Don’t Believe It

Gros Piton Jalousie Plantation

Gros Piton

Jalousie Plantation

The blood was a problem.

I knew it as soon as I felt it spit across my face.

It streamed from his hairline and ran along his jaw until it dribbled onto the granite bluff, first in sporadic red blots, like the leading raindrops of a coming storm, and then in a continuous stream, as though a spigot had been plugged into the spot on his head where I had struck him and had opened wide.

It was an error in judgment and strategy, which was a shame because up to now I had been perfect.

A moment earlier, the soft soles of my shoes had squished through the mud on the final turn of my arduous hike up the Piton.

My system was rich with adrenaline, which made my journey nearly effortless.

The endorphins would serve me well. I would need their analgesic and energy-producing powers to get back down the mountain as quickly as I’d made it up.

To kill someone required perfection, timing, and luck.

I hoped all three were with me this evening.

He came into view. As he stared out over the bluff, the setting sun cast his shadow toward me like a black panther painted over the ground.

He stood next to the blanket he had laid over the granite, a bottle of champagne and two flutes waiting.

In the backdrop the sun was approaching the horizon, casting its glow across the calm Caribbean waters and interrupted only by a sailboat whose bright spinnaker was bloated with the evening breeze.

It was one hundred feet to the water. A straight drop, and shallow at the base of the mountain.

No way for the sea to substantially break his fall.

I’d confirmed this the day before. I had put much thought into this evening.

Besides the depth of the water, I calculated the time it would take for me to reach the bluff and return to my cottage.

I plotted my route back through the resort.

I factored in the unexpected, a necessity to any proper strategy.

And, most important, I considered the amount of time I would spend with him on the bluff. It wouldn’t be long.

From my spot in the foliage, I took a few silent steps forward until he was accessible, close enough to touch.

But physical touch would be limited this evening.

Physical touch would leave clues and fibers and forensics.

My weapon allowed me to stay at a safe distance.

I lifted it, pausing slightly at the peak of the arc when my hand was raised high above my head, then brought it down in a sharp rap against his skull.

The connection was solid. A direct strike that he didn’t anticipate and likely never felt.

Besides a quick synapse that radiated through the neurons of his central nervous system, he likely felt nothing at all.

No pain, no suffering. Unless, of course, he was still conscious when he went over the edge. I try not to dwell on that.

I knew immediately that I had been too aggressive with my assault.

My goal was to stun him and render him incapable of defending himself.

Instead, my strike nearly killed him. He reflexively reached for the back of his head and fell to his knees.

I waited and watched, unsure how things would progress.

He seemed to recognize the blood as it poured onto the granite, and gained enough wherewithal to stagger back to his feet.

Before he could turn around, my shoe met the back of his pants and he was gone.

I didn’t hear him land, never heard a splash.

I dared not venture to the edge of the bluff for fear that someone had spotted his body tumbling toward the ocean, like a skydiver whose chute had failed, and would subsequently look to the source of the fall and see me peering over the ledge.

I assessed the bluff now and worked to figure out the best way to fix my blunder.

The blood would tell a different story than I had hoped to draw tonight.

It took only a fraction of a second to make my decision.

The carnage on the bluff was impossible to hide.

The splatter across my face, however, needed to be addressed.

On closer inspection, the spray of blood streaked down my chest and onto my left hand.

Another collection of red, I noticed, had speckled my weapon.

It was an unfortunate error—unforced and brought on entirely by my eagerness.

There was no way to solve all of these problems. I chose the most pressing—the blood that was covering me—and settled on a solution.

I turned from the setting sun and the blood-covered bluff and ran down the Piton, stomping over dirt and through brush and down the man-made staircase of boulders and bamboo on a beeline to the cottage.