The Boulevard Monster, page 10
While dancing at the reception, I told her so to be sure she knew.
Fourteen
Is that Blood on Your Hand?
Nearly five months passed. My bank account grew. The blue jays stayed close. No new reports aired about missing Boulevard prostitutes. I tried to act as normal as possible. I made it a point to have drinks with the guys at Wizzards sometimes. Ryan moved out of his mom’s apartment and got an efficiency apartment of his own. Howe’s landed a contract to build a Latino-themed bar on the south end of Mercy. Sera developed more into a woman every day. Every minute it seemed. And I received less complaining from Brianne about being distant. We had a short honeymoon in South Padre Island where we lounged under umbrellas on the beach all day, drinking Marguritas and laughing, ate seafood in local restaurants as the sun dipped into the water at sunset, and spent gobs of time naked in bed.
Day-to-day life sailed by smooth enough that I had large gaps of time when I didn’t think about Luther or notice the birds. Toward the end of the five months, I could almost go an entire day without thinking about Luther. And the times I did, I didn’t have only dreadful, depressing thoughts. I allowed myself to hope that he’d been killed somehow, that the birds were on autopilot, carrying out an old order, and they’d all eventually disappear. Maybe it was over. But that hope ended after I had a few drinks at Wizzards with the guys one Thursday night.
I didn’t notice the flyers on the trucks and cars in the parking lot until Ryan jerked one off his small Toyota’s windshield. “Jesus-fucking-Christ. Goddamn son-of-a-Jew. Church of Christ says we all need to be saved…again,” he said, followed by a burp and chuckle. He wadded up the flyer, tossed it on the ground, and pointed at me. A couple of the other guys who had parked close by stopped to listen. “Remember that fucking bird that night at your place?” he asked. “That one that attacked me?”
“I do,” I said, “That was crazy. Never seen anything like it.”
“What happened?” someone else asked.
“It fucking dive-bombed my face when I went to grab a flyer someone left on Seth’s truck. But of course…” He squatted, cocked his arms at ninety-degree angles and swiped them through the air like he was Bruce Lee. He made a waaaaaa noise, stopped in an attack pose, then added, “It didn’t know who it was messing with. I chopped the fucker right out of the air. Right, Seth?”
I thought of more than one witty comeback, but the reality of what had happened that night blanketed the humor behind them. I settled on a light “yeah,” dropped my eyes to the pavement, and made my way toward my truck, fearful of what I’d find on the windshield. Behind me, Ryan resumed chopping at the night air, demanding the bird return for another battle.
The flyer on my windshield was the same yellow Church of Christ one Ryan had tossed on the ground. Relieved, I drove home with my hand swimming out the open window, surfing the waves of air like I had when I was a child.
At home, I parked behind Brianne’s Fit, which was under the carport, then rolled the trash can to the dumpster in the alley behind the duplex to empty it. After taking a quick piss behind the dumpster, I was rolling the can back around the side of the duplex when a blue jay swooped down from the carport and landed on the lid. It had a note lodged in its beak. My heart jumped from idle to fifth gear as I slowly took the note. The bird waited while I read.
Hope your marriage is going well, friend. It’s been a long while, but I think you know what to do.
I handed the note back to the bird and stood perfectly still staring down at the trash can as it flew away. I made my way back to the truck and glanced at the burlap sack. As I pulled away from the curb, I heard Brianne call my name from the front porch, but I didn’t stop. I honked and threw my hand out the window and waved to let her know I was okay, then headed to the Latino-themed bar site.
I parked behind the rectangular building, next to the Bobcat and a front loader. The frame and sheetrock on the bar’s main building was complete, and we had plans to pave the parking lot the following week.
The location was unlit and far enough away from high traffic areas that I could use the Bobcat to speed up the process. The closest building was two city blocks away— a warehouse with a giant, cheap XXX VIDEO sign haphazardly hung on the front. I dug in the center of what would six days later become the parking lot, retrieved the burlap sack, and was ten feet away from the hole when the person inside moved. And moaned.
I dropped the sack and jumped away from it as if it were explosive. “Please, God, don’t let it move again.”
I repeated the request three or four times before it jerked, and a loud, animalistic moan-groan seeped out of the sack and soured my ears. A bite of panic grabbed my chest. What was I supposed to do? Bury the person alive? Set them free? My eyes skidded to the hole. Two blue jays were hopping around the edge of it in geometric patterns as if dancing the cha-cha.
“It’s just involuntary death spasms,” I whispered, trying to convince myself. “That’s all.” I’d learned about death spasms from Dr. Biden on that HBO Autopsy show.
Extending my arm to maximum length, I inched toward the sack. When close enough, I grabbed a handful of burlap and took off running for the hole, dragging the sack behind me.
The birds moved aside, allowing me the room to slide the sack into the hole. When it landed in the bottom, a flurry of jerks and moans followed. I hurried to the Bobcat and started it up, but when I raised the first scoop of dirt to dump in the hole, I shut it off. I couldn’t do it. What if the person was alive? I couldn’t bury anyone alive. I couldn’t be responsible for killing them.
I stepped off the Bobcat and knelt beside the hole. After taking a few measured breaths to steel myself, I loosened the knot that was keeping the sack closed and moved back.
Nothing happened. No head with horrified, dying eyes emerged. No desperate hand popped out, reaching for me.
Bug-eyed and anticipating the worst, I waited a moment before whispering, “Hello.”
No movement. No response.
“Hello,” I tried a little louder.
Still, nothing.
I nudged the mass in the sack with my foot. Nothing. I nudged again. Nothing. Maybe it was just death spasms, I thought.
I stood, took off my lucky Rangers hat, and was wiping the sweat off my face when my cell phone vibrated in my pocket, causing me to flinch and drop my hat into the hole. “Damn it,” I mumbled as I checked my phone. It was a text from Brianne: Where did you go? Worried. I put the phone back in my pocket, then dropped down into the hole to retrieve my hat.
As I reached for the cap’s bill, I heard a soft plea. “Help.”
I froze with my arm extended.
“Help.”
I stayed motionless for many long minutes, watching, listening, but I didn’t hear anything else. Eventually, holding my breath, I grabbed the top of the burlap sack and eased it open to look inside, to make sure the person wasn’t alive.
Short black hair clung to a woman’s scalp like a beanie. Her large eyes were closed, dark-skinned cheeks and chin smeared with fresh blood.
“Hello,” I whispered. “Are you alive?”
She didn’t answer, but seconds later, her leg slightly twitched and I jumped back. Pressing my spine against the wall of the hole, I watched the sack for what felt like hours before reaching down and jerking it off the rest of her body.
Her knees were pulled up to her chest, hands clasped together, as though in prayer. Her nails were painted pink. She had on a purple tank top and cut-off jean-shorts. No bra. A fat trail of fresh blood stemming from a wound on her neck colored her chest. I put my hand on her shoulder. She was cold but not stiff. “Hey? Lady?”
She didn’t move.
Holding my breath, I lowered my ear to her parted lips but didn’t feel any air. I put my hand on her chest, my palm resting in her warm blood, but didn’t feel any signs of breathing or heartbeats. I placed my fingers on her neck above the wound to check for a pulse but again felt nothing. She was dead. I was certain. But I was also certain I’d heard her whisper. Hadn’t I?
My eyes cut to the two blue jays dancing around the hole, and an eerie sensation caused my stomach to tighten. Were they fucking with me? Could they do that? Or was I going crazy. Was my guilty conscience manipulating my imagination? Could I have imagined her movements and whispers? I wasn’t sure. In that moment, I wasn’t sure of anything other than the fact that I wanted to get the hell out of there.
As I leaned over the woman’s body to grab my hat, her leg jerked. I tried to back up, but my feet tangled and I fell on top of her, chest to chest, face to face. I could smell her cheap perfume mixed with the coppery scent of her blood. Her perky breasts squashed into my chest, and she seemed to be smiling now, as if pleased I was mounting her.
In frantic, forceful movements, I used her face and body as leverage to push myself to my feet. Then, driven by panic and fear, I kicked her ten solid times in the face and abdomen. She never moved or moaned or tried to block or dodge the blows. She never asked for help, either. She just laid there and took it like a helpless dead person.
I regretted kicking her seconds after I finished. Even though she was dead, she didn’t deserve to take the brunt of my frustration and fear and paranoia. She didn’t deserve to be disrespected in that way. Not after she’d already lost her life…her family…been murdered by a monster and stuffed into a sack and discarded as trash.
After grabbing my hat and laying the bag over the woman’s body, I jumped out of the hole, sprinted to the Bobcat, and quickly finished the job.
Foolishly figuring I’d just wash the woman's blood off my hands with the front yard hose, and that I’d take my shirt off before I went inside to talk with Brianne, I sped toward home. In hindsight, I should’ve gone to a Toot ‘n Totum or McDonald’s bathroom to clean up instead. But at the time, my craving for the comfort of home, the sight of a comforting face, sound of a comforting, real voice, overrode my better judgment.
Two blocks from the duplex, my cell phone vibrated. Assuming it was Brianne again, I didn’t check it. I’d see her in a few seconds. I’d tell her I went to help one of the guys from work who was having car trouble and that I was sorry I hadn’t told her where I was going. I wanted to help the guy and get home as quick as possible. To get into bed with her. Wink. Wink. But then I’d accidentally hit a dog and had to deal with that, too. That’s why I hadn’t answered her text.
After I parked behind Brianne’s Fit, but before I killed the engine, a pair of headlights pulled in behind me. I glanced in the rearview mirror, and when I saw Ryan getting out of his truck, I quickly took off my bloody shirt and wadded it into a ball.
As I tossed it onto the floorboard, Ryan tapped on the window. He was smiling. I opened the door and stepped out.
“Did Brianne call you?” I asked.
“Yeah. She said you came home and took out the trash, but then left without talking to her. She was freaking out so I told her I’d see if I could find you.”
I flashed a half-hearted smile. “Well, you found me.”
He pointed at my chest. “Yeah. Shirtless. What the hell?”
I reflexively moved my right hand over my bare chest. What a mistake.
Ryan eye-balled my hand. “Is that blood on your hand?”
I glanced at my hand, opened and closed my fingers a few times as though I’d just learned the trick of finger movement. “Yeah,” I admitted. “Dog blood,” I lied.
“How did you get dog blood on you?”
I stared at my hand for a long moment. “One of my friends called right after I got home from Wizzards. He was at the Taco Villa on 45th street and wanted to know if I could come jump his car for him since I lived close by. On the way over there, a stupid mutt ran out in front of me, and I clipped it.”
“Is it all right? Did it die?”
“No. He had a cut on its hind leg, but when I tried to see if he had tags, he ran off. He had a little hitch in his step but moved pretty well. I think he’ll be fine.” I thumbed at my shirt on the floorboard. “Got a little blood on my shirt, too. That’s why I took it off.”
He nodded, but his brow furrowed. “Did you go ahead and go help…who was it that called you?”
The simple question tripped me up. I’d prepared the fib for Brianne, not Ryan. I could get away with stretching the truth about the guys from work with her. She knew some of them but not all. She also understood that turnaround was high, the grunt workers coming and going quicker than nails from a nail-gun. And based on her opinion of Dan, and Howe’s in general, I don’t think she listened much when I went off about work anyway.
Ryan, on the other hand, knew everyone I worked with. Well. Better than I did in most cases. He may not have been blessed with math or English smarts, but he could look someone in the eye and shake their hand once (even when sloppy drunk or high as a kite) and recall their name ten years later if he came across them. A politician’s trait if there ever was one.
“Uh…it was…this guy named Darren. He doesn’t work with us anymore.”
“I don’t remember any Darren.”
I dropped my eyes to my bloody hand for a moment, twisted it side to side, looked up. “Yeah. He worked there before you came on board I think.”
He nodded, but I could tell by the look in his eyes that he didn’t buy it. That he wanted to know more. Ask more questions. He was a people-person by nature and could smell a bullshit story mile away. For both our sakes, I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to press the issue.
“Well, I better get inside,” I said. “I need to go apologize to Brianne. You know her. She’s probably blown a gasket by now.” I patted his shoulder. “Be safe. I’ll see you at work in the morning.” I hurried to the porch and glanced back over my shoulder.
Ryan was looming around the front of The Chevy, examining the fender. He ran his hand over the bumper. “Doesn’t look like it did any damage,” he said, and smiled. “But it would be hard to tell if this piece of shit clipped a meteor.”
I held up a bloody, acknowledging hand, and then quickly went inside.
Fifteen
New Home, Same Problems
Neither Brianne nor I had ever owned a house, and she had only lived in cheap rental properties. Having a place of our own meant a great deal to me, but even a greater deal to her.
She never said so, but I think she saw owning a house as proof that she’d risen above her troubled upbringing. That she’d bested her past, her mom, her drunkard dad who she hadn’t spoken to since she was ten. Some people need a college education to feel that. Others need the notoriety associated with becoming a doctor or lawyer. Or landing a role in a blockbuster movie. Others need a higher calling from God or Allah or Jehovah, helping the poor or saving souls from the fires of Hell. Brianne needed a house. A permanent home.
In August, a few months after I’d kicked and buried the woman at the Latino bar site, one week before Sera started her freshman year at Mercy High, and two years after I’d met Luther, we closed on a two-story brick home in Ridgecrest. It was the last house on a dead end street on the northwestern edge of Mercy. Eighty-year-old cottonwoods surrounded the house. Beyond the backyard, open plains rolled as far as the eye could see.
The house was built in the 1930s but had been renovated in the late ’90s. “Classic charm with modern comforts” was how our realtor described it. It had four spacious bedrooms, a large kitchen, a living room, and a den. Our furniture didn’t fill half the house, our plates and cups and pots and pans not even a third of the storage space in the kitchen. We spent every weekend for a month shopping for new tables, sofas, and other various decorative pieces. Brianne picked out a new bedroom set for us. All but our queen-size bed. We’d bought it at a garage sale when we moved in to the duplex together, and she thought it would be bad luck to switch it out.
We gave Sera her pick of the three bedrooms upstairs. She picked the one with the most windows—four. One window looked out over the driveway and detached garage, the other three, the backyard. We also let her pick out her own bedroom furniture, which tickled her to no end. We spent two days hopping from antique shop to antique shop because she wanted to “go vintage.” She bought an oak, hand-carved queen-size headboard, a ’40s style dresser with a large mirror, a metal vanity, and a small desk that came from a school that was abandoned in the ’50s.
The backyard was as large as the entire lot our old duplex sat on and had a wrap-around porch like the one on that farmhouse in Field of Dreams. We bought a wooden swing for the porch that Ryan helped me assemble, and Brianne hung a couple of asparagus ferns in macramé holders on either side of it.
My dad and Brenda helped us unload the U-Haul the day we moved in, and we offered Dad the apartment above the detached garage (It had its own stove and fridge, toilet and tub.), but he refused, of course, saying he’d rather die in his own home thank you very much.
Ryan came by the house nearly every day in the beginning. He helped us paint the bedrooms, replace a few splintered doors and broken outlets, and re-tile one of the showers. Like Dad, we offered him the apartment, free of rent, and like Dad, he refused, saying he liked finally having a place of his own, even if it was just a small efficiency. He said he was saving for a house of his own, too. I think it’s safe to say he had the same craving for a permanent home as Brianne.
Personally, I liked everything about the new house—the spacious yard, the architecture, the layout, the size, mostly, the sparkle it brought to Brianne’s and Sera’s eyes—but I never felt as comfortable there as I hoped I would. No matter how far back in mind I tried to push the truth, no matter how hard I reminded myself that owning a house was a dream come true for Brianne, knowing the true cost of the house, dwelling on it, seeing it right in front of me every morning I woke up, made that next to impossible.
