The Good Kind of Bad (26 page)

‘I know you’re off duty but if you want to liaise with Reeve, he’s over there keeping his car seat warm.’

I stole a glance from the window. Crime Scene were photographing the body missing half a face, though as Detective Reeve glanced over to us, I hastily ducked back down.

‘Reeve? He working homicide now?’ Evan asked Lenny.

‘Overtime. I guess you’re not the only one sniffing out a promotion, Evan.’

‘If Reeve wants to bust his balls, let him. This is my day off. I do have those occasionally. Besides, we’ve got somewhere to be.’ Evan turned to me and with a flash of his eyebrows, he hit the accelerator, leaving Officer Lawrence waving after us. ‘I don’t like that kid. He talks too much. Damn, that was close.’

The skyscrapers turned to suburbs and the townhouses became trees as the city faded in Evan’s mirrors. This was the first time I’d left Chicago since returning from Mother and Father dearest. Even if there’d been no reason to come out to the sticks and stare at nothing, the lawlessness of the world outside Chicago was consoling, in the exiled state of nature beyond the city walls. Here I could pretend, pretend Joe was still breathing.

The city was imposing, impersonal, an incessant sensory bombardment. Over the flat horizon of the cornfields you could stare forever and nothing would change. It was almost comforting, until I remembered why we were here, and moreover,
who
was in the boot.

Denial propelled me on. Joe was watching the Kansas City Chiefs get their asses whooped from the TV chair. He was guzzling beer and bellowing at the screen. He wasn’t cold and lifeless in the back of the car. That wasn’t the sound of his body hitting the side each time we reached a stop sign.

Evan didn’t kill him. He wasn’t capable. He was a good man, a police officer, the brave and loyal beneficiary of promotions and citations. He’d also been so matter-of-fact, so forthcoming with the plan. It had to be shock that provoked him to drive a body out to the country. There’d been some hesitation, sure, but what he was thinking, what was really going on behind those eyes, had to be something else entirely.

There was no point denying it, it was time for the cold, hard, uncomfortable truth. Evan had killed Joe, and now we were hiding the evidence.

Though I was here, albeit as an unwilling passenger, I wanted no part in Evan’s plans. Silent tears fell as Joe whispered his last three words for me, that one line, to leave only the regret and remorse and the pain of wishing he’d been a better man. I was still a good person. I was allowed to think this was wrong, even after the kicks and fists and threats. Wasn’t I?

At first I assumed they were scarecrows in rimmed hats and black cloaks, fluttering on the breeze. There were so many of them, and they all pointed west along the highway. When I glanced at Evan, I knew he was blind to them, and when I looked back they were gone.

I smiled. No longer able to trust my eyes or my thoughts, there was one thing I
was
 sure of.

‘Stop the car.’

‘What?’

‘Stop the car!’ I ordered, gripped by panic.

The tyres screeched to a halt, leaving a hot trail of rubber on the deserted Keslinger Road.

‘I cannot do this, Evan. I can’t watch you bury . . .’ My voice rose to a crescendo before stopping dead. ‘I can’t act like this is normal, like we’re out for a drive, and like there’s nothing in the boot to feel guilty about.’

‘The boot?’

‘The boot, the trunk, whatever. He’s still in there, isn’t he? He’s still dead!’

‘I know that,’ Evan murmured, palming the steering wheel. ‘No one said this was normal. I sure don’t think it is.’

‘You put a body in your car. You put Joe
in your car
. Last night he was breathing, last night Joe was alive . . .’

‘Last night Joe tried to kill you; shit, he tried to kill me! He threw you out of a moving car! He wasn’t a saint; the man was as far from holy as you could get. Someone had to stop him and we both know he got what he deserved. You said so yourself, he had to pay for what he’d done. You even told me to kill him. You’re acting like Joe deserved more than this. How long were you going to give him? Before he found you, beat you
too
bad . . . before he killed
you
?’

Evan’s words slipped like poison down my throat. In a seething rage I’d said those words, in pain of an ending most feared, though the reality of murder in the first degree made my blood run cold. Illinois had the death penalty, and the lethal injection at that.

‘How can you be so calm about it, so cold? It’s like you don’t care. Like this is normal to you.’

‘Do I look like I’m calm? Were you not there, in the apartment? I’m freaking out, all right? I’ve killed a man. I’ve put my whole life, career, everything on the line. Like I said, I didn’t know what else to do. Do you know what would have happened, if I’d left him there? I nearly did. I spent hours just looking at him, thinking how I could climb out of the goddamn hole I’d dug myself into. I was going to walk out, leave you there. Leave you with the mess, the questions, the arrest. That’s how much of a coward I am. You might not think we’ve done the right thing, hiding him, carrying him here, but it’s better than the alternative. Don’t you get it? We can make this,
him
disappear. We can pretend this never happened. We can get away with it.’

I’d heard enough. I kicked open the door and sprinted down the interminable road, running hard, though wasn’t carried far by the binding dress and towering heels. Besieged by Illinois farmland, I was blinded by the climbing sun before I sensed Evan behind me, grasping me before I fell.

I tore at his shirt, trying to escape him, but kept on crying. I didn’t know how to do anything else. On the lonely road we stood locked in the embrace as my body shook. I fought in Evan’s arms as the tears came but I was held fast, eventually staggering back to the car with Evan’s arm locked to my waist.

We drove further into the nothingness, field upon field dotted with the odd house or empty farm before the weather began to change. Away from the heat of the city, the rain cleansed the earth, pouring out from the blackened clouds. Like a child fascinated by the mundane, my fingers traced the raindrops carving their course along the glass, our silence remaining just that.

After another ten miles or so, Evan turned off the road, brought the car to a stop and turned off the engine. We were parked down a dirt track off Highway 88, beside a small wood.

‘Why have we stopped?’ I asked through the window, after Evan moved outside.

‘This is the place.’

Taking the shovel from the back seat and blinking away the rain, I watched him check up the dirt path for onlookers, the hair already matted to his scalp. After appearing satisfied with our solitude, he turned to the black cherry and white ash of the wood.

Following at a lagging pace, I circumvented the fallen branches and small ferns in my skyscraper heels. I should’ve worn flats. I made a mental note. Yeah, for the next time I had to bury a body.

After reaching a clearing of sorts, at least a quarter of a mile from the car, he began digging. It lasted an age ‒ the shovel scraping the earth as the rain pummelled the leafy branches. In silent vindication I stood by the deepening hole, more grave-like with each fresh shovel of soil. The sweat dripped. Evan panted. And I was ready to wake up.

Once deep enough, Evan leant on the spade handle, visibly exhausted, dirt soiling his jacket as he cast the tool aside. ‘Well?’

‘Well, what?’

‘Are you going to help me or stand there looking pretty?’

‘Help with what?’ I murmured, peering into the hole. A pool of water had begun to gather at the far end.

‘They don’t call it a
dead weight
for nothing. We’ve got to move fast. He’ll start stinking if we don’t bury him soon,’ Evan called over his shoulder as he marched back to the car.

I didn’t help Evan. Taking one last look at the hole, I turned and stumbled further into the woods, to find a hiding place all of my own.

Crouching beside two ferns in my ripped and bloodied dress, I covered my ears and shut my eyes, any composure moving further from reach as the guilt throttled me one breath at a time. I was without hope, alone in the woods with the rain my only confidant. There was the dank smell of earth as the raindrops traversed my back. Lifting my head to the heavens, the rain blended with my tears, though I let them fall no longer. I waited until I knew it was over, until Evan had dragged Joe’s lifeless corpse across the muddied ground and rolled him, and the carpet, into the two-by-eight-foot hole.

Evan, the honest cop.

Our return to the city was quiet. Evan supplied the silences with empty questions and idle talk, though I wasn’t listening. I was deafened by the strangeness of it all. The gunshot still sounded, his whisper echoing on. Joe wouldn’t have a funeral. No one knew he was gone. His departure from the world had been violent and quiet, our terrible secret never to tell.

Evan had done this. Evan had saved me. Evan had taken a life, bundled the remnants into his car, and buried him below ground. This man beside me, chatting crap, was capable of that. Maybe it’d been instinct for him to reach for the gun and shoot, maybe an accident that he’d aimed too well, but it felt wrong, all of it. Good people didn’t do
this
. Evan should’ve called the police from the get-go, called for backup once Joe appeared in the garage. He would’ve been locked up and I could’ve moved far, far away. Joe would never have found me, or had the money to try.

There had been another trail of breadcrumbs through the forest, but we hadn’t taken it. I’d chosen to go with Evan, knowing he had Joe dead in the back of his car. Now that I’d helped conceal murder, there was no running to the police.

I couldn’t tear my eyes from Evan’s tainted hands as they gripped the wheel. Smeared with a mixture of mud and blood, it looked like he’d crawled out of his own grave.

‘I know you don’t want to talk, but this has to be said.’ Evan stopped at the lights at Ashton and Glendore, back within the protection and surveillance of the city. ‘This thing ends, and ends now. This is the last time we talk about it. Joe is gone, he left you, and that’s all anybody needs to know. AMF, do you understand?’

There was unease in his voice, an understandable nervousness. I knew he was lying, to me and himself. There was nothing to do
but
talk about Joe, though for today we could pretend. Pretend we were strong. Pretend we hadn’t done what we’d just done.

My gaze from the window didn’t falter. ‘I understand. This never happened. AMF.’

Seven days passed. Seven pretty shitty days.

I was pushed to the edge of my sanity and beyond in the week following. Each morning, to maintain our cover story, I dragged myself into work. My make-up sat untouched, I barely combed my hair; nothing mattered anymore.

Unbeknown to Evan, each night I forewent my suite and instead ventured back to the old apartment, first to check if any rumours were circulating, if there were witnesses, an investigation, cameras or evidence to freak out about; but in Armanti, another shot in the night hadn’t raised suspicions. Instead I made it my mission to eradicate every trace of blood and scour the floor until the tiles of the kitchen turned from black to grey.

After I failed to answer his calls, it wasn’t long before Evan arrived at the hotel. His calls through the door were relentless, while in the corner of the lounge I huddled with Sybil, my head hidden, patiently praying for solitude once more.

I knew Evan had grown anxious at my radio silence. On Tuesday, he’d waited across the street from Faith Advertising Co., to avoid identification by co-workers or CCTV. He gripped my arm and begged me to confide in him, telling me how his own conscience had almost gotten the better of him, but he hadn’t caved. I could confess my guilt all I wanted, so long as he was the only person to whom I told my sins. We were in this together, he said. We had to stay strong. I didn’t need to be afraid.

My reaction to Joe’s death was more than extreme, according to Evan. Even after the beatings, lies and emotional blackmail I still felt sorrow for my abuser, but it was for the man before, for the promise of our first life, that I cried.

Even in death, Joe’s presence remained. I’d run into the woods and cried tears over a man who’d done such terrible things. Evan’s attempt at justification, maybe to navigate his own guilt, tainted Joe as the man who’d got what he deserved, and maybe he was right. Though through all the anger, I knew Evan was the true focus of my grief. His actions were not those of a righteous man, though on the fourth day I let him in, allaying his fears of rejection and confession of the soul. I no longer punished myself. I couldn’t do it on my own. Evan knew the secret. Evan had been there too.

I knew time would quell the frayed emotions, memories one day nothing but a reverie. Conversations would become hazy, arguments forgotten and Joe Petrozzi would be consigned to history. An unemployed drunk with little family to speak of and a social circle comprising of gambling associates wouldn’t be missed in a hurry. Guys like him disappeared all the time. The past couldn’t be changed and for a week it’d been written in stone.