The Ax

37

Five minutes to nine. I open the driver's door beside me, and the interior light goes on.

I am back at the mall, and this time I am parked only four spaces from HCE's Taurus, where he'll have to walk by me. The left side of the Voyager is toward the mall building, and the long sliding door on the right side, away from the building, is open. The stubby hood is open, too, in front of me, exposing the chunky little engine. The new hammer rests on the depression between windshield and hood, where the windshield wiper lies when not in use; the hammer's business end is pointed downward, and its handle is out toward the side of the car.

My other purchases are all in the vehicle with me. Over there at the main entrance, the last shoppers trickle out. The parking lot is less than a quarter full, and none of the remaining cars are close to HCE and me.

What I'm planning has some risk to it, but without the gun anything I do must include some risk, and this plan has as little as possible, I think. The long June twilight is nearing its end, so, even though darkness hasn't really settled in yet, it's that tricky time of evening light when you're never quite sure what you're seeing. Also, no one but HCE is going to walk out this far across the parking lot, because our two vehicles are the only ones this far from the building. I expect to have the element of surprise on my side, and I have my purchases from the various shops in the mall.

Four minutes to nine. Three minutes to nine. Still three minutes to nine.

I keep looking at my watch, I can't help myself. My hands clench and clench the steering wheel, no matter how hard I try to relax, no matter how much I tell myself I shouldn't exhaust these hands, I'm going to need them soon.

Someone coming. A man, in silhouette against the lights of the mall behind him. In a dark suit, I think, and trudging as though he's tired, or discouraged. Or both.

He's passed every other parked car now, and he's still coming. Is he going to be so caught up in his own gloomy thoughts that he won't even notice me here?

No. He's a man who notices things, and he does see my open car door, the soft yellow interior light shining down on me, the open hood. "Trouble?" he calls.

I sigh, theatrically. "Won't start," I say, and then I lean partway out of the car, as though I've just recognized him: "Oh, hi!"

He'd still been walking toward his own car, but now he veers in my direction, squinting at me, finally getting it: "Mr. Hutcheson?"

Yes, you'll remember the name, the hot prospect for a sport jacket, going to come back tomorrow with the wife. I say, "Yes, hello. Didn't expect to see you until tomorrow."

"What's wrong?" He frowns at the open hood. I've read him to be a take-charge kind of guy, somebody proud to be there in an emergency, and he's certainly acting the part.

I say, "I hate to admit it, but I don't know a goddam thing about car engines. I called my wife, she's going to have the garage send somebody out. God knows when."

"That'll cost you," he says.

"Don't remind me," I say. "And I really can't afford it, not now." I step out of the car, keeping my right hand down by my side, and gesture at the engine with my other hand. "There goes my new sport jacket."

Now it's personal. "No, no, Mr. Hutcheson," he chides me. "Never say die, that's my motto."

"I wish it was the car's motto," I say.

He laughs and moves toward the front of the Voyager, saying, "Let's just take a look. Do you mind?"

"Not at all," I say. "If you can save me a tow and a repair…"

"No promises." He picks up the hammer and raises an eyebrow at me. "Going to fix it with this?"

I move my hands, showing helplessness. "I thought I might have to loosen a wing nut."

Shaking his head, he puts the hammer back where I'd placed it, and leans over the engine, his head close to the open hood. "Try to turn it over," he tells me.

"Sure. Do you want a flashlight?"

"You've got one? Perfect," he says, and turns his head toward me, right hand reaching out for the flashlight, and I Mace him in the face. He cries out and slaps both palms to his eyes, as I drop the Mace can on the ground and reach for the hammer. I hit him on the temple as hard as I can, feeling his skull crack. Quickly, I hit him a second time, same spot.

He's falling. I jump forward, dropping the hammer, and throw my arms around him, holding him up. We must look like drunks dancing, but no one is close enough, with a clear enough view, to see anything going on here at all.

I crab-walk forward, carrying him, staggering under the weight, his limp feet dragging along the ground between mine. Moving like that, I hustle him around to the right side of the car and lunge him in onto the clear plastic tarp I've spread over the seat and floor. I hunch him up, hunch him up, and he's completely in.

Now I flip the excess tarp over the body, grab the dark green new blanket from the floor behind the seat, shake it out from its manufacturer's creases, and fling it over him. Then I step back and slide shut the door.

Brisk now, but not too fast. I walk around the front of the Voyager, closing the hood, picking up the Mace and hammer. I toss them across onto the passenger seat, climb in behind the wheel, and shut the door. Turn the key. Surprise; the engine works just fine.

I join the other laggard traffic rolling toward the exit, turn left, head up Route 9 toward Kingston and the bridge and home.

The only lights showing at my house are one table lamp in the living room, the reading light in Billy's bedroom, and the light at the head of the stairs. It's a little after eleven and Marjorie, as I'd hoped, has gone to bed. Otherwise, I'd have to drive around until she did retire, which would make me very nervous. Billy's awake, but he won't be coming out of his room.

I don't like it that I still have this body with me, but I was afraid to stop anywhere along the way to do the necessary preparation. You can find a spot that looks perfectly safe, dark and deserted, and be right in the middle of what has to be done when other people show up, or lights go on, or the police drive by. I'm safest at home, in my own garage, with the family safely tucked in for the night.

I thumb the remote control on the visor and the garage door opens, the light switching on in there. I drive in, hit the remote control again, and wait till the door shuts before I climb out and go over to turn on the main garage light. (That first one automatically switches off again three minutes after the garage door closes.)

Now to take care of the body, at least for tonight. I open the box of plastic bags I picked up at the mall, the very large kind called lawn-n-leaf, dark green, with a tie at the top. I then put on the white cotton gloves I also bought at the mall, open the Voyager's sliding side door, and look in at that mound of green blanket.

First I pull the blanket off and stuff it into the plastic bag. The hammer and the Mace I drop in there, too, and then I set aside that bag and pull another one out of the box.

This is the difficult part. I fold the clear tarp away from the body, and am relieved to see there's almost no blood, just a little around his crushed forehead and leaking from his nose and ears. Very little bleeding means he died the instant I hit him, which is better for both of us.

The body is still limber, but it won't be for long. I move his arms down across his body, elbows nearly straight, so his hands, the fingers partly curled, lie just above his crotch. Then I take the roll of heavy-gauge picture wire — another mall purchase — and loop the end of it around his belt, twisting the wire around itself to hold it secure.

The legs are sluggish, they don't want to move, but I press and push and force the knees to bend and the legs to fold up toward the body, until his knees are against his chest, his legs pressing down on his forearms. I cross the picture wire over his legs, snap off that length by bending it quickly backward and forward, and then secure this end also to his belt.

Now he's a compact package, legs and arms and torso all folded together. But I want to be sure nothing goes wrong, so I put my shoulder against his shoes and push upward, to make it possible to slide the next section of wire beneath him, wriggling it up as far as his waist. Then I let the body settle back down, as I snap apart this length of wire by bending it, and twist its ends together over his shins until it's very tight around him, pressing into him and becoming impossible to twist any tighter.

Getting this trussed body into another of the lawn-n-leaf bags isn't nearly as difficult as I'd expected. Of course, I might just be running on adrenaline, I don't know. In any event, in what seems like no time at all I have the second bag standing on the cement floor.

Now I open the first bag again, and stuff the plastic tarp into it. The idea is, the body never touched any part of my car, so if they do find it — which I hope they don't — there will be no fibers or paint or anything else to connect that body with this vehicle. And the parts that did touch the car, like the tarp and the blanket, go into a separate bag.

Also into this bag goes the rest of the roll of picture wire, the box of plastic bags and, at last, the gloves. When I tie this bag, I smear the plastic with my palms. No fingerprints.

It's my own work gloves from the workbench in here that I use when I wrestle the two full plastic trash bags into a corner of the garage, surrounded by the rest of the detritus that just naturally seems to grow there, particularly since we sold the Civic. The bags are both bulky, but one is much heavier than the other.

I look around the garage. Everything is normal. Nothing is amiss. I turn out the light and go in to bed.