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As Dog readied the death packs, April Spring shivered against the night air. “Alex,” she called after her second sharp knock on his door. Lights were on but she heard no sound from within. She shivered slightly in her sparse clothing – cut-off jeans and a halter top. I want company, she thought as she tried the locked door. She knocked again. As she turned to leave she saw for the first time an opening in what she had assumed was a solid growth of multiflora rose.
Stepping closer, the lovely full moon easily illuminated a gap. April saw that a section of the brambles had been cut vertically and backed with light woven wire. Curious, she pulled gently on the wire, creating an opening she could slip through without getting snagged on the prickly bush. Inside, the brambles had been severely cut back to make an open air tunnel through the room-size bush. Regular use had worn a path. I should come when it’s light, she told herself, but instead walked into the tunnel. I know Alex goes for a run nearly every day. This must lead to one of his trails.
She stepped into a clearing and a large hand gripped her shoulder. Screaming in horror, she flailed behind her with her right hand, hitting a hard body as she turned. “Alex!” she wailed. “You scared me to death.”
“Sorry. I was just ready to go back to the trailer when I heard knocking. I didn’t know it was you.”
“God, I have never been so frightened. Why didn’t you come out? I called your name.”
“I didn’t hear you. I must have still been up the trail when you called. This is sort of my place to run at night when the moon is out. There are cattle back there and they’ve made a good trail through the pasture.”
As April caught her breath she inhaled a sticky scent and realized he was drenched with sweat. The fear that had sent blood racing to her throat suddenly changed direction. She stepped in front of him, then against him. “I came over because I want you.”
She kissed him and he responded, slipping a hand inside the waistband of her cut-offs to find her bare. “I see you’re nearly ready.”
“All the way ready,” she said, reaching for the front of his running shorts, pulling downward. “You, too.”
“We’ll be eaten by chiggers. Let’s go inside.”
“No, you just need to be on the bottom.”
Eager jerks removed their skimpy clothes as they sank to the ground, April shoving him down. She straddled him, knees spread wide as she began rocking slowly, her hard nipples punctuating the gray light. The cool moist grass felt sensual beneath him and he moaned softly as he admired her undulating body. They quickened, bringing each other to orgasm, Maple showing far more finesse than only days earlier. He lolled back, unruly dark hair falling from his face, eyes half-closed, content, still slightly moving with her.
April studied him, his sensual lips, the drowsy eyes, hair falling back. There was a mole beneath his right hairline. She shuddered, seeing his face with a new familiarity. She heard the TV announcers, heard a terrifying chorus of them as she stared slack-mouth, “dime-size mole beneath his right hairline.” She stifled a gasp and shuddered. “Nice aftershock?” His soft voice stirred a fear beyond her control. My God yes! The scores, perhaps hundreds of times, she had seen his mugshot on television washed uncontrollably before her. How had she not recognized him? How? The way his hair fell ... somehow she had never seen the mole. She fought within to tell him yes, nice aftershock, and calmly save herself. But she was screaming “You! You! No! No!” and of course he knew. She lurched away and rolled but he rolled with her, like circus acrobats. They rolled again and when on top she struggled to her feet. He was too quick, too strong, grabbing an ankle and jerking violently. She went down on her back and he scrambled between her legs, then straddled her.
“Stop. Stop,” he demanded, grabbing her wrists, holding them down above her shoulders. She kept fighting to raise her arms, bucking to throw him, yelling for help and that he was a murderer, for someone to save her. “Stop. Stop,” he pleaded. She wouldn’t, and with her strength ebbing he flipped her over and pressed her face into the damp grass that no longer felt sensual, quieting but not ending her pleas. “Please stop ...” She kept arching her back against him, futilely, but Maple lost hope. She wouldn’t stop fighting him. Within reach was a stone that barely fit in his hand, and he used it.
––––––––
“Did ya hear that, Wilbur?”
“Hear what, Mother?”
“I thought I heard a yell,” said Violet, undressing for bed. “There, did ya hear it that time? More like a scream.”
“Probably an owl catchin’ a rabbit. They set up the most pitiful squealin’ when they die.”
––––––––
Maple lay on his back, eyes wide in alarm. He reached for his running shorts and was disgusted by the smell of their orgasms that hung in the air. She was totally still now, so soon after so much passion, so much fight. His eyes ran over her and he felt chilled. Scudding clouds passed before the moon and he could barely make out the indentations where he struck her. He assumed the slight glisten was blood. “God,” he said aloud, “what have I done? What do I do?” He began shaking, gripped by waves of confusion and anxiety. Never had he killed with his bare hands. Never had he killed someone he actually knew. I didn’t want to but there was no choice, he insisted to himself. Stickman will understand. He’ll tell me the years of training had stuck. Affection and need had turned to desperation and survival as quickly as flipping a switch. I had no choice, he told himself again. This time he knew it to be true. Had she escaped, the police would have been swarming within minutes. He started shaking again, decided he would think more clearly in the trailer, over the beers April had left on her last visit.
Inside, he wrapped himself in a blanket and drank deeply. His shivering stopped but not the shaking. They could feel nearly the same but Maple knew better. He needed to call Stickman, knew he could not. He didn’t know what Stickman planned, only that it would happen tomorrow, Sunday at the latest. No way could he disturb the mission now. Once it happened, he and the entire world would know about it soon enough. Knowing where it happened would give him an idea of when Stickman should be back. Okay, he continued, talking quietly to himself, there’s still the matter of April. I can’t just leave her out there. He went through options and then knew what he needed to do. But first he headed for the shower to scrub away the chiggers and whatever else he could.
––––––––
At Point of Rocks, the river had been their friend, his and Stickman’s, for disposing of threatening evidence. The river would be his friend now. He gathered what he needed and went back through the make-shift multiflora rose gate. He felt strangely disoriented to find April was just like he had left her. If she had moved, none of this would have happened, he reasoned, starting to shake again. The back of her head sparkled more but didn’t appear to have bled to the ground. He found that surprising but had no idea why. He pulled a penknife from his back pocket and scraped beneath her fingernails to remove any skin claimed by her scratches as they wrestled. This is crap, he thought: I may be leaving blood traces or her DNA on the soil. If they find her in the river will my cum be gone? What the hell do I know about any of this? Stick with what you do, Maple told himself as he began carefully slipping an extra-large heavy duty black garbage bag over April, from her feet up. With nylon rope, he lashed the bag tight beneath her breasts. He slipped another bag on from the head down, tying that below her breasts, too. The second bag overlapped the first, and a third, up from April’s cold feet, overlapped the second. This is what I know, he said aloud as he carried her to her car. He cut what was left of his nylon rope into three long lengths. Those he braided before tying one end of the braid around the plastic garbage bag at her waist. He circled her trailer looking at the cement blocks it sat on. As the trailer had settled, some blocks had loosened. Maple gathered those, laying them neatly in the trunk around April. He leaned against the closed trunk, anxiously wondering what else to dump. Shit, driver’s license, purse, plastic, whatever. Maple rushed inside and soon returned with a small, zippered bag. He was surprised when he found twenty-seven thousand dollars in cash, no doubt from her winnings at the casino named Downstream. The wad of bills bulged from a back pocket of his jeans. Fuck, this is taking too long, he thought, realizing he had to untie the knots securing the braided rope and at least one of the large black bags to put the small bag in the bundle that was April.
Okay, think a minute. Done this way, what’s next? If someone comes looking for her, what’s my story? I saw April drive away with someone. At least I thought it was April. It looked like two people in the car and her place was dark. End of story. That way I won’t have to dispose of her car. Not the most stable creature, it’s doubtful she’ll be missed soon.
He felt depleted, this time not from April’s pleasures. The strain of events starting before the embassy attack were taking their toll. Sweat broke out during the short drive to a state park. Though closed, Maple knew a service road that took him to a trail along the Youghiogheny River. The area was deserted. On a steep embankment, he stacked the concrete blocks at the water’s edge. The river was fast and deep, a dark stretch where a weighted object would sink and rest. Ready, finally, he tossed April over his shoulder and walked to the waiting stack of blocks. After making sure the braided rope was tight around her waist, squeezing her middle between rib cage and hips, Maple began weaving the rope’s loose end through openings in the blocks, one, a second and more and more. The concrete far outweighs her, Maple thought smugly, starting to regain confidence. Almost home now. He balanced the black plastic bundle on top of the stack and got on his back, knees bent nearly to his chest, feet solid against the concrete blocks. He kicked violently, tumbling the blocks over the embankment and into the inky water with surprisingly little splash, April streaming in behind and immediately disappearing from sight.
Getting up, Maple released a huge sigh. As he trudged back to her car a thought struck him: The total weight of the blocks may not be as important as having looped the braid through the first block only once. Would the endless motion of the current, pulling at April’s one hundred thirty pounds, fray the rope until it snapped? He tried to put the thought aside.