Blvd. of Blood

Book 2, chapters 7–8

Continued from here. Table of contents for ease of navigation here.

(The story so far: Respectable actuary Colin Lang continues to plan something horrible (“the Incident”) to take place on Bland Blvd. in April.)

7.

We should probably review.

I-81 runs north–south, or northeast–southeast, for most of its path, but it’s anomalously east–west where it cuts through Cottinend, dividing the town in two. North of the highway is the quaint, strollable Shopping District and the big office complexes; the southern half of town is more residential, and has the park—the one with the big playscape. In between the two halves is a lot of wild, empty, unused forest land, some of it swampy.

Technically, Cottinend is just a village, but it’s huge, at least for New York. All that undeveloped land. It gets three exits on I-81, and one of them, the furthest east, is labeled simply Blande Blvd.

Blande snakes through Cottinend, connecting Hesitania (in the north) with Hobsons Falls. Between a sleepy development of raised ranches—Maple Street, Elm Street, and North and South Oak—and the ramps to I-81 lies the strip in question. Four miles of winding road, divided by a cultivated, fenced-in median (bright, in summer, with flowers). Very scenic. Forested on both sides. No exits.

No exits at all.

8.

Quietly competent had been what Colin had always gone for, if he had gone for anything. “Competent and professional” is perhaps the phrase used earlier. He got good performance reviews, but nothing more. Nothing flashy.

But now the boss was calling him in for a special commendation. “You’ve just been so focused recently,” Mr. Arnoux said from behind his big desk, shaking his head in good-natured disbelief. Colin recognized that there was some irony in this statement, as he had never, not once since he arrived at Radcliffe Worth, not even when his father died, been less focused on work.

“You’re ‘hitting it on all cylinders,’” Arnoux went on. He was fond of such phrases.

And certainly Colin was focused on something. He was focused on detail work.

There were still so many small details of the plan. Take the leather gloves. They kept Colin from leaving prints of course, but what if there were prints on them? He didn’t anticipate forgetting the gloves at any crime scene, but what if something unexpected happened? The soft inside would probably hold no prints, but the shiny outside? He could wipe them down, of course, but even putting them on would necessarily entail touching them again.

The gloves themselves were probably untraceable—Colin had owned them for so many years that even he didn’t remember where they’d come from; and yet they were generic enough, just black leather, that they could hardly be associated with him in anyone’s minds. But the very age of the gloves increased the danger—how many hairs and skin cells were stuck in the lining? Could you…wash leather gloves? Would that work?

He could buy a new pair of gloves, but either he would have to practice with them on—in which case the hair and skin would build up in them as well—or he’d have to initiate the Incident with strange new gloves, never broken in. Certainly it would be foolish to try that!

All of these thoughts appeared and disappeared from the white board.

Finally he took his gloves and did a test wash. Delicates. Air dried. They came through looking fine, and if it reduced the life of the gloves—well, the gloves were expendable. He’d have to discard them after the Incident anyway. Only one more wash they’d have to endure, and that could wait until April.

From the garage he took a pair of pliers. He looked at the grooved tips. Perhaps they were as distinctive as a fingerprint, unique to this set of pliers. He got some duct tape and wrapped it around the pliers’ grooves. Then he practiced picking up the gloves with the wrapped pliers, carrying around the gloves with the wrapped pliers, putting on the gloves with the wrapped pliers. This last part was a little difficult. He only had to use the pliers on one glove, of course, in order to keep his fingerprints off the gloves. Once one glove was in place, he could use it to pull on the other glove.

Just to be safe, one day after work he bought another pair of similar leather gloves. In case anyone asked, in some future time, what had happened to that pair of gloves, he could simply present these new ones. Who would know?

And then the next night, a Friday night, he left the house after nine. He drove about an hour to a 24-hour Rite Aid he’d seen once in Ithaca. He looked around for a burner phone, but none were on display. Instead, he placed in his little blue basket a roll of high-quality packing tape, a spool of black thread, a stack of post-it notes, a red bandana, several more cylinders of sterile wipes, a Sharpie, and—for the drive home—a can of iced coffee.

Colin wished he had facial hair or sunglasses; at least he had a sherpa hat on, pulled low over his ears. “Do you carry pre-paid phones here?” he asked the clerk.

“Yeah, they’re back here somewhere,” the clerk said. He pawed behind the counter through a shelf full of condoms and cigarettes. “Do you know what kind you want?”

“Disposable, with a pre-paid SIM card and a removable battery.” Taking his own phone along would be too dangerous, or course—he didn’t even have it with him here, and this was an innocent trip to Ithaca—but Colin could imagine a number of situations that would call for a phone at hand, and he wouldn’t want to be caught without one.

The clerk fumbled a plastic shell onto the counter. It looked adequate. “Thank you. Can you activate that for me?” A website accessed back in November had assured Colin the clerk could.

“Uggggggh,” groaned the clerk, rolling his head and eyes. Perhaps it was the end of a long shift. But he did it. He had to unwrap the phone from the hard plastic, which required scissors and more groans, but he did it.

“Name,” he asked.

“Brandon Wilson.”

“Address?” and Colin did not give his real address. He paid cash

The automatic door ushered Colin out of the store with his purchases. Once in the car he immediately removed the battery from the phone. He was wearing gloves, although he took them off when he started the car up, of course. The purchases were in a plastic bag. He wasn’t crazy.

Once home, he tossed the empty iced coffee can, openly, into the recycling. It was not suspicious; anyone can drink iced coffee. He picked up a nail scissors in the bathroom and carried the plastic bag to the basement. There in the fluorescent light he put his gloves back on and took out the packing tape. It had an easy-start pull tab, which was lucky, because he could hardly pick at it with his nail while wearing gloves. He pulled off a piece and snipped it with the scissors, making sure to keep his gloved thumb on the roll so the loose end of the tape couldn’t fall back against it. With the hand holding the tape he doubled the loose end over, making an ersatz tab. He put the long, dangling tape strand on the VHS tape holder, the one that had cracked. He taped right over the hardened slather of glue, wrapping the edge around. He practiced pulling several strips off, making sure he could do it easily with gloves. The test pieces he pulled off all went to reinforcing the VHS holder. Eavh time he made a little tab on the tape, for the next pull.

He put the tape roll back in the bag and carried it up two flights of stairs to his bedroom. He opened the drawer with the coveralls and went to upend the bag into it, when something brought him up short.

The top pair of coveralls were zipper-side up. He could have sworn he’d stored them zipper-side down. He’d certainly intended to—in the hopes that anyone glancing in the drawer would only see cloth. Was it possible that someone had been searching his house?

It sounded crazy, a crazy idea. He didn’t want to be paranoid. He walked around, looking if anything else was out of place. The napkin with the address was still under the can of nuts. The rifle was just where he’d left it, of course.

Since his gloves were still on, he sat for a while in the basement, practicing switching clips. Then he got up and went out again, driving to another 24-hour Rite Aid—this one much closer to home, over in Hesitania. He bought a doorknob, which was so thoroughly not suspicious that he almost considered using a credit card, for the points. He came home and installed the knob on the basement door with a screwdriver. It was the kind with a lock; it came with two keys, and he threaded one onto his keychain. The other one went into his junk drawer. By the time he was done it was well past one in the morning, so he went to bed.

There was still so much to do. Maybe tomorrow he could go to the library. Maybe he could drive around, scouting some locations. He still wanted to practice on his bike.

Then he remembered Carol. She’d be coming over.

(Continued here.)