Over Your Dead Body (19 page)

“I guess,” I said, and I imagined Brooke in the shower again, naked and glistening. I closed my eyes and tried to push the thought away. Getting physical with Brooke would be like a … a betrayal, of her and Marci both. “You think she’ll have two guest rooms?”

“You’re forgetting our cover story,” she said. “Everyone thinks we’re a couple.”

“Great,” I said. I thought about her body next to mine, and started counting again. Two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, fifty-five …

I counted all night.

In the morning we got as clean as we could, trying to look as normal and approachable as possible. I stood watch while Brooke changed her pad again; she said the flow was almost gone now and soon she’d be done altogether. I gave Boy Dog the rest of the food I’d been storing up for him, and we walked to the freeway to look for a ride. It took almost an hour before a small car pulled over; a young woman smiled behind the wheel. She looked barely a few years older than we were. She leaned over and opened the passenger door.

“How far are you going?”

“As far as you’ll take us,” I said, holding the door for Brooke.

“That’s pretty far,” said the girl. Brooke closed her door, and I got in the back with Boy Dog. “Cute dog! What’s his name?”

“Boy Dog,” said Brooke.

“What?” asked the girl.

“That’s his name,” said Brooke. “Don’t ask me, I didn’t name him.”

“He was a hand-me-down,” I said. “We’re going to eastern Oklahoma, but you can drop us off anywhere, thank you.”

“I can do eastern Oklahoma,” said the girl as she pulled back onto the road. “I’m Kate, by the way. Do you mind if I play the radio a bit?”

“Whatever you want,” I said, buckling my seat belt. “Thanks again for the ride.”

“Kate short for Katherine?” asked Brooke.

“Katelynn,” said Kate, “with two N’s. I hate it, though, so please just call me Kate.”

“I’m Brooke,” said Brooke. “Also with two N’s.” She frowned, looking concerned. “I mean—”

“Short for Brooklynn?” asked Kate.

“No,” said Brooke, and she looked confused. Was she switching over to a new personality, or had one simply popped up, spelled its name, and then disappeared again?

“Just a joke,” I said, hoping to soothe Brooke’s worries. “Speaking of two N’s, I’m Johnn.” I dragged out the
n.
“Nice to meet you.”

Kate laughed. “How far into eastern Oklahoma? I’m headed all the way to California—new semester, you know how it is. Or do you? You go to college at all?”

“We’re taking a year off,” said Brooke.

“Sounds fun,” said Kate. She switched the radio station, skipping some commercials and settling on a bombastic country song, though she kept the volume so low it was mostly muffled thumps and the occasional twangy holler. “Where are you two from?”

“Kentucky,” said Brooke quickly. Her confusion seemed to have dissipated, and I wondered if this was a lie or if she’d become a girl who was actually from Kentucky. She didn’t look disoriented, but sometimes she didn’t.

“Wow,” said Kate, “I wouldn’t have guessed that at all. ’Course, I don’t really have an accent either. Our generation doesn’t, really, right? All the TV and movies and stuff, we all sound like we’re from … I don’t know … Cleveland?”

“Comfortably Midwest,” I said. I had no interest in small talk but I didn’t want her to feel awkward, either, as the only one talking.

“Can I ask what brings you to Missouri?”

“Just traveling,” said Brooke. “We thought about going to Europe, but decided there was so much of America we didn’t even know, so why not get to know that better first?”

“There’s no way,” said Kate, shaking her head. “I’d never pick Missouri over Europe, are you kidding me? I mean, sure, I grew up here, so it’s old hat and I’ve already seen it and all, but even … what else … Kansas? Tennessee? Maybe, what, Arizona and the Grand Canyon, or anywhere in the States is pretty enough, I guess, but they’re not Venice. Weigh them on the scale and they don’t stack up.” She took her hands off the wheel, mimicking a scale with her palms. She grabbed the wheel again. “I’d give anything to go to Venice.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Brooke.

Kate brightened. “You’ve been?”

“A long, long time ago,” said Brooke. She stared out the window. “I’m sure it’s changed a lot.”

“Even if it’s all touristy and whatever I still want to see it,” said Kate. “Not just to take pictures, you know, but to stay there, to live there, even if it’s only for a month or two. Maybe a summer, shacked up in a one-room apartment with nothing but a laptop to write poetry on. Or even better a typewriter. Old school.”

“You’re a writer?” asked Brooke.

“No, no, no,” said Kate, shaking her head so vigorously I worried she’d drive us right off the side of the road. “Anthropology major—I’m going to join Doctors Without Borders or something like that. I’m hoping for an internship with them over Christmas, but, I mean, if you had the chance to just sit in Venice and write poetry, why wouldn’t you? Just, like, sipping little demitasse cups of coffee and smoking in a plaza reading Byron. I don’t even smoke but I would, because, come on.”

I realized, listening to Kate talk, that no one would miss her for days if we killed her. She was in the first hours of a cross-country trip, with the kind of free-spirited independence that would explain away all kinds of silences. I could grab the back of her neck—soft and exposed, her hair pulled up except for a few wispy strands and the light blond down on her skin. She’d let two strangers into her car because she’d wanted the conversation, and because our status as drifters suggested a shared love of reckless romanticism. It was more likely that we were addicts, car thieves, or straight-up murderers looking for someone to chop into pieces. I thought of all the ways we could kill her, all the ways we could hide the body—dozens, if not hundreds, of ways that we could make her disappear without a single trace.

That slender neck, right in front of me. I could choke it, or stab it, or pull its hair and listen to it scream—

“It was really cool of you to pick us up,” said Brooke. “Most people are scared of hitchhikers.”

I looked at her and saw she was staring at me as she said it.

I closed my eyes and leaned back into my seat.

“I know, you hear all the stories,” said Kate. “But seriously. I mean, you guys are great, and I think most people are great, you know?”

“It doesn’t hurt to be careful though,” said Brooke.

I never would have actually hurt her. I was just thinking about it because … because that’s what I did. Killing wasn’t a job, it was literally what I did for a living. To live. To help other people live. I couldn’t just kill people, except sometimes I could.

That was the moral swamp I swam in and I was barely keeping my head above water.

Kate drove us through Tulsa without stopping, and then Oklahoma City, and finally stopped for gas somewhere west of there, in a land now almost entirely taken over by farms. It had been more than five hours, and Brooke had chatted with her for all of it. They’d even played the alphabet game, but with so much banter mixed in I’d lost track of who was winning. I checked my map, looking for which crossroads we needed to stop at, trying to remember if our next leg took us north or south.

“Want to stop for some food?” asked Kate, jerking her head toward the truck stop while she pumped gas. “They’ve got a burger place and a taco place, your pick.”

“No thank you,” I said quickly. “We’re good.”

Kate looked puzzled. “It’s been hours—Brooke, I heard your stomach rumbling like five minutes ago.”

“Honestly,” said Brooke. “I’m not hungry. You get something if you want it.”

“Do you not have any money?” asked Kate.

I wished she hadn’t asked that. How could we possibly proceed from here? Either she offered to buy us food, in which case we were a burden, or she didn’t, in which case she’d feel uncomfortable eating in front of us. Even if she ate in the truck stop without us watching, the difference in food possession would define the rest of the trip. She’d wonder if she should have given us some, or she’d wonder why we didn’t get any, or she’d wonder if maybe we really were criminals. Were we running from something? Would we steal things from her car? Would we hurt her? In just a few sentences, her entire perception of us had changed.

“You know what?” I said, holding up the map. “This is where we get off anyway. I just found it.”

“You sure?”

“We go north,” I said, and looked around at the flat nothingness that surrounded us. “I told you we were headed for the country.”

“I can take you farther if you want,” she said.

“You’re headed west,” said Brooke, shrugging helplessly. “Thanks, though.”

“Do you need food?” she asked, but she lowered her voice as she said it. It made her uncomfortable. What was she thinking about us? That we weren’t equals anymore—that we were poor and possibly homeless. Whatever easy relationship we’d had was gone now.

But … who cared what she thought of us? We needed to eat, and if we made her uncomfortable, well, we’d never see each other again. “Sure,” I said. She bought a burger each for the three of us, with fries and a drink, and we ate together in silence. Then she waved goodbye and drove away.

“I just hope she doesn’t tell anyone about us,” I said.

“She’ll tell Becky,” said Brooke. “A story like this is too good not to tell.”

“Who’s Becky?”

“Her roommate,” said Brooke. “Weren’t you listening?”

I watched the car drive away. “None of it really applied to me.”

“That was the longest conversation I’ve had in two years,” said Brooke. She stood silent for a moment, then started walking toward the freeway. “Let’s go.”

I followed, studying the map. Two more cars, give or take, and we’d be there.

15

We arrived in Dillon around noon the next day. A Wednesday. Just four days after we’d left, and three days since Derek was chopped into pieces.

The city was nearly silent and it was crawling with cops.

Our latest driver dropped us off at the same gas station where we’d bought our meager lunch the day we left. Brooke and I went straight to the restroom and locked ourselves inside, pulling out our cleanest clothes and washing our hair in the sink. I turned to the corner while she changed, counting off my number sequence and trying not to think about her skin, and then she did the same for me—though without, I assumed, the suppressed urge to flay me. Dark thoughts about Brooke had become so common and ignoring them had become such second nature, it was almost backwards at this point—my number sequence had become so firmly associated with thoughts of sex and violence that counting it off almost made it worse. One, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one …

I needed a new coping strategy. My rules were like a lifeline for all three of us.

As quickly as we could, before the gas station clerk started asking questions, we repacked our bags and walked back out, looking for all the world like two normal teenagers with their dog. We walked down Main Street, looking at the store fronts and houses. With one or two exceptions—a man in a delivery van, a woman in a tow truck—the streets were empty. The children who would have been out playing were all inside, watching TV or, just as often, watching us through the cracks in the blinds. We could see them all through the town, little faces peeking out through the windows, wondering who would be next. And older faces behind them, looking out sternly, wondering which member of their community was a vicious killer.

We turned off Main Street and walked the block to Beck Street, keeping to the shade as we passed the rows of well-kept houses and neatly mown lawns. The streets were wide, probably a holdover from the days when frontier settlers used wagons with full teams of horses. The asphalt was old and crosshatched with lines of tar, the decades of wear and repair covering the streets in a kind of black, sticky lace. The sidewalks were dotted here and there with new slabs to replace older ones that had buckled over time.

We reached Ms. Glassman’s house, but as Brooke started toward the porch, I put a hand on her arm. “Who are you?”

“Still Brooke.”

“You’re better with people than I am—”

“You’re great with people.”

“—and I need you to handle this, okay? I don’t know how to ask a stranger to stay in her house.” I stammered, searching for words. “I-I don’t even know where to start.”

“Don’t worry,” said Brooke, putting her hand on mine. I relished the touch, counting slowly to five, then pulled my hand away. She walked to the door, and Boy Dog and I followed.

Ms. Glassman opened the door with a frown of confusion. “Yes? Is there something I can … Marci!” Her eyes lit up with recognition. I’d forgotten we’d given her that name. “And David! I didn’t expect to see you again! What brings you back to Dillon?” Her face fell immediately. “Oh, please tell me you’ve already heard the news; I couldn’t bear to be the one to give it to you.”

“We saw it on the TV,” said Brooke, and she surprised me by opening her arms and stepping forward for a hug. Ms. Glassman hugged her back, cooing softly. “We met Derek the night we were here—I guess that would have been two days before he died. We hung out with him and his friends and I can’t help but think that … that maybe if we’d stayed a few days longer he would have been somewhere else, or doing something else, and maybe he wouldn’t have—”

“You stop that talk right now,” said Ms. Glassman, stepping back and looking Brooke in the eyes. “It’s not your fault, and don’t think for one minute that it is.”

“I know,” said Brooke, “I know, but it’s just … But I suppose it’s been even harder on the rest of you.”

“If it’s anyone’s fault it’s mine,” said Ms. Glassman, “for not dragging that family back to church when they stopped going.”

“Was there a church event the night he was killed?” I asked.

Ms. Glassman looked at me oddly, as if surprised by the question. “The church is a help and a protection. If they’d had the Holy Spirit in their home this never would have happened.”

“We thought it would be nice to come back for the funeral,” said Brooke. “We’re just drifting anyway, walking the land before we go back to college. Do you know when it’s going to be?”