I rolled my eyes.
Gwen; How did you bury it?
Unknown; Built a fire. Let the ground thaw. Put the fire out. Dug until I hit frozen ground. Lit another fire. Rinse repeat.
Damn. Why the hell hadn’t I thought of that?
Gwen; That had to have taken hours.
Unknown; A couple.
Gwen; Why so much effort?
Unknown; I googled the guy. Took me all of two minutes to figure out why you did it.
Gwen; And why did I do it?
Unknown; Simone. He showed up, either threatened or hurt her, and you defended her. I respect it. Probably would’ve done the same thing in your position. But you didn’t know what you were doing, and you screwed up. It looked like you were coming from the ranch. If I were you, I would’ve just incinerated it there. There’s one at the meatpacking plant, you know.
No. I sure as hell did not know. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have known how to get inside the meatpacking plant. Could Ihave figured out a way? Sure. If I told Rhiannon I was curious about how to process meat, gave her a spiel about my desire to live off the land, she would have given me a job at the plant. But I wouldn’t have had time for all that while hiding a decomposing body.
Still, something about their attitude put me off.
Gwen; You’re too calm about this.
Unknown; You’re too panicked. That’s what could get you caught.
Maybe they were right.
Gwen;The only way your reaction makes any sense is if you’ve done this before.
Unknown; I assure you, I have never seen a friend drop a body off an overpass, then drug it out of the creek myself, only to spend my entire day burying the damn thing.
Gwen; Maybe not. But you’re too calm about a murder to have never been involved in something similar.
Unknown; Could’ve been manslaughter for all I know.
In the eyes of the law, that may have been what I did. I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter.
What mattered was how comfortable they were with all this.
If it were Rhiannon, was it possible that she’d killed a man like David before? I could see her capable of it. Most people, under the right circumstances, were capable of killing.
But Rhiannon had looked genuinely shocked by Simone’s bruises. Whoever this was wouldn’t have been.
Unless that had been a ruse too.
Axel still seemed more likely. A man his size would have an easier time moving the body than Rhiannon or I would have.
While Axel and I weren’t the best of friends, I knew a thing or two. Like how he’d gotten this job. His mom had left his dad and came to live at the ranch. I’d never met her, so I wasn’t sure if she had passed or moved away after getting back on her feet.
But was it possible that she had killed her husband? And that coming to the ranch was about escaping more than just her trauma?
Gwen; Fine, I won’t pry. But I need to know where he is.
Unknown; You really don’t. You do need to tell me what you meant earlier though. What shit hit the fan?
Gwen; Rhiannon saw bruises on Simone’s face. She knew it was David. We didn’t tell her exactly what happened, but she made Simone file a report. The cops are gonna be looking for him.
