CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (32 page)

"Highway 180? Where's that?" Mark could hardly contain his excitement. Fifty miles ahead somewhere, he thought.

"You catch it outta Deming. It heads north. This blue rig, now, it ain't on 180 no more."

"It isn't?" Mark's spirits dropped down like a sack of wet laundry falling from a high window. "Where is it then? You know?"

"I was passing it just as it turned off 180 onto 61. Hell, ain't no trucks take 61. I thought it was damn stupid at the time. I asked the guy, I asked him where he was dead-heading, but like I say, he didn't have his ears on, I guess."

"Where's 6l?" Mark tried to get it all straight in his mind so he could follow the directions. Take 180 north out of Deming, look for 61.

"61's a two-laner this side of Bayard. It only goes east, but you gotta watch for it."

The trucker's voice was fading, moving out of the antenna's range. "Okay, thanks a lot. Listen, do me a favor and get on channel nine to tell the police, will you? They want this guy almost as bad as I do."

"Check, Killany. This is Gold Nugget signing off."

Fifty miles. The last sign he saw for Deming said it was fourteen miles distant. That meant 61 had to be more than thirty miles on 180 north. Not so far. He was close now and it was doing strange things to his heart. He had been driving flat out for hundreds of miles, driving like a man on the way to a fire. Or a preventable murder.

If he could just catch up with them in time. If only he could save his baby.

If only time would stop and allow him to reach her before she was taken away from him forever.

#

Molly was swept along with the tide of Cruise's rushing madness. The stories he told were disjointed and pointless. They dropped off before reaching any conclusion. There was a story about when he was a boy and something about an incident with a lawn mower that ended before she could get the sense of whatever meaning it held for Cruise. There was another story about a fishing trip with his brothers that veered off into a different tale about going hunting for deer in the Arkansas woods when he was just twelve years old.

There were stories of people he killed and robbed, nameless people he remembered only because of the places they died. Memphis. Chicago. Seattle. Jacksonville. Cincinnati. Austin. Sacramento. Little towns she'd never heard of, colorful names of places that sounded like they shouldn't exist within United States borders. Selah. Chewelsh. Brillion. St. Johnsbury. Carizo Springs.

The people were hitchhikers and kids on the run and store clerks and travelers with car trouble and gas-station attendants and one was just a girl riding a horse along a rural back road on an Alabama summer day.

Her head whirled with the names and the people. How could she ever remember all this to tell the police if she survived the trip with Cruise? She'd never remember it all. There were too many places, too many people. Years and years of madness and dying that left her astonished and trembling with outrage. How could one man cause such destruction and loss of human life? It was one long horror story that stretched the mind to its limits of understanding. Her mind rebelled at the carnage left along Cruise's trail. He might be the most dangerous man in the entire country. Had she not been frightened before, she was now petrified and speechless before his revelations.

He told her all these secrets while driving steadily through the night. After he stopped and shaved off the beard and mustache his stories came in a flood told in a voice that chilled her to the very bone. Each new admission scored her mind with bright new pathways of fear. She feared to move, to speak, to break into his reverie and remind him she was there.

He not only looked like a different man after shaving the beard and mustache, but he sounded like a different man. He wasn't the same Cruise that offered her Cokes and paid for her shower room in the truck stops. He wasn't the Cruise who held her in the circle of his arms in the Mexican cemetery as if she were a fragile bird with a broken wing. Ever since he had heard on the radio reports that he was being hunted, he had become more and more unstable. He was like a star flying out of orbit, disintegrating into trailing fire as it sped through space. He was a comet burning itself out as it slammed into the earth.

She despaired when the stories faltered to a stop near Deming, New Mexico. He left the interstate and took a smaller highway north. She had hoped he would remain on I-10 where a patrol car might spot them. The silence unnerved her more than his admissions of murder for the next forty miles. She cleared her throat a couple of times, wishing to question him about where they were going, but she just couldn't get the words out. If he was a burning comet, his fire could burn her to cinders at any moment. She could say the wrong thing, move the wrong way, and she knew her life hung by a slender filament.

He promised to keep her, maybe to insure safe passage if he were captured, but she knew he was not operating the way a practical man would act. She couldn't trust him to save her to save himself. He was so far over the edge she could never reach him now.

When he turned off the main highway onto another road, she sat up in the seat and looked around, trying to memorize the route. Where in holy hell was he taking her?

A sign read CITY OF ROCKS STATE PARK.

Cruise turned left and downshifted to cross a cattle guard. They bumped and rumbled across the metal grid, the truck lurching drunkenly to the left, then to the right. He slowed even further so that they were crawling across a desert floor. The truck motor growled low and the smell of diesel came into the window. About a mile away Molly could see flat-topped blocks of rock. City of Rocks? A state park? But there was no guard gate or guard, no camping facilities, no concession booths or souvenir stands. Just the desert, the standing rocks, prickly pear and barrel cacti, the twisted, thorn- infested mesquite trees.

Hideout.

Of course. He had been looking for a place to hide and lucked onto the City of Rocks. Or had he known about it before and came directly here? She didn't know. She was afraid to ask.

"Fifty miles more and you could have seen the Kneeling Nun."

His statement clarified the mystery for Molly. He knew this place. "Kneeling Nun?" Her voice sounded small, apologetic.

"There's a huge mesa that split into two. One piece was weathered or something and it looks like a gigantic nun kneeling. She's so big she throws a shadow over the town. But this is more private," he added. "Much better for us."

"Oh."

"See those mountains back there?" He pointed behind the rock formations standing isolated on the desert.

"Yes."

'Mount, Holt's there. And Old Baldy. You can't see much at night, but during daylight you can tell there's snow up near the summits. The continental Divide's not too far north of us."

As they approached the City of Rocks, Molly could see that at one time the entire cluster of one-story rocks had probably been all of one piece. A vast slab of mesa sitting out here in the desert by itself. Over generations of time heat and cold contracting within the rock had caused it to splinter down straight north-south, east-west fault lines so that now the blocks stood apart. As Cruise stopped the truck and sat staring into the crevices between the rocks, Molly could see that some of the lanes were wide enough to allow entrance of a vehicle and some were too narrow. Altogether the geological formation made a sort of city, a city of rocks, the rocks like houses built along cramped streets. A rock maze. A dead place.

She shivered uncontrollably and locked her hands around one another. She didn't want to be here. It was the worst place he could have taken her. It was barren and lonely and there was no one here to help her. The police would never...

"We..." She had to find some spit in her mouth so she could talk. "We...could we...this is...uh..."

"What's the matter, don't you like it?"

"But it's so..."

"Empty?"

She nodded and licked the split in her lower lip.

"Yeah," he said. "It's empty and pretty much stays that way. Not many tourists ever find their way here. That's why I like it so much. With food and water, we could stay some time before anyone ever showed up. As it is, we should be able to stay until the heat gives up. The cops will think we just disappeared into thin air."

Oh, no
, Molly thought,
not here, not out here at the end of the world. I don't want to disappear with Cruise, not in this terrible place.

#

Cruise pulled the truck into one of the wider streets leading into the City of Rocks. He parked it. and turned off the motor. He climbed from the cab. Stood looking overhead past the tops of the rocks on either side. There were a million trillion stars, more stars than he had ever seen from any vantage point except maybe up in the Colorado Rockies. The stars twinkled and blinked and shone down steady, silver and gold and icy blue and crystal pink.

He took in a desert-cool breath, feeling easier. He heard the cab door open on the other side of the truck and knew the girl was looking around. If she'd look up, let her gaze travel heavenward, she too would feel better about his chosen hideout.

He heard a rustle along the ground and turned his attention there. He saw a gila monster scurry away, pushing aside small stones and pebbles in its way. Sometimes on his visits to the City of Rocks he heard coyotes wailing out on the plains.

They'd never find him here. When he left it could be weeks before anyone found the body of his witness.

#

Fifty miles seemed to spin out to five hundred. He should have driven it in an hour or less, and according to his watch he had, but the hour seemed to be ten while he drove and cursed and called Molly's name in a whisper.

He almost passed Highway 6l and had to slam the brakes, skid to a complete stop halfway past the turnoff. He passed a sign that read CITY OF ROCKS STATE PARK. He continued to a small town. Sherman. Were they here? He needed to check with someone. He tried the CB, but the streets were devoid of traffic this time of night. And there were no trucks along this route.

He realized that Sherman was just a spot in the road. There were no lights on or places of business that were open this time of early morning. As he crept along at less than twenty miles an hour, he saw the glow of a cigarette in front of a dark closed service station. He whipped the steering wheel to his right and pulled up to a stop. He hopped from the car, left it running. He must have scared the older man as he came toward him. He saw him drop the straight-backed chair he'd been leaning against the wall to the ground with a hollow thump. He saw a six-pack of beer at the side of the chair. The man had one open in his hand and a cigarette in the other.

Mark had to hurry.

"Listen, I hate to bother you, but have you been here the last hour or two?"

"Sure, mister. What's the trouble?"

"I'm with the state police," he lied smoothly. "We're searching for a truck. It isn't pulling a trailer. It's dark blue, has a snub nose, a cab-over truck. Have you seen it?"

The man shook his head and his long hair moved like a sheaf of white wheat. "Ain't nothing come by here since about midnight. I close up at eleven. I sometimes sit out here with a beer afterward. I like the peace and quiet, and those stars up there." He pointed overhead with his beer and Mark caught himself looking up too. The sight at this elevation was spectacular. He had never seen so many stars in Florida.

"I don't get too many customers through here this time of night," the man continued. He laughed as if that was supposed to be a joke on the town.

"You didn't see a truck? Any kind of semi-truck?"

"No, sir. I would have noticed. I've been sitting right here in front of the place all night. Last sale I had was a pack of Salem Lights to Jerry Salinas, and that was around closing time. He stops by after work at the hospital and gets either cigarettes or a brewski."

Mark thought it over. "No truck? You're sure?" He couldn't figure that out. The station was right on 61. There were no other highways crossing 61 they might have taken.

The sign he'd passed flashed through his mind. CITY OF ROCKS STATE PARK.

"That state park back on 61," he said. "What is that anyway?"

"What is it? Well, it's just a big bunch of squared-off rocks. You can walk down through them and all. It ain't much."

"Could you drive into them? Park a semi-cab in there?"

The man gave it some thought. He twirled the beer in his hand. "Oh, there's one or two streets in it, well....they ain't streets really, just lanes where the rocks have split, but there's a couple you could drive a big cab into, sure."

"Thanks." Mark turned on his heel and was back inside his running car before the man could ask any questions.

He turned the car around and headed back out of town.

That's the only place Molly could be. Parked in the City of Rocks. She had to be there, hidden from view. He just knew it.

#

Once they were off the road, time fell back into a familiar pattern. In fact, it might have slowed now. The stars wheeled overhead in dazzling array. A caressing wind blew down the canyons between the rocks.

Cruise made Molly walk with him through the maze while he worked out his tension and stretched his legs. When they came to the outer edge of one of the streets, he would pause and look out at the plain. There were desert spoon plants, small yucca-type plants that Indians sometimes used for spoons. There were straggly mesquite trees blowing in the starlight, long pods of dry beans rattling like strings of tiny clicking bones.

"You think this is desolate?" he asked Molly.

She didn't answer. She was a most uncooperative witness, a sad little companion.

"This is paradise," he said. "There's the wind and the stars, the rocks that have been here longer than man has wandered these plains. I love it here."

Prodding her, he turned back to take another stroll down another canyon street.

He had time.

All the time he needed.

#

Mark turned off his headlights before he turned onto the cattle guard crossing that led to the City of Rocks. He could see the formation not far away. He didn't want to alert the killer, if he was here. He pulled over onto the desert sand and shut off the ignition. He'd walk. If he was wrong about this, he'd kick himself all the way back to the car. He prayed he was right.