The Boulevard Monster, page 7
I hesitated before aiming the flashlight that direction. The beam fell on a naked man who was tied to a dead tree trunk about fifteen yards away. A rope wrapped around his chest, another around his upper thighs, anchoring him to the tree. A red cloth was stuffed in his mouth. His large gut hung low, covering most of his privates. Even at that distance, I could see his eyes were wild-wide. Horrified. Just like the girl in the sack in Randy’s truck. He didn’t appear to be injured. A few blue jays were hopping around on the ground in front of him. I slowly moved the light back to Luther, trembling so bad my teeth were chattering.
“This guy invested in a company with me,” he said, his accusatory finger aimed at the man. “And he has lived twenty luxurious years because of it. He could’ve lived twenty more, but he decided to do something stupid.” He glanced at the guy, back at me. “I’ve already taken care of the person he blabbed to, but I brought him here so you could see firsthand how serious the consequences will be if you ever break our agreement. I like you, Seth, I really do, and I don’t want you getting sloppy like this guy did…like Randy did. This is for your own good. For your family’s good. Keep your light on me.”
He dashed toward the man in a blur, crossing the distance in a blink. Then he repeatedly tapped the man’s chest, yelling words I couldn’t make out. The man shook his head vigorously, seemingly trying to scream and plead with Luther with his eyes. I initially wanted to run over to Luther and yell “stop” or “don’t,” to beg him to let the man at least speak. I even took a few steps forward. But then I thought better of it and stopped. I thought of Brianne and Sera and what the consequences would be of interfering.
My flashlight beam shook as Luther continued jabbing the man in the chest with a stiff finger. Ten or twenty blue jays were crowded around his feet now, some occasionally fluttering a few feet up into the air, chirping with excitement.
Luther smashed the man’s face sideways into the trunk and leaned in close enough to kiss his neck. The bird noise grew louder, their fluttering chaotic. Luther’s head twitched and jerked. I struggled to hold the light steady. When Luther twisted away from the man, I nearly dropped the flashlight. He had blood all over his face and the chest of his blue coat. The man had a jagged, gaping wound on his neck, blood gushing from the wound in fat spurts, running down his chest and leg like a raging river, mixing with the piss drizzling from his crotch. He wasn’t dead yet. His eyes were pregnant with pain. His mouth silently opened and closed a few times as if he were biting chunks off an invisible apple.
Light headed, I fell to a knee. I ducked my head and lowered the flashlight for a terrifying second. But when I heard the bird’s wing’s flapping intensify, I looked up and moved the flashlight toward them. They were all air-born, a cloud of smudged blue hovering around Luther and the man. I moved the flashlight away, angled my eyes down. As I placed my hand on my head, fighting an urge to collapse, to puke, to scream, Luther suddenly appeared at my side and grabbed my wrist. A feeling of pure terror, drowning terror, deathly terror, assaulted me, stifled my breathing. “Do you understand the stakes?” he whispered. “Do you see my power?”
His hot breath brought gooseflesh to my cold ear. I understood all right. Crystal clear. I tried to nod, but I’m not sure if I did.
“Get out of here,” he whispered, removing his hand. “I’ll be in touch.” Then, in a blur, he dashed back toward the tree and the birds and the man.
I snuck one last glance at them before bolting to the cabin. Luther was directly in front of the man, with his head tilted sideways—the nucleus in an atom of blue birds. Some of the birds were perched on the dead man’s head and shoulders, pecking at the blood on his neck. A few others were on the ground, pecking at the pool of blood between his legs.
Swinging the flashlight like a baton, I sprinted uphill toward the cabin as fast as I could. By the time I reached the front porch, I was heaving, struggling to pull enough oxygen from the thin air to keep from fainting. My face was scraped from pushing through crowds of conifers, my pants torn and bloodied from several trips and falls. The palms of my hands were scraped from latching onto jagged branches when I’d lost my balance and gravity tried to force me downhill.
I ran inside the cabin, grabbed my bag, phone, and rental car keys, then ran to the Tahoe and sped away. I wasn’t sure how to navigate the dirt roads to reach the highway, but I didn’t care. I had to get away. Far away. Anywhere away.
Luther had predicted my fleeing and directional confusion and had prepared a solution. At each fork in the dirt road, a blue jay was waiting in a nearby tree. When my headlights lit a fork and I slowed, the bird would swoop down and fly at windshield-level down one of the paths. Although terrified and frazzled, I knew to follow them. When my tires hit the highway that led me to back to Denver, I saw the last bird I would see until I arrived back in Mercy.
In the weeks that followed, the naked man visited me in my sleep often. Damn near every night. Every time he’d rip free of the ropes binding him to the tree and rush me with vengeance in his eyes, bleeding from the neck, a trail of squawking blue jays in his wake. He’d tackle me, straddle me, jam his finger in my chest, and scream, “Why didn’t you help? Why? Why? Why?” As the repeated “why?” grew louder and louder, more and more of his spit and blood landed on my face, in my eyes, in my screaming mouth.
Brianne took notice of the nightmares, the sweating and tossing and turning, but I told her the dreams were about my mom. That Mom was lost somewhere in Lummorville, and I couldn’t find her. I told Brianne I probably kept having the dream because Mom’s birthday was approaching, and she bought it, hook, line, and sinker. She always had a soft spot for my mom and Lummorville.
Sorry, Bri.
Eleven
Notes and Bodies
The five-day trip to D.C. was a success. Ryan and one of Sera’s friends came with us. We stayed in a fancy hotel with an indoor swimming pool and ordered expensive room service every night. We visited the White House, Smithsonian, and Lincoln Memorial, and scored tickets to a Redskins/Cowboys game on Thanksgiving Day. We returned to Mercy with more than enough souvenirs, pictures, and memories. Unfortunately, many of my memories were tainted by the blue jays that followed us around. I noticed them nearly everywhere we went, but no one else did.
In Mercy, the blue jays kept a vigilant eye on me as well. They built a nest in the tree behind our duplex, one in my dad’s front yard elm, and daily visited the new construction site in southeast Mercy where we’d started a government housing complex project.
But Luther didn’t contact me again until three months after the Colorado trip, the weekend Sera turned thirteen.
I had taken her and two of her friends to the mall so she could spend her birthday money ($300—six times the amount from the previous year). While they shopped, I ate a slice of pizza in the Food Court, had a lengthy discussion with Dan about an upcoming project, walked around the mall a couple of times, bought Brianne the Neil Finn CD she’d hinted at wanting, then met the girls in front of the dollar theater at 9 P.M. as planned. The girls were looking at the movie posters, talking, holding their bags of new clothes.
“So what movie do you guys want to see?” I asked.
“The one with Matthew McConaughey,” Sera said. She glanced at the other girls and they giddily agreed.
“I think I’ll sit this one out,” I said. “McConaughey’s not my type.”
Sera’s friends giggled. She punched me in the arm. Just like Brianne had taught her. “Do you have enough money for drinks and food and everything?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Sera said. “We have plenty.”
“All right. I’ll meet you guys here when the show is over. Promise me you won’t go anywhere else or talk to any creepy older guys in there.”
Sera playfully rolled her eyes. “I promise. What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know. I need to call Brianne real quick then I might come back and check out the Jason Bourne flick or something.” I gestured at her bags. “You want me to take those for you?”
“Sure.” Sera handed over her bags, and I offered to take the other two girl’s bags as well and they passed them to me. Then Sera pecked me on the cheek, took one of her friends by the hand, and they hurried to the ticket booth.
I waited while they purchased tickets and drinks and popcorn, waved to Sera, and headed to my truck.
I saw the note under the Chevy’s wiper blade from ten cars away and my muscles tensed. I stopped mid-stride, wanting to turn around and march back into the mall and pretend I hadn’t seen it. But I continued to the truck, set the girl’s bags in the cab, and took the note off the windshield. As I read it, a blue jay landed on the hood.
Thanks for helping out.
The bird hopped closer to me, its nails clicking on the hood. I passed it the note but didn’t bother watching it fly away. I didn’t bother checking the bed for the burlap sack, either. I knew it was there. I knew what I had to do. I checked the time on my cell phone. I had two hours until the girl’s show would end, enough time if I hurried. I didn’t want the girls in the truck with the corpse.
I drove to the southeast side of town and buried the sack in the corner of the soon-to-be parking lot of the government housing project without incident. I had to use a hand shovel this time because unlike West Hill, the new site wasn’t secluded enough for me to use the Bobcat without recognition; a busy Popeye’s Chicken was a block away.
As I feverishly scooped soil, I tried to drive my thoughts in any direction other than toward the corpse in the sack with thin shoulders and wide hips. I thought about how what I was doing was helping everyone I loved, making them happy, giving them opportunities and vacations and security. I thought about how I didn’t have a choice, how I couldn’t change the fate of whoever was in that sack anyway. How I could change the fate of my loved one’s lives by digging the hole and keeping my mouth shut. I thought about Brianne’s excited squee when I’d mentioned maybe buying her a new car. About Sera’s joy at having a closet full of new clothes, a new dresser, new jewelry. About Ryan’s relief at having a large chunk of his debt paid off. But by the time I was smoothing the soil on top of the hole my thoughts had drifted to the big-hipped woman in the sack. How she may have died. What her last thought on Earth was. What her eyes looked like inside there.
After I picked up the girls and we were on our way home, it occurred to me that I hadn’t washed the Chevy since I’d met Luther, since he’d been in the cab, right where Sera was sitting and chatting about Matthew McConaughey’s abs with her friends. The idea of Sera being that close to Luther sickened me. The next morning, I scrubbed the entire thing, inside and out. Brianne and Sera both offered to help, but I refused their offers.
I washed it the night of or day after every burial from then on.
A month later I received a note that simply read Delivery. I found it one morning before work and therefore had to keep the corpse in my truck all day—one of the longest days of my life.
The new grunt workers Dan had hired for the government housing project made quite a few mistakes that day because I watched my truck more than I watched them. I spent my morning break, lunch hour, and afternoon break pacing around my truck, pretending to be on the phone with Brianne, shooing away anyone who came close.
After work, I drove straight home, parked in front of the carport, plopped down in one of the lawn chairs, and stared at the bed until the sun fell below the horizon. Brianne came out a couple of times and asked if I was all right, and I told her I was stressed about work and missing Randy. Which wasn’t an absolute lie. I was stressed about work. Just a different type of work. And I did miss Randy. Because if he were still around, my burden wouldn’t have…it doesn’t matter. That’s not fair. It wasn’t his fault.
For safe measure, I checked the Chevy’s lights and blinkers and tags before driving to the government housing site. We had one building left to complete and were supposed to lay a cement sidewalk with a wheelchair ramp in front of it the following morning. I parked next to the cement truck, Bobcat, and front loader, then dug the hole in the leveled soil where the ramp would go and went to retrieve the sack.
It was twice as heavy as the previous ones. One-hundred-forty pounds or more. And it felt different. The way it balled-up in the bottom of the burlap. The way it shifted as I walked. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle trying to squirm their way into the right slot, to make a coherent picture. I especially didn’t like the way it felt when it brushed against my thigh and shin. No matter how hard I tried to hold the sack away from my body I felt the brushing, the shifting, which conjured horrible images in my mind of tiny babies squashed together inside, wide-eyed as the girl I’d found in Randy’s truck, fighting for comfortable position. The image was accompanied by a sinister whisper in my head, Luther’s hiss: “Babies. Babies. Babies. You’re burying tiny little babies. Ha, ha, ha.”
I closed my eyes when I reached the hole, and against my better judgment, I decided to dump out the contents of the bag rather than just drop it in. I couldn’t help it. I had to see what was inside. I had to know.
A relieved sigh burst through my clenched lips when I shone my keychain light down in the hole and saw a heap of cats and dogs and large rats instead of babies. They were all eyeless and poked with tiny bird-beak-size peck holes, but at least they weren’t babies. I tossed the sack over the animals, and filled and smoothed the hole faster than I had any other hole in my entire life.
It wasn’t until later that night while I lay in bed, slipping in and out of a mild sleep, that my imagination ran wild with bird-feast images. They weren’t feasting on cats and dogs and rats, though. They were feasting on babies. I didn’t sleep well that night. Or for weeks after.
I saw the next note on the Chevy when I peeked out the front window after dinner the day before Valentine’s Day. I didn’t even read it. I glanced in the cab, saw the sack, then simply held the note in the air. A few seconds later, a blue jay snatched it and carried it away. After telling Brianne I thought I’d accidentally left the keys in the ignition of the Bobcat and needed to go check, I left.
I parked across the street from Crocket Elementary. The new state-of-the-art school was located west of the West Hill neighborhood, close to the pond where the bird bandits had lived, had been built by Washer Construction over the fall and winter. But when vandalism claims on their equipment and contract disputes with the city halted the finishing of the sidewalks and playground area, we stepped in. We’d leveled a large rectangular patch of land for a basketball court the day before.
I walked around to the back of the school, shoved my hands deep in my pockets, and examined the area. The closest inhabited houses were two city blocks away. No street lights had been erected above the roads yet in front of the school yet.
The thought of burying the burlap sack in a spot where kids would be laughing and playing unnerved me, but I didn’t have a choice. And, selfishly, I just wanted to get it done and get home. As I took slow measured breaths to still myself for the job at hand, I heard footsteps behind me. Before I could spin around, a flashlight beam hit my back, casting my long silhouette out onto the freshly leveled dirt.
“Put your hands in the air,” a man ordered.
I obeyed, and slowly turned toward the voice. A uniformed cop held the flashlight head-high, had his other hand at his waist, hovering above his gun like a gunfighter awaiting the signal to draw. He was tall and stalky, middle-aged with pock marks on his cheeks and thin wire-rim glasses covering his eyes. I didn’t recognize him. “What are you doing out here?” he asked.
Despite the cold temperature, sweat beaded up on my forehead beneath my lucky Rangers cap. “I work out here, sir.” My voice cracked with the “sir.”
“What are you doing out here this late?”
I forced a dry swallow, tried to gather enough spit to speak with confidence. “Just making sure we have everything ready for tomorrow’s cement pouring. We’re putting in the basketball court.” A beat. “And to make sure nothing’s happened to any of our supplies or trucks. After the vandalism that happened to Washer’s stuff, you know?”
He moved the light away from my face and walked toward me. “Do you have any ID?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, pulling my wallet out of my back pocket. I handed him my driver’s license, and he scrutinized it with his flashlight.
“Is that your Chevy over there?” He gestured toward my truck with his flashlight. His cruiser was parked behind it with its headlights on. I nodded.
“What construction company do you work for?”
“Howe’s Construction. Dan Howe’s company.”
“Worked there long?”
“Twelve years,” I said, trying to sound proud about the length.
“Do you have any guns or weapons on you or in your truck?”
“No, sir.” Just a dead body. With the thought came the realization that a blue jay was watching, perched on a pile of bricks stacked behind the officer.
“I’m going to pat you down real quick, anyway. For my safety.” He gently frisked me, patting down my pant and coat pockets.
“It’s a little cold out to be sweating, isn’t it?” he asked, eyeing my face.
I wiped the sweat away with my sleeve. “Just a nervous reaction I guess. You scared the shit out of me.”
He held my gaze for a moment, reading my lie as easy as a Dick and Jane book, or so I thought. He gestured toward our vehicles. “Let’s walk over there so I can run your license for warrants.”
He followed me to my truck and told me to stand by the tailgate, in the cruiser’s headlights. As he sat in his driver’s seat and pulled up my arrest record, my eyes slid over everything in the bed of my truck besides the burlap sack by the back window. I purposefully didn’t look at that, paranoid that acknowledging it with my eyes would reveal its contents. I lowered my head, stooped, and rested it on the tailgate. What if he does find it? I thought. What if I go to jail? What would I say? I jerked my head up when a blue jay landed on top of the cab. What am I going to do? I thought at the bird. If I get caught what will Luther do to me? To Sera? To Brianne? What will they think? The questions and consequences and time it was taking the officer to finish checking my license all seemed endless. Torturous. My sweat had doubled in volume and stink.
