soft click as a permanently closing door, and put it back in my pocket. And I put into play what was arguably the stupidest mistake of my life.
I considered my options, came up with three, decided. Made a plan.
Phase one: I opened the doors of the van and peered out. After the murky interior the light bouncing off the sand blasted my eyes. Then the wash came back into focus. I hopped out, unkinked my back, and got the liter bottle of water out of my backpack. I took off my gloves and dropped them in the sand. I washed some of the blood spurt off my face, then poured water over my blouse to spread the blood evenly through it, so it looked like darker denim. Rather than doing it in the sand I did this over a bit of scrub bush under the shelter of the bridge to hide the trace evidence in case they did a careful scene processing. Picking up my hat from where it had dropped in the struggle, I gathered up my bloodied hair into it. It didn’t take a mirror to tell me that anyone seeing me now, at least from a distance, would merely see a bedraggled woman, wilted from the heat.
A car drove over the bridge heading west but didn’t slow.
Phase two: I put my gloves back on, climbed in through the back of the van expecting to have to search the body for the keys, but I was in luck. He had left the keys in the ignition to make his getaway faster. I checked above the visors and in the glove compartment for a wallet, insurance card, vehicle registration, anything that might identify him and raise questions. All I found was an eight-by-ten manila envelope slid between the driver’s seat and the transmission console, which I tossed on the ground outside the van so I wouldn’t risk getting any blood on it.
Going back into the rear of the van, I opened the latch of a small cupboard attached to the wall. Among the contents was a pink Barbie Doll lunch box which I tried not to think about as I nosed around inside to find a box cutter. That would do nicely. I flicked up the blade of the box cutter, dabbed it in the man’s blood, made a couple experimental cuts in his wrists, and tossed it near the body to make it look like he sliced his own artery.
I nearly missed my walking stick, lying in one of the grooves, the raw wood stained now with blood that would never come clean.
Knowing every second was a chance taken, I looked around the interior as best I could trying to spot any other clues that I’d been there. It seemed clean enough.
Phase three: I got into the driver’s seat and peered through the front windshield to see if anyone had been watching me. Finding the coast clear, I turned on the engine and turned the van onto a dirt road that ran along the top edge of the wash. Luckily the wash and the road veered hard left, and I traveled around the curve until I felt the van would be well out of sight from the bridge where I was known to do my rock hounding. Also luckily, here the river had caused a higher drop from the edge where the water had rushed around the bend in times past, carving out the sand at the curve.
I carefully maneuvered the van closer, closer to the edge of the wash where there was an opening between the mesquite trees that clung stubbornly to the earth despite the erosion of the sand beneath them. When I felt the tires begin to sag dangerously on the driver’s side, leaving the vehicle in drive, I pulled up the emergency brake, crawled over the console and out the passenger side. It would have been more convenient if I were on the left bank of the river and could punch the gas with my walking stick. Instead, I released the brake, pushed on the open passenger door, and prayed for the strength I needed as well as maximum rollover so the drop and tumble would justify the condition of the corpse.
The technique worked. The van fell the eight feet or so into the riverbed, twisting as it dropped so that by the time it hit the softest sand it was lying on its roof, the engine still humming. Holding my breath, practically holding