“They’ll go away,” Maryellen whispered.
It rang again, twice in a row.
Mrs. Greene’s hands and feet went cold. Maryellen felt a headache start at the base of her skull. Kitty whimpered.
“Please go away,” she whispered. “Please go away…please go away…please go away…”
The black plastic packages crackled in the bathroom. One of them rolled off the pile and hit the floor with a THUMP. It began to squirm towards the door.
“The lights are on,” Maryellen said. “We forgot to turn out the lights. You can see them through the shutters. They’ll know he’s home.”
The doorbell rang, three times in a row.
“Who’s the least of a mess?” Maryellen asked. They looked at each other. She and Mrs. Greene were encrusted in blood. Kitty only had some bruises.
“Oh, merciful Jesus,” Kitty moaned.
“It’s probably one of the Johnsons,” Maryellen said. “They must’ve run out of beer.”
Kitty took three deep breaths, on the verge of hyperventilating, then walked out into the hall, down the stairs, and over to the front door. Everything was silent. Maybe they’d gone away.
The doorbell rang, so loudly that she squeaked. She grabbed the handle, flipped the deadbolt, and opened it a crack.
“Am I too late?” Grace asked.
“Grace!” Kitty shouted, dragging her inside by the arm.
They heard her all the way up in the bedroom and came running downstairs. Grace’s face went slack when a blood-splattered Maryellen and Mrs. Greene appeared. She looked at them in horror.
“That’s a white carpet,” she said.
They froze and looked back at the stairs. Their bloody footprints came right down the middle of the carpet. They turned back around and saw Grace stepping back from them, taking in everything.
“You didn’t…” she began, but couldn’t finish.
“Go see for yourself,” Maryellen said.
“I’d prefer not to,” Grace said.
“No,” Mrs. Greene said. “If you have doubts, you need to see. He’s in the upstairs toilet.”
Grace went reluctantly, fastidiously avoiding the bloodstains on the stairs. They heard her footsteps cross the bedroom and stop in the bathroom doorway. There was a long silence. When she came back down, her steps were shaky and she had one hand on the wall. She looked at the three women, covered in blood.
“What’s wrong with Patricia?” she asked.
They filled her in on what had happened. As they talked, her face got firm, her shoulders squared, she stood straighter. When they finished, she said, “I see. And what’s the plan to dispose of him?”
“Stuhr’s has a contract with Roper and East Cooper Hospital,” Maryellen said. “To burn their medical waste in the crematorium early in the morning and late at night. I put a big box of biohazard burn bags in my car, but…they’re moving. We can’t take them in like this.”
They all watched as Grace tapped her fingers against her lips.
“We can still use Stuhr’s,” she said, then checked the inside of her wrist. “There’s less than half an hour left in the game.”
“Grace,” Maryellen said, the dried blood crackling on her face. “We can’t take moving bags of body parts to Stuhr’s. They’ll see them. They’ll open them up and I can’t explain what they are.”
“Bennett and I have two columbarium niches for our ashes,” Grace said. They’re in the back of the cemetery, on the eastern side, facing the sunrise. We’ll simply put his head in one and the rest of his remains in the other.”
“But there’s a record,” Maryellen said. “On the computer. And what happens when the two of you pass?”
“Surely you can alter the records,” Grace said. “As for Bennett and myself, hopefully it will be years before we have to cross that bridge. Now, let’s see if he has some boxes somewhere. Maryellen, you and Mrs. Greene shower in the guest room. Use dark towels and leave them in the tub. Tell me you at least brought changes of clothes?”
“In the car,” Maryellen said.
“Kitty,” Grace said, “bring her car here. I’ll look for boxes. You two clean yourselves up. We can only count on forty or so minutes before that street is full of people, so let’s be purposeful.”
Kitty brought the car around and helped Grace pack the squirming, plastic-wrapped body parts into boxes, and lugged them down to the front door. Mrs. Greene and Maryellen didn’t clean themselves perfectly, but at least they didn’t look like they worked in a slaughterhouse anymore.
“How much longer is left in the game?” Grace asked as they dropped the final cardboard box onto the stack by the front door.
Kitty turned on the TV.
“…and Clemson has called a time-out hoping to run out the clock…” an announcer brayed.
“Less than five minutes,” Kitty said.
“Then let’s load the car while the streets are still clear,” Grace said.
They almost ran, shambling up and down the dark front stairs, tossing the boxes into Maryellen’s minivan. They could feel James Harris moving inside, like they were carrying boxes full of rats.
When they were finished, they stood in the front hall and realized that they had failed. The plan had been to wipe James Harris off the face of the earth, leaving his house pristine, as if he’d simply disappeared into thin air, or packed his things and walked out the door. But blood had pooled by the front door where they’d stacked the boxes, the white carpeted stairs were a mess of streaked gore, there were blood smears up and down the walls, bloody fingerprints were drying on the banister, and even from downstairs they could see that the mess covered the upstairs hall. And then there was the master bath.
A huge roar rose up from the surrounding houses. Someone activated an airhorn. The game was over.
“We can’t do this,” Maryellen said. “Someone will come looking for him and they’ll know he was killed the second they open that door.”
“Stop whining,” Grace snapped. “You’re looking for columbariums C-24 and C-25, Maryellen. I’m sure you can find those. You and Kitty are the least messy, so you’re driving to Stuhr’s.”
“What are you going to do?” Maryellen asked. “Burn this place down?”
“Don’t be absurd,” Grace said. “Mrs. Greene and I will stay behind. We’ve been cleaning up after men our entire lives. This is no different.”
Headlights snapped on up and down the street as drunk football fans stumbled to their cars, hollering and calling to one another in the dark. A ground mist lay low on the road.
“But—” Maryellen began.
“If ifs and buts were candy and nuts it would be Christmas every day,” Grace said. “Now scoot.”
Kitty and Maryellen limped for the minivan. Grace closed the door behind them and turned to Mrs. Greene.
“It’s a lot of work,” Mrs. Greene said.
“Between us we’ve been cleaning houses for eighty years,” Grace said. “I believe we’re up to the challenge. Now, we’ll need baking soda, ammonia, white vinegar, and dishwashing detergent. We’ll need to get the sheets and towels in the washer, and spray the carpets first so they can soak while we work.”
“We should wash the towels and that duvet in the shower,” Mrs. Greene said. “Get it real hot and take a hard bristle brush to them with some salt paste. Then put it in the dryer with plenty of fabric softener.”
“Let’s see if we can find some hydrogen peroxide for these bloodstains in the carpet,” Grace said.
“I prefer ammonia,” Mrs. Greene said.
“Hot water?” Grace asked.
“No, cold.”
“Interesting,” Grace said.
Around midnight, Maryellen called them from a gas station pay phone.
“We’re done,” Maryellen said. “C-24 and C-25. They’re sealed tight and I’ll clean up the database in the morning.”
“Mrs. Cavanaugh is just ironing the sheets,” Mrs. Greene said. “Then we have to shampoo the carpets, put things away, and we’re done.”
“How does it look?” Maryellen asked.
“Like no one ever lived here,” Mrs. Greene said.
“How’s Patricia?”
“Sleeping,” Mrs. Greene said. “She hasn’t made a sound.”
“Do you want me to come pick you up?”
“Go home,” Mrs. Greene said. “We don’t want people to think this is a public parking lot. I’ll get a ride.”
“Well,” Maryellen said. “Good luck.”
Mrs. Greene hung up the phone.
She and Grace finished ironing the sheets, put the duvet back on the bed, and inspected the house for any bloodstains they’d missed. Then Grace walked home and got her car while Mrs. Greene hauled Patricia downstairs, switched off the radio, turned off the lights, and used James Harris’s keys to lock the front door behind her.
Bennett had passed out on the downstairs sofa, so they put Patricia in Grace’s guest bedroom, and then Grace called Carter.
“She wound up watching the game over here after visiting Slick at the hospital,” she told him. “She fell asleep. I think it’s better not to wake her.”
“Probably for the best,” Carter said. He’d had a lot to drink so it came out prollyferthebersh. “I’m glad you girls are friends again.”
“Good night, Carter,” Grace said, and hung up.
She drove Mrs. Greene home and let her out in front of her dark house.
“Thank you for all your help,” Grace said.
“Tomorrow,” Mrs. Greene said, “I’m going to drive up to Irmo and bring my babies home.”
“Good,” Grace said.
“You were wrong three years ago,” Mrs. Greene said. “You were wrong, and you were a coward, and people died.”
They stood, considering each other in the glow of the car’s ceiling light, as the engine idled. Finally Grace said something she’d almost never said before in her life.
“I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Greene gave a small nod.
“Thank you for coming tonight,” she said. “We couldn’t have done it alone.”
“None of us could have done this alone,” Grace said.
Grace sat by Patricia’s bed, dozing in her chair. Patricia woke up around four in the morning with a gasp. Grace smoothed her sweaty hair back from her face.
“It’s over,” Grace said.
Patricia burst into tears, and Grace took off her shoes and crawled into bed next to her and rocked Patricia while she cried herself out. The pain hit next, and Grace helped her to the bathroom and stood outside the door while Patricia sat on the toilet, her bowels turned to water. She’d barely got the toilet flushed before she had to kneel in front of it and vomit.
Grace helped her back to bed and sat with her while she tossed and turned. Finally, she found her copy of In Cold Blood.
“‘The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas,’” she read to Patricia in her soft Southern accent. “‘A lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.” The land is flat, the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.’”
She read to her until the sun came up.