She spilled half the contents of one can, and he finally managed to kick a leg free. Naked from the waist down, he was trying to get his legs under him. To stand up. So tenacious. She felt for the matches in her jeans pocket, tore one free, and said a prayer. She’d wondered endlessly if when this moment came she would flinch, but she felt no wobble in her heart. She’d already made this right with God, but she would keep making it right for the rest of her days on this earth. He was screaming for help and had finally shimmied to a sitting position when she lit the book and tossed it at him. It landed in his lap and the flames wrapped around him like armor, encased him, a blue-orange knight. He screamed and fell onto his back. The night went bright and the tops of the trees glowed yellow from the power of the blaze. His cries made her understand she’d never actually heard a person scream before. Not like that. Not even close to the scream that had brought her mom running when she cut too deep. Not with madness and pleading and desperate hope that you’re about to wake up from a nightmare. His screams grew louder for a moment and then faded to a choking sound as his esophagus or voice box melted. The last thing she saw was his skin blistering, huge boils forming on his arms and thighs, fat bubbling from the tissue like bacon grease sizzling in a pan, the fabric of his shirt and the duct tape melting quickly away. He pulled his skin off in slithering, sizzling strips. The blue Walmart bag fried to his face. She kicked the sled in after him. Then she turned, walked a ways to the edge of the woods where the air was cool and clean. Though she could no longer see him, the glow beamed out of the pit. The river murmured, and the flames threw mischievous, dancing shadows across the surrounding woods. Like a gash in the earth had opened to reveal a bit of hell.
She went back with the gas can and emptied it onto him. He didn’t protest. It was strange looking at him now, once a human being she’d known and cared for and now just a log of char. The flames once again went white-hot, the sled burned purple as it melted to him; the heat steamed her face, and sweat beaded across her brow and in her armpits. She couldn’t smell him cooking, only the gasoline. She stepped back into the cool of the woods again. She waited until the flames had died down some, and then began emptying the second gas can into the pit, stepping back each time the flames grew too hot. Like she’d hoped, there wasn’t much left of 56 by the time she’d emptied both cans. The love of her life was nothing but blackened, smoking shards of bone. She took the heavy rocks she’d used to weigh down the tarp and spent a few minutes hurling them at the skull. Squatting in front of the pit with that acrid scent now more barbecue, she turned the last recognizable feature of his skeleton to smoking scraps. They looked like broken bits of ancient pottery. She saw the chain necklace, filthy and blackened, but there were no longer dog tags looped to the chain. It was a locket, like a grandmother would wear. She fished it out with a stick and pocketed it. Then she covered what remained with the tarp, took the shovel from its perch in the dirt, and began filling in the hole.
“Why’re you always reading that gruesome stuff?” Cole had asked her once. She was at lunch in the break room, riveted by a book about JonBenét Ramsey. She’d spent all morning stocking in the grocery section, pulling around cases of apple juice and baby food and frozen dinners on the pallet jack, and she wanted to be left alone for just a minute. She kept her answer short.
“It’s interesting.”
“Doesn’t seem interesting. Seems weird.”
“You like horror movies. This stuff’s like real-life horror.”
Maybe she was thinking about her plan even back then when Cole first began to pursue her, before she’d even had an inkling about what she would do. The example of poor JonBenét served her well, though, when her mind got wandering about how she might do this. Misdirection. Disappearance. Time.
Buried beneath four feet of earth, covered in branches and a young fallen tree toppled prematurely by a storm that she dragged across the disturbed soil, 56 would almost certainly not be discovered. At least not for a good long while. If he were found in a few years, forensic experts—the CSI guys—would have only bone fragments to go on. Dental records would be tough with the skull and jaw in pieces. Wallet and clothes and identifying marks would all be burned up. Perhaps they’d use DNA to identify the victim, but then they’d have to ask what happened to him. Who was he last with? Who did he know? Who’d have reason to hurt him? So few of those questions would have even a remote chance of directing attention to her. His car would be sitting in the parking space across from the Lincoln Lounge with a flat tire. In a few days it would be towed. After three or four days of not showing up for work and not answering his phone, his employer (or maybe Ryan Ostrowski) would call his mother. A missing persons report would be filed. Yet there were plenty of reasons a guy like 56 might want to flee town. Everyone was fleeing everywhere these days. At Walmart, temp associates up and left because a child payment came due or a warrant went out for violating a parole offense or someone had a court date they didn’t want to show up to or just plain old debt they could never pay. Without a body, that would be the first assumption. Later, they would first and foremost suspect men. As long as Cole was fast asleep back home, no one would have reason to suspect she’d been anywhere but her own bed on this particular night (and there was no reason he wouldn’t be: for four months she’d practiced finding the dosage that would put him under for the night, tapping it into his dinner Mountain Dew). She’d show up for work a bit tired tomorrow but would power through with a Red Bull just fine.
Even if a pair of eyes had spotted 56 climbing into the blue Cobalt, that was okay. She and Cole had already spoken about getting a new used car. She’d suggest they finally pull the trigger this week. There was certainly video footage of her pulling into the gas station on Route 30, but by the time they found him (if anyone found him) this footage and the Cobalt would be ancient history.
She’d shower before Cole woke. She’d get rid of the tire iron, the Buckeyes hat, the gas cans, the little whiskey bottles, the duct tape, and the shovel in the next few weeks. Find them new homes, toss them in dumpsters, or abandon them in places no one would ever look. What was left? Without investigators stumbling upon a huge stroke of luck that tied her to 56 on this night, would she even make the top twenty in a list of suspects? The top fifty?
She suspected not. She also suspected that when 56 turned up missing, New Canaan’s police department would assume that he’d either run somewhere or—if he was the victim of a violent crime—it was somehow related to the distribution of methamphetamines, prescription pills, and heroin in the county. He’d said so himself how he was still friends with characters like the Flood brothers. She wasn’t worried. She’d have many secrets to keep, but she was an expert at living with secrets. She planned on returning home, living her life with Cole, riding her new bike to work, adopting two children, a boy and a girl, and never hearing about 56 again. She’d sleep happily in her bed, and he in his. Because what she’d finally decided was that Love sometimes called upon people to do drastic things in order to secure it. God would take 56 into His arms and allow him all the happiness that had eluded him, that had made him cruel in life.
And yet, her face grew wet with tears as she remembered him in his backyard cutting burrs out of Symphony’s hair.