Chapter 8
I'm not thinking about my car that still sits in the parking lot as I pull away.
What I'm thinking about is how crazed Nina looked standing in that alley.
Wild eyes and unhinged to the point of action. She claimed self defense, which I don’t believe for a second.
She was doing something for herself and it wasn’t defending.
I just don’t know what that something is.
As much as I want to be pissed the fuck off about being made accomplice to what was so very obviously a murder, a messy and unplanned one, something about the way she looked standing there arrested me.
Again.
Though I've gotten very close to her actually doing it, this was the first time that I have seen the tangible evidence that she is responsible for someone's life being taken.
She played it cool, but there's something not right here.
There's something not right with her.
I’m going to get to the bottom of it.
As we drive to the one place that Dupont has set up to handle bodies, I can't help but think about how this isn't her first time going. She knows exactly what route I'm taking because I know she's taken it many times herself.
Our King is a fan of his gators. They’re as much his pets as the snakes he keeps in his estate. While this marsh is far from that property, we have a full staff that takes care of these guys. I wonder what their thoughts are on their full bellies.
These gators are getting fed well with Nina’s presence here.
"Look, I'll help you now, but I don't want this to become some sort of common thing. I'm not helpin’ you because I agree with what you're doin’ either," I tell her as she sits in the passenger seat. I know I sound like a fucking dad right now and goddamnit I can’t help it.
She's not playing on her phone for once, which is unusual given how glued she is to it. Instead, she's looking out the window, and she's eerily quiet. She's not particularly talkative except for when it comes to needling me into annoyance so that I will speak with her.
Me speaking now has broken whatever deep thought or reverie she was in.
I can see when she puts on her little doll-like mask and says, "Come on, Vert, what is your problem?
Why is it that you feel the need to police what I have going on?
Don't you have other things you could be doing, like me, for instance? " she questions.
Here she is trying to deflect with sex, which, for any other piece of shit, would probably work. But there's something happening here.
I'm not the police, but I grunt in response to that, knowing very well that she's trying to bait me.
She tilts her head to the side, which I only know because of the flick of her pink hair. "No, actually, I don't want to be doing you either."
I grunt again, allowing her to tire herself out instead of playing into whatever this suggestive conversation could lead to.
"Rude," she says. "Super rude."
At that point, I take the moment to glare at her from the side of my eyes. "Considerin’ I'm takin’ you to dispose of a body, shouldn't the only one who's rude here be you?"
"Wow." She sounds out every single letter of the word. "Double rude. No one told you to do that. I was just fine without you here."
I scoff, continuing on my journey since there's less than fifteen minutes left till we get to the one dock that leads to the shed I'm looking for.
"Our definitions of fine are very, very different, it seems."
"Maybe," she says flippantly as we continue down the darkened road.
I don't know what I'm going to do about Nina, but she very desperately needs something. I don't know if I'm the man to give it to her, but I do know that I'm the one who sees what is going on. I won't allow her to cutesy her way out of it or for her to pout her way out of it.
I need to stop what's going on here, and it has to come to a close fairly quickly.
There were bags large enough to contain this man's body in her trunk which is likely evidence enough that she is capable of disposal herself.
I'm not in danger of getting more blood on my hands—not figuratively—as I heft him over my shoulder and onto the small boat that will take us onto the marshy waters.
I think the gators are smart enough to recognize when food's on its way.
They don't immediately swarm the boat or come up to us in any way. We get to the other side of the marsh that's away from the restaurant that Dupont owns. The lights sparkle in the distance from the outside and though I couldn’t see who’s on the dock, it looks especially romantic as we ride away.
Even more so, in contrast to the gore the task ahead of us.
Once I tie up the boat satisfactorily, I drag the body over to the designated area. The gators know to wait for us to drop off and leave before they get what’s waiting for them.
"So you've been here before?" I ask though I already know the answer. She’s not at all disturbed by the prospect of what awaits us.
She shrugs. "Not over here."
That gives me pause. "What have you been doin’ here then?"
She points to the west side of the area that seems to be more shallow than where the boats dock. "I usually just drive as close as I can over here and then slide them in."
"Slide them in?" I question, still somewhat amazed that she has managed to do so much on her own. It must be luck that she can do it and even luckier that she hasn’t been caught yet.
Nina looks down at her shoes. "Yea. I don't have a damn boat, so I do what I can, which is my best."
What most people would consider to be their nightmare, she shrugs as if it is inevitable. People outside of this life do everything they can to never face the horrors of logistics and could never stomach the task to begin with. "You do your best at disposing of a body?"
"Yea. That's what I said."
So casual.
What the fuck?
I get the bag off the guy and ball the bag up to fit into the small incinerator pit we keep outside the shed over here. "And how many times have you come out here?"
"Are we really going to do this right now? I'm pretty sure you're going to make them restless," she points to the movement in the water that is coming closer the longer we stand here talking.
"I don't know.”
They've been eating pretty damn good. They're starting to outnumber Dupont with how frequently they've been able to re-energize.
When we first started coming out here, there were maybe five or six gators at best. Now it seems like they've tripled in numbers.
Pretty soon, we're going to have to be doing more drastic measures to keep up with how well we're maintaining their population.
“After all, who is the predator of a gator?"
"Look, I appreciate what you did for me back there," she says looking up at me. The words are genuine but I hesitate to accept them.
"What I did for you?" I repeat, unsure that I like where this is going.
"Yeah. You had my back."
And there you have it. She did get the wrong idea. "So, do you just pick what things you're hearin’ when I talk, or—"
She nods, and continues walking toward the boat. "Yea, remember how I have that thing where it's, like, mostly a roaring sound?"
I finally get the man positioned in a way that seems feasible, that seems far enough away from where we need to get back onto the boat and out of here. "Yea, when I offer to do somethin’ for you, you can certainly hear that."
Nina nods as I suspected she would. "Oh yea, that breaks through that roaring noise for sure."
I hold the boat steady for her to step back into it and untie us.
As soon as we get towards the middle of the water, the splashing sound of the gators having their dinner picks up louder and louder, though we're getting farther away.
We're in no danger, and honestly, we weren't to begin with because they recognize our boat, and they're smart enough not to bite the hand that feeds them.
I can say that much about the alligators.
I don't know if I can say that about the woman who daintily steps out of the boat, back into her stride towards the car.