Helltown (15 page)

Noah’s eyes brightened, became intense. “Then we drive it somewhere, somewhere far away.”

“There’s blood all over the floor.”

“We can clean it up,” he said urgently, almost manically. “I’ll clean it up right now.” He jerked his head about, as if searching for a mop.

“No,” Steve said, aware his dithering was encouraging his friend. “No,” he added more firmly. “Forget it, Noah. Forget it.”

“Dude!” Noah grabbed his arm. “We can do this!”

Steve tugged free. “We have to report this.”

“We can’t—”

“We’re reporting this!”

“Jesus! Don’t you—”

“Yeah, I do! I understand!” Steve said, stepping away, putting space between them. “And I’m sorry, Noah, but we’re doing this right. We start lying, it’s only going to get worse—a lot worse.”

Noah shook his head disgustedly.

“It’ll be okay,” Steve told him. “It will.” He softened his voice. “Don’t worry, man. We’ll sort this all out.”

Then he was gone around the corner, back upstairs.

Noah remained where he was, thinking.

Lonnie Carlsbaugh shoved through the front doors of Randy’s Bar-B-Q and tottered out into the cold, starless night to his car, trying his best to keep in a straight line. He had driven home from Randy’s beer-eyed too many times to count, and he had no reservations about doing so this evening, even after polishing off what must have been seven or eight pints of Coors Extra Gold. Given that it was that time of month again—that time being the end of the month—he had no cash on hand and put the beers on his tab. Randy knew he was good for it. One thing Lonnie did, and did well, was pay his debts. Every two weeks, after receiving his workers’ compensation check from the government, he would stop by Randy’s for a beer and to clear his tab. Keith and Buck and Daryl and his other pals would show up throughout the course of the evening to get away from their wives, and he’d square up with them whatever he owed them from their Tuesday night Texas Hold ’Em games. This would usually leave him with just enough money to pay any outstanding utility bills and pick up a few groceries. He didn’t eat much himself, but his son Scottie could eat a man out of house and home. Last week Scottie’s cunt of a schoolteacher had the nerve to call up Lonnie in the middle of the day, like he had nothing better to do than waste his time talking to her, and ask if Scottie was eating breakfast because he had been caught stealing his classmates snacks at recess time. She also blamed what she called “hunger pains” for his rowdy behavior and poor attention span. Lonnie told the stupid cunt Scottie was eating just fine, had eggs every morning. And that was mostly true. He ate whatever the hen laid. That was usually one egg, but sometimes it might be two. And on the days the hen laid a zero—well, how was that Lonnie’s fault? He couldn’t control the biology of a chicken. He wasn’t fucking God, was he?

It really pissed Lonnie off, Scottie’s teachers calling him up like they did. Didn’t they understand he was a single father doing the best he could for the boy? Georgina, his wife and the boy’s ma, had died in childbirth from something the doctors had a big fancy word for. That had been shitty luck. Georgina might not have been a looker, but her family had money coming out of their collective gazoo. Her parents bought him and Georgie the house for their wedding gift, and furnished it with stock from one of their furniture stores. Lonnie had been in the crosshairs to manage one of those stores. But when Georgie died the family didn’t want anything to do with him or Scottie. So he was stuck raising the boy by himself. And it hadn’t been easy either. No sir. But he’d done it, hadn’t he? He’d raised Scottie fine and well. So what if the boy had a few behavioral problems. Hell, all kids did. What was a parent to do about that? Let them live and learn and fend for themselves, was Lonnie’s mantra. That’s how you built character. That’s how Lonnie’s father raised Lonnie, and he’d turned out all right.

Lonnie made it to his rusted puke-green Buick Skylark without falling on his ass and spent a good ten seconds finding the right key to unlock the door. He dropped in behind the steering wheel with a great sigh of satisfaction. His eyes drifted closed, and when he realized this, they snapped back open. He slapped himself across the face to wake himself up, got the car going, and reversed, bumping off a particularly high part of curb. The Skylark’s back bumper kissed the road loudly.

Lonnie mumbled something incomprehensible, shoved the column shifter into drive, and accelerated. He didn’t drive too fast because clouds of fog hung low over the streets, turning the largely residential neighborhood into something out of a monster movie. At the corner he turned left onto Westside Lane. Some of the houses he passed had jack-o-lanterns sitting in their front windows or out on their front stoops, though only two were lit from within with candles.

Halfway down the block Lonnie spotted his first trick-or-treaters: a little girl dressed as a princess with fairy wings sprouting from her back and a little boy dressed in a full-body tiger suit with a limp tail that dragged on the sidewalk. The mother walked a few feet behind them. She was on the chubby side, but not a bad looker. Lonnie had seen her around town before. You saw everyone around town now and then in a township of nine hundred souls. He thought she might work at the art gallery on Edgeview Street, but he couldn’t be sure because he’d never gone in, only glanced through the window when walking past on random occasions.

Seeing the woman and her kids made Lonnie think about Scottie again. He’d promised to take the boy trick-or-treating tonight. Scottie had even made a mask to wear. Lonnie frowned. How had he forgotten? Well, he hadn’t, had he? Not really. It was more a case of time getting away from him. He went to Randy’s for a couple beers, and those couple beers turned into eight. What was he supposed to do about that? He couldn’t control time, let alone turn back the clock. He wasn’t fucking God, was he?

Maybe he’d buy Scottie a chocolate bar tomorrow, surprise him with it at dinner? Sure, that was a good idea. He’d get him one of those Twix bars he liked, because there were two cookies in the package, which made him think he was getting more bang for his buck.

Lonnie made a right onto Mayapple Drive, then a left on Colony Drive, passing six more trick-or-treaters. Then he was on Stanford Road, leaving Boston Hills behind him.

Trees closed in around him, their canopy blotting out the silvered light from the full moon. He flicked on the high beams and kept the speedometer needle at sixty miles an hour. The fog was just as bad as it had been in town, and although there might no longer be kids to worry about, there were plenty of deer in these parts, and some of them were plain suicidal. Last summer he’d been driving back from Randy’s in the early hours of the morning, nicely licked and minding nobody’s business but his own, when a whitetail bounded right in front of him, like it got its wires crossed or something. It took out the car’s left headlight, crunched the bumper, but at least had the courtesy to die in the process. Lonnie tossed it in the trunk, happy to feast on choice cuts of venison for the next while. The following day he noticed the damage to the car, of course, the blood and fur glued to the broken headlight, but he had no memory of the accident. By the time he discovered the carcass in the trunk a week later it was covered in a squiggling film of maggots, and he had to scoop the goopy remains out with a shovel.

Anyway, a run-in with a suicidal deer wasn’t the only reason Lonnie was driving cautiously. He needed time to react, slow down, block the road, if those out-of-towners came his way. Lonnie didn’t know why Cleavon couldn’t tell him whether they were lookers or not, but Cleavon was like that, a rancorous old crabapple who’d bitch if you hung him with a new rope. Still, if any of the does were half as pretty as the last one—Betty Wilfried, according to her driver’s license—he’d be a happy man. It was a shame pretty Betty had gotten so beat up in the crash. Weasel had been too aggressive, scared her a bit too much, because she’d smashed her car bad enough to break half the bones in her body and face. Still, Lonnie hadn’t complained. A fuck was a fuck, and broken or not, Betty Wilfried had been a great fuck.

Noah knew Steve was wrong, he couldn’t fess up, they had to get rid of the body. Otherwise he was facing prison time—and what was the prison sentence for manslaughter? Five years? Ten? Hell, even one year would be too long. He’d be locked up with murderers and rapists, people who’d been in the slammer before, knew the system, knew how to work the guards. He’d know nothing. He’d be alone, surrounded by sheetrock and iron bars and gang members aligned from the housing projects they came from. They’d each want a piece of a young, straight kid like himself. Some big black or Latino dude trapping him in the shower and telling him how much he was going to love their good time up his sugah ass. And when he wasn’t getting raped he would likely be getting the piss beat out of him in the exercise yard, or the cafeteria, maybe even in his own goddamn cell. Because he’d be a kid killer, pretty low on the totem pole. It wouldn’t matter that the boy’s death had been an accident. The lowlifes he was locked up with would believe what they wanted to believe, rumors would swirl, accounts would become embellished. He’d be finished. Hell, he likely wouldn’t make it to the end of his sentence alive.

And in the off chance he did…what then?

He could kiss his career in sculpting goodbye. No respectable gallery owner would display his work. He’d be a kid killer in their eyes too, only they wouldn’t need to turn him into some depraved pedophile to feel superior. Smashing in the skull in of a little boy while drunk and high would be bad enough on its own in their civilized circles.

So what would he do? Get a nine-to-five job? Then again, who would hire him? He’d have to check that little box on all his future employment applications that asked if you had a criminal record.

Why couldn’t Steve just cut him a break?
All he had to do was turn a blind eye to what had happened, let him hide the body in the forest. Was that so much to ask? The kid was gone. Why ruin a second life?

“What the fuck were you doing?” he said quietly to the dead boy. “Why the fuck were you attacking us, you stupid shit?”

Suddenly, before his eyes, the boy’s jeans darkened around his crotch. Noah stared, incredulous, terrified. He bent close and detected the acrid odor of urine.

He was
peeing
?

Feeling suddenly sick, Noah hurried to the front door, threw it open, and stepped onto the veranda. Cool air caressed his face, but this did little to calm him. He stumbled blindly to the banister and leaned over the railing. His stomach slammed his esophagus, acid burned a trail up his throat, and he vomited a jet of watery gunk. This went on for five or ten seconds, one abdomen contraction after the next, a biological pump, until there was nothing left to spew.

Groaning, Noah wiped the heel of his hand across his lips—and made out two headlights approaching along the highway. Instead of continuing past, however, the vehicle slowed, then turned onto the driveway.

“Steve?” Noah shouted in a rubbery voice. “
Steve!
Get down here!”