“It's sorta mine,” Jesse said. She looked so sad that the cop's smile vanished. She got up close and peered down at Screw's body. “That's him. He looks so… dead.”
The body was important for two major reasons: it confirmed Jesse's story; and one other thing…
Lucas squatted next to it: the dog was twisted and scuffed, but also, it seemed, broken. Better though: its muzzle was stained with blood.
Lucas stood up and said to the cop, “Somebody said Animal Control was coming?”
“Yeah.”
“I don't know how to do this, exactly, but I want an autopsy done,” Lucas said. “I'd like to have it done by the Ramsey medical examiner, if they'll do it.”
“An autopsy?” Jason looked doubtfully at the dead dog.
“Yeah. I want to know how he was killed. Specifically, if it might have been a pipe,” Lucas said. “I want the nose, there, the mouth, checked for human blood. If there is human blood, I want DNA.”
“Who'd he bite?” the cop asked.
“We don't know. But this is seriously important. When I find this guy, I'm gonna hang him up by his… I'm gonna hang him up,” Lucas said.
“By his balls,” said Jesse.
Gabriella didn't notice the broken window in the back door until she actually pushed the door open and was reaching for the kitchen light switch. The back door had nine small windows in it, and the broken one was bottom left, above the knob. The glass was still there, held together by transparent Scotch tape, but she could see the cracks when the light snapped on. She frowned and took a step into the kitchen and the other woman was right there.
Jane Widdler had just come down the stairs, carrying the sewing basket. She turned and walked down the hall into the kitchen, quiet in running shoes, Leslie twenty feet behind, when she heard the key in the back door lock and the door popped open and the light went on and a woman stepped into the kitchen and there they were.
The woman froze and blurted, “What?” and then a light of recognition flared in her eyes.
Jane recognized her from the meeting at Bucher's. The woman shrank back and looked as though she were about to scream or run, or scream and run, and Jane knew that a running fight in a crowded neighborhood just wouldn't work, not with the dog bites in Leslie's legs, and Leslie was still too far away, so she dropped the basket and launched herself at Coombs, windmilling at her, fingernails flying, mouth open, smothering a war shriek.
Coombs put up a hand and tried to backpedal and Jane hit her in the face and the two women bounced off the doorjamb and went down and rolled across the floor, Coombs pounding at Jane's midriff and legs, then Leslie was there, trying to get behind Coombs, and they rolled over into the kitchen table, and then back, and then Leslie plumped down on both of them and got an arm around Coombs and pulled her off of Jane like a mouse being pulled off flypaper.
Coombs tried to scream, her mouth open, her eyes bulging as Leslie choked her, and she was looking right in Jane's eyes when her spine cracked, and her eyes rolled up and her body went limp.
Jane pushed the body away and Leslie said, “Motherfucker,” and backed up to the door, then turned around and closed it.
Jane was on her hands and knees, used the table to push herself up. “Is she dead?”
“Yeah.” Leslie's voice was hoarse. He'd been angry with the world ever since the dog. His arms, ass, and legs burned like fire, and his heart was pounding from the surprise and murder of Coombs.
Coombs lay like a crumpled rag in the nearly nonexistent light on the kitchen floor; a shadow, a shape in a black-and-white photograph. “We can't leave her,” Leslie said.
“She's got to disappear. She's one too many dead people.”
“They'll know,” Jane said, near panic. “We've got to get out of here.”
“We've got to take her with us. We'll go back to the house, get the van, we've got to move the van anyway. We'll take her down to the farm, like we were gonna do with the kid,” Leslie said.
“Then what? Then what?”
“Then tomorrow, we go to see John Smith at Bucher's, give him some papers of some kind, tell him we forgot something,” Leslie said “We let him see us: see that I'm not all bitten up. I can fake that. We tell him we're thinking of a scouting trip… and then we take off.”
“Oh, God, Leslie, I'm frightened. I think…” Jane looked at the shadow on the floor.
What she thought was, This won't work.
But better not to tell Les. Not in the mood he was in. “Maybe. Maybe that's the best plan. I don't know if we should go away, though. Going away won't help us if they decide to start looking for us…”
“We can talk about that later. Get your flashlight, see if there're some garbage bags here. We gotta bag this bitch up and get rid of her. And we've gotta pick up this sewing shit… What'd you do, you dumbshit, throw it at her?”
“Don't be vulgar. Not now. Please.”
They scrabbled around in the dark, afraid to let the light of the flash play against the walls or windows. They got the sewing basket back together, hurriedly, and found garbage bags in a cleaning closet next to the refrigerator. They stuffed the lower half of Coombs's limp body into a garbage bag, then pulled another over the top of her body.
Leslie squatted on the floor and sprayed around some Scrubbing Bubbles cleaner, then wiped it up with paper towels and put the towels in the bags with the body. He did most of the kitchen floor that way, waddling backward away from the wet parts until he'd done most of the kitchen floor.
“Should be good,” he muttered. Then: “Get the car. Pull it through the alley. I'll meet you by the fence.”
She didn't say a word, but went out the back door, carrying the wicker sewing basket.
And she thought, Won't work. Won't work.
She moved slowly around the house, in the dark, then down the front lawn and up the street to the car. She got in, thinking, Won't work.
Some kind of dark, disturbing mantra. She had to break out of it, had to think. Leslie didn't see it yet, but he would.
Had to think.
The alley was a line of battered garages, with one or two new ones, and a broken up, rolling street surface. She moved through it slowly and carefully, around an old battered car, maybe Coombs's, paused by the back gate to Coombs's house, popped the trunk: felt the weight when the body went in the trunk. Then Leslie was in the car and said, “Move it.”
She had to think. “We need supplies. We need to get the coveralls. If we're going to dig… we need some boots we can leave behind. In the ground. We need gloves.
We need a shovel.”
Leslie looked out the window, at the houses passing on Lexington Avenue, staring, sullen: he got like that after he'd killed someone. “We've got to go away,” he said, finally. “Someplace… far away. For a couple of months. Even then… these goddamn holes in me, they're pinning us down. We don't dare get in a situation where somebody wants to look at my legs. They don't even have to suspect us-if they start looking at antique dealers, looking in general, asking about dog bites, want to look at my legs… We're fucked.”
Maybe you, Jane thought. “We can't just go rushing off. There's no sign that they'll be looking at you right away, so we'll tell Mary Belle and Kathy that we're going on a driving loop, that we'll be gone at least three weeks. Then, we can stretch it, once we're out there. Talk to the girls tomorrow, get it going… and then leave. End of the week.”
“Just fuckin' itch like crazy,” Leslie said. “Just want to pull the bandages off and scratch myself.”
“Leslie, could you please… watch the language? Please? I know this is upsetting, but you know how upset I get…”
Leslie looked OUT the window and thought, We're fucked. It was getting away from them, and he knew it. And with the bites on his legs, he was a sitting duck. He could run. They had a good bit of cash stashed, and if he loaded the van with all the highest-value stuff, drove out to L.A., and was very, very careful, he could walk off with a million and a half in cash.
It'd take some time; but he could buy an ID, grow a beard, lose some weight. Move to Mexico, or Costa Rica.
