The Lonely Mile

by Allan Leverone

  The cruiser’s air conditioner was running and the coolness felt refreshing and invigorating after the blistering heat radiating off the pavement. Bill sighed and closed his eyes. He tried to find a comfortable position, not an easy task with his hands cuffed behind his back. It looked like he was going to be here a while. He wished he had his coffee.

  CHAPTER 13

  “WHAT THE HELL WERE you doing inside that rest area with a loaded gun?”

  Bill was seated in an interrogation room at the State Police barracks in Lee while a petite, auburn-haired woman, who had introduced herself rather perfunctorily as “Canfield,” paced back and forth in front of him. She seemed angry, affronted that an ordinary citizen might carry a concealed weapon in a public place.

  Bill assumed Canfield was a detective, but since she hadn’t offered her status during the introduction, he couldn’t be sure. One thing he was sure of, though, was that she was extremely unhappy and more than willing to share her displeasure with him.

  He had cooled his heels inside the State Police cruiser for close to forty-five minutes before officers returned and removed the handcuffs, apparently satisfied, after speaking with the many witnesses inside the rest stop, that Bill was one of the good guys, or at least didn’t represent the enemy. They had very respectfully informed him that they would be driving him to the station—he waited for someone to say “downtown,” like they always did on TV but was once again disappointed—where he was going to have to answer a few questions.

  The police had been careful to stress that he was not under arrest, nor was he considered a suspect in any criminal activity, and they backed up their claim by not cuffing his hands to the iron ring protruding from the middle of the scarred wooden table dominating the interrogation room. Aside from that courtesy, though, Bill doubted there was much difference between how he was being treated and how the I-90 Killer might have been treated.

  Bill watched his interrogator as she stomped back and forth. It was like trying to follow a particularly spirited tennis volley. Canfield stopped short of adopting an accusatory tone but came close. She was clearly trying to lean on him, although for what purpose he could not guess.

  Canfield—whether that was her first or last name was unclear, although Bill figured it was the latter, since she was very clearly a woman, a good-looking one at that, and he had never known a single female with the first name of Canfield in his life—seemed to find it unlikely in the extreme that an ordinary citizen carrying a concealed weapon would happen to be inside the rest stop at the exact time the I-90 Killer would try to snatch a girl.

  Bill thought the kidnapper had probably found it unlikely as well, and tried to hide a smile. He failed, and Canfield stopped right in the middle of a question to ask, “Do you find something funny about this, Mr. Ferguson?”

  “Listen,” he said, “I’m not the enemy here. I have a valid, up-to-date license to carry that Browning due to business concerns. Feel free to check, although I imagine you already have. I realize that, mathematically, the odds are against me being in the exact position to see an attempted kidnapping and then stop it, but that’s precisely what happened. Obviously, the girl and her parents related the same story or I would be sitting in a holding cell right now. So why bust my chops? What do you think you’re going to gain from that? I don’t expect a ticker-tape parade from you people, but you don’t need to flog me with a rubber hose, either.”

  Canfield leveled her best, flat-eyed cop gaze at Bill, amazed by the outburst, her next question apparently forgotten. Then a trace of a smile seemed to tug at the corners of her mouth for just a second before disappearing. She turned without a word and left the room.

  Bill waited fifteen minutes before Canfield—Officer Canfield? Detective Canfield? Agent Canfield?—returned, and when she did, she was lugging a bulky, old-fashioned tape recorder. She took a seat across from him at the table and set the recorder between them, plugged it in, and turned it on. She recorded initial identifying information, the date and their names, before starting a formal interview. The mystery was solved. “Canfield” was FBI Special Agent Angela Canfield, lead investigator on the search for the I-90 Killer.

  The FBI was extremely interested in Bill Ferguson as he was the first person they were aware of who had interacted with the elusive I-90 Killer and survived to tell about it, or at least who hadn’t disappeared into thin air afterward, and the authorities wanted to learn every last detail of the encounter.

  The other witnesses, all of the people inside the rest stop at the time of the confrontation, were, undoubtedly, being interviewed as well, but the two the authorities were most interested in would be Bill and the young girl who had been the target. They had gotten closest to the man.

  Agent Canfield’s initial questions centered on a detailed, physical description of the kidnapper. Then, Canfield took Bill through a timeline from his perspective, again in the most detailed manner possible, of the entire attempted abduction, from beginning to end. Where was Bill when he noticed something was wrong? What was he doing? What drew his attention to the kidnapper? Why did he feel something was amiss?

  After she seemed satisfied with the description of the man’s physical characteristics and timeline of the crime, Canfield spent a long time questioning Bill about the vehicle he had seen the I-90 Killer driving. Bill had gotten a pretty close-up view of it as it passed him in the parking lot, and the authorities wanted as accurate a description as possible to add to the alert which had already been issued.

  “It was pretty generic,” he said. “A standard truck with an enclosed, square cargo box on the back, like a small moving truck. It had clearly been repainted and its color was off-white. It looked like an amateur paint job to me. The coloring was uneven and beginning to fade.”

  “What about identifying markings? Name of a business, telephone number, anything?”

  “No,” he said. “There was nothing on the truck at all that I could see, either on the side of the cargo box or on the passenger side door when he drove by.”

  “What about the license plate?”

  Bill shook his head. “I tried to read it, but there was so much blue smoke pouring from the exhaust that it totally obscured the tags. I couldn’t even make out what state the vehicle was registered in. It could have been Massachusetts or New York. Or neither one, for that matter. In fact, I would say the smoke might represent the only real identifying characteristic of the truck. It needs a ring job badly. Aside from that, it’s completely anonymous. There are probably ten thousand trucks just like it all over the east coast.”

  From there, the interview deviated into Bill’s perceptions of the attempted kidnapper. The man had successfully evaded capture by law enforcement for well over three years. Every time they got close, he would frustrate authorities by simply disappearing. “If you had to choose one word to describe this man, what would it be?” Canfield asked.

  Bill sat quietly, thinking. The question had surprised him. The agent didn’t hurry him; she seemed to have all the time in the world.

  “Arrogant,” he finally answered.

  “How so?”

  “Even when I had my weapon trained right on him, he seemed to feel he was in complete control. Looking back on it now, I suppose he was, considering how it turned out, but at no time did he ever seem to doubt his own ability to escape from a situation that had to have appeared pretty hopeless.”

  “He wasn’t nervous?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Bill said. “He was definitely nervous. He was sweating up a storm and smelled like he hadn’t showered for days. I feel sorry for that poor girl—he was hugging her like a second skin. But even though he was nervous, he acted like he believed he was smarter than everyone else in the room and could use that intelligence any time he wanted to fashion his escape.”

  Canfield paused, studying Bill. It had been a long time since an attractive woman looked at him that closely—definitely since before the divorce, probably since way before, if he wa
s being honest with himself—and Bill wasn’t about to complain or hurry her along. It seemed clear her interest in him was strictly professional, but still, he had to admit that it felt kind of good. Plus, it was obvious she was trying to formulate a question she didn’t quite know how to ask, and he was more than happy to let her twist in the wind for a while as payback for leaning on him so hard about his gun at the beginning of the interview.

  At last, she cleared her throat. “Why do you suppose…”

  He thought he knew what she wanted to ask but waited her out. Finally she finished, rushing through the question as if embarrassed about asking. “Why do you suppose he didn’t just shoot you and take the girl? He was holding a human shield, but you had no such protection.”

  Bill smiled. “I’ve been asking myself exactly that question since about five seconds after the guy drove away. I really don’t have a clue. The only thing I can guess is that maybe he was afraid shooting me would cause a mass panic and that the rest of the people inside the rest stop might stampede wildly toward the door in an attempt to escape, blocking him in. He must have known the cops were on their way and that he had a limited amount of time to get out. After all, this State Police barracks is only a mile or so away from the place.”

  At last, Agent Canfield turned off the recorder and unplugged it, winding the cord around the machine. She reached into the breast pocket of her chambray shirt and pulled out a business card, handing it to Bill. “This has my office number as well as my private cell phone number on it. If you think of anything else, I don’t care how small or unimportant it seems, please call me. Any time, night or day, I don’t care. We need to catch this guy, and we need to do it before he takes another girl.”

  “How is she?” Bill asked.

  “Who?”

  “The teenage girl the guy tried to kidnap. Allie, I think, was her name. How is she doing?”

  Canfield thought about it and laughed. It made her whole face light up and Bill wanted to tell her she should do it more often. “The girl is fine,” she said. “She’s a tough kid. Her mother, though, that’s a different story. I don’t think she’s going to let that poor thing out of her sight again. Ever.”

  Canfield stood and picked up the recorder, indicating the interview was over. “I’ll take you back to the rest stop to pick up your vehicle.”

  “Isn’t that kind of a menial job for a big-shot FBI Special Agent?”

  She laughed again and said, “We’re stretched a little thin at the moment, as you might imagine. Everyone available is back at the rest area cleaning up your mess.” She said it with a smile.

  The pair walked out of the State Police barracks and the heat rolled over them. The pavement felt soft and mushy underfoot. “Seriously, though,” Canfield said, “nice work back there. You could have been killed, but you managed the situation, and now that seventeen-year-old girl is going home with her parents tonight when she could have been God-knows-where, facing an unthinkable fate.”

  They slid into an unmarked Chevrolet Caprice, and Canfield cranked the engine. “I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to think about this, but the media is going to be all over you when we get back to the crime scene. I called our people at the plaza, and there are television trucks and reporters everywhere. We can’t order you not to talk to them but would prefer that you don’t—”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Bill interrupted. “I have zero desire to be a reality TV star.”

  “Good. We will be behind most of the assembled media when we enter the parking lot, so, with a little luck, you might be able to make it to your van unseen, but I wouldn’t hold out too much hope on that score. I’m sure they’re staking out your vehicle, just waiting for you to come back to pick it up.”

  “If they know which one it is.”

  “They’ll know.”

  The pair cruised westbound along the interstate to Exit 1, then crossed over the highway and turned back east. Less than five minutes later, Canfield eased the unmarked vehicle into the massive service area parking lot. She hadn’t been kidding. The media were buzzing around the location like bees at a honey pot. He pointed out his van and the FBI Special Agent pulled to a stop as close to it as she could manage without alerting the throng of reporters to their presence.

  “Good luck,” she said as he opened his door, “and remember what I told you. Feel free to call me any time if you think of anything else that might be helpful. No detail is too small.”

  Canfield handed him his gun with a smile. “I know it will be tempting, but try not to use this on those vultures out there.” She nodded toward the gathered mass of television and newspaper reporters milling about at the front of the parking lot.

  Bill secured the weapon in the shoulder holster under his jacket and stepped out of the car, walking casually toward his van, covering roughly half the distance before being spotted. The horde of media turned their attention from the front of the service plaza toward Bill as he picked up his pace. Television cameras tracked his progress, questions were shouted, flashbulbs popped. He reached his van and yanked open the driver’s side door as the quickest of the news people shoved microphones in his face.

  “I have no comment,” Bill said, grimacing and shaking his head at the chaotic scene. It occurred to him that he had felt safer and more in control with the I-90 Killer’s gun stuck in his face than he did right now. He eased the door closed, using his right hand to shove three stubborn microphones out of the way while he pulled on the handle with his left. He could have closed the door on the reporters’ hands with no problem at all. These people were relentless.

  The van started with a rumble, and Bill pulled carefully around the men and women holding cameras, microphones, and notebooks, making his way slowly but steadily toward the on-ramp and the freedom of the interstate. Finally, he broke loose from the crowd and accelerated smoothly away, anxious see Carli, who by now would be home from school. It was a weekday, so she would be at Sandra and Howard’s home rather than at Bill’s apartment, but he didn’t think Sandra would mind him stopping by for a few minutes to chat with Carli. It was something he really needed to do.

  That blonde teen who had come so close to being taken by the gunman at the service stop reminded him so much of his own seventeen-year-old daughter that he needed to see his little girl for himself, to hug her and tousle her hair the way she hated, to see her and talk to her and feel her. To convince himself she was okay and not the unwitting victim of some random act of violence committed by a sociopath with a gun.

  Because you never know. That was the lesson of the day—you just never know.

  CHAPTER 14

  MARTIN KRALL SAT ON his threadbare couch staring at the TV, a dirty glass of flat cola warming on the table next to him. The porn videos he had planned on watching were forgotten because something even more interesting had caught his attention. The moment he arrived home he had flicked on the television, certain he would be able to find breaking news reports from back at the rest stop, but he almost couldn’t believe the scene that greeted his eyes.

  The highway rest area was a madhouse. All of the local stations had preempted their afternoon programming in favor of live coverage of the attempted kidnapping. Apparently, the breathless reports went, a citizen inside the building had thwarted the I-90 Killer in his attempt to abduct another girl, his fourteenth over the past three-and-a-half years, the first time the infamous outlaw had ever been unsuccessful.

  On the screen, reporters interviewed the victim’s tearful mother as she stood in the shade of the overhang on the top step just outside the entrance to the rest stop. Her arm was wrapped tightly around her daughter’s shoulder, and it appeared she had no intention of ever removing it. The blonde girl looked exhausted.

  Martin’s heart ached. She was so beautiful. He already missed her immensely.

  “It was incredible,” the woman was telling an unseen reporter. “This man, Bill Ferguson, risked his life to save my little girl. He stared down the barrel
of that lunatic’s gun. Then, the police came and he just disappeared. I don’t know what happened to him or where he went, but I didn’t have a chance to talk to him or even thank him for the tremendous risk he took. Mr. Ferguson, if you’re out there, you are a true hero. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

  Martin felt a tide of anger rising inside him as he watched the disgusting display on his television. He wanted to pull his gun out and shoot the woman right through the screen. That girl she was so obsessively hugging to her bosom should have been his. She was rightfully his and she’d been taken away by that stupid busybody who didn’t have a shred of common sense. Why in the holy hell did he have to stick his nose into a situation that was clearly none of his business?

  Didn’t a loaded gun mean anything anymore? Martin was flabbergasted. He could not understand it.

  The more he thought about, the more he realized he had been wronged, had suffered a personal insult, and he was not about to take it lying down. The old Martin Krall would have curled up in the fetal position like some pathetic loser when life dealt him a bad hand. No more. The new and improved Martin Krall had learned that you had to fight for yourself in this world; you had to go after what you wanted, because no one else was going to get it for you.

  On television, the cameras tracked the reluctant hero as he climbed into his vehicle, clearly anxious to escape. Questions were shouted at him from every direction and he ignored them all. “No comment,” he said as he pulled his door shut and started his van’s engine. He pulled forward slowly and carefully, the reporters moving out of the way only with the utmost reluctance and only at the point of being run down.

  The man’s van lumbered left to right across the screen as he accelerated toward the on-ramp to the highway. He was driving a Ford Econoline panel van. Stenciled across the side in big, gold, block letters against a blue background were the words “Ferguson Hardware.” Underneath, in smaller print, were words Martin could not make out. He assumed they were the locations and telephone numbers of his stores.