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30
ABRAM
Now that I’ve made sure that Cambria’s alright, I need to dispose of this body as quickly as possible. It’s been a miracle that nobody has walked past his bleeding corpse yet, but I can’t count on luck forever. I need to take action.
James connects me with one of his close friends, Steven, who ran in the same circles as him when he still lived in California. Apparently, Steven enjoys this type of thing. James rolls with a weird crowd, but I can’t say much different about myself.
Steven is a soft-spoken but dangerous man. He’s known in his circle for being an expert at body disposal, which is something you would never assume upon a first glance at him. He’s a bit shorter than me, and he strikes me as being more of the accountant type than a hardened mafia member.
I suppose that’s why they like him so much. He’s so unassuming that he could get pulled over with a body in his trunk and be let off with a warning for speeding.
When he arrives at the scene, he doesn’t say much as I intercept him outside.
“I need half up front. No deal otherwise,” he says as we enter the apartment building.
I hand him a huge wad of cash. “Here, it’s more than you asked for. I really didn’t see this coming, and you came such a long way to help me.”
He shrugs, flipping through the stack. “Yeah, I’m not one to turn down some extra money. I never had that kind of pride. And you’re right; this is a long way out of my way.”
We approach Cole’s body, which I’d moved into Cambria’s apartment in a tarp I found in the complex’s storage below.
“Holy shit, you really did a number on this guy. Goddamn,” he says, examining each bullet wound.
I feel a pang of embarrassment at his assessment. “I didn’t do this. Cambria did. I would have gotten to him sooner, but I left my gun in the car.”
“I don’t need you to explain yourself. I need you to help me get him into my truck. Then we can take him to a more remote location to dispose of the remains,” he responds, softly but in a uniquely firm manner that sends chills up my spine. This guy could be the next Jeffrey Dahmer.
We both work together to roll the body into the tarp more efficiently, shaping it into a gigantic human burrito. It takes both of us a few tries to hoist the body up off the floor, but eventually, we’re able to get a good enough grip on it to carry it outside.
The truck is already parked close to the doorway, so we toss Cole into the bed of the truck right before my arms are about to give out. Cole is a heavy motherfucker. All fat, not an ounce of muscle on him despite his time in prison, which seems like a waste to me.
Shoving a body into the backseat of a truck reminds me of the first time I ever met Cambria. I remember how scared she was of me, and how much of a thrill it gave me to see that fear in her eyes.
Now, that memory hurts me. I hate that I ever scared her so much, even if it was something she should have never been involved with in the first place.
“So, where are we taking him?” I ask as we both climb into the cab of the truck.
“I know a guy out by the coast who deals in suspicious deaths. He’s a farmer, and he’s got all the tools necessary to dismember and dissolve a body pretty quickly. He rents out the extra space in his barn to people like me who know what they’re doing but don’t want to keep barrels of hydrochloric acid in their apartments,” he replies without a hint of humor or irony.
My eyes widen at the thought. I picture the farmer as an old, fat man with a beard, tending his cattle in a sunny field as a chainsaw roars in the distance. “Jesus, that’s… I mean, that’s a great business model, but damn.”
“I mean, it’s an arrangement that works for everyone. He’s never connected to the crimes, so nobody comes looking for him. Even if they did, the tools he has are appropriate to the work he does, for the most part,” he replies, staring straight ahead as we drive.
It takes us a few hours to get there, and it’s dark by the time we arrive. Cam’s phone was smashed against the wall when she threw it, which means she just needs to trust that I’ll come back to her as quickly as possible.
I hate the thought of her alone in that apartment, scared out of her mind from shooting Cole, looking at his gigantic, blackened bloodstain on her living room floor.
She’s not a killer. She doesn’t have a single gram of true malice in her. I wouldn’t even be surprised if she felt guilty for killing him despite the fact that he was there to kill her.
But I have to finish this mess so that we can move on. There’s no other way.
At around nine PM, Steven pulls into a long, winding dirt driveway with a few glimmers of light at the end where the house and barn sit. As the car crawls to a stop, a man in a green flannel and blue jeans steps out of the house to meet us. He looks so much like Santa Claus that it’s funny to me until I remember what we’re doing here. When I think about it from that perspective, the irony takes on a morbid overtone.
“Steven, this is your third time here this year. What have you been doing? Not getting your shipments in time or something?” the man asks, chuckling a little to himself.
“Nah, this one isn’t mine. I’m helping a friend,” Steven replies in an unnervingly dry, unbothered tone.
If I’m being honest with myself, I know that I prefer for Steven to be a seasoned veteran of body disposal. If he were panicky, trembling as soon as he had to take a hatchet to Cole’s fingers, I would be in very deep shit.
