Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 924 & 925, September/October 2018

End of the Line by De Paepe and Depuydt

Herbert De Paepe and Els Depuydt have cowritten several award-nominated novels — a rare enough thing. But what is really extraordinary about their literary collaboration is that they began it while married to each other and continue it now that they’re no longer married. At www.somethingisgoingtoliappen.net in September, they’ll blog about their dynamic relationship.

Translated from the Flemish hit Josh Pachter

Donna Daems hadn’t felt right all day. She’d awakened with a splitting headache. Something she couldn’t identify sucked the energy from her bones, and a wave of nausea crept upward from her stomach with every move she made. She probably had a fever, but she didn’t dare reach for the thermometer, sure that doing so would mean she’d have to stay home from work. She’d only started at the Jan Palfijn Hospital in Ghent a week ago, and she couldn’t afford to call in sick so soon. It had been challenging enough to find a new position after being let go by her previous employer. So she’d shrugged into her heavy winter coat and, shivering, dragged herself to the deserted bus stop at the far end of the sparsely populated Meulesteedsesteenweg, the end of the line for the #6.

She was forty years old and still couldn’t seem to get her life on track. Her ex had custody of their kids, only because he had a bigger house with a bigger yard and bought them more toys than they could ever possibly play with. She had visitation rights once every other week, and the in-between times were filled with loneliness. Which gnawed at her as fiercely as the flu she seemed to have come down with.

All things considered, the workday hadn’t been too awful. The patients on the geriatric ward had even managed to cheer her up a little. Especially Mr. Sertijns, who despite terminal cancer seemed to consider his final weeks of life one grand adventure and whose humor made him the nurses’ pet. When, sighing, she’d begun to make his bed, he’d noticed she wasn’t feeling well and burst out in a verse of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” That had charmed a smile out of her, which in and of itself was more than she’d expected of the day.

Her shift had ended — without any noteworthy difficulties — at eleven p.m. She got to the bus stop in plenty of time to catch the last #6 to Meulestede. She vaguely recognized a few of the passengers, other hospital employees and residents of the apartments on the Watersportbaan. She knew the driver by sight too. The day before yesterday, after her first late shift, the same man had been behind the wheel. She was sure of that, recognized the tattoos on his forearms, his sleeves rolled up despite the weather. That previous time, she’d spent the entire ride staring at them in fascination. Two entwined nudes shimmied on his biceps every time he swung the bus left or right. The man’s black hair was going gray, and she figured him for about her own age.

Donna nodded at him politely and moved to the back of the bus. She dozed off almost before she was settled in her seat. The sudden warmth — the heat was turned up full — the stress of her new job, the long nights spent worrying about her children, and her ill health all conspired to send her off into a dreamless sleep.

The first thing she became aware of when she awoke was a rattling, like a loose garden gate shuddering in the wind. Through eyes not yet fully open, she saw that it was the hatch of what must be the heating system, under the rack where passengers left their luggage. Then she remembered where she was. She was lying stretched out on the back seat of the #6 bus, which was barreling down the road at high speed. Oddly, the interior lights had gone out. The only illumination came from the street lamps outside, which cast strange shadows on the empty seats as the bus raced past them.

The rattling sound was annoying. She reached for the hatch to close it.

It was all she could do to stifle a scream. She jerked back and cupped a hand over her mouth. There was something in there. There was something in the space next to the heater, something preventing the hatch from closing. Fear and curiosity warred within her, and she peered through the faint light, trying to make out what it was. Two gray trash bags were pulled over the large object, and there was something sticking out at the place where they’d been clumsily overlapped. My God, was that a human hand?

Horrified, she glanced up toward the driver. He was staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel. She turned to look out the side window and was shocked again. Where in the world were they? They were on an empty road, dark warehouses on either side, chimneys belching smoke and flames, a shuttered gas station, a parking lot filled with semis. They must be far past the end of the line; this looked like... like the harbor.

She got to her feet and staggered forward, her head pounding. “Something’s wrong,” she told the driver when she reached him.

The man jerked in his seat and whirled around, sending the bus onto the wrong side of the road, then straightening out just in time to miss smashing into a streetlamp. Donna was thrown against the door but struggled upright. “Something’s wrong,” she said again, and waved a hand at the back of the bus.

“What are you doing here?” the driver snapped. “I thought everyone got off. Why didn’t you get off at the terminus?”

“I, ah, I fell asleep,” she stammered.

She noticed that the man’s forearms were no longer visible. He had a fleece on now, with the bus company’s logo embroidered on it. And he’d put on a cap. He looked different, but he was definitely the same person, which somehow comforted her. He had a surprisingly high voice for a man of his bulk. Under other circumstances, she might have laughed at the incongruity of it.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he told her. “No passengers allowed after the end of the line.”

“Why are we at the harbor?” she asked.

He hesitated. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “I’m heading for the depot.”

“Can I get off there?” Donna asked. “Is there another bus back to Meulestede?”

“Not tonight,” he said. He peered at her, her hand tightening on the support bar beside his seat to hold herself erect as he swung around a comer.

“What did you see back there?” His eyes stabbed at her, and then he abruptly returned his attention to the road. The fierceness of his gaze frightened her. Should she tell him? Had she really seen a hand, or had it been the tail end of a fever dream? And if she had seen it, what if the driver was somehow involved? They were on an empty road, deep in the harbor in the dead of night. She examined the nameplate pinned to his fleece. Dieter Doremans. D.D., the same as her.

“I’m not sure,” she said, “but the hatch for the heating’s banging open and closed. Isn’t that dangerous?”

An orange glow from a spotlight mounted on the side of one of the factories slid across his profile. She saw a vein pulse in his temple. His voice seemed even higher when he said, “I’ll have them fix it at the depot.” He stomped so hard on the brakes that she almost fell over. “But you have to get out,” he said. “It’s not allowed. It’s not safe.”

He pressed a button, and the bus door swung open.

Donna stared at him open-mouthed. “You can’t just leave me here. How am I supposed to get home?”

“Out,” he said, pointing at her. His forefinger practically jabbed her in the eye.

“We’re in the middle of the harbor,” she protested. “There’s nothing here.”

“Get out! You’re gonna get me in trouble!”

He lunged in her direction, and before she knew it, Donna was standing in the road. The bus door swung shut, and the #6 pulled away. Its headlights were off, she saw.

Donna stood on the curb, utterly defeated. There was a guardrail behind her, and she leaned against it. Her stomach cramped with a new attack of nausea. She dry heaved. Her legs were rubber. She looked around. There was nothing to be seen but factories, dimly lit mastodons that grinned at her with their concrete maws. Two windmills turned beneath the starless sky. Their sweeping blades seemed to slice through her skull, so sharp was the pain in her head.

Where was she? She fished her phone from her pocket, but the battery was dead. It had died before the end of her shift, but she hadn’t worried about it, had simply planned to plug it in when she got home. She wasn’t wearing a watch, so she had to guess at the time. How long had she slept? How big was the Ghent harbor? Didn’t it extend all the way up to Zelzate?

She swallowed a sigh and began walking, sunk in despair. She assumed that the bus had been coming from Meulestede, so she headed back in that direction. Would she be brave enough to stick out her thumb if a car or truck came by? How long would it take her to reach a house or any other sign of life? Inside her heavy coat, she shivered. She buried her hands in her pockets, and her breath came out in clouds of white. Could things be any worse? What was wrong with her? Every time she began to get it together, something led her astray. First the divorce, then someone else’s mistake had wound up costing her her job. And now that she’d finally found a new position, this...

She put one foot in front of the other and tried to maintain a steady rhythm, counting her steps until she reached the perimeter fence of yet another factory. She was an insignificant speck compared to the huge silos and the cranes with their long metal arms.

Chin up, Donna, she told herself, this can’t last forever. Ghent has to be around here somewhere. Sooner or later, you’ll make it home.

She stiffened when a yellow light suddenly enfolded her. To her astonishment, the #6 bus loomed into sight and slowed to a crawl beside her. Its passenger door opened. She looked in and saw the same driver, Dieter Doremans, smiling at her. “Get in,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She turned away and resumed walking, staring at the ground. “Never mind,” she muttered. “I’m fine.”

She quickened her pace, but the bus kept up with her. She was penned in by the factory’s high fence on one side and the rolling colossus on the other. “Come on, get in. I’ll take you home, I owe you that much.”

Despite herself, she snuck a glance at him. He nodded encouragingly. She stopped walking, and the bus also came to a stop. “Come on, it’s warm in here,” he said. “I can’t leave you out here in the cold. That was stupid of me, unprofessional.”

She hesitated.

“I’ll take you back to Meulestede, then you’ll be close to home,” he said, waving her aboard.

She gave in. The idea of snuggling into her bed was too appealing. Without a lift, who knew how long it would take her to trudge home in the cold and dark?

She climbed onto the bus, and the door folded shut behind her. Without a word, she took a seat near the front and cast a suspicious eye to the back. He followed the movement of her head in his rearview mirror. “There’s nothing there,” he said. “I screwed the hatch shut, it was just a little loose.”

Donna sighed with relief. She’d probably just imagined the hand.

The driver grinned. “All’s well that ends well,” he said. “I’ll take you back. What’s your name?”

She relaxed. “Donna,” she said. “Donna Daems. And you’re Dieter Doremans. We have the same initials.”

He smiled.

Donna rested her head against the back of her seat and laughed. “You won’t believe what I thought I saw in that heating space back there. I must have been dreaming.” She looked at him in the rearview mirror, waiting for him to echo her laughter. But the reflection showed only his eyes, and there was no trace of humor in them now.

“What?” he said, his voice high-pitched. “What did you see?”

She swallowed. “A hand,” she said. “A human hand.”

The bus came to an abrupt stop. They were at the intersection of two roads that seemed to lead nowhere. The traffic light turned green, but the bus stayed where it was. She thought she could hear a truck approaching, but it was a freight train that roared by on the harbor track that ran parallel to the road. The racket seemed to go on forever.

Dieter turned around and stared dangerously at Donna.

“Let me out,” she yelped. She jumped to her feet and hurried to the door, banged on the glass with her fists, but all she accomplished was to bruise her knuckles.

“Open the door!” she shouted.

Dieter got out of his seat and came toward her.

“Get away!” she screamed, as loudly as she could. She buried her face in her hands, but he grabbed her wrists and pulled them away.

“Calm down,” he said. She looked at him and saw that he was crying. Surprised, she dropped her arms. She was so taken aback she couldn’t speak. He collapsed onto the nearest passenger seat like an empty burlap sack.

“You’re right,” he said. “It was a hand.”

The horror of that statement propelled Donna’s fists back to her mouth.

“There was nothing I could do. It just... it just happened. My wife... she was cheating on me. I suspected it for weeks, but yesterday I caught them. He ran off. I was so angry I pushed her, and she fell down the stairs.”

Donna stared at him, her eyes wide open. “You have to turn yourself in,” she said. It was all she could think of to say.

He seemed not to hear her. “Last night, after my run but before I reported in, I swung by our house. I wrapped her body in a couple of trash bags and hid it on the bus. It was late, nobody saw a thing. They never check the heating vents at the depot, and I knew I’d have the same bus tonight. I was going to get rid of the body, somewhere in the harbor.”

“You have to turn yourself in,” Donna repeated. “This won’t solve anything. You’ll be the obvious suspect if your wife just disappears.”

He looked at her, his eyes watery. “I just got this job. I really like it. I don’t want to mess it up. I can’t go to prison.”

Donna felt sorry for him. Another D.D. with a brand-new job. Another D.D. who’d do anything to keep it.

She wanted to pat his shoulder but stopped herself. “I understand,” she said. “More than you know.”

He looked a question at her.

“You say it was an accident,” she said. “Why not just take her back home and put her at the bottom of the stairs? Moving the body makes it look like it wasn’t an accident.”

“You read too many mysteries,” he said. “No one would believe me. You’re not a cop, are you?”

“No, no,” she said quickly, “I’m a nurse. I know what a fall does to a body. Let me look at her. Maybe I can get rid of any sign she was pushed.”

Donna felt she was losing touch with reality. The darkened bus at this empty harbor crossroads seemed to belong to some parallel universe, and Dieter Doremans seemed more a reflection of herself than a man trying to rid himself of a corpse.

The man sat there with his head in his hands, wrestling with his inner demons.

She stared at his nameplate. He couldn’t lose his job. He couldn’t.

She knelt beside him. “Let me help you,” she said. Her exhaustion and nausea were gone. She knew intellectually that what she was about to do was insane, but to her it seemed perfectly logical. It wasn’t fair that people wound up devastated due to circumstances beyond their control. At her previous job, her supervisor had hung her out to dry to cover up a mistake he had made. A patient had been given the wrong medication and had died as a result. All she’d done was call attention to the error — and yet she was the one who’d been fired.

And Dieter’s wife? She had cheated on him. Wasn’t she the guilty party in this story? When Donna thought of her ex-husband’s young blond bitch of a new girlfriend, playing mommy to her children in their fancy villa, she felt a connection to this other DD that made her determined to help him.

Dieter returned to the driver’s seat. “I appreciate your understanding. It’s amazing that you want to help me. But I’ve already gotten rid of the body. I dumped her in the canal, half an hour ago, after I kicked you out.”

Donna stood beside him. She considered the situation. She still felt sorry for him, in spite of what he’d done.

“Take me home,” she said. “No one has to know what happened tonight. You don’t have to lose your job over that adulterous bitch.”

He nodded and started the engine. “I’ll take you home. Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

Their eyes locked. She nodded. “I promise. I mean it.”

At the next intersection, he turned the bus around and set off again. Soon, Donna recognized the outskirts of Meulestede. They crossed the bridge that formed a borderline between the harbor and the city. She had never been so happy to see the lonely church in the distance, and the houses with their trim gables. Normally, those gables reminded her that she lived in a second-class suburb, but now they shone like beacons in the night.

“It’ll all work out,” he said, opening the door for her. “You’d better go.”

She stepped down and looked back at him. “Are you sure?”

He nodded. “I’ll be fine. I promise. Thank you.”

She waved at him and stepped out into the crosswalk.

And Dieter Doremans, a confirmed bachelor, stomped on the gas. The last thing he saw before the bus hit her was Donna Daems’s astonished eyes. It had been exactly the same last night, right here, at this very crosswalk. It had been just as dark, just as cold, just as deserted. Heading back to the depot after his final run of the evening, he hadn’t noticed the pedestrian in the black parka. He’d run her down. But he couldn’t afford to lose his new job, no way. Not for anything. Or anyone. Whatever she’d promised, he knew Donna would tell someone what she’d seen, sooner or later.

But now he was safe. Nothing but dead silence would remain at the end of the line.