Bombed

Written: 2005   |   Setting: Suburban Neighborhood   |   3,260 words   |   15 Minutes minute read

He hoped the fumes cleared by the time he got home. He was slightly worried; it wasn’t just any average bug bombing. He’d become frustrated by the number of chemicals he’d used to try and get rid of all those bugs in the basement. Sprays, powders, traps, tacky paper, nothing worked. Why? Why were they always there? He didn’t have any boxes or clothing in the basement, nothing that would cause such infestations.

He wasn’t about to call an exterminator; why pay for what he could do on his own? It was a waste of money. He was the exterminator, he would kill them no matter what. He set off ten bug bombs at once that morning; that should create enough toxic air to float through even the smallest of cracks. It’s not like he had a big basement.

The street was quiet as usual as he rolled up to his drive. He was usually the first one out to work each morning and the first one home on the block. The old Cavalier coughed and sputtered as he stopped at his mailbox. He would rest a moment, then he had to finish painting the ceiling in the kitchen.

He quickly flipped through the mail and the side door to his house caught his eye. It was wide open. He locked that door earlier, he knew it. He never left for work without locking up.

Under normal circumstances, it meant Greg was visiting. But they had argued the week before and Greg stopped coming over. He’d just grown so sick of his endless mooching, always borrowing, always asking for something. He always demanded and never returned anything to anyone. Greg had downed his last beer and eaten his last meal at his expense.

It was embarrassing to fight at a community cookout, but it escalated. Greg was unbearable. He was a man who wasn’t. His parents still gave him an allowance, paid his rent, and what that didn’t cover, he mooched from his neighbors. Greg had not apologized and he was not about to tolerate his pissy attitude.

He opened the side door and coughed; the chemical smell lingered. “Greg?” he called. “You here?”

What if it were a burglar? What if he was getting ready to be ambushed by thieves in his own house? He slowed and paid more attention to the noises in the house. It was silent aside from the hum of the central air.

He stopped in the living room. A pair of shoes stuck out of the threshold of the kitchen. Someone left a corpse in his house? Everything was still as he approached the body. Why would someone leave something so incriminating? Was it a message?

He neared the deceased and stopped. It was Greg. Who would kill Greg? Why? He didn’t do anything to piss anyone off that bad, did he? Who would kill the harmless moocher? Was it the mafia? Which mafia, though? Every country seemed to have its own version of a mafia. Well, Greg always enjoyed discussing his risk-taking and stepping up to the plate, someone just knocked him home.

Could it have been loan sharks? As much as he bummed off everyone, it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to assume that. He must’ve had terrible debts with some cruel bastards. He didn’t know them and they were trying to frame him.

Or could it be something else? Greg looked peaceful from behind, like he was sleeping. He should probably turn him over; he could tell more by looking at his face.

He tugged at his pants until he rolled over. His head appeared normal, except there was a bloody bruise on his forehead. Someone had cracked his skull. That was it. Someone had been in his house. What if they were still there waiting for him? What if he called the cops and word got out that the wrong one died?

Or even worse, what if they believed he deliberately killed Greg? They were arguing at a cookout with a hundred witnesses. His pulse quickened; he was going to be sick. Dear God, they would convict him of murder, maybe even imply it was premeditated.

He had to do something. He couldn’t have a corpse in his house and he couldn’t involve the authorities. As if reading his mind, there was a knock at the door. He was busted.

“Yoo-hoo!” It was Mrs. Diller, the elderly woman from across the street. “Is anyone home?”

What did that old bat want? “Yes, Mrs. Diller.” He grabbed the paint tarp from the cans on the floor and threw it over Greg. He went to the door. “What can I do for you?”

“Could you please get my poor Mr. Morris out of your tree?”

Of all times, that fat puss got stuck in his tree at least once weekly. As always, since the tree was in his yard, and was his tree, she expected him to retrieve the larger-than-life cat.

He could brush her off without appearing suspicious; he always got it before. More suspicion was all he needed. He had a dead body in his kitchen and no way of getting rid of it.

He accompanied Beatrice Diller to the tree. “Did you ever reconcile with Mr. Burke?” The nosy dragon had been at the cookout. God, did everyone know everything? Wasn’t anything private anymore?

“No, Mrs. Diller. I apologize for the scene at the cookout, I feel terrible.”

“Why, Mr. Garner, we all know what kind of person Greg Burke was. You aren’t the first person in the community he had shamelessly taken advantage of.”

“I’m not?” The list of suspects continued to grow. Greg really had cheated others on the block? “I doubt the situations were like . . .”

“You would be surprised. He still owes Mr. Davis across the street two thousand for destroying his pool two years ago. Mr. Burke was drunk.”

“He didn’t pay that? I thought that was part of his sentence—”

“Then, he owes the Darnell family five thousand for the car he borrowed and wrecked . . .”

She went through three other families, so Greg really had been a bastard of legend. Who knew what motives were out there and weren’t accounted for? Regardless of their motive, why did they pick him? Did they assume he was the same way? Why were they trying to frame him?

He pulled Mr. Morris from the tree and handed him to the old woman. “You know, Mr. Garner,” she thanked him, “you’re a good man.”

Was he a good man? If he were truly good, would he call the police instead of worrying about how it would appear on him? He lightly smiled and walked back in the house as she returned home. He wasn’t a good man, not even a decent man. A corpse was in his kitchen and he was trying to figure out how to cover himself with not a thought for the dead man in his kitchen.

Selfish or not, he had to protect himself. Greg would create trouble in death, just as in life. How could he pull it off? He tugged and pulled the corpse to sit at the table. All he managed was to make Greg appear like he’d died at the table. Except for the gash on his forehead, he simply looked like he was sleeping.

Unless you looked at his legs, no man could sit in that position comfortably. One leg went right and the other went left; he looked like a gymnast who had been saved from an agonizing split. He was not good with arranging bodies.

Could he make it look like a drowning? But would people believe Greg killed himself? He loved himself far too much. He pondered the potential of his situation all evening. As night came in and the area darkened, streetlights flickered on.

He could put him in the car and take him to the river. He would do it. He dragged the body through the door and out to his car. He threw him in the back seat and covered him with the tarp. To conceal that, he loaded a few trash bags on top of him. Just a trip to the dump, nothing out of the ordinary.

He pressed on towards the river, he could do it. He really could. Just toss him in the river, and . . . And . . . How would that explain the gash on his forehead? He made his way onto the remote gravel road and pulled to the side. He threw back the trash and tarp; as he feared, blood had dried on his forehead.

He could wipe it off, but what if they discovered his fingerprints? His hair on the corpse? How would he explain it? Greg hadn’t been over. He looked down at Greg’s expensive shirt; there were tiny splatters of blood. How the hell did that get there? Did he spray after he hit the floor?

That blew his hopes away. There’s no way they would accept he hit his head after falling in the water; too much evidence said otherwise. He turned the car around and drove back home. He would need to think of something else.

He pulled in his driveway. Could he make it look like Greg had fallen down the steps at his house? He examined the block; nearly everyone had their lights out. He quickly pulled Greg from the back seat and dragged him across the yard. Greg had been his next-door neighbor for years, yet the walk to his house had never felt so far.

He finally made it. As usual, Greg left his door open. The man was, had been, an eternal child. He pulled the body to the top of the steps in his living room and let it roll. It thudded and banged all the way down.

Yet, it didn’t land the way he needed it to. Greg landed on his backside, not his head. He went down and grabbed him under his arms. He pulled him back up the steps. He let go. It made the same familiar sounds, but this time, he landed on his shoulder.

He was a very stubborn corpse. Somehow, he’d created more spots of blood on the floor. Greg was turning into an aggravating son-of-a-bitch. All he had to do was land on his head, that’s it. He would be left alone, but no, he couldn’t do that. He was an obstinate bastard.

He pulled his neighbor up the steps one last time. He didn’t know what he would do next, but he couldn’t yank that heavy body up the steps again. He let him go. Yet again, the corpse refused to land correctly. This last time, the blood splatters became a puddle. He landed on his hand and something cracked. Wayne looked at Greg’s arm in disgust. A bone was protruding from the forearm and congealed blood had seeped out. That selfish prick. What did he have to do to make his death appear natural?

He had to think of something, quickly. The body would begin decomposition before long; it was already stiff in places. Rigor mortis was starting and nothing he could do would stop it.

What about painkillers? Greg could have overdosed; he was a pill-popper since the seventies. Who knew otherwise? So he broke his arm and wanted something to ease the pain and overdid it? Or he might have taken them and then broken his arm during his stupor. It was perfect.

He dragged the body into the bedroom and laid it on the bed. Wayne ran to Greg’s medicine cabinet and pulled a few bottles down. He didn’t know what they were, but he needed to make it look convincing. He laid him back and stretched his legs out across the top. He opened Greg’s mouth and began pouring pills inside. He dumped the first bottle and stopped; they weren’t going anywhere. He didn’t expect him to swallow them, of course not. But he had expected them to go back in his throat or something. Anything besides just lie there.

It didn’t look effective in the least. Greg’s color was becoming striking; he didn’t just appear unwell anymore. He was looking like a corpse. Wayne sat down. What was he going to do? He was going to prison, that was it. He was going to be tried and convicted. What else could he do? He couldn’t bury the body; their yards were too open to others. Someone would notice a gaping chasm in the yard. He could cut him up, but then what? Not only would he be tried for murder, he would look like a bloodthirsty killer.

It was nearing midnight and he still hadn’t solved the problem. He would lose his life no matter what he tried. Regardless. It was gone, over, done with. He was up the creek without a paddle.

That sorry shit, he just had to die in his house. Of all houses, he picked his to die in. What thanks was that? Selfish ass. Well, he had to try something else. He began picking pills out of Greg’s mouth and returning them to the bottle. What would prison be like? He had to wonder, he was going there.

He picked up the telephone by the bed and dialed 9-1-1. He reported a murder; why bother saying it was an accident? Why? There was no use. He put the pills back in the bottle, returned the bottle to the medicine cabinet, and waited.

As he expected, within minutes sirens wailed up the street. He walked down the steps and opened the door to the police. “Right this way, officers.”

They followed him up the steps and he sat across from the bed. They both stopped looking at the body and turned their attention towards him. “What happened?”

“I came home from work and he was in my kitchen on the floor. He was lying face down. I live across the yard.”

The authorities talked among themselves and he felt like running. If he made a run for it, he could get to his car. Of course, then he would be stopped by the police cars sitting in the drive. The grave atmosphere made his palms sweat.

Two other cops came into the bedroom and they grouped around Greg. They were probably deciding what all they would charge him with. He wondered if it really would go as far as premeditated murder.

The lead detective walked to him. “You’re painting your kitchen?”

“Yes. The ceiling. I’m nearly finished.”

“Why did you set off so many bug bombs in your basement?”

“I couldn’t get rid of the bugs down there.”

“Why not call an exterminator?”

“I was going to if the bug bombs didn’t work.”

“Did you invite him into your home?”

“No. I didn’t know he was going to barge in. He did that often when we were on civil terms, but we had a falling out at the neighborhood cookout last week.”

“He broke into your home?”

“Yes, I always left the door locked, but he knew how to open it without a key.”

“Was this common? He broke into your home?”

“When we were speaking, yes. Nearly every day.”

He consulted with the officers again. Wayne prepared for handcuffs. He rubbed his wrists and looked at the floor; he was going to the big house with the efficient security system.

“We’ve developed a theory, Mr. Garner. We want your honest opinion on it.”

Wayne looked up at the detective. Was he serious? Were they going to rub it in that he was going to jail for a long, long time? “Sure.”

“We believe he broke into your house and was dazed by the fumes from the insect foggers. He was in the kitchen, do you know why?”

“He usually came over and got in my refrigerator and cabinets. He just wanted food.”

“It appears, from the blot on the floor, he slid in a small puddle of paint and that threw his balance off. He fell and hit a very delicate part of the temple, breaking his arm on the way down.”

“What does this mean?” What were they saying? Were they going to wait to arrest him?

“His death was accidental. You can’t be held accountable because he broke into your home. Of course, we’ll conduct an autopsy at his family’s request and follow the necessary procedures; however, we see no evidence of foul play. Any possibility that someone could have planned such a fall is highly improbable. Do you need to see the EMT for anything? Did you breathe in the fumes when you returned home?”

“Briefly, but not much. They started to clear before I came home.”

“You’d better get checked, anyway. I think this is all we needed. You can go now. We must inform his relatives.”

Wayne felt bewildered as he watched them. Weren’t they going to cuff him? Weren’t they going to slap the nice silver matching bracelets across his wrists and escort him to his new apartment? “You mean I’m not being arrested?”

“For what?” The detective glared at him. “Is there something you aren’t telling us?”

“Not really. I came home and he was gone.”

“Did you do anything?”

“No.”

“Very well. If there’s any evidence of foul play, the coroner will find it during the autopsy.”

“I moved the body.”

“And?”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“Did you deliberately harm the corpse?”

“No. But isn’t that disturbing the scene?”

“Scene of what?”

“I don’t know, the crime scene . . .”

“Look, Mack. If it were a boring night, we’d have time to discuss it. As it is, we’re slammed, five automobile accidents and one shooting on the other side of the city. We have a small police force and the state is hellishly sluggish on sending us some backup. Do you really want to debate this?”

“No, no. Just concerned.”

“Don’t be. If we felt your actions warranted our detaining you, we would. Go get some rest, you look like hell.”

He left the room and slowly descended the steps. What was it all for? What just happened? He was worried about the chair and he was free?

He awoke the next morning late; he didn’t bother to set his alarm. By the time his nerves calmed, it was three in the morning. He called in. He trudged down the steps, halfway expecting to see Greg sitting at his table. He opened the front door to get the paper and found three large gift baskets and two bunches of flowers. All the cards included were without a sender name and all said the same thing:

“Thank you, Mr. Garner.”