It took several seconds for the tension to ease from his arms, and his breath was labored. After a moment’s pause, Harlan pulled back the pillow and looked at the dead woman’s shattered face. The bullet had caved in her forehead around a star-shaped hole big enough to stick his finger in, and he resisted a perverse desire to do just that. The body convulsed more than he thought it would, but he told himself the whore was dead. No one could live through an injury as traumatic as that. Sure enough, her legs and arms went still and her wide-open eyes were fast going dull.
The rashness of his action concerned him. This was an unplanned kill brought on by the woman’s comments about Lipinski and, to a lesser degree, her overall irritating disposition. He gazed up at the mirrored ceiling and spoke to himself in a placid tone. “Keep this shit up and you’ll be locked up by the end of the week.”
Giving no thought to panic, Harlan sat on the bed next to the dead prostitute and planned his exit. The gun had been effectively silenced, muffled by the pillow. He took a fistful of hair and lifted her head. The exit wound in the back of her skull meant the bullet was likely buried somewhere deep in the mattress. It’d take some effort and luck to find it. “Fuck all that diggin’ around.”
She had picked the hotel and was probably a regular. No one would come looking for the room for a few more hours. He hadn’t been seen at check-in. The car in the parking lot was stolen from the next town over but clean of prints. He dug through her purse and smiled. Not only did he recover his own money but three hundred on top of it.
“No surprise there, sister. You were a talent.” He gave her a hard swat on her bare ass and stood.
Harlan spent ten minutes wiping down anything he might have touched, all the while carrying on a one-way conversation with the silent girl in bed, explaining how it was he’d come to be so ill-tempered. He stuck the bottle of Wild Turkey into his backpack and dropped the drinking glass onto the hard floor, shattering it into thousands of unprintable shards. He stopped to consider the body and thought for a moment, hands on his hips.
“Bottle of whiskey is one thing, but I sure can’t be takin’ you along with me.”
An idea came to him, and he carried the nude, lifeless prostitute to the bathroom. She dripped blood heavily along the way, but Harlan was cautious where he stepped. Small, she slid into the damp tub with room to spare. Harlan took hold by the scruff of her neck and pulled down on the jaw, opening her mouth to its full extension. The head lolled back and forth, making him lose his grip.
“Hold still, bitch.” His voice was low and lightly laced with affection.
Harlan turned the tap on full force, shooting water down her throat. Membrane and tissue bubbled out past her lips and cheeks; some pieces got caught in her open eyes and long hair. Harlan canted the head back and forth to clear away the more sizable chunks. Much of the water followed a path to the large exit wound, where it ran out red, then rose, and finally clear. For the mirth value he shot some water through the bullet hole before returning to her mouth and counting off another thirty seconds. He was amused to discover that he actually filled her. Her stomach bloated out and water gushed from the gaping mouth like a sheared-open fire hydrant.
“That oughta rid ya of anything I left swimmin’ around.” He looked the corpse up and down. “Glad I didn’t go pokin’ around the rest of ya unsheathed. That’d been a mite more difficult situation to deal with.”
He dropped her head against the porcelain bottom of the tub, where it landed with a strange tonk. She lay there, still warm and, from the neck down at least, not at all hard on the eyes.
Harlan let the water run for another minute, using the showerhead to spray her down thoroughly. When he figured she was washed clean of him, he closed the drain and cranked the water to scalding hot. While the tub filled, he sat on the closed toilet and breezed through the copy of Hustler he’d brought along to help set the mood. Once she floated an inch off the bottom, he turned off the spigot. The hole in her forehead bubbled and her long hair turned a darker auburn and looped about her in the water. Her mouth, erotic earlier in the day, hung slack jawed, the still-tender tongue sticking out like a fat red worm. Her wide-open eyes stared at him from under the steaming water as if to ask what in the world had become of her.
“Ya look like a frickin’ retard.” He spoke as if to admonish. “If you’re a whore again in your next life, keep to your work and don’t talk so damn much.”
Harlan went to the door, looked out the peephole, and saw no one. He walked out and pulled the door shut behind him. The stolen car he’d arrived in still sat in the lot, clean of prints, and that’s where it’ll stay, he thought. Harlan figured this was as good a time as any to get reacquainted with walking.
Five minutes later he strolled into the Greyhound station. He pulled the dead girl’s hard-earned cash from his pocket and slapped down $42 for a one-way ticket. He checked the electronic board that listed departure and arrival times and saw that his trip would take a little over four hours. He’d get there and grab a room. Order in. Lay low. Alone, he told himself, now aware that his trip to Chippewa Falls had involved a foolish indiscretion. Years of planning nearly wasted for an afternoon hummer from a local hooker.
Harlan boarded the bus and found an empty seat toward the back. By the time the Greyhound reached cruising speed, his eyes were closed. The past several days had been intense, and he welcomed the opportunity to drift. His mind wandered back to the endless forest of his boyhood, to years of lean but purposeful living followed by law trouble, arrest, and finally prison. His thought of his father, dead for nearly a decade.
Pa.
Jedidiah Lee had been a cantankerous sixty-year-old recluse the day a half-breed Chippewa temptress barely of legal age wandered into his shack in the deepest woods of Florence County. Near ruined but well trained by all the substantial forms of reservation abuse, the girl sought only safety and shelter in exchange for an enthusiastic brand of companionship she willingly demonstrated within moments of their initial meeting. Jedidiah always referred fondly to those early romps and said though the couple rarely spoke, their nightly coupling left both spent but agreeable to one more day of their shared but separate existence.
The first indication of her pregnancy marked the end of their relationship, and two weeks after giving birth she was gone, leaving father and newborn son behind. Jedidiah claimed he never harbored a shred of ill will against Harlan’s mother; far from it. He was thankful to her for the establishment of his legacy. From his first day of parenthood, Jedidiah devoted his life to his only child.
Harlan stared out the window at the passing signposts, barns, and cornfields, and thought about how he came to live the outlaw life. His father had always boasted that the Lee gene for emotional indifference and legal irreverence had been passed on to his son. Jedidiah and Harlan were as much notorious partners in crime as they were father and son. With Harlan’s youth and Jedidiah’s guile, they turned the hundred-and-sixty-acre family homestead into the most sophisticated and profitable marijuana grow east of the Mississippi. The Lees were just hitting their stride when it all came to a sudden end.
A rival dope dealer found dead. Arrested, jailed and with a sham of a trial looming, Harlan pled guilty. He got twenty-five to life. Game over.
The old man grew feeble while the state kept Harlan penned up like dairy stock. At the last visit Jedidiah managed to make, they spoke of years past, of old scores and outlaw associates.
As he left, the old man had struggled to speak.
“I’m gonna die soon, boy, and you still ain’t free. I can’t be here to help ya, but there will come a time that the Lee name must be avenged. It falls to you, son. It falls to you.”
Harlan pushed back farther in the worn seat and shook his head with a vigor intended to clear away his pointless reminiscing. His next act of retribution was going to bring a particularly strong sense of satisfaction.
The speaker above his head crackled, and Harlan realized he had dozed off. He looked out and saw the town had barely changed, as though it were stuck in time. The driver’s voice came clearly over the loudspeaker. “Good afternoon, Greyhound passengers. Now announcing arrival at Greyhound stop eleven twenty-one. If this is your destination, prepare to disembark. Welcome to Newberg.”