The only sound in the waning moments of the darkness was that of the entrenching tool’s blade rasping against frozen ground. Behr had made the Iowa state line in under six hours. He’d gone on and reached his destination, the vast woodlands he’d hunted with Les Dollaway, forty minutes after that, with just under two hours left before sunup in which to work. Behr had seen where the key to the gate that blocked the dirt access road was stashed when Les used it a few months back, and it was still there when he arrived. He drove in slow, without headlights, to a spot not far from where Les had collected his buck. If the landowner spotted him for some crazy reason, Behr would try to sell the story that after hunting the spot with Les the prior season he thought he’d scout game movement for the next year so he didn’t face the embarrassment of not filling his tag again.
Behr cut into the cold hardened dirt with the E-tool, and the vibrations of the handle hurt his hands. He wished he’d had a pickax, but there weren’t any at Abler’s and he wasn’t about to go shopping. He shed his coat and steam came off of him in thick clouds in the cold night air. Once he was below the top crust, the ground was warmer and began to yield more easily, so he could use the shovel, and he picked up speed. He dug until he hit four feet. He didn’t have the patience, time, or strength to go any deeper, and the plum-colored sky over the eastern ridge told him the party was almost over.
He dropped the plastic and mason’s bags in with no fanfare and even less emotion. The last thing that went into the hole, besides what was left of his conscience, was the entrenching tool, its handle wiped down. Then he used the shovel to fill everything back in and smooth out the topsoil as best he could. He moved some heavy rocks and armfuls of dead leaves and bramble over the dug-up earth, and he felt pretty confident that after a snow or two, and certainly by spring, no one out on the land would notice that the earth had been disturbed.
He was back in the car with the key in the ignition before he realized he’d left his coat behind. He went and retrieved it, trying to shake off the cobwebs and avoid the single mistake that would doom him. The old shovel got jettisoned in a roadside ditch before he was back on the interstate, and he launched the Mag Pug into the Mississippi River from the I-74 bridge near Bettendorf.
He pushed it as far as he could with what he had left in the tank and was well into Illinois before he had to stop. He paid for another tank of gas with cash, along with a pack of doughnuts and another large cup of coffee.
With the midday sun searing his eyeballs, he considered stopping at every roadside motel he passed, but he forged on, because if he didn’t stop at one then there’d be no proof he’d even been by. With an effort that was more physically draining than anything he’d undertaken in his life, including the Chicago Marathon the time he’d run it in weather that had been freakishly hot and humid, he finally wheeled his car up to his place and shut it off. No one from the IMPD was there to meet him. No one was there at all. He walked into his silent house and used his landline to check his cell phone voice mail, but there were no messages. He took a scalding shower, the soap and water stinging his torn and blistered hands. Then he crawled into his bed and collapsed into a black, featureless sleep.