All The Way Down

Chapter 41

Then it occurred to me that maybe what I was looking at wasn't a warning but a message, telling me that Michelle and Rosalie had already been killed in addition to their dog. I ran into the kitchen to use the phone, pulled Michelle’s number from my wallet, and dialed. My hands were shaking.

Michelle's sleepy voice answered. "Hello?"

"Michelle? Is that you?" I asked.

"Who is this??? Del?"

"It's me," I said. "Something terrible happened tonight."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"I don't think you're safe. Get Rosalie and get out of there."

"What? Why? What happened?"

"Somebody broke into Brick’s house," I said. "They slaughtered Colonel in the living room. There's blood everywhere."

"Oh my God," she said. "You've brought them down on us, you stupid bastard." Then she hung up on me.

I sat in one of the chairs at the kitchen table looking at the bloody footprints on the linoleum. I thought about taking a taxi over to Bullard's house and splitting his skull open with a tire wrench, but I decided against it. If I broke into his house while he was there, I was asking for a bullet. I needed a little time to think, but I knew I was going to get him, even if it meant waiting for him in his house with a weapon when he came home from work.

I went to the sink and washed my hands, then on out to the garage. I got a pair of pliers from the toolbox and then I started in the living room, using the pliers to pull up the edge of the carpet before ripping the bloody carpet loose from the tack strips at the edge of the floor. I shifted the living room furniture into the kitchen to get the carpet up, and an hour later I had the bloody carpet in a big pile out in the garage. The blood had seeped through to the floorboards in a couple of places, but it was still a big improvement.

I carried a heavy blanket from the bedroom into the hall bathroom and laid it on the floor. I got a firm grip on Colonel's front legs and dragged him over the tub and onto the blanket. After dragging it down the hall and into the garage, I went back into the kitchen and washed my hands again.

It took me a while to bury Colonel in the back yard. The light through the sliding glass door in the kitchen provided the only illumination, but that was enough. I didn't want the neighbors to see what I was doing anyway. I was as quiet as I was able to be, and if the neighbors heard me working out there I couldn't tell it. An hour later I had dug a pit five feet deep and about three wide. By the time I was done I had a furious sweat going. The ground was dry, and dust clung to the sweat on my face and arms.

I rolled Colonel into the grave and shoveled the dirt pile beside the hole back over the body. Then I went back inside and took the pail under the kitchen sink and filled it with hot water. I got several towels from the master bath and went through the whole house, wiping as much of the blood off the walls with the wet towels as I could manage.

The first traces of sunlight were coming though the drapes in the living room when I finished the cleanup. The walls were clean again and the kitchen looked okay. The sofa and the fabric covering the speakers were stained with black dried blood, but there was nothing I could do about that. The ceiling was still spattered with blackening blood, but I had the light fixture clean again. I would have to repaint the ceiling to cover the spots.

I went out to the garage, stripped my bloody clothes off, and put them in the washing machine. I dumped in detergent and got the load started. Then I went back down the hall into the master bedroom. I guess poor old Colonel had run out of blood before he made it that far because the bedroom was untouched. I picked up the mattress and saw that the pictures Brick had taken were still there.

I took a long shower, scrubbing the grime and dried blood from my skin. Then I collapsed on the bed and fell asleep within seconds.