It always took a while to catch up with him. He went into the bathroom, got the prescription asthma spray he used. She said his inability to breathe was more in his head than in his respiratory system. That was another thing that maddened him, her know-it-all attitude. He’d told her he had a mild case of asthma and that it was easily controlled. When they were first married she’d tried to baby him over it, but he’d shrugged that off. She never knew the real cause; he’d tried to hide the severity of those attacks from her.
Usually he could ease the breathing, but he couldn’t stop the tightness in his chest that made him feel like he was being crushed, as if he was sealed inside a wall. In the bathroom, inhaling the spray, that dark memory from his childhood filled him.
He’d had the vision for so many years that sometimes he was no longer sure if that horror had really happened. Not sure if he’d seen that victim when he was a child, or even if he’d been the victim, himself. Or if the vision had come only from Poe’s dark tale that he’d read over and over, the story of the man sealed in a cellar wall. Only, this time when he couldn’t breathe and that scene hit him, it was her he saw, it was her sealed, dead, inside the cellar wall.
He’d sat shakily at the kitchen table until the breathing came easier, then he’d gotten up, poured a glass of milk, and found some crackers. And soon, with some food in him, he started wondering if he could move her now, if he dared get the car out before dark and go back, if he dared take a chance. The notion ate at him until he headed for the garage, unloaded the car’s toolbox and blanket from the trunk to make room, and stuffed them in the backseat. He found the shovel and put that in, too.
He’d checked the street several times, looking out the living room windows. At last he had backed the car out, shut the garage door, and headed down the street-just as three kids careened around the corner on their skateboards.
Losing his nerve, he’d turned around and headed back home. The neighbors, glimpsing the car, might not know for sure he was alone, with the tinted side windows, would maybe think they’d forgotten something. Damn neighbors minded way too much of other people’s business-but he needed them. If he went ahead with the plan, he sure as hell needed them.
He had put the car back in the garage, had spent hours pacing the house waiting for it to get dark, sweating and trying to breathe slowly and deeply. At dusk he’d wanted to try again, but when he looked out the front window, two couples were walking their dogs. Puffy little mutts that looked more like wind-up toys than something alive, and their owners strutting along after them like they were some kind of big deal. That was another thing about pets, they were not only dirty and of no practical use, they wasted a person’s time, to say nothing of wasting money. And right now those dogs, bringing the neighbors out on the street, were sure as hell hindering him in what he had to do. She’d never known how he felt about useless animals, he was way too good at making people believe what he wanted them to believe.
He’d left the house lights off. In the dark he’d poured himself a small bourbon, knowing he daren’t drink much, that he had to keep his head clear. He’d kept looking out the window, but had ended up having to wait until full dark before the street was empty. This time, going into the garage, he’d disconnected the motor for the garage door by pulling the cord, had pushed the door up manually so it was quieter. Had gotten in the car and backed out hoping no one saw, had closed the door again by hand and headed down to the Parker house.
Turning into the cracked drive, he’d pulled down to where it turned to enter the garage, where the overgrown bushes should hide the car. Getting out, he’d walked back up the drive and stood among the dark bushes looking up and down the street.
He could see no one on the street or in the yards. Studying the lighted windows, he could see no shadow standing behind the curtains or shades as if looking out. He could smell roast beef cooking, and fish frying. Taking the flashlight from the glove compartment, he’d walked between the bushes and through the long grass on down to the pool. Insane to let a house go like this, with the prices of real estate in this town.
It was dark as hell in the back, and he was afraid of a misstep, of falling into the empty pool himself. Wouldn’t that be ironic, if he, too, died down there. He had a flash of her making him fall, reaching up from the pool and dragging him down, and that constricted his breathing, so he had to slow until he got his breath. All his life he’d had to deal with constricted breathing. All his life he’d known that wasn’t fair.
He didn’t want to shine the light until he was down inside the pool, and twice he slipped going down the slimy steps. He was down inside the concrete hole at last. Crossing the muddy tile, he shielded the light in his cupped hand, wondering how much would reflect up out of the pool.
She was there lying in the dark, as he’d left her, but the shock of seeing her sprawled, of his light playing over the blood and bruise, made his stomach twist.
At last, kneeling, he got his arms under her, to lift her. Her arms were stiff, her head and neck stiff. Her torso was limp, difficult to handle, stiff arms and legs sticking out. Sickened, he lifted her as best he could, carried and dragged her across the pool and up the steps, slipping and silently cursing-and leaving a drag trail of mud and blood along with the track of his tennis shoes, a mess he would have to clean up once he got her out of there.
She was even harder to handle loading in the trunk. He got her in at last, got the dark wool lap blanket out of the backseat and pulled it over her, covering her face. He didn’t want to look at her face; he still had a sense of her watching him. The blood had mostly dried, but some of it was sticky. He shut the lid as quietly as he could. Getting in the car, making sure he’d slid the shovel onto the floor of the backseat, he headed up toward the hills.
He drove for a long time, back and forth among the dark and empty hills, trying to find a place to bury her. His headlights picked out very little beyond the road. He tried to scan the night-black hills by memory, tried to identify the few dim lights of the scattered houses as he looked for a stretch of empty land where freshly dug earth wouldn’t be noticed. And as the car nosed along the dark roads, fear rode with him, chill and black.
8
HE STOPPED SEVERAL times to look out at an empty field, but in every case one house or another was too close. He wanted a place where he wouldn’t have to carry her for miles across rough fields in the dark, but isolated enough so no one would hear him digging. The night was so still. Even from inside a house someone might hear the sound of the shovel, or a dog would hear and start barking. Though the night was cool, some hardy soul might be sitting on his front porch, his ears tuned to every small bucolic sound. To such a listener, the clink of a shovel would echo like thunder. And he’d have to do it all in the dark. If he used the flashlight, he’d sure as hell be seen. She’d really screwed things up, had really made it hard for him.
He’d headed home after midnight, discouraged with her still in the trunk. He was exhausted and his nerves were shot. He’d put the car in the garage, put on clean tennis shoes, and in the dark neighborhood he’d headed on foot back to the Parker house. Hoping somehow, even in the dark, to clean up the tracks he’d left. He carried the flashlight in his pocket, but when he got there he was afraid someone would see a light moving around the yard or reflecting up from the pool. Consequently, he couldn’t see what to clean up; if he tried, he’d only make a mess of it. He’d have to come back in the morning, the minute it started to get light.