steel one-handed, half overhead, like a whip, or a machete chopping sugarcane. The steel crashed through the side of George's head, two inches above his right ear. The professor bounced off the Jeep and down. Druze hit him again, but it was unnecessary: the first blow had crushed the side of his head. A sudden stench told Druze that George's bowels had relaxed. Neither he nor Bekker had thought about the stink the body could make in the car.
No reason to be furtive now: if anyone came in the next thirty seconds, it was over. Druze grabbed George under the arms, dragged him to the station wagon. The building lights, which had seemed remote and inadequate a few moments before, now seemed bright as stadium lights. Druze snatched open the wagon's back door and threw the body on the black plastic garbage bags that covered the floor behind the front seat. A short-handled spade was on the floor below the bags. When George's body hit the floor, it landed on the tip of the blade, and the handle popped up, tearing the bags. Druze swore and pushed the handle down, but now the body rolled…
George was heavy, and his legs were still sticking out of the car. Druze struggled, half frantic, trying to bend the legs; then he grappled with the overweight torso, pulling on the sport coat lapels, not seeing the bloody twisted head, trying to lift the torso farther into the car while he pressed the feet in behind. The spade bounded up and down like a teeter-totter, obstructing everything. Druze was sweating heavily by the time he finished.
Never been scared… He was scared now. Not badly, but enough to identify the emotion, a feeling that went back to the days of the burning. The hospital baths, where they peeled the dead skin… those had scared him. The transplants had scared him. When the doctor had come to check his progress, that had scared him. He hadn't been scared since he'd left the hospital. But he felt it now, a distant tingle, but definitely there…
When George was fully inside the car, on the floor behind the front seat, Druze covered the body with more black plastic garbage bags and then folded the back seats down over it. The seats didn't quite cover it, but to anyone looking casually inside, the wagon would appear empty.
He slammed the door, went back to the Jeep, got the keys out of the back door, shoved them between the curb and the front tire, then checked the meter: ten minutes. Druze took more quarters from his pocket, put in two hours' worth, then went back to the wagon. Nobody around. Nothing but the lights of Minneapolis, over across the river, and the distant sound of an unhappy taxi horn on Hennepin Avenue.
What if the wagon wouldn't start? What if… The wagon turned over, and he rolled it out of the lot, took a right. Met no cars. Turned onto University Avenue, let a breath out. Past the frat houses… Checked the gas gauge for the hundredth time. Full. He drove down Oak Street, then left, and then onto I-94, and pointed the car east toward Wisconsin.
The drive was eerie. Quiet. He had the feeling that the car was standing still, with the lights zooming by, like a nightmare. A cop crossed the overhead ramp at Snelling. Druze kept his eyes glued on the rearview mirror, but the cop continued south on Snelling, and out of sight.
He crossed the Fifth Street exit, past Highway 61, and exited at White Bear Avenue. Drove into a Standard station, called the number Bekker had given him, got the answering machine and spoke a single syllable: 'Yes.'
Back on I-94, fifty-five miles per hour all the way, ignoring the signs for sixty-five, through the double bridge across the St. Croix River at Hudson, out of Minnesota and up the Wisconsin side. The interstate mileage signs started on the western ends of each state, so he could count the ascending numbers as he moved deeper into Wisconsin, ten miles, twelve. He took the exit specified by Bekker, heading north.
Four-point-two miles, three red reflectors on a sign at the turnoff. He found it, right where Bekker had said, took the turnoff and bumped down a dirt track. Two-tenths of a mile. The track ended at a simple post-and-beam log cabin, a door in the center, a square window on either side of the door. The cabin was dark. In the headlights, he could see a brass padlock hanging from a hasp on the door.
Beyond the cabin, Druze could see moonlight on the lake. Not much of a lake; almost like a large pond, rimmed with cattails. He turned off the car lights, got out and walked down to the water, his feet groping for the path between the cabin and the water. There was a dark form off to his left, and he stepped next to it, trying to figure out what it was. Boards, on a steel frame, tires… a rollout dock. Okay.
On the opposite side of the lake, he could see a single lighted window but not the house around it. There was no sound but the wind in the trees. He stood for a moment, listening, watching, then hurried back up to the car.
George was easier to handle this time, because Druze didn't have to move so quickly or quietly. He got a flashlight from the glove compartment, then grabbed George by the necktie and the crotch, and hauled him out of the wagon. He threw the body over his shoulder like a sack of oatmeal and carried it down past the end of the track, as Bekker had said, past the tire swing hanging from the cottonwood. He flicked the light off and on, as he needed to spot footing; he was walking diagonally away from the cabin across the lake, so the light wouldn't be visible at the other house.
Blackberry brambles, dead but still armed, plucked at his clothing. Through the brambles, Bekker had said. Just go straight on back, nobody goes out there. Bekker and Stephanie had explored the place three years earlier, when she had been looking for a lake cabin. They'd seen the 'For Sale' sign on the way back from another lake, stopped to look, found the cabin vacant, stayed for ten minutes, then moved on. The cabin was primitive: an outhouse, no running water, no insulation. Summer only. Stephanie hadn't been interested, and nobody in the world knew they had been there.
Druze pushed through the brambles until the ground went soft, then dumped the body. He flicked the light on, looked around. He was on the edge of a bleak, rough-looking tamarack swamp. Bekker was right. It could be years before anyone came back here. Or never…
Druze walked back to the car, got the spade and went to work. He labored steadily for an hour, feeling his muscles overheat. Nothing fancy, he thought; just a hole. He dug straight down, a pit three feet in diameter, the soil getting heavier and wetter as he dug deeper. He hit a few roots, flailed at them with the spade, cut through, went deeper, covering himself with muck. At the end he had a waist-deep hole, flooded ankle-deep with muddy water. He climbed out of it, beaten, grabbed the body by the necktie and pantleg, and dumped it headfirst into the hole. There was a splash, and he flicked the light on. George's head was underwater, his feet sticking up. His socks had fallen down around very white ankles, Druze noticed, and one shoe had a hole in the sole…
He stood for a moment, resting, the clouds whipping overhead like black ships, the moon sliding behind one, then peeking out, then going down again. Cold, he thought. Like Halloween. He shivered, and started to fill the hole.
No one saw, no one heard.
He backed the car out, not turning on the headlights until he was down the track. He was in St. Paul before he realized he'd forgotten to cut George's eyes.
Fuck his eyes. And fuck Bekker.
Druze was free of the tarbaby.
Two campus cops cruised past George's Jeep and flashed the meter. More than an hour on the clock.
'Yes.'
The single syllable was in his ear, like stone, so hard. George was dead.
Bekker, standing in the hallway outside the restaurant entrance, dropped the phone in its cradle and danced his little jig, bobbing up and down, hopping from foot to foot, chortling. Caught himself. Looked around, guilty. Nobody. And they were clean. There were details to be tidied away, but they were details. After he got rid of the Jeep, there'd be no way to connect him to anything. Well: there'd be one way. But that was a detail.
He glanced at his watch: not quite midnight. Druze should be in Wisconsin by now. Bekker walked out to his car, drove to the hospital, parked. Took the cigarette case from his pocket, opened it in the gloom, popped one of the special Contac capsules, inhaled. The coke hit him immediately, and he rode with it, head back, eyes closed…
Time to go. Nobody was following, but if someone was, he could handle it. He and his friends. He walked through the hospital lobby and took the stairs. Down, this time. Used his key to get into the tunnel and walked through the maintenance tunnel to the next building. Everybody did it, especially in the winter. But the cops wouldn't know.
Careful, he told himself, paranoia… there were no cops. The dope was in his blood… but what was it, exactly? He couldn't quite remember. There had been some amphetamines, he always did those, and a lick of the PCP; he'd had some aspirin, a lot of aspirin, actually, for an incipient headache, and his regular doses of anabolic
