goddam well make this work. You don’t believe me, assface, just watch and see.”
Carver said, “Somehow I believe you.”
“Then unfold those plastic drop cloths or whatever the fuck they are. Pick up the guns and wrap them in with the bodies.” He turned to Beth. “You carry my rifle. Leave Gomez’s and Hirsh’s weapons where they are. Got it?”
Beth said she did. She stared down at her dead husband. Her features were impassive. It was impossible to guess what she was thinking. What she was reliving.
McGregor said, “Remember he was gonna feed you to the alligators.”
Beth surprised Carver. She nudged Gomez’s corpse with the toe of her shoe and said, “I remember. And further back than tonight. Good riddance, Roberto.”
McGregor looked at her with a flicker of approval.
Carver and McGregor got the bodies wrapped. Carver retrieved his Colt from where it was stuck in Junior’s belt and shoved it down his waistband at the small of his back. Then he picked up the Uzi the Brainards had confiscated from Beth, and a rifle, and wound them in plastic along with B.J.’s body.
B.J. wasn’t much of a problem. McGregor slung his plastic-clad corpse across his shoulders and carried him fireman-fashion to the truck while Carver and Beth trudged along behind.
McGregor found an old wheelbarrow in a toolshed near the shack, and they used it to transport Junior. Even then, they spent most of their time carrying him over soft mud, and Beth had to help several times when the wheelbarrow’s narrow wheel sank into the ooze.
They loaded the bodies in the cargo area of the Blazer. Carver sat in back with them and watched while McGregor opened the trunk of the blue Plymouth that had been parked at the motel. Beth dropped the rifle into the dark trunk, and McGregor hurriedly slammed down the lid and made sure the trunk was locked.
McGregor drove the heavily laden four-wheel-drive Blazer out of the swamp and to the interstate highway. He maneuvered the ruts and bumps as if he’d spent his entire life in Dark Glades. Like so many egomaniacs, he could rise to necessity and find dormant talents.
In less than an hour they’d reached the deserted construction site, and shortly thereafter the Brainards were buried like plastic-shrouded mummies in shallow graves. Clouds had closed in. The night was almost totally black, and only infrequent sets of speeding headlights, like tracer bullets on the distant detour, broke the darkness. The grisly job was completed in privacy.
When the last shovelful of loose earth had been tossed, McGregor stood back and placed a hand over his heart, his head bowed. For a moment Carver actually thought he was going to say a few words over the graves. What he said was, “Better thee than me, assholes.” Then he laughed. “Ready? Let’s get the fuck outa here.”
Carver was ready.
Carver and Beth stayed in Carver’s room at the Casa Grande that night. They heard distant sirens. McGregor, having a high time with Chief Morgan and the DEA. With the news media. A hero being born.
Beth snuggled close to Carver. They’d showered together, and she smelled like perfumed soap and shampoo.
She said, “You think McGregor can really make it work?”
Carver said, “Trust him.”
And fell asleep.
At Whiffy’s the next morning, the talk was of nothing other than what had happened in the swamp near the Brainards’ shack. How a big-time drug dealer and his partner had been killed during some kind of narcotics transaction, but the Brainards had escaped. Behind the long counter, Whiffy looked briefly at Carver and Beth and offered the opinion that Dark Glades had seen the last of the Brainards. Several customers agreed, and opined that that was just fine.
Carver and Beth ate their bacon and eggs silently, enjoying the cool breeze from the ticking ceiling fan.
Over fresh coffee, Beth stared across the table at Carver and said, “Guess I better tell you.”
He saw it in her eyes, though he didn’t understand it. Felt something cold close in on him. A premonition. “Tell me what?”
She inhaled and held her breath for several seconds, as if not wanting to turn the words loose. Then she said, “Adam’s not my son. He’s Melanie’s.”
Carver couldn’t believe it. He set down his cup too hard, almost breaking it against the saucer as he sloshed hot coffee onto his thumb. He sat back and stared at her.
Beth said, “I sorta borrowed Adam. Got Melanie to cooperate.”
“And your real son?”
“He died in childbirth. Not from drug addiction complications, but because he was a breech birth and the umbilical cord got wrapped around his neck. It was asphyxiation.”
“Roberto knew this? “
“No. I planted the heroin addiction story, just like I said. I didn’t know it’d turn him into an animal, out for revenge. Didn’t realize how ferociously he’d hunt me and try to kill me.”
“He was an animal to begin with, and he thought you killed his son.”
Beth bowed her head and began to sob quietly. “Christ, I don’t know, maybe I
Carver said, “Jesus, you were wrong! About everything.” He tried to take a sip of coffee but found his hand was trembling too much. He placed the cup back in its saucer, gently this time, listening to the brief music of china on china as his hand shook. “You got me going, though. One lie after another.”
“Would you have helped me otherwise?” she asked calmly and sadly.
“No,” he admitted. The truth cut him like a blade. “If the baby’s not yours, why did you call Melanie from the motel?”
“I needed to keep you convinced, and I wanted to make sure Roberto hadn’t traced our moves and harmed Melanie for helping me.”
“You are something,” Carver said. “An actress good enough for the movies.”
Beth sat up straighter. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, as if she were infinitely weary, then gave Carver the look of a woman twenty years older. “I did what I had to in order to survive. Can’t you understand that?”
He said, “I do understand.”
“Then can you forgive me?”
Carver said, “No. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
Another thing he couldn’t do was look at her. He put down a ten-dollar bill to cover breakfast and a tip and stood up, then he limped out of there. She let him leave without calling to him.
Well, she was finished using him.
On the drive back to Del Moray he listened to the news on the Olds’s radio. McGregor was selling his story to the DEA and the media. Carver hadn’t doubted he would, but still he was impressed. The force of McGregor’s evil and ego was such that it engulfed and persuaded.
Carver had heard enough. He switched off the radio and settled back in the sun-warmed vinyl seat. The car’s canvas top was down. He draped a wrist over the top of the steering wheel and let the wind swirl around him.
As he drove past the highway construction site, he saw a procession of cement trucks with their mixers slowly revolving, lined along the dirt shoulder and inching forward as their stacks belched dark diesel fumes. One by one pouring the Brainard brothers’ gravestone.
33
