Grateful acknowledgment is given to my dear friend Louise, aka, Sprite_65@yahoo.com, without whose able assistance and keen eye I would never have learned the difference between taut and taunt and a host of other pitfalls for the unlearned.
All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to persons known or unknown is unintentional. This story was written solely for the entertainment of adults; minor readers are cautioned to read no further.
* * * * *
Prologue
The flame in the old oil lamp writhed like a tormented soul in the gusting wind that whipped the inky blackness beyond the thick screen of trees. A dark, hulking figure stood knee deep in a new excavation, sweating and cursing the roots that contested every bite of his spade.
"Goddammit, woman," he snarled, "You pick the damnedest places to dig; this here ground ain't nothin but rocks and roots."
"Shutup and hurry, you old fool; it ain't no worse than them others." Her thin, reedy voice had an edge, an anxious vibration, that made the words tremble on her tongue.
"I can't hurry. They's too many rocks, and I'm near wore out carrying him all the way up here, for Christ's sake; it must be two miles back to the road."
"Quit your whining and dig, unless you want him found before we git back to the house."
"Found? Hell, woman, ain't nobody gonna find him up here. Even if we left him on top of the ground, wouldn't nobody find him."
"You're a bigger fool than I took you for. They's hunters all over these hills; one of them would come across him before the month's out, and then they'd be all over the place with their dogs sniffin and diggin, and then where would you be?"
"Oh, ok, ok" he grunted grudgingly and angrily jabbed the spade into the hard earth. He could imagine a horde of sheriff's deputies combing the hills with bloodhounds and backhoes, excavating every depression, and he began to sweat in spite of the cool night air. "How deep you want this hole to be, anyway?" he grumbled.
"Two more feet ought to do it. `Bout like them others, you know. Puttin them in plastic bags helps some, and we can put them rocks on top, so's the dirt don't settle so much. Do it right, and won't nobody ever know what's buried here."
"I hope you're right, woman, cause hit's gonna take me another hour at least to dig that deep." He sounded uncertain, but rose from the hole with another spade full of dirt.
"I been right so far, ain't I?" she cackled smugly. "Ain't one of them been found yit, have they?"
"I reckon not," he acknowledged sourly. "Least wise, none that we heered about."
"Don't be a fool, man. You know if'n they'd found one, we'ud have heard about it. That kind of stuff gets in all the papers and the TV." She was shaking her head confidently.
"What if somebody starts lookin for one of them; asking questions; snooping around?" He looked up from the hole, squinting nervously to make out her face in the shadows. He only half-heartedly believed her and wanted the reassurance of seeing her when she spoke.
"Who'd want to start looking for some damn runaway kid, a drifter with no home or family to care about them?" she replied with an air of assurance. She had instructed him carefully about how to pick and choose their subjects; hitchhikers, wanderers passing through the desolate truck stops and rest areas along the interstate, transients, homeless and friendless, the flotsam and jetsam of an uncaring, indifferent society, here today and gone tomorrow, their passage unnoticed or forgotten. So that, when their usefulness had run its course, they could be disposed of easily, with no one the wiser to ask questions. "You been pickin `em like I told you, ain't you?" she followed.
"Yeah, yeah, sure I have," he said. Sometimes, and this was one of them, when he was preoccupied with something that worried him, he had a detached manner of speaking that gave the impression that his responses might not be completely reliable.
She was standing outside the circle of light, leaning casually against the trunk of a gnarled tree and watching him as he stabbed angrily at the soil with his spade. A black plastic bundle was lying on the ground at her feet. The man in the grave was sweating, and worry, or perhaps it was dread, had deepened the lines on his face. She could see the restlessness of fear in his darting eyes and in the grim set of his jaw. He was struggling to control his anxiety, and his tight grip on the shaft of the spade had turned his knuckles white.
He was pathetic, she thought, and worse, he was also stupid and unreliable, potentially a danger to her, and briefly, like a wisp of drifting cloud that obscures the face of a full moon for a moment, a recurring thought crossed her mind, and it occurred to her that she might be better off if he was the one who was going into the hole instead of the kid. How simple that would be, she calculated with complete detachment. Just wait till the hole was dug and slip up behind him quietly. Wait till he stoops for the last shovel full of dirt, then put a bullet through his brain and drop him right in the hole. There would be room enough for the both of them, and she could easily cover them up; dirt goes back in a hole a lot easier than it comes out. It would be simple, clean and quick, like snapping a chicken's neck, and, then, she would be free, free of his stumbling and bumbling, free of his nervous incompetence and careless talk.
She pondered the possibilities while he sweated and cursed the uncooperative earth. She was pretty enough and still had her figure; she could easily pick up another man to take his place; one who was just as strong, just as virile; one who was more eager to please her and more pliable. Fantasies of eager marionettes danced and bowed on slender threads in her imagination, and her fingers closed around the cold metal grip of the pistol in her coat pocket. She thumbed the hammer and closed her eyes, visualizing the flash, the sharp cough, the quick kick of the recoil, and a new life far from the scruffy, flinty hills of Missouri. The clink of steel on stone as his shovel struck another buried rock, followed quickly by his grunt of disgust, snatched her back to reality, and she shrugged in resignation. Not yet, she thought, reaching to pull a half empty bottle of whiskey from her belt.
