I’m carrying a dead fetus in a garbage bag…and putting it in my car…
Most of the organic remnants were still wet, so cleaning the toilet had been easy. He triple-checked the room—in dread from the possibility of forgetting something—then checked out and drove away.
Once on the road, he jettisoned the pen out the window.
But the parcel lay beside him on the passenger seat. He thought of a fresh package from the butcher’s, and groaned. Some arcane logic told him to get rid of it miles away from the motel, miles from the decrepit neighborhood and its horrors. Deep thought continued to elude him, his brain engaged on its own sort of auto-pilot. Had he not been able to remain detached, he knew he would’ve cracked up by now.
More alter-ego thoughts mocked him: Dead baby in your car dead baby in your car dead baby in your car…
“Shut up!” he screamed at the windshield, knuckles white on the wheel.
A convenience store on the corner seemed to beckon, its front window bright with light but no other cars in the lot. Look normal, he pled with himself. He walked in, bought a paper from the amiable clerk, and went back out. The large dumpster on the side of the store sat with its lid flapped open.
Heyton moved very deftly. He didn’t get back in the car; instead he leaned in, grabbed the parcel, and lobbed it into the dumpster via gestures nearly balletic.
Then he slid back into the driver’s seat and saw the clerk through the window, none the wiser.
“God forgive me,” he muttered.
The whisper of his guilt would not relent: You just threw a baby in the garbage you just threw a baby in the garbage you just threw a baby in the garbage…
Heyton shut the voice out of his head and drove off.
Guilt weighed him down as he checked into the convention center just past dawn. The room was four-star, unlike the charnel-house he’d just fled. Why should I feel guilty? he finally challenged himself. I didn’t kill the kid, she did. The kid’s death is HER responsibility, HER crime. Shit, the only crime I committed was solicitation, and I wound up getting robbed before a sex act could even take place!
The placations took away some of the edge. An awful tragedy, yes, but it would’ve happened anyway… If not with me, with the next john. Or worse, in an alley somewhere.
The fetus would’ve died regardless, he assured himself.
He wondered where the girl had gone but the answer was simple. Right back onto the street with my money and Rolex… She’d pawn the watch and spend everything on crack, and when the money was gone she’d be plying her trade again.
But nine pounds lighter now, he reminded himself.
With each minute that ticked by in the clean hotel, the more impossible it all seemed.
During the breakfast hour, he ran into some competitors. Most offered phony smiles and begrudging nods, with lines like “Congrats on Texas” or “Good job yesterday.” One, however—from a software house in Ohio—smirked the truth at him: “None of us stand a chance after you sold Texas, Heyton. You’re top of the heap now—just remember, the air gets really thin up there.” Heyton would’ve been amused by the sour grapes had he not still been coming to terms with last night’s jolt. Yet another competitor put it bluntly: “Leave Blocher and work for me. You can name your price.”
At least I’m doing SOMETHING right, he thought.
The hotel bar opened at noon; Heyton planted himself on the corner and braced himself with multiple cups of coffee. More competitors sat about him, eyes full of either envy or disdain for his success.
Above the bar, a TV sputtered at low volume: generic news. The Yankees acquire a new pitcher for a record $500,000,000 ten-year deal. Four homeless shelters in the Bronx are closed due to budget cuts, turning hundreds into the street. Afghan insurgents level a children’s hospital with pilfered U.S. demolition material, over a hundred dead. Paroled child molester caught with the body parts of three adolescent girls under his trailer. A judge had released him after a second conviction, on good behavior.
“Great news today,” Heyton muttered a sarcasm.
A guy next to him perked up. “Oh, yeah, the new lefty for the Yanks! That is great news.”
Heyton smirked.
Next, a stoic newswoman who looked like a lobotomized Barbie reported: “Also in the news, Michigan’s self-described B-H-R Killer, Duane Packer, was sentenced today to 23 consecutive life terms after an Antrim County court heard forensic evidence detailing most of Packer’s victims. In the witness stand, Packer himself defined B-H-R as initials for ‘blind, hang, and rape,’ and claimed that his only regret was being caught, because, quote, ‘now the fun has to end,’ unquote. Expert witnesses from the county coroner’s office verified that Packer, a crystal meth dealer, would also inject his young victims with the powerful amphetamine so they wouldn’t pass out during his ministrations of torture. Further charges of post-mortal and peri-mortal sexual assault, child abduction, and felonious imprisonment will be processed later in the week. All of Packer’s victims were boys and girls between the ages of six and eleven.”
“Only in America,” the barkeep remarked, pale with disgust.
Next, the TV flashed footage of the killer being led from the courthouse. He could’ve been a stock broker with his well-groomed hair, tidy suit, and studied expression.
“Can you believe that shit?” said the tech salesman next to Heyton. “He looks like any of us. He looks totally normal.”
“Looks are deceiving,” said the keep.
Another man said, “When you get right down to it, lots of people are never what they seem.”
The words chased Heyton from the bar. The girl said the same thing, he recalled, and she wasn’t kidding. Indeed, people could look normal but could just as easily be monsters beneath their veneers of normalcy.
Like her, Heyton thought. His stomach went sour.
Soon, droves of high-ranking police filed in to the center—Heyton’s target customers. He wasn’t sure why, because he believed his previous self-assurances. She killed the kid, not me, became a cyclic fugue in his head. Of course, so many police made him paranoid, and they weren’t just police, either. Police chiefs. Indeed, the con center was full to the brim with them.
Chiefs from every Florida city and township, chiefs from myriad counties, chiefs from sheriff’s departments, along with their technical liaisons.
If they only knew, he thought, passing still more of them. If they only knew what happened to me last night…
Even hours before the meeting’s official commencement, Heyton was approached by one chief after the next, wanting to know more about his system. “I heard damn near all of Texas bought it,” one said, “so it must be better than anything on the market.”
“It is,” Heyton told him.
He was about to start setting up his presentation material in the conference hall when it occurred to him that he was the star of the day. The competitors beside him were outright cold now, knowing their own pitches would go ignored, but at Heyton’s place at the table a line was forming almost like the autograph session for a bestselling author.
Police chiefs swooped down from either side to barrage him with questions, all of which Heyton answered with an easy expertise. He handed out business cards and brochures full of his system’s technical details. “It comes down to this, sir,” he explained to a Gregory Peck-looking county sheriff, “with our Interagency program system, your department saves money by identifying offenders faster. Your arrest rates go up, your processing costs go down. Why? Because you’re fully integrated with a statewide criminal offenders database. Access is instantaneous.”