An Eye for Death Page 2

  The routine completed, Barry locked the door, leaving the key inside on the windowsill as the apartment manager had instructed. There was no need to delay, no reason to delay, no one to wave goodbye or to give him a farewell kiss. There was no need to make things any harder. Just turn the ignition, and go, he told himself.

  He allowed himself a week's vacation to move and resettle in the old farmhouse he was buying in South Dakota. A hard two-day drive away, he was late getting started. Having slept through the easy, early morning driving hours, he would have to fight the Atlanta rush hour as he made his way north.

  At least once there, he had a house, and he could work his business from anywhere. Perspective is everything, he thought.

  It seemed strange. Moving to a place he had never visited until he went to look for a house was completely out of character, but it felt right. He wasn't sure how right he would feel about it in the midst of a South Dakota February, but it was too late to worry about that now. It was time to go.

  He threw the sofa pillows and shaving kit in the back of the truck, locked the cargo door, checked the tire straps and safety chains on the car carrier and climbed behind the steering wheel. He breathed a sigh of relief when he cranked the old rental up and the engine turned over, rattling to a roar and then settling down to a steady rumble.

  It was not the newest of trucks. He figured they didn't give you the best rigs for one-way, cross-country rentals. Never knew what shape they would be in when they got where they were going.

  Pulling from the parking lot, Barry checked the side mirrors frequently to make sure the car carrier still followed. He had never towed a car before. Worried about the Nissan riding securely on the carrier, he was comforted by the sight of it in the mirror, tagging along behind.

  He cranked the window down. Outside the air, still hot and humid even in the first week of October, drifted into the cab. For the first time in his life, he would not see the Georgia autumn come on, slow and gentle.

  Winding through the suburban streets, Barry found his way to the I-75 northbound entrance ramp. Thirty minutes later, the Atlanta skyline dwindled in the distance. Goodbye, he thought. Thanks for everything. Thanks for life. I'll keep in touch.

  He could almost hear the skyline he knew so well reply. “I reckon you won't keep in touch, Barry. This is goodbye. Don't pretend it's not.”

  Barry nodded, to himself. Right, goodbye. No more pretending about things. The journey began.

  5. Can You Guess My Name

  He hummed. Then, he whistled, and then he hummed some more, content with himself. It was surreal.

  The girl in the car with him cringed more out of annoyance than fear. His self-contented humming made her feel like she was trapped in hell, serenaded by the devil himself. He sang like a lark as if putting a knife to her ribs and kidnapping her made it the day perfect. It was bullshit, she thought and despite her fear, she was pissed.

  The humming pulled her from the distant, tortured nap where she took refuge. Forcing her eyes open, she focused on the car's bare interior. It was the kind of car a young woman on a tight budget would drive. The dashboard and seats were nondescript beige plastic. Bug spatters dappled the windshield. A fly buzzed and bounced off the inside of the glass trying to escape its prison.

  Becoming aware of the tension in her right arm, she looked down. The thin leather belt from her waist now secured her arm tightly to the seat frame, cutting a deep groove in her wrist. Blood was smeared around her hand and on the belt.

  Humming. He was at it again, humming a melody, almost familiar, but just beyond recognition, over and over, repeating the same tune, and irritating her beyond belief. She turned her head to the left, staring at the man. He seemed content, smiling, almost harmless, but not quite.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked softly, swallowing down her irritation in an effort to maintain her composure and not provoke him. “Who are you?”

  The man's head turned towards her. She cringed. The look of contented harmlessness evaporated. His eyes bored into her, hard and vicious. A smile still lingered on his narrow face, but it was no longer harmless. The smile now held a mean secret.

  “Call me...” He thought for a moment. He grinned, showing a set of tobacco-yellow teeth. “Luther. Call me Luther.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why? I needed a ride, a car …” Luther said, letting his face morph into a full grin. “And now, I have a car, and I'm giving you a ride.”

  The grin annoyed her more than the humming. “So you decided to take me because you needed a car? You used a knife. You tied my arm.”

  The grin widened on his face. The taunting arrogance made her angry. Fuck him. “Who the hell do you think you are? What gives you the fucking right to take me?” She jerked her arm savagely, against the leather strap.

  “You might not have let me give you a ride.” He said matter-of-factly. “Somebody else might be giving you a ride right now. Or, you might be all alone, out here on the highway.” He shook his head. “Couldn't have that now, could we?” He ran his tongue over his yellow teeth the way a hyena licks its jowls in anticipation before plunging its head in a carcass.

  “I don't need a ride. This is my car.” Her logic was futile she knew but said it anyway. “Let me go. Please,” she said as firmly as she could manage.

  Luther turned back towards her, examining her intently, the grin gone from his face. She was adapting, struggling to cope with the situation, he realized. Not good.

  He reached his right hand out. She turned her face away, but Luther grabbed her chin and twisted her head back around. A tingle grew in his groin as the fear sprang into in her eyes.

  After a few seconds, the fear faded from her face, replaced by something else. Determination. The look said she would make it through this. She would come out of this somehow, she thought. Luther smiled.

  “Well,” he said. “We can talk about letting you go tomorrow. Right now, you're riding with me.” He released her and put his hand back on the wheel.

  The girl stared at him until the humming started again. Turning her head to stare out of the passenger window, her mind slipped away again, out into the passing fields, anywhere to escape the car and the incessant humming.

  Subconsciously, she comprehended that she couldn't give in to her mind’s desire to flee while her body remained behind. She pulled her mind and her awareness back into the car, into the now.

  It was instinctive. She knew she had to remain engaged, part of what was happening. She had to be more than the victim it was happening to.

  Normally, not a girl for tears, the frustration and uncertainty sent one trickling down her cheek now. She shook her head, flinging it off. Stop!

  No tears, she told herself. That’s what he wants, to see her sob and tremble, helpless and afraid. She would not give that to him.

  Luther hummed again. The words of the Rolling Stones song came out in a half whisper, as he beat out the rhythm on the steering wheel with his hand. “...Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name...”

  He glanced over at the girl. She stared out the window, alert, conscious and thinking.

  The thrilling tingle coursed through his body again, in his gut and balls. He had needed money. The store had money. The elderly owners happened to be convenient targets. The girl had come as an unexpected opportunity. He would make the most of that opportunity when the time came, but not yet. They had time, and he needed to put some miles between him and the little country store in Kansas.

  “Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name,” he sang.

  Leaning against the passenger door, she stared at the fields passing outside with the miles. Luther, or whoever he might really be, was the master of the situation, for now at least. She had to find a way to fight back, or he would take whatever he wanted from her, whenever he wanted it. That unpleasant thought sent a shiver up her spine.

  Lighting a cigarette, he rested his left elbow out the window. The cigarette dangl
ed from his fingers. The wind rushing over his arm blew on his face and ruffled his hair. He felt like a god. He was at ease, in control, all-powerful.

  6. Tired

  The noise inside the cab of the old rental deafened him. The windows wouldn't roll all the way up and rattled incessantly. Barry thought the exhaust fumes that drifted in might suffocate him. Could that happen in a moving vehicle, he wondered.

  Outside the plains of middle Georgia turned into the hills of north Georgia and Tennessee, then more plains as he headed west on I-70. The dirt in the fields changed color from red clay to rich black, thick with the bluegrass of Kentucky.

  He fumbled with an old style dial radio on the dash—this really is an old piece of shit truck. Who had dial radios anymore?

  Without FM, only AM, he searched for a country or light rock station but only found static, occasionally punctuated by a daytime preacher. Once or twice, he heard a fifty thousand watt talk radio station out of Nashville or St. Louis, or maybe Chicago but it would fade in and out, and he couldn't make sense out of the garbled transmission followed by more static. He spun the volume knob to the left until the radio clicked off.

  The loud whine of the tires on the road, the pulsing throb of the old engine and rattling of the windows surrounded him. He had the feeling of being encased in a cocoon. The noise isolated him from the real world, flowing by outside, mile after mile.

  Stretching one leg and then the other, he arched his back, trying to get comfortable. He shook his head, flexed his arms and settled his butt into the old plastic seat cover again.

  His foot held the accelerator to the floor. The dial speedometer wavered back and forth on its spring but never got above sixty or so. Well, no problem, he thought. There was no reason to hurry. He would drive as far as he could today and be in Sioux Falls by tomorrow evening. Perfect.

  Perfect. It was a word he used a lot lately. Everything is perfect, he repeated, as if saying the word as many times as possible would make it true, like a prayer. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

  He didn't believe in prayer, had not for many years, but a prayer from his youth came to him, from the Hebrew school his grandfather insisted he attend for a time when they lived near him.

  Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the Universe, Who bestows good things on the unworthy, and has bestowed on me every goodness.

  Say it enough, and it would be true. Right? Kind of like wishing on a star and about as effective. A smile crossed his face that some would have called a smirk. His time for prayers had passed long ago.

  The beers from the night before had worn off, assisted on their way by copious quantities of coffee and water. He stopped to pee every twenty-five miles or so at first, but now, settled in, he made time, letting the miles add up. Comfortable and as relaxed as he could remember feeling in years, he wondered what it would be like to be genuinely at ease all the time. He didn't think he had ever been at peace in his life. At least he couldn't remember if he had.

  A good day, just one...today. The thought crept into his mind for the hundredth time since leaving Atlanta. It didn’t seem like too much to ask.

  For the moment, surrounded and isolated by the noise, he was at peace. The sensation was startling as he became aware of it.

  Peace. Here? Now? Where did that come from?

  He thought about it. Maybe from having finally made a decision, a major life-changing decision at that.

  Maybe it was because after the doubts and pain and guilt surrounding his divorce and loss of his family, he had finally committed himself to something, to an action. There was forward movement and purpose, and he was part of it. Whatever the reason, he welcomed the peace.

  There was nothing to do now, but let events unfold. Or perhaps it was just pure acceptance of the situation. He shook his head to clear it. It didn't matter.

  He found a semi rig with a governor on the engine, traveling at about the same speed while the other traffic sped by. Working the old rental up about two hundred yards behind the semi, he backed off the gas to follow it for a while. Relax, make some miles; follow the big rig, it's going to be a long day, he told himself.

  He admitted that he tended to be a somewhat aggressive driver. His wife always said he had road rage. He didn't think so. He would try to explain patiently, at first, he drove with purpose. People who operated a vehicle, unaware of anything or anyone on the road around them, annoyed him. Situational awareness, he called it.

  No, she would say, he had road rage. His patience would evaporate. He would get angry. She would get angry back. Another one of the things they disagreed about...fought about...one of a thousand things. A thousand things? A million things would be closer to the truth.

  Like a million fire ant bites. One would sting, but a million would kill you. And there it was. Right or wrong, they had been dying.

  He lost count of the things they found to fight about. He chided her, saying that she had their fights neatly cataloged and ready to be recalled during one of their arguments. In truth, he remembered them too.

  They fought because fighting was what they did, usually for no other reason. He gave up. Not his wife though, he thought with a wry smile. She never gave up. One thing about Barb, she was no quitter.

  No, the fights were not her fault. He was as much to blame, probably more. In the end, nothing mattered.

  After years of living separate lives, he realized he could not live another year, or another day, like that. He suggested they separate. The life he had known, and his family, fell apart.

  The rage and anger of his wife and children overpowered him. His children told him they hated him, wouldn't speak to him, or let him see his grandchildren. His wife alternated between hatred and hysterical tears. Barry was just confused.

  To Barry, separation appeared to be entirely logical, a way to make peace between them, no more fighting. They might even be friends, stay close to their children. They could move into a new part of life where they both might find some happiness without the constant fighting.

  His oldest daughter said she thought of him now as the devil. He didn't feel like the devil. He just felt tired.

  7. BOLO

  At precisely eleven-sixteen, the computer in Paul Sorenson's patrol car beeped and lit up as it did in every other Iowa State Patrol cruiser and innumerable police vehicles throughout the Midwest. “All units, 10-35, major crime alert. Standby for a Lookout.”

  Reaching across the seat with one hand, Sorensen picked up the clipboard from his duty case and pulled a pen from his pocket with the other. Enjoying his first day as Sergeant Sorensen, he sat at the top of a rural entrance ramp to I-29 watching traffic, munching the tuna sandwich Donna had sent with him.

  The morning's crisp air had warmed by the afternoon. He wanted to stretch out in the grass somewhere and take a nap. The sun shining through the windows on his uniform shirt and glinting off his gold badge reminded of the summer just passed, while the frosty mornings warned of the cold Iowa winter beating relentlessly on the heels of autumn.

  The air breezed in through the open windows, clean and pleasant, scented with the smell of fresh hay. Somewhere nearby a cow gave a deep-throated bellow. The sound mingled incongruously with the traffic noise. But this was Iowa, and there were cows, lots of them. Fortunately, none were wandering the interstate, today at least.

  “All units,” the dispatcher repeated. “BOLO, Be On the Lookout for a suspect wanted in the murder of two persons at a convenience store outside Isla, Kansas. Security cameras show the suspect to be a white male, approximately five feet ten to six feet in height, thin to medium build, wearing jeans, a waist-length jacket, and dark colored ball cap, possibly navy blue in color and with the patch cut off the front over the bill. The suspect has no facial hair, other distinguishing marks unknown.” She paused, took a breath, and gave everyone time to note the information before proceeding with the rest of the BOLO. “All units, the subject is also wanted for abduction of a white female, Lauren Pierce, who was filling
her car at the store's gas pumps when the murders occurred. Suspect abducted Pierce and left the location in her vehicle, a 1998, Toyota Corolla.” The alert ended with the Toyota's tag number.

  He noted the information on the clipboard pad and laid it in the duty case. Trying to key up a BOLO on the computer screen while driving down the highway had landed more than one trooper in a ditch.

  Five feet ten to six feet, thin to medium build. He shook his head. It was the typically imprecise description police officers struggled with universally. Law enforcement officers everywhere accepted as common knowledge that eyewitness accounts, even those recorded on surveillance cameras, were notoriously unreliable.

  It didn't matter. Paul picked up his sandwich from the dashboard, leaned back in his seat and continued his lunch. This isn't Kansas Toto.

  8. The Miles Ground By

  Rolling through the miles on I-70, the country flowed by in a hypnotic haze. Fighting off drowsiness and the remnants of his hangover, Barry's mind went back to another time when he drove this same stretch of interstate. A smile spread across his face.

  *****

  Opening his eyes to bright sunlight coming through the back window of the car, head against the rear door, he sat up slowly and looked around, groggy from his nap. For a moment, he couldn't remember where he was, and then he remembered. His oldest daughter, Charlotte, was behind the wheel. His son, Robert, sat beside her. Barb and their youngest child Tamara napped in the back seat with him. It was peaceful and quiet in the car, humming down the highway.

  He yawned and asked, “Where are we?”