The Lies That Bind

2: No Body, No Crime

There was blood under Calla Parker's fingernails. Blood and dirt.

At least this time, she knew why.

"Jeremy Kepner," she announced to no one in particular, "you have been a spectacular pain in my ass."

She tossed aside the shovel and hauled herself out of the hole she'd been working on for the better part of the evening. Her arms shook with the effort, but then she was free, panting as she rolled onto her back, legs dangling over the edge of the makeshift grave.

"Son of a bitch," she groaned, sitting upright. Her head spun and her teeth ached. She needed water. Lots of water. A pack of ice against her jaw wouldn't hurt, either.

She glanced at her phone. Fifty minutes. She still had fifty minutes to make it back to the morgue before her boss started asking questions about the van.

"Alright, Jeremy." She pushed herself to her feet and readjusted her gloves. Behind her, the work van she'd borrowed for the trip idled, its back doors thrown open to reveal a faded blue tarp. And in that tarp, a body.

Jeremy Lane Kepner. Thirty-eight. A lawyer. And yes—a massive pain in her ass. More so now that he was dead.

Calla grabbed him by the ankles and dragged his sorry corpse out of the van—his body hit the ground with a satisfying thud—and over to the edge of the grave she'd so painstakingly carved out of the earth. "An unmarked grave for an unremarkable man," she muttered, shoving his body over the lip of the hole with a grunt. Jeremy hit the bottom, a heap of bones and fleshy skin and those dead, useless eyes.

Calla pulled out her burner phone and snapped a picture of the scene. A picture she then forwarded along to an unsaved number in her phone. It's done, she wrote, sending the message with it.

A few seconds passed. The burner phone buzzed.

Unknown: Well done. One more to go.

Calla pocketed the phone and grabbed the shovel she'd set aside. One more. The pile of loose dirt at her feet receded as she began to fill the hole. One more. Jeremy's eyes were the first thing to disappear. And then his hands. His feet.

One more.

Until there was nothing left at all.

# # #

The morgue was a quick fifteen minute walk from Calla's apartment, but she was sweaty and somewhat filthy, and smelled faintly of death and cheap cologne—one last fuck you from Jeremy Kepner, she supposed—which made the walk all the more miserable.

"One more," she muttered to herself as she took the stairs up to the third floor. The elevators were out of order. Naturally.

Calla turned the corner, thinking how glorious a hot shower would feel against the aching muscles of her hands, her shoulders, her jaw and the holes where her wisdom teeth had been—and then she froze.

Because there was her apartment. Her beautiful, lovely apartment with its beautiful, lovely shower and all of the other beautiful, lovely comforts she'd fantasized about while digging that dreadful grave. And it was there, in front of her beautiful, lovely apartment, that she saw him.

Cooper Daniels.

The fluorescent light above her apartment door cast stark shadows across his face, but it was a face she knew well. The slight dip in his nose. The hollow of his cheeks. The straight line of his back, his feet stuck so thoroughly together that a strong wind was sure to blow him over at any moment. His shoulders broader than she remembered, and his hair longer than it had been, back in the...spring? Yes, it had been spring when he'd visited last, the air unseasonably cold. Now his hair curled into his eyes, brushed against the base of his neck.