take you to her.”
“Not interested,” I said.
“Sure you are. You’re very interested.”
“You know what I want?”
“Judy.”
“No. I want this house cleaned up. I want you to haul Elroy’s body out—and get his head out of the pool. Then we’ll take a little trip. You buried Milo and Marilyn somewhere near your camp?”
He nodded and stuffed more steak into his mouth.
“You have shovels?”
“Sure. Tools of the trade. Got a couple of them.”
“Okay. Then I guess we will go to camp. You can bury Elroy there with the others.”
“And you can have a nice reunion with Judy.”
51
TEAMWORK
“Cut it out about Judy,” I said.
“Whatever you say. You’re the boss.”
“Finish up with the food. We’ve gotta get on with this.”
He stuffed the last three or four pieces of steak into his mouth. Chewing, his sidestepped to the sink.
“You raped her, huh?” I asked.
He made a garbled sound.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head and continued to chew. Then he ran the faucet, leaned forward and cupped water into his mouth like before. When the faucet was off, he stood up straight. He wiped his mouth. Then he turned around to face me. “I thought you didn’t want me to talk about Judy.”
“Yeah. You’re right. I don’t. Never mind.”
“Anyway, I didn’t rape her.”
“But you said…”
“I said we fucked. I didn’t say anything about rape. A rape requires force or coercion. She was quite willing. After all, I’d cut her down. You should’ve cut her down. Maybe you would’ve gotten lucky.”
“Okay, that’s enough. Let’s go find Elroy. You lead the way.”
Holding the end of the cord in one hand, the saber in the other, I followed Steve out of the kitchen. The rest of the house was pretty dark. As we walked through the foyer, I switched a light on.
“How long have you been here today?” I asked.
“Oh, I arrived around noon. Hoping to find you sunning yourself by the pool like yesterday. I was severely disappointed.”
“How did you get in?”
“Sliding doors are a cinch.”
He turned to the left and stepped into the guest bathroom. Now that he was no longer blocking my view, I saw a trail of blood drops on the hallway carpet. Steve must’ve made them carrying Elroy’s head from the bathroom to the den. The trail was sure to continue on through the den.
Entering the bathroom, I said, “Nice job on the carpet.” And then I saw the mess near the toilet. “Oh, my God.”
Steve grinned and shrugged. “What can I say? He made a nice splatter pattern. Could’ve been a lot worse, though. At least he fell into the tub.”
I walked closer to Steve, sidestepped to see past him, and spotted Elroy in the bathtub.
My memory flashed an image of Murphy, also dead in a tub. Rub-a-dub dub, two men in a tub…
Unlike Murphy, Elroy had his clothes on. And he wasn’t sitting sideways in the tub, feet sticking out. He probably had been crooked, since he’d fallen from a standing position in front of the toilet. But now he was stretched out on his back, feet toward the drain. His penis was hanging out the open fly of his trousers. His blood-soaked shirt was still tucked in, and his bow-tie, no longer blue, was still in place at the throat of his shirt. Above the bow-tie, he had a ragged stump of neck.
“You want me to pick him up?” Steve asked.
“That’s the idea.”
“And do what with him?”
“Get him out of the house, for starters.”
“He’s bound to drip, you know.”
“Run the shower on him,” I said. “That’ll get the worst of the blood off.”
“Aye-aye, ma’am.” Steve stepped to the foot of the tub, started the shower spraying down onto Elroy, then slid the plastic curtain shut.
“We need something to put him in,” I said.
“A couple of plastic garbage bags should do the trick.”
“Those’d be out in the garage.”
“No problem.”
“Yeah, it’s a problem,” I said. “I’m not taking you all the way out there just to get some garbage bags.”
“Afraid I’ll make a break for it?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, we could get a sandwich baggie from the kitchen and put it on his stump.”
“Very funny,” I said. But his suggestion made me realize that, if the shower did its job, we really didn’t need to worry about blood from anywhere except Elroy’s neck.
So we marched back to the kitchen. I instructed Steve where to look, and he found Serena’s roll of cellophane wrap in the cupboard underneath the sink.
We returned to the bathroom.
While I held the saber and my end of the cord, Steve shut off the shower. He slid open the curtain, stepped into the tub, and got to work on Elroy.
First, he raised the body to a sitting position. Then he removed Elroy’s bow-tie and opened the top two buttons of his shirt. After that, he tore off a foot-long section of plastic wrap and draped it over Elroy’s neck stump. He squeezed it down firmly so it clung to the raw stuff inside. Finally, he tucked the edges of the cellophane underneath Elroy’s shirt collar to hold the wrapping snug.
“That should do the trick,” he said.
“I think so,” I agreed.
The shower had done a fine job cleaning the blood off Elroy and his clothes. The white shirt was badly stained, but it wouldn’t be dripping blood on the way out. With the neck stump secure, he was ready to move.
“Okay,” I said. “Now pick him up and let’s get him out of the house.”
Steve looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Are you going to lend a hand?”
“No.”
“But you’re so good at body handling.”
“I’ve retired,” I said. “You killed him, you carry him.”
“What a sweetheart.”
“That’s me. Let’s get going.”
Squatting behind Elroy’s back, he reached beneath the arms, hugged him around the chest, and lifted.
As Steve hauled Elroy out of the tub, I backed away, giving him plenty of slack with the electric cord. Then I waited while he struggled to find the best way to carry the body. He ended up cradling Elroy in his arms the way you see guys carry their brides over the threshold in movies.
“Ready?” I asked.
“All set,” he said. “You ready, Elroy?”
“Cut out the funny stuff,” I said. “He was a nice guy.”
“Give me a break. He was a pain in the ass. You couldn’t stand him.”
“Maybe so, but you shouldn’t have killed him.”
Smirking, he said, “You made me do it. I would chop the heads off an army to get my hands on you.”
“Go to hell,” I said.
Then I led us out of the bathroom. “We’ll take him out the front door,” I said, turning and moving backward for the foyer. As I walked, I watched Elroy. He dripped onto the carpet, but only water—so far as I could tell. The cellophane on his neck seemed to be working fine. “We’ll put him in his car and drive him to the woods.”
“Now, that’s a good idea. I was afraid you might make me walk.”
“Can’t leave his car here, anyway. We’ll park it at the picnic area, and you can carry him the rest of the way to the camp.”
I opened the front door, glanced outside to make sure the coast was clear, then stepped out of the way. Turning sideways, Steve carried Elroy past me. I left the door open (since I had no keys on me) and followed them across the lawn to the driveway.
“You’d better put him in the trunk,” I said.
Nodding, Steve trudged to the rear of Elroy’s car. “How do we unlock it?” he asked.
 
; “Use his keys,” I suggested. “They’re probably in a pocket of his pants.”
“How about coming over here and finding them for me?”
“Thanks, but no thanks. Do I look that stupid?”
“I won’t try anything,” he said.
“I’m sure I believe you. Just put him down and get the keys yourself.”
He started to crouch, then apparently changed his mind. Instead of lowering Elroy onto the driveway, he eased the body down on the trunk of the car. Then he patted both front pockets of the trousers. I heard keys jingle.
The body started to slip, so Steve halted it with one hand. Holding it still, he shoved his other hand into the right front pocket. A moment later, he came out with a key case.
He tossed it to me and said, “Catch.”
It sailed toward my left shoulder.
In my left hand, I held the end of the cord that led to his ankle.
I clutched the cord more tightly, and didn’t go for the keys.
The leather case smacked me below my left shoulder, slid down my breast and fell to the grass.
“Nice catch,” he said.
“Nice try,” I told him.
He laughed softly. Then he said, “I know it’s asking a lot, but if I pick up your friend and move out of the way, would you be kind enough to unlock the trunk for us?”
“No.”
“Please? Pretty please with sugar?”
“Which hand do you want me to use for the keys?” I asked. “The one with the saber in it, or the one with the cord in it?”
“Either would be fine,” he said.
“I’m sure.”
“You know what? I’ve got a terrific idea. Why don’t we simply dispense with the cord altogether? In fact, why not forget this entire captive routine and work as a team?”
“You’re dreaming.”
“Let’s be partners from now on. How about it? It would make life so much easier for both of us if we start working together instead of fighting each other.”
“Only one problem with that,” I said. “I’d turn up raped and dead.”
“No, no, no. Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t hurt my partner.”
“Forget about it. Come over here and pick up the keys.” I gave the cord a couple of quick tugs.
“Okay, okay.” Leaving Elroy on the car’s trunk, Steve came toward me. I backed away. “I know you want me,” he said. “You should’ve seen the look on your face last night when I was up against the door. You wanted to be the door. Not to mention in the kitchen tonight when I licked the teryaki off your incredible, luscious body…”