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“She lives here?”
“She’s an artist, and she has a gallery downtown.”
“And this guy lived with her?”
“He did not. He has his own apartment, but he had some kind of psychotic break. He talked the landlord into putting his name on Charity’s lease so the cops wouldn’t kick him out when they came knocking.”
“Charity?”
“Lawson.”
“Does Charity Lawson know she’s your girlfriend?”
The question makes me laugh, but I can feel something shifting deep in my gut because, no, Charity Lawson does not know she’s my girlfriend. “Fuck off, Marco.”
She raises both hands in surrender, a crooked smile on her face. “So, what’s the plan, big guy?”
“Fucking hell. Why do pigs like mud?”
“Pl-please. I’m s-sorry, I’ll leave her a-alone, I sw-sw-swear!”
“Shut up, dude,” Marco huffs, shoving the sniveling man onto his side in the dirt. “You need help, big man?”
Rolling my eyes at the question, I lift my foot out of the mud with an audible sucking sound. I’ll be lucky if I don’t lose a shoe in here. Carrying a body over my shoulder doesn’t help, adding about two hundred pounds of additional weight on one side of my body.
Deciding I’ve come far enough, I drop Charity’s landlord on his back. I check his mouth to ensure we got all his teeth. Marco shaved his head and removed his clothes before I carried him into the pigpen, so there shouldn’t be anything left of his body when the pigs are done. I wanted to chop him into sections, but Marco insisted the old man who owns this farm would want the body whole. I don’t love it, but I trust her.
Another pathetic whimper from Eric draws my attention away from Donnie’s mouth. The landlord didn’t cooperate quickly enough for Marco’s liking, and he paid with his life. Eric doesn’t have enough backbone to stand up to someone breaking into his home, so he’s still breathing…for now.
Turning back toward the fence-line, I see the man curled into the fetal position at Marco’s feet. She’s looking down at him with disgust written on every inch of her face. Hopping over the fence, I land with a heavy thud at Eric’s side, making him whimper and scramble away. Marco meets my eye over the man’s body, shaking her head from side to side.
“Pathetic little shit. Your girl dated this?”
“She doesn’t understand her worth,” I bend, dragging the little weasel back toward me. Marco crouches on the other side of the wriggling man, pulling a syringe from the little purse slung across her chest. “I’m working on it.”
“Good luck to ya,” she mumbles, pulling off the syringe cap and immediately stabbing it into Eric’s neck. He screams and tries to get away, but I’ve got him pinned to the ground.
It doesn’t take long for the drugs to kick in, the fight quickly leaving his body. Checking his eyes, I’m satisfied when I see the terror in them as they try to track my movements. “Where are the acid barrels?”
“In the barn.”
Marco hops up, pointing to an old barn at the top of a hill. Eric is much easier to carry when he isn’t kicking and screaming for his life. He manages to make a sound that I think would be a scream if he could open his mouth enough to let it out.
We head toward the barn but slow down as we pass through a horrific-smelling field. “What is this?”
“Decomposition in direct sunlight on barren earth.”
My eyes catch on a heap of rotten flesh and exposed bones. “How do you know this guy again?”
“I grew up on a farm near here. He was a scientist that went a little,” she whistles, spinning one finger in a circle next to her temple. “He’s a good guy, though.”
“And he won’t tell anyone we were here?”
“Nah. He’s too interested in the science to care where the bodies are from.”
We stop before the barn so Marco can slide the doors open. The room is lined with clear barrels, each filled with a different-colored liquid. Eric’s terrified whimpering increases in volume the closer we get to the row of red barrels.
“The dye is for organization,” Marco explains, wiggling the lid off a barrel near the middle of the row. “The red barrels are the slowest-acting acids, followed by yellow and green.”
