The Ninth Step (18 page)

“And why? What are you thinking, Edgar? Stop yourself. Stop yourself and think.”

Cornell offered, “What if I told you—”

“Shut up!”

Edgar was pulling out kitchen drawers and emptying them on the floor. Utensils scattered and piled up. He opened the last drawer and paused. He reached in and pulled out a gun.

He leveled the gun at Cornell’s head.

Helen cried out—both in protest and at the pain of a fresh contraction. Edgar looked at her, and the cracked lens of his bifocals made him look unstable, off-kilter. She truly had no idea what he would do next.

Edgar cocked the gun.

“Do you have anything here that links you to us?”

“No. Nothing.”

“What do you suggest we do? What’s the solution here?”

“Let me go. I’ll never tell. Never.”

“Because I can only think of one solution. I won’t let you rob me of my life. I’ll not be a victim. Not again.”

“Edgar, think! Stop and think.”

“Just listen. You don’t have to worry about me. She didn’t kill your wife.”

“What?”

“She didn’t kill your wife. I did.”

“How do you think I lost my teeth? Got this scar? Helen, you saw the hole in your windshield. It was my head that put it there, not yours. I drove your car. You don’t have to worry about me. I don’t have anything on you. I’m sorry, Helen.”

“I wasn’t driving?”

“No. I took your keys. I drove your car. You’re not a bad person, Helen. I am.”

And with that bit of information, her body stopped fighting the labor contractions. It was as though her mind told her body,
Okay, we got what we wanted. Have at it.

“Edgar, we have to go. The baby is coming.”

But Edgar didn’t hear her. He was lost in his own revelation. And when he did look up, it was at Cornell he looked, not
Helen. He pressed the bore of the gun dead center to Cornell’s forehead.

“You just admitted to killing my wife. What makes you think I won’t end your life right here, right now?”

“Cause you’re not a killer. If you were, you’da killed me two hours ago.” He held his bound hands out to Edgar. “Let me go. I don’t have anything on you.”

“Let him go, Edgar. We’re clean. Free. The baby is coming. I have to get to the hospital right now.”

Edgar relaxed the gun. He put it in his pocket. “He’s a drunk. A blackmailer. A bully.” Edgar reached forward and took a cigarette from the pack in Cornell’s breast pocket. “A murderer.” He put the cigarette in Cornell’s mouth. “He needs to make amends.”

He struck a match. Cornell gulped the smoke gratefully. Edgar held on to the lit match.

“He has sedatives and alcohol in his system. That’s what the autopsy would show. No one would ever think twice.”

Edgar dropped the burning match into the tangled bed covers. It guttered, seemed to go out, and then a weak flame took hold.

Helen struggled to find the exact words, to get through to Edgar. “It will eat at your soul.”

Edgar started the car and looked forward at the trailer. The flames were dancing, licking, and writhing. The yellow light caught in the cracked left lens of his glasses.

Next to him, Helen had her eyes closed in pain.

And in the backseat, Cornell Smith was bound at the wrists, ankles, and thighs—very much alive.

In the end, Edgar just didn’t have it in him to murder a man.

“Just take me to the police. I’ll turn myself in.”

“Do it, Edgar. Do something. I’m going to have this baby right fucking now.”

“We can’t. You weren’t driving, but you covered up a crime.”

“Then let me go. Let me out right here. I won’t tell. You got something on me. I got something on you. Even steven. You’ll never see me again. Never.”

Edgar found the gloppy mess of fast-food napkins, wet with amniotic fluid, and shoved them into Cornell’s mouth. He pushed Cornell to the floor and threw a coat over him.

“Hospital. Please, Edgar. Hospital.”

Edgar burned rubber.

He took Helen in through the emergency entrance, and once she had been admitted, Edgar removed the car from the emergency drop-off. He parked the car on the most deserted level of the parking deck he could find. He checked on Cornell. The ropes were still secure, and the napkins were still wadded into his mouth. Edgar wished he had some duct tape to put over Cornell’s mouth, but he didn’t. The napkins would have to do. He found a gray emergency blanket stowed away with the spare tire and flare kit. He used this to make sure Cornell stayed completely hidden. During all of this, Cornell grunted and tried to gain Edgar’s attention, but Edgar would not make eye contact with the man.

Edgar had decided on some level to compartmentalize the Cornell problem. He sealed it off to be dealt with at a later time.

He went back to the hospital to see his daughter being born.

The delivery was quick and without complication. Textbook, the OB said. Within three hours of being admitted, Edgar and Helen were new parents and had been placed in a room on the maternity ward. The sun had risen on a bright day, and their daughter, Isabella, slept soundly in the clear plastic crib between them.

There was a cushioned perch built onto the windowsill for husbands to rest and sleep. And that was what Edgar did. He slept. His sleep was untroubled. His problems had been neatly compartmentalized, and they could not reach him.

The day passed in a series of moments of wakefulness and sleep. Nurses and attendants wandered in and out of the room, monitoring Helen and whisking Isabella away for different blood tests, screenings, and immunizations. Sometimes Edgar would waken and change Isabella’s diaper and feed her a bottle while Helen slept. Sometimes, Helen would feed Isabella from her breast while Edgar slept. When they were awake together, they would marvel over Isabella’s tininess, her perfect fingers, her pink toes.

Late in the day, the charge nurse said that they would likely be discharged the following day.

“That quick?” Helen asked.

“Twenty-four to forty-eight hours is the norm for vaginal deliveries with no complications.”

“Wow. That’s great.”

But, of course, it wasn’t great. Helen too had compartmentalized, and she knew that her discharge would signal the end of this reprieve. By tacit design, she and Edgar had not spoken of the incidents leading up to this moment. She did not want to know. She only wanted to be a mother.

That night, Edgar kissed Helen’s head and said he needed to take care of a few things. That she should call him as soon as her discharge came through.

It was four a.m., Monday morning. Dawn was not yet even a hint. But it would be soon. Edgar had just left downtown, where he had visited an ATM, and now he drove along the scenic highway. He had driven for hours before he could force himself to open that inner compartment, but once he did, he found the solution to his problem alarmingly simple. Cornell had said it himself. Even steven. He had something on them, but they also had something on him. Even steven. He wasn’t a threat. He would always be an uncertainty. A dark shadow. But he wasn’t a threat.

Under the blanket in the back of the car, Cornell had not been forced to compartmentalize. He had been hard at work over the last twenty-four hours focusing purely on saving his
own life. He had become certain that Edgar was going to kill him. It only stood to reason.

He had spit out the soggy napkins easily enough and used his teeth to see what he could do about the ropes. It was slow going without his two front teeth. He had dozed off a few times, but he had more or less concentrated on breaking his bindings. What else was there for him to do?

Edgar drove to the Greyhound depot. The bus station itself was quite modest, but adjoining it was the regional storage and repair hub with a sprawling parking area where hundreds of buses were put out for repair; most of them appeared forgotten. Edgar pulled his car into the deserted storage field, hidden among the monolithic buses.

Under the blanket, Cornell was at work. From the moment the car had cranked up and gotten back on the road, he had redoubled his efforts to free himself from the ropes. He had been using his bottom teeth as a sort of saw, back and forth, back and forth with the serrated tops of his remaining central incisors. But the cords were nylon or some other synthetic material. Each thread was a monumental struggle, but about twenty minutes earlier, Cornell had cut through the last strand, freeing his hands. It took ten minutes for even a small bit of feeling to return to them so that he could—cautiously—reach down and try
to free the knots that bound his thighs and ankles. But he could not work his swollen, benumbed fingers into the tight knots.

Nonetheless, he had freed his hands. He could at least defend himself.

And now the car had stopped.

What would happen next?

Edgar took out his wallet and retrieved the cash he had withdrawn from the ATM. One thousand dollars was the daily limit.

He opened the glove compartment (even in his current state, Edgar noted that the contents were in disarray, with a jumble of fast-food napkins and the Rubik’s Cube tossed in there as well) and rummaged under the title papers to see if there might be an envelope. There wasn’t, so he smoothed out several paper napkins and folded them over the money, making a relatively neat package. He extracted a pen and wrote (squinting through the cracked left lens) on the package:
As far as it will take you. Last chance.

His plan was to not even speak to Cornell, but simply untie him and hand him the money. After replacing the pen in the glove compartment, Edgar picked up the Rubik’s Cube. He kissed it like a good-luck charm.

That was when Cornell exploded from the backseat. An explosion of fear and violence, attacking Edgar.

With Cornell having the advantage of surprise, Edgar didn’t stand a chance. Cornell had flipped himself over the seat back
and come down on top of Edgar with the full force of his body.

The weight of Cornell’s still-bound lower body pinned Edgar. Cornell had his hands wrapped around Edgar’s neck, throttling him full strength, with every intention of squeezing the life out of him.

“Your cunt wife’s going to jail,” Cornell hissed through teeth clenched in exertion. “And you’re going to hell.”

Cornell tightened his grip even more, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. Edgar’s face puffed in an angry red, then faded to a complacent blue.

Edgar didn’t actually remember the Rubik’s Cube still clenched in his clawed hand; he was really only convulsing when he brought the hand up and then down in a wicked arc. The protruding corner of the cube connected viciously with Cornell’s temple.

Cornell’s grip around Edgar’s neck lessened, and air rushed inside his screaming lungs. The atavistic thing that Edgar had become did not truly understand what it had done, only that the last action had brought relief. So the action was repeated. The cube slammed into Cornell’s head. Again. And again.

Stunned and bleeding, Cornell managed the door handle and spilled out of the car onto the asphalt, his bound legs, like a useless serpentine appendage, tumbling behind him. A wounded animal, he crawled (well, slithered) to the closest shelter. Under the bus, Cornell gathered himself. Watched and waited.

What would happen next?

Edgar sat in the car, looking at the Rubik’s Cube, the smeared blood, and the single strand of jet-black hair caught in a groove.

Edgar stepped out of the car.

The depot was bathed in blackness; the sodium arc lights on the outskirts backlit the rows of buses so that it felt like a shadow maze of high walls.

Edgar stood and listened. And watched. There was no sign of Cornell. Edgar stepped forward. The cube, grasped loosely in his hand, dangled at his side.
Layers
, he thought.
Layers
. The gritty sound of his steady footsteps was all that could be heard in the maze of buses.

Edgar got down on his hands and knees and began looking under the vehicles. The lot lights actually threw more light under the buses than between them. He went from bus to bus, methodic, searching. And he spotted Cornell tucked behind a dry rotted tire.

Edgar didn’t hesitate. He dove under the bus and lunged forward, reaching for Cornell, but Cornell reacted, his cocooned legs jacking out; he didn’t make contact but did manage to kick Edgar’s glasses off his face. Edgar recoiled, smashing his head on the metal undercarriage. He heard his glasses skittering behind him, sliding off into the murky darkness. Without his glasses he was damn near blind, but he dared not stop to find them now.

He stayed on the offensive, moving forward. Using his ears
to guide him, Edgar crawled farther under the bus, listening for the slithering sound Cornell made as he retreated. Cornell was no more than a blur to Edgar, but he pursued him with a single-minded savagery.

Cornell scooted and pulled himself forward, clawing at the pavement, ripping off fingernails in his desperation. From one bus to the next he clawed his way forward, just out of Edgar’s reach. Until there were no buses left. Cornell emerged and saw an open expanse of scrub grass with highway lights twinkling in the distance. He paused to gather himself, to decide what to do next. But that pause cost him everything. He felt Edgar’s hand grip his ankle like the unyielding talon of a bird of prey.