Heads You Lose Read Free

rational persona fading fast.
    “I don’t know,” Paul replied.
    “Is someone sending us a message?”
    “Still don’t know.”
    Despite the smell, the siblings stood at the grisly crime scene and took in the sight of the uninvited guest on their property. The body, flat on its back, had on work boots, old blue jeans (the kind that got old from wearing them and working in them and then washing them), a plaid work shirt, and another layer underneath. It was once white. Now it was covered in dirt and blood and who knows what else.
    “So what do we do?” Lacey asked, fighting back the urge to vomit.
    “We have to move the body,” Paul replied.
    In silence, brother and sister returned to the house to prepare for the ugly task at hand. Lacey pulled her hair into a tight ponytail. She was twenty-eight years old, it occurred to her, and moving her first dead body. The calm and rational side of Lacey thought about DNA. She’d watched enough of those programs to know that she didn’t want hers sprinkling all over the corpse. Paul donned a baseball cap. Lacey pulled two sets of dishwashing gloves from the pantry. Paul grabbed a tarp from the garage. Lacey poured peppermint oil on a pair of earplugs and stuffed them up her nose. She offered a pair of the same to her brother. The silence was briefly broken.
    “These aren’t used, are they?” Paul asked, holding the earplugs at a distance.
    “What do you care? You’ve worn that same shirt for a week straight,” Lacey replied. The shirt was a blue variation on Mercer’s plaid flannel uniform. Last week it was red.
    “I don’t want your earwax up my nose.”
    “They’re fresh,” Lacey said. “I buy them in bulk. You have no idea how loud you snore.”
    “Well, you did play me that tape,” Paul mumbled.
    Another short patch of silence. Paul backed his blue Dodge pickup truck to the edge of the gravel driveway. He met Lacey beside the body. The tarp was laid next to the headless man.
    “You can have the feet,” Paul said, generously.
    “Thanks,” Lacey replied.
    Paul grabbed the body by the shoulders; Lacey took his feet. Having never tried to move a body before, neither sibling realized how immovable dead weight was.
    “Let’s roll him,” Lacey suggested.
    Paul and Lacey each secured the tarp on the ground with one foot and, with all their force, they pushed the body over once, then twice, until it was resting in the center of the tarp. Then they wrapped the plastic around the body and secured it with duct tape so no fluids could escape. They each grabbed a side of the tarp and lifted the body off the ground, carrying it to the truck. They dropped him on the ground to catch their breath. They had to somehow lift one hundred and eighty or so pounds onto the truck bed. Lacey was strong. Sometimes she had to carry giant sacks of soil amendments deep into the woods, but this would take all her strength. She rested for a bit on her haunches.
    “On the count of three,” Paul said. “One. Two. Three.”
    “Now what?” Lacey asked, after Paul secured the body in the truck bed.
    “We dump him.”
    “Where?”
    “Anywhere remote,” Paul replied. “We’re surrounded by acres of forest. If we pick the right spot, he might never be found.”
    “But don’t we want him to be found?”
    “Why?”
    “Because clearly he was murdered, and we want the murderer caught so his family, if he has any, can have some peace.”
    “You don’t even know the guy,” Paul replied.
    “Doesn’t matter,” Lacey said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
    “I don’t care where we dump him as long as it’s miles from here.”
    “I know a place,” Lacey replied.
     
     
    Paul drove their truck down the dark road. He turned on the radio to a country station. He thought the music might help. Lacey hated this song—pop masquerading as country. She knew it would always remind her of this night, so she was glad it wasn’t one she liked.
    There was an eight-mile path off a