. . . 44 Hours and Counting . . .

“Just burying the kid’s body would’ve been a lot easier,” muttered Spurlock to himself. He hadn’t worked so hard since the joint. Come to think of it, the joint had been less work than this.

Santa had left the backhoe right where he said it would be. The keys were in it, and there were almond trees everywhere, providing cover. Spurlock had learned to operate these things almost ten years ago when he had tried a rare spurt of honest work. The trend hadn’t lasted, but the skill was still there. It took him only a minute or two to prime the old engine and fire it up. Working the levers carefully, he began to dig. With less than another hour’s work, he would have a hole big enough to bury the van.

The big diesel grunted and strained, farting so much blue smoke that the cloud reached forward into the bright cones lit up by the headlights. Black-trunked almond trees stood in guardian rows, and somehow they made Spurlock feel more at ease, more hidden. Overhead, a green canopy covered his deeds from the prying eyes of the stars.

It was a warm spring night that hinted of the blazing Central Valley summer that was to come. The air was absolutely still. He sweated over the controls, wiping his forehead often with a filthy red bandana he’d found tied to the steering wheel. He’d learned all too well why the bandana was there. Each time he wiped he also drank a shot from his squirt-bottle of water. The van was parked on the side of the road, about a hundred yards behind him. Laying beside the growing wound in the earth were two eight-foot lengths of white PVC pipe and a giant roll of duct tape. All he had to do was drive the van into the hole, put the PVC pipe through the little pop-up dome on the top of the van, then bury the whole fucker. The pipe would provide fresh air and allow him to drop food into the van. The duct tape was to seal the pipe so dirt wouldn’t fill the van’s interior.

Spurlock had gotten this idea from an old crime he had read about back in the early eighties. Down in the southern half of the Valley, in a town called Chowchilla, some players had hi-jacked an entire school bus loaded with kids and buried the lot of them in a hole for safe-keeping. They had demanded a ransom, but had eventually blown it and gotten caught. The crime had always impressed him with its simplicity and sheer balls. Spurlock, of course, had no intentions of demanding a ransom. All he wanted was to get the kid out of his hair for awhile so he could move without being hampered.

Running the big scoop up the side of the hole to widen it, he heard the engine strain and rev-up as something resisted the blade. Another big root, he figured. The root snapped and the whole rig rocked a bit. A shower of almonds and twigs fell from the disturbed tree, pelting the cab and Spurlock in discriminately.

“The crazy shit I go through to avoid Murder One,” complained Spurlock, scowling back toward the van. He dragged the filthy bandana across his forehead again and lowered the scoop for another bite of earth.