Grave Situation (23 page)

For the first time since leaving
the bridge, the vagrant spoke, “Where can I put this,
buddy?”

Herb saw him holding up the bag of
cans and bottles.

“You can put it in the back,
friend,” he said. “Against the tailgate, so they won’t blow
off.”

As he approached the pickup, Herb
fumbled in his pocket for the keys and unlocked the passenger door
for the man. Then he went to the driver’s side.

“You’re a good man,” the vagrant
told him.

The sincerity of the man’s tone
stopped Herb where he was. Across the roof, he watched the
vagrant’s head dip inside, felt the truck move with his weight as
he climbed onto the seat.

Strange. No one had ever called him
that. For a split-second, Herb considered calling it
off.

He got in behind the wheel with his
heart in his throat. As he turned the ignition, his fingers were
awkward. He flipped the headlights on and then made a U-turn in the
street. Three blocks west, he swung right onto Hanover
Street.

A moment later, he made another
turn at Preston, Acresville’s main drag. In the downtown core, only
a handful of cars crawled back and forth.

The two men passed a drugstore, a
barbershop with its striped pole lit up outside, a Laundromat, and
the decrepit building that accommodated the community’s only movie
theatre. A group of kids loitered outside in the parking lot. Herb
noticed a police cruiser near them. He instinctively eased up on
the gas pedal. As he drove past, he saw the driver’s door fling
open, the long legs of an officer emerge. In the rear-view mirror,
he watched the cop walk over to the kids.

There were no signs of life further
on. The streets, the sidewalks were all empty. Preston ended at a
T-intersection and Herb braked for the red light. Opposite him
loomed the monolithic shape of a Catholic Church that dated back to
the eighteenth century.

As he stared at it, Herb felt a
swell of sadness, years deep. The sight evoked a visceral memory of
a little boy sitting inside next to his mother at Mass.

Eighteen years had passed since
Herb last stepped foot in the church; three weeks before his mother
died, he had returned to his faith and to God, to pray for her
recovery.

A green arrow flashed on the
traffic light ahead and Herb turned left, motoring north for the
outskirts of town. The country road he took wound through farmland.
Here he opened up the truck a little. Fence posts swept by at
eighty kilometers an hour. Behind him, the skyline of Acresville
grew distant.

Miles passed.

Within minutes trees bound both
sides of the road, broken only by a few scattered houses. Herb shot
over a plank bridge. The Elm River flowed beneath. The road ahead
twisted with the river for a full two kilometers and then the two
branched off into different directions, the road continuing north,
the river abruptly veering east. Six more kilometers and the road
itself forked in two. Highway #12 diverged to the right.

Herb took it.

Foothills rose up to surround them.
In the rear-view mirror, Herb saw headlights of a lone car, hanging
back, keeping distance.

At the side of the road, a sign on
a canted post warned of a rough section ahead. The speed limit was
reduced to thirty kilometers. He hit the brights and slowed
accordingly, bumping his way over pothole after pothole.

Next to Herb, the vagrant sat quiet
with an elbow propped up on the door. The poor man was unaware that
the Good Samaritan beside him was heading in the opposite direction
as his farm. Unaware of the dire fate awaiting him.

High beams swept across tall trees
as Herb turned west onto Timbre Road. The car behind him continued
straight and then disappeared.

Timbre Road had barely enough room
for another vehicle to pass in the opposite direction. Herb knew
this route led to a logging mill several kilometers in the
backwoods and no traffic came through in the evening hours. The
mill closed at five each weekday. For that reason alone, he’d
chosen this location.

Off to the left, just inside the
trees, stood a white-tailed doe, feeding on a shrub. A smaller
shadow moved behind it. As it entered the outer margins of the
headlights, Herb saw the white spots of a fawn.

The road started a steep climb.
Herb pushed the pedal to the floor as the pickup began to lose
speed. The engine whined. The rear tires spun gravel. The two men
inched their way up the hill with agonizing slowness. At the top,
Herb knew he will reach his destination and his grip tightened more
on the wheel the closer he got.

There is no god
but God,
he prayed
. Truly with death come its pangs of agony. O God! Forgive me
and forgive this man beside me, have mercy on him and unite him
with the Highest Companion.

Herb dimmed the brights, shifted
into park, and turned the engine off. A dust cloud swept over the
pickup and drifted a short distance up the road before
dissipating.

The vagrant’s brow furrowed. He
looked out the windshield, out the side window, and then shot Herb
a quizzical frown.

“Where’s your house? Where’s your
farm?”

Without answering, Herb opened the
door and slid out.

“What’s going on, buddy?” The
vagrant’s words carried an edge now.

At once, Herb felt a stab of guilt.
He paused, held up a hand.

When he spoke, he realized his
voice was tight. “I need to take care of something
first.”

He shut the door and the dome light
went dark. With the engine off, the area seemed boundless, hushed.
Under the burden of a slow wind, the trees seemed to be whispering
to one another. Far up the road, a cluster of lights marked the
location of the sawmill.

Slowly, Herb rounded the back of
the truck. He felt, rather than saw, the vagrant watching him
through the rear window.

At the edge of the road, Herb
stopped and breathed in a lungful of fresh country air. Below him,
an embankment dipped into darkness. From what he could see, the
side of the slope was covered with sparse trees, boulders and
bushes. At its bottom came the gentle purl of water. A creek, he
guessed.

In an act of will, he reached under
his shirt and slid the knife from its sheath. Approaching the
passenger door, he fought back panic.

Then time seemed to
slow.

As Herb reached in and yanked the
vagrant out by the lapel of his trench coat, the poor man
blanched.

A tremor carried his words.
“Whaddya doin?”

Silent, Herb hauled him to the
front of the truck and pressed him against the grille with terrible
strength. Through the vagrant’s trench coat, he could feel the
man’s thumping heartbeat, strangely mimicking Herb’s own racing
pulse. His fingers tightened on the knife hidden behind his
leg.

“Forgive me, friend,” Herb
whispered. “On Monday you were simply in the wrong place at the
wrong time in my life.”

He watched the vagrant’s Adam’s
apple move in one convulsive swallow, watched his eyes widen as
confusion gave way to terror.

“Buddy
,” he
murmured.

Herb thrust the sharp steel into
the man’s belly. Twisting the handle, he felt the blade catch on
something inside. The vagrant’s scream pierced the night. Pain
worked on his face, deepening the lines around his eyes.

In rapid succession, Herb stabbed
him twice more. The final time, he put his weight behind the knife,
driving it into the guard and lifting the poor man off his feet. At
that moment, Herb could feel something warm and wet on his
hand.

Gritting his teeth, the vagrant
tried to push back on Herb’s strong wrist with both hands, but his
effort failed.

Herb pulled out the blade and the
vagrant collapsed straight down, as if his bones had suddenly
disintegrated. On his knees, body curled on itself, he clutched
both hands to his abdomen. He moaned in agony, a deep gurgling
sound as blood began to rise in his throat.

Herb recoiled in dismay.

Slowly, the vagrant raised his
stricken eyes to him.

“Why?
” the man croaked and then
coughed up a gout of blood.

Reflexively, Herb flinched and
jerked his head away as he felt some of the blood spatter him.
Stepping back a foot, he flicked a heavy drop from his
cheek.

The vagrant lifted his hand to the
sky. He gasped, tried to speak, and then made one final
effort.

“Help
me…
Jesus.”

He crumpled back to the gravel, his
head lolled to one side, and his eyes fixed into a silent scream.
His body twitched a moment and then was still.

Breathing hard, Herb gaped at him.
In the twin funnels of headlights the blade dripped from his
hand.

He walked around to the driver’s
side of the truck and stood there, sweating, trying hard to collect
himself.

The sky had become overcast. Across
the road in the dark woodland, night animals were stirring, filling
the gloom with their strange noises. Something flew overhead.
Something else swooped down at the front of the pickup and
vanished—bats hunting bugs that were attracted to the low
beams.

Time to finish this.

Herb retrieved his duffel bag from
the storage box in the back of the truck. He carried it to the body
and set it down. It was impossible, he found, to look at the man
now.

He unzipped the bag and took out a
rag. He thoroughly cleaned his hand and the knife. After taking out
his gloves from the bag, he slipped them on. When he pulled out the
hacksaw, the sharp metal teeth glinted in the
headlights.

Herb closed his eyes and breathed
in once, to steel himself. He pulled the vagrant’s limp right arm
toward him and rolled up the sleeve of the trench coat to expose
the forearm. With a secure grip low on the arm, he placed the blade
of the hacksaw across the wrist. He paused a brief moment,
wondering if a meat cleaver would have been a better choice for
this job.

Too late now.

He kept his strokes light; let the
blade do the work. Once the teeth managed to break the loose skin,
Herb found it easy to cut through the tiny bones of the wrist. When
he finished, he held up the severed hand by the middle finger,
allowing the blood to drain. Afterwards, he dropped the hand into a
Ziploc bag.

He repeated the same procedure with
the vagrant’s other arm. With both hands bagged and sealed now, he
wiped off the hacksaw and the gloves with a clean rag. He had
brought a third Ziploc bag for the dirty rags. In the morning he
would set them ablaze in the burn barrel out back of his
farmhouse.

He stuffed everything into the
duffel bag and zipped it up. He sheathed the knife and wiped the
sweat from his face.

He went to the vagrant, put his
hands beneath the man’s armpits, and picked him up. The body felt
awkward, limp. Herb dragged the man to the edge of the road and
with one powerful thrust, hurled him over the edge. As it
disappeared into the darkness, he heard the body tumbling through
grass and brush. He hoped it would not get lodged against a boulder
or a tree.

Moments later there came a light
splash.

Herb picked up the duffel bag and
returned to the pickup. He opened the driver’s door, tossed the bag
onto the passenger seat, and climbed in. With a flick to turn on
the dome light, he tilted the rear-view mirror toward him. The man
in the reflection was pale and sweating, a stranger with the same
face as his.

Herb cranked over the engine and
then remembered the bag of bottles and cans the vagrant had put in
the back. Collection day for recyclables would be next Monday. He
decided to hide the bag in the barn until then.

Slowly, he pulled away as the first
drop of rain struck the windshield.

27

Halifax, May 13

12:23 a.m.

Before ringing the doorbell, Allan
took a moment to prepare. When at last he did, he drew a deep
breath.

There was silence. In moments a
light came on in an upper floor window. Through the frosted glass
of the front door, another light turned on. The distorted image of
a person appeared.

His stomach clenched at the sound
of the latch. The man who opened the door was tall and raw-boned,
perhaps fifty. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and green pajama
bottoms. He had a thin, clean-shaven face, perceptive blue eyes and
short salt and pepper hair, shaved close on the sides.

“Mister Philip Ambré?” Allan
asked.

“Yes.” The man’s voice was tired,
husky.

“I’m Lieutenant Allan Stanton with
the Halifax Regional Police’s Major Crimes Unit.” He held up his
open badge case. “May I come in, please?”

Blank-faced, Philip paused a
moment. He motioned him inside.

The family room he led Allan into
was spacious, exquisite. Hardwood floors. Marble fireplace.
Grandfather clock. Vaulted ceiling with recessed lights. A bank of
arched windows looked out at the front yard. The furnishings were
top-grain leather.