Body Rides (4 page)

‘Sometimes life’s worse than the movies,’ Elise broke in.

‘Yeah. You can say that again.’

‘And sometimes it’s better.’

‘Think so?’

‘And it’s always stranger.’

‘Stranger?’

‘I think so. Yeah.’

‘Well,’ Neal said, ‘all
this
is sure awfully strange. Me just happening to come by at exactly the right time and saving you.’

‘A few minutes earlier couldn’t have hurt.’

‘Yeah. God. I sure wish . . .’

‘I was kidding,’ she said. ‘I mean, it
would’ve
been nice, but on the other hand, I might not’ve yelled just as you drove by. I wouldn’t exactly like to go back in time and give it another whirl. You might miss me altogether, and then where would I be?’

‘Good point,’ Neal agreed.

‘I’m not about to quibble about how it turned out. It’s like a miracle.’

‘Or a bunch of lucky accidents.’

‘I don’t believe in accidents,’ Elise said. ‘Everything happens for a reason.’

‘Well . . . I guess you weren’t meant to die tonight. And he
was
.’

‘And
we
were meant to meet.’

He blushed. ‘Guess so.’ Then the last twist of rope yielded to the pliers. ‘There,’ he said.

Elise sighed. Her wrist shoved against his hand, so he let go. She swung her arm forward, shaking the loose circle of rope off her hand. Then she stepped away from the tree. With a swing of her right arm, she whipped the rope out from behind it.

She hunched over slightly, head down.

Neal looked at her back and the curves of her buttocks and her slender legs.

We were meant to meet
.

‘Could you help me with this?’ she asked. Turning toward him, she held out her right hand. It was still bound with knotted rope.

‘Sure.’

When he reached out, she took hold of his hand. She gripped it firmly while he used the pliers in his other hand to grab and rip at the knots. He tried to avoid staring at her body. He couldn’t help it, though. Sometimes, when he jerked hard with the pliers, her breasts joggled. He could see that happen, even with the bad light. He could also see the neat little patch of hair at her groin.

After a while, he forced himself to look away from her.

He looked toward the body of the man he’d shot.

‘Still there?’ Elise asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Thought so.’ She lifted her left hand away from her side and put it on Neal’s shoulder. ‘Still no police,’ she said.

‘Not so far.’

‘I don’t think they’re coming. Not unless we call them ourselves. Which I don’t think we should do.’

‘We have to,’ Neal said.

‘No, we don’t.’

‘Sure, we do.’

She squeezed his shoulder firmly, but not so hard that it hurt. ‘Listen,’ she said.

He gave the rope a rough tug with the pliers. The jaws slipped off and the pliers leaped sideways. ‘Damn!’

‘Stop it for a minute. Listen. Nobody has to ever find out about any of this.’

‘He was going to
kill
you.’

‘Yeah. And he’s dead. So it’s not as if he has to be apprehended
or put on trial or anything. He’s already been . . . brought to justice. He’s never going to hurt anyone again. So what’ll we accomplish by bringing in the cops?’

Neal shrugged. ‘I’m not sure, but . . . You don’t just walk away from something like this.’

‘Why not?’

‘I
killed
this guy.’

‘In self-defense,’ Elise reminded him.

‘Maybe it won’t look like self-defense if we run away. It’ll make
us
look like the criminals.’

‘How will you explain your gun?’

‘Tell the truth.’

‘Do you have a permit, or whatever?’

‘Not to carry. Are you kidding? In L.A.? Nobody gets a carry permit. Not unless you happen to be the chief of police, or something. That’s why crime’s so out of control around here.’

‘The thing is, are you going to be in trouble?’

‘Maybe. They won’t prosecute me for killing the guy, I’m pretty sure. Though I guess his family could always sue me. You know, for wrongful death.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I guess that’s
very
likely, if he has family. Not that they’d win. But I’d be up to my neck in legal stuff . . .’

‘And what about the gun?’ Elise asked.

‘Carrying a loaded gun in my car . . . I’m pretty sure it’s a felony.’

Her hand tightened. ‘You could go to
jail
?’

‘I guess it’s possible.’

‘My God. For saving my life?’

‘Well . . . The main thing is, I did what had to be done. If I have to go to jail for it . . . those are the breaks. I mean, I sort of assumed that risk when I started carrying the gun. But I’ll probably just end up with a suspended sentence and a fine.’

‘What sort of fine?’

‘I don’t know. A thousand bucks, maybe.’

‘Okay, get this rope off me.’

He lifted the pliers, clamped the knot, and started tugging again.

‘I didn’t think it’d be
that
bad,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘The trouble you could get into.’

‘Hell. The way things work these days, you’re in trouble if you
look
at someone funny.’

‘I wasn’t going to mention that.’ A slim crescent of teeth appeared in the blur of her face, then vanished. ‘Anyway, none of that will happen if we keep quiet about all this.’

‘I’m the one who’ll be in trouble. You haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘Do you think that’ll matter? By the time the media gets finished with us?’

Neal grimaced. ‘You’ve got a point there.’

‘You know exactly what’ll happen. They do it to
every
body. Doesn’t matter how good a person you might be, they won’t quit till they make you look like the scum of the earth. If they can’t find dirt on you, they’ll make something up.’

‘Yeah. That sort of thing happens.’

‘All the time,’ Elise said.

‘Well, most of the time.’ As he said that, the knot gave a bit. He pulled harder. The tight bundle of rope came apart. ‘There.’

‘I’ll get it.’ Elise let go of him and worked on removing the rope.

Neal watched her.

She said, ‘Even if they
don’t
try to trash me – and they will – I don’t much like the idea of suddenly being known throughout the world as the woman who got abducted and tortured by some sadistic maniac. That I was found naked and tied to a tree. It won’t just be strangers who find out about it, either. It’ll be everybody who knows me. All my relatives and friends . . .’

‘Doesn’t sound very pleasant,’ Neal admitted.

‘There’ll be pictures of me everywhere. Guys will probably look at them and have daydreams about stripping me and using pliers and knives.’ She threw the rope down and rubbed her right wrist. ‘I want to keep my life,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to become public property.’

‘You talked me into it.’

‘You’re with me?’

‘Yeah. I don’t want to end up in court
or
on
Hard Copy
.’

‘Are your clothes around here someplace?’ Neal asked.

Elise, still rubbing her wrist, shook her head.

‘Here, you can wear this.’ Neal took off his shirt and gave it to her.

‘Thanks.’ She put it on. As she fastened the buttons, she turned away and walked toward the body. The tail of the big, loose shirt draped her buttocks.

Neal followed her, the pliers in his hand. ‘What’re you going to do?’ he asked.

‘Borrow his shoes, for starters.’ Crouching by the body, she started to pull them off. ‘Don’t want to wreck my feet on the way out,’ she said. ‘He carried me over here.’

He carried her naked?

‘I’ll carry you out, if you want,’ Neal offered.

‘Thanks, but you don’t have to do that.’

I wouldn’t mind, he thought.

She stood up. Balancing on one foot, then the other, she put on the man’s dark sneakers. ‘Disgusting,’ she muttered.

‘What?’

‘Wearing his shoes. But at least they aren’t gigantic.’ She squatted and tied the laces. Then she duck-walked away from the body and tugged a couple of thick, leafy weeds out of the ground.

‘What’re you doing?’ Neal asked.

‘I want to hide him.’

‘Shouldn’t we just get out of here?’

She twisted sideways and tossed the weeds at the body. One landed on the chest, the other on the face. ‘If the cops were coming,’ she said, ‘they’d be here by now. Don’t you think so?’

‘I don’t know. Depends on how busy they are, I guess.’

‘I think they’d show up fast for a report of shots being fired.’

‘Probably,’ Neal admitted. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. As he wiped the pliers, he said, ‘I’d still like to get out of here.’

‘This won’t take long.’ She pulled out more weeds.

Done wiping the pliers, Neal squatted beside the man. He placed the tool on the ground near the gloved hand.

‘The longer he goes without being found,’ Elise said, ‘the better off we’ll be. Don’t you think?’

‘Yeah,’ Neal said. ‘Things’ll deteriorate. It won’t be so easy for the cops to pinpoint when he died.’

‘And people might forget they saw us,’ Elise added.

‘Let’s hope nobody
does
see us.’

‘But if they do, it won’t matter so much if the body doesn’t get found for a while. If nobody knows for sure when anything happened . . .’

‘Yeah. You’re right.’

‘I wish we had a shovel.’

‘That’d be pushing it,’ Neal said. ‘The quicker we get out of here, the better.’

‘Maybe so.’

‘You go ahead with that,’ he told her. ‘I’ll look for my brass.’

‘Your brass?’

‘My cartridge casings. I want to find them if I can. We should try not to leave anything behind.’

On hands and knees, he searched the ground to the right of where he had stood while firing. He quickly found two of the shells. The chances of finding all four were remote, but he figured there was no reason to quit. Not yet. Not while Elise continued to work at concealing the body.

She hurried about, pulling bunches of weeds and grass, and even uprooting a couple of small bushes.

Neal found the third casing. It must’ve flown six feet before landing on the ground beside an old beer can.

‘That should about do it,’ Elise said.

Neal raised his head. The body had disappeared under a cover of foliage.

‘I’m still missing one shell,’ Neal told her.

She came over. On hands and knees, she helped him search. ‘What happens if we don’t find it?’ she asked.

‘The cops will.’

‘Does that matter?’

‘It might. I’ll have to get rid of the pistol, anyway. But the shell might have my prints on it. Partials. Maybe not, but I’d feel a lot . . .’

‘Is this it?’ Elise picked an object out of the weeds. She held it
up between the tips of her thumb and forefinger.

‘Let’s see.’ Neal held out his hand. She dropped it into his palm. ‘That’s it. Good going.’

‘The least I could do.’

The four brass casings jingled in the pocket of his shorts as he got to his feet. Beside him, Elise stood up. She bent over and brushed off her bare knees.

‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘We can’t leave anything of yours behind.’

‘Nothing here. He just brought me.’

‘You weren’t wearing anything at all?’

‘Nothing.’

‘How about jewelry? Earrings? Anything like that?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, good. Did you touch anything around here?’

‘Just the rope, I think.’

‘That’s all right. I don’t think they could lift any sort of decent prints off that. What about him? Did you touch him? His pants?’

‘With my hands?’

‘Yeah. They’re leather. That goes for his gloves, too. Any chance your prints might be on them?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘There wasn’t any sort of struggle?’ Neal asked.

‘He got me from behind,’ she explained. ‘All of a sudden, I had this arm across my neck. It lifted me right off my feet. I didn’t have a
chance
to struggle. Next thing I knew, I was in the back of his van with my hands tied behind me.’