Satan's Mother, Satan's Daughter 13

In a giddy state of apoplexy, knowing I was risking my existence, I got out of the convertible and into the jeep and put the key in… no, wrong key, I went to the next one on the ring… it was wrong too… Lucy was driving off in her convertible, going to pick up Lia from the lobby… another wrong key… I thought once more of them leaving me, like that wasn’t insane… they’d be doing me a favor, getting out of here with that corpse in their trunk… wrong key again… and that was something else to worry about, that I was going insane, that my every thought was a paranoid fantasy with no relation to reality… that forget the cops proving anything, that I didn’t have the guts to get away with committing murder, and I’d end up in an asylum where it wouldn’t matter if I’d done it or not, the straitjacket was on either way… the key I had now went in and turned and the engine roared to life…

New anxiety in before the old one was even done: it was so loud, what if the clerk heard, what if he went to see who it was that had parked in his lot and not come to see him? I stepped on the gas and oh what an effort it was not to bury that pedal in the floor mat, to roll out of there with no more speed than you’d leave the McDonald’s drive-thru with and get on the highway and only then push down the pedal, not a lot, just a little, accelerate, accelerate, but slowly, not taxing the engine, not making any real noise, not until the motel and all those killer witnesses were out of sight and then down on the gas, down HARD, the engine revving and the wheels squealing and the wind finally blowing to let me know I was underway!

I looked into the rearview, just to be sure that motel was gone, and I wondered what they would think of the stripped bed and the missing towel and the ashes staining the bathroom sink.

By the standards of that place, probably they’d hope we’d be repeat customers.

I spent ten minutes pulled over at the side of the road, going through the jeep’s glovebox and the center console and anywhere else I could expect to find something. I don’t know what I expected to turn up. I just hated waiting.

Finally, the convertible showed up in my rearview. I let it drive by, then followed it until the turn signal went on. There wasn’t any turn-off, just a trail that was marginally free of shrubs and the other scabs of the desert landscape. Crashed through by the last person that had made this drive, assuming that was even this century. Things grew slow out here on the sand. They had to fight for it.

Lucy drove the convertible off the asphalt and I followed her, grateful for the jeep’s suspension now that I had rough, rocky terrain under me. But there was still plenty of sand to be churned under the girls’ tires and stray up into the air, making me slow to a crawl just to avoid hitting anything while I was blinded. I had plenty of time to take in the scenery while the windshield got caked with grit and motes of pulverized earth trickled in through the vents.

Jagged black rocks were all around, a ravine of them, holding the desert back. If that wasn’t a contradiction in terms, like a clean public restroom. A few rocks managed to reach out and scratch the jeep’s paint. They weren’t round and smooth like you’d think the desert would make them. These were pointed, angular, chipped and splintered. Less like a skeleton and more like a bleeding body, the killer still around. What other metaphor would occur to me?

The ravine turned and weaved, rolling up and down on little hills that made me step on the gas to get over them, then surprised me with rocks too close to steer clear of. More rocks hung over me, precarious and looming, like they might’ve waited a million years just to fall on me. With the vibrations my engine was putting out into this untouched soil, it seemed a real possibility. I kept my foot on the gas, juicing it forward into intervals as thick as I could make them. I tried not to stray to the brakes. If I started pumping on those, I’d be out here all day.

Finally, the ravine opened up into a natural amphitheater of stone. One side had collapsed, broken away into an uneasy glimpse of how much nothing shot out into the distance, but the rest offered a kind of privacy I found reassuring.

There was a freshwater spring in the middle. The convertible parked next to it—Lucy and Lia out of the car, milling around. I pulled up to them and they lowered their sunglasses to take in my ride and how much paint had been scraped off it.

“Jesus, Roy,” Lia said. “Any rocks you manage to avoid hitting?”

I resisted pointing out that Pryor had been driving the kind of Hummer you could take into a warzone, while they’d only had to maneuver a teensy little convertible that was practically Italian. And that jogged loose a new worry. “That water deep enough for the whole jeep?”

“Probably,” Lucy said.

“Probably isn’t good enough. Let’s check how deep it is before we’re committed.”

“Lia, you do that and Roy and I will get the body in the jeep.”

“We’ll do that second,” I said, though Lia already started to take her clothes off. “Lucy, get your red suitcase out. We’re going to wrap up the body. And we’re going to take care of some identifying features.”

I said we, but it was I who ended up doing it. Using the already bloody sheets as a tarp, then taking a rock the size of my head and smashing Pryor’s fingers into nothing much. Doing the same with his jaw. Lucy didn’t look. I didn’t blame her. It was ugly work, but I’d take a few minutes of it over twenty-five years in prison.

I looked halfway through the deed, looking for the source of a noise, and saw Lia naked, stepping into the water which whispered and lisped as it embraced her. There was nothing innocent about her nudity—not like in the motel room, when I’d seen her bare back, her tawdrily exposed ass. I knew how sensuous she was and I wanted her, all over again, fully this time. Her creamy little hips, the wisps of pubic hair, the succulent breasts that were as gorgeous as Lucy’s, but untried, fresh, for me alone.

I felt Lucy pet my hair. When I looked up at her, she didn’t seem jealous. She was smiling. As flattered as she would be if I were licking my lips at the sight of her.

“Chip off the old block, isn’t she?”

I watched Lia’s pink little ass disappear under the ripples she was making. Now that she was up to her waist, I went back to my work. It didn’t affect the lust I felt.

I turned his fingerbones into gravel and did the same to his teeth, leaving both hands and the lower half of his face looking like flowers that bloomed and then wilted. Melting away where they weren’t tearing. I knew it wouldn’t make for a pleasant memory. I also knew that it was already too far away to touch me.

I wouldn’t have dreams of this. If there were any nightmares, they’d be of moving the body, of the wait in the hotel room, of the fatal gunshot itself and the drop my stomach had taken when a lifetime of jail yawned open in front of me. But that was all. There was no room for anymore horror. My taste buds were numb to it; now I was all about Lia’s wantonness and Lucy’s willingness.

Lia took a deep breath and went under. When she came back up, I was done with the body. I tossed the rock into the water, well away from her.

“Found a good parking space?” I asked her.

Lia spat out some water. “I’d say it’s maybe twenty feet deep?”

“That’ll have to do.”

Lucy nudged me in the ribs. “Roy, that’s wonderful!” Then she cupped her hands to her mouth to call to Lia. “You did great, sweetie!”

I rolled the body up in the sheets, making a burrito out of him. The abstract art I’d made of Pryor’s face made it look, through the covering of the sheets, like his mouth was open. Screaming. But he didn’t have a mouth anymore and he certainly didn’t have anything to scream about.

“Let’s put him in the back of the jeep.”

“Don’t you think we should put him in the driver’s seat?” Lucy suggested. “So maybe they’ll think he crashed?”

“He couldn’t count to three with the fingers he’s got left. They’re not going to think it’s a car accident.”

Lucy looked hurt in that way women did when they weren’t really hurt, they just wanted to needle you about how mean you were being. “I mean, they might think it’s decay. And the mouth thing could be from hitting it on the steering wheel—”

Lia was wading back out of the water. “Jesus, Mom, he’s got a bullet in him! What are they going to say, that he shot himself because he was so ashamed of getting into an accident?”