Grisly work

Alex stood there dumbfounded, staring at the briefcase full of money. At the moment, he was the only person who knew about it. He had not mentioned the briefcase to John so far. He had only told him about the body. That money would solve a lot of his problems. He started to turn things over in his mind, exploring ideas. Alex quickly came to the disappointing conclusion that he would not easily be able to conceal the money from John. They were only a few hours into their shift, which would mean leaving the body unreported for hours. The briefcase was also handcuffed to the body, and he would not be able to return with something to remove it without raising suspicion.

Alex cursed silently and opened the radio channel to speak with John. “There's a briefcase stuffed full of bills.”

There was a moment of considerable silence before John spoke. “Alex, I need you to listen to me very carefully. Get him out of the stall and down to the sub-basement. You'll need to come down at least one floor and get him over to the service elevator that's near the back of the cafeteria.”

“That's one floor down and halfway across the mall,” Alex replied.

It took Alex a minute to consider one of the potential problems with this idea.

“What about the security camera? There's got to be at least five that will see me doing that.” Alex pointed out to John.

“Alex. You've not been here long enough to know how outdated our CCTV is. The archive feeds are accessed from a web page and it barely works with a browser that is current. The whole systems is prone to failure and loosing footage if there is any form of power outage. Honestly, I'm glad nothing major ever happens here as if it did and Sunshine needed to provide footage, there's likely a lawsuit waiting if that ever happened. So what I'm going to do while you are dragging our friend there to the service elevator is turn off the power supply for the CCTV for twenty minutes any footage from the last six hours should be lost.” John explained.

“I'll meet you down there then,” Alex told him, feeling reassured.

Alex stepped back into the stall and hooked his arms under the armpits of the body. He was surprised at how heavy he was and took a few attempts to haul him off the toilet. The briefcase got caught against the stall door, so he had to drop the body, move him forward a little until he could move it around the door. Alex did consider for a moment how undignified it was leaving this man face down on the bathroom floor. He pulled him onto the open floor of the bathroom and turned the body over. Alex stopped for a moment and went and wedged the restroom door open so he would not have any issues moving the body out. After Alex turned the body over.

He decided to be careful first and went and checked out on the concourse to make sure nobody else was around before what he was going to do next. Alex went back into the restroom. He placed the briefcase on top of the man's chest and then hooked his arms under his armpits again. Dragging him this way was slow going as Alex decided to avoid the elevators as he was not sure if the cameras in them were part of the same network as the rest of the CCTV. There was also the thought of what if he got stuck in one. Explaining why he was in there with a dead body would be complicated.

In the end, it took Alex about thirty minutes to get the body over the service elevator at the back of the cafeteria that John had mentioned. Moving the body down several stairwells had been less difficult than he thought, the briefcase had complicated things a little, as it sometimes had to be repositioned to prevent it from blocking him from getting the body around corners. He checked to make sure there had not been any obvious drag marks caused by moving the body, Alex was relieved that he could not see anything obvious. Alex called for the service elevator and dragged his new friend inside. He pressed the button for the sub-basement. The service elevator was slow, and the wait was torturous. It was enough time for Alex to start panicking for a moment. What if other people knew about the body, what if the camera footage was not wiped fully. The person who was most at risk here was himself as John had not really done anything that had a paper trail behind it. The elevator doors snapped open which brought Alex out of his self-reflection.

Alex had not been down to this area of the mall. This was the domain of maintenance. He was in a long corridor. He started dragging the body down to the end of the corridor and found he was in some sort of intersection. He thought he was all alone and then John appeared from somewhere.

“I hope it wasn't too difficult getting him down here,” John asked.

“It was oddly easier than I thought it would be,” Alex replied.

“Where are we taking him?” Alex asked.

“There's this large open area near the backup generators,” John explained while grabbing the stiff's feet.

It was quicker moving it with somebody else. John directed him to the area that he had mentioned. They put the body down on the floor.

“So what now?” Alex asked

“I've got a list of supplies we need,” John advised

“Supplies for what?” Alex further questioned.

“Please tell me you aren't being this innocent, Alex. Do I really need me to directly state what we are going to do? Nobody else knows about him, and that is a large amount of money. I say an even split.” John said to him, sounding irritated,

Alex realised he was committed and there was not any turning back at this point. He had not wanted to consider exactly what they were about to do. He felt like he was going to be sick when it finally fully hit him.

“Give me the list,” Alex replied.

John handed over a list.

4 X Large tarpaulins

2 X Hacksaws

Hydrochloric Acid

4 X Pairs of heavy-duty gloves

Pair of Pliers

Large refuse sacks

2 X pairs of large overalls

Industrial strength cleaning supplies

Alex looked at the list in horror. He thought it was better not to question the purpose of most of these items.

“How do I get any of them?” Alex asked, knowing he sounded stupid.

“You should be able to get into any of the stores from their staff entrances. Make sure to disable any alarm system. They'll not notice a few items going missing.” John told him

“How is something like this so easy for you?” Alex queried

“I used to work homicide. You get to know some of the methods they used for cleaning things up.” John answered.

Alex hated the use of the word cleaning in that way. Alex left John with the body while he left to gather the supplies John had requested. It took Alex several trips, but eventually he gathered everything John had requested. When he returned for the final time, he found John over the body checking the dead man's wallet.

John looked up at Alex, showing him a driver's licence. “Ignacio Cruz. I'll get a buddy of mine who is still on the force to run some ID checks. Don't worry, I'll be discreet.”

The pair of them laid out the tarpaulins on the ground and got on with the grisly work ahead of them. Alex got through it by going somewhere in his own head. He compartmentalised what was happening, and the distance allowed him to think it was someone else doing this work. After several hours, and several refuse bags filled with their new friend, it was done. Alex had been shocked at how readily John had committed to this.

“So next, Alex. There is an exit down here which leads to the staff car park. Take one of the tarps, line your trunk with it. Come back down here and take half of the bags. I know a couple of spots around town where you can drop one before the waste removal comes this morning. Then get back here, and we can split the money up.” John instructed.

“What about the smell?” Alex asked.

“He won't get ripe for another couple of hours,” John told him.

“The one they reported. Why we found him?” Alex stated

“We say there was nothing. They'll just chalk it up to someone who had an accident after too many burritos.” John replied.

Alex grabbed one of the tarps and made his way to the car park. He opened the trunk of his car and carefully lined it with the tarp, he did not want to experience any spillage as that would be really difficult to explain to a car wash. He returned to John.

“What about any of the stuff we used?” Alex questioned.

“Some of it can go in the incinerator. Some of it will need cleaning before we can dispose of it. I'll handle it. Load up some of the bags and take them to the spots I mentioned.” John requested.

Alex grabbed around half of the bags and loaded them into his trunk. He looked up the first address that John had given him. Alex also had an awful thought: he was placing a lot of trust in John, and he had the money. Alex hoped he had just got himself up for a life behind bars.