Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(31)

“Let me shoot them motherf*ckers,” Tim hissed. “Let me shoot them; let me shoot them.”

“No, f*ck! I’m not gonna let you,” Carol shouted back. “I’m not gonna let you shoot them.”

Tim’s automatic wasn’t the only gun in the car. Carol carried a .32 automatic hidden between the two front seats.

“C’mon, let’s shoot them.”

“For what?”

It was like Tim always wanted to do something like that. He always wanted to shoot everybody, anybody that bothered him. Maybe he thought he’d be bigger in her eyes if she saw him do it.

Carol told him they didn’t have time, but Tim insisted.

“Leave them alone,” Carol said firmly.

Tim went around the block like he was going back to get them. Carol realized that if she said yes, he’d do it. Instead, Carol insisted that they must dump the body; she wanted to be done with the killing. That’s when Tim pulled into the park.

Carol had no idea where they were, just that it was dark and silent. Suddenly the two white guys that had dissed Tim were long gone, distant encumbrances that had been shown mercy.

Tim backed into the park’s lot, so the back of the car faced the river. When they got out, he grabbed the gas can, walked a few paces down the snow-covered path. He stopped, looked around.

“Okay, right here.”

“Well, what are we gonna do?”

The idea, he said, was to bring Nancy to this spot and burn her. Nobody would see because it was a secluded spot.

“Let’s get it over with,” she said.

Carol thrust her frozen hands into her pockets. The snow was coming down heavier. Their breaths were heavy white plumes.

They went back to the car. Tim looked around to make sure no other cars were coming. Satisfied at their isolation, he popped the trunk. Looking around again, Tim sat Nancy up and grabbed her like he was hugging her. He pulled her out and onto the ground.

Carol started to grab Nancy’s feet and he just pulled her out, going with the momentum of the body, slinging her over his shoulder. She closed the trunk and followed Tim up the path.

Carol tripped over something and fell. She got back up and by the time she caught up, her boyfriend had dropped the trussed-up body to the ground and was dousing it with gasoline. The awful smell permeated the blanket and came up and hit her nostrils with a sickeningly sweet stench. Carol kept guard, looking around, making sure no one was coming.

“When I tell you, go back and start the car and be ready to go,” Tim ordered as he continued to pour.

A car came down the street.

“Get down,” Tim ordered.

Carol hid behind a tree. When the car was gone, Tim poured out the remaining gasoline. Carol saw him leave a small trail of twigs and leaves leading up to the gasoline-drenched body. It was really a fuse that he intended to light. It would burn along the ground and when it hit the body, poof! It would go up in flames, destroying the evidence.

“Okay, start the car,” Tim ordered.

“Well, you got the keys.”

He stood there for a minute, thinking. Then, instead of giving her the keys, he gave her a lighter.

“You’re gonna light her. Light the gas,” he said.

Carol hadn’t bargained for that. She didn’t know what they were doing. What did she know about disposing of a body by burning it? But this wasn’t the time to disagree with Tim.

Tim put the gas can in the trunk. Then he went and got into the car and told her that when he gave the signal, “light it.”

Carol looked around. She was scared; she didn’t know what to do. Tim cracked the door open and peered out. No one was coming.

“Light it,” he ordered.

She looked down at about a five-foot trail of leaves and twigs, saturated with gas that led toward the body. Carol took a piece of paper out of her pocket, lit it, and put it down on the ground. But it didn’t hit the gas. When the paper went out, she bent down and lit the gas. When it caught fire, she ran to the car.

She looked back. It was a small, weak fire. Tim pulled out and onto the street and hit the accelerator. Never mind it was snowing and icy. He wanted to get the hell out of there.

“Did the body catch fire?” Tim asked.

Carol said she didn’t know. Tim was upset, real upset that she hadn’t lit the body. He repeated that that was what she was supposed to do, to make sure the body was lit. That way, she’d burn and nobody’d recognize her.

“I lit the trail close to the body,” she lied. “It should catch.”

There was no more time to waste. Tim drove around some streets that were foreign to her, until he pulled up in front of Uncle Sammy’s house. They knocked on the door. Carol hadn’t seen Tim pull the gas can out of the car, but there it was, in his hand. He was putting it down on the steps inside the house after Uncle Sammy let them in. They went upstairs, into the living room. Two of Sammy’s girlfriends were already there enjoying his hospitality.

Tim pulled some crack out of his pocket. He gave Sammy some and the two girls some. The four of them lit up and smoked, drifting to heaven on the high, not worrying about anything except where the next pipe was coming from.

He started socializing, like they had just come over for a Sunday dinner. What’s your name? Where you from? Was her brother so-and-so? Yada yada yada. After a while, Tim got bored.