My torn-up wrist hurt and demanded attention. I blew on it to relieve the smarting. Ernest had a better idea; he poured whisky on it. I squealed in pain, which he found amusing.
“Oh, so sorry, let me make nice.” He reached over to grab my breast, but he didn’t find much. “Jesus, you’re a flat-chested little sparrow.”
He splashed more whisky on my wound. I bit my lower lip hard to keep from crying out. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, but he saw my eyes tear up.
“Quit crying, bitch. You wouldn’t want an infection, would you?” The guffawing began again.
A look at the handcuffed wrist made it clear that there was no way of sliding it over my hand: the cuff was fixed securely. My gaze went to the steering wheel hub and alighted on the words “SRS AIRBAG.” I let my eyes drift casually to the dash in front of Ernest. I saw no such letters. This was an early ’90s model, before passenger airbags were required.
Ernest was singing to himself. “I’m gonna have some fun, toniiigght; I’m gonna get my kicks, toniiiiggghht.” He looked at my reflection in the rearview mirror, then directly at my face, then the rest of my body. The dumpy clothes of my disguise together with my flat-chestedness must have dampened his ardor for the moment, so that he didn’t molest me again.
I thought of the busty babes I was once jealous of, including the one who stole my professor boyfriend. They would have fared poorly in my place, for if Ernest was aroused there was no telling what he might do. Score one for small-breasted women.
After some 40 miles, he ordered me off the Interstate onto a secondary four-lane highway. We drove two or three more miles and he had me turn right at a BP station onto a two-lane, unlighted county road.
There was no traffic in front or behind. A forest rose up on both sides of the road, pressing in nearly to the edge of the asphalt. The darkness was profound, giving ground grudgingly to the headlights and instantly closing in behind us. I saw only black in my mirrors.
Out of machismo, and ultimately fatal stupidity, Ernest had not put on his seat belt, but he had made me attach mine as a further, though unnecessary, restraint. I thought of Princess Diana’s accident of just over two years ago. The lone survivor, a bodyguard, was the only one wearing a seat belt. Ironic, I thought, that I had been reminded of her death by Mrs. Palmer’s reference to that event with respect to the death of Harry’s father.
Ernest was becoming excited in anticipation of his fantasized fun-and-games with Susan. I sensed we were nearing the place where he intended to torture, rape and murder me. He drained the bottle and exchanged it for the pistol in his jacket pocket. He took a final drag from his cigarette and stubbed it out on the floor in front of him.
If Harry hadn’t been so specific about having me killed, I doubt I’d have conceived the reckless plan now gelling in my brain. My adrenaline levels rose, my breathing became shallow and frequent. I felt my heart pound in my ears and hoped, mindlessly, that Ernest couldn’t hear it and be forewarned. The nearness of death and the lust for life combine to free the mind to navigate black and foreboding waters. On such a dark sea was I now afloat.
Ernest pointed up the road. “Pull over to the side.”
“But screw your courage to the sticking place,” I exhorted myself, the only line kids ever remember from the reading of Macbeth forced on eleventh graders; who’d have thought it would pop into my head at such a moment? I depressed the accelerator. The car shot forward. This caught him by surprise.
“Slow up, goddammit.”
I pushed it to 80.
He yelled, “Did you hear me, cunt? Slow the fuck up! I’ll kill you.”
I tighten my seat belt with my free hand, white-knuckling the wheel with the other. I nudge the car up to 90, focusing intently on the road, ignoring the pistol that Ernest is waving in my face. Even drunk, he isn’t stupid enough to shoot the driver at this speed. He’s screaming something unintelligible. I can see the reflection of his jaw pumping up and down in the mirror. We’re approaching a bend to the left. I flick to high beams. A sign warns drivers to slow to 35 miles per hour. I hold at 90. The forest is now in front of me, with the road curving away before it. A large tree looms into view straight ahead.
Ernest is all at once desperately afraid. He reaches for the ignition keys. I harden my grip on the steering wheel with my cuffed hand, and holding steady, I make a tight fist of my other hand and snap a left cross into his left eye. Reflexively, his hands come up to his face. The steering wheel jerks a smidgen and I nearly lose control of the speeding vehicle. If I roll the car at this speed, we both will die.
I aim at the tree, my hands hold fast in a death grip on the wheel, my right foot pressed doggedly on the gas pedal under a trembling knee. As my nerve begins to fail, I close my eyes, tense my body, hold my breath, and wish for a deeper belief in God.
My last glimpse of Ernest before slamming my eyes shut was of him trying to shoot me in the leg. Booze and fear conspire against him. Before he can get off a shot, it’s too late.
CHAPTER 14
A bomb detonated. A colossal marshmallow sprang from nowhere to receive my hurtling body. I bounced off the rubbery confection, slammed backwards into my seat, and twisted about pivoting on my shackled right arm. The unyielding metal of the handcuff lacerated my wrist and hand to the bone. I fainted.
When I regained my senses, all was quiet except for the last few gurgling sounds of life abandoning Ernest’s body, and the plop, plop of a thick fluid dripping onto a metallic surface.
There was a dim light coming from behind. By some quirky electrical miracle, the trunk light was on and shone through a rent in the rear seat. The car had accordioned. I could nearly reach the hood ornament. The force of the collision had crushed the doors to half their former length. Every window was shattered.
My right arm was bleeding fearfully. Though dazed, I knew it wasn’t an artery, for the blood flowed rather than spurted. But it would all flow out if I didn’t do something. Forgetting the handcuff, I pulled my hand toward me to bury in my shirt. The action produced a sharp, horrific pain. My eyes filled with tears and I started to cry.
Between sobs, I’d begun to remove my shirt with my free hand so as to use it as a bandage, when I remembered the key. Harry had dropped it in Ernest’s pocket. I was so concerned about my predicament I hadn’t looked at him.
I looked and instantly turned away in revulsion. I gained control of myself and looked again. I’ve seen gruesome sights. As a corpsman in the army, I was supposed to be inured to torn-up bodies, but Ernest’s was beyond the pale. The same mega-g force that had buckled the steel frame of the Buick had crushed and compressed his torso. His head and chest had smashed through the windshield and jutted upward, supported by the crumpled hood. He looked not unlike a carved figure on the prow of a Viking ship. The glass had guillotined his throat and neck, forcing the half-severed head to tilt back at a hideous angle. Blood dripped steadily from the appalling cavity, and dribbled away in the channels of the wrinkled metal.
Movement was painful. The impact wrenched my shoulder and back, and my right arm throbbed to the beat of my pulse. I released my seatbelt and reached across my chest to Ernest with my left arm. With a painful lunge, I grabbed on to his jacket and pulled it, and him, towards me. I turned away again, retching, and tried not to vomit on myself.
I counted to ten and went back to it. I groped in his jacket pocket, whimpering with relief when my hand closed around the precious key. I was trembling uncontrollably. I couldn’t risk dropping it. I tried to bring about a spell of calmness by taking steady, shallow Lamaze breaths, disregarding the fact that every moment I was losing precious blood.
My eyes had adjusted to the dim light. When my left hand stopped shaking, it became possible, taking ever so much care, to unlock the cuffs. I removed them from both my wrist and the steering wheel and put them in my pocket. I took off my shirt and the T-shirt under it. I tied the T-shirt tightly over my lacerations and re-dressed myself.
Now I f
aced a grim task. I pulled Ernest down into the passenger’s seat and propped him up in the corner. His head bobbled precariously, blood dribbling everywhere. I threw my left shoulder into the driver’s door. It gave, but just a tad, and pain flashed through my left side. I turned gingerly and, despite the overwhelming abhorrence that I felt, leaned my back against Ernest for leverage. I drew up my legs and kicked the door hard. I recoiled against the corpse and I could swear it groaned, but it was the sound of the door yielding with reluctance. I repeated the kicks until I inched it open enough to squeeze through.
Ignoring protesting muscles, I reached back in and grabbed Ernest by the legs. Bit by bit, his head lolling dreadfully, I pulled him into the driver’s position, with his upper body lying on the passenger’s seat. He now appeared as though he’d been driving, and had thrown himself down on the seat at the last moment, missing the protection of the airbag, and thereby sustaining his terrible injuries.
I used a part of the T-shirt-cum-bandage to wipe my fingerprints off the steering wheel and anything else I could think of. The odor of bourbon would bear silent witness to Ernest’s tragic drunk-driving accident. I was sure his blood, if he had any left, would also bear testament to the foolhardiness of mixing speed with alcohol.
I stood up and surveyed the scene in what dim light was available. The crumpled Buick had slid back from the tree a couple of feet. Any resemblance between the wreck before my eyes and the finished product of a Detroit assembly line was purely coincidental.
The odor of gasoline was in the air. Fuel was seeping out of the ruptured gas tank and trickling down the side of the road in a small stream. If I’d considered the high possibility of a conflagration, I might have shrunk away from the action I took. I’d have survived the impact only to die a far worse death by fire, trapped as I was.
Another vehicle could be along at any moment. I didn’t want to be seen. Fortunately, in the dark, approaching headlights would be visible in ample time for me to duck into the woods that so closely bordered the road. I began walking in the direction that we had come from. I remembered the service station and minimart, and if I thought up a good story I might get a ride to Orlando.
My appearance was problematic. My clothes were blood-spattered and my wrist looked like so much raw hamburger, though the bleeding had subsided. When I had walked well away from the demolished Buick, I stepped into the woods, stripped to my underwear, turned my clothes inside out, and put them back on. The overlarge, unattractive dungarees and man’s work shirt looked no worse one way than the other, but the bloodstains now looked vague and more generic. Hell, if some rap star did this, half the teens in the country would be wearing their clothes inside out.
Inevitably, a car came. I hid, but I knew that soon after the driver saw the wreck, the place would be swarming with emergency vehicles. I was within a quarter mile of the service station and I could see a little by its ambient light. I untied the bloody T-shirt and tore it into strips. This made my arm throb and sent waves of nausea through me. With the least bloody of the strips, I bandaged the wounded limb as neatly as I could with left hand and teeth. I resisted the temptation to jog the last stretch to the highway. I didn’t need to begin bleeding again. Instead, I marched quickly and deliberately. Shades of army boot camp.
A mud-caked Ford Explorer stood at the pumps of the BP station. One guy was gassing up while exploring the inside of a nostril with the little finger of his left hand. His passenger was chugging from a tall can of Coors. I walked up to the gas pump and addressed the driver, who flicked his little finger behind him when he saw me. He was a ruddy-faced youth with dirty fingernails and pimples. His attire was barely less gross than mine, though unlike me, he was trying to look good, this being Saturday night and all.
“Hi,” I said shyly. “I want to ask you to do me a really big favor. I just had a really big fight with my boyfriend, you know, and I jumped out of the car, and about fucking killed myself. Do you think you and your friend could give me a lift? I’d be glad to pay you.”
I reached into a back pocket, now an inside back pocket, where I’d sequestered a few one-hundred-dollar bills. I brandished one of them.
“Aw, you don’t hafta pay me, ma’am. Chucky ’n’ me’d be happy to help a dame in distress.”
“Look, I’m from Orlando, okay, and that’s pretty far to go. I’d feel better if you’d just take the money. I’m just so happy just to have a ride.” I pushed the C-note into his shirt pocket.
“That’s right nice o’ you. Go ahead ’n’ hop in the back seat. Say, ain’t yer clothes on backward, or some’n’.”
“Yeah, well, I had to dress in a hurry,” I said, looking embarrassed. It embarrassed him too and the matter was dropped.
He topped off and went inside to pay. He gave the clerk my hundred and she was holding it up to the light, clearly doubting that the likes of him could have that much genuine cash. The bill survived scrutiny and she doled out change. A moment later he was in the cab cranking the engine. Before shifting into gear, he turned to say he was Lionel and his bud was Chucky.
I didn’t want to be Susan since it could be argued that she had murdered a man. I introduced myself as Norma, another one of my multiple personalities. Norma is not the sharpest tack in the box, and her mother dresses her funny.
While the introductions were taking place, a wail of sirens and a constellation of twinkling blue, red and orange lights grabbed our attention.
A veritable parade of government vehicles had stopped tentatively on the highway by the road from which I’d just come. There were two sheriffs’ cars, two highway patrol cruisers, an ambulance, and a fire engine bringing up the rear. The boys in the front seat found this a circus not to be missed. Lionel asked if I wouldn’t mind a small delay while they fell in behind the troop to see what was up. Demurring would be ungrateful, if not suspicious.
They stayed well behind until the caravan came upon the hulk of the Buick. The first sheriff’s car stopped on the berm a few car lengths back from the wreck. The others lined up behind it. Lionel caught up to them and happily drove his four-wheeler as far into the forest as it would go, on the opposite side of the road. He backed and turned to give us a bird’s-eye view of the scene.
A stout deputy sheriff got slowly out of the first vehicle. His ankles showed white under his hitched-up uniform trousers, and his belly lapped over his belt. He walked toward the wreck in the light of his cruiser’s headlamps. A lit cigarette dangled from his lips. As I watched, he grabbed it between his thumb and forefinger and flipped it onto the side of the road.
A stream of fire surged to the ruined car. The deputy barely had time to turn his back when the gas tank blew, enveloping the wreckage in a swath of flame. This elicited a rousing “fucking A” from my two companions. It made their night, and they hadn’t even gotten laid.
The crew on the fire truck, who up to now must have felt fairly dispensable, leaped into action. They drove the truck alongside the flaming wreckage and proceeded to hose it down. When the fire was under control, they finished it off with copious amounts of foam. At the same time, the EMTs from the ambulance ministered to the hapless deputy, who appeared shaken but not seriously injured. The brunt of the explosion expended itself in hurtling the vehicle onto its side.
For me, this was an unbelievably lucky turn of events. Despite my efforts to reposition Ernest, the nature of his injuries was not consistent with the scene I’d left behind. I’d had to hope for carelessness or naiveté on the part of the officers sent to the accident. A good forensic analyst would have seen straight through the ruse. Then questions would be raised that might ultimately put me in jeopardy with the law. The explosion annihilated any evidence that Ernest was not the driver.
With the fire out, and the first deputy safely in the ambulance, the second deputy approached the charred wreckage with a broom, swept away a mass of foam, and shone his flashlight inside. He did not like what he saw. He jerked back and looked to his companions for support.
The medical team came up to the wreck with a stretcher and body bag. They were preparing to remove Ernest’s corpse when I noticed one of the state troopers walking in our direction. My heart leaped into my throat and my wrist began to throb in synch with my accelerating pulse. He played the light of his flashlight first on the car, then on us. I held my breath. I didn’t have any ID on me and my explanation for my presence wouldn’t fly with the cops.
He seemed to know my new friends, however. Instead of hassling them, as I expected, he waved them on with the flashlight. “Okay, boys, you’ve had your fun, now get the fuck outta here. And goddammit, Chucky, don’t litter,” he said as he stepped on an empty Coors can. Chucky apologized sheepishly and hopped out to retrieve the crushed can.
The boys drove slowly away, Chucky craning for a glimpse of the body.
“I guess you know the trooper, huh?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.
“Yeah, he’s me uncle,” said Chucky. “He’s pretty fuckin’ cool for a copper.”
I had them drive me to the hotel complex. I thanked them again and gave each a left-armed hug and a kiss on the cheek, which elicited a couple of aw, shuckses. They were nice boys.
Where Evil Lurks Page 11
