The Best American Mystery Stories 2018

Scott Loring Sanders WAITING ON JOE ^{from Shooting Creek and Other Stories}

Erick, my Lab-chow mutt, was down at the treeline chewing on something, content, gnawing and licking the marrow from whatever creature he’d rooted up. On the porch, I attempted to keep my wood shavings in a neat pile as I worked on a replica of Erick, made from a soft chunk of poplar. Wood, it seemed, consumed every aspect of my life. I lived in the woods, I worked on a Christmas tree farm, and during my free time I was either splitting firewood or whittling to avoid the wife.

It had been a tough winter for me and Deborah, cooped up together far longer than was tolerable. She’d been pretty removed lately, and I didn’t possess the proper tools to cheer her, neither in my pants nor in my brain. She’d gotten laid off from her secretary job at the dentist’s office (or possibly fired; she’d been a bit murky with the details), so we weren’t exactly happy or flush.

I used the tip of my Buck knife to replicate Erick’s muscular haunches while the real Erick sprawled in the not-yet-green grass, still chomping away. That dog was always scavenging, bringing stuff home—woodchucks, squirrels, a three-foot copperhead once. During the spring melt he’d often drag back field dressings the hunters had left behind, my lawn resembling a full-blown yard sale composed of deer parts.

Inside, Deborah rummaged around, finally awake. She seemed to be sleeping later and later these days, going to bed earlier and earlier. Always on the computer, Facebooking or whatever the hell. Some nights I wanted to climb on the roof and rip down that satellite dish, get rid of our Internet, television, the whole goddamned bundle, as it were, toss it in the fucking dumpster. Hard to justify such luxuries when we had bills to pay, groceries to buy. She’d often talked of getting her degree at Community, but I hadn’t once seen her make a move in that direction. Come to think of it, the only move I’d seen her make lately was toward another beer. Which made me sick. Only added to the problems. I think it’s a weak man (or woman) who uses alcohol to wash away their troubles. Me, well, I never had a taste for it.

My fingers had turned fat and thick from the cold, the unforgiving winter refusing to let go just yet, so my carving was over for the morning. I set my knife and miniature Erick on the table and opened and closed my frozen hands as if casting a spell, attempting to work some blood back in. I whistled for Erick and he popped to attention, his find still stuffed in his jaws.

As he trotted across the yard, wood smoke caught the breeze and trickled down from the chimney, lightly fogging him. Tinges of red shimmered in his black coat when the sun hit it right. He was a tough old bastard. Seventy pounds, solid muscle, total badass. Far as I was concerned, flawless. Deborah felt otherwise.

“He just puked up a baby rabbit on the new rug, Steven,” she’d once said. “Jesus Christ, it stinks.” And it had stunk, granted, but if a dead rabbit was rotting in your gut, you’d probably throw up too. He was just a dog being a dog, couldn’t blame him for that.

He chewed a beer can all to shit one time, which Deborah consequently stepped on, slicing her big toe on the way to the toilet in the middle of the night. He’d puked up plastic Kroger bags on a few occasions. Ate a dirty diaper once. Also an entire junior-sized Wilson leather football. We didn’t have kids and I sure as hell had never changed a diaper. Hadn’t tossed a ball since grade school. Where he’d found such items was a mystery.

Deborah had issues with Erick, fair enough, but you can’t hold a dog accountable for following its instincts. Like now, for instance.

As he got closer, I tried to determine what he held so happily. A naked baby doll? The coloring was right. Shoot, he’d found a football once, why not a Barbie? I went to the top stair to greet him, and that’s when my heart stuttered. Clamped between his jowls was a human foot, sawed off three inches above the ankle, the skin ragged and jagged as if chewed by some toothy monster. Erick swooshed his tail proudly.

“Shit, Erick,” I muttered, glancing behind me. I guess my body language suggested he’d done something wrong, because his tail stopped wagging, his head drooped to hangdog. “It’s okay, boy,” I half whispered. “Drop it.”

He was having none of it. Sensing I was up to something, he tried to make a break for it, unwilling to surrender his trophy. I snatched his collar and grabbed his bottom jaw. “Drop it,” I said again, more forcefully. Erick’s ears pinned back, his front paws digging in. The foot’s stiff toes brushed my wrist, which freaked me out. “Motherfucker,” I grunted through clenched teeth, realizing my only choice was to grasp that slobber-coated foot like it was Erick’s favorite tennis ball. He immediately took it for a game, like a goddamned tug-o-war, and we both pulled and held on with the stubbornness of snapping turtles. But when I said, “Chase? You wanna chase?” that did the trick and he let go.

He started barking when I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain. “Be quiet,” I whisper-pleaded, knowing Deborah would open that front door any second now, furious, only to discover me hugging a hairy human foot. I scurried up the steps, grabbed the sports section from a stack of old newspapers, and quickly wrapped that thing as if rolling the world’s biggest joint. I twisted the ends, then rewrapped with the classifieds. Erick was going apeshit, pissed I’d stolen his treasure.

I held the package tight to my chest, then walked inside and beelined for the woodstove. Bacon sizzled in the kitchen, a spatula clinking against a skillet, no doubt Deborah making exactly five pieces for her own self and exactly zero for me, a perfect illustration of where our marriage stood.

“Shut that dog up,” she yelled. I envisioned her bleached hair pulled up high on her head in a ponytail as she squinted, a nasty cigarette waggling in her squeezed lips, her face not nearly as pretty as it once was.

“I’ll try, dear,” I said, stuffing Erick’s offering into the coals, using the poker to push it way back. The man’s leg hairs ignited and I got a strong whiff before closing the door. Deborah didn’t need to know about Erick’s discovery. Not just yet. “Sorry. I think he’s hungry is all.”

“Well, feed him already. Christ, it’s too early. I got a ripping headache.”

I walked back outside, Erick still yammering about how I’d betrayed him. “Come on, boy,” I said, then zipped my jacket snug, grabbed a shovel, headed for the woods. The snow, the ice, it could only keep evil doings hid for so long. “Hike, boy? Wanna go for a hike?”

It was a pretty sorry excuse for a grave. But when dug in haste, and with fatigue setting in after sawing and digging and lugging and burying, a bit of slack had to be extended when it came to the particulars.

Erick had really gone to town—dirt scattered every which way, dead leaves strewn about like feathers from a slaughtered goose. The only body part I saw was a leg wearing a scrap of blue jean, and that was enough for me; no reason to delve deeper. Wasn’t like I needed to confirm his face; I knew good and well who he was. I hoped Erick hadn’t already carried off the head or arms or whatever, leaving bits of the man scattered about like a trail of breadcrumbs.

Erick had led me right to the plot, using an established deer path that meandered through oaks and rhododendron thickets. It was also a path that, if followed for another half mile, would’ve taken me straight to Willie Koonz’s back door. Willie, as it so happened, was the man currently half buried in the soil. He had two kids and a wife, them wondering where he’d run off to three months prior. He’d been my supervisor. The guy I’d worked with on the tree farm for five years. He was also the guy who’d been fucking my wife for the past eight months before he disappeared, sneaking through these very woods, on this very deer path, during lunch hour. Supposedly he went home to eat during our break while me and the Mexicans stayed in the fields, our boots dangling over pickup tailgates, me eating partially frozen peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, them gorging on still-hot tamales wrapped tightly in corn husks that their pretty wives—with skin like warm honey—had, earlier that morning, cooked and sealed in foil, which in turn always made me envious, but I never had the gumption to ask if maybe (just once) they’d bring an extra for me, them probably thinking I was pleased as punch with the cold, stale gringo sandwiches I slapped together every morning because my wife sure as shit didn’t make them for me, her still sleeping away, waiting for lunchtime so my boss could come over and give her the business in my own bed while my bony ass turned numb on the freezing metal ridges of that aforementioned tailgate.

So, yeah, there was that.

I’d figured out the affair a year back. The Mexicans were doing the season’s first mowing while me and Willie planted seedlings on a hillside. Squatting, kneeling, digging little holes, dropping in trees no higher than a hand. Long, sunny days but not so damn hot like it would be in another month, when we’d be culling dead trees, the son-of-a-bitching yellow jackets in the ground, lying in wait for you to step on their nests, or the hornets in their paper globes tucked in the trees, praying you’d slice into their hive with your trimming machete so they could zoom out like a squadron of fighter jets, just for the fun of it. But in March and April things were still pleasant. The magenta of redbuds dotting the mountainsides, the white of dogwoods. Oaks dropping their tassels from the sky like heavenly pipe cleaners.

When it’s just you and one other guy, and that guy’s come back from lunch, and he smells strangely familiar, in fact smells not only like that perfume your wife insists on—which she can only find at select TJ Maxx stores—but also like the unmistakable sweaty sex of her puss, well, you start to wonder. Then, when the breeze shifts and Willie is upwind of you, and suddenly Deborah’s fragrance filters down the slope and your nose starts twitching the same as Erick’s when he whiffs an injured bunny rabbit, well, your brain starts connecting the dots, puts the pieces together. A man knows his wife’s odor, that’s all I’m saying.

That, in and of itself, wasn’t enough proof. Hell, maybe Willie’s wife smelled similar. I mean, maybe it’s like snowflakes. Every one of them’s different, but from a distance they all appear pretty damn equal. So it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Deborah and Willie’s wife could’ve had a nearly identical odor. They live within a mile of each other, probably our wells are tapped into the same aquifer—pardon the expression—so maybe it’s in the water. Who’s to say? All I know is when that pleasant breeze drifted down the hillside, there was no doubt Deborah’s unique and particular aroma floated on that stream of lazy, warm air.

A few weeks later, me and Willie are fertilizing when he gets to ripping on me. He was always bullying, but that day it was with more oomph. “Don’t you got goals, Steve? What’re you doing with your life?”

I hated when people called me Steve. My name’s Steven, I always introduced myself as such, and I’d corrected Willie many times. “Doing about the same as you,” I said. “We’re both dipping our hands into dried-up horseshit, which, by some weird-ass miracle, makes trees grow.”

“Yeah, but this is temporary for me,” he said. “I got bigger plans.”

“Five years on the job doesn’t sound very temporary, Willie. Five years sounds pretty permanent.”

He spit, wiping tobacco trickle into his beard. “I’ve got some stuff on the side,” he said. “Me and my brother, we been investing in shit. You ever heard of semiconductors?”

“Like a part-time orchestra leader?” I said, messing with him. If there was one thing I knew, it was technology. I only had a high school diploma, but I was always playing with electronics, tinkering. Probably had the fastest Wi-Fi connection in the county, not that Deborah appreciated it. Something I’d learned over the years was that people generally thought I was stupid. No matter, because I’d found it to be an asset. When people assume you’re dumb, they let down their guard.

“I don’t know how they work,” he said, “but Barth says it’s related to cell phones. We’ve been dumping money into this company he knows of, got an inside tip, and it’s about to hit big. That’s what I mean, Steve. I got plans, man, more than baling and loading fucking Christmas trees the rest of my life.”

“Semiconductors, huh? Like you talking about core cooling capacitors, that type of shit?” I was that kid you probably went to school with, the one always tearing apart radios, TVs, just to see how they worked, then putting them back together.

“Speak English, man. I swear you’re worse than them goddamn wetbacks half the time. I don’t know what the fuck you just said. Anyway, you need to think bigger.” Willie reached into his fertilizer bag and tossed a handful around the base of a Fraser fir. “Stop acting like an idiot, wasting your time carving stupid shit out of wood. You need to plan for your future.”

“Hmm, maybe so,” I said. And I did start planning, right then, because I’d never discussed my whittling with him. In fact, I’d never mentioned it to anyone, other than Deb, obviously. It was private, just something I did. And me and Willie, we didn’t mingle outside of work. When we’d first met, there’d been discussions of us and the wives getting together to grill burgers, the way new acquaintances will do, imagining they’ve found that perfect match where the wives have everything in common, scrapbooking and collecting Longaberger baskets or Beanie Babies, and the guys love bow hunting and Earnhardt—but that never panned out. So there was no way he could’ve known about me carving “stupid shit out of wood” unless he’d been to my house. Not just to my house, but inside, and not just inside, but all the way back to my bedroom, where I kept my finished pieces on a dresser, mostly of Erick in various states of repose. So that, along with the stink of my wife on his clothes, well, that got me to planning for my future all right.

“You ever seen Risky Business?” continued Willie, chuckling. “God, what a great movie. ‘Sometimes you just gotta say What the fuck, Steve.’ Best line ever.”

A stripe of spittle dripped from his beard like lace from a spider’s ass, and I considered countering with a quote of my own, lifted from a fortune cookie I’d once cracked open. “Live life like a mighty river.” I loved that. I was a mighty river, ready to unleash my power. But in my own way, on my own terms.

It was me who’d first discovered how bad off Joe actually was. I was late for work, zipping my old Charger tight around a corner, when I nearly hit him as he walked the road’s edge, gimping along. I braked, rolled down the passenger window. “What do you know good, old man?” I said. He caught my eye, then kept on. I nudged the car forward. “Jump in, Joe, before you get killed. Where you heading?”

He glanced over but didn’t stop. “Gotta see the doc. Alternator belt’s shot on my truck.”

“The doctor? In town? That’s ten miles. Get your ass in here before I jump out and stuff you in.”

“You wrassle with a rattlesnake, you bound to get bit,” he said, taking a long, deep draw from his cigarette. Deborah had gotten her orneriness honestly, that’s for sure, but he did concede, opened the door, started to enter.

“Whoa, hold up,” I said, raising my free hand. “You can’t smoke in here.”

Joe stopped midstream, tightened his jaw, began walking again, not bothering to close my door. “Go piss your pants, you son of a bitch.”

“Shit,” I muttered, inching the car forward, careful not to slap his ass with the open door. I leaned across the huge front seat, yelled to him. “C’mon, I’m sorry. Finish up and get in.”

He kept walking, ignoring me, but I wouldn’t relent. Finally he flicked his cigarette into the broom sedge and entered, the whole process a struggle as he twisted that twisted body into the front seat. His chest heaved in small spurts.

“You really need to quit smoking, Joe.”

“Just drive, peckerhead.” He stared at me, his eyes as hard and dark as the coal he’d extracted from the ground for fifty years.

I liked Joe well enough. Grouchy old thing, tough as leather plow line, his body bent and mangled like a crashed car, but he always told it straight.

“What’re you going in for?” I asked.

“Cain’t breathe, Steve,” he said, lighting a fresh cigarette. “Reckon doc’s gonna tell me for certain what I already been knowing for years.”

So it was me who’d been with Joe when he’d received the official news, only a month after I’d learned his daughter was screwing Willie. He had the black lung—which might sound horrible—but for a retired coal miner it meant a check he could live out his days on, something to leave for his family.

The doctor brought in X-rays, clamped them to the backlit screen. Joe hadn’t wanted me in there, had said, “Get on to work before I slit your throat,” but his rheumy eyes said something different. So I insisted, ignored his objections. Those X-rays looked like some foreign black universe with a splattering of white stars. Each star, explained the doc, was coal dust, scarring the lungs. Joe didn’t ask questions, just gazed ahead, absorbing it as if he’d known since boyhood this day was inevitable. He’d left school in eighth grade to enter the mines, only exited a few years back. That was the shit of it all. Work fifty years underground just to be put back in it permanently, right when you’d finally come up for air. As if day by day, year by year, all you’d been doing was digging your own grave.

That was his life. Mines every day, a wife, two kids—Deborah, of course, and her older brother, Russ, who’d made it to eleventh grade before going underground, only to be blown up ten years back. After the explosion, with his son dead, with his wife gone many years before, Joe moved from the little mining town of Grundy—the only home he’d ever known—to a singlewide in the Blue Ridge to be closer to his daughter, for whatever that was worth. No love lost between those two. Saw each other maybe three times a year. It was me who often checked on him, made sure he was getting by all right, especially after the diagnosis.

It was also me who’d helped Joe get his tanks in order. At first those clear plastic tubes jammed up his nose drove him batshit. He’d hobble around, bitching, pulling his little cart behind him like a pissed-off caddy, the thin blue oxygen tank his golf clubs. Once a month I’d go over to Radford to the gas place for refills. As teenagers we used to hop their chain-link fence at night and steal tanks of nitrous oxide, then buy big punching balloons at the pharmacy, fill them, have insane parties, everybody so fucked up they’d stumble, fall, and sometimes convulse. The gas people eventually got wise—installed hurricane wire, locked the nitrous in a cage—but did we ever fry some brain cells for a while, our entire class whacked on dental-grade laughing gas most of senior year. Man, I’d changed a lot since then.

Several weeks after I determined Deborah was knocking boots with Willie, I drove to Crosshairs, the local hunting outfitter, to make a purchase. Not for a gun, but instead for a couple of trail cameras—the ones with motion sensors so hunters can discover what monster bucks roam their forests. Simple setup, really. I put one above the floodlight spotting the driveway and another in a tree along that trail leading to Willie’s.

That following Monday, after Deborah was asleep, I checked the computer to confirm my suspicions. Sure enough, during lunch while I sat with the Mexicans, me fantasizing about their young, dark-skinned wives, guess who appeared on my trail cam software? That cocksucker Willie, that’s who, sneaking through the woods. Then the house camera picked him up, strutting along my driveway, cool as a goddamn cucumber.

The same deal unfolded for the next several months. I stewed so bad I couldn’t stand it. Not so much because I gave a hell about Deborah anymore or felt betrayed by my coworker, who had the balls to stick it to my wife nearly every day, then return to work an hour later and tell me my tree trimming was a bit sloppy, but more because I was scared Deb might file for divorce. Which wasn’t an option. Not yet. That didn’t jibe with my financial plans. But a man can only take so much. So I decided if they liked games, I’d play a few of my own. Mess with their tiny brains a bit.

Once, when I’d mentioned that Joe was a good man, Deborah had gone off. “Don’t you dare. You don’t know a goddamn thing about it.” I’d assumed this meant Joe used to be rough on her as a child, maybe knocked her around a bit, but I was wrong. “He was a drunk. A real bastard. I don’t think he remembered my name most days.”

“Coal mining’s a tough job. He probably—”

“Don’t you dare defend him, Steven. You want an example of what a good man he was?”

I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

“He used to go to the shelter and get cats, pretend he was adopting them, okay? Once home, he’d break their legs with a hammer, leave ’em mewing in the barn. Those cries still keep me up some nights. Then in the evenings he’d sit in the loft drinking beer, waiting to shoot the curious coyotes who wandered in. For the bounty.”

“Well, it was just cats. And son of a bitching coyotes. Not like it was dogs or cattle or something.”

“That’s awful, Steven. Cats are God’s creatures, same as dogs.”

“I’ll tell you right now, cats sure as shit aren’t the same as dogs. Not even fucking close.”

“Doesn’t mean they should be abused.”

“That’s not what I meant. Shit, they were gonna die at that shelter anyway.”

“You’re disgusting. God loves all his miracles equally.”

All I can say is, she never showed that sort of compassion toward Erick. Not once. And okay, fair enough, no animal should be abused—not even cats, I guess. But oh, Jesus, did it make me crazy when she preached her Bible bullshit. Full-on hypocrite. Prime example? When I’d gotten home from Joe’s first doctor’s visit and advised her of his prognosis, she’d said, “Hallelujah. About time.”

What she meant, of course, was that the diagnosis equaled compensation. Money that would set us up good once Joe died. Her brother was dead from the mines, her mother a suicide—slit her wrists in a bathtub; Deborah found her when she’d gotten home from school, only a freshman—so Deborah was the sole heir. Wouldn’t get rich, but between that and the settlement from Russ’s death in the mine collapse, we’d be doing okay for a while.

So I had no interest in divorce. Last thing I wanted was for Willie to somehow get his hands on even one dime of that money. I needed to break them up.

Out in the fields, I put my sabotage plan in motion. Started dropping hints. “But it’s weird, Willie. I mean, me and Deborah, well, we haven’t exactly been frisky in months. So if she really is pregnant… shoot, I don’t know what’s going on.” The way Willie shifted, the way he nervously passed that trimming machete from one hand to the other, man, it was priceless.

Toying with Deborah was even more fun, and one evening while eating dinner, I laid it on thick. Vanna was on the tube pushing letters as we sat in the living room, shoveling in peas and potatoes from our potpies. I had a lemonade, she one of those Redd’s Apple Ale things that’d been on the commercials lately.

“So I was talking with Willie today,” I said, “and you know what he told me? He’s a real jackass, that guy.” I paused, all cool-like. Wanted to watch her squirm. But she was staring at that screen, only one blank left in the entire puzzle: THE P_INTED DESERT. She shouted at the TV, “The Pointed Desert, you dumb shit,” just as the contestant on Wheel said the same exact thing (I swear to God) minus the “dumb shit” part. Sajak said, “No, I’m sorry, but you still have time.” The guy sounded things out, repeated, “The Pointed Desert,” and Sajak, supercool as always, replied, “No matter how many times you say it, the puzzle’s not going to change.” Deborah said, “What the hell?” so I chimed in, “The Painted Desert,” which of course was the correct answer and what the next contestant said. The woman got twenty-five hundred bucks for her winning efforts. I got nada. “Did you hear me?” I said. “About Willie?”

“What? No,” she snapped, staring down the television as if somehow betrayed. Like Sajak and company were running a conspiracy. “What happened?”

“Willie said something today I couldn’t believe. Said he was stepping out on his wife.”

She lifted her bottle, paused midraise, wouldn’t look at me. “Huh, well, I guess there’s trouble in paradise.”

“Not according to him. Says he’s just got another girl he likes better. Wants to be with.”

Did she half smile as she took a sip of Redd’s? Possibly.

“Shit happens all the time, right?” she said, cutting some potpie crust with her fork and stuffing it in, grinning like a wolf.

“I don’t know, just seems lowdown. Blindsiding his wife like that. Two kids and all. I mean, if it was you and me, I’d just tell you.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’d do the same, right? No behind-the-back stuff?”

“Yeah,” she repeated, her eyes locked on the television, staring at that new creepy Colonel Sanders as he peddled chicken, her seeming to only half pay attention to me. But I assure you, I had her ear.

“He said he hooked up with that cute little thing down at the tavern. You know, that new blonde who waits tables?”

Her head whipped in my direction. “With who?”

“That woman—hell, girl really—at the tavern. Melody, I think her name is. Short skirts, legs to here,” I said, raising my hand well above my head. This was fun.

Her lips pursed.

“Said they’re going to take off on Saturday. His wife and kids are out of town, visiting her mother, and he’s running away to Myrtle Beach. Leaving a note, and poof, just like that, he’s gone. Crazy, huh?”

That bit about his wife going out of town was the only true part, by the way, Willie having mentioned it at work. You sprinkle in a few truths with your lies and people eat it up.

Deborah looked at Vanna, back from commercial. “Yeah, I reckon so.”

“Good news for us is I’ll get the foreman job. A few more bucks. Mr. Majors ain’t gonna give it to no Mexican.”

She grabbed her plate and walked toward the kitchen, her face blank. If I could’ve magically pried open the top of her head right then, I’d’ve seen those gears whirring at double-time, grinding like an unoiled machine, smoke pouring from the works.

The day after I’d messed with Deborah, something curious happened: Willie failed to return to work after lunch. That son of a bitch was a lot of things, but unreliable wasn’t one of them. That evening I checked my trail cam software, and sure enough, he’d headed toward my house that afternoon, sneaking through the woods like a horny tomcat. But the footage never showed him leaving. What it did capture, however, precisely an hour and twenty-three minutes later, according to the timestamp, was Deborah passing by, pushing my wheelbarrow, which in all my days I’d never seen her do. Far as I knew, that woman didn’t know which end of a hammer to hold. But as usual, I’d underestimated her. She was full of surprises.

Days and weeks later, small-town details funneled through the rumor mill. One in particular was that Willie had left a note stating he was leaving his family. Nobody seemed too surprised by this, least of all his wife. She never even bothered to call the cops when she got back from her weekend at her mother’s, just assumed the no-good scoundrel had left her high and dry. Which turned out to be particularly good fortune for me and Deborah.

I didn’t let on to Deborah that I knew anything about what she’d done. I had my reasons for keeping quiet. But it was weird, living in that house with her afterward, realizing what she was capable of. I’d find myself looking at her from across the table every once in a while, thinking, Man, that’s one wicked-assed woman. But she was cool. You’d never guess, not in a million years, she’d sawed up her lover and buried him in the woods.

“I’m leaving you,” said Deborah. This was three weeks after Erick had brought me the foot, several months since Willie had gone missing. I have no idea why it took her so long to make that decision, but I’m assuming she wanted to be sure the smoke had cleared.

“No,” I said. “No, you’re not.”

“Bite me, Steven. I’ll do whatever I damn well please.”

“Mmm, no you won’t.” That’s when I got off the couch and approached the front door—all smooth and cavalier, like I had all the power, all the answers—and ran my hand along the casing. “Let me show you something, Deb. I’m figuring you plugged these with chewing gum?” I said when my fingers located the first of the three patched bullet holes, almost like I was reading Braille. “Then smeared them with shoe polish?” I rubbed both my pointer and middle finger against my thumb, as if demonstrating the universal money sign, while showing her the inky residue. “Pretty good match, really. I’m impressed.”

“Listen, baby, you got things a little mixed up,” she said, playing it cool but unable to hide her panic. Plain as day I saw her envisioning where exactly my rifle was at that moment. Saw her calculating speed and time and distance to the closet, figuring whether she could race to it before I tackled her. Of course it didn’t matter, since I’d already moved the gun. And unloaded it.

“I don’t have a thing mixed up, Deborah. In fact, it’s all clear as day.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t do nothing.”

That’s when I popped in the flash drive, played the video. She stood over my shoulder and watched her own self, right there on the computer screen, all bloody and goopy, pushing body parts down the trail. Three separate trips. It was almost funny, in a sick, demented sort of way, I admit, but it was humorous watching Erick follow at her heels as she struggled with that wheelbarrow, strong-arming it down the trail. Even when she halted and clearly yelled at him, presumably ordering him back to the house, his tail just slapped back and forth like a windshield wiper. He ignored her completely.

One particular part of the video seemed to really unsettle her. Of Willie’s head bouncing up and out of the barrow when the wheel clipped a rock, then rolling along the trail for a few feet like a kid’s wayward ball. I glanced back to see her nose crinkle as she relived that scene: her scooting around the wheelbarrow, picking up his head, plopping it back in as if harvesting pumpkins. She could’ve closed her eyes as the video played, could’ve turned away or walked off, but she watched intently. Instead of being unsettled, as I’d first assumed, I realized she seemed almost fascinated. Suddenly it was me who felt uneasy.

“It’s also saved to a second jump drive,” I explained, “and stored in a safe place with instructions. Thought you should know, just in case you’re considering cutting me up into bits like your boyfriend.”

“Steven, you don’t understand. There’s—”

“I figured out most of it, Deb. Though, I confess, I still don’t know how you forced him to write a note. You’re good, I’ll give you that. Damn smart.”

And that, right there—along with the video—was the key to her spilling everything. Simple flattery. Who’d’ve thunk it? Offer her a little praise about a cold-blooded murder she’d committed, and boy, she ate it up. Actually chuckled. “He didn’t write a note.”

“He didn’t?”

“I did.”

“You?”

“He denied everything. Said there wasn’t no other woman. Got all emotional, started boo-hooing, though I reckon a gun pointed straight at your chest has a way of doing that. Him crying got me all fired up and flustered. Then bam bam bam, and he’s dead on the floor. I barely touched that trigger. Didn’t even mean to do it.

“When I’m burying him, I find a receipt in his pocket. From the XPress Mart, right? Had his fingerprints on it, which got me to thinking. I walk to his house when I’m done, let myself in with his keys, scratch a note on the back of it. Simple block lettering. He wrote like a third grader, so it was easy.”

I rubbed my whiskers, cupped my chin. “Pretty damn good, Deb. I gotta give credit where credit’s due.” Figured I’d keep buttering her up, see what other info I might squeeze.

She grinned wide and lit a smoke. I’d never seen her so proud. “Stashed his truck at Daddy’s.”

She was gushing now. Who was I to stop her? “So Joe knows?” I said.

“Knows enough not to ask questions. So like I said, I’m leaving.”

I shook my head. “And like I said, no, you’re not.”

“What the hell, Steven? We’re done. You know it, I know it. No reason to stick around, so don’t play me.”

“You and me, we’re gonna sit tight, happy and hunky-dory. And wait.”

“What do you mean, wait?”

“On Joe.”

“On Daddy? Wait for goddamn what, goddamnit?” Her eyes darted, searching for her smokes even though one still smoldered between her fingers.

“Wait on him to croak. Doc says he’s got a year left, max, probably only six months. Once I get my half, you’re free to roll. But until then you’re staying right by my side. For better or worse, remember?”

“You ain’t getting half,” she said, but the statement lacked conviction. She knew she was beat.

“I’m going out on the porch for the sunset,” I said. “Give you a little time to ponder, maybe rewatch that video if you want. Think about what the cops might say if they got their hands on it somehow.”

Thirty minutes later she joined me, a fresh smoke pinched in her fingers. Erick sat between my knees, getting his ears rubbed.

“I been thinking,” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t wanna wait.”

“Well, Deb, in this particular instance, I’d say you don’t got much choice.”

It appeared she hadn’t heard me. “You know, lately I’ve noticed Daddy’s been down in the dumps. Suicidal, even. Maybe I should call his doctor, tell him I’m worried about his mental status or whatever.”

“Stability?”

“Yeah, that.” She paused as if waiting for me to fully comprehend her meaning. Her intentions. Like she was giving me a second to let it all sink in.

“Deb, it’s only six months. Year at the most. Not long in the whole scheme of things.”

“Or better yet,” she continued, “what if them oxygen tubes accidentally got pinched under a table leg or something?”

“Jesus, Deb.”

“Oh, Jesus yourself, Steven. Fuck Jesus.”

I once again found myself fearful, and slightly in awe, of my wife. But if truth be told, it was exactly what I’d been expecting. And hoping for.

“You’re a dark, dark woman, Deb.”

She remained quiet, deep in thought. The only sound on the porch was the shuffle of her bare feet as she paced, and the faint crackle of cigarette paper, that cherry burning hot as it raced down the shaft on her inhale. She shot me a nasty look, but her expression softened when she saw my own. Maybe it was the way my mouth had turned up at the corners, not quite a smile, exactly, but something close. Or maybe it was my eyes, the way I imagined they glimmered as the evening sun lit them up just before vanishing behind the distant hills. Like we were communicating without saying a word.

“I’ve never been able to change your mind once it’s set on something,” I said, feeding her fire. “Like a bulldog, you are.”

“Damn straight,” she said, looking confident as she stared off at the shotgunned sky, a spattering of purples and oranges and blues.

I gave Erick a good rub on his head, realizing I might not have to wait on Joe nearly as long as I’d first thought. And that pleased me to no end. Pleased me real good.