She’d watched it happen as if from outside her body. But the second it was over she’d been yanked back into herself with a force like a roller-coaster drop.
Now the gun was a hot weight in her hand. Her wrist thrummed from the silencered kick. It had felt like being stomped on by a hoof. She let the weapon fall to the ground. Her legs were heavy. She staggered to the water’s edge, dropped to her hands and knees, and vomited.
For a few moments she stayed there, spitting out bile, eyes stinging. She had an image of herself, a naked goosefleshed woman groveling in the darkness. Primitive, an animal. The water lapped the shingle’s edge. She was grateful for it. Nature didn’t judge. The black lake, the pebbles, the trees, they shared a sentience that observed but didn’t care. Nature was amoral, self-involved, indifferent to the whole human show. It was there before us and would be there when we were gone. That thought, too, comforted her.
No time. Get up. It’s not over. Get up. Now.
But she couldn’t, in fact, get up. She crawled further into the water until it covered her knees, calves, feet, arms up to the elbows. She bathed her hands and face, teeth chattering. Her remote Catholicism offered itself. Water to wash away Original Sin. She’d made her First Confession at St. Theresa’s when she was eight years old. In the weeks leading up to it everyone in class had been fascinated by the idea that even if you confessed to murdering someone, the priest couldn’t report you to the police. Father Arbuthnot had grown weary of being quizzed about it. How many of you are planning on murdering someone? he’d asked, exasperated. One of her classmates, a highly strung girl named Veronica Miller, wouldn’t let it go. She was obsessed with the idea that God could forgive a murderer. Father Arbuthnot had spelled it out: There is nothing—literally nothing—God cannot find room in His heart to forgive, because God’s love is infinite. (“Infinite” was a tricky word, but it conjured a notion of God’s heart like a dark, star-filled warehouse that went on forever.) But, Father Arbuthnot continued, with a raised index finger, God’s forgiveness is only for those who are truly sorry for what they have done. And you prove that by accepting your penance. (“Penance,” they all knew, was something like five Hail Marys or ten Our Fathers.) So if one of you murdered someone and confessed it to me, I would tell you what any priest would tell you: that your penance would be to hand yourself in to the police. Do you understand? God would forgive you if you were truly sorry, but you could only prove that you were truly sorry by turning yourself in and owning up to what you had done. All right? Are you satisfied now? Can we stop, please, all this wretched talk about murder?
She got, by degrees, to her feet. The cold water had refreshed her. She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t want to do any of the things she had to do.
So she made herself do them.
The first two shots had struck him in the stomach and chest. After firing twice she’d walked over (surreally aware of the grass tickling her bare toes) and put a third shot in his head. It had hit him just above his left eyebrow.
Glistening blood pooled under his skull. His white T-shirt was dark and wet around the other wounds. She thought of all the movies in which someone got shot. All the gallons of Hollywood blood. Fake.
Real.
The big stones and garbage bags were where she’d left them, a yard or two behind the tree line, along with the oxygen bleach. The rope was coiled on the spare wheel in the cavity under the floor of the Volvo’s trunk. Four rolls of waterproof duct tape beneath the driver’s seat, folded scrubs under the passenger. You do it right next to the lake so there’s less ground to cross. You drag him. Can you drag that weight? And if the stones work loose? The body fills with its own gasses. Floats up. Hi, everyone! Look at me—a corpse! The lake’s forty feet deep. How long before ropes rot in water? She’d looked nothing up online. No such thing as an erased search history. Even idiots knew that. Check for blood under the tarp if the bullets have gone through. Dig out the bullets if they have. Remove the turf. Shell casings. Shoes.
She went over to the cooler bag. The air had already half dried her skin. She had a profane sensitivity to her nakedness: nipples, belly, thighs, ankles. It was as if the summer night caressed her, like a cat, with its mind on something else.
Ice. Freezer bags. Hacksaw. Sabatier meat knife.
Meat.
Knife.
The words floated free of their objects.
A bat whirred past her head, startling her.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t thought to check no one else was here.
Well, it was too late now. It was too late for anything except going on.
She took the roll of freezer bags, the knife, and the hacksaw and knelt down beside his body.
By the time she was finished she knew the lake was a bad idea. She also knew (remembered hearing, or reading, or seeing on TV) that there was nothing more likely to get a criminal caught than changing his plan in the middle of the crime.
Changing her plan, rather. Her crime.
She sat back on her heels, took a deep breath—and considered her options.