CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (8 page)

It was at the end of the hallway past four video games lined on one wall. A trucker in greasy jeans played Tetris, the Russian game of falling shapes one had to fit together into lines. Molly noted in passing he wasn't too damn good at it either. She could beat him with one hand tied and her eyes blindfolded.

She wandered into the jumbo room of the cafe. She took a trucker's booth where a black phone hung on the wall at table level. She sat staring at it a full minute. Nah. She

couldn't call him, her dad. He'd want to know where she was, why'd she leave, would she come back? She couldn't stand the pain of it. To be truthful she missed him already, but she'd get over it, she knew. She had to. She could not live with him, could not, could not.

She watched the young waitress. Her hair was short and lacquered stiffly. She wore a teddy bear sweatshirt and faded jeans that fit her all too well. While she waited to be served, Molly cataloged the stuff this joint had on the puke-pink Formica table. The jumble sat on every table.

Mcllhenny Co. Tabasco sauce, Cajun Chef hot sauce, ketchup, sugar shaker, salt and pepper shakers, napkin holder, margarine and jelly tubs (apple and mixed fruit), low-cal sugar packets, creamer packets, and a generic black plastic ashtray. Good God. Did they provide for the customers or what?

The little waitress wore a short red change apron with black stitching across the front. Molly read it when she approached. "My name is Stinky."

Molly suppressed a giggle threatening to get up and out.

"Stinky?" she asked when the girl stood over her.

The waitress looked down at the apron. "Uh, no, this ain't my apron. My name's Lynette."

Molly thought that was pretty fortunate for the girl. "Just coffee right now. I'll look at a menu."

Lynette bounced away and came back with a tan plastic mug of steamy java and a plastic-encased menu. There were black thumbprints on the front edges.

Molly decided on the
huevos rancheros
. Two eggs served on a corn tortilla with beans, rice, and their own special sauce. $2.95. Sounded like a regular bargain if the heartburn didn't kill her.

While she waited for the meal, Molly kept looking the place over. She didn't know what it was about truck stops that Cruise might like. The floor was black and white tiles. None too clean. The tables out in the center of the room had chairs with vinyl backs and seats of sick mustard-yellow. Bad color to have around food, she'd think. On white vinyl-covered walls hung wooden pictures of sunsets and Indians, a picture-frame clock of a semi-trailer truck parked in autumn leaves.

In the booth facing Molly she saw the back of a driver's head. Leaning slightly to the left or right she could see around him to get a view of his partner's billed cap. It was black with a red-and-white eagle on the front. Beneath the eagle was the legend RIDE To LIVE, LIVE To RIDE. At least it didn't say BORN To LOSE.

There was a salad and ice cream bar. Another waitress took care of the trade at the center tables. She was fiftyish, gray hair, blue pants uniform, and a light gray fleece-lined sweater jacket. She looked tired. Compared to the bouncy Lynette of the red apron, she looked dead.

The
huevos rancheros
arrived and looked every bit as inviting as a roadkill. Molly's stomach did a flip-flop looking at how the fragile eggs were buried under the heaps of beans and rice.

Lynette said, '"There's Tabasco sauce there if you want it."

Molly nodded dumbly. She'd have to drink her coffee before she'd ever get up the courage to tackle this thing.

While she sipped the black brew, two truckers entered trailed by a woman, dressed as they were, in jeans and sweatshirts and jackets. They passed Molly's booth. The woman had long blond hair. Bleached, but pretty. On the back of her black jacket was an American flag. Below the flag it read STONE MOUNTAIN. Molly knew where that was. In Georgia. A big ring of keys jingled and clanked on the woman's sturdy hips as she moved past. Molly thought she smelled the scorched scent of a hot radiator as they wove through tables to the back.

Travelers. Just like her. Driving those big rigs and eating in dumps like this one.

And Cruise liked them. She'd have to get him to confide in her just exactly what it was about bad art, scrubby jeans, and greasy food that he found intriguing.

Then again, come to think of it, it was really highly amusing. She never saw Tabasco sauce on the cafe tables in South Florida. She'd never in her life seen a female truck driver. And thank God, she'd never known a girl named Stinky--and wouldn't, she guessed.

The eggs were quite good despite their caked and drowned appearance. The beans were hot, the rice spicy. Molly ate every bite and burped politely behind a napkin. Damn gas bothered her like crazy when she ate spicy foods.

Lynette didn't say anything to her about sitting at a table reserved for truckers. Probably because the place wasn't exactly packed to the rafters. Molly let her cup be refilled four times before she made any move to leave. She lingered, savoring the place, the sounds, the way the truckers moved beneath their thick jackets and their cowboy and gimmee hats. One fellow at the counter had great buns--tight and small and cute as the cheeks of a panda bear--and just about the longest legs Molly had ever seen. Dwight Yoakum, the country singer who sang songs through his nose, had legs like that. Went on forever. The trucker wore gray lizard-skin cowboy boots, the pointy-toed ones, and his shirt had pearl snaps instead of buttons. He sat drinking coffee and kidding pretty Lynette about her silly apron.

All of a sudden Molly felt loneliness descend, a black curtain settling just behind her eyes. She wished the cowboy would talk to her, kid her about something. She wished the damn sun would set, goddammit, so Cruise would wake up and keep her company. She might as well be invisible, sitting nursing a cup of coffee, trailing a finger through a puddle of water condensed off her yellow plastic glass of iced water.

Just how was she going to make it in this world? When she got to California, that golden West, that Pacific paradise, just how was she going to keep herself off the street? She expected she was going to get hungry, learn all about how it felt to have your stomach shrink and your clothes fall off your hips. Learn all about staying out of the way of drug addicts, pimps, pushers, and muggers. Learn how to sleep standing up, leaning on a wall, arms folded. She'd seen people do that in downtown Miami. Stand there like a leaning pole, propped against the side of a wall, chin on chest, arms crossed, asleep. She guessed they locked their knees to keep from falling on their faces.

It had to be hard.

Life. It was a tough deal.

Tears swarmed in her eyes and she angrily brushed them away by pretending to wipe her face with a napkin.
Shit
.
Self-pitying asshole
. She lurched up from the table and turned her back on the cute cowboy and his doll of a waitress. She paid at the cashier's counter and hurried out the door. The coolness of evening braced and refreshed her.

She eyed the sky, measuring how far the sun had to go to hit sundown. An hour. Forty-five minutes.

She glanced around the parking lot for a place to wait it out. She picked the parking curb near the Chrysler. She lay her head on crossed arms against her knees, face turned so she could see the western sky. She could count the colors of sunset, gift the layers with all new names. Clam white. Pussy pink. Well. She had to have
some
fun. Then there was larva lavender. Jazz blue. Bruise purple. Scalding red. Tabby-cat orange. Bone ivory. Summer squash yellow.

Daydream
. She could daydream about sex with Cruise. Or the cowboy with the lizard boots and pearl snap buttons. He was younger, though not quite as attractive. It was all right when she was awake and could control the images, not let it get too out of hand where her body started feeling all hot and achy and thrumming for a touch, any touch.

Slowly a masculine hand pulled down the zipper of her jeans. Another hand, unattached to body, to face, slipped up under her blouse and tugged the padded bra aside.

Tweaked one tiny pink-brown nipple. Covered her breast softly. Moved gently down over her abdomen past the elastic waist of her bikini panties...

Hell and damnation.

That wasn't all that much fun either. Made her start panting like a bitch in heat so anybody would know what she was thinking if they walked by her.

Raging fucking hormones.

And they said only guys got horny. Boy, were they wrong! If she didn't get this stuff out of her brain, she'd wind up trying to throw herself all over poor Cruise, and what would that look like, huh?

He probably didn't even like her. She was too young. Looked thirteen, fourteen, he said. Probably too skinny. No boobs. Hardly any hips. She was just a hitchhiker he was taking along to keep him awake while he drove nights. He wouldn't touch her if she begged for it.

The sun dipped through low-lying clouds. The colors over the land smeared unevenly and darkened.

Molly watched the car door on the Chrysler for Cruise.

Wake up
.

The cowboy of the long legs sauntered out the cafe door chewing a toothpick. He never even glanced her way. Molly watched his tight little butt as he circled the building to the back lot where his rig was parked. She sighed to see him go. He'd had thick black curly hair and dark eyes. She would have to dream of him tonight. It was as close as she was going to get to heaven this century.

#

Mark Killany thought he'd lost Molly's trail for good. He had overslept in Beaumont, cradling the phone receiver on his chest after the wake-up call. Cursing himself upon waking, he hurried from the Holiday Inn to his car, his shirt trailing out the back of his pants. He had needed to shave again, but there hadn't been time. He ran a hand over his grizzled chin now, frowning at how he was slowly losing all control over events in his life. He wasn't exercising, he wasn't shaving enough, his clothes needed an iron run over them.

He crossed the Old and Lost Rivers and thought how apt the name was to his state of mind. If his mind wasn't old and lost, he didn't know what was.

He stopped along the way between Beaumont and Houston, showing Molly's picture. No one had seen her.

He kept losing time exiting the freeway, parking, walking around to question service station employees. He had known he was handicapped from the outset, that she'd be ahead of him and gaining ground west each time he chose to stop. But he'd optimistically thought he could find a clearer trail.

Trail! He had a wisp. A promise. Not a trail.

Now it was late afternoon, the sun setting in a blaze at his back. He was somewhere between San Antonio and El Paso on Interstate 10, out in the center of the tumbleweed desert, and he hadn't once found a person who had seen his daughter.

A vibration in the rear of his car that he'd noticed earlier, but didn't want to stop to check, now turned to a walloping sound. A flat. Of all the damned luck...

He pulled over into the emergency lane and stopped just as the tire went so flat he could hear the car running on the metal rim. Big eighteen-wheelers whooshed past, their wind hot and full of stink. The displaced air from them rocked his car on its wheels.

Mark carefully exited the car, eyes squinted against the ball of fire to the west. He circled to the rear right tire and stooped to inspect it. Shredded. Metal strands showing through the flaps. When was the last time he'd bought tires? he wondered. Sloppy. Not at all like him.

He must hurry.

He popped the trunk, took out the spare and the tools required to change the tire. He sweated during the time-consuming ordeal, threw the ripped tire into the trunk, and wiped his hands on a red rag he kept there.

Now it was nearly dark. Telephone poles marched down his side of the freeway leading straight through the desert. On the other side of the rusted barbed-wire fence he could see nothing but sand and mesquite trees and cacti. He supposed the wire fence was meant to confine cattle, but where were they? West Texas made him feel exposed and insignificant. The sooner he got out of here, the better.

God, he was tired. He was used to hard work, but not to the toll stationary sitting and driving took on his muscles. The strain showed in his face shadowed with the day-old beard. His blue eyes were dim as swamp water, his mouth set between twin age lines cut deep into the flesh. Haggard wouldn't even get near to describing the way he was beginning to look.

Once on the road again, he sped toward the steel-gray horizon. How in hell did he think he could find her? The blue Chrysler could easily be in New Mexico by now. For all he knew her ride, the guy with the long hair and beard, could have taken her another route and done anything to her, anything. He could have murdered her and left her body for the buzzards and the sandstorms.

This thought so frightened him he edged the speedometer needle past seventy to eighty, eighty-five, racing toward nowhere, lost in West Texas, sure he was now on a mission doomed to failure. First he'd overslept, then lost time on the exits, and now the flat made him lose more precious time.

"Molly, God, Molly, where are you?" he mumbled into the thickening clot of darkness overtaking the car's interior.

Got to find her
, he thought, a fierceness entering into his attitude that hadn't been there before. Clamping his hands tight on the steering wheel, he drove furiously, bypassing even the speeding truckers who had less reason to reach a destination than he.

A line of traffic trailed him and eventually disappeared into the murk of night as headlights began to sprinkle the oncoming lanes. It was crazy, what he was doing, he admitted that much earlier in the trip. He was always so obsessed with results, and this time he might not have any. He could drive straight into the far Pacific Ocean and still never reach his goal.

But that wouldn't stop him.

Nothing could stop him short of finding his girl.

#

Cruise drove at a steady fifty-five miles an hour west across the Texas desert. He periodically dipped a big hand into a bag of Cheetos, munching them as he told Molly a story. He had eaten the
huevos rancheros
in the White Elephant, but still felt hungry as a bear cub fed on berries for a month.