by N. M. Brown
The Greyhound coaches that occasionally growled along Route 15 through the parched landscape were always equipped with air con and toilets. There remained, however, a degree of uncertainty, because today she would be travelling with a lesser known bus company.
It had been almost one week since Vicki had called out of the blue and invited Laurie down to the coast for a break from her small dusty boredom. In the fourteen months since graduating from college in San Diego, Laurie had done nothing other than serve coffee and burritos in the sun-bleached diner of her hometown. Her patrons were mainly locals or the occasional marine from the military camp over at Barstow.
When Laurie had first accepted the job, she had optimistically imagined she could bring her Nikon SLR to work, and between orders, she could take dramatic portraits of American diner life. In reality, any spare time Laurie had between taking orders was spent cooking, mopping, and washing. The camera only came to work for one shift and was subsequently returned to a crushed shoebox at the back of Laurie’s cramped wardrobe.
With each passing month, Laurie’s bright and ambitious college life seemed more like a vague dream than an actual memory – so the call from her friend felt like a lifeline thrown from the past. Vicki’s parents were both professionals who owned a holiday apartment on Oceanside, which she, apparently, practically lived in now.
After an hour of reminiscing about campus life, Vicki had promised Laurie she would drive up to meet her off the bus in Escondido, and they could continue catching up on the journey back to the beach.
Following the call, Laurie had sat cross-legged on her bed with her laptop in front of her, and a large glass of cheap wine on the bedside table. She had performed a search on coach prices for her intended trip.
The route from Barstow, the nearest town to Burke’s End, to Escondido was almost one hundred and fifty miles and a journey of several hours. Most of the large companies charged similar prices for similar services. Laurie tried some smaller sites too, but eventually she settled upon taking a Greyhound, which, at forty dollars for four and half hours of transport, seemed more than reasonable.
However, as Laurie typed in the details of her location and ticket type, a new pop-up box appeared on the screen in front of her. It was a bright yellow window featuring a cartoon image of a bus which featured a grinning face and dust clouds coming off its wheels. The text beneath the image said, “Click here for a cheaper ticket”. Laurie hit the “x” to close the window, but this only caused a full-screen window to open, featuring a business called Route King.
This page featured a list of benefits – unbeatable prices, fully air-conditioned buses, refundable tickets and local pickup point. It was this final detail which appealed to Laurie most of all. It meant there was no need to get herself two miles east of the centre of Barstow. At the bottom of the page, in flashing red text, it stated the price of a ticket from Burke’s End to Escondido was only twenty-five dollars. The offer was just too good to refuse. Laurie took a gulp of sweet pink wine and clicked on the button marked “purchase tickets”.
Now, three days later, the bus was approaching. Laurie checked her purse to secure her keys and cell phone whilst taking a step towards the baking road. The heat haze from the asphalt was distorting the shape of the moving vehicle, melting it into little more than a grey and black mass. There was no wind to carry the distant rumbling sound, so as she narrowed her eyes against the afternoon sun, the Route King bus appeared like an approaching shark, moving silently through rippling air towards her.
As the bus reached within a hundred feet or so of her, Laurie slung her travel bag over one shoulder and shielded her eyes. At first she thought the bus wasn't going to stop. In her mind she imagined it sliding smoothly by, leaving her stranded in a cloud of cartoon dust – just like their logo. However, as the vehicle approached, it suddenly began to slow and then jolted to a stop. The doors hissed open, and as she stepped into the darkness, Laurie sighed with relief– the interior of the vehicle was thankfully cooler than outside.
‘Hey there.’ The driver grinned at her from behind mirrored aviator sunglasses. He wore a denim shirt and Mickey Mouse baseball cap. ‘Where you heading, sweetheart?’
‘San Diego – Escondido,’ Laurie replied, as she pulled a crumpled piece of paper bearing the Route King logo from her pocket and held it out for the man to inspect. ‘I booked online.’
Taking the paper from her, the driver lowered his glasses and peered at it intently. His eyes scoured the details. Beneath his foot, the engine continued to growl impatiently.
‘The website said to print off the details and hand them to the driver,’ Laurie said nervously.
A frown creased the man’s face for a moment, then the grin returned and he slid his glasses back up his nose.
‘Well, that all looks fine, miss. You go get yourself a seat and relax. Should be a fun trip.’
With a brief nod of his head, the driver turned back to the tinted windshield, pushed the gear stick and the bus lurched forward, leaving Laurie to stagger up the aisle. Having wobbled from side to side, she finally slumped into the only available seat and removed her bag. As she slipped her worn sandals from her hot feet, Laurie had a brief glance around at her fellow passengers to check no-one appeared particularly offended by her actions.
The other travellers seemed to be oblivious to her – most were sleeping, listening to music or staring out of the windows at the parched landscape. Directly opposite her, an elderly man with a neat moustache was reading a battered paperback edition of some Robert Bloch novel. He glanced at Laurie, smiled momentarily and then slipped back into the book.
Laurie glanced back up the aisle of the bus to see there was a bathroom located halfway along the vehicle. She decided she would give it a couple of minutes before she went. As she considered this, a man in the seat directly behind her leaned forward and placed his hand on Laurie’s headrest.
‘Hi there,’ he said, his voice deep and quiet.
Laurie said nothing.
‘I said hi,’ he continued, undaunted by her resistance.
‘Hi.’ Laurie turned around quickly, then back again. It was a quick gesture designed to show disinterest. There wasn't enough time to see his face, but she got the impression of a ruddy-faced man with limp sandy hair and a wispy moustache. She reached for her bag and removed her iPod, unravelling the headphone cable. In her experience, earphones were a great way to shut out creeps.
‘Where you heading?’ he persisted.
‘Nowhere,’ Laurie said flatly, hoping he would take the hint and give her peace.
‘Looks to me like you’re travelling all alone.’ He whistled through his teeth. ‘You’re a brave young lady.’
‘I won’t be alone; I'm meeting my boyfriend.’
‘But he’s not your only boyfriend, though…’
‘What?’ Laurie twisted half way around with a frown on her face.
‘Well, I don’t see a ring on your finger,’ the man said pointedly.
‘What the hell are you trying to say?’
‘No ring, so you’re not married or engaged, either – makes you open to offers.’
‘Look, mister, I'm not interested, okay? I just want to take a ride in peace.’
‘Okay, Little Miss Grumpy. I was only trying to break the ice a little.’
Laurie sighed and stared out of the window, trying to pretend she was interested in the dry desolation. It was like staring into an abyss.
The man behind her finally leaned back in his seat, leaving Laurie to listen to the groaning of the engine and the murmur of chatter. Now, she decided, would be a good time to the use the bathroom.
Making her way along the aisle towards the small stall, Laurie made only polite glances at the other passengers. There was nothing outwardly peculiar, but as she examined the faces of the twenty-six commuters, she felt momentarily disturbed. It was not a conscious awareness, rather an instinctive feeling that something was missing. Perhaps it was simply there was so
little conversation for so many people, but then again the afternoon heat on an intercity bus could easily stifle that.
When she reached the three steps descending to the toilet, Laurie paused. For an uncomfortable moment, she thought she was the only female aboard the vehicle, but she relaxed a little as she looked to the back row of seats where a pretty blonde woman was sleeping on the shoulder of the fat man next to her. He was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and gently stroking her hair as she slept. They were sharing iPod headphones.
The toilet was nothing more than a small closet of polished steel. It smelled of antiseptic and bleach. Despite the apparent hygienic state, Laurie was a creature of habit and she used three or four pieces of toilet tissue from the wall mounted dispenser to wipe the lid. Having checked the door was locked, she slid her jeans over her hips and knees and sat down. As her bladder hissed empty, she stared ahead at the metal door and noticed it was dented in the centre, as if a bull had charged into it.
‘Somebody needed real bad,’ she muttered.
Laurie finished her business and reached into the box on the wall to retrieve more tissue. It was then that her fingers met something unusual. Tucked inside the dispenser was a small, folded piece of paper. Laurie’s fingers unfurled the crushed note and realised it had been ripped from a bus receipt, with part of the logo still visible in the bottom corner. The indistinct message on the paper was simple:
My name is Joanne Chapman. I know he’s going to kill me. Let anyone know it happened here. Tell Mark I love him, and he was right. 117-565-6315
The words had been written using a flesh coloured pencil – make-up most likely. The writing was oversized and clumsy, but the final three numbers were more misshapen, suggesting the author had rushed at the end.
Laurie felt her stomach flood with cold adrenaline. She stared intently at the shaky writing, trying to dismiss it. Maybe it was simply a stupid joke. Public bathroom stalls were often defaced with threats, obscenities and messages. Yet this message had not been scrawled on the wall; it had been hidden and the rest of the bathroom was clean. Despite the unsettling nature of the discovery, it Laurie thought it was unlikely that anybody had been murdered in the toilet. Still, something about the note was sinister enough to unsettle her. The word “here” stood out the most.
Standing up, Laurie pulled up her jeans and inhaled deeply. As she buttoned her fly, she decided she would get off the bus at Victorville, twenty minutes down the interstate, and then contact the police. Whatever had happened deserved to be investigated.
Closing the neat bathroom door behind her, Laurie returned quickly to her seat. Once she had checked that her bag was untouched, she noticed the curtain had been pulled across the window, blotting out both the view and the sunlight. She initially blamed this act on the creep sitting behind her, probably trying to get some kind of reaction out of her – or maybe he was dumb enough to consider it humorous.
However, Laurie was surprised the elderly man holding the paperback book spoke softly. ‘I did that.’ He nodded to the curtain. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but the sun was shining on the pages.’
‘I’m fine,’ Laurie said. What did it matter now? She would be getting off the bus in about ten minutes. This now meant she would need to contact Vicki and let her know about the change of plans. Laurie reached into her bag and produced her phone. At that moment, a dark line passed in front of her face so quickly it appeared as a momentary blur. She instinctively glanced down at her chest to see a loop of metal appear on her body, like a long metal necklace. There was not enough time for Laurie to register what the strange object was before the brake cable was suddenly pulled tight. Laurie gagged as the metal noose dug into her throat. She grabbed crazily at the back of her neck, but she was unable to make contact with the hands of the man behind her, who simply grunted as he twisted the cable tighter.
Laurie’s legs thrashed and her body bucked, knocking her bag into the aisle. Her panicking brain held on to the desperate hope the other passengers would somehow stop her attacker, but in her final gasping moments, Laurie saw something that made her thrash all the more. Around her, all the other passengers remained calmly seated. The people in front of her continued staring straight ahead, ignoring her struggle. Directly across from her, the elderly man had put his paperback novel upon his knees and was now smiling at her.
As Laurie fought for her life at the front of the bus, in the back, the large man in the Hawaiian shirt sighed, recovered his earphone from the head of the blonde girl next to him, and then let her dead body drop to the floor of the bus.
Chapter Four
Vicki Reiner was running late, but that was nothing new. In her twenty-three years, it seemed that she was fated to be consistently delayed in life – a fact which had placed her out of step with her fastidiously punctual parents. They would arrive at least half an hour early for any appointment or arrangement. Her mother, who seemed to consider herself above all mortals, liked to state that arriving in plenty of time provided a window of additional planning to ensure she was maximising her impact on the world around her.
It was not like that for their daughter. No matter what the day or time, crawling motorhomes, mobile cranes, and flocks of kindergarten children desperate to cross the interstate, all seemed to magically appear in front of Vicki’s car. These delays would occur on every possible journey – she had been tardy for classes, job interviews and, more recently, therapy sessions. Whenever she complained to her father (who now asked her to call him Steve) in their weekly long-distance phone conversation, he would tell Vicki in an infuriatingly chilled out voice that it was simply the universe’s way of keeping her safe. Vicki was not so charitable and believed it was just the universe’s way of pissing her off.
Still, today she told herself there was no point getting all stressed out – after all, she would soon see Laurie, and that created the possibility that things would be better again… like they had been before graduation, or even better, before she had left college entirely.
The previous year had not been a good one for Vicki. She had never been naturally academic and had therefore slumped beneath the weighty expectations of two professional parents. Through most of her teenage years, she consistently felt her main function was to evoke a heavy air of disappointment in the Reiner household. At the end of each semester, her mother would scrutinise every report card and interrogate every teacher to identify the cause of her daughter’s inexplicable mediocrity.
This was perhaps the reason why, towards the end of her course, she was not even sure that she would graduate. Four years earlier, she had left high school with good enough grades to attend college. This was not testament to her great intellect, but rather because she had always kept her head down and worked as hard as she could. Towards the end of June, she had been delighted to receive an acceptance letter from UC San Diego. The offer related to Computer Science, which satisfied her mother mainly because the course had the word “science” in it. But as graduation grew ever closer, Vicki’s father had repeatedly told her this degree might open doors for further avenues of study.
That was until he got stuck in his mid-life adolescence.
In some superficial ways, college had been easier than high school. The fact most students were, for the most part, on the same intellectual page, helped – there was no longer a cluster of hormonal rebels trying to undermine each lesson. But campus life also seemed to move at a much faster pace than the long, indulgent days of school, and Vicki struggled to keep up. Most of her first year was punctuated by dinner table interrogations from both parents. During her final dinner as a resident of her parents’ home, the tension had swelled to a crescendo.
‘What did you learn today?’ her mother had asked, as she reached across the table for the glass bowl of green salad.
‘Mom,’ Vicki had laughed nervously, ‘I'm not in high school anymore.’
‘Honey, I'm only asking because I'm interested.’
‘Just looking for an update, Vict
oria,’ her father had said, without looking up from his pasta.
‘Well,’ Vicki had sighed, ‘today we were looking at file carving. Dad, can you pass the pepper, please.’
‘Now,’ her mother had tilted her head, narrowing her eyes, ‘you know very well that means nothing to us.’
‘Yeah?’ her father had nodded. ‘Sounds like some kind of furniture making to me.’
‘It’s just a way of finding lost data on a computer.’
‘Ah, computer forensics,’ her father had concluded.
‘Yeah, I guess.’ Vicki had taken a mouthful of linguine in the hope of avoiding any further questions. However, her mother would not be derailed so easily.
‘So, how did you get on with this file carving business, top of the class?’
‘It doesn’t really work like that,’ Vicki had said in an attempt to explain. ‘It’s more like we all get a drive with hidden data on it and we have to locate it. There’s no scoring against the other students.’
‘How do you know how you are doing in relation to the rest of the class?’ Vicki's mother had asked.
‘I don’t,’ Vicki had shrugged her shoulders. ‘That’s not really relevant to how we work.’
‘Work? You see,’ her mother had turned her attention to her husband, ‘that’s what they call further education nowadays.’
‘Thanks very much.’ Vicki laid her fork down and folded her arms.
‘Well, it’s hardly challenging, is it, if there’s no competition?’ Her mother had smiled wryly. ‘It’s more just a play session with computers.’
‘Could you do it?’ Vicki had raised her eyebrows at her mother, who paused for a moment, as if slapped, before regaining her sense of composure.
‘I dare say I could.’ She had smiled purposefully, then examined her nails as if suddenly interested in the quality of her manicure. ‘But,' she had continued, 'I have more important things to do.’