Paths

by David DeSimone

  With his eyes glued to the pickup truck, he climbed halfway out of the car to memorize the plate number. It took about thirty seconds.

  He got back into the car, closed the door. Eva took out a scrap of paper and pen and took down the number Drew gave her.

  The scrap of paper happened to be a prescription of Letrozole - fertility pills. She handed the paper to him.

  After a long moment she said, “What if his plate isn’t real?”

  “What?” he said, incredulously.

  “What if the plate he’s using isn’t really his?”

  “What are you talking about, Eva?”

  “What if he switches them after a kill?”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “It’s not ridiculous,” she said, eyes fixed on his, defiant.

  “It would be too risky. Even a madman like him would know that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you think guys like him are very careful not to get caught?” he said.

  “Not necessarily,” she said. “Before his hunt - or whatever - he fits his truck with fake plates, ones that he stole, either from his victims - “

  “That’s unlikely because - “

  “Or from anywhere. It can’t be too hard to steal plates, right?”

  He shrugged.

  She continued, “He goes on his terror spree, satisfies his bloodlust, and immediately switches the plates back to his real one, the one registered in his name: Joe Blow with a record as shiny as Mr. Clean’s bald head.”

  Drew chuckled.

  “He’s a careful guy,” she added. “You said so yourself. Right?”

  He nodded.

  “Then it would be totally pointless to give the clerk his license.”

  “Still can’t hurt,” he said.

  “You know what the clerk’s going to do? He’s going to listen to you, take down all the information you have to give, and then once you leave, he’ll throw it away!”

  In a rare moment of open hostility Drew threw his arms up. “Well,” he barked, “what am I supposed to do!”

  “Don’t yell at me!”

  “I asked a question, Eva?”

  She shoved the pen back in her purse and threw the purse on the floor.

  “Fuck it,” he said throwing the door open.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going in there and I’m going to point out that crazy bastard to the clerk. I’m going to tell him to call the cops!”

  “Drew stop!” she urged grabbing his arm.

  “What can he do,” he shouted, “shoot me in front of everybody? That’s not how he works!”

  “You don’t know that!” she cried. “You don’t know anything, except how to get yourself killed!”

  Drew jerked his arm free, got out and slammed the door. “Stay there,” he ordered, and marched toward the food mart.

  He wanted to buy sandwiches anyway.

  7

  He had to pay.

  That phrase circled in his mind like bees around a hive as he neared the entrance. He had to pay.

  The only question was how. How was Drew going to make him pay?

  He had no gun, no knife, would not know how to use them anyway; he never studied martial arts, and he wouldn’t know how to forge a weapon out of everyday items even if you gave him a how-to manual. He was just a software designer. Had the maniac been a computer virus, he could have whipped up antivirus program to delete him.

  If only it were that easy. But the maniac was not a digital virus. He was flesh and blood, a lot of flesh and blood. If a confrontation came to blows, Drew would be in considerable trouble.

  The last time Drew brawled with anyone was two and a half decades ago when he was a kid in the seventh grade. That year Brett Russellman, a typical schoolyard bully, had discovered the wonders of the Bic lighter. Drew never knew when or why Brett chose certain days to strike. To him they seemed completely random, but they always occurred during the final minutes of lunch break when the kids arrived back from home and waited in the schoolyard for an attendance officer to blow a whistle and herd them all back into class.

  As far as physicality went, the two boys were comparatively equal. Drew might have actually been a wee taller than his nemesis.

  However Brett was an aggressive kid, Drew was not. Brett was reckless, daring, willing to accept any challenge.

  Drew was a nervous kid who felt it necessary to think of a solution before acting on a problem, and once he started he had to see it through its completion.

  Brett on the other hand acted first, thought later.

  They were complete opposites.

  Somewhere in the deeper part of his psyche, Brett must have sensed this difference. He would sneak up on an unsuspecting Drew, and hold his “flicked Bic” under Drew’s ass. A few kids would snicker and goad Brett to continue until Drew jumps and yelps like a wounded animal.

  Bellows of wicked laughter would follow.

  One day Drew decided he had had enough.

  On that day, he didn’t jump and he didn’t yelp. What he did was sock Brett squarely on the mouth. Too startled to react, Brett dropped the Bic and staggered backward covering his bloody mouth, eyes wide and watery in confusion and pain. Just to make sure Brett got the message loud and clear, he punched him again and Brett fell to his knees, crumpled over and wept.

  The following day Brett Russelman came into class looking like someone who had just gone ten rounds with a golden glove boxer. His mouth was puffy, shiny and red. It looked tender to the touch.

  Brett’s days of taunting Drew with a lighter were over.

  The maniac was just another version of Brett Russelman, but instead of a Bic lighter, the terror weapon of choice was a bigass pickup truck.

  A phone booth mounted to the side of the building sat neglected, the payphone itself having long since been removed, like a relic of a forgotten age. The cyclist a few feet away from the phoneless booth moved to the rear tire to check its pressure.

  Any interest Eva had in the male cyclist had changed since his arrival at the pump. Her interest was exclusively focused on Drew and his safety.

  She waited and watched.

  Entering the store, Drew looked for the most identifiable marker on the maniac, the red baseball cap. But the aisles were too high.

  Three people were waiting at the checkout line. At the front was the older man with the arthritic walk and salt and pepper beard digging in his pants pocket for loose change. Behind him stood Ms. Golden Ponytail. In one arm were boxes of plasticware, trash bags and paper plates, the other thumbed through her cellphone emails. Standing behind her was the thin young man with lanky blonde hair and proud owner of the silver Mustang. He was still wearing mirrored aviator shades despite being indoors.

  Moving toward the line he threw nervous glances down each aisle he passed, steeling himself for the sight of the monster.

  Falling into line behind the Mustang Man, Drew opened his wallet, took out a twenty-dollar bill.

  I’m only here to pay for gas, that’s all, he thought defensively. No reason to look at me.

  The old man collected his bagful of things and shuffled away.

  The athletic blonde stepped up to the counter and began unloading her stuff.

  The Mustang Man moved forward, turned his head, looked past the entrance window and out toward his car with an admiring look. Drew wondered how many nights and weekends the kid had spent so far tinkering with his beloved Mustang. He knew the feeling.

  Drew felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and found himself nose to chest with a large man. He had to crane his neck to see the man’s face, and when he did he was struck by sudden recognition that sent seismic tremors across his solo plexus.

  The maniac stared back at him. Absent was the bug-eyed crazed look of a lunatic that you might expect to find in some bad horror movie. Quite the opposite. Here was a man completely at peace with himself. His blue eyes peered through half-closed lids giving them a se
rene if not sleepy aspect. The camouflage was impressive and disarming, so much so that it even caused Drew to consider the possibility that he might have the wrong man.

  But there was no mistaking the red hat, the lumberjack beard and the huge gray pickup outside. He was the guy.

  As Drew was about to turn tail and run, the maniac raised his eyebrows, and in a politely questioning manner, gestured toward the line. “You gonna go?” he said in a low, distant voice, a voice that sounded like the rumble of an approaching freight train - hypnotic.

  Drew closed the gap between him and Mustang Man with steps calculated to appear nonchalant, casual. In reality he fought to keep his legs under control and possibly running into the kid in front of him. He folded his arms tightly across his chest so the maniac wouldn’t be able to see how badly he was shaking.

  He considered cutting in front of the Mustang Man, but doing so might cause a scene, and alert the maniac and possibly set him off. With only one person ahead of him, Drew decided prudently to wait. Yet he couldn’t speak to the clerk with the maniac standing right behind him either.

  You’ve got to stay calm, he told himself.

  Breathe, Drew. Give yourself a chance to think!

  He tried his damnedest to think, but it only made things worse. The harder he tried the more muddled his thinking got - Jesus! His chest felt tight, his skin cold, clammy. Had he not been familiar with the feeling, he might have mistaken it for early signs of a heart attack.

  The first time he’d had such an attack was when he was seven years old. He was having the usual six-o'clock supper with his parents, and for whatever reason he blurted out the word “damn!” His father, Richard, in a moment of blind rage, reached across the table and smacked his son across the face.

  He warned young Drew that cursing causes the tongue to turn black and fall out. Cursing was a sin and sinners go to hell.

  For Drew, the following weeks were filled with agonizing visions of boiling pits of molten lava and wordless screams from a mouth void of a tongue - for all eternity. They were excruciating images that got stuck in his brain and refused to go away.

  Until it all came to a head.

  After being admitted to the hospital for chest pains, difficulty breathing, and sweats, he had a thorough workup and the results had come back normal.

  “It was a panic attack,” the doctor had told his mother, Helen, her son sitting beside her, listening intently.

  “I’m going to prescribe medicine to help him relax, and recommend that he speak with someone who can help,” he said and handed her a referral to a child psychiatrist.

  Even though he was only seven, Drew understood clearly what that meant. To “speak with someone” meant that he was going to see a doctor for crazy people. He began to cry and begged his mother not to send him to a doctor for crazy people.

  When they got home Helen removed the referral from her purse and threw it in the wastebasket.

  Drew had told her about his obsessive thoughts: the hellfire, burning in a pit of lava, and spending eternity screaming without a tongue, and where he had gotten those ideas from.

  When his father, Richard, came home that night, he was greeted with an angry wife, anxious son and two packed suitcases. After falling to his knees begging for forgiveness, Richard never raised an angry hand or spoke of hellfire to his son again.

  Although Drew would have other anxiety attacks over the years, that first one made the biggest impression on him. Now, standing in line watching Mustang Man approach the counter to pay, he felt like that seven-year-old boy again.

  8

  EVA

  She was crazy for letting him go into the food mart alone. “Mr. Hero” was not going to be talked out of his mission. He was the good guy and good guys had to save the world from bad guys - right? That worked fine in movies and television, but in real life it could get you killed.

  She shook her head. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  It wasn’t enough they had escaped the maniac with their lives. Drew needed to do more, she supposed. He needed to prove his bravery. His male ego had taken a hit leading him to make a rash decision.

  What Eva wanted to do was to go out there and drag Mr. Hero back into the car by his ear, start the car, and put miles and miles between them and the gas station as quickly as possible. But she only sat there, dabbing at her cheek. Her face still burned like hell. She looked at herself in the visor mirror. Her face felt worse than it looked. The redness around the cheeks, chin, nose and forehead had faded to a rosy pink, and she saw no blistering. Although she felt glad about that, she was too tired to care very much. Exhaustion also probably explained why she didn’t stop her husband. She just lacked the energy.

  But another reason kept her from getting out of the car: fear, fear of creating a stir in the food mart that would draw the maniac’s attention to them, which might lead to further stalking. The last thing she needed in her life was another game of cat and mouse with an obsessive psychopath.

  With a flick of a switch she engaged the locks on all four door. At that moment the world felt alien to her and everyone in it a potential threat. She recognized this as a reaction to stress and overstimulation, but it didn’t matter.

  Eva let out a nervous chuckle. Now who’s being irrational?

  She went to turn the key so she could put on the radio, maybe crack the window open a bit, and froze.

  The keys weren’t there.

  Drew had taken them. He took the damned keys!

  Deflated, Eva fell back in her seat with a weary sigh.

  Why would he take the keys?

  But she already knew the answer. Habit. Drew had taken them without giving it a single thought - without giving her a single thought. “Great”, she muttered.

  Recessed within the dashboard above the radio was a clock with an analog display. The hands showed 5:18 p.m. She’d give him five minutes. After that, she’d flag down someone to phone the police (since she couldn’t use her own cellphone) with quite a story to tell. But without any evidence to support such a story, it would be her word alone. Would she be seen as crazy? Or worse, might they turn their backs on her, afraid that getting involved would put them in unnecessary danger?

  She checked the clock again. Two minutes had passed. Two down, three to go.

  She reached into the back seat, picked up the cellphone, took it out of standby. Once again the display became washed out, the icons unreadable. She tried the voice command. Nothing.

  Then an idea occurred to her. What if she found some kind of extension that enabled her to operate the phone from a distance? Would it work? Well, hell, it was worth a try.

  Eva searched the floor between the front and rear seats certain that the ice scraper was around there somewhere. She checked and rechecked. No luck.

  She moved to the front seats, felt around the floor and underneath the seats. Once again, she came up empty-handed.

  She sat for a while thinking when a light went off in her head. She reached over to open the glove compartment, found the trunk release button, pressed it. The car shook slightly with a dull thump as the trunk door popped open.

  Eva got out of the car, went around the back, stopped. For the first time she noticed the shattered taillight. She stood mystified over the amount of destruction that had been wrought upon it. It hadn’t only been shattered, it had been demolished, vaporized. In its place was a gaping hole.

  As the initial shock wore off, Eva began tracing back to recent events, to when they were almost run off the road by the road raging maniac. At some point while playing bumper tag with the Acura, his Ford pickup must have struck the left taillight causing it to shatter, though she saw no conclusive evidence, like paint scuffs, to support this assumption. That was discrepancy number one. Discrepancy number two was that she couldn’t recall ever getting struck so hard as to cause such damage. The one or two bumps the Acura took from the truck had been light taps intended only to scare rather than damage - at least at that point (what stopped the
maniac from going further was Drew taking evasive action, donutting the Acura into the opposing lane. It was a crazy move but one that probably saved their lives).

  As much as she wanted to believe it was the truck’s bumper that wrecked the taillight, the evidence didn’t seem to support it.

  Then Eva recalled the maniac stepping out of the truck. It was hard to tell for sure from the rearview mirror but she thought he might have been cradling a rifle or shotgun in his arms. She never saw him aiming the gun at them. If he had, then it had to be during the moment they were fishtailing. She must have mistaken the bang that rattled the car for a bump in the road rather than the sound of a bullet destroying the taillight.

  A bullet.

  Eva’s blood went cold.

  Did Drew know about this? She deliberated, going through point by point like a lawyer examining a case file.

  The gas cap is not far from the taillight.

  Drew got out of the car to fill the tank.

  In order to do this, he had to first open the gas cap, which is on the same side as the damaged taillight, the driver side.

  It stood to reason then if Drew went to the back of the car with the purpose of filling the tank, he would have seen the damage. It was a hole as big as a softball. How could he not see it?

  Final conclusion: Drew knows about the damaged taillight. He wasn’t stupid. He was a programmer, for god's sake.

  She wondered why he hadn’t told her. He had gone through a lot with her, accompanying her to the fertility clinic, the hospital, witnessing her disappointments and rebounds. Her moods had gotten quite stormy at times, yet he rode them out with patience, compassion and understanding. As a result of this roller-coaster ride she supposed he had become too sensitive to her feelings. It was the only explanation that made sense. Not that any of it mattered now. The only thing that mattered was getting inside the trunk. Somewhere in there lay the blessed tire iron, which promised access to her cellphone and the return of at least some control over her life.

  She lifted the trunk door, pushed back the carpet to reveal the spare tire.