The Girl in the Woods

Roger nodded. "Sure." He felt his own excitement growing. A girl. His dad had explained it to him, and it made perfect sense. Take a girl who needed a husband and make her your wife. That had to be what Mr. Bolton was talking about. "You want her to come and live with me?" Roger said.

 

Mr. Bolton smiled. "I want you to bring her here, yes. I want you to bring her to the clearing, and then you'll know what to do with her."

 

 

 

But Roger hadn't done that. He hadn't brought the girl to the clearing right away. He intended to. He meant to. He found her at the place and time Mr. Bolton had given him, and he took her off the street just as they discussed. But when he brought her back to the house, she cried and asked for her mother, so rather than take her out to the clearing, as he was supposed to do, Roger brought her inside the house. And once she was inside the house, he found out he liked having her there, and he didn't want her to leave.

 

Roger wondered if all of his trouble began then, when he didn't listen to what Mr. Bolton told him to do. And now, after all of these years, the chickens were coming home to roost. He wiped the snot and tears off his face and grabbed the shovel, raising it and driving it deep into the earth on the other side of the clearing from where he had buried the girl. He churned the earth, piling it to the side of the hole he slowly created, making room, ever so slowly, for the body of the dead cop to be placed inside.

 

He had to be a man. He knew what he had to do.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

 

 

 

 

 

Getting rid of the truck was relatively easy.

 

Before he rolled the cop into his shallow grave, Roger went through the man's pockets and found the key ring. He trudged back to the house, carrying the shovel, the dirt from the grave covering his hands and his clothes. He thought about going upstairs and checking on the girl, but he didn't imagine it would do him much good. She might have worked her way loose and run off, or she might still be there, tied to the bed. It didn't really matter to him at this point. Whatever the situation with her, he could deal with it when he came back. And deal with it he must. But first, there was the truck.

 

Roger knew he didn't have time to dispose of it properly. In order to do that, he'd have to have someone else to work with, someone who could drive one car while he drove the truck, and they could go far away, possibly to Columbus or Cincinnati and leave it parked at an airport or bus station, anything that would throw the police off the trail. People did that kind of thing all the time on the cop shows. But he couldn't do that. He had to dump it fast and then get back to the house and finish the rest of his work.

 

But Roger did think he could find a decent place to hide the truck in the short-term, just long enough to give him to time to straighten up the house and be ready for the trouble he suspected would be coming down on him very soon.

 

He wished he could keep the truck for himself. It smelled new and clean inside, like the kind of truck that Roger had never owned and would never be able to afford. It looked like it belonged to a guy with a good job and a little bit of money. On the passenger seat, Roger found a map of the county with different areas circled and other areas crossed off. His house was circled in green marker, so he took those papers and threw them out the window of the truck, letting them flutter away behind him like giant moths in the wind. When they did find the truck, he didn't want any evidence left linking him to the cop. Unless the cop had already told someone he was coming to Roger's house. He shook his head quickly. He couldn't think about that.

 

Roger drove east for three miles, away from his house and toward the small town of Lambeau. He remembered going there with his dad to hunt. He knew a dirt road, rutted and narrow, where hunters left their cars during deer season. He found the spot and left the truck there, off to the side of the road and near the trees. The season had been going for almost a month now, and it wouldn't be unusual to see a truck parked in that place. Anyone passing by would assume it belonged to a hunter out in the woods and would then go about their business as though nothing were wrong.

 

Before he left the truck, he dug around in the cab looking for anything else he needed to remove, anything that might link him to the cop. It looked like the guy was in school. Roger found some papers covered with math equations and a couple of thick textbooks. He also found some loose change, a tube of deodorant and a baseball glove, but nothing he thought he needed to take.

 

Roger stepped out of the cab and closed the door. He tossed the keys back into the woods and heard them land somewhere out of sight with a metallic jangle.

 

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