“What for?”
“I’ll explain later. Then I want you to walk diagonally over to this trailer over here,” he said pointing. “Can you do that? Just do it quickly, and we’ll get it over with.”
Reznick’s heart was still pounding, but now for a different reason. His erotic dream was forgotten, as if he’d never had it.
Anna zigzagged like a drunk over the narrow trailer-park road, crossed the divider, then crossed back again, then stopped, turned to him, and said in a stage whisper, “What now?”
He walked over to her and stood beside her for a moment, looking at her.
“What’d you have me do that for?”
“You’re trailing blood all over the place. You came straight to my trailer. I’d rather not be involved once the police are pulled into this tomorrow, if they’re pulled in tomorrow. Now it looks like you wandered all over the place and didn’t just come over here.” He pointed to another trailer. “Go over there, under the carport, and stand there for a few seconds and just drip for a while.”
As she did as she was told, Reznick walked down to unit five. The door was open, the screen door closed. He approached the door and looked in through the screen.
“Oh, my God,” he whispered.
It was a slaughterhouse. There was blood everywhere. The corpse was bathed in it and it covered the carpet and some of the furniture. Through the screen, the blood looked black, like motor oil.
He heard her approaching behind him, her flip-flops slapping her heels.
“What happened?” he whispered.
They stood close, and in the glow of the porch light, he could see her face, see the expression on it, see her eyes, her lips.
“He runs a website,” she said, her voice quavering. She sounded unlike herself, as if she were about to snap. But obviously, she had already done that.
“A website?”
“Trailer Park Girls. He has her pictures on it. Naked. Pictures of her touching herself. Pictures of her… of her… sucking on his filthy cock.” She said the last two words through clenched teeth.
“What? Who?”
“Kuh-Kendra. My Kendra.”
“TrailerParkGirls.com?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Reznick frowned. That was one of the websites owned by Burning Lizard Amusements. That meant the dead man lying on the floor in the trailer was probably one of the two men he’d seen frolicking with Alicia Carey and her friend on Jupiter Lane. And he lived here in the Riverside Mobile Home Park.
“I think he drugged her,” Anna whispered.
“What?”
“Kendra.” Her lips were a tight straight line. “I think he drugged Kendra. Or he got her drunk. Or something. I mean… my Kendra.” Her voice was merely a breath now as her face softened. “How could she do such a thing? How did he make her do it?”
“He was probably very good at it,” Reznick said. “Very manipulative. He’s talked a lot of women into taking their clothes off. I’ve seen his other websites. They’re filled with women who’ve done it. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I don’t think it’s scarred Kendra, or anything like that.”
“How do you know? How will we ever know? Until later, I mean? It might not show itself for years.”
“Look, I’d love to stand here and talk about this with you, but, uh… what exactly do you want me to do?”
“I… I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. You were the first person I thought of. I didn’t know who else to go to. I… I just, I lost it, something inside me, it snapped, and I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t stop stabbing him, I’ve never felt that way before in my life.”
Reznick thought of what she’d told him earlier that night, the threat she’d made if he ever took advantage of the crush Kendra had on him. He’d had no idea then that she was so capable of actually going through with it.
“I can’t go to prison,” Anna whispered. “Who will take care of my Kendra?” Her hoarse voice trembled and she interlocked her bloody fingers just below her chin, her eyes wide and glistening. “I can’t leave her all alone. I-I can’t, I can’t abandon her.”
“You want me to help you dispose of the body?”
Her eyes widened more, even though it didn’t seem possible. She put a bloody hand on each side of her head, curling her fingers into her auburn hair. “I-I-I don’t knuh-know. I cuh-can’t think.”
Reznick began to pace. “Let me think,” he said. “Let me think.”
And for a while, Reznick thought.
Twenty-One
“Can you wait right here?” Reznick said.
Anna stood nearby crying quietly. “What-huh?”
“Wait right here. I have to go to my trailer and get some stuff. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”
“Oh. Okay. Okay.”
He broke into a jog and returned to his own trailer. At the rear of his carport was a small metal shed he’d had since he’d lived in the smaller trailer park over on River Valley Drive. He went into the trailer to get his keys and a flashlight and, from a bedroom dresser drawer, a pair of work gloves, which he put on. From the top shelf of his closet, he took a roll of duct tape. Then he went back outside and unlocked the padlock on the shed. He turned on the flashlight and looked around. There were a few boxes of junk stored in there. On top of one stack of boxes was an old duffle bag he hadn’t used in many years. He picked up the duffle bag and opened it wide, and put the duct tape in. He put the bag on a box, then looked around for something else.
There they were – weights he hadn’t used in ages, dumbbells that had been tucked away in this shed over in the other trailer park for years. He removed the weights from the bars and put them in the duffle bag. He put all of them in the bag and tried lifting it. It wasn’t easy, but he could manage.
Standing in the back corner of the shed was an old rolled-up canvas he’d had so long that he’d forgotten why he had it. He stepped over a box and wrapped an arm around the rolled-up canvas and carried it clumsily to the door.
It wouldn’t work. He couldn’t carry it all at once. Using both hands, he carried the bag of weights down to unit five, then came back and hauled the rolled-up canvas over, with the flashlight in his right back pocket. On his way to unit five with the canvas, he thought, Why am I doing this?
The response was a long time coming. But when it came, it was strong, and it was enough.
I’m doing it for Kendra, he thought.
When he reached the attractive new trailer, he exhaled loudly as he leaned the canvas up against the side of it. He blew air out through puffed cheeks. Stinging sweat had sprung up on his neck and forehead and trickled down his back.
“Whew,” he said, “didn’t think I was gonna make it over here with that load.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“You’ll see. Take off your flip-flops,” he said, slipping out of his own.
“What?”
“Take off your flip-flops. I want to wear them in there, so it won’t look like there were two different people walking around in all that blood.”
“Oh. Okay.” She pulled her feet out of the flip-flops and stepped away from them.
Reznick put his feet into the flip-flops, which were much too small for him, but he would make do. He wrapped an arm around the canvas, picked it up, opened the screen door, and climbed the steps, hefting the canvas into the trailer.
“Oh, God,” he whispered.
It was even worse than it had looked through the screen. A large butcher knife lay on the floor beside the dead body. He could not tell the color of the shirt the man was wearing – it was too soaked in blood. It was torn and tattered, and Reznick assumed the man was just as torn and tattered beneath it. He might not have to puncture the lungs and stomach after all – it looked like she’d probably done that already.