He didn’t like the police, knew what they thought about someone with a record.
He could avoid bringing up his past again, avoid threatening his relationship with his neighbors, his coworkers. If they moved fast, he could hide this.
“You fish him out,” Randall said. “I’ll go pack up his stuff.”
“What? Why me?” Grayson asked.
“Because he died on your watch.”
“It was a little bit of X and a few poppers and some alcohol.”
Randall aimed a finger at him as he walked around the pool, the blue light playing across his skin. “Exactly why I don’t want the cops coming here.”
Inside the pool house Randall found a single suitcase open on the floor. Some dirty socks and underwear next to it. A few T-shirts and shorts in one drawer of the chest. He packed up the toothbrush and comb and electric shaver from the bathroom. It was quick, easy work to rid the place of any evidence of the dead man’s stay.
On the nightstand was a cell phone. They couldn’t hide that he was there. With the way the room was rented out on Airbnb, there’d be a record. They had to show him leaving.
Everything went into the suitcase except for the cell phone. When Randall arrived back in the yard, cell phone in hand, Grayson had hooked the pool skimming net over the young man’s head and was trying to drag him to the side of the pool.
Grayson winced and squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” He put down the suitcase and stuffed the cell phone in his pocket. He took the handle of the net from Grayson and towed the body in by its neck to the steps in the shallow end. “Help me,” he said.
Grayson didn’t move.
“Damnit, Grayson, get over here and help me get him out. I don’t like this any more than you do.”
Grayson looked like he was going to be sick, but he joined Randall. The cricket kept sawing away and the sound pushed the needle deeper into Randall’s spine.
They dragged the body out onto the pool deck where it seemed to deflate as the water seeped from his lungs. Now, on his back, Randall could see the young man had been hot — when he was alive.
“How many of my guests have you slept with?” he asked Grayson.
“Jesus, Randy. Not now.”
“How many?”
Grayson turned away from the body. “One or two, okay? Happy?”
Randall often wondered why he and Grayson had never hooked up. He always told himself it was because Grayson was too immature. This kind of behavior proved it. He wanted to kick him out, but they’d be forever bonded by this night.
He removed the phone from his pocket. “We have to open this.” He looked at Grayson. “What was his name?”
“Mickey.”
Randall felt a weird pang of guilt that he hadn’t thought to ask his name before, and now he regretted that he had. It gave the dead man an identity. But the body in front of him wasn’t a person. It was a problem to be hidden away. It wasn’t a human being, just some debris in his pool he needed to get rid of. It was the only way he could do it.
Randall woke up the phone and it asked for a password. No way he could ever guess it right in a million years. “Maybe it has that face recognition.” He pointed the phone at Mickey’s face. It forced Randall to look closely. The skin was blue-gray in the light from the pool. His lips parted slightly, and his tongue swollen and purple. His eyes were clouded over.
Not a person, just an object.
The phone didn’t react. Randall straightened. “Shit.” He tapped the home screen a few more times, uselessly. “Let’s try his fingerprints. Give me a hand.”
Grayson had stepped away and kept his back to the body. “What?”
“I cannot hold the phone and his hand at the same time. Just come over here.”
Grayson hugged himself and shrank away. “I can’t.”
Randall stalked the space between them and got in Grayson’s face. “You can and you will. Right fucking now. We need to fix this and do it quick, so get your ass over here and help me with his finger.”
Randall spun and marched back toward the body. Halfway there he turned toward the sound of the cricket in the planter, stomping his feet as he went. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
The cricket went quiet. When he turned, Grayson was standing next to the body.
Randall held the phone and Grayson shut his eyes and lifted Mickey’s hand while Randall guided the dead man’s index finger to the small button on the bottom of the phone. Nothing happened.
“He’s too bloated and pruned,” Grayson said. “It’s like he’s been in a bathtub for too long.”
“Try another finger.”
Grayson pressed each finger of his right hand to the phone and nothing happened.
“Try the other hand.”
Grayson shivered and leaned away. “I don’t want to touch him again.”
“You have to.”
Randall saw a thought flash over his face.
“Wait,” said Grayson. “He was left-handed. Yes. He used his left hand when he—” Grayson stopped himself and could have been blushing but it was hard for Randall to tell in the dim light. Grayson got the left index finger on the pad and the phone came to life.
Randall found the Airbnb app, opened it, and entered a five-star review for his own guest house. He left a comment: Great stay. Perfect location. Sad to leave, but I’ll be back!
Randall powered off the phone, wiped it free of his own fingerprints, then tossed it on top of the suitcase. He let out a deep sigh, feeling as close to safe as he had since he’d arrived. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go bury him.”
The San Jacinto Mountains loomed. The hills where the sun disappeared each night as it sank toward the other side of the world rose in front of them now like the entrance to a dark and foreboding stadium. At each step Randall thought, No going back now. But really there was. There always was. The steeper the road climbed into the hills, though, the more turning back seemed impossible.
The roads didn’t travel into the hills, rather they snaked around them. The dry, brown San Jacintos were too steep to be developed, not pretty enough for anyone to level the earth and make it habitable. Perfect for hiding a dead body. Not easy to get to, though.
Randall had fallen victim to a salesman when he bought his Range Rover. He hadn’t needed an all-terrain vehicle. He now silently praised that pushy guy in his ill-fitting suit.
With each switchback turn they made, Mickey’s body slid from one side of the back to the other, clunking against the side walls. The confines of the car felt tight around them and Randall could see each sound making Grayson wince as if he’d been touched by a lit match. Around another turn and Randall couldn’t take it anymore. He steered them off-road and wound away from prying eyes into a suitably remote area.
They couldn’t have gotten more than a hundred feet from the road. They weren’t even a third of the way up the hills. It seemed like a terrible place to hide anything, and yet in the darkness he felt as if they could be a thousand miles from civilization.
Randall had been surprised by how malleable and rubbery the body had been as they tried to lift it into the back hatch. Grayson had moaned and made little squeaks at every turn.
“Okay, let’s go quick,” Randall said.
This was really it. No going back. Last chance. As he lifted the shovel from behind the body, Randall knew this was either the best or worst decision of his life. The one that would save him from humiliation and scorn or would make him an accomplice to a very serious crime.
He was exactly that, though, whether he got caught or not. But it was always better not to get caught.