It wasn’t as if Billy wouldn’t have done it, if he could have.
Meryl knew his own fingerprints were all over the house.
Did that matter? It would seem odd if they weren’t, he decided, although the guest room and bathroom upstairs might be a problem, albeit not one he couldn’t solve with a dust rag and a can of dusting aerosol for the bedroom and cleanser and a sponge for the bathroom.
He looked at his watch and then outside at the storm.
It looked as if it would keep pouring and thundering for hours.
There was plenty of time to do all that needed doing.
His only real worry was exactly what Laurie feared, which was flooding that might keep him from getting back to her. He had to get back to her. She was an emotional unguided missile aimed directly at both of them if he didn’t stick with her and control her.
There was time, but he couldn’t afford to waste it.
He washed the bathroom first, watching out for hairs in the shower, getting rid of as much blood as he could, although he wasn’t particularly worried about that as it was only Hugh-Jay’s blood and not theirs. If someone else-Billy, for instance-had committed these acts, that person could have been expected to use the shower to wash off, too.
They had left bloody footprints on the upstairs carpets.
Meryl ran to the basement for bleach, made a solution of it with water, grabbed a scrub brush and went back upstairs. He flooded the bloody floors and carpet with the solution and rubbed at the footprints until they ran together and their outlines were indistinguishable by size or footfall.
Now the upstairs smelled hideously of acrid bleach.
He preferred that to the worse smells that it covered up.
He had told Laurie he would bring her what she needed.
But he wouldn’t do it now, and it wouldn’t include anything she owned.
It would have to be all new. She would have to have a new identity.
He felt overwhelmed by how much would be required to save both of them from here on out. She didn’t think she could do it, and Meryl wasn’t at all sure she could, either.
He would deal with that later; right now he had to prepare the bedroom.
He stripped the sheets, for fear of hair fibers. Hair from his head anywhere in the house was one thing, but pubic hair in a bed with semen stains on it was something else entirely. He wiped down all the surfaces, rather than try to remember which of them he had touched.
Meryl left the gun where it lay loose in Hugh-Jay’s right hand. He had, essentially, shot himself, which took care of the problem of fingerprints. If people didn’t jump to the conclusion that Billy Crosby had murdered him, then maybe they’d think Hugh-Jay had killed himself. But when Meryl stepped back and viewed the obvious signs of violence and struggle in the room, and those downstairs in the kitchen, he doubted that scenario would convince anyone.
All the while he stepped around his best friend’s body.
Best friend, he thought several times.
Had they been best friends? Brothers was more like it. Brothers raised at first by two different families and then merged into a single one, the better one. Everybody knew Meryl loved Hugh-Jay, and they would expect him to be incredibly upset by his friend’s death. There’d be no faking there: he was incredibly upset by this. Whoever had killed Hugh-Jay was going to be hated. Meryl had to make sure that wouldn’t be him. He worried a little over the fact that he didn’t feel very sad, that he only felt worried about what this night might mean to his own life. And then he put that behind him, because if all went well, he would have the rest of his life to make it up to the Linders-and to Hugh-Jay’s daughter-the best way he could, with attention and hard work and taking care of them and their business.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” he said when he was finished. “We didn’t mean to.”
After throwing the thin quilt aside, he gathered up the sheets and pillowcases and walked them downstairs, knowing that his footprints in wet socks would dry and disappear before morning. He stuffed the linens into a black plastic trash bag and put them in Billy’s truck, still unsure of what he was going to do with them. He’d worry about that later, because he had to get back out to Laurie before the roads were too flooded to allow him through.
Meryl stood in the darkness and the rain taking a long last look at the house that looked like a huge gravestone to him now. Had he taken care of everything? Had he thought of everything? Feeling unsure, he went back inside and rechecked every room to look for things he’d missed, nearly fainting when he spotted his own bolo tie down on the carpet between the far side of the bed and the wall. He had removed it when he got undressed to get into bed with Laurie and put it on the end table, where it had fallen off.
Feeling shaken, Meryl stuffed it down inside his suit coat pocket.
Then he hurried down the stairs and went around the first floor using a knuckle to push the button locks closed on the outside doors, hoping to make it just that much harder, and delay that much longer, anybody’s entrance into the house.
SHE WAS DEAD when he found her, and it wasn’t hard to discern why.
A large shred of her dress had caught on a rock sticking out of the formation she had apparently tried to climb. Meryl realized she must have gotten a long way up for a fall to have killed her, or else she just happened to hit at a fatal angle. He also realized this was going to make his life much, much easier. All he needed to do now was get rid of her body, Billy’s truck, and the damned bed linens in time to walk back to Rose and climb into his own bed to await the moment when someone called to tell him the terrible news.
Her body, shed of its clothing, went into an abandoned feedlot waste pit in the next county. Billy’s truck-with her yellow sundress tied into a plastic bag Meryl found in the truck-got sent into the floodwaters over the highway. In desperation, out of ideas and running out of time before sunrise, Meryl picked up the plastic bag with the bed linens and carried them back to Rose with him. He felt ridiculous doing it. He could get rid of a body and a two-ton vehicle, but he couldn’t figure out how to do the same with some sheets? He’d been afraid to throw them into the feedlot waste pit, for fear they wouldn’t sink fast enough, and he didn’t want to leave them in the truck to be found there. As he walked home, daring the lightning to get him, Meryl nearly started laughing hysterically at this last dilemma. It seemed so stupid compared to everything else he’d had to take care of this night.
When he woke up to the phone ringing in the morning, he knew what to do about the bedclothes that were his remaining problem. He was afraid to wash them for fear Belle or someone else would see him doing it; he was also afraid to take them to the dump, or put them out with the trash. He knew he was being paranoid about something that probably should be easy, but it felt as if all of his fears had centered now on the damned sheets and pillowcases. So after emptying out a cardboard file box, Meryl folded the sheets, put them inside it, and closed the lid on top of them. He found threaded mailing tape in his desk and wrapped the box in it so tightly and completely all around that even scissors would have a hard time finding a place to cut. Then he put it aside to give to Belle to store unknowingly in her basement for him, “because it’s full of a client’s personal records and your bank is more fireproof than my office.” Later, much later when nobody would be paying any attention related to Hugh-Jay or Laurie, he could go back and get the box and finally destroy it. And if he didn’t, maybe the wet fabric would mildew so completely in the box that it would eventually disintegrate and be no threat to him. It wasn’t as if they were much of a threat anyway-hair fiber analysis was an inexact science; a good defense lawyer would cast doubt on it.