Unbury Carol(8)

“Manders,” he said, his voice trembling. “She’s gone!”

But as the words fell false from his lips, his mind remained focused on the incredible series of events that had led him to where he was. The Illness had taken Bowie in pieces (it always did, that’s how it worked), and there had been plenty of time for Dwight to account for the fact that, with Bowie’s eventual expiration, there would be nobody living who knew of Carol’s condition.

But for Carol to go under on the very same night Bowie was buried?

Well, Dwight knew that was not exactly fortuitous luck. Carol was far too stubborn to recognize a correlation between her comas and the stresses life may or may not have placed upon her. Dwight had been keeping track of such things for close to five years. He’d even pointed it out to her, but Carol refuted this claim, insisting that if Hattie hadn’t spotted it, it simply didn’t exist.

And yet it did exist. Carol went under the very night Hattie died, too. Emotional duress almost always sent Carol to…to…

Howltown.

Carol’s childish name for the comas.

He was about a mile away from Lafayette’s shack. The pear-shaped ponytailed wrinkled witch of a Trail-watcher whose primary source of income was connecting civil men with uncivil monsters. Carol had never liked her. Dwight wasn’t sure he liked her himself. But there was a lot of Carol’s money to go around now. And Lafayette knew better than most what to do with a surplus.

“Manders,” Dwight said, changing the timbre of his voice slightly. A tad less sad. “She’s…gone.”

John Bowie wasn’t the only one who knew of Carol’s condition. But Carol certainly didn’t need to know about Lafayette.

Dwight wanted to laugh with excitement, but couldn’t. There were things to take care of before celebrating in any way. A quick conversation with Lafayette for starters. Funeral arrangements with Manders straight after.

And what of the girl, Farrah? How much did she know?

Dwight had carried her to the guest bedroom and placed her gently upon the mattress. Best to look gentlemanly at this stage of the game. And if she woke while he was away? She wouldn’t think to check the cellar. She’d simply discover that her lady was no longer in the master bedroom and she’d rush into town, hysterical, claiming that her lady had died.

All good for Dwight.

“Manders…she’s gone.”

But now Dwight wasn’t using a sad tone at all. Now he was blubbering with enthusiasm as the lone light in Lafayette’s shack came aflame like a lightning bug: a solitary life living in the shadows.

She really does live like a witch, Dwight thought.

He parked the coach twenty feet from the lean-to and got down from the box quickly. Lafayette’s door was open, as if this were only a summer night that had nothing to do with death. Nothing to do with murder at all.

“Evers?”

Lafayette’s wrinkled face was in the window. Dwight hadn’t seen it until he was inches from the open door.

“She’s under.”

Lafayette didn’t look surprised. She didn’t look like she’d heard Dwight at all. Dwight imagined that it was one of the many reasons the Trail-watcher was good at what she did.

“Come inside.”

Dwight crossed the shack’s threshold and thought of Carol collapsing upon the threshold of the back door at home. By the time he reached the small wooden table within, Lafayette was already seated.

“So we begin,” Lafayette said.

“Manders,” Dwight said, nodding. “Tonight.”

Lafayette held up a fat open palm. Her eyes shone by candlelight.

“Too rushed. Do it tomorrow.”

“I want her buried now.”

Lafayette laughed and with the laughter Dwight felt as if he were seeing the woman for the first time—how she truly was. It felt something like discovering the edicts of a club after the initiation had taken place.

“He’s not gonna bury her tonight, Dwight. You can count on that. Let’s stick to the plan.”

“Plan? Carol has gone under. We bury her. That’s the plan.”

Lafayette looked over her shoulder, through the open front door. “Is she in the carriage?”

There was an uneasy, lustful curiosity in her voice. It made Dwight’s stomach turn. “She’s at home. Where she belongs, if Sheriff Opal were to ask.”

Lafayette turned her emotionless eyes on Dwight. “So while you’re with Manders…she could wake and…walk on out…maybe go to Manders, too…make a fool of you?”

“No. She won’t wake tonight. She’s never woken that quick.”

“What’s the quickest?”

“Two days. Since we’ve been married. Since she’d been under my watch.”

“And before then?”

“Two days!” Dwight bellowed.

Even then Lafayette showed no impatience, no anger. “Then why rush?”

Dwight opened his mouth to speak. Closed it. Opened it again. “I want her buried now.”

Lafayette rested her heavy hands upon her considerable gut. In the lantern shadows her ponytail looked something like a whip.

“It’ll look like grief to Manders,” Dwight said.

“Which it is, of course.”