NIGHT CRUISING

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  He dropped the jug and hurried around the car to Molly's side. She wasn't there.

  He turned in a circle, looking for her outline on the desert. He saw a dark stick figure moving toward the west, toward the ranch houses.

  Cursing his lapse, he ran to the trunk, threw in his soggy clothes and shoes, slammed it shut. He grabbed the keys from the fender and slipped into the car wearing only his wet undershorts.

  He ought to run her down.

  He ought to hurt her.

  The cuts on his arms bled onto his thighs as he drove across the bare land toward the girl speared in his headlights.

  #

  Molly thought her lungs would burst. She could hear the car behind her, closing in like a bumblebee aiming at the lush heart of a flower. She ran harder, her feet slapping the firm sand with a flat crunching sound. She was too far from the houses! She'd never make it!

  Oh, God, oh, God, he'd run her over.

  She stumbled on the thought and fell flat on her face, knocking the wind from her belabored lungs. She gasped, trying to get air again. She heard the engine of the Chrysler roaring in her ears. It blocked out the world. She brought her fists to each side of her face, sucking in air finally, closing her eyes and her mind to what might happen to her in the next few seconds. She couldn't think of it, couldn't get her mind to conjure the image beyond the one of her lying helpless on the ground while the car sped across the sand straight at her body.

  She screamed out, pressing her fists into the sides of her head, legs automatically pulling up to her groin, toes curling in her shoes, feet tucking toward her buttocks to present the smallest possible target.

  She might have lost consciousness for a while. She couldn't remember hearing the car braking or the sound of the car door opening and closing or the touch on her arm. The first thing she did hear was Cruise's voice demanding...

  "Get into the car."

  She couldn't get up. She expected to be run over and that expectation had become real in her head so that now she didn't believe she was still whole. She lay there, exhausted, not enough air in all the sky for her to breathe right again.

  She felt herself lifted, taken into his arms. Her head hung down and she still couldn't breathe, her chest sucking up and down like a bellows.

  She was put into the car, but she kept slipping from the seat, her legs Jell-O, her arms like strings attached to her shoulders. He shut the car door and the sound rattled her teeth.

  Shouldn't the third try have been the charm? she wondered idiotically. She tried to leave him in Mexico. In Yuma. This time she should have succeeded. Third time a charm--was that a superstition?

  When she had run this time, he had been in some kind of trance. He had stood behind the car after pouring the water over his head, stood so long she thought he had fallen asleep. He didn't even move an eyelid when she opened the door and began sprinting away.

  Shouldn't she have made it? Was her luck so bad or did she have any? But yes, she had luck left. He hadn't driven the car over her prone body. She had lots of luck, but it just wasn't sufficient to get her free.

  Strength returned to her limbs. She was able now to lift a hand to her face and brush the sand from around her eyes. She spit. Sand granules were in her mouth, grating on her tongue. She stuck out her tongue and wiped it on the back of her hand. She wiped her hand along the leg of her jeans.

  She turned in the seat a little and saw the trunk lid open again. Soon it lowered and she saw Cruise dressed in fresh clothes. A sky-blue shirt, long sleeves. Navy trousers. When he sat in the driver's seat, she cringed, and moved closer to the door on her side.

  "We're going into Mexico again," he said.

  He turned the car around and returned to the bumpy road they had taken into the desert.

  '"This time there's no hotel room for you. I'll leave you tied in the car."

  She almost wanted to thank him. Being bound seemed an infinitesimal annoyance compared to being run over by a big blue Chrysler.

  They drove past the tired border guards without a hitch. Cruise showed them his driver's license, his car insurance. Molly sat with a docile look on her face, though her red curly hair was all in disarray, and there was sand on the front of her shirt.

  In Mexicali, Cruise drove to the far side of town where he found cantinas open all night. Molly saw that he knew the people in this section of town, knew them as well as he had in the other Mexican town east of Juarez. They called to him as he drove up. "Senor Cruise! Amigo!"

  They came to the car windows and watched curiously as he tied her with the yellow nylon rope. He looped it through the armrest, making it fast. Even if she could get out of the car, she was hobbled, ankles tightly tied together, and she wouldn't get anywhere. She'd be back on her belly again, in trouble and out of luck.

  "Please..." she begged.

  Cruise told her to shut up. He said, "I don't need you to witness this part of my life."

  She didn't know what he meant. She expected to have plenty of time to think about it.

  She didn't know the drunk Mexicans who had grouped around the car to watch her imprisonment wouldn't give her much time for thinking. She didn't know they wanted to have some fun with another of Cruise's young female hostages.

  #

  The murders at the Pick 'N Save in Yuma, Arizona, occurred between two-thirty and three A.M. At four-thirty Mark Killany heard the news on the car radio as he drove the streets of Flagstaff.

  There hadn't been witnesses to the crime. But the throat slashings matched the way the murderer killed the obeseMr. James Comquest near Lake Roosevelt.

  "Authorities believe the same suspect is responsible for both murder sprees," the news announcer said, "and that he's moving south through the state of Arizona. The highway patrol has alerted California state police to watch for any car resembling the one described as being driven by the killer."

  Mark pulled over to the curb to listen. He held his jaws rigid in thought. Yuma. First the lake, then Yuma. Had the killer ever gone to Flagstaff, or even to Globe?

  Consulting the road map spread on the bench seat of the car, Mark found the route that would take him south to Yuma. It was one helluva drive and he was tired. He needed a thermos of coffee to keep him awake.

  He found a service station open. They had a small convenience store that carried thermoses. There were three on a bottom shelf. The boxes were covered with a patina of dust. Mark took one to the counter, slipped out the thermos. "I'm going to fill this with coffee. Add it onto my gas ticket, will you?"

  He was on the way to Yuma by five A.M. Once there he'd call back to Globe, see if they had any information the radio newscast overlooked.

  How long a head start did the fucker have anyway? He had killed Comquest the night before. A convenience store clerk and a customer tonight. It couldn't have taken him that long to get to Yuma. That meant he had holed up somewhere along the way. He might have slept in his car in a national park. Or did he know someone in Arizona who had taken him in? Did he just drive at night, sleep during

  the day?

  Mark would have to throw some of these questions at the detective in Globe, gauge his reaction.

  But the important questions none of them could answer were the ones doing chaotic things to Mark's mind. Was Molly with the killer? Was this the same man she had taken a ride from in Mobile?

  The coincidence of the same kind of car and a man described the same way made him almost sure. Sure enough to follow the leads. To wherever they led him.

  He had seen a film once on cable TV about a serial killer. He had a home in South Florida, drove a Porsche, owned his own business. He went into shopping malls pretending to be a photographer looking for models. He conned young girls to his car in the parking lot, then he kidnapped, raped, brutalized, and left them dead alongside the roads countrywide. About nine victims in all if Mark remembered correctly.

  The scary thing about him, though, was that he took one girl from a mall and did not kill her. Inst
ead, he made her stay with him on the road for nearly two weeks. Checking into motels together, letting her drive the car, even in the end trusting her to help him lure another young woman from a mall.

  The psychologist working with the FBI theorized he didn't kill this one girl because she'd been raped at age thirteen. When he raped and threatened to kill her, she was so traumatized, she didn't seem to care if she died or not. The other girls begged for their lives. That gave him the momentary thrill of having complete control and power. He killed then. But the girl he kept with him--her name was Tina--didn't beg for her life. It was what saved her.

  Eventually the killer put her on a plane in Boston to send her home. Later he was spotted by an FBI agent and shot with his own gun while they fought over it in the front seat of the car.

  Mark remembered from the film that the psychologist believed Tina hadn't tried to escape her captor because she was suffering from the "Stockholm syndrome." Prisoners in World War II first exhibited the syndrome and it was documented in psychoanalytic textbooks. Some prisoners, it seemed, stopped caring whether they lived or died, were in such deep shock that they would not try to escape if given the chance. They were locked into a psychological as well as a physical prison, traumatized, tortured, and turned into shadows of their former selves.

  If Molly was with a murderer, she wouldn't be with him under her own free will. Therefore, she was a hostage. Hostages died. Not many of them were as fortunate as Tina.

  Drinking coffee from the thermos, driving faster than the speed limit, Mark worried about his daughter and what might be happening to her now. If she was with a killer, she wouldn't react the way Tina did. She hadn't been traumatized before. She'd try to escape any chance she got. And the hostage-taking serial killers of the world had little patience with the girls who wanted to survive.

  "Shit," Mark said aloud. He poured more coffee into the thermos cup while holding the wheel with one hand.

  It was still a long way to Yuma. If his hopelessness welled any higher, he thought he might drown in it and that wouldn't help Molly at all.

  He wished he hadn't thought about the cable film. He had to harbor some hope that whoever Molly was with, the man displayed a modicum of forbearance. Without it Molly was lost.

  #

  Molly believed she was lost.

  No matter how loud she called for Cruise to help her, no matter how much she tried to talk some sense to the men surrounding the Chrysler, nothing got any better. The best she could do was wait out the demeaning experience, try to think of something else. Endure. Survive.

  Just as soon as Cruise passed through the portal of the cantina, Molly knew she was going to be in for a hard time. With Cruise out of sight, the man closest to the car window on Molly's side reached in and grasped one of her breasts. Mostly he got hold of a bra cup. The Nubs hid behind the stiff material of the padded cup like scared rabbits behind a thicket. When he twisted his wrist, the bra lifted from her chest. She wanted to laugh in his face. Ha ha, she thought, you can't get me. I'm too skinny to get hold of, you prick.

  But she was wrong. She wasn't going to be protected from a mauling by the mere presence of a padded brassiere. Frustrated to find he had a handful of cloth, the Mexican grinned slowly before tightening his grip and ripping the front of her shirt down to her waist. Molly sat looking down at herself, furiously embarrassed, her skin blotching with red all over her chest and stomach.

  "You get away from me!"

  But they didn't speak English. Or they didn't care to. She heard a half-dozen tongues wagging, but not one word she recognized. Other men stuck their heads in the back window to gawk at her. Two of them crawled onto the hood and pressed their faces flat against the windshield. Their faces looked as grotesque as Halloween masks. Finally one of the men opened the driver's side door and slid into the bucket seat next to her.

  If they would untie her she'd have a chance. She even held out her bound wrists to him, thinking if he wanted to rape her he'd have to get her onto her back first, and that meant untying her hands and feet. But again what she thought might be her protection was no trouble at all to the drunken group who had descended upon her like locusts.

  They refused to untie her. There was a wagging of heads in the negative until the girl realized it was no use. That might make Cruise unhappy and no one wanted the big, grizzly American unhappy. No, they'd leave her bound hand and foot to the car door, the easier to play with her. The easier it was to terrify. She tried to claw, to spit, to bite, but nothing she did proved a deterrent.

  Molly bucked and fought to keep the strangers' hands off her body, but it was a losing proposition. The man hanging halfway in her window had his head buried against her chest. His mouth kept slipping off her nipples onto her ribs as she tried to thrust him away. His mustache scorched paths that smelled of tequila across her naked skin.

  Meanwhile the man in the seat next to her worked to unzip her jeans enough to get his hand inside. When he'd succeeded, the two leering faces on the windshield shouted with demonic glee.

  Two men got into the back seat and leaned over the Igloo cooler to watch the proceedings. One of them tried to kiss her until she butted his chin with the top of her head.

  This went on. It went on and on until Molly tired of fighting back. Already she'd drawn blood where the ropes held her prisoner. Her lip had split in the melee and dripped blood down her neck. One man had his mouth on her breast. Another had two of his fingers searching blindly inside her. Someone caressed the back of her neck and shoulders.

  Molly couldn't scream; she couldn't fight anymore. She went limp. A plastic doll would have been more sport. It took a while, but after some minutes passed and she showed no reaction to the probings, fondlings, and suckling going on, the drunken bunch tired of the game. They cursed her and one another. They took her face in their hands and shook it until her eyes rolled. The man with his hand inside her jeans caught her tightly there and squeezed to see if she would flinch.

  She slumped into the seat, her limpness not a ruse, but an admittance of futility. She couldn't do anything. Her body was not her own while they worked so hard to possess it.

  Let them have it. That's what she thought. Let them have it if they want it so fucking bad.

  Soon she was alone in the car, the drunks staggering and laughing over the incident as they headed into the cantina and the music. They could spend themselves on the willing women inside. They weren't really going to rape Cruise's girl without his permission anyway; it was all a rowdy, little game.

  Her blouse was in rags hanging off her shoulders. Her bra was torn apart in the center, the cups lying on each side by her arms. Her jeans were undone down to the tops of her bikini panties. She might be a fashion plate for a club that went in for body slamming.

  She sat this way without one tear making a track down her cheeks. She had no way to cover herself, not with her hands tied to the door. She must remain half clothed until

  Cruise returned to the car to see about her. When that would be, she didn't know. Until then she was at the mercy of any man who happened by the car and saw her. She was an open invitation to any horny Mexican who came in or out of the cantina.

  And that's just the way it is, she thought, at peace once she accepted her fate.

  Her luck was still holding out even though it wasn't the best luck in the world. At least she wasn't dead. Or raped.

  Not quite.

  She didn't feel so good, though. She didn't feel right anymore. She could tell she hadn't been feeling all right again since Cruise killed the woman in the store. When he tried to run her down with the car something inside her really snapped. She thought she might be getting to a place where she...just...didn't...care.

  A small black dog crept to the car and sniffed at the ground. Molly looked down at it and watched until it went away, limping. She listened to the sounds of music and laughter. She smelled the sick-making mingled aromas of spilled beer and cooking beans.

  As the sky grew li
ght and the sun began to rise, some of the cantina patrons came outside and trotted away, none of them paying any attention to where she sat staring through the windshield.

  A skinny red rooster swaggered down the street crowing for a majestic dawn. The stray dog that sniffed the Chrysler earlier scurried out now from between two houses and chased off the lone rooster.

  For a while the town seemed deserted. The music had stopped. The laughter was gone. No car passed.

  Molly lay her head back on the headrest and closed her eyes.

  Cruise would come for her when he was ready.

  Until then she would try to sleep since the help she longed for wasn't available in Mexicali, Mexico.

  The movie behind the closed lids of her eyes took her back to Dania, Florida, where once she had been safe. It was a day with her counselor. She sat in a starched white room where the plaster on the walls had been swirled to create circular patterns. The furniture was the best money could buy. There was a white leather sofa, a club chair to match, a blond coffee table bare of adornment. Across from this magazine-perfect arrangement sat Jason Harcraft behind his mahogany desk. The desk so dark, so smooth and rich, dwarfed Jason, and made whatever advice he gave sound weak. Molly had a hard time taking him seriously.

  "All teens rebel," he was saying. "It's a natural process of growing up. You have to break the bonds from your father so you can become an adult."

  "So what's the problem?" She was a smart ass even then, but it never got her into dutch with Jason. He was understanding. Too much so. He let her get away with murder. He was indulgent in the extreme. If she had taken a ballpoint pen from her purse and stabbed holes in his brilliant white leather sofa, she expected he'd tsk-tsk and ask her to sit in the chair so the holes wouldn't snag her clothing.

  "The problem," he said, infinitely patient, "is your particular brand of rebelliousness is worrying to your father. We need to modify the methods you employ to break the parental bond."

  "How do you suggest I do that, Jason?" He liked her to call him by his Christian name. Mr. Harcraft, he said, sounded like an airplane inventor. She thought it was because he wanted to be twenty again. He wore his thinning hair combed over the bald spot where the hair had receded on his forehead. It was sad. "My dad is a former Marine boot-camp instructor. We can't forget that."