The Highway ch-2

by C. J. Box

  There was a tremendous explosion of light and thunder.

  He could no longer see out of his right eye, but it was more than that. There was no pain, only tremendous silence.

  Then he was floating, light as air, as if his lungs had filled with helium. He passed through the sheet metal roof of his pickup into the night, which was no longer cold. As he rose his eyesight was restored but he no longer had feeling in his limbs and his arms hung loose at his sides.

  He looked down. He could see the top of his pickup from above, the bed of his truck which was empty except for a crumpled fast-food wrapper in the corner, then the rusted metal roof of the First National Bar. The windows of his pickup strobed three more times but there was no sound and he felt nothing.

  Cody’s life didn’t pass before his eyes, but he clearly saw the photo of Justin in his football uniform and a vision of Jenny sleeping in bed from years before they separated the first time and he rose until he could see the river and the ribbon of highway through the valley and Jimmy and the truck driver emerge from the bar and stand on the porch and he knew what happened to those poor girls and he felt both cheated and angry at the same time and he wished he could do it all over again, everything.

  Especially the last five minutes.

  Then nothing. No sound, smell, or sight.

  Peace.

  26

  3:53 A.M., Wednesday, November 21

  Cassie Dewell sat at her kitchen table in worn sweats and slippers with her laptop open in front of her. Although she’d switched to decaffeinated coffee two hours after she’d returned home from Cody Hoyt’s house, she was still wired. And unsettled. Her stomach growled and burbled and sounded loud in the sleeping house, and each time it happened she found herself placing her hand over her middle with the same reflexive instinct she’d once used when she was pregnant with Ben.

  She’d tried to sleep but couldn’t, and thought she’d work herself into exhaustion. Instead, though, she found her mind racing.

  She considered eating something but nothing sounded good except cake. There was some in the refrigerator-German chocolate-left there by her passive-aggressive mother for the sole reason, Cassie thought, to keep her fat. So instead of eating it, she drank decaf and her stomach growled as if she’d swallowed a wolverine.

  Cassie sat back and tapped out another e-mail on her phone and sent it to Cody. This one, from the Bozeman Chronicle the previous winter, was entitled WITH DEATH OF CHARISMATIC LEADER THE FUTURE OF DOOMSDAY CULT IN DOUBT. She found it of interest because, at the time, the reporter stated there was no clear plan of succession for the church and several factions were stepping forward to claim it. According to the article, the leadership of the Church of Glory and Transcendence would likely fall to Stacy Smith’s son Wayne, but no one was sure he either wanted the role or was up for it. There was a brief mention of someone named William Edwards, who represented a competing effort. There was no other information about Edwards in the article, and Cassie failed to find any other published information about him in her searches. The only reference she found to him was on the Web site of the church itself, which referred to him as “Terrestrial Caretaker.” Wayne Smith wasn’t listed at all, which she took to mean that Stacy Smith’s son had either not stepped forward or had been defeated for leadership. As far as Edwards went, there was no photo, no biography. She pointed out that fact in a note accompanying the link she sent to Cody’s phone, and wrote, “He seems to be the guy you’ll want to interview.”

  Not that Cody replied. In fact, he hadn’t acknowledged even receiving any of the texts or e-mails she’d sent in the past hour. She speculated that he was out of cell phone range, busy with something, or simply unresponsive and rude. All three were distinct possibilities. She began to understand why Larry Olson, Cody’s former partner, became so frustrated with him.

  She wasn’t supposed to access the ViCAP database from anywhere other than an official departmental computer in the sheriff’s department, but she justified it to herself by noting the laptop actually belonged to Lewis and Clark County, so what did it matter? Cassie had no intention of claiming the overtime on her sheet because she wanted to avoid problems and questions from Sheriff Tubman. Questions like why she was assisting a suspended deputy in his investigation of two missing teenage girls in the middle of the night with no formal complaint or referral-and outside their jurisdiction.

  She didn’t know how she would answer that question if it came up, other than it seemed like the right thing to do despite policy and protocol. That she felt unclean and guilty for being responsible for the suspension itself. That she didn’t want to be regarded by her colleagues around the office as the sheriff’s tool.

  Cassie sat back in her chair and knuckled at her eyes with both hands. Her spine cracked and her stomach burbled again. The house was cold for sleeping-her mother insisted on turning the temperature down to sixty-two at night to “save energy”-and Cassie’s feet were cold. But she didn’t want to risk turning the thermostat up. The rumble of the furnace and the whoosh of forced air might awake her mother, who would ask what she was doing and why she was doing it so late. Cassie didn’t want to deal with the questions now. Although Cassie was in her midthirties and had a son, her mother had a way of phrasing things-with a certain tone-that always made Cassie act guilty, like she was still twelve and trying to get away with something.

  Although she was grateful her mother lived with her and watched over Ben and cared for him while she was at work, the situation was difficult and becoming worse. While Cassie had aged and changed, her mother hadn’t. The quirks and passions her mother displayed when Cassie had lived at home seemed more pronounced, more set, more rigid. Cassie looked on helplessly, for example, when her mother patrolled the house turning off lights and unplugging electronics that weren’t being used at the time. Cassie was afraid Ben would take to heart her mother’s leftist rants and genuine hatred of business, all Republicans, the military, and the police. The police! Didn’t her mother know what she did every day? Didn’t she know or care that Ben’s father had been in the army?

  She swallowed the last of her cup of decaf and leaned forward to her laptop and keyed in the passwords for ViCAP-one for the department, one for her personally-and followed the prompts and she was in.

  * * *

  It took five minutes to narrow down the search. There were actually twelve missing women from southern Montana, but only four in their teens at the time of their disappearance. Of the four, one case had been open for five years, so she discounted it with a pang of guilt and the recognition that missing Jessica Lowry, age seventeen, Bozeman, history of drug abuse and emotional problems-would for now remain shoved aside and forgotten. She didn’t even want to look beyond the area, or statewide. Even in a state with a low population like Montana, the sheer number of missing people was overwhelming and depressing. Instead, Cassie keyed on the three girls she presumed Cody had asked about, and read up on each of them. She opened a document window aside from the Web pages so she could cut and paste relevant information to share with Cody, provided there was anything of note.

  Erin Hill, Livingston, eighteen, white, brown hair (although possibly colored red), green eyes, five foot two, 160 pounds, reported missing by stepmother in July two years prior. Disappeared after being arrested for possession of meth, presumed a runaway. Divorced parents, lived with mother. An unconfirmed sighting of her was reported by a convenience store cashier at a truck stop on I-90 west of Billings. The cashier reported that a girl matching Hill’s description had used the ATM in the store and lingered for an hour inside, but the cashier didn’t speak to her or see her depart the store. The internal ATM video malfunctioned during the transaction and didn’t get a shot of the user, but the subject had used Hill’s PIN number to withdraw the last $120 from her savings account in a Livingston bank.

  Shanna Marone, Bozeman, seventeen, white, long dark hair, brown eyes, five foot six, 140 pounds, tattoo of red lips on neck and Harley-Davidson l
ogo tattoo on mid-lower back, reported missing eighteen months before after not showing up for classes at the alternative high school. Mother distraught, father not in the picture. A passing motorist on State Highway 205 (between Belgrade and Manhatten) reported seeing a person hitchhiking who matched the description of the missing subject, including a yellow down coat she was known to wear. No other verified sightings had ever been confirmed.

  Chelsey Lybeck, Big Timber, fifteen, white, short blond hair, blue eyes, four feet eleven, 110 pounds, was reported missing by the father, a ranch foreman on the Lazy Double-Ought Ranch …

  But she was found, Cassie realized as she read on. Her body was discovered last summer on the bank of Sweet Grass Creek by fishermen. Cassie recalled reading something about it in the newspaper. The body was too decomposed to determine the cause of death, but the Sweet Grass County Sheriff’s Department speculated she’d died of blunt force trauma followed by exposure. To date, there had been no arrests, although the ranch foreman father had been questioned twice and the file remained open.

  Cassie didn’t include Chelsey Lybeck on the document she was building, but concentrated on Erin Hill and Shanna Marone. Both runaways, apparently. Both last seen-possibly-at a truck stop along an interstate highway and on a state highway. Both never seen again, if the ViCAP records were correct.

  She thought of the Sullivan girls. Similar age. On the highway. Missing. Cassie forced herself not to make a leap of speculation based on such a weak and isolated set of circumstances.

  Then she saw the link on the bottom of the ViCAP Web page for HIGHWAY SERIAL KILLER INITIATIVE.

  She hesitated, worried about spending too much time going down a wrong path when there were other things she could be doing.

  But she floated the cursor down and clicked on it. As she read, Cassie felt the hairs rise on her forearms and on the back of her neck.

  First, she scanned a map of the United States covered with red dots. The dots were placed along interstate and state highways, looking like a strings of red pearls from coast to coast. The highest concentration of dots were in the east, Midwest, and southeast. But there were plenty in Montana and throughout the rest of the country.

  In 2004, an analyst from the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation detected a crime pattern: the bodies of murdered women were being dumped along the Interstate 40 corridor in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi … ViCAP analysts have created a national matrix of more than 500 murder victims from along or near highways, as well as a list of some 200 potential suspects, almost all long-haul truck drivers … The victims in these cases are primarily women who were living high-risk, transient lifestyles, often involving substance abuse and prostitution. They’re frequently picked up at truck stops or service stations and sexually assaulted, murdered, and dumped along a highway … the mobile nature of the offenders, the unsafe lifestyles of the victims, the significant distances and multiple jurisdictions involved, and the scarcity of witnesses or forensic evidence can make these cases tough to solve …

  She took a deep breath and scrolled down to a specific incident report.

  A passerby found the severed head on Feb. 10, wrapped in two plastic bags and stuffed inside a backpack in Barstow, Calif. Authorities still haven’t identified the victim or her killer, but the circumstances point in a particular direction.

  The teenage girl likely had been killed days earlier, Barstow police say. Her head lay a few hundred yards from a truck stop just off Interstate 15, not far from I-40. To authorities, the proximity to the truck stop and the interstates suggests that the slaying might have been the work of a distinctive type of criminal: a serial killer operating along the nation’s highways.

  Cassie thought it remarkable and horrifying that there were so many missing women along the highways that a task force had been created in the first place. And her mouth went dry when she read that ViCAP and the task force had assisted local authorities to arrest no more than a dozen suspects-all long-haul truckers. There had been two convictions, but more than five hundred open cases were unsolved.

  The fact there was an actual federal task force on highway serial killers disturbed her greatly. Cassie’s father had been a long-haul truck driver. The story of how her parents met was a sweet one-how her mother had been hitchhiking back in the days when people actually hitchhiked across the country en route to a Grateful Dead concert in Big Sur-when the ex-Marine with a buzz cut named Bill Scribner picked her up in his Kenworth. The unlikely pair disagreed on everything except their attraction for each other.

  Scribner was based in Wyoming and he drove his truck for eleven months and hunted elk the other, and he could quote Shakespeare and Paul Harvey without missing a beat. He wanted to marry but Cassie’s mother refused to engage in the formality of a ceremony and a contract, so they had an understanding of sorts. He doted on Cassie during his rare overnight visits, and he’d taken her on several cross-country runs when she was ten and eleven. While he drove and the country went by, he told her that Americans had a restless gene and he must have been double-dosed with it. But he said he performed an important and honorable service, and he was proud of his profession. He told Cassie that professional long-haul truck drivers like himself were “Knights of the Road” and they had their own code of conduct and civility. She remembered him telling her he was “building America, one truckload at a time.” She was proud of him also, and noted how other truckers looked up to him with respect and admiration when he strode into truck stops or met foremen to pick up or drop off a load. There was even a time when she thought she’d like to follow in his footsteps. She wanted to be a Knight of the Road, too.

  But Bill was struck down with inoperable brain cancer that took him down so quickly he was dead by her thirteenth birthday.

  Still, though, she thought of her father and those glorious trips through a warm sentimental haze. And she was disgusted there were a few drivers out there who had penetrated the knighthood in an evil way.

  * * *

  From the darkened doorway, Ben said, “Momma, what are you doing? What are you looking at?” and she was jolted back to the present. She reflexively reached up and closed the laptop screen.

  “Ben…”

  “I miss Dad,” Ben said, and stepped into the light. He was five years old, wearing his flannel pajamas with the cowboy print. His feet were bare and looked cold. He was dark-headed and chubby, like his mother.

  “Come here,” she said, sliding back in her chair and opening her arms.

  He shuffled forward, arms to his sides, and thumped his head into her breasts.

  “I miss him,” Ben said, his voice muffled by her clothing.

  “I know you do, honey. So do I. But you need to get to bed and get some sleep.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Ah.”

  “Maybe if I got a snack.”

  “I’ll get you a glass of milk.”

  “And maybe some cake…”

  “No cake,” she said, extricating herself. “Milk and off to bed.”

  As he settled into a chair she poured a glass of milk from the refrigerator after checking the expiration date. Her mother was loath to throw anything away until it was consumed. The milk was okay.

  “What are you doing?” Ben asked when she sat back down.

  “Working. Sometimes I have to work late.”

  He nodded, not very empathetic, and gulped the milk down and shivered.

  “Don’t drink so fast,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  Before he could settle in, she guided him out of the kitchen and down the dark hall. As they passed the bedroom occupied by her mother, she heard, “Cassie? Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “I heard talking.”

  “Ben.”

  “Is he sick again?”

  “Just sleepwalking,” she said. She wasn’t sure why she fudged on the answer.

  “I’m not sleepwalking,” Ben whispered over his shoulder. Cassie shush
ed him.

  “There’s cake in the fridge,” her mother called out.

  “I told you,” Ben said accusingly.

  “Good night,” Cassie sang through the door to her mother.

  Her mother said something else she didn’t hear, and Cassie ushered Ben to bed and tucked him in. She straightened up his blankets and quilts against the cold and kissed him good night on the cheek.

  “Night, Ben.”

  “Night, Mom. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  A shaft of moonlight from the window illuminated the framed photos on Ben’s dresser. Three photos of his father Jim Dewell, one in the dress uniform after basic, two in his desert fatigues. In the one Ben liked best, Jim leaned back against a wall of sandbags cradling a machine gun. He wore a pistol on his belt and a smirk on his face.

  Ben didn’t actually miss his father because he’d never met him. But he knew if he said it, Cassie would always react with sympathy. Cassie knew it, too. She sometimes wondered if she’d done the right thing, raised Ben the right way. But she was new at this, and didn’t know better. She’d had no real road map from her own mother.

  Ben was a boy through and through. He spent hours wordlessly disassembling his toys and putting them back together. He knew the makes and models of cars and trucks on the street, and he’d declared recently that as soon as he could he wanted to hunt deer and elk. There was a poster of Tim Tebow when he was the Bronco quarterback, on his wall despite her grandmother’s disdain for the man and his overt Christianity. Ben’s career path, he’d stated without doubt over breakfast cereal the week before, was to be an NFL quarterback, join the army, and drive tanks and later tractors. He wouldn’t get married and he’d eat elk meat for dinner. Cassie had stifled a smile when her mother reacted to the declaration with outright horror.

  She closed his door and padded down the dark hallway, considered going to her own bedroom, and decided against it for now. She was still too wired. She thought of the missing Sullivan girls, Cody out there somewhere not responding, the way the sheriff had played her, and raising a boy in a home with a mother who worked too many hours and a grandmother who was crazy as a tick. She tried not to resent Jim for getting killed and abandoning her. It always bothered her that she’d never seen that gleeful smirk he showed in the photo in real life. Like he was really enjoying what he was doing and Afghanistan in general, and certainly much more than working back at the state highway shop to pay the mortgage with a fat wife and a crying baby at home.