Joyride

by Jack Ketchum

  Filthy.

  Let it come, she thought. Fine, let it happen. I’ll let go of it.

  Let it all be over.

  She could almost hear the tumbrels moving through the streets. She deserved them.

  “Pull up! Quick! Pass her!”

  The voice jolted her.

  She felt the car lurch forward as Lee obeyed. Behind her Wayne was pounding on his seat, excited. Lee looked confused, like he didn’t know exactly what the point was here.

  She glanced beyond him out the driver’s side window. Saw that they were gaining on a blue Ford wagon, passing it on the right. The driver was a woman, profiled dim and gray in the dusk.

  Wayne rolled down his window.

  They were passing slowly, gradually nosing past her.

  “Give her the horn.”

  “What?”

  “I said give her your horn. Use the horn!”

  Lee hit it with his fist, two short bursts. The woman glanced over. Carole had the impression of both youth and age at once—a young mother maybe. It would fit the way she looked. Baggy sweatshirt. Hair pulled back in a ponytail. Driving a wagon.

  Carole turned and saw Wayne lean out the window motioning to the driver. Pointing down at her right rear tire.

  So that was it.

  Something was wrong with the tire.

  The woman saw him, understood, gave him a worried smile and nodded. She slowed, turned the wheel and fell back into the lane behind them.

  “Pull over.”

  Lee was frowning. “Why? What for?”

  “The tire. She’s gonna need help with that.”

  Carole watched the wagon stop along the narrow shoulder. Lee pulled over.

  “Come on,” said Wayne.

  The woman was opening her door, getting out of the car.

  The Magnum was up and pointing at Lee across the seat.

  Lee opened his door, put one foot outside it and so did she on her side.

  “You going to take that with you, Wayne?” he said.

  Wayne laughed. He put the gun down beside him on the car seat.

  “Just remember the other one,” he said. “Okay?” He patted his back pocket.

  The woman was moving around behind her car, looking first at the rear tire on the driver’s side and then walking around to the other.

  Cars whooshed by as they approached her. Some had their headlights on. It was getting close to dark.

  The woman looked up at them, puzzled. She was blonde, a little overweight, but pretty.

  “I don’t see…”

  Carole found herself glancing through the woman’s backseat window. She didn’t know what she was looking for. A car seat for a child maybe.

  There wasn’t any.

  No kids’ stuff in the rear compartment either. A tire. A checkered quilt. That was all.

  For some reason she felt relieved. She didn’t know why.

  Not right away.

  It took her only a moment to check inside the woman’s car but when she looked up again Wayne was two steps ahead of them when he’d been a step behind her only a second ago, he’d moved that fast, and Lee was lurching back. She nearly stumbled into him.

  The look on his face was shocked. Frightened.

  And the gun was up and firing.

  Her name was Deanna Morris. A file clerk and typist for a Barstow law firm taking what she called a “mental health day” after six grueling days and nights helping to prepare a brief on a child molestation case, The People vs. Sunnybrook Day Care, a detestable case to her way of thinking because she was sure that the people at Sunnybrook were guilty, and she herself was five months’ pregnant by her husband Carl, her own burgeoning motherhood making their defense of Sunnybrook’s owners all the more repulsive—but it was a job. She knew that this would be her last “mental health day” for a while. The pregnancy would probably consume the rest of her sick days and maybe then some.

  She was on her way to meet Carl at his construction site, to pick him up after work because the Chevy’s driver-side window had popped off its track again and the car was at the shop. They were going to have dinner. Probably Italian.

  Payments on the house were reasonable. So were payments on the two cars.

  She and Carl were happy together now that the lean times were over and they both, thank god, were working finally. For their son—the sonogram had told them it was a boy—there would be comfort and stability, at least for the foreseeable future.

  She was five feet three inches tall.

  The man with the gun was much taller, perhaps five-nine.

  So the first bullet entered high through the deltoid muscle of her shoulder, plowed through her pectoral muscles to the sternum, chipped the sternum and exited through the ribs of her back.

  She heard herself scream and the flat report of the gun simultaneously.

  By then the man had shot her a second time.

  Instinctively she had thrown up her left hand toward him to ward him off, and turned her back. The first bullet’s impact spun her around even farther so that her back was square to him as he fired the second shot—and she was crouching a little, her fingers still splayed behind her like a discus thrower or a bowler at the peak of her backswing.

  The shot tore away most of her left index finger before entering her back to the right of the vertebral column and scattering her kidneys out in front of her all across the tarmac. It looked like an open dog-food can had simply exploded out of her.

  She fell sideways to her knees, catching herself with the palm of her right hand. She knelt there canted to the right trying to breathe. There was no pain, only amazement, horror at the awful thing she had witnessed the man do—and though she could not have phrased it, a raw yearning disappointment. A final scan for meaning that ended in senseless waste.

  She was a realistic person, she had prided herself in that, and understood as she fell that her life, so full of purpose both mundane and far-reaching just seconds ago, had now suddenly entered into the realm of the useless and the ridiculous. A sock with a hole where the toes peeked through. A garden hose clogged all summer. A stewpot with no handles.

  That was what she was.

  That was what the gun had made of her.

  A joke.

  “Eeeeeyah!”

  Wayne was leaping along the shoulder like a crazed ape, like some fucking wide receiver who’s just scored the winning touchdown.

  “Jesus Christ! Did you see that?”

  The woman’s body slumped on its side. Lee smelled urine, shit, and gunpowder. Cars whizzed by. He could feel the warm thrusting breeze of their passing. One seemed to slow and then moved on.

  “Come on. Get back in the car.” The gun was pointed at him. Then at Carole.

  Then back at him again.

  “Get into the car!”

  They did as he said. There was no way he could get to the Magnum. Wayne was too close. And Wayne was timing it perfectly. He had the rear door open, one foot in, and the .38 trained on Lee’s back through the window until Lee got his own door open. Then he just slid inside. He held both guns now, the Magnum pointed at Lee’s ear and the .38 at Carole.

  “Drive!”

  He waited for a break in traffic and pulled away.

  He looked through the rearview mirror. The woman’s station wagon receded behind him. Just beyond it one pale arm pointed toward the highway. The glint of a bracelet in the lights of an approaching car.

  Why hadn’t someone stopped?

  Why weren’t they stopping now?

  “Put on your lights.”

  He was aware of Carole sobbing beside him, her fist clenched tight to her mouth.

  There were a million things to say and nothing worth saying. They drove in silence.

  The silence buzzed and droned.

  He drove and shook and gripped the wheel.

  He adjusted the mirror so that Wayne was in the frame. It seemed important to have him there.

  The look on his face was distant. The e
yes glittered brightly, skittered in their sockets. Only the eyes moved. He could see the man relax into something and he could guess what Wayne was doing, that he was replaying the whole thing over in his mind.

  He would want to do that.

  Of course he would.

  Lee had replayed Howard’s death a few times too by now. The difference was he’d had no choice. They’d come unbidden. Images skewed so that it was he who was holding the rock, not Carole.

  He saw it now.

  He was driving badly. He knew that. As though the wheel had too much play in it suddenly. His lane seemed elusive. Passing cars were giving him a wide berth.

  “We ought to…I should get off the highway,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “I think I’m not doing so well here. Driving, I mean. We ought to go somewhere. Stop. For a little while, anyhow. Give me a minute to…collect myself, you know?”

  Wayne smiled.

  “Yeah. Pretty fucking wild, wasn’t it?”

  He laughed and slapped his seat again. The .38 was gone from his hand. Either it was on the car seat beside him or he’d pocketed it.

  “Okay. Sure. Take your next exit. You like McDonald’s? Maybe we can find a McDonald’s. Get some burgers. I’m sorry about that drink I promised. It’ll have to wait. Okay?”

  He and Carole exchanged glances.

  “What?” said Wayne. “You got a problem with that?”

  “No. No problem.”

  “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I fucking did it. Jesus! You feel that way after?”

  “What way?”

  “Like everything’s different. Like from now on, everything changes.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  The exit was coming up. WILLIAMSTOWN, the sign said. He had no idea they’d come this far.

  “So how did it feel? Watching me I mean.”

  “How did it feel?”

  He pulled off onto the ramp. Slowed. He saw Carole turn, dry-eyed, wild-eyed suddenly glaring at the man.

  “It felt sickening,” she said. “It felt sickening you son of a bitch. You sick bastard!”

  And then she was up on her knees on the car seat, leaning over, trying to pummel him with her fists, Wayne fending her off easily but in one hand he still held the Magnum and Lee thought Jesus Christ the thing could go off right here inside the car and what the hell was she doing? Wayne was laughing, her blows completely ineffectual and she knew it, so she was going right over the seat after him, trying to climb right into the back, screaming, furious, calling him bastard bastard bastard.

  He slowed where the ramp went into a curve, slid into the curve and, despite slowing, fishtailed, then got beyond the curve on a straightaway and reached across. He found the back of her blouse at the neck with his hand and he grabbed it and pulled.

  “Carole! For chrissake!”

  The man was still laughing, squealing, having a hell of a time with her, slapping her fists away with his open left hand and the barrel of the fucking gun and Lee pulled at her again, pulled hard.

  And he guessed she was off balance because her head nearly went back into the windshield. Her right hand smacked the rearview mirror and her back hit the dashboard hard enough so that the glove compartment popped open and wedged against her as she slid knees-first off the seat down onto the floor.

  It hurt. You could see it on her face.

  Too fucking bad.

  A bullet would have hurt a whole lot more.

  He was drifting almost to a stop now. Luckily there were no cars behind him.

  “You all right?”

  She nodded.

  She wouldn’t look at him.

  She pulled herself up onto the seat and sat staring.

  He adjusted the mirror.

  Wayne was smirking at her, his eyes trying to bore into the back of her skull. It was just as well she didn’t see them, he thought. It could start her up all over again.

  He had a car full of goddamn lunatics here.

  He glanced at the road ahead and then back at Wayne again. His face seemed to have softened in the instant he’d looked away.

  “I understand, Carole,” he said. His voice was controlled, quiet. “I frightened you. I’m sorry. I promise—it won’t happen again.”

  He leaned toward her. For a terrible moment it looked as though he were going to bury his face in her long dark hair.

  “From now on,” he said, “there’ll be no surprises. Anything that happens, anything we do, I’ll let you know in advance. Okay?”

  Lee didn’t think she was even listening to him. She said nothing. Just stared straight through the windshield at the road ahead.

  Lee was listening, though.

  And he heard the man’s subtext loud and clear.

  It was a warm humid night but his fingers on the wheel felt suddenly cold.

  There were going to be more.

  That was what he was saying. That was the subtext. The woman wasn’t the last of them.

  He was just beginning.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It was four days now and Susan was feeling bad for him.

  She’d been thinking about Wayne all day on and off at work, damning herself for a fool after what he’d done to her but then remembering some of the things he’d said at other times and feeling sort of bad for him, feeling practically guilty.

  About how his father, dead fifteen years now, had locked him up in the pickup while he hit the local taverns all day long sometimes. How he’d hustled Wayne’s first and only dog off to the veterinarian. “The dog’s a bird killer and he’s got to die,” he’d said. Wayne’s father had a thing about birds, feeders all over the place, and the dog had snapped the pinfeathers off a starling.

  He’d had it rough with his father.

  To hear Wayne talk, his mother was practically a saint. But his father was another matter.

  She wasn’t excusing him. Not exactly. But she thought that it might be okay to give him a chance to explain himself. She hadn’t the other day. She’d been far too scared and angry.

  She knew that there were people who actually liked to do what Wayne had done to her. They did it all the time. There was even a name for it. They said when you couldn’t breathe sometimes it made your orgasm better, stronger.

  Hers had been pretty strong.

  While it lasted. Until she got scared of him.

  She could still remember the feel of his hands around her throat. She wasn’t forgetting that.

  Still…

  She hadn’t let him explain. It was possible he was just being sort of experimental. She could certainly make it clear to him that it wasn’t her idea of fun.

  She could at least give him a chance to talk to her about it.

  It was hard to dial, though. Hard to know what to do.

  She sat on the couch and watched the streetlight blinking erratically on and off across from her apartment. Obviously the bulb was going.

  Probably she was crazy even to think about calling Wayne.

  Because maybe he wasn’t being experimental. There was that possibility too.

  But there had been good times. Lots of them. Susan hadn’t had all that many boyfriends, just a few really, and none who were as thoughtful as Wayne could be when he wanted to. Who but Wayne would show up at the dentist’s office thinking she might have had a bad reaction to the Novocain and would maybe need a ride? Who would send her flowers on Mother’s Day even though she was nobody’s mother, god knows, calling it “an investment in her future.” She’d laughed and said she was kind of a mother anyway, she was already mothering him, and he didn’t take it badly—he’d laughed.

  But there was truth to that too. The mother thing.

  Maybe that was why she wanted to call him.

  She was nobody’s idea of a beauty. She’d been fat as a kid and traces of that tendency remained, especially around her butt and thighs. Her nose was a little too long. Her chin too weak. Oh, she knew how to attract a man if need be, she’d
learned that much all right, that wasn’t the problem.

  But she found that now she didn’t much want to. There was something about Wayne that appealed to the caregiver in her, she guessed. Something that just didn’t surface with most other men.

  A need in him. A loneliness. Almost a hunger for some sort of connection.

  She dialed his number.

  She dialed four more times, thinking that there was probably no more solitary sound in the world than a telephone line that just rings and rings.

  There was always the bar later. She could call him there if she wanted to.

  She wondered if she’d want to.

  She wondered if he’d already found somebody else. Somebody to replace her. It was only four days but it was possible. Wayne could be charming and he was pretty good-looking even if, like most men, he didn’t know how to dress in a way that would show him off well. At least she thought so.

  If he’d found somebody, she wondered if she’d be willing to just let it go at that, to accept it, or if she’d want to go the extra mile and fight for him somehow.

  She didn’t know.

  Maybe later she’d phone the bar.

  She thought of Wayne lonely. Missing her but too damn proud or too ashamed to call. She thought of him with another woman. It was hard to say which was worse.

  Maybe she’d call.

  She had plenty of time to think it over. Maybe she’d try. Maybe it was worth trying.

  She really didn’t know.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Covitski put down the phone and wearily shook his head. He stood up. His weight made that slow going.

  “You’re not gonna believe this,” he said to Rule. “We got a shooting out on I-89. Lady in a station wagon. Is this piece-of-shit day never gonna end?”

  Rule looked at him. “You’re going out there?”

  “Hey. Like I got nothing to do, right?”

  Rule knew what he meant. It had been a long day for both of them. Covitski had been out at the stream on the Gardner thing till six. They’d turned up nothing out there so it would all begin again tomorrow. Covitski had that to look forward to, plus probably half a dozen other cases and now this.

  Like everybody else these days they were understaffed, work jammed into every one of them like meat into so many sausage casings.