NIGHT CRUISING (3 page)

She smiled back, at
ease. She had good teeth and liked to smile when she had reason.

"Far as the land
will take me," he said. "Right to the shores of the blue
Pacific Ocean."

"Job waiting for
you out there?"

He eased the Chrysler
into traffic on l-l0 and held his speed at fifty-five. Most cars
overtook him, their headlights swinging out to the left of the car
and spearing past into the darkness. "Maybe," he said.
"We'll see."

She decided not to
press him for details. It was none of her business. I'm sixteen,"
she said. "Be seventeen in three months. I'm a runaway and . . .
sometimes . . . uh . . . I'm a prostitute. It's, you know, a living."

She knew he suspected
as much, but she liked to get it all out in the open from the get-go.
She wasn't technically a prostitute yet, but that's what she would
have to be in order to survive. She meant to survive no matter what.

"I figured."
He spoke with some admiration for her up-front confession. She
thought he'd like that. Most of them did.

"I don't need to
be saved, redeemed, talked to, lectured at, advised, or otherwise
manipulated. I do what I do strictly to take care of myself and I'm
not ashamed of it. I'm not looking for a Sugar Daddy or a pimp. I'm
my own person." She said all this in one long breath, then
sucked in air and turned her face to the window to keep the blush
that rose in her cheeks from his view.

"I figured that
too."

"Good. Now we're
all straight," she said to the night outside the window.

"Want a Coke?"
he lifted the lid of the Igloo cooler between the seats and gestured
she take one. She screwed off the lid on a sixteen-ouncer and drank
thirstily. Coke for supper was her diet when she didn't have Waffle
House money. She preferred it over Pepsi. It put hair on her tongue
and fire in her belly. He would probably buy her food somewhere later
on. Before the night was over he'd no doubt expect repayment, and
that was life, this adult life she'd chosen, tit for tat. She'd find
a way to turn off her mind while she did it. She had a lot of things
to get used to. Sex with strangers was one of them. She couldn't
fault herself since she'd tried to find decent work before turning to
it. It was as hard on the road as she thought it might be. She'd just
have to be tough enough.

She was scheming how to
explain to him in some politic fashion that frontal.
missionary-position sex was going to be a problem for them when they
passed a green road sign for the Pascagoula, Mississippi, exit. Molly
never noticed the moment they left the state of Alabama in the wings.
She'd crossed two state lines now and wasn't going to be bothered
about it. That was the least of her worries. It was money and getting
by that she had to do all her worrying about.

"You don't look
sixteen," he said, never taking his eyes from the road.

Molly sighed. It was a
damn shame she couldn't do something about that. She hunched her
shoulders in the seat to shield her breasts. "I need to gain
weight," she admitted. She weighed a hundred pounds on her good
days. "How old do I look?"

"Thirteen.
Fourteen."

Molly took a sip of
Coke and nursed her silence. She wished to God she had her boobs
back. It was bad enough being young. It was worse to look even
younger. What kind of hooker was she going to make if she looked like
a kid?

"You're cute.
Beautiful hair."

She smiled a little,
her lips curving around the bottle top. She lowered the Coke to her
lap. "That's what people say. Personally, I don't like red hair.
I might bleach it."

"That would be a
shame. It certainly makes you stand out from a crowd."

"Irish ancestry
kicking in. My dad's hair..." She bit her tongue. She hadn't
meant to bring up her father. She didn't want to talk about him. Now
she really sounded like a homesick, silly-ass little kid. Damn.

"Red too?" he
asked.

"Yeah. Redder.
Mine's got a little blond in it to tone it down. His, though, is
fiery red."

Cruise whistled low in
appreciation.

"Are you one of
those old hippies?" Molly wanted to make him feel as
uncomfortable as she had just felt when she slipped up and mentioned
her father. Tit for tat.

Cruise laughed and this
time she didn't get any shivery premonitory hair tricks at the back
of her neck. It was a pleased, cheerful kind of laugh.

"I never was a
hippie," he said. "Never cared for them."

"You wear your
hair like a hippie. Some of the kids do that, stuff with the
headbands and peace signs on their jackets and hair to their butts,
things like that. I don't know what they think they're doing,
reliving the sixties or what. I think it's real dumb."

"I just don't like
barbers. It has nothing to do with any group."

Molly waited for
further illumination but when he didn't continue, she shrugged her
bony shoulders. "Doesn't matter to me. Your hair, I mean. Why
you wear it like that. I don't really care. In fact, it makes you
look a little bit Christ-like. Like the pictures of Christ, you
know." Actually she meant he looked like a crazy ass fallen
angel, but she didn't know how to explain that without sounding rude
so she settled for Christ.

He gave her a winning
smile and she settled into the bucket seat with the bottle of Coke.
He was an all-right guy. Very sweet. Not pushy. Not grabby. A real
gentleman and regular guy.

She was cruising with
Cruise, going where she had never been before, and that's what
mattered.

That's all that
mattered.

#

Cruise worked at being
open, appealing, friendly. It was a knack he had. People warmed to
him, always had, and it was an advantage. Little Molly would find out
soon enough about him. About the dying. If he played it right, she'd
be so caught up in him before he made his next kill, she'd find a way
to accept it. Some of them did. It was strange how the kids could
adjust to nearly any way of life. Already Molly called herself a
prostitute to earn her way. He knew that she was almost certainly
from a good middle-class home where morals had been instilled in her.
Yet she'd found a way to dump them as soon as she got on her own. Her
manner of speech and vocabulary told him she wasn't raised to the
life.

She was insecure about
her looks and that was why she hunched her shoulders, but she liked
compliments. She was no one's dummy. He hoped she wasn't too smart or
he'd have to get rid of her in a roadside ditch or leave her remains
in a restaurant dumpster. Be a fucking shame.

Sum total, he thought
he'd made the perfect choice for his companion. His witness. Little
Irish Molly. He thought he could train her. There was time to find
out.

He must gain her
confidence, learn more about that father she mentioned. Kid might
stay in touch with home and that could bollix up plans. She needed to
be cut free before he could trust her to any extent. She started
thinking about what her father would want her to do or be, she might
not bend to his will on the trip west. That would never do.

Pretending to stretch,
Cruise leaned back in his seat and reached his left arm over and
behind his head. He yawned and grunted, meanwhile lightly touching,
checking the back of his head with the pads of his fingers.
Underneath the long hair, he kept a small area shaved. He had glued a
Velcro patch there and the matching patch to the tiny,
four-and-one-half-inch, hooked-end knife he carried. It was too
dangerous to drive across country with a weapon the cops might find
on casual inspection during a traffic violation. (Bundy had been
found with handcuffs in his trunk.
Handcuffs
. That little
oversight put him behind bars in Colorado, the stupid bastard.)

Cruise had grown his
hair long and kept the knife concealed there for more than three
years now. It was stainless steel and razor sharp. The handle was
slightly curved so that it fit in a good grip around his index finger
when he used it. On the side of the handle was a silver skull and
crossbones.

The hook on the
business end of the blade caught and ripped flesh. He had found the
odd little lethal knife in a pawnshop in Chicago. The idea of
strapping it to his head and beneath his hair was a stroke of pure
genius. His victims never expected a man to pull Death from his hair
and wield it with such lightning-quick movement. Cruise could rip
open a man's throat with his special little knife in three seconds
flat. In the first second they saw it. The eyes reflected deep,
paralyzing fear. In the second instant they felt the cool metal
against their warm throats. In the third second Cruise had them; they
belonged to him.

Feeling the knife
securely in place, he lowered his arm and asked the girl if she
wanted something to eat when they reached Hammond, Louisiana.

"Sure. Wake me
when we get there, okay?"

He assured her that he
would.

He tried to keep his
mind occupied by listing the rivers they crossed. Outside of Mobile
he began the river name game. He crossed Singing River. Beautiful
name for a river. The next was the Biloxi. Then Wolf. The names
rolled through his thoughts until he lost their order. There was the
Jourdan, Pearl, Arnite, Mississippi River, Whiskey Bay, Atchafalaya,
Lake Pelba, Lake Bigbeaux.

His thoughts gradually
wandered over to his passenger. Little Molly. Then for the next
hundred miles while oncoming lights steamed past on the freeway, and
she slept slumped against the car window, he stole lustful glances at
her slight body. All the while he admonished himself to take it easy,
go slow, work the girl around until she loved him.

Until she worshiped him
as a god.

#

Mark Killany knew his
daughter was moving away from him on Interstate l0 West. After
frantic questioning of her friends, he discovered she was headed to
California. At least she had told her friends
that
much. Since
their home was in Dania, Flonda, the most direct route to the
opposite coast was by l-l0. She had but a few hours start on him. He
had left to do some grocery shopping and on his return found her
note.

I'm sorry, Daddy, but I
have to leave. I can't be perfect the way you want me to. We're
driving one another crazy. I'm not going to the counselors anymore.
Don't come after me because you won't find me.

Molly

It took him some time
to withdraw money from the bank, pack a few clothes, question her
friends and acquaintances.

As far as he could tell
from investigating her room, she had taken few clothes and no
personal articles. She didn't have money except for the ten-dollar
allowance he had given her the day before so she had to be traveling
as a hitchhiker.

God. Molly on the roads
hitching. She could get raped or killed before she left the state.
Her chance of making it all the way to California by hitching rides
was impossible. That was just one of the illusions she was working
under. She was a kid. Just a shavetail kid. She didn't know what she
was doing. Even now she might be on the roadside in the rain or
stranded at some gas station or off ramp.

He hurried as fast as
he could to finish preparations, then he started out. He wasn't going
to call the police with a missing person's report. He just couldn't
wait that long. He didn't care that the statistics said thousands of
kids run away from home every year and just disappear, never to be
beard from again, He didn't care, even, that he was probably the
responsible party in this debacle. All he cared about was his little
girl. He'd get her back safely or spend the rest of his life trying.
She was all he had. If he botched her raising, he'd fix it.

A nagging voice said,
You should have fixed it before you lost her
. He shut off the
voice. First he must find her and bring her home. No matter what
effort or how long it took.

Then he'd repair
whatever had caused her to run away.

He thought she might
have taken Interstate 95 north to the top of the state since it went
right through Dania. That's the route he followed. At every station
where he bought gas or stopped to grab food to go, he asked if anyone
had seen her, and he showed the latest picture he had, her
junior-year school photo. With that red hair and slate-gray eyes, she
was memorable. At least he had one thing in his favor. Yet no one had
seen her so he doggedly drove north, worrying, scrubbing down his
crew-cut red hair, watching the roadside and on ramps for
hitchhikers.

"Molly, Molly,
Molly..." He said her name aloud repetitively as he drove.

How could his daughter
desert him? He must have appeared an ogre to her, a strict
disciplinarian who left her no way out but to run. There had been
arguments, but he never suspected she was so unhappy she'd leave him.

Maybe he should have
remarried, found a woman to help love and raise her. Maybe he should
have been more permissive, made fewer restraints on her freedom.
Maybe he hadn't listened during the times he should. Maybe the
counselor he paid exorbitant fees was right, though he had failed to
admit it; he was as much at fault for the conflicts with his teenage
daughter as she was. Maybe he should have put her into a private
girls' school where she would have been carefully watched.

To hell with it. He had
to stop this train of thought. Recriminations wouldn't get Molly
back. It produced zero profit. He'd never know what to do right for
her until he could find and bring her home.
Then
he could go
over the reasons she felt she must escape her home. Let's face it.

Escape
him
.
Until then, he had to keep his mind on the road and watch the
entrance ramps.

It was not until he hit
l-l0 west out of Jacksonville that he found someone who had seen her.
He had driven like a maniac, flat out, foot to the pedal, the radar
detector signaling with high beeps when a patrol car lurked nearby.
He drove all day and was so tired his back ached, his head throbbed.
At a Conoco station where he filled up, he took her picture around to
the employees, asking each one the same question. "Have you seen
this girl?"'