Chapter 20
Chapter
The rain was deafening. The body of the pastor was still at my feet, soaked through. My hand was still white-knuckled around the wrench, the tool suddenly heavy as an anchor.
Every muscle and bone in my body was liquid with panic.
I had killed a man—and not just a man, not just any man, but one certain to be missed, one whose disappearance would not be brushed off or handed down to a rookie detective or chalked up to a natural consequence of his life or actions.
If no one had seen me already, standing here frozen over the body with a wrench in my fist, then someone would soon.
I gulped in air, trying to think clearly, trying to dig up an ember of the rage that had filled me a moment ago.
The first thing was to get the goddamn body out of my driveway.
I imagined Evelyn chugging by in Georgie’s car, her eyes widening at the scene, her hands clutching the steering wheel as she yanked the car back toward town.
I imagined her alongside Georgie and Christine and Max as I was tried and sentenced.
I imagined Chief Broder, gloating over my unprotected sanctuary.
I grit my teeth until my jawbone creaked with the pressure. I could not get caught. I would not let him win.
The body. Then the truck. Then come up with your story.
I nearly dropped the wrench back into my toolbox, then thought better of it; I’d need to clean it first. Instead, I set it down in the driveway and went over to the body.
I rolled it over, ignoring the wide, staring eyes, and hitched it up from behind the arms. My ears strained for the sound of a car over the patter of the rain.
I moved to heave the body off the driveway, and my hands slipped straight through; I tumbled backward.
My knees shook as I struggled back to my feet, all my strength vented into the blow that had killed him.
I grabbed the body again, braced myself.
One step. Then another. Then another. Slow, too slow—like running in a nightmare.
With every movement, I saw myself damned further, the blood in the driveway and the drag marks from his heels testifying against me.
When the body was tucked into the overgrowth of the tree line, impossible to see from the road, I pulled on my work gloves, grabbed the leather portfolio, and slid into the driver’s seat of Zeke’s truck.
I would leave the seat damp and dirty behind me, but that couldn’t be helped.
I needed to dump it somewhere else, somewhere it wouldn’t be found too quickly.
Maybe I could make it look like he crashed, wandered off disoriented—
Every thought was swept away in a rush of terror as another car crested the hill toward me.
The truck was far too recognizable, brand new and riding on fat dual tires, and if anyone saw me driving it, I might as well turn myself in.
I jammed the wiper lever downward, hoping that enough raindrops would build up on the windshield to hide me.
I ducked my head as the car went by, my heart pounding wildly in my chest as I glanced into the rearview mirror.
The car kept going past my driveway without a hint of brake lights.
I turned down one back road, then another, each one narrower and rougher than the last. Too late I remembered that I would have to walk home, and I had to get back there as fast as I could.
I went in circles, my mind racing but no ideas coming to me, and finally, I pulled off on a private access road that meandered into the woods.
I went down just until it curved, then stopped, panting hard.
The portfolio had to stay with the truck, that much I knew, but I couldn’t risk leaving the deed.
I tore it out and shoved it in my pocket, then tucked the portfolio between the seat and console.
Finally, I gave the truck a little gas, wrenched the wheel to the side, and dove out the door.
The clunk as it hit a tree sounded unbearably loud.
My first instinct was to run, simply crash into the trees in the direction of home and not look back, but I forced myself to slow down and look for footprints, to see where my shoulder landed in the dirt when I dove from the truck.
I buffed out a few of the more obvious marks, then froze at the sound of another car.
For a moment, I was convinced it had turned onto the private access road, that in a matter of seconds I would see headlights beaming toward me.
But no car appeared, and the sound faded. I was too edgy to stay any longer, too scattered—there was just as much chance I would leave more signs of my presence as erase them, so I turned for home.
It took me three hours to get back to the sanctuary.
The rain continued to pour, and the first creek I forded was already rising dangerously high.
There would be flash floods in the valley, and I should’ve set buckets around the house to catch the rainwater, because I still hadn’t gotten around to patching my roof.
I thought of the pond spilling its bank, colonizing the lowland around it, sending rivulets like fingers toward my cabin.
As I made my winding way home, cutting through patches of woods and fields and rapidly filling ditches, I was struck by how poor the land outside my sanctuary looked.
Everything out here was a sea of dying yellow thanks to the relentless, unseasonal heat; plants were wilted and curling, and flowers left behind no seedhead, just a naked stalk.
Far from a healing balm, the rain beat the leaves from the trees and flattened the grasses, pockmarking the dusty ground and driving detritus into roiling black pools.
My work boots were full of filthy water, and my wet socks had slipped down to leave me with the beginnings of raw blisters on both heels.
I fell several times, my weak knees simply giving out on me, and each time I pushed myself up like a machine, knowing that if I took a beat to rest, I simply wouldn’t get up again.
By the time I reached the patch of briars that stood across from my driveway, my hands were covered in grime and skinned raw.
I lurched across the road and through the gate that still hung open; I couldn’t believe I forgot to lock it before I left.
My toolbox was full of water, and the pool of blood from the pastor’s mouth had been diffused into a puddle.
My paranoid eyes searched the tree line, trying to pick out his shoes, as if there were a chance he got up and walked away.
When I glimpsed one boot in the brush, I turned back to the gate; its new weight felt impossibly heavy to my shaking limbs, but I threw myself against it until it closed.
The new padlock did not have the same reassuring clang of the old lock sliding home, but it would keep the rest of the world out.
For now.
For the first time that season, I lit a fire in the woodstove. The cold hinges shrieked as I opened the door, but in just a few minutes, the fire was roaring. The heat warmed my cheeks, and my eyelids felt heavier immediately.
I dusted off my hands and paced the house, glancing out the front window obsessively even though it was too streaked with rain to see anything.
Rainy days had been my excuse to get caught up on housework, and I half-heartedly started the dishes, started the laundry, started to clear the counter of gloves and tools and plant husks, but I didn’t finish a single thing.
Every time I approached the fugue state of simple chores, I was yanked back to the present moment and the fact that there was a body on my property I couldn’t move until nightfall.
Instead, I allowed myself to pace, planning my next moves.
There was a tarp in the laundry room; I could use that.
Up in the loft in the barn, I knew there was a coil of dusty old rope, not to mention bags stuffed with cast-off baling twine.
The four-wheeler had sputtered all the way back up the drive in the rain, but it should be good for one more load, one more trip.
But where? Where can I take him?
There was only one answer, even though the thought of it made my stomach clench tight enough to cramp.
The pond was the single place that gave me a prayer of staying undiscovered—no disturbed earth, no chance of the body getting dug up by a coyote.
As long as I could cover my tracks and weigh it down…
No sooner had I thought it than I was swamped with visions of the sanctuary crawling with police, four-wheeler tracks left clearly in the mud, the body bobbing to the surface of the pond like a gruesome balloon.
I raked my hands through my hair and pushed the images away, focusing again on what had to happen next.
There was a heavy logging chain looped around the back of the tractor, heavy enough to sink a corpse, and I could tuck rocks into the tarp. The old rowboat had been sitting in the lean-to on the east side of the pond for years—I had to hope it hadn’t rotted away too bad to float.
What about when they find the truck? Once that happens, I’ll have forty-eight hours at most.
And on I went, wearing the same pattern into the floor and glancing repeatedly out the window until I nearly tripped on the fawn.
She nipped me, a hard scrape of teeth on my damp jeans, and bounced away with an irritated shake of her head.
I realized it was past her dinnertime, and she hadn’t eaten since lunch, but outside, night had fallen fast and thick.
“I know you’re hungry,” I said, “but you’ll just have to wait a little bit.” I reached out to stroke her head, and she snapped at me again.
When I stepped outside, the temperature had fallen twenty degrees from where it was that morning. My breath misted gently in the damp air, and there were light raindrops still flecking down. It felt like any autumn evening, but this homage to normalcy mocked me.