Country Roads

Country Roads

         Vicki Martin’s body had been found in the Ohio River, washed onto shore and wrapped in industrial plastic like a cocooned caterpillar.  She was pronounced dead long before she had been dumped into the Ohio, and in his mind Fletcher could see her gaping mouth and wide eyes through the milky film of the plastic binding.  “Country Road Killer still at large, Authorities clueless” scrolled along the bottom of the screen.  Fletcher called Holly again and listened to her voice mail once more.
         Fletcher opened his cell phone again.
         “911, what’s your emergency?” asked a lady.
         At first he didn’t know what to say, he felt he had made a mistake.  “It’s my girlfriend.  She was supposed to be here, maybe an hour ago.”
         “Sir, that doesn’t sound like much of an emergency.”  His finger, still rapping the desk, stopped, and he considered slamming the phone into a wall.
         “I know, but, she’s been on Pike Road and she should be here by now.”
         “Oh, I see,” there was a brief pause at the end of the line, as if this came up every other call.  “You’re worried about the ‘Country Road Killer,’ well, I wouldn’t worry sir.  There is strong evidence that he is nowhere near Pike at the moment.  Besides, we just had a cruiser stationed on that road.  Nothing but a couple speeders.”
         Fletcher closed his phone without saying goodbye. A car entered the parking lot, sending a beam of light through the window blinds where it cracked and fell across the room in expanding parallel lines.  He waited a few more minutes, then called Holly again.  Hey, this is Holl . . . he hung up.
         He took out a sheet of paper and wrote a note to his roommate.  Went looking for Holly on Pike.  Probably just paranoid, but she should be here by now.  If I’m not back by the time you get this, call the police.  I already tried once.  He set the note on his roommate’s desk and picked up his keys.
         Outside, an invisible hand stretched a veil of cotton clouds across the moon.  A light precipitation fell in sheets, coating everything with a sleek, thin film of water; maples and birches all round amplified the sound into a downpour.  The exterior light for the dormitory had burned out last week and, without it, the parking lot was a black window.  Fletcher pressed the unlock button on his key chain, and the headlights of his car flickered.
         He opened the door, sat down, and turned off the volume dial on his radio before inserting his key into the ignition.  Music would be a distraction, a drain on his senses, and he wanted his hearing and vision to pick up every tiny detail.  The Pontiac’s engine roared to life.  Fletcher took a deep breath before creeping out of his parking space against the road’s one-way flow of traffic.  The wheels squeeled, and the vehicle burst forward flicking water from the wet pavement leading down and around the backside of his dormitory.
         On Main Street, Fletcher saw the campus security car sitting in the parking lot of the medical center.  He ran through the stop sign before taking a right onto 67.  In the rear view mirror, the security car had begun to move when Fletcher had already approached the border of the campus.  He ripped off a right turn onto 88; it was a short and windy road that deadended at Pike Road.  Trees littered both sides of the road and they blocked what little light the hidden moon could provide.  The speedometer rose to the 40 miles per hour speed limit, then edged to 50, 55, and 60. 
         In the passenger seat, Fletcher’s cell phone beeped and glowed blue, signaling the first zone where he would have no reception.
         A bend in the road lowered the Pontiac’s speed to 50, it fishtailed for a split second, then found the pavement again.  As it centered, Fletcher caught the unmistakable fluorescence of a deer’s eye caught in light.  It froze, he swerved.  The car fishtailed again, but this time he couldn’t stop the spiral.  He spun the wheel hard in the direction of the skid.  The rear tires gave way to all the weight and momentum, and the vehicle spunout and struck a guardrail on the back fender.
         When he first saw the Cavalier nestled off the other side of the road in a small clearing, Fletcher was certain the accident had shaken him up so badly that he wouldn’t be able to drive again.  He sat there shaking his head, rubbing his eyes, fixated on the car.  If he had not spun out, he never would have seen it.  He would have kept on driving for God knows how long.  For a split second, he thought about the fortuity of this accident. 
         He cautiously stepped out of his car.  He didn’t bother to move his car off the road though, the possibility of someone else smashing into it did not come to mind.  Besides, his headlights were the sole source of light other than the stars and moon above.  The woods mocked him; he remembered Holly talking about this place being the perfect setting for a murder mystery or a werewolf horror movie.  Now, standing in the middle of 88, torn between the relative safety that his Pontiac had to offer and the fear that the Cavalier invoked, Fletcher felt like a blonde in a Wes Craven movie, perched on the edge of a bad decision and a logical choice.  He approached the Cavalier.
         A rapid thwucking erupted from the wild emptiness.  Thwuck-thwuck-thwuck-thwuck.  A woodpecker, perhaps.
         The car proved to be empty and his worst fears intensified.  The car door was unlocked, but the keys were nowhere to be seen. The back seat of the car held a half-empty box of clothes.  The other half had been strewn about the rear of the car.  Shirts, pants, and shorts lay on the floor and seats.  He looked under the front seats, where he was certain he’d find a bag of pot she said she was bringing, and found nothing.  His shoulders sagged, his temples throbbed, and he saw horrible, hopeless images when he closed his eyes.  The solitude of the woods collapsed around him as he sat in the driver’s seat with his feet in the grass.  He decided to call the police again.  Report the evacuated vehicle.  It would get their attention. 
         Thwuck-thwuck-thwuck – thwuck-thwuck.  The sound had a rhythmic beat to it.  A woodpecker.  Or a man with a handaxe, hacking at god-knows-what.
         Halfway back to his car, he had a sickening thought and he froze in the middle of the road once again.  He looked to the sky and down at the ground, nodded, turned, and trudged back to the Cavalier to check the trunk.  The sound of the hatchet – no, the woodpecker – intensified.
         The first thing he saw as the trunk raised was a bloodied foot with the high heel of a shoe snapped off.  He saw the bent and twisted body, broken in order to allow it to fit in the confines of the space.  A blood soaked tangle of matted hair covered a part of her skull that had been bludgeoned over and over and over until the bone gave way and allowed the contents of her head to flow freely from a gaping hole.  He reached in with a stiff hand and, sweeping the hair aside her face, looked into the pasty white complexion of a phantom.  And the eyes, dead and without color, looked up at him and he knew at once he would see those empty orbs for all his life, wherever he went, they would watch him and never again would he sleep.
         The neck started to twist, until it moved beyond its natural range, so the face could look directly at Fletcher, and the lips started to tremble.  “You — yoouuu...You led me to him,” came a raspy, moaning voice that did not sync up with the movement of the lips.  “It’s all—lll  yoouur fault...”
         Fletcher shook his head, freeing his mind of the image, and pulled the trunk release.  It echoed throughout the clearing and, for a second, blotted out the thwucking.  Above, the veil of the moon had gathered into a mass of sullen rain clouds.  Thunder cracked and lightning whipped across the sky.  Fletcher became aware of his loud, rapid, and unsteady breathing.  A quivering hand hovered in front of the trunk.  Another blast of thunder rocked the clearing.  The trunk raised. 
         Empty, and at once the thwucking stopped.
         Breathing a sigh of relief, Fletcher slammed the trunk shut and bent over the rear of the car.  He closed his eyes and steadied himself.  Rain began to fall in waves.  When he opened his eyes, he noticed an oddity in the grass and mud around his feet.  There were footprints that were clearly his own, characterized by a wave-like design that ended in a spiraling circle.  Another footprint, with no design at all, belonged to a pair of Holly’s sandals. 
         An unrecognized third footprint marked the area around the driver’s door and the trunk.
         Fletcher ran to his Pontiac to call the police.  When he picked up his cell phone, he saw he had no reception.  He tried anyway, and the call was rejected.  Standing outside of his car and looking over the hood, he tried to discern his exact location.  Where would he get reception the quickest?  He had drove for several miles after his phone had beeped and glowed blue. 
         “Come on, come on,” he said to himself.  After looking down both ends of 88, he decided driving in the wrong direction was better than not driving at all.
         He popped the Pontiac into drive and floored the gas while heading in the direction he had been driving before the accident.  The car streaked through the night like a panther chasing its prey.  A sign for Pike Road came earlier than expected.  He barely slowed to make the turn.  The speedometer hit the sixty mark.
         On a house porch just off the road, a man in a rocking chair sat up and watched the car blaze by his home.  A cigar fell from his lips as the Pontiac squeeled around a tight turn a hundred yards down the road.
         Fletcher felt the left side of his car become lighter, as if it had been on the cusp of going into a barrel roll.  His back stiffened, face contorted, a grunt of panic escaped his mouth.  The car settled on the pavement once again.  Looking off the road to his right, Fletcher breathed a sigh of relief.  It was a long, long way down, a quick route to the bottom of a hundred foot drop if the hillside was not littered with trees. 
         Smoke Two Joints started to play from the passenger seat.  While still maintaining his speed, Fletcher picked up the cell phone.  He watched the road as best he could.  The frontal display on the phone read “Holly...Calling.”  He opened it and placed it between his ear and shoulder.  Rain beat down on his window and his windshield wipers worked furiously to keep the road visible.
         “Hello?  Hello!?”  No response.  A sharp curve in the road approached, Fletcher glanced at the phone and saw the call had dropped.  The reception bar bounced between no bars and one bar.
         A deer pranced into the middle of the lane just as Fletcher looked up.  He swerved to the left.  Car beams met his path.  He wheeled right.  The road curved hard left, he missed the deer by inches as it stood unmoving.  The vehicle vibrated on the rumble strip as Fletcher tried to find the road again, but it was too late.  With the sharp curve, and the speed of the car, he couldn’t bring it back to center, and the Pontiac skidded to the edge of the road.  It seemed to teeter there for a few seconds, like a rollercoaster hanging over a steep hill, and then gravity ran its course and the Pontiac fell.  The rear of the car struck a tree and the airbag exploded into Fletcher’s face.  He was vaguely aware that the vehicle rolled over before it slammed head-on into another tree.  The grade of the hill was steeper here, and the back wheels of the car caused the rear to rotate toward the slope.  The middle of the trunk hit a frail pine tree.  And here, wedged between a pine and a birch, the Pontiac rested.
         He awoke to the sound of a car horn.  It didn’t stop until he lifted his face from the wheel.  A deflated airbag hung in front of him.  At first, he wondered where he was.  What happened? 
         A voice called out, “Are you okay down there?  Are you okay?  I’m coming down!”  A beam of light hit the window and Fletcher squinted away from it.  The man, at least it sounded like a man through the ringing in Fletcher’s eardrums, skirted along the road and found a safe spot to traverse the hill.  Smoke plumed from the engine.  The passenger door dented inward and glass littered the right side of the car.  Through the passenger-side window, Fletcher could see a bottomless slope riddled with tree trunks.  He thought of Bob Barker announcing Plinko to the audience of The Price is Right; only it would be a 2003 black Pontiac falling through trees, instead of a round chip and pegs, and there would be no prize money at the bottom, just mangled car parts and a bloodied corpse.
         “I’m going to open the door now, stay still,” the man yelled through the window as if  it was sound proof.  He yanked on the door, but it was jammed shut.  He pulled harder.  The door started to give, but so did the Pontiac.  The car shuddered between the two trees. It was remarkable the pine holding the rear-side of the car held at all.  It looked young, as narrow as a flagpole.  At last the door opened, but the trees gave way for the wheels to slide a few more inches.
         Fletcher could see the badge on the stranger’s chest.  Blue shirt, dark pants, a flashlight, a billy club, and a handgun.  A police officer and damn lucky at that.
         “Sir—sir, you’ve just been in an accident.  Do you know where you are?”
         Fletcher moaned and tried to explain about Holly.  He had forgotten the phone had rang to her tune.  Incomprehensible babble came out of his mouth.
         “Sir, you’ve been in an accident.  An ambulance is on its way, but we need to get you out of the vehicle, fast.”
         Fletcher attempted to speak again, this time he was certain the word “Holly” had come out clear enough.  The officer grabbed him from under the arms and started to pull him out of the car.  He was not gentle.  The wheels rolled a couple more inches.  Fletcher’s legs were stuck under the steering wheel.  For a moment, he thought his legs would break before he came out of the seat.  Then he came free and both men went sprawling to the ground.  They watched the car as the pine tree creaked and swayed from the weight of the vehicle.
         “I have to get you on your feet.  I won’t be able to get you to the road alone.”
         The officer crouched down and placed Fletcher’s arm over his shoulder, then he forced Fletcher off the ground.  “Here, stand against the tree for a second.  Find your bearings.  You’re fine, just a minor accident.”  Beside them, the pine tree gave up its hold on the car’s trunk with a snap; the Pontiac jerked several feet until the wheel lodged to the broken trunk of the pine.
         Fletcher regained some of his balance.  A bit of the accident came back to mind and none of it seemed minor.  The rain fell in droves.  “Come on, best we get off this hill.  Over here’s a good spot to climb out.”
         Climbing up from the wreckage proved a chore even for the two working as one.  Together, they fought against the wet, muddy incline.  Twice Fletcher fell, but the officer kept a firm grip on his forearm and pulled him to his feet.  Fletcher tasted iron, adrenaline.  It kept him from feeling any pain, gave him the strength to battle the hill.
         At last, they reached the top.
         “Officer Wilkinson,” he started, reading the man’s badge.  “It’s my girlfriend, I think she’s in trouble.”
         “Son, you were just in an accident.  I think you’re in trouble enough.  Now what’s her name?”
         Wilkinson steered him toward the passenger side of the cruiser.
         “Holly, I called 911 already.”
         Wilkinson fell behind, making room for Fletcher to get to the passenger door.  “If you called 911, they will take care of it.  Don’t worry.”
         Fletcher started to protest.  He spun around to face the officer.  The billy club smashed into his forehead, and he hit the wet ground like deadweight.  Above him the thunderstorm boomed, rain mixed with blood on his face, and his consciousness receded into darkness like a bolt of lightning into the night.                              

         Over the mountains to the west, a storm glistened in the receding sunlight, sending a brilliant rainbow streaming across the sky.  A breeze rushed through the porch and ruffled the hair of the three men.  Two leaned on the railing by the stairs, a third sat in a rocking chair behind them.  It wouldn’t be long before the storm approached. 
         One of the men on the railing turned and propped himself on his right elbow.  “They says they gunna find him now.  Now that they find his hiding place.”
         “What that gotta do with it?  Didn’ find’im,” said the other man on the railing while spitting out a huge wad of tobacco juice.  Some of it clung to his lips and dripped into a beard that hung several inches below his chin.
         “My friend says now that they find his place, Frank, they know more bout’em.  Like they can tell what he’s thinkin’ now.”
         The man in the chair started rocking and watched the storm clouds creep ever closer.
         Frank stroked his overgrown beard, the tobacco juice and spittle came off onto his hand and he rubbed it on his pantleg.  “That don’t make no sense.  Sounds like one’a dem sci-fi movies on the tell-e-vision.  ‘Know what he’s thinkin,’ they says, hog wash I says.”  He rolled his eyes.
         The first man threw up his hand as if to suggest the other had no idea what he was talking about, but the man in the chair kept rocking and echoed Frank’s sentiments.  In the west, the storm clouds approached, and the sound of thunder bounced around the porch, drowning out the third man’s voice.
         “Anyways,” the first man stepped off the railing to address both men and grabbed his cane to stay balanced, “my buddy tells me, ‘you can’t go tellin’ e’erybody bout this, see hear?’  And I tells him I won’t.  So you best keep quiet.”
         “Well, git on with it then, afore the storm goes an’ washes us all out,” Frank said as he leaned over the rail to drip tobacco juice away from his beard.
         “So, this kid from the college nearby, his girlfriend or something doesn’t show up and he goes’a lookin’ for’er,” the man on the cane took a cigar from his shirt pocket and pointed it at the other man before placing it between his teeth.  “So this kid comes tearin’ ass down Pike, and I remember seein’ this car go flyin’ by.  A Pontiac or some damned thing, must’a been doin’ eighty.”
         “On these roads?  Ain’t no way you gunna make it.”
         The rocking chair man bobbed his head up and down and made a sound that suggested agreement once again.  A bolt of lightning scorched the sky, a boom of thunder followed.  The first drops of rain reached the small shack.
         “Thas right.  Thas what I been tryin’ to tell ya,” exclaimed the first man.  “So, this kid, he finds his girlfriend’s car on the side’a the road.  Panickin,’ he calls 911 again.  But he ain’t got no reception.  Go figure, huh?”
         “Just like them shows you watch, Al.”
         “Thas right, Frank.  So, he goes away from the college, must’a thought he’d find reception that’a way first.  The roads wet and he goes sliding off into some ditch somewhere.  And who do you think comes and finds him?”
         A crack of thunder punctuated Al’s question.  The rain picked up and the man in the chair muttered, “Country Road Killer.”  The standing men glanced at him and silence ensued.  Frank combed through the tangles hanging from his chin.  Al leaned on the rail and lit his cigar.  The third continued to rock.
         Frank yawned and spittle escaped his lips and fell to his t-shirt.  “So, what happened to’em?”
         Al swiveled around on his bad leg to face the man.  “Thas the worst part,” he let out a long, exasperated sigh.  “My friend, he says, he wouldn’ tell me ‘cause I wouldn’ wanna know.  Said he won’t sleep for weeks.”  His eyes fixated on Frank, and then the third to drive home the boy’s fate.  “They don’ know what kinda, experiments, that sicko was doin’.”
         “Reckon he tellin’ ya everything?  ‘Side from savin’ the details?”  Frank looked at Al through the corner of his eyes.  He was frightened.
         Thunder rocked the shack and lightning flashed across the night.  In the rocking chair, the man grunted through a closed mouth.  Al could not tell whether the man was suggesting his friend had left out information or whether the whole story was bogus.  It started to pour down rain.
         “No, I tell ya what I think though.  I reckon this ‘Country Road Killa’ got a whole new game though.”  Al leaned on his cane and looked to the thunderstorm in the west.  The man in the chair stopped rocking.
         “That so?” asked Frank.
         Al nodded, still looking to the west.  “I think he was into some real sick stuff.  Probably mutilatin’ they bodies, dissectin’em, while they was alive, most likely, and rapin’ and sodomizin’em when they was dead...”
         “Saddam what?”
         “Never you mind, Frank.”  Al shook his head in disgust.  “Anyways, he went an’ took his first male victim.  Found out he can have fun with them to.  Gonna change e’erything ‘round on them special agents,” he dropped his head and stared at the ground.  “He’ll keep on killin’.”  The tone of Al’s voice suggested finality.
         A tear gleamed from the corner of the man’s eye before rolling slowly from its’ well, down the porous, haggard features of his face. He seemed older to Frank, as if a few months time had lasted years for Al, aging his body but tormenting his mind.
         By Frank’s estimation it had been three months since Al’s daughter Vanessa vanished, meaning her body would soon turn up in the frigid waters of the Ohio.  Wrapped tightly in seran wrap, wire cutters would be needed to free her; her exposed skin would be pale as the moon, a vacant, starstruck expression in her eyes.
         Al would be called to identify her.  But not before the coroner closed her mouth and eyes, erasing the vacant look, and replacing it with the visage of a clothing mannequin.  Al would cry great big tears of disbelief that linger and burn in the eyelids, before they fall and land on his baby’s cheeks and lips.  Then, he would cry fast and hard, tears falling in tiny, running beads, and his throat would burn with the taste of defeat and loss.  And he would fall to his knees, his blood sapped fingers clutching violently to her table, begging God for forgiveness, for release from any minute offense he had ever committed.
         With the ensuing silence, Frank felt the unnatural slow of time; seconds turned into minutes.  The third man had begun to rock again.  Above them, the sky roared to life, firing giant forks of lightning here and there, the intermittent bellows of thunder linked by guttural rumbling coming from the heavens.
         “Well, I better get moving along now.  Before it starts raining cats and dogs.  I should have brought my umbrella,” said the third man.  He stood, smiled as best he could, walked between the men, patted them on the back, and stepped down the stairs into the rain.
         “Hey, you be careful now.  I know yer new to these parts, but he killed that other cop just a couple counties away,” Al said, stopping the third man in the rain by the door of his cruiser.  A Mustang blew by, and the officer hardly bothered to glance.
         The third opened the door to his car and put one leg inside.  “Thanks Al.  You two take it easy.  Bye Al, Frank.”
         “Take care now,” said Al.
         The officer had started to get into his cruiser before he stood back up.  “Hey, just curious, but did your friend happen to say how they found his place?”
         “Boy from the college left a note for his roommate.  Told’im to call the police.  So I’m told.”
         The officer looked about to say something, then turned his head and nodded as he ducked into his cruiser.
         Frank produced another giant stream of tobacco.  “Take care, Officer Wilkinson.”

         Sunlight glistened from the horizon, just over a mountaintop, sending beams of light twinkling through the many trees on the mountain-side.  Holly stepped out of the county lock-up for the first time in two days.  She smelled the dew in the air and let it run between her toes in the grass.  She was elated to be out, but it had been a miserable two nights.
         Fletcher would have some explaining to do!  Infuriated, that was the sole word to describe her attitude to her soon-to-be former boyfriend.  Going out of her way to buy him some smoke, getting picked up for speeding, a do-goody cop with a sense of smell and a hard-on for busting college students.  And Fletcher can’t answer one damn call?  The absurdity of the whole situation made her laugh out loud in the day light.
         A beautiful day.
         She thought she could kill Fletcher.  Spill his blood across the sun tipped golden green grass.
         She would cut him some slack.  Afterall, it was her idea to buy the pot.  She walked into Harry and Ryan’s smoke polluted room.  She decided to hop in the car without a shower or even changing her clothes.  Yes, she would cut him some slack.
         But he owed her big time.