The Night's Legacy

The Night’s Legacy

By
P.T. Dilloway

Copyright 2012
P.T. Dilloway

Published by Planet 99 Publishing at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.   Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chapter 1

She liked working the graveyard shift the best.  The other girls hated the lack of tips, but she preferred the quiet of the diner after midnight.  Except for the occasional trucker coming in for coffee, pie, and scrambled eggs she had the place to herself most of the night.  She spent that time sitting at the counter with a book, a new one every night.  On a really slow night she could finish two books.

She was halfway through an analysis of mythic symbolism in hieroglyphics of the Old Kingdom when her first two customers came in.  From their baggy pants and lack of beer guts she knew they weren’t truckers.  From the way they staggered over to a booth and practically fell into it, giggling all the while, she knew they were college kids trying to sober up.  She’d seen their kind often enough at Northwestern, Cornell, Michigan, Brown, and even Renaissance City Community College to recognize them.

She gave them a couple of minutes to settle into the booth and pretend to read the menus.  Then she strolled over with two cups of black coffee.  “Here you boys go,” she said.  As part of the act she took the order pad and pen from her apron.  “Anything else I can get you?”

The way the boy in the red T-shirt on the left’s head bobbed up and down, she knew these two were going to be trouble.  “How about your phone number—” Red T-shirt squinted at her nametag, needing a moment to pull together all four letters, “Lois?”

“Sorry boys, I’m unlisted.  Maybe you’d like some homemade pecan pie instead?”

“Only if it’s as sweet as you,” Red T-shirt said.  Lois tried not to roll her eyes at this.  The drunker the boy, the more suave he thought he was.

“Sure.  What about your friend?”  She glanced over at the other boy, whose chin rested on his blue T-shirt.  He’d probably passed out.  “Maybe a glass of water to pour over his head?”

Red T-shirt cackled at this as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.  “You’re a funny chick Lois.  Why don’t you sit down with us?”

“Against store policy.”

“Who’s going to know?”

She turned back to the kitchen and shouted, “Hey Miguel!  Come out here a second.”  A few moments later the kitchen door banged open and out came all six feet-eight inches and three hundred pounds of Miguel Santiago.

He folded his arms over his white T-shirt stained with seventeen years of grease and dirt.  “You got a problem?”

Red T-shirt wasn’t so drunk that he didn’t understand the significance of Miguel’s appearance.  His face went paler than Miguel’s shirt. 
Lois smiled and then turned back to the cook.  “Could you fetch some vanilla ice cream from the freezer?  I think these boys want their pie ala mode, don’t you?”

“Sure,” Red T-shirt squeaked.  His partner had slept through the entire encounter.

“I’ll be right back.”  She gave Red T-shirt a wink before she sauntered back to the counter for two slices of pie.

Miguel ladled a slab of ice cream on each slice.  In Spanish he muttered, “Why a girl like you work in a place like this?”

He’d asked her that every night for the last six months she’d been working at the diner.  She gave him the same answer she always did, “I just like the ambiance.”

Red T-shirt set a new record in eating his pie and drinking his coffee.  For good measure he ate Blue T-shirt’s as well.  He didn’t even ask for the bill; he just dropped a twenty on the counter and dragged his friend out of the place.

Lois collected the bill and then stuck it in the cash register.  She took out the appropriate change to split the fifty percent tip with Miguel.  As always he tried to decline the money and as always she convinced him that he was the one who had really earned it.  “Buy a couple Happy Meals for the kids,” she said.

He took the money and then she sat down on her stool to continue reading her book.

* * *

When her shift ended at five o’clock,
Lois put on her coat, tucked her latest book under her arm, and headed for the door.  As usual, Miguel asked if she wanted a ride.  “I’m going to walk,” she said.

“You should not be walking this early,” he said.

“Don’t worry, it’s not very far.”

“Home” was about three miles down the road in Durndell at a motel she chose because it looked liked the kind of rundown place that would take cash and not ask too many inconvenient questions. 
Lois preferred to operate on a cash-only basis; she hadn’t ever filed a local, state, or Federal tax return.  That kept her name off the books and out of the computers.

She enjoyed the morning walks back to the motel.  The west Texas
air had a crisp, pure smell, nothing like the air of Ren City that you could through with a knife.  She walked slow enough so that by the time she reached the Sunoco station on the edge of town the sun was peeking over the distant hills.  In those moments she was glad to be out here, to have escaped the rat race that had been her life.

This morning she had made it about halfway when she saw the car approaching.  That wasn’t unusual; on those rare times when it was raining she would sometimes try to flag one down to drop her off in town.  Since the weather was dry, she stepped off onto the gravel shoulder and kept walking.

She knew there was going to be trouble when the car began slowing down.  Sometimes would-be heroes stopped to ask if her car had broken down or if she wanted a ride.  She would try to be as polite as possible in telling them to mind their own damned business.  This time she sensed would be different.  She didn’t know why until the car came up beside her.

Inside were the two boys from the diner.  Blue T-shirt was conscious, if just barely, his head lolling to the side to face her as his window came down.  His buddy Red T-shirt shouted from the driver’s seat, “Hey, honey, you want a ride?”

“No thanks,” she said.  “I’m going just down the road.”

She took a few steps forward, but wasn’t surprised when the car backed up.  Red T-shirt sneered at her and said, “Where’s your boyfriend at?”

Mom had always told Lois to turn the other cheek.  She had stressed that patience and good humor would disarm most bullies.  But Mom probably hadn’t dealt with many drunken frat boys in her time.  “Look guys, let’s not do anything we’d regret, huh?”

The car stopped and Red T-shirt got out. 
Lois took off her jacket, dropping it on the ground.  She shifted the book from under her arm to her right hand.  Then she waited on the gravel shoulder for him to make his move.

Where other little girls had been playing tag, swinging, or sliding on the playground,
Lois had spent her recesses learning to fight.  Part of this education came through books she checked out of the adult section of the library without Mom knowing about it and the rest came through practical application on the playground. 

Her first fight happened when she was in kindergarten.  She had been only
four years old.  A boy three times her age had stolen her lunch for the third time that week.  “Thanks for bringing me lunch, Ratface,” he said as he snatched the bag away.  She hadn’t bothered to respond with words; instead she waited until he turned away and then kicked him as hard as possible in the back of the kneecap.  When he fell down, she located the rest of his weak points.  At four she didn’t have much strength, but as the great sensei’s taught, strength didn’t matter if you knew where to apply it.

Twenty years later, she had far more strength than as a toddler.  So did Red T-shirt have more strength than a nine-year-old bully on the playground.  Except he didn’t know how to use it.  For one thing he was drunk and for another his IQ was probably half of hers.  From the clumsy way he charged she figured him for a football player, probably a linebacker.  If his technique was any indication, he wasn’t a starter.

She waited until he was within a couple inches of her and then sidestepped him like a matador sidestepped a charging bull.  As he stumbled past, she brought the book down on his neck.  The book was roughly the length of an Oxford dictionary, heavy enough to send him crashing down to the ground.

Once he was down, she tossed the book aside and then bent down to take his right arm.  She jerked it back hard enough to hear a pop, followed by his scream.  “Unless you want both arms in casts, you better cry uncle,” she said.

Too late she realized that she had underestimated Blue T-shirt.  He had looked so out of it that she figured she could take down his friend without him getting involved.  But when someone wrenched her arms back and she smelled stale Busch beer, she realized he was more alert than she had thought.  “You the only one who’s gonna cry,” he growled into her ear.

She didn’t give him a chance for another snappy line.  He was groggy enough that it didn’t take much effort to shift her left leg around his and trip him.  As he fell, he let go of her, his instincts telling him to put his arms out to break the fall.  She had enough control of her instincts so that she rolled away from him, somersaulting into a kneeling position.

She left them on the side of the road.  “You boys could use some fresh air,” she said as she got into their car.  It took her a few seconds to find the seat controls so that she could move the driver’s seat up far enough to reach the pedals and raise it a few inches to see over the wheel.  Sticking her hand out the window to give them the bird, she did a U-turn in the road to head into Durndell.

* * *

As bad luck would have it, she was nearing the Sunoco station when she saw the flashing lights behind her.  She could probably elude a sheriff’s car, but then she would have half the state of Texas looking for her.  They didn’t have her last name and even if they asked Mr. Henry or Miguel at the diner they would get a fake name, but that wouldn’t matter.  Her description would go out over the wires and it wouldn’t be long until Mom picked up on it.  It would be better to try and talk her way out of it first.

She pulled into the Sunoco station, parking in front of the convenience store.  She waited for the cop to get out.  He was Latino and probably not much taller than her, but like a typical cop he walked with the swagger of authority.

“Some boys back there said you assaulted them and stole their car,” he said, not bothering with the foreplay of asking her if she knew why she was being stopped.  “That true?”

“They tried to attack me on the road.  I defended myself and then took the car so I could get help.  But now that you’re here, you can put them where they belong.”

He stared at her for a moment, probably trying to remember where he’d seen her before.  There were of course posters of her.  Her mug had adorned the back of milk cartons and at least once a year an advertising circular would have her picture at age thirteen and then one computer-aged photo that never looked anything like her.  If that was where he’d seen her before, then she was in big trouble.

“You work at Hal’s Diner, don’t you?” he asked instead.

“That’s right.  I just got off work.”  She touched her nametag.  “My name’s Lois.  Lois Ritter.”

“You got any ID on you?”

She shook her head.  “I left my purse at home.  The Plainview Motel, Room 216.”

“You been here long,
Lois?”

“About six months.  Moved here from Austin.”

“Got any family here?”

“No, but if you just call Mr. Henry he’ll vouch for me.”

The cop spit a wad of tobacco juice onto the pavement.  “I suppose it’d be better if we do that at the station.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“No, but we got to sort this out—”

She didn’t let him get any farther before she put the car into drive and pushed down on the accelerator.  She jumped over the curb of the sidewalk in front of the store and then roared out of the parking lot.  If they took her to the police station she’d be as good as cooked.  They’d find out there was no
Lois Ritter—not one still living—and then they’d run her prints.  Once they did that, they would find out her real name and past history.  The game would be over then.

Her attempt to escape got as far as the McDonald’s a half-mile down the road.  Some careless schmuck munching on a sausage biscuit lurched out into the road without realizing she was coming at a hundred miles an hour.  She barely had time to swing the car to the right, into the sign in front of the restaurant. 

The car slammed into the sign, throwing her against her safety belt.  Always buckling up had been one of Mom’s tenets Lois always followed, mostly because she didn’t want anyone scraping her off the pavement.  Red T-shirt’s car was new enough that it had airbags on the front and the side.  These both deployed to cushion her head as she was thrown forward and then to the side.

The airbags hadn’t deflated when she fumbled with her seatbelt to unbuckle it.  She slid over to the passenger’s side, wincing at a pain in her left foot.  It might be broken or she might have just twisted it in the crash.  Either way, she couldn’t let it slow her down now.

She dropped out of the passenger’s side door, onto the cedar chips around the sign.  Her left foot certainly felt broken when she tried to put weight on it.  Biting down on her lip, she dragged her left foot as she tried to run from the smashed car. 

She made it to the Burger King next door before the cop tackled her.  Assaulting a police officer would only make things worse and she didn’t have much energy left to do so anyway.  She let him jerk her hands back to slap the cuffs on.  She barely listened as he read her rights.