by Bryan Smith
A horn honked somewhere behind Pete, making him flinch.
He sat up straighter in his seat and saw that traffic in front of him had moved forward. There was a gap of approximately two car-lengths ahead of him. A check of his rearview mirror showed more than one vehicle to his rear swerving out into the next lane. These were drivers frustrated by the delay, intent on swooping into that open space. Pete glanced at the dead woman slumped in his passenger seat and knew he couldn’t allow that. He pushed the gas pedal to the floor and the car shot forward, quickly closing the gap before anyone could cut in front of him.
The last-second maneuver resulted in more horn-honking as well as quite a few bellowed expressions of rage. After pulling up alongside Pete, a big man in a blue Mustang revved his engine to get his attention. Pete reluctantly glanced that way. The man was leaning out his window and thrusting an upraised middle finger in his direction. Even after all he’d been through tonight, Pete was still very much a man who shied away from moments of angry confrontation. He cringingly mouthed the word “sorry” and shifted his gaze back to the car in front of him, keeping it there until the light changed again and he was able to move up another two car-lengths. It still felt like too much time was passing by, which was making him antsier by the second. The good news was one more change of the light should take him through the intersection and then down the exit ramp to the interstate. From there, it should be relatively smooth sailing the rest of the way.
Feeling slightly more relaxed now, he glanced to his right again and saw that the man in the blue Mustang’s attention was still focused in his direction. In another instant, Pete realized that wasn’t precisely true. The big man wasn’t looking at him. He was looking at the slumped-over woman in his passenger seat, his features arranged in a deeply puzzled expression. When the man did look at Pete again, it was with something more akin to wariness than rage.
Pete gulped.
Uh-oh.
A horn honked behind him again. Pete’s head snapped forward. The light had changed again and his path to the interstate ramp was clear. Tires squealed on asphalt as he again stomped on the gas pedal. The car lurched forward and roared through the intersection. He steered his way down the curving ramp and kept accelerating as he neared the highway. His heart hammered as he thought about what he’d seen in that man’s eyes. It was a look that had conveyed sudden understanding and a deepening sense of horror.
He knows, he thought. The motherfucker knows.
Pete didn’t doubt this conclusion for even a second. He felt the truth of it as clearly as he’d ever felt anything. Acceptance of this truth sent his anxiety soaring to uncharted new heights. He pictured the guy taking out his phone and putting in a call to the cops. An APB was possibly minutes away from being issued, and his apprehension would surely follow shortly thereafter. He thumped the base of a fist against his steering wheel rim and screeched in frustration. His breathing quickened to a degree that left him feeling on the verge of hyperventilating.
Then several minutes passed and nothing happened other than the dark highway continuing to unfurl ahead of him. He let out a big breath and felt his iron grip on the steering wheel begin to relax. After another uneventful few minutes elapsed, he shifted around in his seat and checked all his mirrors to further appraise the current situation. As expected, he saw countless sets of headlights zipping through the night across multiple lanes of traffic on both sides of the interstate. For now, though, he saw no indication of the flashing blue of police cruisers.
He supposed it was possible the man in the blue Mustang had been too startled by what he thought he’d seen to take note of important things like the make of his car or his license plate number. The reason for the apparent lack of pursuit by law enforcement could be as simple as that. Or perhaps the man had simply opted not to get involved. Pete leaned toward the latter scenario, as it reflected what he likely would have done in the big man’s place. He knew, of course, that some people were made of sterner stuff than he was and wouldn’t even have considered taking the coward’s way out. Regardless, the possible threat the man had posed seemed to have faded away.
The only thing to do now was get to the storage facility before time ran out. There wasn’t much farther to go now. He’d plugged the address into Google Maps and was taking direction from the voice navigator. In just under three more miles, he would take an exit into the town where the storage facility was located. From there, the facility would only be two more miles away. Despite his earlier anxiety about the minutes passing too quickly, he realized getting there in time was still doable. As he’d hoped, he’d made up significant time on the interstate. Deciding to make up just a little more, he increased pressure on the gas pedal, causing the speedometer needle to soar past 90 MPH. He kept it there until the exit came into view on his right, at which point he let up on the gas pedal and started tapping the brake. The brief burst of increased speed had been a calculated risk, but one he’d felt was worth taking to earn another minute of breathing space.
At the end of the exit ramp, he merged onto a two-lane street that took him to a four-way intersection, where he pulled into the far left lane and waited for the light to change. When it did, he took the left turn and hit the gas again. He could feel a psychic weight lifting from him as the car straightened out and began the last stretch of this harrowing journey. It was a weight of the spirit so immense it almost felt like a physical thing. He’d be glad to soon be shed of it entirely.
Less than two miles to go now, he thought. Fuck, yeah!
In the next second after this thought flitted through his head, a car that had been sitting parked at the shoulder with its lights off pulled into the street behind him. Its headlights came on as it rushed to catch up.
A spinning blue light appeared atop the car.
TWENTY
Pete gasped in dismay when he glanced at his rearview mirror and saw the spinning blue light. This was followed by a drawn-out, despairing groan. He felt like crying at the unfairness of it all. He’d come so close to completing the insane task he’d been assigned, only to be stopped by some bored small town cop barely more than a mile from his destination.
He tapped his brake and slowed down some, but did not immediately pull over to the side of the road. His options were limited. He could admit that the game was over and pull over now. The law could take over from here and begin the monumental task of sorting it all out. He’d be heading straight to jail, a prospect that still filled him with paralyzing dread, but at least in jail Mary would no longer be able to endlessly fuck with him. The only other thing he could do was hit the gas and make a run for it. He tried to imagine himself successfully evading an increasingly intense level of police pursuit and couldn’t do it. They’d catch up to him sooner or later and he might even get himself shot in the process. Pete didn’t want to be shot even more than he didn’t want to go to jail.
Surrendering to the inevitable, he slowed down some more and pulled over to the side of the road, soon coming to a full stop. He put the car in park, hit the button to lower his window, and shut off the engine.
The other car pulled up behind him, stopping with about a half car-length separating their bumpers. Pete could hear the other car’s engine idling. He looked at his rearview mirror and frowned as he stared at the spinning blue light. It was so different from the light bar that stretched across the roof of most police cruisers. This light reminded him of the kind used by plainclothes detectives in old TV cop shows. After taking off in hot pursuit of some bad guy, they’d grab the rotating dome light, reach out the window, and slap the thing down on the roof of their car. Those scenes were always the same. Really dramatic. Pounding but cheesy ’70s theme music, usually with a hint of a funky disco beat. Pete couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen one of those removable dome lights in real life.
Or if he ever had.
At least another full minute passed before Pete heard the loud creak of a door opening. A portly man in dark clothes got
out of the cop car, which Pete now saw had no markings or emblems of any kind. In Pete’s mind, that about sealed it. This was a plainclothes cop he was dealing with, no mere patrol officer. His dread of what the cop was about to discover in his car was still there, but now he felt a little flicker of excitement. This cop being a detective might work to his benefit. A detective wouldn’t just take things at face value. He would listen to Pete’s wild story and logically puzzle the whole thing out. He would see that Pete was a pitiful stooge callously manipulated by cruel predators.
The portly man arrived at the driver’s side door and leaned down to take a peek inside Pete’s car, playing the beam of a flashlight over the interior. He had greasy, unruly hair and a jowly, rosy-cheeked face. He wore a black long-sleeved shirt and a pair of baggy black jeans. A device that looked like it was probably a stun gun was clipped to his belt, as was a pair of handcuffs. There was no sign of a gun, which seemed strange.
The man’s flat expression was devoid of emotion of any kind. He looked first at Pete and then at the woman slumped down in his passenger seat, his gaze lingering there a moment before returning to Pete. “Something wrong with your lady friend?”
Pete nervously cleared his throat. “Um …”
He didn’t know whether to come clean right away or delay the inevitable moment of discovery as long as possible. Delay seemed pointless under the circumstances, but he couldn’t bring himself to just blurt out, “She’s dead.”
The man’s flat expression sharpened a small degree, taking on an aspect that might have indicated genuine concern for the woman’s well-being or merely a mild curiosity. It was hard to tell with this guy. “Is she … drunk?”
Pete forced out a nervous laugh. “Um … yeah. She’s, uh, totally blasted out of her mind. Had a wild night on the town, I guess you could say. That’s why she’s almost naked.” Pete started to feel inspired and decided to elaborate a bit further. “Yeah, man, she did something like thirteen shots of tequila and decided to strip down to her undies right there in the middle of the bar.”
The man scratched his chin. “Hmm. What’s your relationship to the lady? Friend? Boyfriend? Something else?”
“Um … friend?”
Pete hated the way the word came out, with that emphasis at the end that made it sound like a question. A declaration like that needed to be made with certainty when dealing with a cop.
A corner of the man’s mouth twitched, a hint of a smirk. “You don’t sound so sure.”
Pete coughed. “Oh, I’m sure. I’m sorry. I’m just always nervous around cops, even for minor traffic stops. I’m definitely her friend and not her boyfriend.”
The man grunted. “I should think not. She’s out of your league for sure.”
Pete laughed. “I agree. Absolutely.”
The man craned his head around for a better look at the dead woman. After a moment of silent appraisal, his brow creased in a frown. His eyes flicked toward Pete. “Lower the window on that side, please.”
Pete bit back a whimper. “But—”
The man stepped back and aimed his flashlight right at Pete’s face, making him squint. “Right now. Or I’m putting you in cuffs and placing you under arrest while I investigate further.”
Shit.
For a few wondrous moments there, Pete had allowed himself to believe he might be able to finesse his way out of this situation, but now the jig was clearly up. Saying nothing else, he thumbed the button that lowered the passenger side window.
The portly man glared at him. “Stay where you are. Any funny business and you’ll be in a world of hurt, my friend. A world of hurt.”
Pete nodded to show his understanding, but again said nothing. What was there to say? The portly cop was moments away from learning the grim truth of the situation, at which point things would get loads more tense and dramatic. And there was nothing he could do about it other than sit back and wait for it to happen.
He frowned as he watched the man waddle around the front of his car. Now that the guy was no longer right in his face, it hit him how off certain things about him seemed. He didn’t look like any cop Pete had ever seen, plainclothes or otherwise. The man was morbidly obese, but the sense of something wrong was more than just about his weight. It was everything about him. His unkempt appearance. The strange flatness of his demeanor. His clothes didn’t look like the kind any cop would wear, not even a detective. They looked like the clothes a person intent on skulking around and doing shady things in the night would wear. And even Pete knew the man wasn’t following anything remotely recognizable as standard police protocol. He hadn’t said anything about why he’d pulled Pete over, nor had he asked him to produce any identification.
Now Pete was thinking about the loud creak the door to the man’s car had made when he got out of it. He doubted a police vehicle of any recent vintage would make a sound like that. No, that was the sound the door of a junked-up old beater would make. That got him to thinking about the rest of it. The dome light. The lack of a sidearm.
Fuck!
Pete sat up straight behind the wheel as the answer to the mystery came to him.
He’s a fake fucking cop. Holy shit!
Pete had heard stories about guys like this before. Cop groupies or wannabes who got their kicks by buying some of the gear and prowling around, pretending to be the real thing, sometimes even pulling people over and harassing them. That was exactly what this was. He didn’t even need the guy to confirm it for him. He felt it in his gut.
The fake cop had arrived at the passenger side window. He reached in and gave the dead woman’s shoulder a little nudge. When she didn’t react, he glanced at Pete, smirking. “Dead to the world, ain’t she?”
He chuckled.
Pete swallowed hard and said nothing.
The man shifted the flashlight beam away from the woman’s face, angling it now to illuminate her enormous breasts. His mouth dropped open and he licked his lips. “Nice jugs.”
He reached in and cupped one of her breasts with a pudgy hand, squeezing and kneading it a moment before sliding some of his stubby, sausage-like fingers beneath the cup of her bra. Pete clenched his teeth and trembled with fury, wondering how long he should let this go on before intervening. If he’d had any lingering doubts regarding the man’s lack of official law enforcement status, they were now thoroughly erased.
Then the man paused in his molestation of the woman he apparently still believed was just a passed-out drunk. Something subtle had changed in the set of his features. Pete sensed he wasn’t yet truly alarmed but had suddenly intuited that something wasn’t quite right.
He took his hand away from her breast and pitched his voice louder than before, as if he could rouse her through sheer volume. “Miss, are you okay? Have you been drinking tonight, ma’am?” He leaned a little closer, sniffing the air in his piggy way. “Strange, I don’t smell any booze on her breath. In fact …” He held a hand in front of her mouth, his frown deepening after a moment. He put his hand to her throat to check for a pulse. “Shit. She’s dead.”
He looked at Pete and they held each other’s gaze for a moment that seemed to stretch out forever, a spell that didn’t break until Pete reached for the door handle on his side. The man took off running in the direction of his car. Pete got out and chased after him, primitive instinct driving him as he dragged the folding knife out of his pocket. He was an animal, acting only to survive, with no conscious thought of what he was doing. If he had stopped to think about it, the fake cop might have gotten the upper hand. For once in his life, his slight build gave him an advantage over an adversary. He moved much faster than the other man, who stumbled as he neared his car and fell heavily across the hood. Pete saw him fumbling with the stun gun. He was trying desperately to unclip it from his belt, but his trembling fingers betrayed him. He couldn’t grip it right. Pete swatted his hand away and opened the knife.
“Please,” the man said. “Please. I won’t tell nobody. I swear.”
&n
bsp; Pete said, “I’m sorry. I never wanted it to come to this.”
Then he rammed the big blade into the man’s temple up to the hilt.
TWENTY-ONE
The storage facility looked deserted as Pete pulled into the parking lot. He saw what looked like the main office, a small building accessible to anyone paying a visit. The rest of the facility with its multiple rows of individual storage units was encircled by a tall fence with thick metal bars. No lights were on inside the office building, but a black SUV with tinted windows was parked at the door. As best Pete could tell, there were no other vehicles on the premises. Aside from his own car, of course.
He took out his phone and sent Mary a text: I’M HERE.
Seconds later, he saw her name appear on the screen. He put the phone to his ear just in time to hear her say, “You are two minutes late.”
Pete grunted. “I was delayed again. But, hey, I’m here, with the package in tow as directed. That’s all that really matters, right?”
“I suppose.”
His text chime sounded.
Pete took the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen. The message was from Mary and consisted only of a four-digit number.
He put the phone to his ear again. “What’s with the numbers?”
“That’s the gate code, genius. Ride up to the gate and enter it in the keypad. Like magic, the gate will open. Proceed to unit 167. We’ll see you soon.”