NIGHT CRUISING

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  Molly had her seat belt off. She was turned to her window, hands flat against the glass. With the motor stopped, the headlights off, the world outside took on a nightmarish quality. They could hear the wind shrieking in a multitude of infernal voices, low, high, harsh, whispery. The lake waters slapped angrily against the shore. The hail had stopped, but now rain again poured down hard and fast, sheeting the windows with gray. Lightning still sparkled and snapped to light up the scene. Once, in the light of lightening strikes, he saw the lake foaming and boiling like a caldron over a hot fire. Once he saw trees on a mountainside leaning almost parallel to the ground. The Chrysler rocked on its tires. It shook them in their seats and had Cruise's top teeth rattling against his bottom molars.

  "Jesus Christ," he whispered.

  "What're we gonna do?" Molly repeated over and over.

  Cruise didn't know. They were at the mercy of the storm. If a wind came down and plucked them from the roadside and hurled them into the lake, they probably wouldn't know anything until they were sucking water. He leaned forward and tried to see out the top of the windshield. He wanted to sight the motherfucking tornado before it got them, but the rain was falling too hard, he couldn't see anything but streaming water. His imagination took over. He thought he saw a funnel reaching down out of the blackness to snatch them from the earth. He thought he heard a freight train and that's what they always said preceded a tornado touching down.

  The girl was nuts, trying to open the passenger door. What was her name? Molly! Irish girl, red hair, that was the one. He was more and more confused as the wind raged around the car and shook him where he sat.

  He knew he couldn't let the girl out of the car. That was absolutely out of the question. A big negatory. The wind would take her away from him. The lake would cover her over and he'd never see her again.

  He bounded across the space between the blue cloth bucket seats and grabbed her shirt with both hands. Fabric ripped at the seams. He held on as she opened the door now and wind and rain sliced into the car wetting his hands, his forearms. He grappled with her and had her around the neck, hauling her back inside. The door slammed shut from the force of the wind. The bang of it made the pressure in his eardrums close. He swallowed hard to clear them. He held her back against his chest, her head in the crook of his arm. All he had to do was snap it. Easy. Be rid of the nuisance of her. She'd been trying to escape. It wasn't the storm she wanted to flee. It was him, of course he knew that.

  He heard her weeping. "Do that again and I break your fucking neck." When she didn't say anything he said, "I should do it anyway. Save myself trouble later on."

  She gasped as his arm tightened down. "No!"

  He let up a little, but not much.

  "I won't do it again!"

  "I know you won't." He pushed her away and reached behind him to the back floorboard. He felt the loops of rope he'd brought along. He found one end of the rope, brought her hands together, and began tying her securely. He passed the rope through the hole in the door armrest. She wanted to get out again, she'd have to take the goddamned door with her. The whole goddamned car.

  While he was busy with Molly the wind dropped and the rain fell to a soft shower. The sound of the freight train was gone and in its place was an eerie stillness with the gentle patter of raindrops as punctuation on the roof.

  "It passed," he said, breathing heavy, fear in his voice.

  His arms were still damp from the rain. Molly sat quietly subdued, roped into submission. The windows had fogged from their breathing.

  A rap came at Cruise's side window. He jerked away and stared out. Molly let out a yelp of surprise.

  The rap came again and someone had hold of the door handle trying to open the door.

  "What the fuck?" Cruise rolled down the window while holding the door closed by grasping the armrest.

  A face swam forward out of the dark. It was wet, the hair plastered in bangs across the broad forehead. It was a frantic red bloated face with a double chin beneath it belonging to a man who needed to lose at least a hundred pounds. His eyes were dark circles, his nose small and pointed. His lips worked long before anything came from them. He was like an actor in a foreign movie, his words dubbed in and not synchronized with his lip movements.

  "My car!" he screamed. Rain sluiced down his cheeks like tear tracks. "My car turned over! I stopped! But the wind turned us over. My wife...my wife's caught...can't get out..."

  Cruise pushed open the door and crawled from the bucket seat. He stood several inches taller than the fat man. "Where?" he asked, feeling the first droplets of rain soaking into the back of his shirt.

  "Down here. I saw your car lights, saw you pull over just before that wind hit. Please help me--we have to get her out."

  Cruise followed behind the waddling fellow. He looked like a duck in his proper element. Cruise noted he wore a sloppy suit in a dark color. It was soaking wet. The cuffs of his pants dragged the ground and his heels stepped on them. When he turned back once to gesture, Cruise saw he wore a diamond ring on his right hand.

  The car was just around a bend in the road, hidden from view by the forested mountain. It was on its side in a steep ditch, the undercarriage facing the highway.

  "I don't know how to get into it," the man was saying. Screaming. The wind had stopped, the rain was gentle, the clouds were parting and letting through the moon, but this man was out of his head and he couldn't stop screaming.

  "She's on the other side!" He went around the front-end of the car and pointed at the ground.

  "Let's try to push it back on its wheels," Cruise suggested.

  He and the fat man put their shoulders to the roof of the car. It was a white Ford Escort. New. Light.

  The car moved, tilted, fell with a resounding crunch into the gravel lining the roadbed. The windows on the side they faced were broken into spiderwebs. The fat man rushed to the wedged door and tried to open it. He couldn't. He was screaming still when Cruise went to the driver's side door and opened it. He leaned in. A small woman, dark hair thin as spaghetti swirling around her face, lay with her torso on the seat, her legs and hips crumpled into the floorboard area. She looked dead to him and he'd seen a lot of dead people. She wasn't moving or making any sound. He thought her eyes were open. Her mouth was. Her bottom denture lay on her unmoving chest.

  Cruise felt the man behind him, trying to pull him out of the way. Cruise backed off. Stood watching while the man crawled into the car on his hands and knees. His tremendous belly got stuck between the steering wheel and the seat back. He was still screaming and crying and Cruise knew then the woman was lifeless.

  Cruise felt beneath his hair for the knife. He pulled it gently from the Velcro patch. He stood with it in his hand until the fat man extricated himself from the wrecked car. What did this man have to live for now? When the grieving husband turned to face him, that's when Cruise took a few steps to circle him, got behind his wide back before he could move again, grabbed the wet hair of his head, jerked him backward until the throat was exposed.

  The screaming turned to a coughing, a gurgling. The little hook on the end of the sharp blade had severed the carotid artery and a few fatty neck muscles. The man jerked in Cruise's big arms. His blood warmed Cruise's skin where he'd caught him around the chest to hold him up. He held him until life drained out and the man was dead weight. He dropped him unceremoniously to the pavement. Stooping, he reached inside the coat pocket and slipped out the wallet. Took the cash. Wrenched the ring from the man's thick finger. Kicked him out of the way. Inside the car Cruise searched the front seat for the woman's purse and couldn't find it. Finally he gave up and shut the car door.

  He'd have to wash himself in the lake. He thought maybe he'd do it right at the edge of the shore near the Chrysler so that Molly could see him naked.

  He'd have to hurry. Another car might come along anytime. Cruise thought that would be a definite inconvenience. He also thought he felt much better with the fat man dead. The ic
e that earlier encased his brain had warmed and melted, leaving him able to think.

  Molly was safe for a little while longer.

  #

  Molly's wrists were rubbed raw where the thin yellow nylon rope circled them. She tried like hell to get herself loose when Cruise left the car to help the fat man. Had she been successful, she could have disappeared into the dark, wet woods where Cruise would never have found her.

  She tried everything she could think to do. She twisted her arms until her elbows groaned, trying to get her fingers on the knots in the rope. She jerked and hauled, yelling out each time when the rope burned into the flesh of her wrists. She even scooted from the seat and knelt on the floorboard to face the armrest trying to get a hold on the knots, but nothing she did worked. She merely succeeded in tearing up the skin on her wrists and crying until she felt sick to her stomach.

  She was just able to get back into the seat before Cruise reappeared by her window. He scared her, standing there in the dark, the moon over his shoulder. She didn't know what he was doing, what he wanted. She reached up tentatively and wiped the fogged window. She was afraid suddenly that he wanted to rape her and was screwing up his courage to do so. But after a short time he stepped away from the window, walked toward the lake while shedding his clothes in the moonlight. Rain still came down, but it was nothing like the storm earlier. This was a light drizzle that sent trails of water slipping quietly down the windshield.

  Molly watched, hypnotized by Cruise's actions. He stripped right to the skin. She saw his white buttocks, his wide muscled shoulders. She saw him walk right into the water until it was up to his knees. He turned then and began dipping the water over himself with his hands. Splashing himself. It had to be cold. What was he doing? He was too distant for her to see his face. He looked like a nature god of the wilderness with his long hair dripping onto his broad shoulders, swinging free around his face as he bent to dip the water. What sort of bizarre ritual this was she could not possibly imagine. He had been wet from the rain, so why was he bathing in the lake?

  God, what was she going to do to get away from him? She'd made that one effort during the height of the wind and rain when Cruise seemed most vulnerable. She thought she could get the door open and be gone before he could react. The stunt almost got her killed. She had felt her wind being cut off by his thick arm. Black dots appeared before her eyes from lack of oxygen. Her neck still ached from the strangling she took. She knew she was lucky to be alive.

  Then they'd both been stunned by the rap on the window and the appearance of the fat man. He was bellowing about his car being wrecked, something about his wife being trapped. Cruise wasn't gone long. Molly wondered if the woman was okay. If they'd gotten her out.

  She saw Cruise starting back up the slope to the car. He picked up his clothes as he came, held them modestly in front of himself. He circled the trunk, opened the driver's door, withdrew the car keys. He went again to the trunk and Molly watched out the rear window until minutes later the trunk lid was lowered. Cruise was dressed again. He had gotten into dry clothes.

  She waited as he climbed into the driver's seat and started the engine. He had brought a wet scent into the car--rainwater, lake water. His hair still dripped. "Did you get the woman out all right?"

  "She was dead."

  Molly bit her lower lip. They drove slowly around the curve in the road and she saw the white Escort in the car lights. She also saw something--was it a body?--on the gravel lining the road next to the car.

  She turned her head, looking back, trying to be sure.

  "He's dead too," Cruise said.

  "What...why...did you...?"

  "Yes," he said simply.

  Molly couldn't look at him any longer. She stared instead ahead at the white dividing lines in the road. "I don't know how you can do that," she said when she was able to speak.

  "Why not? He wouldn't have been happy without his wife anyway."

  "How do you know that?" She spoke in a dull monotone. She thought all her indignation had been sapped; thought she might be losing touch with her deepest emotions, or at least losing touch with the necessity to express them.

  "It's a gift I have. Knowing."

  Molly couldn't stand hearing what he had to say anymore. Everything he said was a torture to her. He was playing God, the God of Death. Being crazy was worse than dying, she thought. Cruise was already crazy and now she feared she might be losing her mind too the way she kept thinking of him as a nature god, a death god. There was only so much shock she could endure before she turned into an inhuman being who couldn't be shocked. Someone just like him.

  Despair at her situation set hooks into her brain and deadened it the way Novocain killed all the pain in a rotten tooth. She didn't want to feel anything. Maybe that's what going crazy meant. You stopped feeling. The appalling truths became commonplace. The heart shriveled to a lump smaller than the tiny nubs that were her breasts.

  #

  Mark Killany was nearly to the outskirts of Tucson with the car radio tuned to a local station when he heard the first reports.

  Man robbed and murdered, found beside his wrecked car near Theodore Roosevelt Lake. His wife was dead too, apparently from being thrown forward into the windshield when the car overturned in a ditch during tornado weather. It was the couple's son, eleven-year-old Brian Delham, who had been relatively unhurt in the back seat who found his father. He told the police about the man who came to help them. The man with long hair, a beard, and mustache. The man who killed his father. Hiding on the floor of the car, Brian had watched the murderer drive away, heading north. It was a blue Chrysler, the boy said. He was positive. It was old. Big. He didn't get the license plate number, but he'd never forget the killer's face.

  Mark sped to the next exit ramp and made a U-turn that took him east again on I-l0. He had trouble breathing. He cranked down the window, drank in great heaving drafts of fresh air. The radio announcer said the murder occurred on Highway 666. Mark had seen the exit for it miles back. He had to get there. He had to get in touch with the Arizona highway patrol. He wanted to tell them about Molly. That she might be with the killer. If it was the same man he'd been following across country, the same man the hooker in Mobile identified, then he might still have Molly with him.

  Or worse yet, he might not have her with him. He could have...murdered her too. The boy didn't say anything about a girl being in the car.

  "Shit," he wailed. "Dammit to hell, shit, shit, shit."

  The speedometer needle rose past eighty, ninety, hovered there. Mark didn't care if he was stopped for speeding. He had to get to 666 and Roosevelt Lake. He had to tell someone about the danger Molly was in. His girl. His baby. The blue Chrysler.

  #

  Lannie Lavanic Reed lived in a modest three-bedroom house on a dead-end street in Flagstaff, Arizona. It was a working-class neighborhood where some of the people couldn't find work or else they made a salary that didn't cover all the expenses. Oil drip spots from worn-out cars marred the driveways. The Big Wheels and bicycles of the neighbor children were broken or rusted and lying forlorn in the weedy yards. Plastic garbage cans sans lids were stacked at the curbs where wandering packs of wild dogs knocked them over for the sparse loot they contained.

  Some of the homes were empty, windows broken or boarded over. Blue cardboard HUD warning signs were taped to the windows of sagging garage doors.

  Cruise pulled into his sister's driveway. He parked next to a twelve-year-old brown Chevy station wagon with ripped seats and a dented front fender. Once the engine was off, ticking away its heat in the early morning hours, Cruise began untying his witness. She moaned as he slipped the rope from her wrists.

  "I'll have to hobble you once we're inside, but for a few minutes I'll let you stay free so you can go to the bathroom. I'll get Lannie to feed you too."

  Molly grunted. She hadn't talked to him since the lake incident. She was an unsatisfactory companion the way she'd argue with him, get her smart mou
th running, then suddenly clam up and give him the silent treatment. Her presence was wearing thin, so thin he thought he'd made a mistake not leaving her floating face-down in the lake back on Highway 666.

  "C'mon," he ordered, pulling himself wearily from the car. She tried to make a break for it, he'd still be able to catch her before any harm was done. She could scream around here for an hour and not more than two people would look out their windows to see what was going on. No one wanted to get involved. Too many of the residents had speed labs in the kitchens and marijuana gardens in the bedrooms.

  It made Cruise sad that Lannie had to live in a place like this. There were lots of neighborhoods in Flagstaff where decent people lived, but it cost too much, more than Lannie could afford. Still, it wasn't right his sister lived this way. Broke his damned heart. Sometimes he sent her money he scored. It was never enough.

  Molly came around the car, a docile little sheep. He marched her before him to the recessed doorway. In the cement entry lay a black plastic machine gun and a boy's cap made of camouflage material. One of Lannie's kids left his junk out. There wasn't any way to make them mind. Lannie had given up trying a long time ago. She had five kids, stepping stones, from Sherry, who was the toddler in diapers, to Wayne, who was ten. Wayne, the eldest, was the probable owner of the gun and cap.

  Cruise tried the doorknob, found it locked. Didn't blame her. The street was a war zone what with the druggies, the teenage burglars, the unemployed. They'd lift their grandmother's girdle if they thought there was any money in it.

  Cruise tried the doorbell. He listened, couldn't hear it ringing inside. He pounded finally on the door.

  "Let's wake them all up," he said to Molly. "Get those little toads of Lannie's into high gear before sunup."

  It took a while, but eventually the door creaked open on a safety chain. A woman wearing a red chenille housecoat looked out.