Long Lost (13 page)

Petey would have taken off their gags and allowed them to catch their breath while he’d warned them not to scream. They’d have been too fear—weakened and groggy from the foul air in the trunk to manage much of an outburst. He’d have needed to lift them one at a time from the trunk, loosening their clothes so they could relieve themselves. That unpleasant intimacy would have tested his commitment to his new family. But his obligations were just beginning. For example, they’d have been terribly thirsty. Had he planned ahead and stopped at a fast—food place in Casper to get soft drinks, possibly french fries and hamburgers also? As he regagged them and put them back in the trunk, would he have said any reassuring words?

“I love you.”

I shut the trunk. From the darkness behind the Dump—ster, I stared toward the vehicles in front of the rest rooms. I walked in that direction, my footsteps crunching on pebbles. The floodlights at the two buildings made me feel naked the closer I came. By then, most of the vehicles had departed, leaving only a midsize sedan. I went into the men’s room and found it empty. I stepped outside. Insects swarmed in the overhead light.

A woman left the other building, pulled keys from her purse, and approached the sedan. She didn’t look in my direction. I imagined Petey starting to rush her, then pausing as headlights flashed past on the interstate, not a lot, but enough that there was never a gap, never a moment when somebody driving by wouldn’t have seen a man attack a woman.

So Petey had waited for another opportunity, gone into the women’s room, and subdued his victim there. He’d watched the interstate until there were just enough gaps between headlights that no one would see him in the few seconds that it took him to carry the unconscious woman around to the darkness. Behind the Dumpster, he’d tied and gagged her. Then he’d returned to the rest area, used the woman’s key to start her car (a Caprice, the police had told me). He’d kept the headlights off and driven back to the darkness behind the fence, where he would have had to use a knife to make ventilation holes through the backseats into the Caprice’s trunk before he transferred Kate and Jason into it.

But when he’d put the driver in the trunk with them, hadn’t it worried him that there might not have been enough air for three people? Why had he risked suffocating Kate and Jason by putting the woman in the trunk with them? As it was, the woman had died. Why hadn’t he killed her and hidden her body in the Dumpster? No one would have found her for quite a while, if ever. Again I felt Kate and Jason’s horror as the asthmatic woman fought to breathe with the duct tape pressed over her mouth, her frenzied movements, her gagging sounds, her gradual stillness, the release of her bladder, probably her bowels. As the Caprice sped along the interstate, Kate and Jason would have been seized by the out—of—control fear that, if it had happened to the woman, it could happen to
them.

The question kept nagging at me:
Why hadn’t Petey just killed her and hidden her body in the Dumpster?
The only answer that made sense to me was that, no matter how indifferent Petey had felt toward the woman, he hadn’t intended for her to die. Killing me was one thing. As far as Petey was concerned, I deserved to die for ruining his life. But this woman had merely happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the first indication of humanity that I’d detected in him. It gave me hope for Kate and Jason.

He could have left the Volvo behind the Dumpster, where it might not have been discovered for days. Instead, he’d gone to the trouble of moving the Volvo to the front of the rest rooms, where it would be in plain sight. Because he wanted it to be found soon. He wanted it to point the way north, just as abandoning the Caprice outside Billings, Montana, made it seem that he was heading toward Butte. He’d been thinking with frightening control.

6

I drove back to the interstate. A road sign indicated that Billings, Montana, was 250 miles away. My eyelids felt heavy. But I had to keep moving. I had to complete Petey’s escape.

Had he slept along the way? Doing that certainly tempted me. But I was afraid that if I steered off the interstate and found a secluded spot—a camping area, for example—where I could get a few hours’ sleep, I wouldn’t waken until daylight. In Petey’s case, the Caprice might have been reported by then. He had to get to Billings. Imitating him, I kept driving.

I played the radio loud. In the middle of the night, it was hard to find a station. The ones I did find broadcast mostly evangelists riddled with static.

A mountain range stretched from north to south on my left. Moonlight glowed off the snowy peaks. My eyelids weakened. To stay awake, I bit my lips. I dug my fingernails into my palms. Interstate 25 became 90. I passed Sheridan, Wyoming, and entered Montana. The signs changed character: Lodge Grass; Custer Battlefield National Monument; Crow Agency… . At Hardin, the interstate veered west. Meanwhile, as the miles accumulated, I imagined that Petey would have worried that his captives weren’t getting enough air. He’d have stopped periodically on deserted roads to check on them. It pained me to think of Kate’s and Jason’s frightened eyes peering desperately up at him. They flinched when he reached in to touch their brows to calm them. As for the Caprice’s driver, he barely looked at her.

When I finally read a sign for Billings, I was troubled that the distance between Casper and Billings should have taken me only four hours, but with frequent stops, pretending to check on my captives, I’d taken ninety minutes longer than I should have.

Even so, it was still dark when I came to the rest stop on the other side of Billings. A sign called it a scenic vista, but with the moon having set, I had only a vague sense of mountains to the north and south. Two vehicles were parked at the rest rooms: a pickup truck and a sedan. Here, too, a service road led behind the buildings. I parked in the darkness. Adrenaline overcame my exhaustion as I got out of the car. The air was surprisingly cold. Two men in cowboy hats came out of one of the concrete—block buildings. I waited while they got in the pickup truck and drove away. At this predawn hour, there was almost no traffic on the interstate. I walked quickly toward the rest rooms and listened for activity in either one. If I heard voices, if there was more than one person, I’d wait for a better opportunity. But if there was only one set of footsteps …

At that hour, few women felt safe to drive alone. I assumed that the victim would have been male. Use a tire iron to knock him unconscious in the men’s room. Drag him into the darkness. Take his car to the back. Put Kate, Jason, and the driver into its trunk.

Would it have been at this point that Petey had discovered that the owner of the Caprice had choked to death from the duct tape over her mouth? He wouldn’t have been overwhelmed with sorrow. He’d given her a chance. As far as he was concerned, it wasn’t his fault. The penalty for kidnapping was the same as for murder, so with nothing to lose, instead of trying to hide her body, he’d left it with the Caprice. Then he’d gotten into its replacement and driven onto the interstate. But instead of continuing toward Butte, where he wanted the police to think he was going, he’d taken the next exit ramp, crossed the overpass, and reaccessed the interstate, reversing direction, heading back toward Billings.

I kept after him. By then, it was dawn. I saw mountains, ranches, and oil refineries. Crossing the Yellowstone River, I no longer had the police report to guide me. Petey had been as tired as I was. Where the hell had he gone next?

7

The interstate forked. I had to choose—take 94 northeast through Montana, way up into North Dakota, or else retrace 90 south into Wyoming. I chose the latter. I didn’t fool myself that intuitively I was doing what Petey had. My decision was totally arbitrary.

But as tired as I was, if I didn’t soon find a place to sleep, I knew I’d have an accident. Petey must have felt the same. Even charged with adrenaline, he couldn’t have kept going much longer. For certain, he wouldn’t have dared risk an accident. He didn’t have a driver’s license, and the car wasn’t registered to him. A state trooper questioning him would eventually have gotten suspicious enough to look in the trunk. Meanwhile, as the sun got higher, warming the car’s interior, I imagined how hot the trunk would have gotten. No matter how many ventilation holes Petey had made, Kate, Jason, and the car’s owner would have roasted in that confined space, the sun’s heat turning the trunk into an oven, the air getting thicker, smothering. If Petey was going to keep them alive in the trunk, he had to rest by day and drive by night.

Because the Denver detectives had said that duct tape had covered the dead woman’s mouth, I presumed that Petey had done the same to Kate, Jason, and the man whose car he’d stolen. I took my right hand off the steering wheel and pressed it over my mouth, forcing myself to breathe only through my nose. Spring allergies had caused mucus to partially block my nostrils. My chest heaved. I couldn’t seem to get enough air. I had to concentrate to control my heartbeat, to inhale and exhale slowly. I couldn’t bear the thought of breathing selfconsciously, of taking in a minimum of air for what felt like forever in a hot, closed space.

Definitely, no one in the trunk would have had a chance of surviving unless Petey drove only when it was cooler—at night. But where could he have stopped? A motel would have been dangerously public. But what about a camping area? Tourist season was only beginning. Petey might have been able to find a wooded area that didn’t have visitors. Listening for the approach of vehicles, he could have risked letting his prisoners out of the trunk. If there was a stream where they could clean themselves, so much the better.

He’d have needed to get food again. At the next exit, I saw a McDonald’s, went to the drive—through lane, and ordered an Egg McMuffin, coffee, and orange juice. While I waited behind other cars, I frowned at my beard—stubbled image in the rearview mirror. But the beard stubble wasn’t what bothered me. I’d been trying to imitate Petey’s thoughts, and I’d forgotten one of the most important things about him: the scar on his chin. It would have attracted attention. I pulled a pen from my shirt pocket and drew a line where Petey’s scar would have been. I wanted to know what it felt like to have people staring at my chin.

When I paid for my food, the woman behind the counter pointed toward the ink mark. “Mister, you’ve got—”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I can’t seem to get the darned thing off.”

I’d intended to ask her if there were nearby camping areas, but feeling conspicuous, I paid for my food and drove away. Squinting from the glare of the morning sun, I decided to let my beard keep growing and hide the streak on my chin.

A likely place for a campground would be along a river, so when I crossed the Bighorn, I took the first exit. There, I debated whether to follow the river north or south. A sign indicated that south would take me to the Crow Indian Reservation. That didn’t sound like a place where I’d be invisible, so I headed north.

Traffic was sparse. The land was fenced. In a while, I came to a dirt road that took me to the left, toward the river. It soon curved to the right to parallel the river, although bushes and trees along the bank prevented me from seeing the water. A weed—overgrown lane went into the trees. I drove down it, parked behind the trees, walked to the road, and satisfied myself that the car was hidden.

I had no illusions that this was the spot where Petey had stopped, but logic suggested that it was similar. Petey would have ignored the car’s owner while he tried to reassure Kate and Jason, saying that he wouldn’t hurt them unless they forced him to, that if they did what they were told, there wouldn’t be trouble. He would have kept one of them in the trunk while he let the other bathe, making sure that a rope was tied to one and then the other’s waist to prevent them from trying to run. He would have allowed them to change clothes. He would have studied them while they ate their fast—food breakfast.

“I’ll take care of you.”

They wouldn’t have known what to make of that.

As frightened as Kate was, she’d have had all night to analyze the danger they were in. She’d have already decided that their only chance was for her to use her stress—management skills to try to keep him calm. “Thanks for the food.”

“You like it?”

Despite their fear, Kate and Jason would have been so hungry that they’d have gulped their hamburgers.

“I said,
Do you like it?
”

“Yes,” Kate would have answered quickly.

“It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing.”

Was there a threat in the way he said it, that if they gave him trouble, he could make sure that was exactly what they got: nothing? Kate would have taken another deep swallow from her soft drink, knowing that it wouldn’t be enough to replenish her fluids. She’d have brushed her tangled hair from her face, aware that she had to try to look as presentable as possible. Make Petey think of you as a human being, not an object. Thank him for courtesies he showed. Behave as if the situation were normal. Make him want to go through efforts for you so he can get the gratification of being appreciated.

But what about Jason? As young as he was, lacking Kate’s training, he’d have been nearly out of his mind with terror. Gagged, Kate wouldn’t have been able to talk to him in the trunk. She couldn’t have coached him. She had to depend on giving him significant looks and hoping that he’d understand her motives, that he’d follow her lead.

“What are you going to do with us?” she’d have asked when the time seemed right.

“I told you, I’m going to take care of you.”

“But why did—”

“We’re a family.”

“Family?” Don’t react. Make even the outrageous seem normal.

“Brad had an accident.”

“What?”

“He fell off a cliff. I’m taking his place.”

Kate’s stomach would have plummeted as if
she
had fallen from a cliff.

“I’m your husband. Jason, you’re my son.”

Fighting to keep tears from swelling into her eyes, Kate would have echoed Petey’s earlier words, reinforcing their import. “Take care of us.”