The minute I punched the button, a man appeared around the corner and came to stand by the elevator door. Perhaps he was a relative of old Mrs. Osburgh, or maybe one of the senators was making a flying trip back to Jackson. Whoever he was, he was well dressed and in his sixties, and he was polite enough to feel the obligation of making conversation.
"It's really cold today, isn't it?"
"Yes, but not as cold as yesterday." I stared at the closed doors, willing them to open so he would be gone.
"Did you just move in?"
I had never been so irritated with a courteous person before. "I'm visiting," I said, in the kind of flat voice that should indicate the conversation is closed.
"Oh," he said cheerfully. "Who?"
Luckily the elevator chose that moment to arrive and its doors snicked open just in time to save this too-genial man from getting his head snapped off. He gestured with a sweep of his hand, wanting me to precede him, but I took a step back, said, "Oh my gosh, I forgot my keys!" and walked briskly off without a backward glance. I went to the door of the apartment next to Alcide's, the one he'd told me was empty, and I knocked on the door. I heard the elevator doors close behind me, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
When I figured Mr. Chatty had had time to get to his car and drive out of the garage - unless he was talking the ears off the security guard - I recalled the elevator. It was Saturday, and there was no telling what people's schedules would be like. According to Alcide, many of the condos had been bought as an investment and were subleased to legislators, most of who would be gone for the pre-holidays. The year-round tenants, however, would be moving around in atypical ways, since it was not only the weekend, but also only two weekends before Christmas. When the creaky contraption came back to the fifth floor, it was empty.
I dashed back to 504, knocked twice on the door, and dashed back to the elevator to hold the doors open. Preceded by the legs of the corpse, Alcide emerged from the apartment. He moved as quickly as a man can while he's carrying a stiff body over his shoulder.
This was our most vulnerable moment. Alcide's bundle looked like nothing on this earth but a corpse wrapped in a shower curtain. The plastic kept the smell down, but it was still noticeable in the small enclosure. We made it down one floor safely, then the next. At the third floor, our nerve ran out. We stopped the elevator, and to our great relief it opened onto an empty corridor. I darted out and over to the stair door, holding it open for Alcide. Then I scampered down the stairs ahead of him, and looked through the pane of glass in the door to the garage.
"Whoa," I said, holding my hand up. A middle-aged woman and a teenage girl were unloading packages from the trunk of their Toyota, simultaneously having a vigorous disagreement. The girl had been invited to an all-night party. No, her mother said.
She had to go, all her friends would be there. No, her mother said.
But Mom, everyone else's mom was letting them go. No, her mother said.
"Please don't decide to take the stairs," I whispered.
But the argument raged on as they got in the elevator. I clearly heard the girl break her train of complaint long enough to say, "Ew, something smells in here!" before the doors closed.
"What's happening?" Alcide whispered.
"Nothing. Let's see if that lasts a minute longer."
It did, and I stepped out of the door and over to Alcide's truck, darting glances from side to side to make sure I was really alone. We weren't quite in sight of the security guard, who was in his little glass hut up the slope of the ramp.
I unlocked the back of Alcide's pickup; fortunately, his pickup bed had a cover. With one more comprehensive look around the garage, I hurried back to the stair door and rapped on it. After a second, I pulled it open.
Alcide shot out and over to his truck faster than I would have believed he could move, burdened as he was. We pushed as hard as we could, and the body slowly retreated into the truck bed. With tremendous relief, we slammed the tailgate shut and locked it.
"Phase two complete," Alcide said with an air that I would have called giddy if he hadn't been such a big man.
Driving through the streets of a city with a body in your vehicle is a terrifying exercise in paranoia.
"Obey every single traffic rule," I reminded Alcide, unhappy with how tense my voice sounded.
"Okay, okay," he growled, his voice equally tense.
"Do you think those people in that Jimmy are looking at us?"
"No."
It would obviously be a good thing for me to keep quiet, so I did. We got back on I-20, the same way we'd entered Jackson, and drove until there was no city, only farmland.
When we got to the Bolton exit, Alcide said, "This looks good."
"Sure," I said. I didn't think I could stand driving around with the body any longer. The land between Jackson and Vicksburg is pretty low and flat, mostly open fields broken up by a few bayous, and this area was typical. We exited the interstate and headed north toward the woods. After a few miles Alcide took a right onto a road that had needed repaving for years. The trees grew up on either side of the much-patched strip of gray. The bleak winter sky didn't stand a chance of giving much light with this kind of competition, and I shivered in the cab of the truck.
"Not too much longer," Alcide said. I nodded jerkily.
A tiny thread of a road led off to the left, and I pointed. Alcide braked, and we examined the prospect. We gave each other a sharp nod of approval. Alcide backed in, which surprised me; but I decided that it was a good idea. The farther we went into the woods, the more I liked our choice of venue. The road had been graveled not too long ago, so we wouldn't leave tire tracks, for one thing. And I thought the chances were good that this rudimentary road led to a hunting camp, which wouldn't be in much use now that deer season was over.
Sure enough, after we'd crunched a few yards down the track, I spotted a sign nailed to a tree. It proclaimed, "Kiley-Odum Hunt Club private property - KEEP OUT."
We proceeded down the track, Alcide backing slowly and carefully.
"Here," he said, when we'd gone far enough into the woods that it was almost certain we couldn't be seen from the road. He put the truck into Park. "Listen, Sookie, you don't have to get out."
"It'll be quicker if we work together."
He tried to give me a menacing glare, but I gave him a stone face right back, and finally, he sighed. "Okay, let's get this over with," he said.
The air was cold and wet, and if you stood still for a moment the chilling damp would creep into your bones. I could tell the temperature was taking a dive, and the bright sky of the morning was a fond memory. It was an appropriate day to dump a body. Alcide opened the back of the truck, we both pulled on gloves, and we grasped the bright blue-and-green bundle. The cheerful yellow fish looked almost obscene out here in the freezing woods.