“That’s the Marines,” Clay said. “Let’s go.”
The van engine rumbled to life. Harry dragged his seatbelt over his chest and clicked it into place. He checked the mirrors and grabbed the stick to shift out of park.
Grade loped out of the front door of the house, laptop under one arm and backpack bouncing on his back, and headed for the van. The engine noise revved up as Harry shifted gears and spun the wheel around, ready to peel out.
It didn’t look like Grade was going to make it. Fuck sake. Clay reached out and grabbed Harry’s wrist.
“Wait,” he said.
“You said to—”
“Shut up,” Clay told him.
Grade scrambled into the back of the van and slammed the doors behind him.
“Now go,” Clay said as he relaxed his grip.
Harry yanked the wheel, hit the gas, and peeled away from the curb. Unsecured bags slid around the back and bounced off the walls as they tore down the road. Grade cursed as he staggered and nearly fell onto the body still bungeed to the floor.
As they left the neighborhood and the last neat farmhouse-style houses were replaced with shuttered shop fronts and pockmarked forecourts, Clay saw two of the sheriff department’s patrol cars turn onto the road behind them.
“Thirty minutes,” Grade said mildly as he hung on to the back of Clay’s seat for balance. “Maybe they brought in an efficiency expert?”
Chapter Five
Grade pulled the bat out of the back of the van. He hefted it in one hand and gave a short practice swing. Then he turned to look speculatively at Harry, who looked like he might not have spent every PE class since he was twelve on the bench.
“No,” Harry said. He held up both hands and took a step back until his shoulders hit the side of the van. “I’m Catholic, and I don’t want to have to explain this shit to the priest. Just get on with it.”
Great.
Grade gripped the handle of the bat in both hands and looked down at the dead man. They were parked in a scenic cutout on the side of the road, the van nudged in closest while the Lexus had been left back on the verge. On the other side of the age-bleached wooden barriers, the side of the mountain dropped down precipitously into tree-covered thickets and rocky outcrops. The air smelled like damp rock and turkey shit.
When they’d gotten the dead man out of the back of the van, they’d cut him out of the plastic. He was laid out face-up on the cracked concrete and discarded wrappers. Despite Grade’s best efforts when he’d wrapped him, the plastic had creased the corpse’s mouth together. The sallow lips were folded into something that was almost a smile.
Grade wasn’t superstitious. Salt was for your fries, not to throw over your shoulder, and it didn’t matter what day you cut your nails; if you were cutting them in Sweeny, then you weren’t that lucky. That smug twist of a smile on the corpse’s face still made the back of Grade’s neck itch uncomfortably.
“Something wrong?” Harry asked. Out of the corner of Grade’s eye he saw the other man pull the cuff of his jacket back to check his watch. “You said we needed to drop the car off by—”
“I know,” Grade said. He shook off the queasy disquiet. “Just thinking of how I’d be spending Friday night if I was still in LA.”
Harry chuckled, the sound unexpectedly clear against the still night air. “What?” he mocked. “You’d be out partying with movie stars?”
Once. Well, CW actors… and one of them had been dead. The party had been over by that point.
“Most nights it would have been something like this,” Grade admitted. He set the end of the bat on the ground and pulled his earphones out of his pocket. They were already linked to his phone, and the tinny notes of Doja Cat’s little single filtered out. “The difference is, it was in LA.”
He plugged the earphones in, filling his head with noise, and swung the bat. The end of it connected with the side of the dead man’s head, right on the indent that a wine bottle had already left there. Grade felt the impact up into his elbows, and the man’s head jolted to the side.
Harry watched for a while. Then he grimaced and went to stand at the barrier so he could peer down over the moonlit town. Grade could have told him that wouldn’t work. He lined up the bat with the dead man’s caved-in clavicle. It was the noises that got most people.
***
“Gotta tell you,” Harry said, “I’ve had better nights.”
Blood dripped sluggishly off the end of the bat as Grade sprayed it with bleach. He wiped it down and stashed it back inside the van. There was a donation bin on the way back into Sweeny. He’d drop it in there. After a week in the hands of a small child in Sweeny, any forensic evidence on it would be seriously compromised.
“Maybe you should ask Ezra for a bonus,” Grade said.
