Screwup

With Karen Lansdale

This one is Jill Morgan’s fault.  She asked my wife and me to do a story for a book of stories written by husbands and wives.  Karen had a couple of ideas, and one of them sparked something.  I changed it a bit, told her what I had in mind, she suggested changes.  I wrote a draft, she worked it over a bit, and I revised, and this came out.

This is the second time Karen and I have done a story together.  The first was “Change of Lifestyle” which appeared in The Twilight Zone Magazine.

We also co-edited an anthology together.

No one got hurt.

As he drove, Miller could hear his wife’s voice in the back of his head telling him what a screwup he was.  The thought of her, the memory of her voice, were normally things he did not like to think about, but now, with her tucked nice and dead in the car trunk, thinking about her wasn’t so bad.

It had been a simple thing, really.  He had considered it for years, almost immediately after the wedding.  Nothing he did or had done suited Caroline.

She didn’t like his job and wanted better for him, she said, so he left it, and when his new job turned sour she scolded him for leaving the old job, never remembered, or admitted she remembered, that she was the one who had asked him to leave.

It was always that way.  One thing after another.  If he took the garbage out, he took it out the wrong.  He should have double-bagged it.  If he double-bagged it, she felt he was wasting bags.  He was supposed to know the difference in trash that needed double-bagging and the trash that needed a single bag.  Now and then Caroline suggested triple-bagging for something especially nasty.

Miller smiled.

She was tripled-bagged.  Very bloody, so three bags were necessary.  He was sure she would approve since the axe blows to her head had made a terrible mess, and would have made an even worse mess in her car.

Her car.  He owned the Cadillac before they met, but now it was her car.  As everything they owned was hers.  Including him.

But not now.  Not anymore.
Miller was smiling to himself when he noticed the flashing lights in the rearview mirror.  His stomach turned sour immediately.  He pulled over and rolled down the window and waited, watched the cop in the rearview mirror.  The cop parked his car, got out, came around to the window.

“I’m sorry, officer,” Miller said.  “Was I speeding?”

The cop was tall, lean fellow with sunglasses on.  Miller could see himself in the glasses.  Somehow, those glasses made him feel as if he were looking into the cold, calculating eyes of an insect.

“License please,” the officer asked.

“I must have been driving faster then I thought, “ Miller said, pulling his wallet out and opening it to his license.

The cop took the wallet, looked at the license.  “Nothing like that, sir.”  The officer gave him his wallet back.  “Could you get out of the car please?  And bring the keys.”

Miller got out and the officer walked him around to the rear of the automobile.  He pointed at the left taillight.

“When you put on the brakes, going around the curve there, I noticed your light wasn’t working.”

“Oh,” Miller said, and he tried not to look overly relieved.

“Cars like this,” the officer said, “sometimes something in the trunk falls against the wire inside, disconnects it.  It’s easy to connect.”

“Good.  I’ll take care of it as soon as I get home.”

“No sir,” the officer said.  “We’ll take care of it right now.  You need to have your taillight working.  If it isn’t a loose wire, I’ll follow you to a filling station where you can have it fixed.”

“I’m going straight home.  I can fix it myself.”

“Your license says you live on Timberridge, that’s in the other direction, so you’re not going straight home.”

“Well, I meant after I run some errands.”

“Open the trunk, sir.”

Miller found the correct key on his ring and opened the trunk.  The big plastic bag, like a cocoon, filled most of the space.

“You don’t have a spare back here?” the cop said.

“No sir.  I took it out.  I had some things I wanted to donate to Goodwill.  I bagged them up, and the bag was so large I had to take the tire out.”

“That’s certainly a nice new shoe you’re donating there,” the officer said.  “”My wife has some just like it.”

“What?”

“The shoe.”

Miller looked.  The bottom of the bag had broken open, and Caroline’s shoe was poking through the break.  You couldn’t see her ankle, just the shoe, the heel of which was resting against a tire iron.

“Oh yeah,” Miller said.  “My wife, she’s like that.  Buys shoes by the dozens.  Soon as she thinks something is out of style, out it goes.  Good tax write off, though.  Goodwill, I mean.”

“Let’s look at that light,” the officer said.  The cop leaned forward, looked inside the trunk.  “Here’s your problem,” he said.  “This bag of clothes has rolled up against the wiring here.”

The cop struggled to move the bag, hesitated, turned and looked at Miller with those bug-eye glasses. Miller could see himself in their mirrored reflection.  He looked red and sweaty in the glasses. 

“You say that bag is full of clothes?” the officer said.

Miller nodded.

“Awful heavy,” the officer said.

“Stuffed tight,” Miller said.

The officer reached out and touched the bag and shifted it.  Caroline’s leg, which had been bent, suddenly extended through the bag, showing not only the shoe, but half a sleek leg in hose.

As the officer reached for his gun, Miller reached for the tire tool.  Miller was faster.  The tool came down on the cop’s cowboy hat and creased it, then creased the head beneath it.  The cop fell straight into Miller’s arms.  Miller dropped the cop and hit him three times in the head with the tire tool, making sure.

When Miller was finished, he boosted the cop into the trunk.  He was about to close the lid when he heard a sound.  He looked to his left, and there, across the highway, standing on a trail on the side of a wooded hill, was a young man with a pack on his back, holding a hiking stick.

The hiker turned quickly, started scuttling up the hill, back into the undergrowth.

“Darn,” Miller said.  He pulled the cop’s gun free, closed the trunk, and ran after the hiker.

Miller was in decent shape, and the man was wearing a pack, so it wasn’t long before he had him in sight.  The hiker had abandoned his walking stick, and was trying to work out of his pack as he ran.  He was making strange sounds, like a trapped animal.  He worked out of the pack and veered off the trail into the woods.

Miller followed.

As the man scrambled up a vine-covered hill, Miller pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.  The bullet slammed into the side of the hill, but missed the hiker.  The hiker made it to the summit of the hill, and was just about to start down the other side when Miller fired again.

This time, Miller was on the money.  The hiker took it in the back, rolled down the hill, bounced against a few thin trees, tumbled to the ground right in front of Miller.

The hiker looked up at Miller with pleading eyes.

“Nothing personal,” Miller said. “Really.”

He shot the hiker in the head.  Twice.

Miller considered leaving the hiker, but thought it might be best to rid himself of the body, along with the cop and his wife.  He had plans to sink Caroline in an old well he knew about on some abandoned property.  He was sure the cop and the hiker would also fit.

Miller jammed the pistol into his pants waistband and pulled his shirt over it.  He gathered up the hiker’s pack and walking stick, tied the walking stick to the pack and put the pack on.  He hoisted the hiker’s body onto his back in a fireman’s cradle, headed toward the highway and his car.

By the time Miller made the highway, he was exhausted.  The man was not a big man, but carrying pack, man, stick, and doing it on rough terrain, was no easy chore.

When Miller got to the edge of the highway, he looked to see if cars were coming.  None were.  Finally, luck was with him.  He carried the body across the highway, dropped it on the ground, hustled the car keys out of his pocket, and opened the trunk.  He picked up the body and tried to shove it in with the cop and Caroline.  It wouldn’t fit.

He pulled the body out, and in then process, the man’s hand caught on the bag containing Caroline, and tore it, all three layers.

Caroline’s face was revealed.  Miller dropped the dead hiker on the ground and looked at the pretty but mocking face.  It seemed to say: “You’re a screwup.  Always a screwup.”

Miller slammed the lid, dragged the hiker to the side of the Cadillac, opened the back door and hoisted the hiker’s body inside.  He put the pack and the stick in there with him.

Covered in sweat, Miller climbed behind the wheel.

He hadn’t gone far when the car began to handle roughly, and in a moment of anger, Miller realized it was his right tire.  The one Caroline told him needed air.  She had bitched about it for an hour, about how he should get air in the tire, about how he should keep the car up, so on and so on, and then he got the axe and made her quiet.

But she was right.  The tire needed air.  He couldn’t just stop at a station and get air.  Someone might see the hiker’s body in the back seat.

Miller pulled off the highway onto a dirt road, got out and opened the trunk.  Caroline’s body had rolled to the side and now her lips were pressed against the dead cop’s lips.

Unfaithful even in death, though Miller.  She had started messing around a month after the wedding, and now, dead, she was still doing it.

Suddenly, Miller remembered he had no spare.

“Damn,” he said.

And then he heard a car pull over and stop.  Two teenagers, a boy and a girl were parked behind him.  They got out, smiling.  

“Hey, you need some help, mister?” said the boy.

“No,” Miller said, but already they were near him.  He saw the girl’s eyes go wide as she looked in the trunk.

“Johnny!” she said, but Johnny had also seen the bodies.  Johnny took off running for his car.  Miller pulled out the pistol and shot him in the back and dropped him.  The girl took off running down the road in the opposite direction.  Miller stepped into the road, leveled the gun, and fired.  The girl went face down on the dirt road, slid, then rolled on her back.

Miller, exhausted, pushed the gun into his waistband, gathered up the girl’s body, then the boy’s, and placed them in the back seat with the hiker.

He checked the teenager’s tires.  Too small. They wouldn’t work on a Caddy.

Exhausted, angry, Miller took bullets from the cop’s gun belt and reloaded the pistol.  He might as well be ready for anything.  He closed up the trunk, drove out of there on a dying tire.

Eventually, Miller located a serve-yourself filling station, pulled in there.  He feared the tire would be so worn that airing it up would be useless.  But he found he was wrong.  The tire swelled up to normal size.

But it wasn’t all good news.  There was a slow leak.  He could hear it hissing.  He filled the tire as best he could, then drove off, heading for the well.  He hoped it was deep enough to hold everybody.

When Miller reached the well it was almost dark.  The well was near the remains of an old house and the house was in the middle of a weed-grown pasture.  The house had been scourged and raped and left for dead by the elements.  The brick curbing around the well was mostly crumbled away, and the mouth of it was covered with an old piece of rotting plyboard.

Miller parked the Caddy near the old gate, got out and opened it, drove through and on up to the old house and well.

As he pulled up, pigeons took flight from the rotting ruins of the house, spotted the gray sky for a moment, then they were gone and the world was silent.

Miller pulled the plyboard off the well and took a look.  It was too dark to see the bottom, but he could tell a lot of the well had crumbled.  He used to play here as a kid, and just last year, out of nostalgia, he had stopped here to look at the old house and the old well.

When he was eleven, he and Trudy Jo Terrence had played here.  He had kissed her inside the old house.  The roof had been on the place then, and the walls were standing.

He wondered whatever happened to Trudy Jo.  He should have married her.  Marrying Caroline had been a huge mistake.  She drove him crazy, and now, just to get rid of her, he had been forced to kill four innocent people.

Miller started with the occupants of the back seat.  He dropped the teenage girl into the well head first.  Her body gave off a sound like someone dropping tea service.  Miller flinched.  She had been a pretty girl.

He dropped the teenage boy next.  The coward had taken off running.  Hadn’t even tried to help the girl.  Miller dropped him down the shaft.  The sound gave off a thud.  Next came the hiker’s pack and the walking stick and the hiker himself.

From the trunk, he dragged the cop to the well curbing and dropped him down.  Miller was amazed when he dropped the cop.  The man’s feet stuck up and out of the well.  The damned thing was full.  Miller worked on pushing the cop deeper, but no go.  The well was tucked tight.

Miller got the tire iron he had used on the cop out of the trunk and beat the cop’s legs with it until he broke enough bones to make the legs bend.  He forced them down with a crunch.  Now there was room to pull the plyboard over the well.  The only problem was, he still had Caroline to take care of.

She was always a problem.

Miller pulled the plyboard over the well, went back to the Caddy and drove towards town.

As Miller neared town, he began to feel the car rock.  The tire was going flat again.  He stopped at a station and aired it.  He wasn’t as tense this time, though he somewhat worried about the bloodstains on the back seat.  He assumed they would wipe off easily, since the seats were vinyl.  He’d clean the trunk too, from top to bottom.  No tell-tale blood stains or hair samples.  He’d do the best job ever done in the history of cleaning up after a murder.  Well, murders.  And he would do the same for the house.

There was a loud wham, and the air hose popped free of the tire with an ear splitting hiss.  A car had rammed the back of the Caddy, knocking it forward a good three feet.

“Hey,” Miller said.

A young man, obviously drunk, climbed out of an ancient Ford.  

“Ah, man, I’m sorry.  I didn’t see you there.”

“You didn’t see a blue Cadillac parked in front of you at a service station air hose!”

“Nope.”

“You idiot!”

“Hey, it’s no reason to get testy, fella.  I’ll poke you in the nose.”

“I doubt it,” Miller said.  Then thought: Great, I’m making a scene.  I don’t want to draw attention to myself.  What’s wrong with me?

“Forget it,” Miller said, and drove away.

Miller drove around town for an hour on his leaking tire, trying to think of a good place to ditch Caroline’s body.  Nothing came to mind.  He finally decided to air up the tire one more time, take the body home, leave it in the trunk overnight.  That would give him a chance to clean up the living room.  No one would even know she was missing.  Tomorrow, he’d find a place to ditch her.

He found a station and put air in the tire and started home.

As he pulled into the driveway, a sense of defeat came over Miller.  Maybe Caroline was right.  He was a screwup.  None of this was working out.  He should have planned her murder instead of doing it spontaneously, and maybe he could have handled the cop better.

No, he assured himself.  He had to kill her when he had the chance and the urge.

And the cop.  The others.  He had no choice.

As Miller closed the Caddy door, a voice said, “Hey, Miller, how about some gin rummy?”

It was Terrence, his next-door neighbor.  Ever since the guy’s wife had died this fellow had been trying to be his good buddy.  He suspicioned it was Caroline that Terrence was after.  He always had eyes for her, and Miller had half hoped they’d run off together, but Caroline never showed any interest in Terrence.  She liked screwing around with the guys at her work, or at Christmas parties.  She didn’t want to run off with any of them.  She liked it the way she had it.  Screw around with the guys, come home and nag him.

Terrence was standing at the back of Miller’s Cadillac, outlined by the streetlights, waving a deck of cards.

“I don’t think so, Terrence,” Miller said.  “Not tonight.  I’m tired.”

“Oh, okay,” Terrence said.  “What about Caroline?”

“Oh no, she’s simply dead, Terrence.  Wouldn’t be able to.”

“Oh,” Terrence said.  “Hey, look at the back of your car.”

Miller walked around slowly to the back of the Caddy.  He hadn’t really looked at it before.  The bumper was bent and the trunk was creased.

“You know what happened?”

“Yeah.  Guy ran into me at the filling station.”

“Hope you got his name and insurance.”

“Yeah.  Sure.”

“Hey look at this,” Terrence said, grasping the bent edge of the trunk.  “This is loose.”

The trunk flew up.  Caroline, the bag completely torn away from her head, was in a bizarre squatting position, that nagging look on her face, a dried blood crevasse in the top of her head.

“Oh, my goodness,” said Terrence.

“Yep,” said Miller, pulling the cop’s revolver from under his shirt.  He pushed the gun straight into Terrence’s gut and pulled the trigger.  There was a muffled bark, and Terrence and his cards were sprawled on the driveway.

Terrence was heavy and Miller was tired, but he got the body boosted into the trunk and pushed Caroline down on her side and closed the lid.  He gathered up Terrence’s cards, put them in his back pocket, went to the garage for wire to tie the trunk down.  All he could find was some thin copper wire, but it would have to do.

When he finished fastening down the trunk, he decided now that he had two bodies, he better get rid of them tonight.  Terrence had a nosy sister, and by tomorrow she’d be hunting for Terrence.  Miller knew, as a next-door neighbor, he’d be questioned, and it wouldn’t do to have Terrence in his car trunk.  He also had to come up with a reason Caroline was gone.  Maybe he could make it look as if she ran off with Terrence.

Now there was an idea.

Man, he thought, I got a lot to wrap up tonight.  Get rid of the bodies, clean up the blood in the living room, clean up the car trunk.  It was all too much to think about.

He drove across town again.  The car began to list.  Oh, dammit, Miller thought, I didn’t change the tire! What a screwup!

But, now that no one was in the back seat, Miller decided to have the tire plugged.  He pulled into a service station and drank a Coke and had some peanuts while he waited for the tire to be plugged.

The station was manned by one man, and he stayed busy running up front to take money for serve-yourself gas, then back to Miller’s tire.

When he had the tire fixed and ready to go on the car, he said, “Hey, Mister, come here.”

Miller and the station man, who wore a shirt with Alex written above his pocket said, “You know, you’re leaking something out of the trunk here.”

Miller looked.  It was a dark stream of blood.

“Oil,” Miller said.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Alex squatting down for a look, touching the wet run with his fingers.  “This looks like blood.”

“All right,” Miller said.  “I shot a dog.  It was digging up my wife’s flower beds.  I hate myself for doing it, but it’s been going on for a while, so I shot it.  I was carrying it off.”

“Oh,” said Alex.  “I like dogs myself.”

“Me too,” Miller said, “but not in my wife’s flower beds.”

Alex pulled a shop rag from his pocket, wiped the blood off his fingers.

“I’m about wrapped up here,” Alex said.

“Sure,” Miller said, and walked back toward the station.  He stopped and turned for a look.  Alex was bending down next to the trunk.  He had a pair of wire cutters and was cutting the copper wire.  The trunk lid sprang open.  Alex looked inside and let out his breath.

When Alex turned Miller was standing behind him with a jack handle.  It took three blows to drop Alex.

Miller put Alex in the back seat with his shop rag and wire cutters.  He wired the trunk shut again.

All that was needed to finish up the tire job was to put the tire on the wheel and fasten the lug bolts.  Miller did this himself, and let the jack down.  Before he could get all of the finished, however, he took in thirty-five dollars for gas from customers, sold a can of oil and turned down a job to fix a flat.

Miller finally settled on the lake outside of town.  It wasn’t his first choice, but it would have to do.  He took some heavy jacks from the station and piled them in the back seat on top of Alex.  When he drove off, the car was weighed down considerably.

Just outside of town a highway patrolman pulled him over about his taillight.  Damn that Caroline, or maybe that nosy Terrence.  One of them had fallen against the wire again.

The cop didn’t get to say much, however.  Miller shot him right away with the first cop’s gun.

Sighing, Miller pulled the policeman into the front seat beside him, sat him up neatly, pulled the officer’s hat down over the bullet hole in his forehead.

“Screwup,” he could hear Caroline say.

Miller sighed.  “You’re right, darling.  You’re right.”

Miller drove out to the lake.

When Miller arrived, he was surprised to find the place deserted.  No cops.  No hikers.  No drunks to run into the back of his car.  No nosy neighbors.  No helpful teenagers.  Just the woods and the lake, wide and wet with moonlight on it.

Miller was about to tie the cop and Alex the station man to the heavy jacks when he had another idea.  What he’d do was just push the car off in the water.  He could say Caroline went away with the car.  Went away with Terrence.  That would work.  He could make up a story about how he found them in bed together once.  Something along that line.  When he got home, he’d give it some serious thought.

Home.  He’d have to walk home, and that would take some time, but it would be best to be rid of the clue-filled car.  With it missing, he could strengthen the scenario he was trying to create.  The poor husband whose wife ran off with the next-door neighbor in their car.

By the time anyone thought to look in the lake, he would have already figured a way to change his identity and move.  Yeah, that’s what he’d do.  He’d start over completely.  It had been done before.

The information was out there on how to accomplish it, all you had to do was research.  There were even books on the subject.  He could do it.  Caroline was wrong.  He wasn’t a screwup.  He was a clear thinker, that’s what he was.

Miller drove the car to a perfect drop off place.  He put the gear in neutral, got out and walked to the rear of the Caddy and gave it a push.

Just before it went over the side of the sloping bank, the wire on the trunk snapped.  The trunk flew up, hit Miller under the chin and sent him sliding after the car.

Next thing he knew he was under water.  The car was going down before him, and he was being pulled after it.  He couldn’t figure how, but he was being pulled down, and fast.

He finally realized the wire that had held the trunk shut was twisted in his shirt and one end was still attached to the bumper, and he was being dragged down with it.  Miller snatched at the wire, ripped his shirt, freed himself.

As he bobbed to the surface, Caroline bobbed too, completely free of her plastic bags.  She splashed down on top of him.  Miller tried to swim away from her, but his legs wouldn’t work.

Miller kicked and struggled, but his legs became more confined.  He bent under the water to free them.  The three plastic bags that had held Caroline were twisted around his ankles, it was impossible to tear them loose, and he was going down, down, down.

Miller fought the plastic until he was exhausted.  He was sinking toward the bottom, his breath all gone, one thought left in his head.

Caroline was right.  He was a screwup.

Passing him in the wet darkness, sinking down with him was Caroline, spinning around and around like a happy ballerina.

Proofed and typed quite high by Jazel v.1