31. Duke
DUKE
Ipull the black ski mask down over my face and hold up the pistol. “How much time would we get for armed robbery?”
“For a dead body?” Sam pulls his mask down. “Damn, a long fucking time.”
“You’d have to protect me in prison. I’m too pretty.”
“You don’t think I’m pretty?”
“Quit fucking around. Let’s go.” Holden slams the door to the old blue pickup.
We bought it a year ago and keep it hidden in one of the older barns, only using it for whenever we need a vehicle for nefarious activities. It’s a 1966 model, so there’s no possibility of tracking its location with a chip. We left our phones at home. We’re ghosts tonight.
I grab the crowbar and the two heavy duty plastic bags out of the back seat.
Holden pulls his mask down over his face as we make our way down the dark road behind Old Harry’s and the funeral home.
I looked up the obituaries earlier. There should be two bodies here. Old man Fleming died a few days ago in his double-wide with his face half eaten by a cat. He should be easy enough for us to identify.
Jed’s body is supposedly fully decomposed. The Sheriff told Warner no samples were taken and sent off yet, but they will be by next week.
We reach the funeral home without a single car passing by us.
I use the crowbar to pry open the back door. It’s not even dead-bolted. Our small town doesn’t usually have a corpse-robbing problem.
We each slither through the door and make our way toward the morgue room.
The funeral home was converted from an old Catholic church once the Baptists started to dominate the town.
We crawl through the empty baptistery, careful to avoid the puddle of water in the bottom.
We have to search several rooms that were once for Sunday school classes.
Finally, we enter a door that greets us with the hum of commercial refrigeration. Dead bodies need cold.
I flick the light on. Holden is searching through a stack of paperwork on a cluttered desk. I move over to the four small metal doors lined up against a wall.
I unlatch one, instantly regretting it when the stench of rotten flesh meets my nostrils. Resisting the urge to gag, I pull the body out and confirm that it’s Fleming. I push it back in and latch the door.
“Fuck,” I grumble under my breath.
I open the next one, but it’s empty. Sam is at the third, and he opens it and peers inside before closing it.
One more.
Sam opens it and looks inside before pulling out a small cardboard box.
“What the fuck?” I whisper.
I move over to him, seeing that the space is, in fact, empty, aside from the box.
I glance at Holden. His dark eyes are lasered in on the hole.
I open up the box to see that it’s a small chunk of white bone and some teeth.
A case number is written on the side of the box.
Holden grabs a Post-it pad and scribbles the number down.
“I’m pretty sure that’s the right case number,” he says.
“Where’s the rest of it?” I mumble.
“It’s got to be around here somewhere. Bones don’t have to be fully refrigerated,” Sam says, glancing around the office. “Why were you so sure they were keeping him here?”
“Where else would he be?” I ask. It’s the only morgue in town.
Sam shrugs. “Hospital in Elmott? That’s where they took my grandfather. He hated Catholics. He put it in his will that he didn’t want to be transported to this morgue because it used to be a Catholic church.”
Holden and I both stare at him. Our father was partial to the Catholic church because of our mother’s affiliation with it. This is where he was brought after he died.
“I didn’t know that was an option,” Holden grunts. “But this is taking way too long, and if we’re taking time to search the whole church, we need an alibi that’s better than just claiming to be home all night. We have no chance of getting to it if it’s in the hospital.”
“We should vandalize the church, maybe steal something to mislead the motive for the investigators,” Sam suggests.
Holden taps the small box, pensive. “You think Dolly would come pick us up from Old Harry’s if we got too drunk?”
I nod, but Sam groans. “Yeah, but I’d get shit for it. And I don’t have a phone to text her.”
“Call her from the bar. It’s the best alibi we’ve got.
Rosie was planning to say I was home all night and we were trying for baby number three, but this would be better.
If we’re seen at Old Harry’s, it gives us an alibi away from the scene.
Go in there and take a few shots and dance with a girl or two while I search.
After twenty minutes, I’ll come find you and we’ll switch out.
After we find it, we’ll burn the bodies together. ”
“Burn both bodies? Why?” Sam asks.
“Because Fleming was an old-school Catholic,” Holden explains, holding up the paperwork he found on the desk.
It clearly states DO NOT BURN in block letters.
“Ah, shit. They didn’t believe in cremation,” I mutter. “We’re going to hell for this.”
“Maybe, but at least it’ll be after we die instead of before.
Go into Old Harry’s and drink and hang out.
Talk to as many people as you can. Duke, you can flirt and act like your usual whore self so that people remember it.
If we rotate out like that we’ll all be seen at different times, and they can’t place any of us at the scene for long enough to have done it.
Hopefully the alibis will be good enough for them to pass the crime off as random. ”
“Why not just burn Jed’s bones?” I ask.
My brother shakes his head. I can see the fear in his eyes.
He spent three and a half years in prison for murder.
He suffered tremendously because of the orders to keep him in isolation for a good chunk of time.
If this investigation reveals who this body belongs to, we’re fucked.
We both might be going to jail, even though he’s the one who shot Jed.
I don’t know if he’d even let me take the fall for it.
“Because it’s way too fucking obvious. We’ll burn him first, then add Fleming’s corpse on top of the ashes and burn it at a lower temperature, so there’s some left.
If we burn it hot enough, maybe they won’t realize the ashes at the bottom belong to someone else.
They’ll think it was a random act of corpse desecration with no connection to us. ”
“No body, no crime,” I add.
Sam and I make the best show of it that we can. I buy shots for at least three women, feigning interest in all of them. Internally, I’m panicking.
Not because of the felony we’re about to commit, but because I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to explain it all to my girlfriend.
After twenty minutes, Holden walks in grinning at me and loudly ordering a whiskey sour.
“No luck,” he leans in and whispers.
Fuck. We have to find those bones.
Sam dips out next. It’s almost midnight, so most of the people in the bar are already drunk.
Sam finds the rest of the bones tucked away in a larger cardboard box. It was in a classroom that had been converted into a lab.
When he comes back after Holden and I have taken shots and talked to more people, I go back to the morgue and carefully place Jed’s bones in the incinerator.
I start it up, hoping it doesn’t take too long.
I manage to find some handwritten instructions that say to burn a skeleton for two hours, if the desire is complete ash. We’re cutting this shit close.
I pull my mask off on the dark walk back to Old Harry’s.
Not a soul seems to be aware that we’ve been sneaking in and out of the back door one by one.
We used to party here all the time together.
It’s been a while, and the women have definitely missed us.
The three of us dance and party and drink every ounce of liquor that’s shoved into our hands.
The Redford brothers’ reputation precedes us, and people expect to see us party.
It makes my stomach turn when one blond girl I hooked up with a few years ago rubs her hand across my abs, then moves it lower.
I pull away from her, moving out of her reach as Dallas’s face materializes in my mind.
After an hour and a half, Holden leaves again to move Fleming’s body into the incinerator, the final part of the plan to cover our tracks and hopefully confuse the investigators enough that the missing body isn’t obviously our doing.
No one would’ve cared enough to burn Old Man Fleming, which means no one will push for the case to be investigated further. He never even had any children.
Finally, once the bar is about to close, Sam asks the bartender to borrow the phone and calls my sister. I’m glad it’s him in the hot seat and not me.
After he hangs up, he punches me in the shoulder and grimaces.
“You gotta help get me out of this. She’s pissed, man.”
I clap his shoulder, nearly losing my balance. “I will; don’t worry.”
We’re both drunk because we committed to the bit, not wanting anyone to suspect we were faking it, considering our freedom hangs in the balance. Holden rejoins us a few minutes before the lights flicker on, signaling that the bar is closing.
Less than fifteen minutes later, my baby sister pulls up to the front of the bar, her Bronco tires slinging dirt as she screeches to a stop. Heads turn, multiple people noticing the scene.
“Fuck,” Sam curses, rubbing his face with both hands.
Yikes. Big fucking yikes. We might just need to tell her the truth.
Holden and I climb into the back, leaving the passenger seat for Sam.
“Hey, Dolls. Great to see you—”
“Shut up, Duke,” she snaps at me.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The ride is completely silent until we pull up to Redford Ranch. Sam is sweating. He reaches out to try and hold her hand, but she smacks it away.
Damn. Good luck, buddy.
When she pulls in front of the main house, I reach for the door. Her words make me pause.
“Have fun explaining yourself to her. She’s already suspicious. I can’t believe you would do something like this, especially after all she’s been through with her ex.”
My stomach churns. I meet Sam’s eyes, and I can already tell he’s going to fold the second he’s alone with her and tell her everything.
“Thanks for the ride, Dolls.”
I stumble toward the front door. It sucks, being drunk and aware of it. I stick my key into the lock and open it. After removing my boots and hat, I make my way to my bedroom, trying not to be loud. My limbs aren’t cooperating.
After stripping down to my underwear, I collapse beside her. I wrap my arm around her, pulling her close and inhaling her sweet jasmine-and-vanilla scent.
“You smell like smoke. And beer,” she says.
“You smell amazing.” I nuzzle her neck.
She’s silent for a few seconds. The buzz of alcohol in my brain is starting to get worse from the last shots we took.
“Where were you?”
“Let’s talk about it tomorrow, darlin’.”
She sighs, but doesn’t push. My head swims, and I just want her to know exactly how special she is to me.
“I love you,” I whisper in her ear before drifting off to sleep.