4th of July

Chapter 41

THE WATCHER HEARD THE doctor’s bound body bump and roll in the back of the van as they climbed the steep road.

“What about here?” he asked the Seeker. He checked the rearview mirror, then turned off the roadside into a niche between clumps of trees. He applied the brakes.

The Seeker leaped out of the van, hauled back on the sliding door, and propped the doctor into a sitting position.

“Okay, Doc, time to go,” he said, ripping the duct tape from his mouth. “Any last words? Or forever hold your peas.”

“What do you want me to say?” Dr. O’Malley gasped. “Just tell me. Do you want money? I can get money for you. Drugs? Anything you want.”

“That’s really stupid, Doc,” said the Seeker. “Even for you.”

“Don’t do this. Help me,” he pleaded. “Help me, please.”

“Help me, please,” mocked the Watcher.

“What did I do to you?” Dr. O’Malley sobbed.

A rough shove sent the doctor out of the van and into the grit on the side of the road.

“It’s easier than you think,” the Seeker said kindly, leaning close to the doctor’s ear. “Just fill your mind with things you love . . . and say good-bye.”

The doctor never saw the rock that caved in the back of his skull.

The Seeker opened his knife and lifted the doctor’s head by a handful of salt-and-pepper hair. As neatly as if he were slicing a melon, he slit the man’s throat.

Then the Watcher used his belt as a lash, striking hard, leaving brownish stripes on the bright white skin of O’Malley’s buttocks.

“Feel that?” he said, panting over the dying man.

The Seeker wiped his prints off the knife using the doctor’s shirttail. Then he hurled the knife and the rock far down the hillside, where they were swallowed by trees, brush, and tall rasping grasses.

Together the two men lifted the doctor’s body by his arms and legs and carried him to the cliffside edge of the road. They swung the limp body and on the count of three launched it over the side. They listened as the body crashed into the underbrush, tumbling downhill to a place so remote it would lie hidden, they hoped, until coyotes dragged off the worthless carcass.