Dead and Buried
The first time I ever heard Nickleback’s song, “Follow You Home,” the inspiration for “Dead and Buried” popped into my head almost fully formed, and all I had to do was write the story down. In the song lyrics, a guy is so enamored of a young lady that he won’t stay away from her, no matter what horrible punishments she inflicts on him. He’s a stalker, in other words. My story, though, is a little different. Imagine a wife anxious enough to get rid of her husband that she orchestrates his murder. Everything goes according to plan, except the hapless victim just won’t… stay… dead. It can turn into a real problem, as you might imagine. “Dead and Buried” first appeared at the very cool website, A Twist of Noir, in October, 2010.
The moon’s dirty grey light struggled to penetrate the ground fog as it swirled and twisted, illuminating the forest weakly, like an old-time black and white television show. In an isolated clearing, a man knelt at the edge of a freshly-dug three-foot-deep hole, hands fastened behind his back with nylon cord, damp earth crusting the knees of his blue jeans. The man was still but keenly observant, seeming to acknowledge the hopelessness of his situation. He knelt and waited.
The hole—the gravesite—had been constructed roughly six feet long and three feet wide, the approximate dimensions of its prospective tenant. The earth excavated to form this makeshift resting place was piled neatly at one end, conveniently located for its return trip.
Behind the soon-to-be victim a second man paced, agitated and clearly nervous. He sucked on a cigarette and held a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum Model 60 revolver in one hand and a shiny Easton aluminum baseball bat in the other. The silvery reflection of the moon’s light offered a jarring contrast to the monochromatic dimness casting the rest of the scene.
The man with the dirt on his knees waited patiently, warily eyeing the nervous man next to him as he paced back and forth. He was not anxious to hurry things along; he was perfectly happy to let the other man deal with his inner demons for as long as necessary. Every breath he took was one more than he had expected to get after being forced to the ground by the handgun barrel pressed to the back of his head.
Finally he spoke. “Why the baseball bat? Planning to sandwich a little batting practice between putting a bullet in my head and moving in with my suddenly available wife?”
The man with the gun and the bat stopped pacing for a moment. He almost seemed to have forgotten his victim was even there. He licked his lips nervously. “No bullets,” he said. “I’m going to do you with the bat instead.”
“I hope you don’t mind me asking the obvious question, but why?”
“I’m not stupid. A bullet lodged in your head can be traced back to the gun it was fired from and used as evidence if you’re body is ever discovered; not that it will be. The baseball bat will be buried in a different location as soon as this is over, and will never be seen again.”
The man kneeling at the edge of his own grave considered this information and then nodded. “I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought—or Maura has—although from my perspective I have to tell you that a home run swing to the side of the head sounds much more painful than taking one in the hat from that cannon you’re holding.”
“Sorry about that,” answered the man holding the weapons. “I know it’s not ideal, but I’ve got to do what’s best for me.”
“Clearly. You do understand I’m going to make you pay for this, right?”
A soft, high-pitched squeal erupted from somewhere in the back of the agitated man’s throat and he turned and raised his bat and swung from the heels, connecting with the other man’s head. A wet noise that sounded nothing like a bat hitting a ball exploded into the heavy night air and the man with the dirt on his knees tumbled slowly, almost gracefully, into the bottom of the shallow pit.
The other man dropped his bat like it contained an electric charge and puked into the grave, neatly extinguishing his cigarette with the acidy yellow contents of his stomach. He dropped to his knees and reached down and yanked his victim’s wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. He then produced a pocket knife and sliced the cord holding the dead man’s hands together, rose unsteadily, and staggered through the silence of the killing field back to his car.
Tossing the incriminating bat and length of cord into the back seat for later disposal, the man grabbed his shovel and steeled himself for one more trip into the forest, this time to toss the pile of dirt over his victim and hide the evidence of his treachery forever.
Maura Stapleton pulled her Mercedes into the driveway of the home she shared with Vince Gower, talking on her cell phone and driving much too fast, as usual. She slowed just enough to squeeze under the garage door still rumbling up on its tracks, then screeched to a stop in the middle of the stall.
It had been ten long months since Vince completed their nasty business—at her insistence—and Maura, for one, had never been happier. Her marriage to Jim Stapleton had been a sham, at least from her perspective, and she had finally prevailed upon Vince to dispose of her pain-in-the-ass husband once and for all.
She would have been free of Jim months earlier if Vince, the man with whom she had been having an affair practically since saying “I do” six years ago, hadn’t been such a frigging wuss. Maura kept pounding into Vince’s thick skull the fact that the only way the two of them would be able to live together in a comfortable manner would be for Jim to disappear. Permanently. The sooner the better. Eventually he had come to see things her way, as she had known he would.
Coming into the marriage, everything had been Jim’s: The business, the cars, the investments, even the house, which was much too big and ostentatious for the two of them, but which Maura loved because it trumpeted to the world in no uncertain terms her new status.
Divorcing Jim would never work, Maura had explained to Vince, because then the prick would get to keep virtually all of the stuff—those goodies which she loved so much and which, to her astonishment, she had discovered Jim didn’t seem to care that much about. She had foolishly agreed to a very restrictive pre-nup before marrying Jim Stapleton and then regretted it almost instantly.
Now, with Jim missing, she and Vince were already almost one year into the seven year wait required by law before ownership of everything reverted to Maura. In the meantime, if Jim wasn’t found—which of course he wouldn’t be—as his wife, she retained the use of everything; it just wouldn’t legally belong to her for six more years.
Maura stepped out of her car and grabbed the shopping bags out of the tiny back seat, struggling to carry her three purchases and not spill her large iced coffee. She loved shopping and considered it a travesty if she went more than two days without buying a new outfit and of course some sexy lingerie for Vince’s benefit. He was everything she needed in a man: handsome, strong, great in the sack, not overly bright, and easy to control.
She stepped into the kitchen and took exactly two steps—elapsed time, maybe one second—to notice something was very wrong, and by then it was already too late. Seated in the middle of the kitchen, secured to a heavy pine chair that was part of the six thousand dollar kitchen set she had purchased to celebrate her husband’s disappearance, was Vince Gower.
He shook his head violently but silently, any attempt at warning Maura muffled by a rag stuffed into his mouth and secured with twine wrapped tightly around the back of his skull. His wrists were tied behind him, his ankles lashed to the legs of the chair. Thick brown hair tumbled down his forehead, tangled and sweaty, obscuring his eyes.