Book Excerpt
Toad had some good news for Jessica.
Jessica didn’t like Toad much, but he sure as hell delivered.
Toad got his name because he croaked—yes there were jokes about how Toad croaked, there was something wrong with his larynx, maybe a tonsillectomy gone wrong. Toad had been sniffing around her at The East Inn for months now, buying her beers, and one time they went out into the parking lot to make out, but he sucked as a kisser—literally sucked her lip like a vacuum cleaner attachment. Ever since then she sat at the bar and ignored him, flirting with Dave the bartender. Honesty here: she had a huge crush on Dave, and the one time he winked at her, she almost came right there on the bar stool. She told him it was her birthday and he grinned his pirate’s grin. His handsome pirate grin.
Jessica hoped they’d be a couple soon. She could feel his attraction to her, but there were…problems. So for now, Toad was her go-to guy. The guy who could make Dave jealous.
Still, she didn’t like being around Toad. He gave her the creeps. The hair rose on her arms when he brushed by her, and she finally—recently—understood the reason why. Once, she’d asked him if he ever in his whole fucking life did anything interesting.
She’d asked him this weeks ago–about the time he’d started talking about killing someone. She called bullshit, but he’d touched her elbow and said, “They’re in the ground. It’s not far. Nobody else knows about it, except me. So if you ever want someone to disappear…”
He’d let that hang.
She’d decided she did need his services, which was why she was flirting with him again at the bar.
He saw she was in to him, and for a moment it seemed as if his face had been transformed. Like she could see the man he’d end up being, with the body fat melted off. His eyes were…
Mesmerizing.
They went with his BAD MOJO T-shirt.
Actually he was kind of sexy. Maybe it had been the wine she’d been drinking nonstop.
But she thought it was because of something else.
Because she believed—
No, she was sure, that Toad was a killer.
Now—tonight—she looked into his eyes, trying to tell if he was bullshitting her. His pupils were tiny but intense. They seemed to come to a point that was darker than anything she’d ever seen. She realized, too, that he was actually pretty good-looking, in a sloppy way.
She knew he had the hots for her. She knew she could wrap him around her little finger. She knew that he was always watching her, like a chained dog watching people walk by his yard, always straining against the collar.
To affect someone that way—it felt powerful. Especially if what he said was true. And what if there was a body? She felt it then, a delicious pit of pleasure deep down inside her, the feeling spreading out, sensual, like something sweet and warm inside. Maybe he was the real thing.
Maybe he’d do it for her.
She had the money with her just in case, just as he’d asked. She’d said he’d have to prove it, first.
Maybe, he was full of shit and this was just his way of getting her to fuck him.
One more time. “You killed someone,” she said. “You really did it?”
He nodded.
“And you’d do it again?”
“I said I would.”
“Okay,” she said. “But you have to prove it to me. You have to convince me—the body’s still there, where you told me, right? You’ll take me out there, right?
He bowed. “Your chariot awaits.”
Stupid, but kind of sweet.
His car didn’t look any better than he did. In fact, it kind of smelled. Maybe it was gym shoes or just sweat and unwashed clothes. She knew he lived with two other guys in a motel room they rented by the month. He wasn’t in school anymore—at least that’s what she’d heard. She sat in the bucket seat leaning against the door, aware of the beer can rolling around at her feet, that strong, yeasty smell.
Still, she wondered. She wondered if his stories had been made up. She wondered if anything he’d said was true. If it was just so much bullshit. He didn’t really seem like a guy who could get things done. And yet, she wanted to rely on him.
That was how bad it was.
That was what that bitch had done to her self-respect.
Destroyed her life. Destroyed her future.
They headed out of town into the desert, following Grant Road out into the middle of nowhere. “Almost there,” he said, reaching over to pat her knee. She flinched. Before, at the bar, she’d felt distinctly horny, but not out here. Besides, the guy she was horny for wasn’t anything like Toad. Toad was a means to the end.
Being in his close proximity made her uncomfortable. Not because of what she’d planned, but because of the weird way his fingers cinched the skin of her knee. Like somebody’s grandfather would pinch a little kid’s chin.
The road narrowed as the houses dropped away, dwindling into the distance.
Her heartbeat picked up pace.
He turned his head to look at her. “You have the money, right?”
She nodded, held tight to her purse.
“Good. Because…SURPRISE!!!! We’re HERE!”
He squeezed her knee again, and this time, it hurt.
Jessica felt a thrill flash through her belly. Through her belly and lower, to her core. “You mean you already did it?”
“What do you think?”
“I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”
“Really?”
“I thought you were joking. I bet you never killed anyone. There is no body. You don’t have to make stuff up just to get me out here.”
“No?”
“No.” Feeling horny now.
She liked his profile. He was pretty good-looking, even if people thought he was kind of creepy.
The whole thing about killing Shelby was really just a fantasy.
He said nothing as he parked on the side of the empty road, opened his door, and got out. She heard him stepping on the gravel and rocks. Walking away from her. He stopped and stared up at the moon. Kicked at a rock. “Do you want to see it or not?”
Although she still thought he was making it up, she wanted to go look. “You’d do it, like that, if I paid you, right?”
“Oh, yeah. If you like what you see, we can work something out about your friend. Wait a minute,” he added. “Just want to scout around and make sure no cops have been there.”
And then he was gone.
She sat in the car. The window was open and she could hear the car engine ticking. She didn’t want to play games. She was sure all of this was pretty much about sex. He wanted to do it, and she was halfway thinking that would be okay, so why was he drawing this out? It felt like she was being played.
This was a joke. It had gone far enough.
She opened the car door and got out. She followed the wash to a place where she could get down. Ahead, where there was rainwater on the concrete, she thought she saw a dead animal of some sort.
But no, it was just a discarded piece of clothing.
The smell hit her right then. The stink. It enveloped her, its bloated skunky fingers poking into her nostrils and slipping into her mouth, the stench sinking into her skin.
Toad cackled. He was standing right beside her. “You thought I was lying, didn’t you?”
The stink clung to her. She almost gagged, but she was seized by curiosity—seeing something lying there, under the bridge, darker than the darkness around it.
“Somebody’s dead?” (although she knew it was true). “Who is it?” She tried to think about who might be missing—if there was anything she’d heard locally. But she didn’t really know because she didn’t follow the local news. “You really did this?”
He had a flashlight. Let’s go down there, he said. It’s a woman. I’ll have to put your enemy—what’s her name? Shelly?—somewhere else.
Suddenly, her distaste turned to interest. She’d never seen anyone dead before. But it made her nervous, too. He made her nervous. If he wanted money, he wouldn’t do anything to her, right? He’d kill for her. For money. Still, her hand inched to the phone in her back pocket as she followed him down the embankment to the culvert. There was some water from the previous night’s rain, standing like oil on the concrete floor under the road.
He glanced back at her. Her hand hovered over her back pocket, then she dropped it to her side.
She didn’t want to piss him off.
As she looked down at the puddle, she realized it was blood, not oil.
She felt two things at once. A horniness that ripped like a rapier through her body—pure avid pleasure. Breath-taking.
And at the same time, a carnival spin of fear.
She glanced over at Toad but he only stood there, arms crossed, staring into the culvert. It was dark, and the moonlight gleamed on the pool of blood, she could tell it was drying but some patches were still wet, which meant it was recent. Had to strain her eyes in the darkness until she saw a darker darkness, a pile of old rags. Stiff rags. Rags, and a skunky smell. She stepped forward—couldn’t help herself. Something avid and greedy inside her embraced the stink, embraced the sight she could barely make out: The shape of a woman—what a rush! Clothes on it, like clothes on a mannequin. Dark here, only a glimmer of the moon on the oily pool of blood, and what got her was the corpse was more thing than person. Static, unmovable. Hard to see in the dark but the outline was human, the hair was long and mired in the blood.
She cleared her throat. “It’s not real, but it looks—”
She coughed, accidentally breathed in, and the stench hit her between the eyes, rushed up her nostrils, sank into her pores, sticky and skunky, lining the inside of her mouth like a layer of grit. She stepped back and a breeze rippled over her.
Cool and welcome.
The stink…there was a dead animal—rabbit, she thought—it stunk to high heaven. She took another step back, the pistons of her heart starting to backpedal, as she backpedaled, right into something solid—
Toad.
He held her tight and hard. Adrenaline squirted through her body. “Hey!” it came out in a croak. Her mind now a rat in a maze, hitting dead-ends at a hundred miles an hour.
He took me out here so I could join her.
She heard that over and over in her ears, in her brain, in her thick dry mouth and throat.
As he held her in a vise, she found herself staring at the body. She knew she was caught in an iron-tight web, unable to move, except for the manic beat of her heart—her pulse beat in her throat, in her ears, in her stomach, all at once. She hadn’t really seen much of it before, but now Toad’s flashlight was trained on the head.
The head.
Her heart seized again. Was she having a heart attack? She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. She didn’t see a head. No, no head. No, there was no head, just something…. Something pink in the flashlight not skin but something else no not skin no-no-no-no-no, it was an oval wrapped in something light-colored.
Shiny.
Pink…pale pink: tape?
Duct tape?
The wrapped head looked like a beehive. Hair flowed out the bottom. Toad stepped toward the corpse and ripped the tape away, unwinding, unwinding, stripping the tape from around the face. She turned away. Closed her eyes. Her heart pounding, everything rushing out of her body on a train of adrenaline, just BOOM! Right down to her toes.
Run!
But she couldn’t.
Her throat locked up, as it did sometimes when she had nightmares, when she cried out but made no sound. She was cold, oh so cold. It was a warm night but she was cold. This was a nightmare, it had to be a nightmare, it wasn’t real—it’s not real—it’s not real it’s not he’s going to kill me he’s going to kill me please no—
The corpse sat up.
A joke?
The corpse ripped at the tape, painfully unwinding it. Revealing the mouth.
Grinning.
Shelby, her former best friend, smiling, alive, not dead, not dead at all—
She realized that the rabbit, the dead, bloated rabbit, was the source of the smell…
Shelby getting to her feet to greet them, smiling, smiling, smiling…
What a relief, just a practical joke, how good—
She felt Toad’s hands close around her throat—
And heard Shelby laughing.
Laughing as her sight grew dim, laughing as she choked, couldn’t stand it another second, laughing somewhere in the universe where the darkness zoomed in, tiny exploding lights and pain, pain, pain, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe! shut-off, it was SHUT OFF!!! not one more second—
Distantly she heard Toad say, “Oh, shit, what d’ya know?
“Blew a fuse.”
