CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (24 page)

In Phoenix he refilled the gas tank at a small truck stop off the freeway. Molly looked for someone who might help her, but the pumps were empty. A trio of trucks idled in the back lot, the drivers nowhere to be seen. There appeared to be just one cashier and one waitress inside. She asked to go to the bathroom again. Cruise walked her through a side entrance. The ladies' room was right there, too far from the cashier to say anything. When she finished, Cruise returned with her inside the bathroom to check for messages she might have left. He was a careful man. But that's not the way she was going to do it. What the hell, even if someone found a message, she'd be too long gone to benefit from it.

Cruise seemed to know she wouldn't throw some kind of out-and-out fit, create a scene. She wasn't nuts. She knew how fast he was with his knife. And he didn't care who saw him use it.

No. When she found an opening she wasn't going to scream and run. She meant to be subtle about it, get attention without Cruise noticing. All she wanted was for someone--preferably a man--to come over to them to ask some questions. She figured Cruise wouldn't kill someone right out in the open where there would be witnesses--unless it was her screaming her head off. He was too much of a snake to do that.

She saw her chance near Yuma. Cruise had the CB on listening to the truckers. He was still doing something with his arms, and that was beginning to worry her ungodly. He couldn't seem to keep his hands off himself. In the past hour or so he had even stopped caring if she watched him. He stared straight ahead at the road, squeezing and squeezing his arms through the shirt. It set her teeth on edge.

The CB interested Molly. If Cruise got out of the car to pump gas she might be able to get the mike and say something over the trucker channel. She worked it out in her head. She'd say,
I'm Molly Killany and I've been kidnapped by a man diving a light blue Chrysler. He's killed some people. Someone call the highway patrol. Tell them he murdered a man near a lake south of Flagstaff. We're on I-8 headed for California. Help me, please!

That's what she'd say. She had it rehearsed in her mind and she was ready. It was like learning a poem to say before the class in literature. You say it over enough in your head, you can repeat it in your sleep.

But it wasn't the CB that presented her chance near Yuma. It was a man dressed in Wrangler jeans, boots, and a cowboy hat.

Cruise pulled off a freeway exit and took the feeder lane until he came to an all-night Pick 'N Save.

"I've got to have a Coke," he said. "I'll get some to put in the cooler. You want anything?"

She thought fast. She hadn't eaten all day. This was the first time since Lannie made breakfast that Cruise had thought to offer her food.

"They got sandwiches in there? Those cellophane-wrapped ones?"

"Probably." He unbuckled his seat belt, had his hand on the door release.

"I want a ham and cheese. A bag of potato chips. A banana if they have them. Maybe a doughnut or a package of cookies. I'm pretty hungry."

Before she knew the real Cruise, before the killing, she thought Cruise would have grinned at her with his perfect, pretty smile and kidded her about being a hog, about getting fat eating that way. But now he didn't crack a smile or make any cute remarks. He shrugged and got out of the car.

"Don't try going anywhere," he warned, slamming closed the door.

He had not tied her up again since they left Lannie's house. She wanted to believe it was because he felt sorry for her bruised and battered wrists where the rope had cut into her, but it was no doubt because he felt she was under his control now. Without him saying it aloud, she knew he wouldn't hesitate to kill her. Even if he had to chase her first, he'd kill her.

The Pick 'N Save blazed with fluorescence. The clerk, an older woman in a green uniform with white pockets and trim, was alone in the store. Early morning shifts were the pits in convenience stores. The Stop 'N Robs.

The minute Cruise was inside hunting down Molly's supper, a red Toyota short-bed pickup truck drove into the slot next to the Chrysler. Molly looked over and saw a man in a cowboy hat turn his head and smile at her. He was about Cruise's age, early forties. Nice face, rugged, the smile a little crooked as if he had had a few beers. Not as big as Cruise, but big enough, and just as tall as her captor. His jeans fit so tight that when he descended from tire truck, her gaze automatically went to the rounded package in his crotch.

He was no more than two feet from her open car window. She glanced fearfully to the front of the Pick 'N Save trying to see Cruise. He must have been on a far aisle. She looked back at the man and the words jumped out. "Can you help me?"

The cowboy hesitated next to her window. He stared down at her, puzzled. "How can I help a pretty little thang like you?"

Molly looked at the glass windows of the store again. Where was Cruise?

"Listen, I have to tell you fast. The man in the store has a knife, he hides it underneath his long hair. He's killed two people and he has me prisoner. I think he's going to kill me too." It came out all in a rush, words tumbling together, syllables running together.

"You what?" the man asked, leaning over a little to better understand. "Somebody's kidnapped you?"

"Please. Listen. He's dangerous, he's a killer. If he knew I was telling you this he'd kill you too. You've got to have some kind of weapon. Don't you understand? I'm being held against my will. I'm going to die if someone doesn't help me."

"Motherfucker." The man stared at her a few seconds longer as if weighing her honesty on an invisible scale. He turned to the truck bed and leaned in. He returned with a metal baseball bat in his hand. "Where is that motherfucker? We'll straighten this out before you can say jack-shit."

Molly pointed toward the store. Now that she'd told someone she was shaking all over. She wanted to open the door, get out of the car, stay close to her rescuer, but she couldn't get moving. It was like when she was scared in the Mexican graveyard and Cruise grabbed her. She couldn't stop shaking to save her life.

The man had left her as soon as she indicated Cruise was in the store. He was over the curb and halfway to the door before Molly heard the voice calling him back.

"Hey, you!"

Cruise!
He wasn't in the store any longer. He was somewhere behind Molly's head, she hadn't seen him come out. It must have been when the man went for the bat. She leaned out the car window to see. There he stood at the back bumper all coated in white fluorescent light. He looked deadly grim. Without looking directly at her he said, "You caused this, Molly. And I know you knew better."

The cowboy had turned at the voice. He stood on the sidewalk hefting the bat. "Little lady there says you're the motherfucker holding her against her will. That true?"

"I'm the motherfucker. Come and get me."

That was all the cowboy needed. He was moving down the curb, between the vehicles, heading for Cruise at a pace that would have frightened most normal men. All Cruise did was back away from the bumper a few steps so the cowboy could clear the passageway.

Molly got her hand on the door release and jerked it up.
Locked!
When had she locked it? She felt for the lock button and lifted it. She heard them talking behind the car, but couldn't hear what they were saying. She had the door open. Had her feet on the pavement, was standing free of the car when the battle began.

The cowboy swung the baseball bat so hard it whistled through the air above Cruise's head. He had ducked, danced back another few steps. They were in the middle of the parking lot. Molly turned and ran for the store. She hit the door so hard it crashed loudly against a stack of boxed 10W-40 Penzoil and sent some of the loose cans tumbling and rolling across the floor. The female clerk came up from behind the counter where she'd been crouching to cut into a carton of cigarettes. Her eyes were wild with sudden alarm.

"What is it?"

"Fight outside. Call the cops quick."

The clerk dropped the box-cutter. It clattered on the tile floor."Uh...uh..."

"Do it now! Where's the phone, for God's sake, let me have it!"

The clerk was too petrified to speak. She glanced to her left. Molly came around the end of the counter and found the phone sitting behind a display of gum. She had the receiver in her hand, her finger on the nine button to call nine-one-one when Cruise came through the door for her, his knife hand dripping the cowboy's new blood.

"Put down the phone, Molly."

"No!"

Cruise vaulted the counter and had the clerk around the neck before Molly could glance down at the phone to push the one-one that would connect her to emergency services.

The clerk screamed and the screeching of her panic filled the empty store with a sound that reverberated from the shelves.

"Drop the goddamn phone."

Molly let the receiver fall from her shaking hand. "Don't hurt her, Cruise, she didn't do anything."

"I won't hurt her," he said, breathing hard from his exertion. "I'm going to kill her. And baby, it's all your fault."

Molly lurched forward, reached for the woman's out-stretched hands, saw the woman's pleading eyes.

Saw Cruise take her by the hair and cut her throat with one swipe of the knife in his fist.

Saw the blood gush out and river down the green uniform with the white pockets, staining it all one shade of bright red.

Saw the woman's eyes again. The fear stuck there, imprinted there forever.

Saw the woman slump to the floor at Cruise's feet as if she were a toy animal who had lost its stuffing.

Molly stood over her, head hanging, tears falling onto the inert body until Cruise took her around the counter and out the door and placed her gently into the Chrysler.

As they pulled away from the store, Molly saw the cowboy in the headlight glare. He lay on his back, the tips of his boots pointing in opposite directions.

Molly couldn't see his neck, but she knew it was cut. She couldn't see the blood, but she knew it pooled beneath his head.

She couldn't bear to look at Cruise driving the car onto the freeway ramp, but she knew he was there.

She didn't think she'd ever get away from him.

#

Cruise crossed the state line into California. He drove fifty-eight miles to where 86 south crossed the freeway. He took the exit ramp.

"Mexicali," he whispered.

Before he reached the border crossing he had to bathe. There was blood all over the front of his clothes, some of it his.

He saw a side road leading to a subdivision of "ranchettes." The archway sign hanging over the gravel entrance way said "Hondo Estates." Cruise thought if these people really believed they could ranch on one acre, they'd buy anything. Although the per capita income for California was one of the highest in the nation, following only Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York, the people living along the border barely scraped a living from the arid soil. They could call California the Golden State all they wanted. They could give the state motto as Eureka, meaning "I have found it.'' But those living in the Hondo Estates knew a different California. One of rattlesnakes and lizards, cacti and blue burning seasons that scorched the brain and cracked the earth into a jigsaw

effect.

There was another side road to the right before he ever reached the first boxy ranch house sitting woebegone in the distance. He turned down the road. The Chrysler bounced through the potholes, spewing gravel behind the tires. The shocks and springs squeaked in protest. The headlights bobbed up and down, highlighting a landscape that looked bomb-blasted. It was a desert without a rose, sand without a sea, low scrubby vegetation that clung to the earth without the encouragement of rainfall.

"Where are we going?"

Cruise heard the barely controlled desperation in Molly's voice. She thought he was taking her out into the desert to die. He could let her think that. Or he could still her worry. Because she had been so much trouble back in Yuma--it was
her
fault he was covered with alien blood--he decided to let her fret.

When he thought they were far enough off the main road, he stopped the car, turned off the headlights. The night was quiet the way it is out in the wilderness before dawn. The last time he had stopped this way the tornado wind and rain and thunder was deafening.

The silence was a welcome respite. Cruise felt he had been driving for eons. The inside of his head jingled and jangled from the aftermath of the Yuma killings. A muscle in his jaw twitched spasmodically. He put his hand there to hold it motionless, but when he took his hand away it jumped again, playing to its own symphony.

Molly had not said anything more. Bitch tried, he'd kick her out of the car, then kick her some more until she couldn't speak again.

He opened the car door. The overhead dome light came on and made him twitch. He stood outside the closed door looking over the roof into the far reaches of empty desert. He could see an occasional car passing on the highway. It was the early part of the morning, the late part of the night. Not many drivers going to and from Mexicali, Mexico.

He looked at the sky. Not a cloud. The stars so bright, so shining, they looked near enough to gather and pocket.

The moon riding low, a silver-white nimbus radiating a cold hazy aloofness that caused shivers to break out on Cruise's wounded arms.

He stepped away from the car and found the key that would open the trunk. He stood with his hands resting on the upraised trunk lid wondering what he had wanted.
Oh, yes,
the bottled water
. He was sticky damp with blood and he must get clean or he would go mad. He could smell himself. He gagged, swallowed hard, reached in for two gallons of the purified water. He set them on the ground near his feet, lay the car keys on the fender.

He leaned down and opened one of the plastic jugs. He stood again, lofting the jug over his head, feeling the chill thrill of water cascading down over his closed eyes. He stopped, lowered the jug. He had to get out of the clothes. He had to bury them once the water had cleansed him of the scent of old caked blood. He disrobed, slipping out of his shoes and socks, kicking the slacks from him, throwing the shirt from his back. He stood in his jockey shorts beneath the star-studded heaven. He saw the wet, clinging gauze bandages on both arms. He ripped at them until they were on the ground. Again he took up the water jug and poured it over him. When it was empty, he took the second jug, and used it to wash his chest, his belly, the wounds on his arms. The flesh there split open and clouded the water as it rolled down his elbows.