Trailer Park Noir (26 page)

Anna stood nearby crying quietly. “What-huh?”

“Wait right here. I have to go to my trailer and get some stuff. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

“Oh. Okay. Okay.”

He broke into a jog and returned to his own trailer. At the rear of his carport was a small metal shed he’d had since he’d lived in the smaller trailer park over on River Valley Drive. He went into the trailer to get his keys and a flashlight and, from a bedroom dresser drawer, a pair of work gloves, which he put on. From the top shelf of his closet, he took a roll of duct tape. Then he went back outside and unlocked the padlock on the shed. He turned on the flashlight and looked around. There were a few boxes of junk stored in there. On top of one stack of boxes was an old duffle bag he hadn’t used in many years. He picked up the duffle bag and opened it wide, and put the duct tape in. He put the bag on a box, then looked around for something else.

There they were – weights he hadn’t used in ages, dumbbells that had been tucked away in this shed over in the other trailer park for years. He removed the weights from the bars and put them in the duffle bag. He put
all
of them in the bag and tried lifting it. It wasn’t easy, but he could manage.

Standing in the back corner of the shed was an old rolled-up canvas he’d had so long that he’d forgotten
why
he had it. He stepped over a box and wrapped an arm around the rolled-up canvas and carried it clumsily to the door.

It wouldn’t work. He couldn’t carry it all at once. Using both hands, he carried the bag of weights down to unit five, then came back and hauled the rolled-up canvas over, with the flashlight in his right back pocket. On his way to unit five with the canvas, he thought,
Why am I doing this?

The response was a long time coming. But when it came, it was strong, and it was enough.

I’m doing it for Kendra,
he thought.

When he reached the attractive new trailer, he exhaled loudly as he leaned the canvas up against the side of it. He blew air out through puffed cheeks. Stinging sweat had sprung up on his neck and forehead and trickled down his back.

“Whew,” he said, “didn’t think I was gonna make it over here with that load.”

“What’s in the bag?”

“You’ll see. Take off your flip-flops,” he said, slipping out of his own.

“What?”

“Take off your flip-flops. I want to wear them in there, so it won’t look like there were two different people walking around in all that blood.”

“Oh. Okay.” She pulled her feet out of the flip-flops and stepped away from them.

Reznick put his feet into the flip-flops, which were much too small for him, but he would make do. He wrapped an arm around the canvas, picked it up, opened the screen door, and climbed the steps, hefting the canvas into the trailer.

“Oh, God,” he whispered.

It was even worse than it had looked through the screen. A large butcher knife lay on the floor beside the dead body. He could not tell the color of the shirt the man was wearing – it was too soaked in blood. It was torn and tattered, and Reznick assumed the man was just as torn and tattered beneath it. He might not have to puncture the lungs and stomach after all – it looked like she’d probably done that already.

The air conditioner was running on high in the trailer, but the smells of blood and feces were still heavy in the room.

Inside the trailer, Reznick walked on the balls of his feet so his heels wouldn’t sink into the bloody carpet over the ends of the short flip-flops.

Reznick took a good look at the face. Sure enough, it was one of the two men he’d seen in that house with Alicia Carey. It seemed that Anna Dunfy had done half of Mo Carey’s job for him. Mo would no doubt be happy to hear about it. Then again, he might be angry that he was robbed of the pleasure of doing it himself.

He put the rolled-up canvas down on the floor beside the body. He picked up the knife, went to the door, and opened the screen. “Here,” he said, holding the knife out to her. “Hold onto this for me.”

She took the knife without saying anything.

Reznick unrolled the canvas, then rolled the body onto it, rolled the canvas out some more, until it was all the way open. He rolled the body onto it further, then rolled the canvas up over the body. He went to the door and opened the screen.

“Anna,” he whispered. “Hold this screen door open for me.”

She went to the door, held it open with her left hand.

He went back to the rolled-up corpse, bent down, and took the foot-end. He pulled the body around and dragged it feet-first toward the door. He dragged it out the door and down the steps. The head thunked against the steps on its way down. On the concrete below, he turned the body until it was parallel with the Porsche SUV parked in the carport, then dropped the feet to the concrete.

Another long exhale through puffed cheeks. He felt itchy as sweat trickled all over his body.

“Okay,” he whispered. He kicked off the flip-flops, walked over to his own, and put them back on. “You can put your flip-flops back on now,” he whispered.

She did.

“Put down the knife by my duffle bag.”

She did that, too.

“Now,” he said, “this is going to be a lot easier if you can lift up one end of this thing and carry it.”

“Where are we taking it?”

“To the pier.”

“Oh. Well, I can try.”

“Take the feet, I’ll take the head.”

Reznick went to the head and lifted it off the concrete. Anna went to the other end, and with a grunt, lifted the feet.

“No,” Reznick said. “Turn around and lift it from behind so you don’t have to walk backwards.”

Anna dropped it, turned around, then bent at the knees and reached behind her, picked it up again. She straightened up with another grunt and started moving forward.

They passed through the rear of the carport and went through tall pale weeds, between two tall, fat oaks. It was dark back here and Reznick wished he could use his flashlight.

“I can’t see,” Anna said.

“Yes, you can,” he said. “Just go slowly.”

They went slowly down a gentle slope that led to the riverside and moved to the left, toward the pier. It was white and stood out, even in the dark, but it was another thirty or forty yards away.

The night was hot and muggy. Reznick felt sweat running down beneath his shirt. It trickled down his temples and forehead and dripped into his eyes and stung. He stopped a moment and wiped the back of his hand over his eyes, tried to get the sweat out.

“Want to stop and rest?” Reznick said.

“Yeah,” Anna said, panting.

They put the body down.

“What’re we gonna do with it?” she said.

He walked over to her and stood close, whispered, “Be quiet. We don’t want anyone to hear us. We’re right behind these trailers, and most of the bedrooms are in the back. Some people are already in bed. Whisper only, okay? And only when absolutely necessary.”

“Okay,” she whispered. “What’re we gonna do with it? Throw it in the river?”

“We’re gonna weigh it down first.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Wanna try again?”

She took a deep, steadying breath. “I feel so ... numb.”

“Yeah. It happens. Let’s go.”

They returned to their positions, lifted the body again, and carried it the rest of the way over uneven ground thick with weeds and stickers that tore at their bare legs. They came to the sandy shore of the river, then to the pier.

“Take him all the way out,” Reznick said in a loud whisper.

Anna was panting heavily, grunting between breaths.

They reached the end of the pier and Reznick said, “Okay.”

Anna dropped her end with a heavy
thunk
. Reznick put his end down and went to her.

“Now stay right here,” he whispered.

Reznick took the flashlight from his back pocket and turned it on. He hurried back up the slope at an angle. Halfway up, he stopped. He looked at the back ends of the trailers that were visible from there. Only one had light in the windows, the others were dark. But no one appeared to be looking out their windows, thank God. He returned to the trailer. He grabbed the knife and the duffle bag, then turned around, heavily weighed down now, carrying the bag with both hands, and hurried back to the pier, but not as fast as before.

At the corpse’s head, he put down the bag and the knife, then went to the side of the rolled up body and unrolled it just enough for the body to be exposed. He gingerly pulled up the corpse’s shirt to expose the torn and tattered abdomen and chest.

“What’re you doing?” Anna whispered.

“Just watch and see.” Reznick looked the body over. “You really did a good job on this guy.” He handed her the flashlight and said, “Hold this on him for me, okay?” Still wearing the work gloves, he picked up the knife. Starting at the sternum, he cut straight downward through the abdomen.

“Oh, Christ, what’re you
doing
?” Anna rasped.

At the top of the incision, he made another, this one horizontal.

Reznick whispered, “The biggest mistake people make when they get rid of a body by throwing it in the drink is that they don’t puncture the most buoyant parts of the body – the lungs and the stomach, and with a woman, the womb. Then the body bobs to the surface and the cops have something to go on. Before you know it, the killer’s arrested and the game’s over.”

Reznick pulled the incision open wide with his gloved hands, making an ugly wet sound. He winced, disgusted by what he was doing.

“Yeah, looks like you did plenty of puncturing,” he whispered. “But we’re going to make sure.”

He stuck the knife up under the rib cage on the right side and sliced, then the left side and sliced. He then cut the stomach open. The sounds it made were awful, the wet smacking sounds, a small farting sound. The smell of fecal matter rose from the body’s opening.

“That oughtta do it,” he breathed.

Anna made disgusted noises.

Reznick opened the duffle bag. He removed the first round, disk-shaped weight with his right hand, used his left to hold the incision open, and stuffed the weight as deeply as he could into the cavity. He did the same with the next weight, and the next, and the next, until the duffle bag was empty except for the roll of duct tape.

Then Reznick removed the duct tape. He pulled a strip off the roll and stretched it taut across the corpse’s abdomen. He covered the opening with duct-tape, until the body looked like a duct-tape mummy. He wrapped the body up in the canvas again, then used the duct tape to wrap up the canvas.

“
Whew
,” he said, standing when he was finished. He scrubbed a hand down his sweaty face a couple times.

“What now?” Anna whispered.

“Now, we throw him in. You think you can manage with all those weights in him?”

“I’ll try.” She turned off the flashlight and put it down on the pier.

“You pick up his feet.” Reznick went to the head and scooted the rolled-up body around so it was lying across the pier. “Okay, you ready?”

Anna went to the foot of the bundle. She bent her knees, clutched the canvas, tried to lift it. With a big grunt, she tried again. She could only raise the legs. Reznick raised his end. The middle sagged.

“C’mon,” he said, “we’ve gotta be able to give it a little swing.”

They both tried harder and managed to raise the middle just a bit, just enough to swing it back and forth a couple times before tossing it in. They did not toss it far.

Reznick quickly swept up the flashlight and turned it on, sent the beam searching for the bundle, found it.

The current of the Sacramento River swept the rolled-up body away and twirled it around for a long moment. For just that moment, it danced on the water’s surface, bobbing up and down and spinning around like a wobbly top.

Reznick’s gut became icy and frozen. For a moment, he was afraid the body was not going to go down.

Then, as if suddenly realizing it was too heavy to float, it sank out of sight and disappeared as if it had never been there.

Reznick bent down, picked up the knife, and threw it hard out into the river.

* * * *

They returned to the trailer in unit five and Reznick locked the door and pulled it closed, then closed the screen. He carried the duffle bag in which he’d put the flashlight and the wet, bloody gloves, and duct tape.

“I hope Kendra’s not awake,” she whispered.

“What are you going to tell her if she is?” Reznick said. “How are you going to explain the fact that you’re covered with caked blood?”

She sighed. “I have no idea.” She turned to him, fidgeting nervously and wearing a deep frown. “Look, Marc ... I-I can’t thank you enough. What you’ve done ... you’ve saved my life.”

“We’ll see. You’ve got one thing in your favor. He runs a bunch of porn websites, and he takes pictures and videos of a lot of women. Porn pictures and videos. He could have been the victim of any angry husband or boyfriend, or even an angry woman. The field of possible killers is big. They’re liable to talk to you, the cops. They’ll talk to everyone in the park. You’ll just have to keep your cool when they do.”