Murder Boy. Bryon Quertermous

out of the car.

      I didn’t want to leave the car so I rolled down my window to yell at him.

      “Where are you going?”

      “Unless you’ve got a backup, we need to get my car.”

      “With the body?”

      “I know someone who can help us with that. She’s paralyzed, and a bit of a bitch, but last resorts and all of that, right?”

      I nodded and wondered if it came down to it, whether I’d prefer jail or death.

      

      RICKARD WAS back in the car with me when a rusty blue full-sized van pulled up next to us. I tried to move my hand to check my door lock, but my arm was numb from the cold and wouldn’t move.

      “Check the locks,” I said. “Make sure they’re—”

      “That’s the Cavalry, man. Rescue bitch is here.”

      Rickard moved from the car to the front seat of the van in the time I was able to pump enough energy into my arms and legs to get my own door open. I stood without closing the door for several seconds, wondering what to do with my car. Rickard rolled his window down and stuck his head out of the van.

      “Want me to come back for you, leave you alone to mourn your golf cart?”

      “I think I still have Triple A,” I said. “They made me pay a huge lump sum when I tried to cancel and I wonder if I should call them.”

      “We got a ride,” Rickard said.

      He popped his head back inside the van and came back out with a joint hanging off his lips and a beer can in his hand.

      “A ride with beverage service.”

      “You think maybe it’s just the weather? I mean, you think we could—”

      “Your ride is shit, man. Leave it and maybe somebody strips it, you get the insurance and get something new with a real engine.”

      I didn’t really care much about the car. In New York I wouldn’t need it and if I stayed in Detroit I wouldn’t be able to afford it. But I still hesitated to Rickard’s growing irritation. It wasn’t my car that concerned me; it was the car waiting for us with the body in the trunk, and more immediately, this rescue ride. Giving up my car was giving up control of the situation which didn’t let me off the hook if it all went south, and put me at the mercy of a man with more in mind for Parker Farmington than a forced signature and cash swipe.

      Rickard tossed the suitcase on the seat next to me when I got in the van.

      “Out of curiosity,” I said. “How much is in here?”

      Rickard leaned over his seat and twisted back to face me.

      “Jesus, a little discretion,” he said.

      I pointed to the old woman driving who had a pair of headphones on, blocking out our conversation.

      “She’s not even listening.”

      “Those are for looks, she knows exactly what’s going on.”

      “Huh,” I said. “Sorry.”

      “You’re a writer, but maybe can you do some math too?”

      “You want me to count it?” I asked.

      “Jesus,” he said again, pointing himself toward front again. “Maybe I need some fucking headphones.”

      The ride was silent after that. The old woman never said anything, I never learned her name, and twenty minutes later we were pulling around to the back entrance of the Saddle Ranch where a clean, but older model Buick the size of a small barge was waiting for us.

      Rickard must have noticed me evaluating the size of his car, because he said, “Believe it or not, this is smaller than my last one.”

      “I had one like this in high school and right into college,” I said. “The air didn’t work and the back floorboards were rotted out, but it warmed up nice in the winter and got surprisingly good gas mileage for an old boat.”

      Rickard went to the trunk and popped it open. I looked over my shoulder and noticed the van and hobo lady hadn’t left yet.

      Rickard said. “We can probably fit the professor in here next to Steve.”

      “Steve?”

      “My trunk buddy here. I had a little trouble with—”

      “I don’t need to know anything about Steve. I don’t even want to know that his name is Steve.”

      “You gonna keep yammering like that, do it while you help me lift.”

      I absentmindedly grabbed Steve’s feet—dammit, the name was stuck in my head now—and stutter-stepped backward away from Rickard’s giant Buick. He swung Steve…er, the body’s top half around and took the lead, walking us back toward the hobo van.

      Wait a minute.

      “Why are we taking him to her?” I asked.

      “The kind lady in the van has offered to help us with the disposal situation so that we can—”

      “Wait. What?” I asked.

      “She’s gonna take the suitcase and the body so we can—”

      I dropped my end of Steve and stopped walking.

      “What kind of moron are you?”

      Rickard dropped his end too and put his hands on his hips.

      “You’re not exactly a fount of alternative ideas,” he said.

      I dragged Steve by his legs back to the Buick and tried to shove him back into the trunk. It took me several tries, with Rickard watching and not offering to help, but I finally got him in. I tossed the suitcase in after the body and slammed it shut.

      “Keys,” I said.

      I crawled into the driver’s seat and waited patiently for Rickard to bring me the keys, but he didn’t. I looked out the back window and didn’t see him behind the car and I wondered if he left the keys in the van. Rickard appeared next to me in blur and opened the driver’s side door again.

      “You could have just put the keys in—”

      Rickard smacked me in the side of the head and grabbed the collar of my shirt. The smack stung more than it hurt. He tugged at my collar and I rolled out of the car to avoid being strangled by my own shirt. My hope that it was an isolated instance of his “unbalanced” behavior was dashed by a kick to my stomach. I prepped for another to follow, but there wasn’t one. Instead, Rickard rolled me over and stuck the sticky red knife to my throat. I looked in his eyes for some sign that his demon wire had been tripped, but his eyes were calm, his facial movements steady.

      “Steve goes in the van,” he said.

      He didn’t elaborate. The knife dug deeper into my skin, though Rickard didn’t seem to be applying any extra pressure. The calm attitude, skill with weapons, and hair trigger would have all been very intriguing from a character standpoint if I hadn’t been the one under the knife. When the knife finally pierced my skin Rickard pulled it away. I half expected him to lick the knife or sniff it or something, but he was not going to fall into standard villain clichés. At that point I wasn’t sure there was a hero in my story, just varying degrees of villain.

      Rickard removed himself and his knife from my personal space and once again I found myself holding the feet of a corpse, trying to load it into a handicap accessible van.

      “Try around the back,” the lady said.

      I was kind of shocked when she spoke. I’d assumed she was a mute as well as handicapped. I’m sure that