“Don’t go. Something’s wrong.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, just something.”
He looked around.
Everything was normal.
“It’s just the night playing a trick.”
She looked around, then raised her lips so close to his that he could feel the warmth of her breath.
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
He headed into the dark with the shovel in hand, counting fifty steps then turning left. An orange moon lifted off the horizon.
The terrain dipped and the temperature followed.
The road was a strip of black to his left, darker than the surroundings but not by much. It was visible enough to follow and that’s all he needed.
In his pocket was a flashlight.
He’d only use it if he couldn’t find the bodies.
A whoosh came overhead.
He looked up and saw nothing, but pictured a bat snatching a bug.
“Bad night to be a bug,” he muttered.
Somewhere in the distance a coyote barked.
No pack joined in.
It wasn’t a hunt.
Maybe it was just a lost soul out there in the world alone, separated from his kind.
That’s what January said.
River suddenly realized she was right.
Something was going to happen.
Something bad.
He shook it off and kept going.
He didn’t need the flashlight to find the bodies, the rancid smell pulled him in. He shined the light down to find something he didn’t expect, namely that both men had been torn apart by coyotes. Their faces and necks were mostly gone, their hands too.
Now the flies were having their turn.
He went through their pockets.
There he found a folded up newspaper article. It was about the murder of a businessman in Kansas City last week. He shoved it in his wallet and started digging.
The soil was hardly soil at all.
It was mostly rock.
He should have brought a pick.
It took over an hour to dig a hole for the both of them to where they were under a good foot. He filled it in, disbursed the extra dirt, rolled a couple of big rocks on top and then raked everything down. If anyone wandered out here it would look suspicious for a couple of days. After that the wind would make it less and less visible. The first good rain would cloak it completely.
He headed back for the car.
When he got to where it should be, it wasn’t there.
He must have passed it or not gone far enough.
He hiked in one direction down the road far enough to know it wasn’t that way, then turned around and went the other way.
It wasn’t there either.
It was gone.
He should have never trusted her.
25
Wilde knocked on Michelle Day’s door, trying with all his might to put the image of this morning out of his head. The harder he tried the more vivid it got. He could see her hips wiggling with all the clarity of the movie screen down at the Zaza Theatre. He could feel her passion and taste her breath.
Suddenly the door opened.
It was Michelle Day, dressed now and brightly awake, wondering who he was.
She was short, not much more than five feet, built in shades of brown-brown hair, brown eyebrows, brown eyes and brown skin. The hair matched up and down, a fact Wilde shouldn’t know but did. She wore shorts, brown, and a T, brown.
Her feet were bare.
Wilde pulled the photo of Charley-Anna Blackridge out of his pocket and handed it to her.
After she studied it, he said, “My name’s Bryson Wilde. I’m a private investigator. The woman in the photograph was killed Friday night. Before she got killed she was at the El Ray Club where you were bartending. I’m trying to find out if you saw who she left with.”
The woman processed it.
“How’d she die?”
“She fell from a roof.”
“
“The theory is that she was pushed or dropped,” he said. “Same landing either way.”
The woman nodded.
“Right, I suppose so.” She turned and headed for the kitchen. “Come on in. I remember her.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, she tipped me.”
“Good.”
“Not everyone does,” she said. “You’d be surprised.”
“I probably would.”
“There are a lot of cheapies out there. They can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned. Do you ever get stiffed by your clients?”
He did; not often, but on occasion.
“Then you know what I’m talking about,” she said.
He did.
He did indeed.
The kitchen wasn’t much more than a closet with faded appliances, but it was large
