evermore: a short story collection

no body no crime

He did it.

The thought echoes through my mind again and again, racing past like the trees in my peripheral. I glance once more behind my shoulder, and just like the past ten times I've checked in the last five minutes, no one is following behind me. I'm alone on the misty lake, my only company his still body beneath the tarp at my feet, and only the moon to bear witness.

A few more minutes cutting through the water, and I arrive at my destination. The cove looks just as it did in my memories of when I would come down here with my dad at fifteen. Good for fishing, he'd told me, but too dangerous for swimming. The cove was shielded on one side by a solid wall of dark trees, waters deep and black enough to conceal big catfish, but with a sneaky current strong enough to pull an unsuspecting swimmer down and through a gap in the brush just big enough to pass through. I'd never been allowed to swim here, but the cove is perfect for what I need to do. I stall the boat at the center of the circular inlet, then cut the motor, sending it sputtering before it quiets into an eerie stillness that matches the surroundings. I grab the backpack I've loaded with rocks, and check one last time that any evidence is stashed inside. Pill bottle, glass, whiskey bottle, his phone with messages leading him to where I was waiting. All there. I pull back the tarp to strap the backpack to his chest. His arms are stiff and cool, and I know I don't have much time before they're frozen in place. I stuff them between the straps of the backpack and buckle it around his waist for good measure. I have to lift his torso a little to reach the buckle and when I set him back down, his mouth falls open. It looks so much like a scream, albeit a silent one, that I stumble back in horror. The reality of what I've done washes over me and suddenly I feel hot tears splashing down my cheeks. I wipe them away furiously.

He did it.

I nod to myself as if I've said the words aloud, and roll him closer to the edge of the boat. I notice blood has smeared out from under the tarp; no matter how inconspicuously poison works, apparently transporting a grown man's dead body is messy work. I make a mental note to take my bleach and scrubbing brush to the boat, and my car for good measure, when I'm finished here, and I turn my focus back on getting him in the water. Just as I'm about to lift him over, a voice in my head:

I think he did it.

The doubt creeps in my mind as I replay the events of the past weeks in my head. Este, trying to mask real pain behind self-deprecating jokes, telling me about her suspicions. The faint smell of Merlot on his breath, the unexplained charges to hotels and jewelry stores on their shared bank statement. She swore she was going to confront him, and I egged her on, tipsy then and nearly yelling that if she didn't give him a piece of her mind, I would. The next week at Olive Garden, my ever-increasing frustration as Este's tardiness turned to full on standing me up. The angry question marks turning to concerned messages with each passing day that I didn't hear from her. Another woman answering the door when I stopped by to check on her, my confusion turning to suspicion when I saw his newly replaced truck tires and heard that he'd filed a missing person report for Este. Every day I imagined something worse than the day before: him rolling through a muddy back road to bury her lifeless body, him running straight into her, backing over her again and again until she stopped screaming. I was sure he did it, badgered my own husband with my suspicions until he yelled at me to move on. I had moved on, moved on to contacting Este's sister and discovered she shared the same worries. We had never liked him, we both insisted, always got a bad vibe from him. We talked late into the night, going over the possibilities together again and again. Este must have confronted him for cheating, there must have been an argument, he must have gotten violent, things went too far. Then his whore must have helped him hide the body before moving into Este's bed herself. There was no other explanation.

But, now, all alone in a boat with his lifeless body at my feet, my confidence wavers. Wasn't it just as likely that Este had confronted him, he admitted to the infidelity and chose the mistress over her? He had never raised a hand to Este before. Wasn't it possible that, heartbroken, Este had fled town all on her own, left her phone behind in her haste?

No, no, no, no.

I interrupt that impossible train of thought and force my trembling hands to still. I bend my knees, wind my arms under his, and heave his torso up on the side of the boat. With one last push of his legs, he tumbles over, and splashes into the water below. I watch him sink until I can't see any hint of him through the black water, then count to ten, when I think he'll have been caught by the current, then plunge the long paddle I brought with me into the water. I steer myself around the cove once, twice, checking every last corner to make sure he's been swept away, and not caught on some unseen roots far below. When I'm finally as sure as I will ever be that his weighted body is gone, I breathe a sigh of relief and take one last look around, yank the motor back to life, and speed away from the cove without looking back.

He did it.