Fatal Justice (Jack Lamburt #1)(14)

There used to be a small one-room cabin at the end of the trail, built sometime in the 1800s, but that was long gone. All that was left was a partially collapsed stone foundation, overgrown with weeds and small shrubs, with a couple of taller trees in the center of it.

And a hand-dug well.

Hand-dug wells in this part of the country ran anywhere from thirty to seventy feet deep, depending on the underground water level. They were usually about forty inches around and were lined with rock to keep the walls from caving in. This particular well hadn’t been used in many decades and was covered with a two-inch-thick piece of flat stone. It would make a perfect burial place for Ostrich Boy. Once I filled it with dirt, he’d never be found.

I stopped the big SUV when I thought we were getting close to the well. I hadn’t been up here in a while, and that was during daylight hours. Everything up here in the country looked different at night. I got out and savored the dark silence. It was so quiet and peaceful, the only sound the clicking of the big engine as she cooled off.

I took out my iPhone flashlight and searched for the well. After a few minutes I found it, hidden by tall grass and a few short shrubs. I got back in the SUV and backed it up to the well, opened up the back, and pulled his fat ass out, letting him hit the ground with a nice satisfying thud. I grinned.

I bent down to slide the heavy rock from the opening. The thing must have weighed over a hundred pounds, and over the years it had sunk into the ground a half inch. It took some work digging my fingers underneath it, and it was covered by moss, so it was slippery and hard to grip. After a few tries and a half dozen curse words, I managed to slide it all the way to the side, opening up a three-foot-plus opening to his tomb.

I grabbed him by his feet, slid his fat ass over the snow to the well, and dropped him into it. Probably my imagination, but I could swear I saw him ball up before he disappeared into the darkness. It had been a long, exhausting day, and despite my stoic appearance, this exercise in body disposal was slightly stressful. Plus I had Debbie and Barry White waiting at home for me, and knowing that always increased my ADD tenfold.

A second later, I heard him splash down. My anger at him got the best of me and I picked up a few bigger rocks from nearby and tossed them down the well, imagining them smashing against his greasy head. That didn’t satisfy my thirst for revenge, so I took out my Glock, screwed on the Osprey, and fired a few shots down into the well as a parting gift. Between shots, I heard the empty shell casings bouncing off the rock lining of the well before splashing down. Good riddance, you bastard. I slid the heavy stone back in place and sealed his tomb. It felt good to be free of him.

I climbed back into the late Ostrich Boy’s SUV and headed back to the Lakeview House. It took me almost an hour, and when I arrived, I parked the SUV in the lot, same spot as I had seen it in earlier. I took a few minutes and wiped the interior down with the sanitizer-soaked paper towels to remove any evidence of my existence, and left the key fob in the visor. Then I tossed the towels in the fifty-gallon burn can everyone in upstate New York had in their backyard, tossed in a little extra hand sanitizer, and threw in a match.

I watched the beautiful blue and orange flames as they converted the last bit of evidence linking me to the SUV to black smoke and bits of ash that disappeared into the night sky. Environmentalists would go ape shit if they saw what I’d done.

I walked over to the trailer park down the road from the Lakeview House, and after sneaking up on a half dozen trailer homes, I found what I was looking for. A bicycle. Okay, it was bright pink and had fluffy little pink things hanging from the handlebar ends, but I wasn’t in a position to be picky, so I hopped on it and pedaled away towards Mary Sue’s house to get my pickup.

There was hardly any traffic on Route 10 at three a.m., but every time I saw the occasional car headlights I had to veer off and hide on the side of the road behind some bushes until they passed. No way I could let anyone see me. Not on that bike, anyway. I’d have to move to escape the ridicule.

Those little breaks in pedaling were a godsend because they gave me a chance to stretch out my long legs. The bike was so small that my knees rubbed against the handlebar with each stroke of the pedals, and I cramped up pretty quickly. At least I wore off those fluffy pink things with the friction. Hiding on the side of the road had the added benefit of allowing me to catch my breath. Those hills on Route 10 were murder.

The first half of the ride wasn’t too bad, but when my body started to heat up from the workout, I started to sweat. It was near freezing, and by the time I reached the turnoff from Route 10 onto Mary’s Sue’s road, my clothes were soaked through with sweat. A breeze hit me, and I switched from overheating to freezing in about four seconds.

With each pedal stroke my frozen clothes chafed at the back of my knees, and I could feel the skin irritation forming through my impending frostbite. I didn’t know which was worse, the friction burns on the front of my knees from rubbing against the handlebars, or the frozen rash on the backs of them. This killing stuff certainly wasn’t for the faint of heart.

It took me almost two hours to bike from the trailer park to Mary Sue’s house, and by the time I tossed the bike into the bed of my Toyota, my teeth were chattering and my whole body was shaking from the cold.

I started my truck, turned the heat up as high as it would go, and headed back to the trailer park.

It only took me ten minutes, but by the time I returned my girly ride to its rightful owner, minus its little fluffy pink things, the sun was peeking over the mountains.