The Funhouse

ledge after the tarp, he heard someone call his name. “Conrad?”
        With a sinking heart, Conrad looked back along the tracks, down the gloomy gondola tunnel.
        It was Ghost. The albino was standing fifty feet away, at the far end of the straightaway, just inside the entrance to the Hall of the Giant Spiders. He was only a pale silhouette, Conrad wasn't able to see the albino's face.
        And if I can't see him clearly, he can't see me any better, Conrad thought, relieved. He can't see the tarp, and even if he can see it, he can't possibly know what's in it.
        “Conrad?”
        “Yeah. Here.”
        “Is something wrong?”
        “No, no. Nothing.”
        “The gates are open. We'll have marks swarming all over us in a couple of minutes.”
        Conrad crouched beside the tarp, using his body to further block Ghost's view of it. “There was some junk on the track. But it's okay now. I've taken care of it.”
        “You need some help?” Ghost asked, starting toward him.
        “No! No, no. I've got everything under control. You better get out front, throw the switch, and start selling tickets. We're ready to roll.”
        “Are you sure?”
        “Of course I'm sure!” Conrad snapped. “Get moving. I'll be out in a few minutes.”
        Ghost hesitated for just a second, then turned and walked back the way he had come.
        As soon as the albino was out of sight, Conrad dragged the tarp behind the papier-mache boulders. He had a bit of trouble squeezing the grisly bundle through the trapdoor. He leaned in after it, lowered it the length of his arms, then let it drop the rest of the way. It landed at the foot of the ladder. The tarp flopped open, and the ghastly, disembodied head looked up at him, mouth stretched in a silent scream.
        Conrad went down the ladder again. He closed the trapdoor above him. He bent, gathered up the corners of the tarp, and dragged the corpse to the maintenance area in the northwest corner of the funhouse basement.
        Overhead, the building was abruptly filled with eerie, tape-recorded music as Ghost started switching on the system.
        Grimacing, Conrad picked up the dead woman's gore-spattered clothes, one piece at a time. He checked the pockets of her jeans, jacket, and blouse, looking for some scrap of identification.
        He found her car keys right away. Attached to the key ring was one of those miniature license plates that were sold by some veterans' organizations. The number on it was the number on her real plates.
        Even before he had finished his search of her clothes, he saw the Big American Midway VIP badge pinned to her blouse. That discovery rocked him. If she was someone with important carnival connections, Gunther's secret could no longer be concealed.
        Conrad found the sort of thing he was looking for in the last pocket he turned out. It was a laminated ID card that said she was Janet Leigh Middlemeir, she worked for the county Office of Public Safety, she was a safety engineer, whatever the hell that was, and she was accredited by the State of Maryland.
        A government official. That was bad. But not as bad as he had feared. At least she wasn't a sister or a cousin of one of the carnies. She didn't have any friends or relatives on the lot, no one who would be looking out for her. Evidently she had been on the midway strictly in a professional capacity, making spot safety checks. No one would have realized that she had disappeared in the middle of one of those inspections because no one would have been paying special attention to her. There was a good chance that Conrad could move the body and plant it far away from the carnival, in such a way that the police would think she had been killed after she quit working.
        But he couldn't do anything more until it was dark, it would be a risky bit of business even then. Now he had to get out front, on the barker's platform, before Ghost started wondering what had happened to him and came looking again.
        Conrad took a coil of rope from one of the storage shelves and threaded it through the eyelets around the edges of the tarpaulin. Then he pulled the rope like a drawstring and made a bag out of the tarp, with the dead woman and her belongings inside. He put the bag in the corner. He stripped out of the bloody coveralls and put them with the bag. His hands were bloody, and he wiped them off as best he could on a