Blood Debt

expensive sedan back onto the road.
    There was a sport utility vehicle parked behind the cottage, but it had to be Sullivan's, and he couldn't bring himself to drive it. He was upset enough without the added stress of driving a dead man's car as well as the dead man. He wished he had more of the doctor's detachment. His thoughts revolved around and around in a chaotic whirlwind, replaying over and over the finding of Sullivan's body, the phone call, the feel of the corpse as he lifted it up into the trunk. He knew he wasn't thinking clearly, but that was as far as awareness extended.
    The road ended in a clear cut just as Dr. Mui had described. He drove the car as close as he could to the rotting stump of a Douglas fir and turned off both the engine and the headlights. The surrounding darkness looked like one of the upper circles of hell.
    Dr. Mui had said it had to be done in the dark. Headlights in the woods at night would attract unwelcome attention. And what would be welcome attention; he wondered.
    After a moment, he dried his palms on his trousers, got out of the car, and opened the trunk.
    Sullivan stared up at him over one broad shoulder, the bouncing having twisted his head around at an impossible angle. His eyes bulged like the eyes of an animal in a slaughterhouse.
    Unable to look away, Swanson stepped back and swallowed bile.
    What am I doing here? Am I out of my mind? I should've called the police. He passed a trembling hand over a damp forehead. No. If I called the police, everything would come out. I'd be ruined. I'd go to jail. Dr. Mui's right. I bury the body, and no one has to know anything. Over the course of a long career, he'd never hesitated to do what had to be done, and he wasn't about to start now.
    Teeth clenched, he pulled the body out of the trunk. He tried to ignore the way it hit the ground, tried not to think of it as something that had once been alive. He dragged it about twenty feet, went back for the shovel, then began to dig.

    "This is nuts. This is absolutely fucking nuts."
    "Watch your language, Brent. And shut up, he'll hear you."
    "Who?"
    Patricia Chou grabbed her cameraman's arm and steadied him as he stumbled over a rut, the weight of the camera and light together throwing him off balance. "Ronald Swanson, that's who."
    "You don't know he was in that car we were following."
    "I do."
    "Based on a phone call at three in the morning?"
    "That's right."
    "That's it?"
    "That and finely honed instincts for a story. Now, shut up !"
    They moved as quietly as possible as they approached the clearing.
    Eyes having grown accustomed to the dark during the walk up the logging road, neither had any trouble separating the parked car from the surrounding shadows.
    Head cocked at the rhythmic sounds from up ahead, the reporter raised a hand and, breathing a little heavily, Brent obediently stopped.
    Digging? she mouthed silently.
    He shrugged and lifted the camera up onto his shoulder.
    She guided him around the car and pointed him toward the man-shaped shadow. This is it, she told herself as she stepped forward and gave the signal.
    Ronald Swanson, already knee-deep in the soft earth, stared up at her like an animal caught on the road—disaster bearing down and unable to get out of the way. The body stretched out on the ground beside him, the unmistakably dead body, was more than she could have hoped for. Her own eyes squinted nearly shut from the brilliant beam of light from the top of Brent's camera, Patricia Chou thumbed her microphone on and thrust it forward. "Anything to say to our viewers, Mr. Swanson?"
    His mouth opened, closed, then opened again, but no sound came out. His eyes widened, pupils contracted to invisibility. He dropped the shovel, clutched at his chest, and collapsed forward onto his face in the dirt, just missing the corpse.
    "Mr. Swanson?" The microphone still on, she knelt beside him and reached under his ear for a pulse. He was alive, but it didn't feel good.
    Scowling, she reached into her belt pouch for her cell phone. "That goddamned son of a bitch has had a heart attack or something before I got a quote."
    "Do I keep shooting?" Brent's voice came out of the darkness on the other side of the light.
    "No. Save the batteries." Grinning triumphantly, she called 911.
    "We'll likely get some good stuff when the police arrive."

    Fourteen
    TONY snatched up the phone on the first ring. "Henry?"
    "You were waiting?"
    "Yeah, well, I set my alarm for half an hour before