Lovely Death Read online

  Nick had no idea how long it had lasted. He never had been much of a marathoner. But he had been drinking, so anything was possible.

  And now she was gone. Nick scanned the floor, found his pants, and discovered the only other remaining trace of his midnight gymnastic session. He lifted a horseshoe-shaped earring up to the light. It was Layla’s.

  Nick pushed the seatback forward, opened the door, and climbed out with a groan. For a moment, he contemplated taking the earring back to the bar, but then he realized he had nothing to put it in, nor anything to tape it to the door with. So he pocketed it.

  The morning air was still heavy with moisture, but at least it was cool. Nick’s side and the back of his tee shirt were sticky with sweat, but he was out of clean clothes. He didn’t even bother opening the trunk to double check his duffle bag. While he stretched his legs, he looked around the lot. The place was dead, an asphalt cemetery with nothing but vacancies, aside from the Cougar. The sun had risen, but it was obviously still early because its rays had not made it over the tops of the buildings that shaded the small lot.

  Nick rubbed his eyes, and then his temples. He needed coffee.

  As he slid into the driver’s seat, the muscles in his thighs protested slightly, another reminder of his night with Layla. Jesus he was out of shape. A mental note was made that he would sign up for a YMCA membership sometime in the near future. He cranked the ignition, rolled down the windows, and set off in search of caffeine.

  Nick found a Sinclair within two blocks of The Ransack Room’s parking lot. It still had one of those old antique, lime green dinosaurs parked out front next to the sign. Heavy chains were fastened around both of its rear legs. Nick chuckled. The chains were probably more for the prevention of co-ed abduction rather than willful escape. He hoped.

  The Cougar’s tires crunched across a fine layer of gravel as it rolled into a parking spot next to the squat white building. A late model Honda Civic was the only other car in sight. It was probably the attendant’s ride.

  Nick depressed the parking brake, took one look at the nearly empty fuel gauge, and put the car back in gear. He backed it up next to a pump and killed the motor.

  There was nobody behind the counter in the convenience store. He made his way to the back, where there was a public restroom. The door was locked and Nick heard shuffling on the other side when he jiggled the handle.

  “Just a second,” a voice called through the steel barrier. This was followed by a cough and more sounds of rustling clothes.

  Well, he’d found the attendant, at least. He’d probably interrupted the kid’s morning nap, or perusal of this month’s newest issue of Penthouse.

  Nick sighed. He moved back into the main store and took two bottles of Gatorade and a gallon of water out of the cooler. He set them next to the register and returned to the row of freshly brewed coffee pots sitting atop their little Formica island at the center of the shop. He chose the biggest Styrofoam cup available and loaded it with Dark Roast and a lot of that fake creamer shit.

  “Nectar of the gods,” Nick said.

  It was perfectly terrible, just how he liked it.

  “Oh, hey man,” came a voice from the rear of the store. A gangly teenager, probably not far from high-school graduation, shuffled his way to the clerk stand. “Sorry about the wait. We don’t usually get many folks in here this early.”

  “No problem,” Nick said. He sat his coffee and his breakfast—a nuked burrito called “The Bomb”—on the counter. “I’m all good to go, here. Can you ring me up for forty five in Premium too?”

  The kid looked out the window. He did a double take. “Yeah, sure thing. Hey, sweet ride, man.”

  “Thanks,” Nick said, slapping a hundred dollar bill on the counter.

  The attendant looked from the bill up to Nick’s face and winced. “Jesus, bro. What happened? Are you alright?”

  Nick frowned, realized that the kid was reacting to something wrong with his face. He lifted a hand to his cheek and his fingers ran over something crusted and flaking above his eye.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just ring me up, alright?” He turned and made his way to the restroom.

  “Oh,” the attendant called from behind him. “Hey, buddy! You might want to give that a minute to clear out.”

  “It’s fine,” Nick said, bracing himself as he pushed the door open into an awful diarrhea stench.

  The first thing he did was inspect his face in the mirror. There was a great spatter of blood caked on the upper right half of his face. He looked closely, but was even more surprised that he could not find any cuts. He was unhurt, but it was no wonder the kid had been so shocked. Nick looked like he’d just walked off the set of one of his own horror films. If it wasn’t his own, whose blood was it? Layla’s? Nick shuddered at the thought. He couldn’t remember a goddamn thing about the night before. At the moment, however, he needed to get cleaned up and get out of that smelly pit before the acrid reek made him hurl.

  He held his breath as much as possible while he took a wad of paper towels and gave himself what his father would have called “a whore’s bath” in the sink. It consisted mostly of face and underarms. The face took the most scrubbing, but eventually it came clean. He dried himself off and was out of the gastric fallout zone in less than two minutes.

  When he reached the counter he found about forty bucks in tens and fives waiting for him with the rest of his goods, which had been tossed together in a plastic bag. He snared his coffee and walked outside.

  “Can I help you, brother?”

  The attendant just sat there in the driver’s seat, staring back at the rear end of the Cougar, looking perplexed.

  “Yeah—I uh, can’t find the fuel door.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Nick said gruffly. “I’ve got it.”

  “Uh, actually, I can’t let you do that, man.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s against the owner’s policy for you to pump your own fuel this early in the day.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  The attendant shrugged and pointed to a red and white sign tacked to the fuel pump making that very proclamation. “Sorry, we used to have a lot of runners.”

  Nick shook his head. “Whatever. Alright, that’s fine. The fuel door’s behind the license plate.”

  “Oh, right. Old Ford design, man. I knew that.” This he said as he climbed out of the front seat.

  Nick noticed the kid had unwittingly depressed the trunk release latch and winced to think what other defenseless buttons had been defiled in his absence. Nick set the bag of junk food down, and with his free hand, gripped the trunk lid so he could close it. As the kid tinkered with the fuel pump, Nick lifted the steel hatch, preparing to slam it. But his gaze drifted downward and all the breath was forced from his lungs in a weak cry.

  There, beaten and bloodied in the compartment of his car, was the body of the bartender. The right side of Layla’s forehead was stained purple with a bruise and crusted blood dribbled a trail from the corner of her mouth down her chin. One of her eyelids was a quarter open, its focus fixed on the great beyond.

  Six

  Nick stared, feeling his chest tighten. His lungs could not draw air and he felt panic begin to take hold in his quivering hands. He lost his grip on the hot coffee.

  The cup hit the ground like a scalding hot water balloon, greasing the thick laces and leather of Nick’s Doc Marten’s with brown slop. The heat was enough to shock Nick back to reality. He gasped, taking shallow, ragged breaths.

  “Shit man,” said the kid. He jammed the pump handle back into the slot and jerked the rag out of his back pocket.

  When he approached Nick his eyes were full of concern. “Dude, are you alright? Shit, was that coffee lid loose? Did you get burned? Oh, motherfuck, Mr. Johnson’s gonna have my ass for this.”

  Nick’s body rocked back into motion then. The trunk (and its cold occupant) was well into the kid’s line of sight as he rounded the tail of th
e Cougar. But his attention, thankfully, was focused on Nick’s soiled shoes and jean cuffs. And he therefore completely neglected to notice the body of the dead woman staring up at him.

  Before he even realized he was doing it, Nick slammed the lid down. It almost clipped the kid’s fingers where he was leaning against the car, but it didn’t register to either of them.

  “Dude, say something. Please. Are you burned? Please don’t sue us. If I lose another job my girlfriend swore she was gonna leave me and go back to Tampa. Please, man…are you alright?”

  “Yeah,” Nick grated, in a voice that he did not recognize as his own. “Yeah, it’s cool.”

  “Ohthankgod. Jesus, man you scared me there for a minute. What do you need? Hey, how about another cup of coffee? You just hang tight in your car for a minute and I’ll go get you another cup, alright?”

  Nick nodded, absently, and walked past the kid. The world swooned before him and as he moved toward the door he steadied himself against the sun-warmed top of the car. He had to get out of there. Once he was behind the wheel of the Cougar, he breathed a little easier. The tremble left his fingers, just slightly. He stuck he keys in the ignition, cranked the motor to life. And then he stopped.

  If he left now, without filling up, it would be highly suspicious. And the whole scenario was already suspicious enough. Especially for a known killer driving around with a body in his trunk. God, people would be looking for her. The thought of the beautiful bartender’s beaten face made his stomach turn and he vaulted himself out of the seat to stick his head in the plastic trash barrel beside the pump. Not much came up. It was stringy liquid, mostly bile, and it seared his throat on the way out.

  When he pressed himself back from the can Nick saw that the kid was already on his return trip, freshly poured cup in hand. His steps were hurried.

  “Here ya go, my man. I wasn’t sure if you wanted cream or sugar so I put in both. If you just give me a minute, I’ll get you pumped and you can be on your…hey, she sounds real nice but you’ve got to shut it down. The motor can’t be running while I fill her, man. It’s the law.”

  “Sorry about that,” Nick rasped. He eyed the kid warily, took the coffee, and mumbled his thanks. When the motor was off, Nick looked in the rearview mirror. Behind the car, the kid had lowered the secret license plate hatch and unscrewed the gas cap. He planted the pump handle into the spout and Nick heard the machine begin to chug and whine as it siphoned fuel into his vehicle. The kid was inches away from being the witness to a murder victim and didn’t even know it. He wiped his hands on his grease rag and raised his eyes to meet Nick’s in the mirror. But he didn’t say anything. His friendly demeanor had been replaced by one of quiet confusion.

  Jesus, the kid knew something was wrong.

  Nick had never before wanted so badly to be extricated from a situation. Even the moments after he had shot Laura had been better than this. Fuck, at least that had been in self-defense. What had this poor girl in his trunk ever done? And how had she gotten there? Jesus Christ, try as he might, he could not remember a single thing from last night. He closed his eyes, willed his memory to open its doors, and could find nothing beyond the blurry sex. Had she attacked him? Had he attacked her?

  And that was when his leg started to itch. The sensation became quickly uncomfortable, forcing Nick to open his eyes. When he reached down to scratch his thigh his fingers met palpable warmth. There was heat radiating from his right leg. More specifically, he found, it was coming from his pants pocket.

  Nick dug into the pocket and produced the bullet casing, the spent .45 round that he had taken from Laura’s grave. It rested in his hand, as warm as if it had been sitting in the summer sun for hours. Nick swallowed, held the shiny hull up closer to his eyes. His brow became a mess of wrinkles as he watched the previously hollow casing become whole. A copper plated lead slug blinked into existence, filling the empty void, and more than quadrupling the bullet’s weight. It was a fully cast bullet again, ready to be fired. And then the cartridge pulsed an electric burst of heat so hot that it burned his fingertips. He dropped the round to the floor of the car.

  “Goddammit.”

  “What’s that, man?”

  The attendant peeked around the fender so that Nick could see him in the side view mirror.

  Nick pinched the bridge of his nose, gathering every strand of willpower available to keep himself together. When he failed to respond, the petroleum jockey frowned, returning to his business.

  “Almost done,” the kid grumbled.

  The statement hardly registered in Nick’s ears. His mind was a whirlwind of anxiety. Should he call the police? That seemed like a really terrible idea given that he had no recollection of what had transpired between him and Layla last night that had left her body curled up in the back compartment of his car. He would go to jail. Regardless of whether or not his name could be cleared of yet another fatality, he would go to jail. It would be in the tabloids, splashed across the entertainment news channels in further horrendous scandal. The studio would probably fucking love that. And Donnie too, even if it meant Nick never worked again. Or never could work again.

  But if he didn’t report it—even if it hadn’t been his doing—wasn’t that an even heavier crime? Sweet fucking Christ, what was he going to do? He couldn’t just drive around with her, crossing state lines with a rigor-mortised stowaway on board. And where would he go? The godforsaken desert? To dump her body in a shallow grave like some kind of old-school Las Vegas gangster?

  What Nick needed was some time to think. He needed to get away from this hellhole gas station and this increasingly worrisome kid, who had already seen too much not to be suspicious. At once, he thought of the Glock pistol in the glove compartment. He leaned over and opened the latch, pulling the unholstered weapon into the light of day. He released the magazine and inspected the numbered bullet slots on the back. All ten spaces were filled. It was unfired.

  “Holy shit, dude. Hey, I don’t want any trouble, alright?”

  Nick turned to see the attendant, wide-eyed and staring down at the pistol. He was holding the pump limply in his left hand.

  “Take it easy,” Nick said. “I don’t want any trouble either. Just checking my piece. Can’t be too careful out on the road, you know what I mean?”

  The kid gulped hard, nodding slowly. His relief was evident in the relaxing of his shoulders, but he never took his eyes off the automatic weapon until Nick tossed it back into the glove box. His hands began to sweat.

  “Oh, okay. Yeah, I know what you mean.” The attendant was still shaken. He hadn’t made any move to either put the pump back or further approach the driver’s door. “You’re, uh, all good to go, man.”

  “Thanks,” Nick said. “Oh, damn, hang on.”

  The kid watched as the driver dug out a handful of bills and forked them over as a tip. He stuck out his hand—though later he wouldn’t recall doing it—and accepted what he later counted to be just over fifty dollars. Then he stared in bewildered surprise with one hand full of cash and the other full of fuel pump as the jittery guy fired the engine, dropped the car into gear, and skidded out of the parking lot in a cloud of dust.

  Seven

  Nick was a dead man. He would be jailed for the death of this young woman, for transporting her brutally murdered body across state lines in the dark, cruel trunk of his muscle car. His name, already tarnished under the light of the media, would turn to rust after the story broke. He would go to court, then to prison. His movie would make millions, even more than the last one. And Nick would be able to touch none of it. Not that the money mattered even a little bit.

  Dark dread threatened to overtake him, and Nick forced himself to pull off the side of the road. He had made it back to the highway and was currently driving in a blind rush away from the city of Spokane. According to the clock, he had been road bound for a little under an hour. How and when had that happened? It felt as though he’d barely left that filling station. His fingers wer
e still clenched painfully tight around the wheel; cold and fearful sweat drenched his shirt completely. Outside, the sky had draped a woolen blanket over the sun again, and Nick passed very few other vehicles.

  He had killed Laura, sure. It had been self-defense. He knew that. The police knew that. Even Laura knew that. Nick recalled the sickening smile that had played across her lips as she collapsed on his stairwell rug, deep green eyes never leaving his face. But this girl, this Layla, would have no such happy ending. Never mind the guilt he already felt for her death, even though he could recall nothing; there was no denying that Nick had implicated himself beyond acquittal by not reporting what he had found. He was fucked.

  “I didn’t do it,” Nick said. The car was fully stopped now, pulled completely to the shoulder. His twisted fingers fell from the leather grip of the wheel to land in his lap. “I couldn’t…there’s just no…”

  How had it happened? How had things gone so terribly wrong? If he told a judge he had blacked out, then surely he couldn’t be held completely accountable, could he? It was the truth and it sounded reasonable. But Nick didn’t know enough about law to even halfway convince himself of that.

  Short of burying her body somewhere on a dusty stretch of road between here and Chicago, there was no way out of this. Nick’s soul was already wasting away with the guilt of killing Laura. There was no way he could carry the burden of concealing an actual murder that had very likely been committed by his hand. No, he knew he couldn’t bear it. He was all out of options.

  “There is one other option, you know.”

  That voice, it struck him like a sandbag, spilling vowels in granules. In the rearview mirror Nick saw the ghoulish apparition of Leonard Harrow, the South Side Skinner, in his back seat. Until that moment he had completely forgotten about the appearance of the fictional character beside him in the bar. In daylight, the killer’s bruised eye sockets were even blacker, his white head reflected the sun like a sickly light bulb.