Lost Echoes

48

Harry and Kayla sat with Tad at his house, drank diet colas and decaffeinated coffee until one in the morning, rehashing the night’s events.

Harry felt as if he had been pulled through the small end of a funnel, but all this talk, even if it was about the night’s events, was good. It kept him from remembering alone, kept him from thinking maybe the shadows weren’t gone, that they were hanging in the belfry of his head like cobwebs.

Yeah. That was a help, having Tad and Kayla. But a drink…God, a drink. And then another drink. Cold beer or hot whiskey. That would be the ticket for the pleasant ride to Numb Land.

Tad showed how he could throw coins and knock knickknacks off a shelf and break them. A pile of shattered elephants and assorted ceramic animals lay Humpty-Dumptied all over the place. Scattered amongst them were winks of shiny minted silver.

“My mother-in-law gave us that shit,” Tad said. “Me and the wife hated them. Been meaning to get rid of them. When I was drunk I thought about it all the time, but then I was too drunk to do anything.”

“Are those quarters you’re throwing?”

“Nickels. It’s all in the wrist.”

Finally Kayla took Harry back to her place, so he could pick up his car.

They lingered at the door, Kayla’s perfume driving him crazy, but there was no kissing. Harry liked to think it was in the air, a kiss, but if it was, he didn’t try to make it materialize. He wasn’t exactly feeling like Don Juan, not after tonight. An event like that, it could put the shrinkage on a man’s equipment.

“See you later,” Kayla said.

“Sure.”

“Thanks for your help.”

“Not a problem.”

“I like your friend.”

“Tad. Yeah, he’s great.”

“Really, Harry. I know it must have been terrible for you.”

“You’re right. It was. But I hope I helped.”

“You did. I’m not sure where to go with it now, but you helped. Lots.”

“Yeah, well…” They were very near now to that kiss hanging in the air, but, alas, he hadn’t the will to try it. What if she said no? He wasn’t up to the disappointment right now.

“Good night, Kayla.”

“Good night, Harry.”

When Harry got home there was a light on the answering machine. The first message was from Tad.

“Kid. I know what you’re thinking. Don’t drink. I know, ’cause I’m thinking the same thing. You need me, call. I’ll come get you.”

Harry grinned, let the other messages come. There was one from his mother, one from Joey.

It was too late to call his mother, but he decided, what the hell, might as well get it over with, call Joey. Shit, I’m going forgive him, way I always do, and he’s going piss me off again. How it works.

When Joey answered, he sounded as if he were climbing out of a hole in the ground.

“Yeah.”

“It’s me, Harry.”

“Good. I was wondering…I mean, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“Yes, you did. And you’ll be happy to know it didn’t work out, the thing with me and Talia. Oh, I was in the saddle for a while, but it’s all over now.”

“Well, you done pretty good then, considering who she is.”

“So you’re gonna sideways insult me, Joey?”

“Nope. I was wondering. Can we still be friends?”

“Sure. We’re always gonna be friends, it’s just I got to wonder why.”

“How about I drop by tomorrow night? We can have a beer.”

“I don’t drink anymore. Remember?”

“Not at all?”

“We did this last time, Joey. You’re already starting it again.”

“Sorry, man. That not-drinking business. How’s that working out for you?”

“Damn good.” Then, trying to change the subject: “Know who I saw tonight?”

“Who?”

“Kayla.”

“Our Kayla?”

“One and the same.”

“How’s she look?”

“Like a million bucks. She’s a cop in town. We visited.”

“She beat me up once.”

“I remember. It’s one of my fondest memories.”

“She could hit really hard.”

“I know. She beat me up too.”

“She used to really smell nice.”

“Still does.”

“Kayla. I’ll be damned.”

“Well, good night, Joey.”

“Good night, Harry…And hey…”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks for calling. I’ve missed you.”

“Can’t say the same.”

Harry showered and went to bed, tried not to think about what he’d seen there in the garage, but every time he closed his eyes, the images came back.

He was glad when the phone rang. He didn’t check the caller ID. He thought it was Joey.

“Harry?”

“Kayla?”

“You know that wooden bear in my place?”

“Sure.”

“It’s named Harry.”

“What a coincidence.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Oh.”

“I thought you were going to kiss me.”

“I started to try. Really. Just wasn’t certain. Not exactly at my peak, you know.”

“You should have tried. Good night, Harry.”

About five A.M., Harry awoke.

He had struggled to fall asleep, and when he did it had been deep and solid, and now, suddenly, he was awake—bright eyed, bushy tailed, and nervous.

He sat up in bed and thought for a while, then got dressed, drove over to his mother’s house, and sat out front. He wanted to see her, but it was too early, and he didn’t want to wake her. If he did, she would know something was wrong, something was bothering him. He thought about how she would feel if she knew he was taking martial arts lessons, that he actually got hit and it hurt. She’d want him to wear a helmet, knee pads. She’d want him to quit.

He drove down where the honky-tonk had once been, now bulldozed over and growing pine trees. Somewhere in all that, the sounds of an old murder hid.

He tooled over to the entrance to the drive-in and let his high beams rest on it. The great frame for the drive-in screen still stood, as did the old ticket booth. The snack bar was collapsed and dark from having caught fire some years back. If he kicked something out there, maybe it would activate a memory. Lot of date rapes in those old cars, most likely. Some of those cars were still on the road. In junkyards, holding badness in a shadow bag.

Harry backed out, drove around trying to find the entrance to the road that led behind the McGuires’. Finally he found a way. There was a lot of garbage tossed back there, even an old armchair. Cruising to the end of the turnoff, Harry came to where he and Tad and Kayla had stood. He killed the lights and sat there. Finally he switched the beams on again, backed out, tried to decide if Tad was right about their carrying the body away.

When he was back on the main road he turned so that he was facing the way he had come, then he backed into the side road and considered.

The road T-boned, and he tried to decide which direction they might have hauled a body, if they hauled one at all.

If they went left, that led alongside the golf course and finally onto the little road that ran alongside Mr. Jones’s garage. They could have gone that way, the way he had come, but it seemed pretty open and well lit, wound down between houses and dumped headlong onto the highway. No problem, but if you had a dead body with you, you might want to stay in seclusion as much as possible, just in case. Even if the corpse was coiled around a spare tire in the trunk.

T-bone to the right…well, he didn’t know where that went. But it was darker that way, with more trees on either side, and seemed more likely if you were gonna be sneaking around.

He turned right.

In the headlights the clay road was red as blood and wound its way slightly upward. There were a number of little turnoffs along the way, and Harry thought any of them might have served as a place to bury a body. But the practical side of it was this: They didn’t want to just dump the body. They needed to get rid of it. Without Vincent’s body, there was no way to prove he had been there when Mr. Jones died. He could have gone home long before it happened. Something could have happened to him later. He might have cleared out. There were all kinds of explanations, but a dead body—that was an explanation that might throw off the whole program. Whatever that program was.

Harry was considering this while he drove, and as he wheeled around a curve there was a break in the trees and across the way, in the distance he could see a great and rare rise in the landscape.

He recognized it immediately, though he had not seen it from this angle before. Humper’s Hill. Nothing else around was that tall. It was a good distance away, but just looking at it brought back memories of Talia’s fine ass in the moonlight, of moments sublime.

And it made him think of something else.

It was a hunch, but it made a kind of sense.

He drove around the curve, and sure enough there was a road that went right. In a short time that would put him onto the highway, and then, in a matter of moments, he would be at the turnoff to Humper’s Hill.

He thought: If I were going to dispose of a body, that would be the place. Up there on Humper’s Hill, tossed over the edge to end up lying down there in the undergrowth, hidden from view, to rot and be eaten by wild animals and insects. Someone found the body, it could be years later, there would still be no direct connection to Jones’s murder.

He felt a chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with the weather. He felt so goddamn certain of what he was thinking, his stomach churned.

“Rope?” Tad said. “For me to hang you with, I hope.”

“I’m sorry, Tad. Really.”

They were in Tad’s living room. Harry had awakened him by leaning on the bell.

“So you had a hot flash and suddenly decided you need rope?”

“I think I know where Vincent’s body is. Or might be.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“I remember this place,” Tad said.

“You’ve been up here?”

“Just to jack off.”

While Harry was thinking on that, Tad said, “Hey, I’m fucking with you. This hill was popular in my time too. I used to bring my dates here.”

“Funny thing is,” Harry said, “sometimes you seem like a wise old sage. Rest of the time, you’re just kind of a regular A-one asshole.”

They got out of the car and Tad dragged the coil of rope out of the backseat. They walked over to the edge of the rise and looked down. It had a slight slope to it. It dropped about a hundred feet into a kind of poor-man’s ravine. The brush was thick there and trees grew straight out from the slope and curved up, seeking sunlight. In the starlight they looked like alien creatures.

“You got your cell phone?” Tad asked.

“Oh, yeah. I forgot about it.”

“Figured that’s why you came over and sat on my doorbell. Make sure it’s on, that way you can keep me posted, and what I’ll do is I’ll fasten one end of the rope to something under the Mercedes, and when you need me to pull you up, I can do that with the car, the phone stuck to one ear, you giving me information. You know, ‘too fast, too slow, my neck’s tangled up.’ Shit like that.”

“Great.”

“What you’re thinking, that the body is down there, might be right,” Tad said. “But the odds are you ain’t gonna find shit. It’s been years now, and the meat would have long come off the bones, and the bones would have come apart and been spread all over hell and back. Some dog, coyote, some kind of critter has probably got a leg bone in his den somewhere, using it as a conversation piece.”

Tad fastened the rope under the car, then Harry coiled it once around his waist and held the loose part so he could lean back and let it out, yet maintain the wrap as he went down.

“Watch for snakes.”

“It’s too cold for them, isn’t it?”

“That’s what they say, but hey, you could wake one up.”

“Thanks.”

Harry went to the edge, turned his back to the drop, held tight to the rope, leaned way out, leaped slightly, and went down about ten feet. When he landed, letting the rope loose as he went, he was surprised at how much the rope cut into him. It looked so much easier in the movies. The brush was also thicker than he imagined, stuck straight out of the sides of the slope as much as two to three feet.

Harry twisted and looked down. That would be some drop.

There was a tree directly below him, standing out from the drop at an angle, twisting back up toward the sun in a U shape. Harry made that his target. He thought, If they were going to dump someone over the side, they’d probably do it where the place dropped the most, and that was it. He tried to figure where a heavy body would fall, even with two guys slinging it. He thought the tree looked about right.

He roped on down, and when he got to the tree he put his back to the twisted trunk and took a rest. He pulled the rope off and rolled around so that his belly was against the trunk. He got the flashlight Tad had given him out of his coat pocket and moved the beam around.

There was so much brush you couldn’t tell shit about much of anything. Tad was right. The body could be anywhere, and this was no easy place to search.

Harry decided he would work his way to the bottom, or at least until his rope played out. He had a lot of rope to work with, maybe two hundred feet, but he couldn’t tell dick about how far it was to the bottom. Taking a deep breath, Harry worked the rope around his waist again, and with his back to the tree, digging his feet into the ground and leaning back out into the wind, he began to work his way down.

He had gone only a short distance when his shoes bumped something.

It wasn’t a body. Of that he was certain. It was something more solid.

Harry turned for a look, saw that his feet were on something metallic. There was another tree about ten feet beyond what he was touching, and as before, he made that his target.

When he was up against it, he found the trunk took a kind of dip and that its roots were buried deeper into the slope than he had expected. When he came to rest, his back against the trunk, he saw through a burst of foliage that he was looking directly into the dark windshield of a car.