"Nothing. I mean I was overheating. I thought I'd let it cool off. Is
it far to a gas station?"
"Mile or so. It'll cool off quicker if you open the hood."
"Will it? Thanks."
"And get it a little farther off the road, doc."
He went on. I moved the car farther off the road. I opened the hood. I
wondered if he would be bothered by the way I had acted and come back
to check my license and look the car over. I wondered if I should make
a U-turn and get as far away from him as I could. But it made some
sense to risk the outside chance of his coming back and stay right
there until I could plan what to do with the body.
The noon sun was warm. There was a subtle, sour odor in the car that
sickened me. A dark-red tractor moved back and forth across a distant
hillside. Drainage water bubbled in the ditch beside the shoulder. A
truck went by at high speed, the blast of its passage shaking my car.
I found that a two-day drunk gives your mind a flavor of unreliability.
Memory is shaky and dreams become mixed with reality. I began to wonder
if I had imagined the body. When there was no traffic I looked into
the back seat again. The tarp was there. The body was covered. It was
not covered very well. I saw a thick ankle, a dark green sock, a brown
scuffed shoe, cracked across the instep, with laces tied in a double
knot, the way my mother used to tie my shoelaces when I was very small
to keep them from coming untied. It made Grassman more believable as a
person, as the person who had sat on the edge of a bed and tied those
laces and then had gone out and become a body, and the laces would
eventually be untied by somebody else, somebody with a professional
coolness and an unthinking competence. I whirled around when I heard
traffic coming. When the road was clear again I pulled the tarp to
cover the ankle and shoe, but it pulled clear of his head and my
stomach spasmed and I could not look at him.
After a while I fixed the tarp properly. I got out of the car. I did
not want to look in again. But I found myself staring in at the side
window.
I had to get rid of it somewhere. I had to get rid of it soon. The very
nearness of the body kept me from thinking clearly.
The lake? I could find it again. But I could be seen there as readily
as Ruth saw Grassman. I could hunt for obscure roads at random and
dump the body out when I came to what seemed to be a good place. But
the body was going to be found and it was going to be identified and it
was going to be in the paper with the right name. And Ruth was going to
remember the odd question I had asked the man and remember his telltale
response to that question.
The minutes were ticking by and I was getting nowhere. Fitzmartin's
trap was wide and deep, lined with sharp stakes. I wished I could put
the body back on his doorstep. Give it right back to him. Let him sweat.
At first glance the idea seemed absurd. But the more I thought about
it the better it seemed. I would be seen driving into the yard. But if
questioned I could say that I was going to see Fitzmartin. And I would
see Fitzmartin. I would leave the body in the yard somewhere between
the piles of stacked lumber.
No. That would do no good. No man would be so stupid as to kill another
man and leave the body at the place where he worked. Yet if some
attempt was made to conceal the body--Perhaps then they would assume
it was a temporary hiding place until Fitzmartin could think of another.
On the other hand, would any man be so stupid as to kill another man
and then drive the body to the police station in his car and claim
he didn't do it? Maybe that was my best out. Maybe that was the best
innocent reaction.
My hands were icy cold and sweaty. They left wet marks where I touched
the steering wheel. I was trying to think of every alternative, every
possible plan of action. I could go back and check out and head west
and try to leave the body where it would never be found. Buy a shovel.
Dig a desert grave. I could put the body in the seat beside me and run
into something. My ideas were getting worse instead of better. The
very presence of the body made thinking as laborious as trying to run
through waist-deep water. I did not want to panic, but I knew I had to
get rid of it as soon as possible. And I could not see myself going to
Prine for tender mercy. There had been a reason why Grassman had been
killed. Hiding the body would give me a grace period. I would have to
assume it would be traced to me eventually. By the time they caught up
with me, I would have to know why he had been killed. Knowing why would
mean knowing who. I knew it was Fitz. Why did Fitz kill Grassman?
I shut the hood and started the car and drove. I was five miles from
the court and about nine miles from town when I found a promising
looking road that turned left. It was potholed asphalt, ravaged by
winter, torn by tractor lugs. It climbed mild hills and dipped into
forgotten valleys. It came out of a heavy wooded area, and ahead on the
left, set well back from the road, I saw a tall stone chimney where a
house had burned long ago. The weathered gray barn had half collapsed.
It looked like a great gray animal with a broken back, its hind legs
dragging. The road was empty. I turned in where the farm road had once
been. Small trees bent over under my front bumper, dragged along the
underside of the car, and half rose again behind me. I circled the
foundation of the house and parked behind the barn near a wild tangle
of berry bushes. I could not be seen from the road. I had to risk being
seen from distant hillsides. It seemed very quiet with the motor off. A
crow went over, hoarse and derisive.
I opened the rear door of the car. I made myself grasp his heavy
ankles. Rigor had begun to set in. It took all my strength to pull the
bulky body free of the cramped space between the back seat and the back
of the front seat. It came free suddenly, thudding to the ground. I
released the ankles and staggered back. There had been something under
the body. Friction had pulled it toward me. It rested on the car floor,
half in and half out of the car--a short, bright length of galvanized
pipe with a dark brown smear at one end. I left the body there and went
to see where I would put it. There was a great splintered hole in the
back of the barn. I stepped up and through the hole. The floor felt
solid. Daylight came brightly through the holes in the roof.
I went back to the body again. It was not hard to drag it to the hole.
But getting it inside the barn was difficult. I had to lift it about
three feet. I puzzled over how to do it. Finally I turned him around
and propped him up in a sitting position, his back to the hole. I
climbed up over him, then reached down and got his wrists. I pulled him
up over the edge and then dragged him back into the darkness. There was
some hay on the floor, musty and matted. I covered the body with it. I
went out and got the piece of pipe, using a dry leaf to pick it up. I
dropped it into the hay that covered the body. I went back out into the
sunlight.
I wondered about Grassman. I wondered what compulsion had made him
choose his line of work. Dirty, monotonous, and sometimes dangerous
work. From the look of the man as he talked to us up at the lake, I
guessed that he had no idea it would end like this. He had looked
tough and confident. This body under the straw was a far cry from the
fictional private eyes, the smart ones and the suave ones and the gamy
ones. His story had ended. He would not sit up, brush the straw out of
his eyes and reach for either blonde or bottle. Leaving him there had
about it the faint flavor of burial, as though solemn words should be
said.
I inspected the car. The floor rug was stained and spotted in four
places. I couldn't see any on the seat, or on the insides of the doors.
I took the floor rug out and rolled it up. I put it beside me in the
front seat. I sat and listened to the quietness, straining to hear any
sound of car motor laboring on the hills. I heard only the birds and
the sound of wind.
I drove back out and I did not head back the way I had come. A car
seen going and returning was more likely to be remembered on a country
road than a car that went on through. In about three miles I came to a
crossroads. I turned north. I thought the road was paralleling the main
highway, but in five miles it joined the main highway, coming into it
at a shallow angle. I took the next secondary road that turned right.
I was closer to the city. Soon, as I had hoped and expected, I came to
a place where a lot of trash had been dumped. I put the rolled rug in
with the bed springs and broken scooters and kicked some cans over it.
By the time I passed the motel, heading toward the city, I was
surprised to find that it was only quarter after one. I ate at a small
restaurant on Delaware Street. When I left I met Mrs. Pat Rorick on the
sidewalk. She had an armful of bundles. She smiled and said "Hello, Mr.
Howard."
"Did you remember anything, Mrs. Rorick?"
"I don't know if this is any use to you, but I did remember one little
thing. It was a skit the eighth grade did and Timmy was in it. It was
based on Cinderella. I can't remember the girl who played the part,
but I remember how funny it sounded the way it was written, with Timmy
calling the girl Cindy. It probably doesn't mean anything."
"It might. Thanks."
"I'm glad I met you. I was wondering whether to call you about anything
that sounds so stupid. I've got to run. There comes my bus."
"I'll drive you home."
"No. Don't bother."
I convinced her I had nothing to do. We got into the car. She had her
packages piled on her lap. I wondered how she'd feel if she'd known
about my last passenger.
"How should I go about finding out who that girl was?"
"Gee, I don't know. It was a long time ago. I don't know if anybody
would remember. The eighth-grade home-room teacher was Miss Major. I
had her too, later. She was real cute. I think she wrote that skit they
did. I don't know what happened to her. I think she got married and
moved away. They might know at the school. It's John L. Davis School.
On Holly Street, near the bridge."