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It's a little known fact of physics that things can, indeed, suck and blow at the same time.
The next few days were both the most boring and the most stressful of my life. Boring because there's only so much sitting in a closet knitting that you can do before you start to go insane. Stressful because I still expected the front door to fly open at any minute. I tried not to let my imagination go too far as to what would happen after that, but once or twice it wandered too far. Mostly it had to do with things like giant steel spikes, huge vats of boiling oil, and other known instruments of torture. Once there was a scenario involving an espresso machine and a length of tulle, but it's too horrible to recount. On the up side, I did also finish four scarves, an afghan, and an assortment of socks. If I survived this, I was in good shape for Christmas presents.
The one question I couldn't decide on a good answer to was the most important: how long were they likely to watch my house? I hadn't seen any more suspicious beams of light since that first night, but you never know. And I needed to have some sort of plan for if I did flee. I couldn't very well just waltz down to the police station, could I? Would they believe me? Or would I run into the one rotten cop who'd turn me over to Mark and his cohorts? Is that a chance I was willing to take? I spent a good hour contemplating what my plan of attack would be as I soaked in the bathtub. I finally decided on the path of least resistance. I would tuck tail and run. At least until things settled down and I could safely come back for my stuff. If I ever could. I sighed as I looked around the cozy little house. I'd miss it, that's for sure. It was so perfectly me. Sure, it was small, but how much room did I need? All the mismatched furniture I'd collected at garage sales and thrift shops over the years added character. Nothing matched, but that was okay. It almost looked intentional. Shabby Chic was all the rage, anyway.
I gathered up a collection of clothes and stuffed them into a cloth bag. Contrary to what the deep voice had speculated, the lack of a suitcase in my closet didn't mean I'd fled (well, obviously). It meant I didn't own a suitcase. And the house hadn't been tossed, I was neatness challenged - a condition I have never been so grateful for in my life. When I needed it most, almost all of my essentials were scattered on the floor. How's that for justification? I vowed to never beat myself up again for being a messy housekeeper. If I survived this, the pessimistic part of my mind piped up. I told it to go stuff itself and finished gathering up the things I'd need to...
That made me pause. I'd decided that 'getting the hell out' was the correct course of action... the problem was, I still didn't have a destination. Where was I supposed to run to? Who was I supposed to run to... when it all falls down? Who's going to pick my world up off of the ground? Who... wait, now I was channeling song lyrics. I was officially going batty, but what could I expect? I had to be going a little stir-crazy, and I hadn't had any fresh air in days. I wonder if I had any interesting mail out in the mailbox... I wondered if I could manage to sneak out and grab it, and then I needed to put in a stop mail order at the post office. They could hold my mail until I came back. I mentally shook myself. This wasn't a vacation. Things like mail weren't important. Except I was waiting for that order from - no, even that wasn't as important as my life. I needed to prioritize.
I was lost in thought and chastising myself when I walked into the kitchen and stopped dead in my tracks. There was a man I'd never seen before sitting casually at the kitchen table. He smiled at me as I stood there, gaping at him. Now, I know what you're thinking. He was gorgeous, and he'd come to save me, and even if he was a bad guy we'd live happily ever after, me in a mansion oblivious to the nefarious dealings of my man. Sure, there would be some trouble and some misunderstanding, but we'd work it out. And in a perfect world, maybe that would have happened. Or maybe just if I was the perfect heroine it would have happened. But as it was, not so much. This is not to say I'm as ugly as the guy sitting at my table. Frankly, I've seen moldy pork chops more appetizing than him. I'm average and ordinary, trim and athletic but not model-slim. Decent shoulder-length hair that tends to wave when it's humid. A decent package, but nothing stunning. He, on the other hand, was truly amazing. His squashed-in nose was lumpy and asymmetric, his ears looked like tufts of cauliflower, and his skin looked as if someone had shot him with a pellet gun and he'd never bothered to have the pellets removed. His hair was lank and thinning, and from what I could tell he looked to be a bit short and portly.
"We thought you'd come back," he said. Then he smiled, and my stomach flipped over. It wasn't just the nasty yellow teeth he exposed, but the pure malice that oozed from that smile. I backed up involuntarily, bumping into the counter and almost sending last week's breakfast dishes crashing to the floor. I put my hand out to steady them, and groped around. No knife, but...
"Who are you? What do you want?" I stammered, trying to buy myself some time. My hand skittered over the piles of dishes, looking for something, anything, to defend myself. Where's a pot of scalding hot coffee when you need it?
"Don't you no never mind, missy," he growled. He stood up slowly, pulling a snub-nosed revolver out of a shoulder holster. "Shut up and let's get in the car like a good girl. You wouldn't want me to get nasty, would you?" He looked like he'd enjoy that.
"I just want to know who sent you, and where you're taking me," I said, hoping I sounded much braver than I felt. "I don't think that's too much to ask."
"Why, are you going to leave a note? Stop wasting my time, and let's go."
"Did Mark send you?" I took a shot. If I was wrong, it would be bad, really, really bad. If I was right... well, it was still bad.
He considered for a moment. "If it'll make you cooperate, I'll tell you. Yes, Mark sent me, and no, I won't tell you were we're going. Now, for the last time, let's go." He motioned with the gun and stepped forward to grab my arm. As he yanked, a pile of dishes tipped over and crashed to the floor. He was momentarily distracted, his eyes shifting down to the shattered mess. My hand found the handle of my grandma's old cast-iron skillet and I swung it with all my might. It connected with his head with a sickening thump and he crumpled to the ground. I stood there, panting and shaking, still holding the skillet. He didn't move, and after a moment I reached down and gingerly extracted the revolver from his loosened grip.
He still appeared to be breathing, but a huge knot was rising on his head. There wasn't any blood, and for that I was thankful. I'm not horridly squeamish, but I have white kitchen tiles and they're a bitch to get clean. I'd have been scrubbing microscopic specks of blood out of them for years. The question was - now what? He wasn't dead, and I couldn't bring myself to shoot him in cold blood. On the other hand, he might be dying of a hemorrhage right now, and my not calling an ambulance would end up killing him. An ambulance meant police, though, and I still wasn't sure where I stood on that front. And, honestly, besides the identity of that one long-dead corpse, I didn't know enough to be of any interest. The old expression 'knowing just enough to be dangerous' floated through my head. I was just enough of a danger I had to be disposed of.
Suddenly I had a thought. He'd said he was on his way to take me to Mark. Who's to say there wasn't an accident along the way? Or, preferably, maybe he had that accident on the way to find me... Could I convincingly fake an accident? I glanced out the window and saw his car in the drive - an old American muscle car, pre-airbag. Perfect. If I could pull this off, all those hours of watching 'forensic detectives' would be worth it. I ran out to the garage and pulled out the Tyvex suit I'd bought to re-insulate the attic. I pulled it on over my clothes, then added a shower cap (pilfered from a hotel) and some latex gloves. I gingerly pulled the keys out of his pocket, grabbed my own keys, and ran out to switch his car with mine, so I could drag his body to the car in the privacy of the garage. I made a carful note of how far I moved the seat in order to drive it, and the falling dusk shielded me from curious neighborhood eyes. Not that we had much in the way of nosey neighbors, honestly. Edith, who'd lived three doors down, had been dead for a month before anyone realized we hadn't seen her in awhile. Depressing under most circumstances, but rather heartening at the moment.
Pulling his body from the kitchen floor to the car was a Herculean task. I winced as I stretched strained back muscles. I was certainly going to pay for this later, but at least he was in the car, though listing lifelessly in the passenger's seat. I momentarily thought about tying his hands, but that would leave forensic evidence, and I couldn't afford that. I sent up a prayer to the iron-skillet gods that the hit had been hard enough, then drove his car up a small, steep side road that led from town to my small subdivision. It's not the most common way for people to enter the area, but it's plausible that he either desired the winding road for the muscle car or just missed the first exit, and decided on this route rather than turning around. I reached the top of the hill and faced the next hurdle. How did I manage this?
I was thankful the car was an automatic, at least. Had Plug Face been a purist, and had a stick-shift, it would have been much more difficult. I popped the trunk and rummaged around, finding tools, some chunks of cinderblock, a bag on cement, and several lengths of rope. These boys were certainly old-school. I sighed and set to work. Of course, this whole operation would go south if anyone drove by, but it was late enough that everyone was home from work, so there was a chance the road would remain deserted. I heaved him into the driver's seat and positioned him in a pseudo-driving position. Using one of the ropes I positioned a cinderblock over the gas and one over the brake. I started the car, letting the brake rope go slack. The car stayed put. I reached through the open window and aimed the steering wheel in a way that I was hopeful it'd hit the big oak tree. Then, frowning, I readjusted it to crash into the headwall of the pipe leading out of the drainage ditch, tying off the ropes holding it in place. The tree hadn't hurt anyone, and I didn't want to risk damaging it. Holding my breath, I untied the rope holding the block over the gas and eased it down. The motor revved and the car strained against the brake. I yanked on the rope holding the cinderblock on the brake, and the car took off. It sped down the road and crashed right into the concrete wall. I caught myself jumping up and down squealing in delight - not at the fact that I might have just killed a man (again) but just out of joy that my plan had actually worked.
I hurried down the road and removed the ropes and cinderblock from the car, careful not to disturb the body. This time there was a fair amount of blood, as his head had cracked the windshield. I popped the trunk and replaced them. I almost turned off the car, but caught myself in time. An unconscious man wouldn't be able to turn off the car. If he was just unconscious and not dead. There was a lot of blood, and I hadn't seen him move. But I couldn't risk shifting him to check. He was perfectly positioned as if he'd crashed. Well, he had, actually. Just not-
My musing was cut short by the sound of a car engine. I sprinted off the road and into the woods, scrambling down a small embankment. I crouched there for a minute, listening to the sounds of a car stopping and someone getting out. Suddenly the night was filled with red and blue flashing lights. My legs trembled as I realized that, by some weird quirk, coincidence, or because the universe conspired against me, the first car to come down that road was a cop car. Suddenly I wished I'd done things differently. Maybe I should have stayed in the car, pretended like he'd picked me up and then we'd had the accident. And I could have had amnesia! Not that I could have convincingly faked being in the accident, and I hadn't been about to actually run into the culvert for real. Besides, I reasoned, they'd still come after me, because the doctors would say the amnesia could be temporary and I might remember at any time.
I shifted my position, trying to not make any noise. I strained to hear the officer talking into his radio, but I couldn't make out any of the individual words. Just a low rumbling sound, and periodic high-pitched squawks coming from the other side. Peering into the darkness around me, I could make out a dry ravine that ran parallel to the road. If I was careful and quiet, I could work my way down it and get back home in a few hours. And then what?
I considered my next move as I worked my way in the direction of my house. It was slow going. The night was cloudless, but the moon was only half-full and very little light filtered down through the trees. As much as I wanted to climb out of the brush and walk along the road, I figured it wasn't the smarted move to be seen walking away from a car accident on a lonely stretch of road. It wouldn't take even the dumbest cop a second to put that together. And there was no way I could explain it now. I slipped in a patch of mud and went down hard on my tailbone. I winced, and as I rolled over I felt my Tyvex suit rip along the butt seam. Nothing was well-made, anymore. Ah well, at least it kept most of the mud and gunk off of me. And hopefully kept all of my cells neatly contained away from the crime scene. I pulled off the gloves, the suit, and the shower cap, shivering in the cool night air. I rolled them into a neat bundle and considered ditching them, but thought better of it. If - no, when - someone found them, it'd be easy enough to link them to me and the car. Best to dispose of them properly. No one will think of looking though my trash for evidence to connect me to some random car accident I have nothing to do with. Except maybe Mark. Okay, my neighbor's trash can, then.
By the time I reached the edge of the subdivision, I was exhausted. It was only a three or four mile walk, but most of it had been through the trees on very uneven ground, and my nerves were strung tighter than piano wire. I'd heard several cop cars, and presumably an ambulance, go by and each time I'd stopped and held my breath, as if they would suddenly plunge into the undergrowth to find me. There couldn't be any way I'd actually get away with it, I told myself. I'm sure there was something I missed, something a seasoned investigator would see and say 'ah, but it is not an accident!' Or, perhaps, I watch too much Agatha Christie. Maybe, just maybe, the overworked police force would see that a not-so-fine, not-so-upstanding citizen rammed his car into a ditch and call it a day. Maybe.
I clung to that hope as I hopped a low row of hedges and plunged the crumpled suit, gloves, and shower cap into my neighbor's trash can. The garbage pickup was an automated affair, the kind where a mechanical arm reaches out from a truck and dumps the entire can into the open side of the truck. The driver never even gets out unless there's a problem. And I couldn't imagine my neighbors, with their new baby and garbage can full of delightful-smelling diapers, ever digging through their own trash can.
Everything was as I'd left it in the house, which was a heartening sign. I put the car back in the garage and closed it up, then cleaned up the broken dishes in the kitchen. Barely able to stay awake, I made sure the house was locked up (though obviously, they had a way to get in if they wanted), took a quick shower, and crawled into my attic space to sleep.
Nano