“No, brother, it is not right, no, sir!” Fowler said. “You’re just smart enough for you. That’s all you need to be, like I always told you.” He raised his pistol and levelled it at Bob. “Now, you’ve had your break and your tongue’s doing all the work. Time to put your back into it again. Go on, climb on in there.”
Bob turned and climbed back into the hole. He resumed digging. After another hour, it was nearly four feet deep, his shoulder muscles aching. “That enough?”
The two men rose and wandered to within ten feet. Czernowitz looked away almost as quickly as his glance. Fowler stood on his toes to get an idea of the hole’s depth. “Yeah, I reckon that’ll do it. Go on, then, roll the professor in.”
Bob climbed out. He rounded the hole and crouched by the professor. He rolled him over. It would only take one more shove to get him into the grave, he knew. He heaved the body onto its side, slipping his hand inside the professor’s coat and into his top shirt pocket.
Got it. He palmed the pipe cleaner then finished the maneuver, Jenkins’ body sliding into the hole in a woosh of dusty dirt.
“Fit just about right,” Fowler said.
“Yeah… about that,” Bob said. “The professor’s under six feet tall. I’d say five-seven, maybe five-eight in generous heels.”
“So?”
“So I’m six-four. The way I see it, you barely have an inch clearance under his heels, and he’s bent up a little.”
Czernowitz frowned. “You started the hole too small, Jeb,” he said. “He’s right. He ain’t going to fit in that.”
He sounded almost hopeful, Bob thought.
“So we bend him up a little,” Fowler said.
“Jeb…”
“Oh sure,” Bob said dryly. “It’ll be really easy for the two of you to ‘shape’ my two-hundred-pound torso into a two-foot-wide hole… assuming you can even get me in there.”
“Dang,” Fowler said. He pushed his hat back with his free hand and rubbed his chin with the other, staring at the hole like it might provide an answer.”
“I mean, you could just have me kneel in front of it, like they do in war zones,” Bob suggested. “But they make sure it’s a deep pit, no adjustments needed, so the bodies can just fall in with others. You two? Well, you’ll have to climb into the hole, stand on the professor’s corpse and move me… all preferably without leaving any DNA, and no room to spare.”
Fowler snarled a little as he spoke. “You knew the god-dang hole was too small, but you just kept digging, didn’t say nothing!” He waved his gun at the hole. “Maybe you pick up that shovel, get back to work, make it deeper and longer.”
Bob picked up the long-handled shovel and leaned on it. “Sure, deeper, too. Like… maybe deep enough for three bodies.”
“Maybe,” Fowler said. “Maybe you keep pissing me off, I’ll have you digging until nightfall.”
“Three bodies deep would be convenient,” Bob said. “Then he can shoot you, too, Officer Czernowitz, take back that twelve and a half grand he just stuck in your pocket. It’s not like he respects or really likes you.”
Fowler raised his gun and stepped forward angrily. “GO ON! Keep talking bullshit, son, see how quick I put a bullet in that fat head of yours!”
“Jeb wouldn’t do that,” Czernowitz said. “Jeb looks out for me.”
“Sure… like when he told you about the professor beforehand, so you’d have a choice about being implicated in a murder. Oh, that’s right… he didn’t. Didn’t even bother. He calls you dumb all the time, but let me ask: you ever take any tests for him back in high school?”
“SHUT UP!” Fowler barked. “Shut your goddamned mouth!”
Bob ignored him. Fowler needed this to go as planned. But his partner’s doubt was massing. They’d learned about duos like Fowler and Czernowitz in CIA behavioral training, that sociopaths preferred to find a mentally weak person to do their day-to-day bidding.
“I used to do his math tests for him,” Czernowitz said. “But that’s because Jeb’s got the math dyslexia, like I got with words.”
“That’s not how dyslexia works,” Bob lied. “It affects the order of words, not numbers. He just wanted you to do his homework.”
Fowler leaped forward, showing more quickness than Bob would’ve assumed, the pistol clouting him again around the temple.
Bob staggered sideways.
The officer skipped back almost as quickly, out of range. “YOU WANT THIS TO GET A LOT MORE PAINFUL?” Fowler yelled. “Because if you do, we can shoot you a few times, bury you alive, let you bleed out.”
“Yeah?” Bob said, rubbing his bleeding temple with his right hand, his left still on the shovel handle. “And who’s going to do the work, shoveling all that dirt back on top of us? Oh… yeah. That’s right. Let me guess: that’s the kind of thing he gets you to do for him, too, right, Officer Czernowitz?”
“He don’t make me—”
“Shut up, Witty!” Fowler’s anger was growing. “He’s trying to trick you! You don’t listen to a god-damned word he says! You feel me, brother?”
There was something in his tone, the tension of the day’s changing circumstances, that struck his partner in the moment. Czernowitz looked uneasy, shuffling in place slightly, his view of his relationship to his bully friend sitting in a new light. He wandered over to the hole and looked in.
“The professor…”
“You got to trust me, Witty…”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know, Jeb, but… He seemed like a nice feller, is all.”
“Yup,” Bob interjected. “And now he’s fucking dead, because your ‘friend’ Jeb murdered him. Now he’s going to have you bury him, so you’re implicated as well.”
“God DANG, mister!” Fowler barked, turning back to Bob. “I am just about done with you.”
“Go on, get digging,” Bob said. “You’re next, Czernowitz… Maybe not today, but…”
