by Shawn Inmon
I’m stuck here, the cops are coming, and my car is the opposite direction down the road. If I run for the car, either she’ll shoot me, or the cops will see me.
Scott made a split-second decision and ran along the fence line toward the neighboring house.
If anybody’s home and sees me, I’m probably stuck. I won’t hurt an innocent person. I guess if I get caught, I can just start over.
He ran, keeping his head low. As he did, he glanced at the neighbor’s house. It looked dark and deserted.
Moments later, he reached the back of the fence, turned right, and ran directly behind the Jenkins house. As he ran along the fence line, the hairs on the back of his neck tingled.
She could be right there, on the back porch, aiming that rifle at me right now.
Scott didn’t focus on being quiet, but instead tried for speed. A few seconds later, he was at the end of the fence, which also marked the end of the Jenkins property.
He peeked around the fence corner at the backyard. It was empty. He gauged the distance between the fence and the safety of the trees.
Maybe fifteen feet. Just a few steps. If she doesn’t see me, of course.
Scott took a deep breath, tucked the jo under his arm and leaped for the woods.
His momentum carried him into the cooler shadows, but his right foot landed on a half-buried rock and twisted. Pain shot up through his leg, but he managed not to cry out.
He peered through the bush and toward the front of the Jenkins house. Scott saw Mrs. Jenkins running out toward her husband’s body as a Waterville Police Department cruiser skidded into the driveway. Scott didn’t wait to see any more.
He worked his way along through the woods, limping badly on his twisted ankle—the same one that had been shot in Vietnam. He used his jo half as a walking stick and half as a crutch. He maneuvered his way through the tangle of underbrush and felled trees.
He couldn’t see the Jenkins place anymore, but he heard the police car that had first arrived tear out of the driveway and turn in the direction he had initially run. Happily for Scott, that was the opposite direction from him at that moment.
Won’t take him long to figure out he can’t find me that way. I’m sure there will be a whole bunch more cop cars here any minute. A murder surely doesn’t happen every day in Waterville, although there would have been more today if I hadn’t come.
He did his best to hurry across the field toward the Valiant. Scott was limping badly now. His ankle was swelling and his walking boot was much too tight.
He opened the Valiant and threw his stick, knife, and baton across the backseat. He twisted in the driver’s seat and put both feet outside the car. With a grimace of pain, he unlaced the boot on his right foot and slipped it off.
Glad this is an automatic. Not sure I could drive a stick right now.
He said a silent prayer to a God he didn’t believe in, then turned the key.
The engine turned over immediately. He pulled out from behind the stone building and eased toward the road. He leaned across the front seat and rolled down the passenger door window—no luxuries like power windows in this vehicle.
He listened.
Sirens again, but coming from his right, and once again sounding some distance away.
They’re gonna stop any vehicle they see along here and question them, so I’ve just gotta hope they don’t see me, right?
He stepped on the gas with his painful right leg and turned left, away from the Jenkins house.
His first instinct was to floor it, to do eighty down that gravel road and put some distance between himself and the trouble behind him.
That’ll only kick up dust, though, and in this still air, it’ll hang there forever, pointing them right toward me.
He kept his speed at twenty-five miles per hour or less and drove toward the highway. He watched the road behind him in the rearview mirror almost as much as he watched the road in front of him.
After a few minutes, which felt like forever to Scott McAllister, he intersected with the highway.
He turned right onto Highway 137.
He looked down at his himself. Both his hands and clothes were covered in sticky, drying blood. He did his best to wipe his hands off on his shirt, but he would need soap and water to get it all off. He made sure to stick right at the speed limit and drove away from Waterville.
Behind him, he heard more and more sirens, but they were fading into the distance.
Twenty miles down the road, he felt safe enough to pull over onto a small side road and find a deserted place to park. He opened the door and tried to step out but immediately regretted it. His right ankle wouldn’t hold any weight and he pitched forward onto all fours. He turned around, grabbed his jo and again used it as a crutch to get back to the trunk.
Scott stripped off his jeans and shirt, rolled them into a ball and stuffed them into the corner of the trunk. He fished through his backpack and found a clean pair of jeans and t-shirt. He slammed the trunk, hopped back around to the driver’s side and collapsed onto the seat. Slowly, painfully, he managed to get his jeans on, but knew that putting his boot back on his right foot was a pipe dream. He slipped the clean shirt on and felt a little better.
I’ve got to be better prepared for these situations. I need a gallon of water stored in the trunk, maybe some baby wipes for quick clean up. Always need to have a change of clothes ready to go.
He started the car, but didn’t move. The horror of the memory of the scene washed over him.
Without warning, he felt onrushing nausea. He opened the driver’s door, leaned his head out and threw up the remainder of his breakfast. He stayed in that position for a long minute, waiting to see if there would be a second spasm.
I killed a man. That was awful. I don’t know if I can do this. I killed people in Vietnam, but that was so different. There, I saw a man a long ways away. Pulled the trigger. When I looked again, he was either still there, and I fired again, or he was gone. This is different. Looking into a man’s eyes while he dies. I don’t know if I can do this.
He put the car in gear and let it roll forward a few feet.
But if I don’t? Then what? Live with the knowledge that I could have stopped these horrible things from happening, but didn’t? I don’t think there is a good answer here.
Scott turned right back onto the highway and drove on. Wanting to put as many miles between him and the Jenkins place as humanly possible, he drove west into the sun. As the miles disappeared under his wheels, more thoughts haunted him.
What else did I mess up there? Mrs. Jenkins saw my face, for sure. She’ll be able to identify me if they ever arrest me. That was stupid. I don’t think anyone saw the car, so it should be okay for right now.
Scott continued revisiting everything and drove until it was almost dark. He stopped at a gas station and used the rest room to wash the blood off his face and hands. A few miles later, he pulled into the parking lot of a roadside motel outside of Lancaster, New Hampshire. His hands were shaking as he turned the ignition key.
At least I made it to another state.
Using the jo, he limped into the office. The gray-haired lady sitting behind the desk raised her eyebrows in surprise when she saw him.
“Looks like you came out on the wrong end of whatever you ran into.”
Scott gave her his best smile. “Just doing some hiking today and slipped off the path. I think I sprained it. Can I get a room for the night?”
“If you’ve got fourteen dollars, I’ve got a room.”
“Sounds like a deal.” He laid a ten and a five dollar bill on the counter. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a couple of aspirin you’d sell me for the extra dollar?”
The bills disappeared into a cash drawer, then she went through a door at the back of the office. Scott could hear a television playing and guessed that was her home. A moment later, she returned with a mostly-empty bottle of Anacin.
“Here. You can keep these. Check out is at eleven.�
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“I might want to stay an extra day or two and let the swelling go down in my ankle. Will that be all right?”
The woman waved her hand at the barren parking lot. “We ain’t even full on the 4th of July, so it’ll be fine. As long as you’ve got money, I’ve got a room.” She grabbed a key attached to a plastic fob. “Room number twelve. You can park right in front of it, so you won’t have to walk far.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Scott said with relief. He had been able to hold himself together to this point, but he knew he was almost to the end of his rope.
Two minutes later, he had moved the car, grabbed his backpack, and shuffled into his room. He turned the television on. The ten o’clock news was playing.
A well-coiffed local news anchor was reading the news. “...and there’s the cutest footage you’ll see all day, the puppy parade down main street. In more serious news, we’ve had reports of a strange murder in neighboring Maine. We don’t have a live report, but word out of our sister station says that a homeowner was killed when a man attacked him with a knife. He might have killed the man’s wife and children as well, but she had a rifle and scared him off. Brave woman. More details as they become available.”
“That’s the spin, huh? I guess that’s the way it looks.” Scott realized he was talking to himself, shut the television off and collapsed across the bed.
He slept twelve hours straight.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Scott was serious about holing up in the little motel for a few days. When he woke up late the next morning, he was stiff and sore. He felt like he might have gone twelve rounds with Smokin’ Joe Frazier the day before.
He took a long, hot shower to loosen his muscles up. His ankle was still swollen, and it had started to turn a deep purple color in places.
He wasn’t even sure he wanted to move from his room to get something to eat. He hadn’t put anything in his stomach since lunch the day before, and he had thrown most of that up. So he hobbled to the car and drove to a small café down the road.
As he limped into the café, he realized how handy his little jo was.
Great for hiking, even better in a fight, and it doubles as a cane, too. They oughta do late night commercials about these.
He took the notebook he had written all his memorized crimes into the café with him. He ordered a double cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate shake, then opened it to the second page. In block letters across the top, he had written: Ted Bundy, Lake Sammamish, July 14, 1974. The rest of the page was filled with bits and pieces of things he remembered about one of the world’s most notorious serial killers.
Suddenly, his eyes slammed back onto that date.
July 14. July 14? Goddamn it! That’s clear on the other side of the country, and he’s going to abduct and kill two girls in nine days. Why didn’t I ever make the connection between one killing in Maine and another in Washington State being so close together on the calendar? Stupid.
Any thoughts of a relaxing few days, sitting around eating fast food and watching television fled from his mind. He could picture the faces of the two women Ted Bundy abducted and killed on that day. Scott remembered Bundy’s confession when he was captured in Florida, saying he had taken them to the same place and made one watch while he killed the other.
No way I can let that happen.
He bolted his food, slurped his shake, and left three dollars on the table to handle the meal and the tip. He hurried back to the motel, threw his pack in the trunk and stopped at the front desk to tell them he was checking out after all.
He pulled his old, folded-up atlas from his pack and opened it to the two-page map of America. He looked at where he was, then looked at where Lake Sammamish was, just outside of Seattle. They couldn’t have been much farther apart and still been in the continental United States.
Using his finger as a ruler, he estimated that it was close to a 3,000-mile drive.
I figure I’ll need at least a couple of days to find things and get situated. So, that gives me seven days to drive three thousand miles. I can do that easily. Five hundred miles per day gets me there an extra day early.
He stopped at a gas station and filled up again, then headed west.
That day—starting late, a little beat up, and exhausted—Scott didn’t make his five hundred miles. He took Highway 2 west, then caught I-91 south, until he hit I-90 at Springfield, Massachusetts. From there, he knew he was going to be on that coast-to-coast freeway all the way to Washington State. It would be a long, straight drive for the most part, and that suited him fine. The less thinking he had to do, the happier he was.
By the time he got to Springfield, Scott’s ankle hurt him so much that he pulled off at a drug store along the interstate. He bought an Ace bandage and a new supply of aspirin. As swollen as it was, he knew that what he needed was some ice and to get it elevated.
He drove a few miles west, found a Motel 6, and pulled off the freeway. Motel 6s were originally called that because the rooms were actually six dollars per night. By the mid-seventies, the rates had gone up, but not all that much. He found a clean, comfortable room for twelve bucks that night.
Scott checked in, grabbed his dinner out of the snack machine in the lobby, got some ice, and hobbled to his room.
He had fallen asleep the night before in the same clothes he had worn since he had changed after the fight with Brock Jenkins, so he stripped those off and climbed onto the bed. He took the plastic bag out of the ice bucket and filled it with ice. He elevated his leg onto a couple of pillows, placed the jury-rigged ice bag on his ankle and lay down.
He awoke in the middle of the night to find that the plastic bag had leaked, but he was too tired to care. He rolled over and slept until morning.
SCOTT SPENT THE NEXT three days driving across the northern part of the United States on Interstate 90. That route took him through the northern part of Indiana, but he was on a tight schedule and didn’t have time to swing by Evansville to see Cheryl. He pushed on.
On the fourth day, he hit the badlands of South Dakota. The small towns that dotted the route of I-90 soon became a blur. When he was a few miles away from Murdo, he noticed that his temperature gauge was climbing.
Steam escaped from under his hood and he pulled over immediately. When he lifted his hood, more steam boiled out. He opened the trunk and retrieved the bloody t-shirt he had balled up and used it to open the radiator. More steam, but not a lot of water left.
He grabbed the jug of water he had begun carrying with him and poured it into the radiator. When he looked inside, he still couldn’t see the water level. He sat on the side of the road for fifteen minutes, watching cars and semis whiz by him at eighty miles per hour or more, rocking the little Valiant to and fro. When he turned the ignition, he saw that the temperature had dropped into the normal range.
Two miles down the road, though, the whole scenario played out again—rising temperature gauge, more steam. He didn’t stop, but pushed on to the Murdo exit, hoping against hope he could make it there.
Immediately off the Murdo exit he saw a small motel, a car museum, a café, and a garage. Scott turned into the garage with a prayer of thanks, killed the engine, and coasted to a stop in front of one of the bays.
A mechanic dressed in blue overalls looked up from the Mustang he was working on and saw the steam. He nodded an acknowledgement at Scott.
“Sorry to block your bay door, I didn’t want to run it any longer than I had to.”
“No big deal,” the mechanic said. “Leave the keys in it and go grab a bite in the café. I’ll take a look and tell you how bad the damage is.”
Scott’s stomach tightened.
I’m already pushing my luck here, I know. Please don’t let this be a total loss. The only time I know for sure where and when Bundy is going to be is at Lake Sammamish on the 14th. After that, I’ll have to hunt him down, and there will be two dead women.
Scott reached into the car for his jo to use as a walking
stick. His ankle was healing, but it was still swollen. He had finally managed to get his boot on, though. As he grabbed his jo, he saw the now damp, bloody t-shirt crumpled on the front seat. He grabbed it and stuffed it under the seat.
Let’s face it. I am a terrible criminal. Sherlock Holmes would have me locked up before the end of the first chapter.
Scott limped over to the little café and ate lunch, although he spent most of his time worrying about his transportation situation.
I guess I’ve got enough with me to buy another old car, but I’ll go broke pretty fast if I have to do that. If I can make it out to Seattle in time to catch up with Bundy, I’ll have a break after that. Maybe I can get a job somewhere for a few months. That’ll give me enough money to maybe buy a more reliable car.
He paid for his lunch and made his way back to the garage.
The mechanic saw him coming. “As these things go, it could be worse. You broke a belt, overheated, but it’s not too bad. Your radiator’s shot, but I can probably find one in the junkyard to replace it. I can do that and put a new belt on for around a hundred bucks.”
Relief flooded through Scott. “Damn, that’s good. I don’t have much more than that to my name.”
That wasn’t true, but Scott didn’t like everyone knowing he was carrying a few thousand dollars with him.
“Bad news is, I won’t be able to get to it until the morning. I’m backed up this afternoon.”
Scott did some time and distance calculations in his head.
Tight, but I can still make it. Just have to drive a little further every day.
Scott checked into the motel that was within walking distance, got out his atlas and planned the rest of his trip.
Chapter Thirty
The mechanic was as good as his word. He started work on the Valiant first thing in the morning and the total bill was a bit under a hundred dollars. By the time he finished and Scott turned back onto Interstate 90, it was early afternoon.
He focused on nothing but putting miles under his wheels. He made it through the rest of South Dakota, across the northeast corner of Wyoming and into Montana before he ran out of steam. He pulled off at a rest area a few miles past the site where the Battle of the Little Big Horn had been fought.