“And tell the police they tried to force their way in,” Felicia finished. “We will do it. I’m glad Claude and his wife are visiting for a time. This will take some getting used to. It…it has been many years since I have been allowed my own thoughts. I hope to return to Paris and see my surviving family. The identities Haris had made for us are very good as are the passports. When he went overseas, he never left us alone. If he had to go away on business, he had a man come and stay at the house with us. We were always afraid. We are cowards.”
“Don’t think about that at all. I have experience with men like El-Amin. They are brutal nightmares to common people. It takes monsters to handle monsters, Felicia. Think no more of this time of captivity. You and your friends are now part of our extended family. We can and will be here within hours if you need us.”
“You are not a monster.”
Nick smiled slowly. “Yes, Felicia… I am.”
*
“The young one still fears somehow El-Amin will return,” Cala said from the backseat. “Perhaps we should have allowed her to see his body.”
“She’s already seen enough for now,” Nick replied. “Living at her age with a slaver like El-Amin, it will be all Felicia can do to bring her around to civilization. It may never happen. Johnny and I probably should have cleaned him a while longer. I have an idea I should have thought of with the first Kader I killed secretly. We’re going to stop at a butcher shop on the way to the woods when we drop Cala off for a while.”
“It is too much inconvenience, Muerto. I’ll be okay in the woods.”
“We have to backtrack to get on the freeway again anyhow. We’ll hit the butcher shop, drop you at a nice coffee shop, and go tuck Kader and El-Amin in for their long dirt nap.”
“What’s with the butcher shop?”
“We’re going to get pork pieces, hopefully something the butcher normally throws out. Uh oh,” Nick said, seeing the twisted look forming on Gus’s face. “Too much?”
“That’s gross,” Gus said. “What the hell will you tell the butcher you’re going to use them for?”
“I’ll tell him I’m burying devout Islamic monsters in the woods and they need a shroud.”
Johnny and Cala enjoyed the exchange, but Gus shook his head with unconcealed disgust. He suddenly straightened. “Damn, Muerto… you’re going to take pictures, aren’t you? That’s just disturbing.”
“Nope. Mutilating and preying on a twelve year old girl from the time she was nine is disturbing. El-Amin’s burial rites will be a little justice. I’ll send Felicia a digital file to show the girl if she still has nightmares about Haris coming back to haunt them. I’ll send whomever takes over the Kader family, if they have anyone left, the final resting place of their deceased leader. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, right?”
Gus took a deep breath. “I concede your point. What will you tell the butcher?”
“I’ll tell him I’ve got a dog that eats burnt barbeque and loves it. I’ll say I can’t afford to barbeque the spoiled brat real meat as a treat, and he likes pork guts barbequed in cooked pork blood.”
“Yuck,” Gus replied. “I’m telling Deke on you.”
“Where’d you think I got the story from?”
*
Having driven off road on a fire trail, Nick remembered from a past contract, located near the Allegheny National Forest, the Unholy Trio proceeded to the burial site with backpackers’ headlamps. The weather, drizzling in a light steady mist, created perfect conditions for the burials. The ground was soft but not so wet it couldn’t be excavated. It didn’t take the trio long to create graves deep enough not to expunge their contents at an inopportune time. They posed each of the deceased at the bottom of their grave with hands folded over their chests. Nick poured the contents of the two large plastic bags over the dead men up to their hands. He then added a pig’s head to each grave on the shoulder of each corpse. Johnny moved in with digital camera and flash, taking stills of each grave from different angles until satisfied he had more than a few keepers in the bunch.
Johnny viewed each one with professional expertise, having learned many trade basics while on location with Director Lynn when she filmed the ‘Hollywood Bounty Hunters’. “These are incredible, Muerto. I’m glad the butcher actually had a couple heads. They project nightmare into the scene.”
“Good job. Let’s get them covered.” Nick and Gus worked the shovels filling in the graves easily while Johnny packed their body bags for disposal in another place. Nick moved rocks, leaves, and branch debris over the filled in graves until the site looked as natural as it could.
Nick moved away in the darkness, checking the scene with reduced light. “The rain will blend a lot of it quickly. That’s it. You two head single file back to the SUV. I’ll brush our trail sign.”
“Who the hell do you think might do a ground check all the way out here, Muerto?”
“I don’t think, Payaso. I do the job and pay attention to the details. Quit yappin’ and get moving. I’d like to hit a real nice place somewhere before Illinois to stop for the night with a nice Bushmill’s Irish nightcap… or morning cap.”
“Get moving, Payaso,” Johnny ordered. “Now, all I can think of is a hot shower and a nightcap.”