Waldo’s truck and trailer were gone. There was nothing in its spot but tire tracks.
I tore through the bushes, fought back some blackberry vines, and made the long run over to the spot where Waldo’s trailer had been.
I walked around in circles like an idiot. I tried to think, tried to figure what had happened.
I made up a possible scenario: Martha and Jasmine had come out here to spy on Waldo, and maybe Waldo, who kept weird hours, had gone out, and Jasmine and Martha had seen their chance and gone in.
Perhaps Waldo turned around and came back suddenly. Realized he’d forgotten his cigarettes, his money, something like that, and he found Jasmine and Martha snooping.
And if he was a murderer, and he found them, and they had discovered incriminating evidence…
Then what?
What would he have done with them?
It struck me then.
The dump. To dispose of the bodies.
God, the bodies.
My stomach soured and my knees shook. I raced back through the tangled growth, back to Jasmine’s car. I pulled around the van and made the circle and whipped onto the road in front of the trailer park and headed for the dump at high speed. If a cop saw me, good. Let him chase me, on out to the dump.
Drops of rain had begun to fall as I turned on the road to the dump.
Lightning was crisscrossing more rapidly and more heatedly than before. Thunder rumbled.
I killed the lights and eased into the dump, using the lightning flashes as my guide, and there, stretched across the dump road, blocking passage, was Waldo’s trailer. The truck the trailer was fastened to was off the road and slightly turned in my direction, ready to leave the dump. I didn’t see any movement. The only sounds were from the throbbing thunder and the hissing lightning. Raindrops were falling faster.
I jerked the car into park in front of the trailer and got out and ran over there, then hesitated. I looked around and spotted a hunk of wood lying in some garbage. I yanked it out and ran back to the trailer and jerked open the door. The smell of dogs was thick in the air.
Lightning flashed in the open doorway and through the thin curtains at the windows. I saw Martha lying on the floor, face down, a meat cleaver in the small of her back. I saw that the bookshelves on the wall were filled with Harlequin Romances, and below them nailed onto the shelves, were strange hunks of what in the lightning flashes looked like hairy leather.
Darkness.
A beat.
Lighting flash.
I looked around, didn’t see Waldo hiding in the shadows with another meat cleaver.
Darkness again.
I went over to Martha and knelt beside her, touched her shoulder. She raised her head, tried to jerk around and grab me, but was too weak. “Sonofabitch,” she said.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Plebin,” she said. “Waldo nailed me a few times… Thinks I’m dead… He’s got Jasmine. Tried to stop him… Couldn’t… You got to. They’re out… there.”
I took hold of the cleaver and jerked it out of her back and tossed it on the floor.
“Goddamn,” Martha said, and almost did a push up, but lay back down. “Could have gone all day without that… Jasmine. The nut’s got her. Go on!”
Martha closed her eyes and lay still. I touched her neck. Still a pulse. But I couldn’t do anything now. I had to find Jasmine. Had to hope the bastard hadn’t done his work.
I went out of the trailer, around to the other side, looked out over the dump. The light wasn’t good, but it was good enough that I could see them immediately. Jasmine, her back to me, upside down, nude, was tied to the inside of the nearest derrick, hung up like a goat for the slaughter. Waldo stood at an angle, facing her, holding something in his hand.
Lightning strobed, thunder rumbled. The poodles were running about, barking and leaping. Two of the dogs were fucking out next to the derrick, flopping tongues. The great black hammerhead of the oil pump rose up and went down. Fires glowed from beneath debris and reflected on the metal bars of the derrick and the well pump, and when the rain hit the fires beneath the garbage they gave up white smoke and the smoke rolled in the wind like great balls of cotton, tumbled over Jasmine and Waldo and away.
Waldo swung what he had in his hand at Jasmine. Caught her across the neck with it. Her body twitched. I let out a yell that was absorbed by a sudden peal of thunder and a slash of lightning.
I started running, yelling as I went.
Waldo slashed at Jasmine again, and then he heard me yelling. He stepped to the side and stared at me, surprised. I ran up the little rise that led to the derrick before he could get it together, and as I ducked under a bar on the derrick, he dropped what he was holding.
A long paint brush.
It fell next to a can of dark paint. Rain plopped in the paint and black balls of paint flew up in response and fell down again. One of the dogs jumped the can of paint for no reason I could determine and ran off into the rain.
Jasmine made a noise like a smothered cough. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a strip of thick, gray tape across her mouth, and where Waldo had slashed her neck with the brush was a band of paint, dissolving in the rain, running down her neck, over her cheeks and into her eyes and finally her hair, like blood in a black-and-white movie.
Waldo reached behind his back and came back with a knife. The edge of the blade caught a flash of lightning and gave a wicked wink. Waldo’s face was full of expression this time, as if he had saved all his passion for this moment.
“Come on, asshole,” I said. “Come on. Cut me.”
He leapt forward, very fast. The knife went out and caught me across the chest as I jumped back and hit my head on a metal runner of the derrick. I felt something warm on my chest. Shit. I hadn’t really wanted him to cut me. He was a fast little bastard.
I didn’t invite him to do that again.
I cocked my piece of wood and let him get as close as I could allow without fear taking over, then I ducked under the metal runner and he ducked under it after me, poking straight out with the knife.
I swung at him, and the wood, rotten, possibly termite ridden, came apart close to my hand and went sailing and crumbling across the dump.
Waldo and I watched the chunk of wood until it hit the dirt by the derrick and exploded into a half dozen fragments.
Waldo turned his attention to me again, smiled, and came fast. I jumped backwards and my feet went out from under me and dogs yelped.
The lover mutts. I had backed over them while they were screwing. I looked up between my knees and saw the dogs turned butt to butt, hung up, and then I looked higher, and there was Waldo and his knife. I rolled and came up and grabbed a wet cardboard box of something and threw it. It struck Waldo in the chest and what was in the box flew out and spun along the wet ground. It was half a mannequin torso.
“You’re ruining everything,” Waldo said.
I glanced down and saw one of the mannequin legs Sam had pulled from a box and tossed. I grabbed the leg and cocked it on my shoulder like a baseball bat.
“Come on, asshole,” I said. “Come on. Let’s see if I can put one over the fence with you.”
He went nuts then, dove for me. The knife jabbed out, fast and blurry.
I swatted. My swing hit his arm and his knife hand went wide and opened up and the knife flew into a pile of garbage and out of sight.
Waldo and I both looked at where it had disappeared.
We looked at one another. It was my turn to smile.
He staggered back and I followed, rotating the leg, trying to pick my shot.
He darted to his right, dipped, came up clutching one of the mannequin’s arms. He held it by the wrist and
