“I don’t see him. He just didn’t go for a stroll, it seems.”
“You have to go after him, Boots. He doesn’t know what he’s doing out there,” Laura whispered as she imagined Jack dying a myriad of different ways and hating herself for enjoying some of them.
Boots stood in his familiar pose, his cheek filled with his hobby. “Seems to me, Laura, that he doesn’t want me coming after him. Seems he likes things his own way.” He turned and spit behind him in deference to the ladies seated on the porch.
Molly’s widened eyes bounced back and forth between the two of them.
“He’ll die out there,” Laura said.
“If that’s the way he wants it.”
“That’s not what he wants. He probably thinks he is trying to help.”
“You give him too much credit. Naw . . . he’s gone to save himself. Left you here on your own. What kind of man does that? Not a good one, I say.”
“Please, Boots?”
The old man removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow. He looked up at the sky and then back to the porch, pondering the situation. “It’s getting hot out today. Probably fry him up real quick.”
Molly and Laura stared back at the old man, surprised that such easy talk could come in such a dire situation.
“All right, I’ll go get him. But not right now. Naw . . . I think a man like that deserves to stew a bit. Make him think about what he’s done.”
“But—” Laura began, but was cut off by a wave of Boots’s hand.
“That’ll be the end of that. Now . . . you don’t worry about him. I’ll get him back.”
He ambled off behind the cabin as if out for a morning walk, leaving the two women sitting on the porch.
Molly moved her rickety chair a little closer to Laura in a small attempt to offer comfort. “I’m sure he’ll be all right.”
Laura didn’t answer, but looked down as a tear dropped from her cheek.
“Jack seems like a strong guy. I’m sure he can take care of himself.”
“That’s one thing he’s good at . . . taking care of himself.” Laura tossed a sideways glance at Molly. “He’s perfected that art for many years.”
Molly sat back, watching her, a patient look on her young face.
Laura rubbed her legs and sat up a little straighter, preparing to recite the script that she had worked on for a long time. The great venting. “Jack is very good at that. Always has been. When he gets something in his head, he can be a very determined man. It’s why he is successful. Very determined. I used to think that he did things for me. You know? Worked hard for me, to show me that I was important. Now I know he just did things for himself. To make himself feel important. I just caught the spillover.
“There was this time . . . I can’t believe I’m telling you this . . .”
“Go ahead.”
Laura looked at the young girl and saw innocent concern in her eyes.
“. . . there was this time when Jack came home with some news. He said that he got a promotion. A lot of money, a nice title. I was excited for him. He told me that the job was in Atlanta.”
She started picking at the fabric in her shorts as a nervous release.
“I told him that was too bad. I still can’t believe I said that to him . . . but it felt good. I told Jack that I wasn’t going to move to Atlanta. He spent about ten minutes trying to tell me why this was a good opportunity for us. I told him that he would have to take the job without me, because I was staying.
“He got pretty mad and left. A couple hours later, he came back and said that he had decided to pass on the job.”
“Well, that seems like a good thing,” Molly said.
“It does, doesn’t it? He thought so. He still feels like he sacrificed for me. But you know something. It took him three hours to decide. Three hours to weigh the choice and the consequence. He didn’t take the job because he felt guilty, not because he wanted me to be happy too. He just didn’t want to show how selfish he could be.
“It’s why we came out here. Out to Las Vegas. Not just that, but this whole charade we’ve been living. I thought this would be good for us. To get away. Rekindle something. Start fresh. Huh, no. Even out here he’s found a way to . . . found a way to be . . . himself.”
Laura drifted off into her own world again as she stared toward the horizon. In her mind’s eye she could see the silhouette of Jack walking through desert brush, tripping from exhaustion, lost and too proud for help.
Molly ventured to take Laura’s hand and she consented.
“You are a strong woman, Laura,” the girl said. “You have a good heart. You deserve to be happy.”
Laura smiled at Molly’s attempt to sound older than her youth allowed. She didn’t want to break the bubble of adolescent optimism by letting her know that “deserving” had nothing to do with it.
44
The black pickup truck drove through the noonday sun, Colten sweating with manic frustration. The killing the night before had calmed his nerves, but he had worked himself up again. He had to find the girl. His thought processes were not working properly. He would never have been as reckless as he was with the biker if she had not taken off. No. He had to find her. Zigzagging through the shrub and stone, he kept his eyes peeled for any movement, but he found none. His bloodlust whipped up to a frenzy as the beats and suspension pounded his heart rate.
“You have to find her,” Seth said.
“I know.”
“If she gets to someone, you’re done.”
“I said I know!” Colten screamed.
He punched the gas as he swung back on the pavement from the desert two-track, a cloud of dust behind him that instantly flashed red and blue. A police cruiser coming up the road behind him.
“You think they found the girl?” Seth said with a faint grin.
“No.”
“You think the girl told them?”
“No.”
“I bet she did,” the man said with a curt smile.
“Just shut up!”
Officer PJ Morey stopped her police cruiser on the side of the road behind the black pickup truck. She could see the heat rising from the roadway as she put the car in park and dialed up the radio. The thought of getting out of the car was not on the top of her “most favorite things to do” list, but this was her job, and she took pride in doing it well. The voice on the other end of the radio sparked up, and she got to work.
“Yeah, Red, I need you to run a plate for me.”
“What’s you got, PJ?”
“Black pickup out driving crazy.”
“Slow day. Hold on a bit.”
She put the radio down and waited for a response. Looking out across the road, she thought about being at home. Such a nice day, it would be better to be poolside with a cold drink than passing out tickets. And poolside is where she belonged, according to many of the hometown folks. But she was out here, being a cop despite all the concerns and naysaying of her pops. Many had placed bets that she would have had a hundred kids by the time she was twenty-five, but she pushed that life aside as soon as she was out of high school, enrolled in the academy, and went to work. It wasn’t her whole life. She knew that, and she daydreamed of lounging around in the heat as any right-thinking person would.
Officer Morey didn’t graduate at the top of her class, but she had learned all the skills of being a good cop. Plus, countless episodes of CSI had filled in the gaps.
She kept an eye on the black pickup, making sure the lone occupant wasn’t busy stashing stuff away in the cabin. She had heard stories of big drug busts out on the stretches of highway in the southwest, but nothing like that ever happened around here. She had to read about such stories back at the station.
Just this morning she heard about the body of a man found outside the air base north of Vegas. The guy was found off the highway, seemingly dragged to death across the desert floor. His bike was next to him, twisted and broken. It too looking as if it had been d
ragged, pieces of it found strewn in its wake. The bike had Minnesota plates. Tire tracks leading out of the desert were waiting to be analyzed. Brutal and interesting. A killer on the loose and officers up there racing to find him. Or her. No, no cases like that down here, she thought, just boring routine and heat. She came out of her daydream when the radio came back to life.
“It’s just Cole, PJ. Better go up and make sure the boy hasn’t been drinking, then turn him loose.”
“All right.”
She opened the door and stepped out of the car.
Colten watched the officer in the cruiser from his rearview mirror, the sweat in his palms greasing the steering wheel as his knuckles cracked from their grip. He watched as the blonde-haired cop pulled the radio to her mouth and put it down again. She sat there waiting, waiting for him to make a move, it seemed. An eternity later she voiced something back in the radio and stepped out of the car.
“So, this is how it ends, huh?” Seth said.
“No, it’s not.”
“She knows. That person on the radio just told her. You’re done.”
“They don’t know anything.”
He watched as the petite cop walked in front of the cruiser and toward the passenger side of the truck.
“Good luck.”
“Just shut up,” Colten replied, but the seat was empty. Just the silence of his own thoughts and the idling engine accompanied him.
PJ walked up the shoulder on the passenger side of the truck. She had read of officers getting struck by passing cars when standing on the driver’s side, so she began to make it a habit of talking to speeders from this vantage point. Plus she told herself it offered her better visibility and protection if someone flew off the handle. The most it had ever done was save her from getting puked on by guys who had had too much to drink. The exhaust pipe shot a rank plume of smoke into her face, making her light-headed for a moment.
Getting to the window, she went to the formalities. “Driver’s license and registration?”
Colten grabbed some papers from his visor and handed them to PJ. She took them with a nod and started heading back to the cruiser.
She thumbed the paper open and glanced at it, then flipped over the license. David Wilcox, St. Paul, Minnesota. She stopped in her tracks, a knot the size of a basketball welling up in her stomach. She looked up toward her cruiser and in her peripheral glanced at the back quarter panel of the truck. There were fresh scrapes that had not started to rust. New.
She forced her legs to take a few more steps, hoping that her hesitation had not alerted the driver.
Colten watched in the passenger side mirror as the cop walked back, examining what he had handed her.
Just get this done with, he thought.
His heart thumped in his chest. He had been reckless. Unordered. He knew that last night he had been twice impulsive, and this had allowed cracks to form. He should have killed the girl when he had intended, and then he never would have gone on a binge with the biker from Minnesota.
He saw the skinned face of the man in his mind, lying on the ground, looking up at him laughing. But why was he laughing now? No, that’s not how it happened. He had died, begging for reason. Colten shut his eyes and shook off the vision in his head. Again, the laughing dead man in his thoughts. He opened his eyes and looked at the dash. Sitting there next to the ashtray was his driver’s license.
A cold hand gripped his spine as laughter echoed in his mind. He looked back to notice the cop walking slowly around the back of his truck.
“She knows,” said the laughing voice.
His heart panicked.
“Hahaha . . . SHE KNOWS!”
PJ stepped behind the truck and looked over the tailgate into the bed. On the floor she could see chains scattered about. Thick ones. Chains able to tow a vehicle . . . or drag a bike and rider cross-country. Her pulse beat faster as she put all the pieces together. Her eyes trailing the chains as they skirted the truck bed up toward the cabin. Then her eyes met his as he was turned, looking back through the rear window. They were soulless . . . evil.
The pickup truck slammed into reverse and she caught the tailgate with her chest, her arms thrown over the top with her feet dragging on the ground. It only took a second to slam into the cruiser, her body smashing through the radiator. She felt nothing as her back broke. She could not breathe but short gasps as she lay pinned on the hood of the crushed police car, staring upward. The sweeps of clouds spun in circles.
Her head rolled to the side and she could see the ground under the driver’s side of the pickup. Her mind struggled to process this as her body went into shock. She could see Colten step out of the truck and walk over to her. He reached for her hand and pulled the driver’s license from her clenched fist. Then stood back and stared at her.
“It’s a shame. Could have been anywhere today. Just so happens you were here.”
She cried a faint tear as the thoughts of an unlived life passed before her eyes.
“Now I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to move the truck and you going to die real quick. But since I wasn’t planning on any of this, you tell me when.”
Officer PJ’s mind spun with the clouds overhead as she thought of the morning, of the desert, of her family, of all the things in life she had done and would never do. She felt calm. Not so much at peace, but slowly processing the facts. She was already dead. Her body just didn’t know it yet.
She rolled her eyes up to Colten. Not able to speak . . . she simply nodded with her eyes.
He turned and got into the truck, put it into gear, and rolled forward. The cop’s body fell with the pressure released, and Officer PJ was dead before her head hit the ground. Colten put the car in park, got out again, and surveyed the scene. His companion returned.
“You are just out of control now, aren’t you?”
“I had no choice. She knew.”
“She knew because you as much as told her.”
“I know.”
“You know you’re done now, right?”
“I know,” Colten said.
“Come on, let’s get going.”
Colten got back in the truck.
There was no use trying to cover up the mess. The cop had obviously called in his plates. They knew where to find her, what she was doing, who she had stopped. The man was right. He was done. They would know everything soon enough. They would be after him.
“They are going to put you in that cell. And all you’ll have to think about is what that injection will feel like.”
“Shut up . . . let me think!”
“It’s going to be a long wait.”
Colten put his head on the steering wheel, rocking back and forth, trying to clear his mind.
“You know what will help pass the time? Remembering that girl. Yes . . . a memory like that will last a long time. She’s still out there. Ain’t nobody important found her yet.”
A silence filled the truck as it started to ease down the highway.
“Let’s go find her.”
45
Sitting at the table, staring outside, Laura sensed more than saw Molly walk back to the couch after fetching another glass of water from the pump and plop down on the tattered cushions. She felt the girl looking at her but kept her eyes on Boots, relaxed on the front porch.
Her thoughts were on Jack, wherever he might be. The heat from outside was unbearable, hotter than any day so far. He was an indoor creature, she knew, and the temperature would make short work of him.
After a while Laura walked out to Boots and stood next to him, looking at the old-timer like a parent silently scolding a child for something they didn’t know they’d done. Boots appeared unaffected and sat motionless in his weathered chair.
“I can’t believe you’re not doing anything.”
“I think you’re mistaken . . . I’m doing something. Sitting here enjoying the view.”
“You know what I mean, Boots. Jack could be hurt out there. Or worse, he coul
d be . . .”
“He’s fine. Like I say, a little time getting beat down may be all he needs.”
“He’s not that type of guy. He can’t survive out there.”
“I guess we’ll find out, huh?”
She was incredulous. Frustrated at the old man’s inaction. He sat there with the power to go after Jack, to bring him back, but did nothing. Boots read her mind.
“No fun, is it, waiting for someone to move?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You know.”
She did. She thought of herself, wasting so much time as her life seeped away. Relinquishing her own strength, her own happiness. Sitting idly by as her years rolled on. The accusation lacerated her and awakened her at the same time. She looked at Boots and nodded her head.
Boots’s stern eyes softened as he looked back.
“Why you want him back so much? Huh? He seemed like he didn’t know how to treat you.”
“He’s my husband. Why wouldn’t I want him back?”
“Just figured you’d like it this way . . . maybe not?”
Laura thought about the stinging words. Stinging because they had passed through her mind before.
“What . . . what is it? Duty? You want him back because you think you have to?”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Aww . . . I get it. You’re a romantic.”
She stood motionless, hurt, defensive. “He’s a good man.”
“You say so.”
“I know so.”
“Then let me tell you something, Laura. If that be the case . . . then maybe he needs this. To get broken. To see that there is more than him to think about.”
“He’ll die out there, Boots!”
“You don’t know that. Ain’t going to happen if you would just listen.”
Purgatory Road Page 12
