Before I got into the car I double-checked the trunk to make sure neither the rug nor anything else was protruding out from underneath the lid. I wanted to avoid being stopped by the police or the Highway Patrol on the journey I was about to embark on. It would have been pretty difficult to explain the cargo I was carrying. I got in the car and headed out of the neighborhood, getting back on Van Nuys Boulevard and heading north and following it past where it jogs at a forty-five degree angle northeast and continues to the Interstate 5 – the Golden State Freeway – which I took northbound, away from the Los Angeles megalopolis and toward the rugged California hinterlands. I knew exactly where I wanted to go, a remote spot I had passed a few times in my travels. It was out in the Mojave Desert toward Palmdale, on, or right off of, a dirt road well off the highway that was at most seldom traveled and most likely, by some very incurious people. The only question was whether I would be able to find it in the dark.

There was hardly any traffic on the freeway at that hour. I conscientiously drove right at the speed limit – 70 miles an hour – and wore my seatbelt and shoulder harness. Where the Golden State Freeway met the Antelope Valley Freeway, also known as Highway 14, I transitioned to the lesser traveled route that forks off east on the north side of the Angeles National Forest divide heading into the western end of the Mojave Desert. It was a dark night, vaguely starlit but with no moon. Nevertheless, I could still see that the freeway was now moving through a desert landscape that featured occasional yucca and Joshua trees and other sparse chaparral that ran right up to the edge of the freeway in some spots.

After a good stretch of travel through this portion of the desert, I exited at Escondito Canyon Road and drove east along it as it paralleled Highway 14 for a few miles. Then as Highway 14 angled away northeast, I continued out through Escondito Canyon in what by my night time reckoning seemed a due east direction. I followed the occasionally winding road and then turned off onto Hubbard Road, doing my best to remember how far along I would need to travel before I came upon the dirt road turnoff I was seeking. I found it about twenty minutes after I had exited the freeway, which I would estimate was sixteen or so miles well off the beaten track. All that way I encountered at that hour only two vehicles, which were headed west in the opposing lane. Except for a fast moving Corvette that passed me from behind shortly after I left the freeway, there was no traffic moving in the same direction I was. I almost missed the turnoff when I did come upon it, but I saw it, a dirt road heading out into indigenous chaparral. Given its contours and the darkness, I could only follow its serpentine direction at no more than 25 or thirty miles an hour. I had never actually traveled it before, but in my excursions out to that region on Highway 14 during skiing trips out to Wrightwood I had noted it as a mysterious back road to a remote location seemingly untraveled by none beyond the most adventurous of offroad enthusiasts, backwoodsmen or the hardiest of hermits, with the exception perhaps of Department of Forestry firefighters who might conceivably have reason to pass over it to reach a wildland fire far up the canyons. Somewhere along this unpaved road, a mile or so after the turnoff from Hubbard Road, I would take a short walk out into the desolate real estate and dig a shallow grave to put the unfortunate Mr. Williams to rest in.

Within the sweep of my headlights I looked constantly for the ideal spot, an absurd undertaking really because the dark in fact prevented me from having any realistic perspective on the lay of the land. Nevertheless, at one bend in the road, I could see that off to the left the floor of the desert dropped down into an arroyo sufficiently below the level of the road so that a passerby’s vantage at that point would prevent him from seeing any irregularity in the ground, such as the mound of a freshly dug, or the shallow of an older, grave. I brought the Buick to a halt, put it into park, shut off the lights and turned off the engine.

Through the open window I could hear the cacophonic but coordinated high-pitched crackle of cicadas in a not-too-distant bush answered by the odd chirping of some crickets. The smell of sage grew even stronger. I threw open the door and stepped out. The road was at a slight tilt and the gravity instantly shut the door beside me. I walked slightly in front of the car and stepped to the top of the embankment at the road’s left side to peer out over the edge and down. I shut my eyes and covered them with my hands to accelerate their adjustment to the dark. After fifteen seconds or so I opened them to focus out into the black again. The black had transitioned to a very dark gray. I could not discern sharp detail but saw that just forty feet or so distant was a spot that would suit my purpose. The fact that a few scattered sage bushes stood between the road and the spot further recommended it.

I went to the back of the Buick and opened the trunk. I had to struggle a bit to get the pick out because the weight of the bundle above it pinned it to the bottom of the trunk. I took it and the shovel and reshut the trunk lid. I walked to the left and front of the car up the embankment and over the side, down the slight incline and through the sage bushes at the periphery of the arroyo. Fifteen or so feet beyond those bushes was a patch of desert dogwood. Seven feet or so to the side of that was some more desert sage. I took off my jacket and threw it atop the sage bush. Between the bush and the dogwood I set about my work. First I tested the ground with the shovel. The first foot or so, the soil was relatively sandy but below that was clayier. I worked a pretty narrow patch of ground, no more than two-and-a-half feet, by roughly six feet. I had taken the leather gloves off during the drive, but I retrieved them from my pocket and put them on to prevent blistering. I worked rapidly, thrusting and casting with the shovel until the earth grew tough. I’d then hack like a ditch digging demon with the pick all along the bottom of the hole, softening the earth up before going to work with the spade again.

After the hole was about two feet deep, I was obliged to get down in it to continue my digging. This slowed me down somewhat as the closer I came to either end, the more abruptly I had to angle the shovel up to cast the dirt out of the hole. Both my lower and upper back were registering complaints at the continuation of the task before me, as were my arms and neck, but I put those thoughts away with the calculation that I would need to make the hole only slightly more than twice as deep as it already was – four-and-a-half feet or thereabouts – to safely stow the corpse.

My turtleneck was wet with perspiration, as was my hair. I continued to dig. I can’t say exactly how deep the hole had grown, but my mind had begun to wonder to the next step, which was how I would carry my 210-pound friend down the embankment and then across the sandy ground without either twisting an ankle or leaving telltale impressions from my footsteps that would lead right to the grave site. I had just hit upon the idea of simply rolling him down the embankment and to his final earthly resting place, when a sound I did not like intruded upon my thoughts. I looked over to see that coming down the winding dirt road from the direction of the foothills toward Hubbard Road and me were two headlights. Muttering a curse, I jumped up out of the hole.