The Killing Circle

If I’m right in this, the possibility that Conrad and Evelyn’s accident was in fact accidental becomes considerably harder to accept. They drove into a cliff wall. But what made them turn? At that speed, what were they driving from? Even the police found the crash “puzzling”. One solution would be if it was a double murder. If their killer was Raymond Mull.

Angela’s father. The original Sandman.

27

Sam calls me.

I’ve been sitting in the Crypt all day, intermittently writing in my journal and trying Angela’s number over and over, as though persistence is all that’s required to bring back the dead. I even try Len, whose answering machine’s message is the creepy piano soundtrack from Halloween.

All of them gone, or missing. Me too. It’s why the ringing of the phone takes me by surprise.

“Dad?”

“What’s up?”

“Are you coming to visit today?”

“Not today.”

“What are you scared of, Dad?”

“I’m not scared.”

“What are you scared of?”

“I don’t want you to get hurt for something I did,” I say finally. “You’re it. You’re all I have. There’s nothing more important to me than making sure I don’t screw up again.”

“What did you do?”

“I stole something.”

“Can’t you give it back?”

“It’s too late.”

“Like a…perishable item.”

“That’s right. Just like that.”

If you take another’s past and use it as your own it can’t be returned. It’s bruised. Perishable. You take someone else’s story and chances are even they won’t want it back.

That evening, I know something’s wrong even before I park the Toyota behind the house. The door to the yard is ajar. The one I’d remembered to padlock over a week ago. It keeps me in the front seat a couple minutes longer, hands on the wheel. A lick of breeze nudges the door open another foot. Even in the dark, I can see the pale cuts in the wood where a crowbar has wrenched it free of the bolt.

It’s rage that starts me running two houses down, through the side alley to the street. Unlocking the door and kicking it open with an underwater rush of blood in my ears.

Upstairs. Making my way down the hallway, stepping blind into each room, not bothering to hide my steps or even turn on the lights.

No sign of anything taken or touched. Nothing left behind.

The same goes for downstairs. Every door locked, every window intact. Whoever went to the trouble of ripping the back gate apart was apparently interrupted on his way to the house. That, or the house wasn’t his destination in the first place.

I pull back the curtains in the living room and look out the sliding glass doors. The light from a single hanging bulb illuminates the inside of the lopsided garden shed. A surprise. First, because it’s been so long since I’ve been out there at night I didn’t even know it had a bulb that still worked. And second, because the light wasn’t on when I parked the car no more than four minutes ago.

I go down to the basement. Rummage through the neglected corner of sports equipment and find what I’m looking for at the bottom of the pile. A baseball bat. A Louisville Slugger that feels right in my hands, heavy but capable of decisive speed in the first swing. After that, if it works, I can take my time.

I’m opening the sliding door and shuffling through the uncut grass. The shed’s door left open a foot in invitation.

The shed’s window is small, maybe two feet square, the glass murky with cobwebs. I try to look in. At the angle I stand at, there are only the shelves and wall hooks that store ignored tools and unopened hardware gifts. A museum of the failed handyman.

I go to the door and bring the bat even with my shoulders.

For a moment, the traffic and air-conditioning thrum of the city is quieted. There is only me. A man standing in his back yard. Holding a baseball bat. Raising his foot to kick in a shed door.

It flies open. Hits the wall. Swings closed again.

Yet there is time enough to peek-a-boo what’s inside. The old rotary lawnmower I’ve yet to take out this year. The 1999 Sunshine Girl calendar Tim Earheart gave me. Red paint dotted over the floor. Petra.

Then: not red paint, but blood.

Not Petra. Petra’s body.

What did he use?

This is my first thought upon seeing what remains of Petra on my shed floor. Would a knife do that? A drill? Could you do it on your own?

Did he keep her in a freezer? I think this too. She looks fresh enough.

But this is shock talking. This isn’t me.

I stare at her. The unfamiliar pinks and coiled blues that normally lie inside a person. I sit on a can of paint and do the same thing I did after finding her Yankees cap once it made its way from Angela’s condo to my living- room coffee table. I just looked at it. Long enough for the morning to slip into afternoon, for a thunderstorm to come and go. And the whole time I was stuck on the same question as I am now: What do you do with evidence planted in your home that could put you in prison for the rest of your life?

There’s going to the police and telling them the whole story, an expensive lawyer by your side, hoping they’ll see it your way. Unavailable in my case, however. Not with all the connections that have even me wondering if I did it.

Next there’s enlisting help. Calling a friend for advice, a drive across the border. But who would I call? Tim Earheart? Hard to believe he could resist the temptation to print the transcript of my call on tomorrow’s front page.

In the end, you might do as I did: put on gardening gloves, wipe the Yankees cap for prints using a wet tea towel, cut the thing into ribbons and stick it in the trash.

Which is the same thing I do with Petra’s body.

Yet not right away. Not until after a couple hours of taking deep breaths with my head between my knees. Smoking a cigarette from the emergency pack I keep in the flour jar. A round of dry heaves into the compost bin. It’s not easy coming to a decision like that. But that’s still nothing. Deciding to do it is a breeze compared with the doing of it.

Not to mention getting ready to do it.

Here, finally, is some use for what I learned over the hundreds of hours of prime-time forensic cop TV I studied as the Couch Potato: How to best cover your tracks in the disposal of a body.

I begin by stripping myself naked (later burning the clothes I wore when I entered the shed, just to be sure). After the cutting, I wrap each smaller part in several garbage bags. Dry, air-tight. Place the resulting packages in a larger bag used for yard waste.