9

COLTON LEFT THE TRAILER just as the ten o’clock news was beginning on Channel 7. He was wearing charcoal slacks, a black pullover, and his crepe-soled shoes. He preferred going bareheaded, but tonight he pulled a navy-blue stocking cap over his straw-colored hair. He took with him a canvas flight bag in which he had put a folding shovel, a green blanket, a white cotton coat with the legend STRONG-THORNE MORTUARY printed on the back, and a New Mexico automobile license plate. He had driven past the Albuquerque airport after telephoning and had collected the plate from a car left in the low-rate parking lot where long-term travelers parked their cars. Then he’d replaced the plate he would use with one switched from another car. If the theft was reported, the police would have the wrong number.

He drove back to the airport now, left his pickup in the upper lot, and rented a Chevrolet station wagon from Hertz, using a driver’s license and credit card that identified him as Charles Minton, with a Dallas post office box address. Then he took Interstate 25 south and turned the wagon westward at the Rio Bravo exit. He drove slowly, counting the tenths of miles on the odometer. Near the river, he turned off the pavement onto a narrow dirt road. He got out of the wagon there, taped down the switch to keep the courtesy light off when the door was opened, and replaced the Hertz license with the stolen plates. It was after 11:00 P.M. now, a cloudless night lit by a partial moon. The dirt road crossed a cattle guard, curved across a culvert, and branched. Colton angled left. The road became two tire tracks winding through the cottonwood of the Rio Grande’s silted flood plain. The tracks crossed an irrigation drain on a rattling plank bridge and dropped abruptly downward. A hundred jolting yards beyond the drain levee, Colton stopped. His headlights illuminated the stripped body of an old Ford sedan, rusty and riddled with bullet holes. Beyond it was the ruins of another car, also the target of years of hunters. Trash was everywhere – a rotting mattress, the corpse of a refrigerator, cans, bottles, boxes, papers, rags, tattered roofing paper, brush. Colton flicked off headlights and engine and rolled down the windows on both sides of the car. He sat without moving for perhaps ten minutes. He heard the ticking of the cooling engine, and the occasional sound of diesels moving on the interstate far up the valley. It was a windless night and he heard nothing else. Satisfied, he removed the shovel from the bag and climbed out of the wagon.

He pulled the mattress aside and dug where it had been, piling the earth carefully. Even in the dark, it was easy going in the loamy soil. He wanted a hole about six feet long and at least four feet deep.

10

COLTON REACHED the University of New Mexico parking lot a little before 2 A.M. He had scouted it before, but two weeks had passed. If anything had changed, Colton wanted to know it early. He replaced his windbreaker with the mortuary coat. The woman at the desk didn’t took up and the hall to the elevators was empty. The second-floor hall was also deserted. So far, fine. But down the halt Colton could see a paper sign taped to the door of the morphology laboratory. It read: MORPHOLOGY LABORATORY MOVED TO STATE LABORATORY BUILDING. He stared at the sign, dismayed. He moved quickly around the corner. The wide door that opened into the morgue was still shielded with a sheet of plywood to protect it from the bumps of metal body carts. He tried the knob. Locked. He had expected it to be locked. Would they have moved the morgue along,with the autopsy laboratory? Even if they did, the hospital would need a place to hold bodies overnight. From his trouser cuff he extracted a thin steel blade which he had stitched into place. It proved as quick as a key. He swung the door shut behind him and found the switch in the darkness. Three body carts were lined against the wall. All were empty. Beyond them the stainless-steel door of the walk-in refrigerator stood closed. Colton swung it open. Two carts were parked inside, each bearing a sheet-shrouded figure. Colton read the tag on the nearest one. It identified the victim as Randy A. Johnson, 23 years old, Roswell, New Mexico. Dead on arrival. Head and neck injuries. Motorcycle accident. Colton checked the next tag. It said: EMERSON CHARLEY. AUTOPSY. HOLD FOR CRTC. “CRTC” would mean Cancer Research and Treatment Center. Colton folded back the sheet. He had seen the face before only at a distance. It was gaunt now, drawn with the effects of a lingering death. But he recognized it. This time nothing would go wrong. He replaced the sheet.

In the hall, he stood a moment, listening. A faint thumping came from the hospital laundry. All else was quiet. Colton glanced at his watch. Five after three. He decided not to wait. The odds, he decided, wouldn’t improve.

It was fourteen after three when he parked the station wagon beside the loading dock. The dock door stood partly open, as he had left it, and he could still hear a thumping from the laundry. He left the station wagon’s tailgate open. It was thirty-five steps from the doorway of the dock to the morgue door. He picked the lock again and slipped in.

There were two red plastic sacks of clothing on the floor beside the carts. He put the nearest one under the sheet beside the corpse and wheeled the cart out of the refrigerator. At the door of the morgue he paused again, listening. Thirty-five steps, and then perhaps sixty seconds on the dock while he lifted the body into the station wagon. The hall was absolutely silent. The cart rolled down it, trailing the slight sound of rubber tires on tile. On the dock, Colton pushed the cart out of sight of the doorway He extracted the clothing sack and tossed it into the back of the wagon.

“Come on, friend,” he said, and he tucked the sheet around the body and lifted it in his arms. It was stiff with rigor mortis. Surprisingly light. “Here we go now,” Colton said. He slid the body into the station wagon and covered it with the green blanket.

The period of high risk was almost over now. He closed the tailgate, rolled the body cart back into the hallway. The station wagon’s engine started instantly. As he did the left turn out of the service drive, he glanced in the rear-view mirror. The dock was deserted. No one had seen him. It had gone perfectly. Absolutely no tracks had been left.

Colton tuned in a country western station on his way back to the grave. He felt happier than he had for months. Happy for the first time since he had called Boxholder and told him of the failure. The memory was vivid. Two hours sitting in the airport, waiting for the time to call the El Paso number. Dreading it. He had never failed before. From the very first – torching the nightclub in Denver seven years before – he had always reported only success. Not just success but perfection. The job done. No witnesses. No evidence. No tracks. Perfection. And always Boxholder’s voice, warm and friendly, congratulating him. This time there had been no congratulations. First there had been only silence, and then Boxholder’s voice was cold.

“Give me the number you’re calling from. Wait right there. I’ll call the client and call you back. Be there.”

“Tell him I won’t accept the fee,” Colton had said. “Tell him I’ll finish the job.”

“You just wait,” Boxholder said.

Colton had waited. It was more than four hours before the telephone rang.

“Your man was checking into the hospital,” Boxholder said. “He’s in now. We’re to just keep an eye on things and when he dies, you get rid of the body. Get it right away and get rid of it.”

“My God,” Colton said. “I baby-sit this guy until he dies?”

“Not long,” Boxholder said. “He’s got a kind of cancer that works fast.”