His friend gave him a quick surge of pleasure.
Roland came out of his reverie and found himself standing over the blanket and bloody clothes. His penis was stiff, but it shrank quickly as he once again confronted his plight.
If he stayed here to wait for dark, he would be risking a return of the cortez.
I’ll think of something, he told himself.
He straightened the blanket, tossed his T-shirt and jeans and Celia’s gown into its center, rolled it up and carried it into the rest room. The air in the rest room was heavy with odors of blood and feces. He shook open the blanket, the clothes falling out; and spread it over Jason’s corpse.
The sink had a mirror above it. Except for pale skin around his eyes, as if he had worn goggles last night, Roland’s face was painted with blood that had dried and turned a shade of red-brown. Locks of hair were glued to his forehead. A bit of something clung to one eyebrow. He picked it off, but it adhered to his finger. He flicked it with his thumbnail and watched it stick to the wall under the mirror.
He turned the faucet on, bent over the sink, and began to clean himself, using one of the towels as a washcloth. He didn’t like the noise of the splashing water. It deafened him to other sounds. A car could drive into the parking lot, someone could sneak up behind him…He shut the water off. As he listened, he straightened enough to see himself in the mirror. His face and neck were clean.
He turned the faucet on again and resumed washing himself, this time standing back from the sink, flooding the towel with warm water and slopping it against himself. The water spilled down his body, sluicing off blood. He rubbed his skin vigorously, wrung the pink residue from the towel, wetted the towel again and repeated the process. Soon, he was standing in a shallow pool of water and blood but the front of his body was almost spotless.
He shut off the faucet, listened, fought an urge to venture into the bar area for a glance out a front window, and turned the water on again. He began the task of washing his back. This was more difficult.
Restaurants ought to have showers, he thought, for occasions like this. He grinned.
When he supposed he must’ve gotten most of it, he splashed across the floor until he was standing almost at the rest room door. There, he looked over his shoulder. He was far enough from the mirror so that it reflected his back all the way down past his rump. The green-yellow bruise ran down his spine and angled across his right buttock, but he saw no blood.
He used the other towel to dry himself. Now that he was clean and dry, he was very careful not to slip on the puddled tiles. He skated slowly along as he worked at his few remaining chores.
After draping the towel over one shoulder, he spent a few minutes at the sink washing his knife and handcuffs. He retrieved his shoes and socks from the space behind the toilet, and carried them, along with the knife and cuffs, to the rest room door. He opened the door and tossed them onto the hardwood floor outside.
Crouching beside Jason’s covered body, he flung the blanket aside and took the car keys from a pocket of Jason’s trousers. His hand got bloody again, doing it, and he sighed. He found Jason’s wallet in a rear pocket, removed the student ID and the driver’s license with its phonied birth date. After making sure that nothing remained in the wallet to identify its owner, he flushed the cards down the toilet.
He picked up his jeans. In the dorm yesterday, he had removed everything from his pockets that could be used to identify him. (The Skidrow Slasher, he knew, had been caught because the idiot had lost his wallet, driver’s license and all, on a hillside while fleeing from a break-in.) He took the handcuff key from the right front pocket and was about to toss the jeans down again when it occurred to him that they didn’t look too bad.
They were wet from lying on the floor. They were matted with blood. But they were blue jeans.
He spent a while at the sink, scrubbing them with hot water and wringing them out. When he shook them open, he found that the stains were not especially noticeable.
He left the rest room with them. Leaning against a wall by the door, he cleaned his feet. He stepped into the damp, clinging jeans and pulled them up.
You’re in business, pal.
A warm, sunny day like this, nobody would think twice about seeing a guy shirtless. And nobody except the cortez would react to the bruise up his back.
Roland put on his shoes and socks. He folded his knife shut and slipped it into the case on his belt. He stuffed Jason’s car keys, the handcuffs, and their key into a front pocket of his jeans.
All set.
He was about to leave when he remembered that he had left the spray can of oil in the rest room behind the toilet. It would have his fingerprints.
Fuck it, he thought. I’ve already got my shoes on. I’m not going back in there.
His prints were probably all over the restaurant. Big deal.
The area in front of the bar looked okay. There were some smears on the floor, but no large quantities of blood. He pulled the towel off his shoulder, spent a few moments scrubbing the area, then tossed the towel behind the bar. He picked up the empty champagne bottle and set it on the card table.
Was he forgetting anything?
Probably.
Who cares? Even if someone finds the bodies today, it’ll take a while to identify them. They won’t have a clue as to who did this until they’ve figured out who Jason and Celia are. By then, I’ll be on the road.
Roland shut the door behind him, saw Jason’s car, and went back into the restaurant. He walked quickly around the corner to the dining area, crouched and opened the toolbox. There were several screwdrivers inside. He took out the largest, and went outside again.
It took only a few minutes to remove both license plates from Jason’s car. He took them to the edge of the parking lot and sailed them into the weeds.
Then he returned to Jason’s car. He opened the trunk, looked inside, and shut it. He opened a back door and looked along the seat and floor. Fine.
He climbed in behind the steering wheel. The warmth of the car felt good. On the floor in front of the passenger seat was Celia’s purse. He opened it and found her wallet. Rather than taking time to search it, he stuffed the entire wallet into a back pocket of his jeans. He found her key chain and pocketed it. Then he inspected the rest of the purse’s contents, making sure that nothing remained to identify its owner.
He searched the car’s glove compartment. A registration slip gave Jason’s name, so he put it into his pocket.
That appeared to be it.
Unless he had missed something, Jason’s car was now stripped of everything that might lead to a quick identification of its owner or last night’s passenger.
Roland drove away from the Oakwood Inn.
Yesterday afternoon, he had parked Dana’s VW bug on a residential street and hiked the final mile or more to the restaurant. Now, he drove back to the place where he had left the car. It was still there, along a lengthy stretch of curb between two expensive-looking ranch style houses. Across the street, an Oriental man in a pith helmet was rolling a power mower down a couple of boards leading from the tail of his battered pickup truck. Otherwise, the neighborhood looked deserted.
Roland turned down a side road and parked near the far corner. He stuffed Celia’s purse under the front seat. Then he pushed down the lock buttons of all the doors and climbed out.
He strolled back to Dana’s car. It was unlocked, just as he had left it. Feeling around beneath the driver’s seat, he found Dana’s keys. The engine turned over without any trouble, and he drove it away.