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Back at Edgewater Beach Ernie finally felt it was dark enough to sneak onto his friend’s fishing boat. Jake Kingston was one of Ernie’s only true friends, and he had even given Ernie a spare key to his boat to use on the days that he didn’t have a charter scheduled.
Ernie had really helped Jake out when he was going through his divorce. He managed to get Jake a car from a dealer-only auction for pennies on the dollar and cosigned on the lease for his apartment. Owning a cash-only fishing charter didn’t exactly give Jake a great credit rating.
Jake was always grateful to his old friend, even though he never really felt he knew him. They had met back when they were both teenage dropouts sweeping floors at the old Cleveland Press. They would frequently play pool together and get hammered on 3-2 beer. Even when they both got married and moved on to new jobs, they stayed in touch, occasionally playing pool together at the Corner Pocket.
Despite all of that, Ernie always seemed to limit what Jake would get to see of him. Jake used to joke with his ex-wife that if he found out someday that Ernie was hiding a secret family somewhere or the police found bones in his backyard he wouldn’t be surprised. It wasn’t that Ernie ever did anything to elicit that kind of observation from Jake, rather it was simply that it seemed like he was definitely hiding something from his only real friend.
Even though he had the keys to the boat, Ernie never took Jake up on the offer until the day he ended Stoya’s life. As soon as he realized what he had done to the girl he had obsessed over, Ernie became hysterical. He tried to wake up her lifeless body on the floor of that motel room, but there was nothing left to wake. She was gone, and he had killed her.
He spent the next few hours in her motel room waiting for nightfall beside her lifeless body. He even prayed for forgiveness despite being a lifelong atheist. He also prayed that she wasn’t expecting any visitors that night. Despite recent events, Ernie had never physically harmed another human in his life. He certainly wasn’t going to be able to do it again if someone showed up at her door.
Thankfully, for Ernie, nobody had visited by the time it was dark enough to try and transport her body. Ernie ran across the street to Rides 4 Less and grabbed the keys to a van that was for sale from the office. Since Stoya’s room was on the first floor next to the parking lot, he knew there was a good chance that he’d be able to back the van up and place her in the back without garnering any attention.
After rolling her body up in a bedsheet, Ernie carefully surveyed the area outside her motel room before he quickly carried her to the van and laid her down in the back. He quickly shut the doors to both the van and the motel room, which he felt he made sure had no trace of him being there, and began his journey to the Edgewater Park Marina.
The weather was rainy and chilly that night, so it was no surprise to Ernie that he found Jake’s boat tied up to the dock. He parked the van by the boat launch and drove the boat near the ramp used to place boats in the water. After making sure that nobody else was around, Ernie pulled Stoya’s lifeless body out of the van and carried her to the back of the boat where he then laid her down gently.
After returning the van to the parking lot, Ernie hopped in the boat which he had tethered next to the launch ramp and began his journey out to the middle of Lake Erie, which actually reaches a depth of 210 feet at its deepest point. Ernie figured if he made it out far enough he could use one of the heavy rocks he had grabbed from the area near the boat launch to weigh her down and dump her body overboard.
After about 30 minutes of traveling north through mildly rough water and rain on Lake Erie, Ernie shut the boat’s engine off and prepared himself for what he was about to do. Ernie wept as he lifted her body, which was still wrapped in the motel sheet and had a heavy rock wrapped up next to it inside the homemade cloth coffin. He told her that he loved her and begged for her forgiveness as he watched her body disappear beneath the dark water of Lake Erie.
The next day Ernie tried to keep to his normal routine. He knew chances were that nobody saw him with Stoya, but he also wanted to keep an eye on her motel room across the street to see if anyone noticed she was gone.
What Ernie didn’t know was that Vladimir Popov had pre-paid for her motel in cash, and there was no record of a Stoya Fedorov staying at the motel. As far as the motel was concerned, there was never going to be any reason to think anything had happened.
That is, until Vlad showed up looking for her that day.
Ernie’s stomach did flips from his view across the street as he watched the Russian that he had seen so many times at the motel brothel pound on her door. He then watched Vlad go to the motel office and later return with an employee who opened the door to Stoya’s room. After entering the room, an angry Vladimir Popov came out and appeared to be asking the motel employee questions.
He knows something happened to her.
What Ernie also didn’t know was that Stoya had promised Vlad that she would call each morning and also that she would not go anywhere without telling him. Even though Vlad knew something wasn’t right, he played it off to the motel employee and told him to keep her room waiting for her in the event she had just wandered off to go to the store or something.
The fact that Stoya was in the country illegally and working at his brothel was all the reason Vlad needed to hope for the best, but also to keep the police and anyone else out of it.
Just then Ernie’s phone rang. It was Jake.
Shit…
“Hey, Jake, what’s up?” Ernie managed to ask as normally as possible.
“Ernie, did you finally take me up on my offer to use the boat last night?” Jake asked.
“Uh… yeah, sure did. Sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“Well, it’s about damn time you did!”
Ernie felt a sense of relief as he heard Jake’s words, and even more so as he saw the Russian leave the motel in his car.
“Hope I left it in good shape for ya…”
“Yeah, looks great. But you sure could’ve picked a better night to go out. You probably were miserable out there in the rain!”
“Yeah, I realized after it was too late. I just needed to get out and clear my mind. Rough day at work…”
“I hear you, man. Listen, you know you can take her out anytime I’m not using her, got it?”
