Digging is much quieter when the dirt is fresh and loose. The tip of the shovel slides in and throws the soil noiselessly to the side. When the earth drops on the growing mound it is quieter than soft rain. An occasional spastic smoker’s cough was the only noise to worry about.
Rand’s eyes adjusted to the video green glow his night vision goggles saw everything through, and the adjustment was a small pain in the ass compared to the ease it added to the work. No need to worry about lanterns or flashlights giving him away. Anyone who might be coming would be seen long before they could see him. When he was down in the hole, he could find what he had to get.
As the dirt’s scooped up and over, he thought about a few of the places he could be instead. He could be back in jail, he could be breaking into some suburban chain jewelry store, he could be getting fat eating fries in his Chevy waiting to take pictures of hubby with a hooker, or he could be on a stool in Lenny’s Liquor Bar soaking the memory of his dead ex-wife until it sunk. Shoveling dirt on a quiet summer night wasn’t a bad way to make a good living, considering the options available to an ex-con.
Prying the casket lid open was the hardest part of the job. There wasn’t much elbowroom in the ground for leverage; the trick was getting the crow bar in at the right angle so that a few stomps could crack it open. Rand pulled the top lid the rest of the way open and looked over the contents. The cadaver inside was rot green, black bruised and bloated with gas. He slipped his nose plugs on.
He pressed the teeth of the surgical saw into the leathery flesh under the left jawbone. He adjusted a half an inch lower to get the best attack on the back of the skull. Rand boosted the ambient gain on his goggles, scanned the cemetery, and then ducked forward for maximum cutting power. The saw teeth carved through the skin, muscle, empty arteries, and spinal tendons with a sound like a bar stool inched over a cold floor.
Five years in jail, the divorce from Alison, Alison’s fatal car wreck – each memory helped the dirty work feel a little cleaner. The bottom feeding straight work he used to do helped him feel clean too. The string of nowhere gigs that followed his nickel stretch in prison ended when the chubby guy in a blue tracksuit and accountant glasses, who asked to be called RT, showed up at his hotel room door with the most unusual gig yet.
Within a few months, Rand was $75,000 richer from RT’s jobs. A wrinkled Metro Tribune left on his table caught his eye as he waited for breakfast at Danny’s Diner. The paper printed in boldface BODY FOUND IN RIVERSIDE PARK. Police linked the victim to the East Bank Stalker, making it his tenth recorded kill.
The police would never catch EBS; sure as shit, he was always a step ahead of their best. Where was a movie star “profiler” when the locals needed help? The article didn’t print the name of the victim until the end of the article, in the paragraph where the writer begged for information from the general public. Her name was Candice Ornstein. She was a student at Metro Community College. The name was familiar -- it was on the next headstone he was to dig under. Some part of her was RT’s next collectable.
“Are you expecting anyone?”
Rand looked up from his black coffee and newspaper to see RT leaning against the empty booth. How did he find him? Why did he want to talk to him? He motioned for RT to sit on the cushion across from him.
RT sat down and looked over his thick bifocal glasses at Rand. His tight lips crawled upward toward a hint of a smirk. There were thin cracks of red at the edge of RT’s eyeballs.
“I need to talk to you, Rand.” RT said in a voice just louder than an asthmatic whisper.
The waitress, a woman who had the cosmetic-free, unwrinkled eyes of a college student, laid Rand’s ham, eggs, and sausage out on the table. She flashed moist lipstick red lips at RT. Spicy perfume drifted from her body.
“Can I get you anything?” She said.
RT blushed and shook his head “no” even as he scanned her from cherry lips to the black apron across her flat midsection. As she swayed from the table, RT looked up with the warmth of a blind mole’s eyes, but his cheeks flushed deeper and darker.
“You do a great job helping me with my odd hobby, Rand. I pay you well, but, I know most men wouldn’t run these kinds of errands for an unremarkable man like me.” RT glanced, like a wink, down at the newspaper on the table. “The pressure is on, and I need to be sure your mind is on the job, Rand.”
“How did you know who EBS’ next victim was? This paper just came out this morning.” Rand said.
“I have connections. I have to get back to the office, so I need to be quick.” RT slid over a note so it touched Rand’s coffee cup. Rand looked down at the names and numbers typed neatly like a mailing list. He felt the blood run from his fingers and toes -- the numbers were Julie and Henry’s home addresses.
“What the fuck is this? Are you threatening my kids?”
“Rand, I know your past is spotty and a regular life is never going to be possible for someone like you. I know your kids are doing well despite their…humble…beginnings. We’ve got a great thing; I keep you out of trouble, and just think how much money you’ll make as long as EBS is out there. You’ll probably never scratch and scrape for cash again.”
Rand crumpled the paper and shoved it in a pocket. He thought about throwing his steaming coffee on RT’s fat face and jabbing the fork smeared with egg into his throat. Finally, he thought about the white bricks in the four walls he spent 1825 days surrounded by, and the violence faded away like hot ash in the bottom of a scotch tumbler.
“How did you know who the victims were?” He asked again.
“We’ll stick to the system. I’ll send you the grave location, you drop the bag, and I’ll send the money order to PO Box 27491. I want you to be sure that we’ve got a contract, and there will be consequences if either of us break it.”
“Consequences? Are you some half-assed enforcer now?”
“No, just diligent.” RT smiled and slid out of the booth. Rand poked at his cooling eggs. RT wobbled out of Danny’s and settled into his blue minivan. The waitress arrived to drop a stream of coffee into Rand’s almost full cup.
“How’s it taste?” She asked.
“Better than jail.” Rand snapped.
***
Rand twisted the corpse’s head to the left so the tension worked with the blade when it cut through the thick spinal cord. Swift, hard motions helped the blade chew the last of the cartilage in two. Rand tore the gristly head away, tossed it in the black mouth of the Jansport backpack. The bag was tossed over the edge of the grave then rolled half a turn.
“Why do you do this, Rand?”
The voice was gruff. Not a voice that should know Rand’s name. Rand lowered his saw and looked up at the green night sky and the bulky man pointing down into the grave. No one he recognized, but he wasn’t a guard or a cop, at least not a uniformed one.
“Who the hell are you?” Rand asked him.
“That’s funny coming from a man in a violated grave. Why do you do it?”
“Pays well.” Rand said.
“I’ve got a job for you.”
“I’m booked.”
“My name is Mitch.” He held open a distressed brown leather wallet, a white ID in a sleeve flipped down. Rand looked over the card, but it was pulled away before he could see a name.
“You’re a private investigator? What are you privately investigating? I wish I had a license like that.” Rand said, climbed out of the hole, and gathered up the loose tools at the lip of the opened grave.
“I’m investigating you.” Mitch said.
“Really? You want to investigate my backpack?” Rand sneered.
“I know you have her head in there. I watched the whole thing from over there, behind that monument. I know what you do and I know why you do it.”
“No you don’t.” Rand slung the backpack over his right shoulder.
“I know I do.” Mitch said. Mitch pulled a news article out of his pocket so Rand could read it.
“What? The East Bank Stalker? You think I work for a serial killer?” Rand said.
“You get his trophies for him.”
“These things are for rich collectors who are true crime buffs. Black market stuff, but no one gets hurt.”
Rand kept his chest toward Mitch and backed away to the black bars of the wrought iron fence. Mitch fiddled at something under the breast of his black coat.
“I’ve been watching you. Every body part you take is from one of EBS’s victims.”
“So fucking what. You want me to put this back?” Rand said, jerking the shouldered strap of his bag.
“I want you to take it to the buyer.”
“I want to retire somewhere warm.” Rand said.
“Or I will turn you in, and the police will book you for grave robbing and maybe accomplice to murder after the fact. That adds up to more jail time.” Mitch said.
“Why didn’t you just follow me to the drop?”
“I didn’t want to risk you tipping him off.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Who hired you?” Rand asked.
“Who do you think? Do you think the families of these people like having their graves dug up after they’re murdered by some psychopath who is still at large? You’re on the wrong side of things, again. Do the right thing…for once?”
“Man…” Rand pushed himself over the fence with one foot on the lower cross bar. Mitch grabbed him by the free strap that dangled off the backpack. Mitch wouldn’t let go.
“We’ll take my car.” Mitch said.
Mitch drove by Rand’s directions four miles to the drop. He parked his 2004 Buick in the shadows a block shy. They sat in the car as Mitch smoked his way through a cigarette and flipped his cell phone end over end like it was a toy.
“So, what’s next big guy?” Rand asked him.
“We’re waiting.”
“For what?”
“How did RT hire you?”
“Can’t I go now?”
“No. Make the drop like usual, and then leave.”
“I have to walk back?” Rand asked.
“I don’t care how you get home. You won’t be riding in my car. Now, do your drop. Do everything you normally do.”
“What are you going to do? If he finds out I lead you to him, he’s coming for my kids. Will my kids be safe? Can I walk away from this? Tell me something or I tell the buyer where to find you.”
“You’ll be fine. All your problems will be solved. Just make the drop.”
Mitch let the black 9mm pistol that was nestled under his coat show enough that Rand could see it. Rand got out of the Buick and crossed the street to the even side. He kept his eyes on the shadows that fell from the seven to eight digit priced houses and condos. They looked as if they were carved from the hillside. RT could watch unseen from any one of their windows or black corners.
The drop mailbox sat under a broken street lamp that the city hadn’t gotten around to fixing in over six months, a funny thing, considering the tax bracket. Not that a light would make Rand feel more or less secure, RT probably picked this spot because he knew none of the residential dayjobbers would be awake at three in the morning.
Rand crouched at the mailbox and slid the backpack underneath. He slapped a blank pink sticky note, the drop signal, on the west side of the blue mailbox and walked down the street. The lightless Buick rolled closer. Rand walked toward the driver.
“What happens now?” Mitch asked.
“I walk away and RT shows up sooner or later. Are you going to tap him?” Rand asked.
Mitch shrugged. “If I were you I’d get out of town. Once I’m done with RT, my clients might want me to come looking for you. I follow the money, bro.”
Rand walked backwards, watched Mitch as he looked for a spot to stake out the mailbox. When Mitch found a spot in a hedge, Rand dashed toward the alley that was out of his view, but lead back to the mailbox. He put on his goggles, moved north, stuck close to the south side of the alley, and ducked from streetlight to streetlight. Meeting RT in the alley, as if he was spying on him too, would be bad. What the hell was Mitch after? If Mitch was out to kill RT, that would be bad, but not that bad. That would free Rand from his contract with RT. If RT was out of the picture, he could take all the cash and be good and gone.
A human shadow popped out in front of the garage near the street the mailbox was on. Rand dropped to the gravel behind a plastic trashcan. After counting to thirty-one, he peeked around the edge.
A short man in his sixties watched his wiener dog do its business in the depression of the alley. After the dog stood from its squat, it roamed the length of the leash from one side of the alley to the owner. The dog cocked its head and barked at Rand’s sheltering trashcan.
“Standish! Quiet!” The short man said.
Standish barked and leapt forward against the owner’s leash. The man jerked forward, but yanked Standish back toward him.
“Down. Standish!” He yelled.
Standish barked and tugged harder at the taut leash and the shuffling man. The owner gave a final tug and grabbed Standish’s webbed collar in his fist with a jingle of tags. Standish barked relentlessly until the noise was muffled by his homes’ slamming backyard door. A wide silhouette passed briskly from the north side of the alley’s outlet to the mailbox.
Rand scrambled from garage to garage, taking some care as he passed Standish’s house. Near the end of the alley he scurried across a driveway to hide behind a wooden privacy fence. He counted to ten and peeked around the corner.
The mailbox sat alone on the dark sidewalk. Rand clenched his right fist. Naked cold cement was exposed where the backpack had been minutes ago. Neither Mitch nor RT was anywhere to be seen.
***
Rand holed up in his house for weeks after his contact with Mitch. The phone never rang, there were no visitors, no suspicious packages from RT or the bereaved families of EBS’ victims. He left messages on Julie and Henry’s voicemail. They didn’t call back, which was normal. Six weeks later, he re-opened Spyglass Surveillance and called around for leads on new gigs. He could live off the cash in the bank, but he wanted to keep his hands busy. Busy was better than worrying about the limbo he was in until he knew RT or Mitch’s fate for sure.
At 4:45pm on the second Wednesday in August, his Spyglass phone rang. The phone chimed three times before he decided it was really time to go back to work.
“Rand?” The voice was familiar but not unique.
“This is Spyglass Surveillance. How may I help you?”
“I have a job for you, Rand.” The voice said.
“Have you worked with us before?”
“Yes, Rand.”
“How about an account number to get things started?” Rand asked.
“PO Box 27491”
The phone disconnected. Rand looked widely at the cold receiver in his right hand. The voice did not have the wispy, milquetoast tone that RT usually had.
He killed time for the rest of the day and drove the two miles to the post office near Ridgeline Cemetery. While the business desk closed at 5pm, the lobby stayed open until midnight, which gave him a few evening hours to sit in his Chevy and try to get the jump on who was waiting for him to go the PO Box.
Two hours of watching men and women spin in and out of squeaky revolving lobby door didn’t reveal the mystery caller. Rand crossed the empty street and went through the tarnished brass rotating doors to the lobby.
The post office floor was thick with layers and layers of dirty gray footprints, black rubber skid marks, and black-pink chunks of dried gum. No other customers stood in the long row of brass faced PO boxes. The only other people in the building were probably doped senseless in stalls behind the unlocked bathroom doors.
Box 27491 was one of the mid-size boxes the middle of the upper second row of the right-hand wall. Rand flipped through his keys. He slid a scuffed-up gray key into the scratched lock. The door opened with a dry squeal until it revealed a single letter-sized envelope toward the front of the box. Rand looked in the half-lit opening, looked for any other people who may have come into the lobby, and then took another look left to right for the man that had to be watching from somewhere. He scrunched the envelope in his fist, locked the box shut, and left the post office without looking at the front of the white envelope.
Rand drove with his headlights off until he rolled like a drunk into the parking lot of Danny’s Diner & Bar. He sat himself at a maroon and yellow booth in the bar, then ordered a gimlet from a career waitress without looking at the upright drink list on his table. He flipped the envelope over so it was face up, but had to rotate it to right-side up. Even then, the wide scrawl didn’t look like RT’s, didn’t look familiar. The waitress set his gimlet down on the hastily washed tabletop; he sipped some booze off the top, and tore the top of the envelope off with a swift tear. He opened the letter.
“Rand, Please go to Ridgeville, Plot J-56, and do the usual. I will send the contracted amount to the box. Thank you.”
Rand re-folded the letter and slid it down into his inside jacket pocket. The gimlet went down slowly. Things were different than they had been. EBS killed on a lunar cycle and was behind schedule. The paper had nothing to say about him.
RT signed his letters with a cursive RT. There was no signature on this letter. RT didn’t break routine, so limbo spun wider and deeper around Rand like an oncoming blackout.
“Fuck me.” He swore to himself.
***
Getting over the drooping fence of Ridgeline Cemetery was “do-it-in-your-sleep” kind of work, but finding the correct plot in the barely-managed grounds was where Rand earned his money. He knew how the cemetery was supposed to be laid out, except J row curved and merged, out of order, like a zipper with K row. Plot K-57 stuck up like a bleached bone in the mud before he stumbled onto the fresh dirt of plot J-56. He looked at the name on the tombstone. Who the hell was this?
“SAM UTRECHT, 1961-2006”
As spades of dirt flew into the night over his shoulder, Rand wondered who wrote to him. The corpse in the casket could be Mitch, as Mitch couldn’t know all the details of the arrangement with RT.
Rand reached over the edge of the grave and pulled his hooded torch down into the hole. After turning down the sensitivity to the lowest level, he cut a decent-sized hole through the top of the stainless steel burial vault. He tapped the unlit torch against the wooden lid of the casket.
The sound was thin, like fabricated wood, if wood at all. The limbo struck again. Why was the body buried if it was Mitch and not RT? What could a homebody like RT have done to a hardass like Mitch?
Rand took the hammer out of the tool bag and smashed a fist-sized hole through top third of the lid. The wood splintered inwards and the odor of slow decay and temporary preservatives plumed up and out. He put his gloved hands inside the hole and tore larger pieces of wood away to widen the opening. He twisted the sensitivity knob on his goggles upwards and leaned to see inside of the stinking portal.
The skin on the waxen face hung loose and flat, the part in the thin hair was no style he had seen RT wear, and his thick glasses were gone too. The remains still looked enough like an expired banker. The body was RT, who appeared to also be “Sam Utrecht”.
The white corner of an envelope poked out of the collar of RT’s funeral coat. Rand plucked the full letter out from the casket to read by the green glow of his goggles. The letter was addressed to him in the same jagged pen strokes as the mystery letter. He stopped ripping the envelope before he tore the sheet in two.
“Rand,
Thank you for your prompt attention. I’ll take over RT’s contract for your services as you agreed to previously. Same terms. Same penalties.
I know you will forgive lies I told you. I had to take Ron Thomas, RT, aka East Bank Stalker, before he sliced another notch on his wide belt. I can’t stand competition. It’s for the best. I’ve been doing this longer than he was. EBS was predictable and would get caught soon and that would be bad for you, too.
This is a list of names and locations for 22 stiffs I need you to get souvenirs from. I look forward to working with you. I know you feel the same.
-Mitch”
Rand re-read the paragraphs as if he could see the future between them. He leaned back against the dirt wall until light burned outward from the stars in the green sky overhead. The terrible glare hurt his eyeballs -- they burrowed back into his socket as far as they could go. He rolled the goggle sensitivity back down. The casket, grave dirt, and loose splinters of broken wood looked like a crime scene photo seen through the green glass of a malt liquor bottle.
In the center of the jade slivers, a circle of seemingly growing dimness dragged him down to the widening limbo. Rand jammed the goggles up over his eyebrows and the night fell to natural black. A cool breeze blew softly over his exposed face, it cooled like the first wind he felt outside of prison, and nudged the limbo just out of reach. He reached blindly for the bone saw handle in the tool bag to his left and bowed forward to grope in the dark hole beneath him. RT’s wide neck sloped under his right hand. Rand knew where the blade should cut.