The Lonely Mile

by Allan Leverone

  Instead you make a promise to yourself. You promise yourself that you will survive and get even someday. Even if it doesn’t happen until you are a full-grown adult, even if it doesn’t happen for twenty years, you will get even.

  You lie in the dark, hardening your heart, visualizing what you will do to even the score and how you will do it, and gradually, slowly, ever so slowly, your tears stop flowing, and your sobs stop choking you, and you begin to calm your frazzled nerves, and you begin to feel like you might actually be able to survive, to hold on for one more day. Picturing the vengeance you will reap when you’re older works for you, makes it possible for you to struggle through one more endless assault.

  The dream is always the same. You are terrified and humiliated and in pain, and you get through the night by promising to get even. Someday you will get even.

  CHAPTER 26

  May 27

  THERE WASN’T REALLY ALL that much to the plan, when you came right down to it. Despite the fact he had told them what he was going to do, Martin determined it wouldn’t be that hard to take Carli Ferguson. He was a predator, and a good one at that. He was smarter, better-prepared, and far more motivated than the herds of sheep surrounding him. Even if you warned the sheep the wolf was coming for them, they still, ultimately, were only as bright as…well…sheep, and sheep were no match for the cunning wolf.

  So even though it would have been much easier to snatch Carli Ferguson two days ago when she had stood so tantalizingly within his reach—he could have waited until her friend went home, or sliced her friend’s throat, grabbed Carli, and been into his car and gone before any of the grazing sheep even sensed something was amiss—doing it this way would be much more satisfying. He felt like a cat toying with a mouse. Except that, when he was finished toying, he would have sweet Carli—his beautiful young angel—who represented a much more desirable prize than a nasty rodent. And they would share seven days of unimaginable bliss together before he sent her on to her final destination, trained to please.

  Unless, of course, he decided to keep her for himself.

  The time now was just past noon, and the drive from his home to Stockton High School would take no more than thirty minutes. Dismissal time at SHS wasn’t until just after two o’clock. That was one of the first details Martin had checked, so there was no need to rush.He had figured, teenage obstinacy being what it was, that Carli would convince her mother to let her take the bus to and from school for the foreseeable future. Obviously, she wouldn’t be walking home any more—her mother would never allow that and neither would the police. He knew she didn’t own a car and was pretty confident she would flatly shoot down any plan that required her to be picked up at the front door of the high school by Mommy—that would constitute the most flagrant form of teenage humiliation imaginable, especially for a senior.

  Thus the school bus would be left as the only reasonable alternative, and after discussing the matter with the police, who were almost certainly staking out the Ferguson home, the reluctant mother would agree to allow her child to ride the bus. She would hesitate, but the police would eventually convince her that they could keep Carli in their sights as she walked the short distance from the bus to her front door. Carli would insist she was not going to be picked up at school by her mommy—Martin smiled as he pictured his angel stamping her foot, hands on her hips, to make her point—and the mother would cave.

  That had been his working theory, and he had been right on target. He waited in a lot around the corner from the store where he had met with Carli a couple of days ago—he wasn’t crazy enough to park in the convenience store lot for a third time—and, as the bus turned the corner, he pulled out behind it, three cars back but still with an excellent view of the passengers as they exited at their stops.

  When the bus had screeched to a stop in front of Carli’s house a few moments later, he watched intently as one solitary passenger—his angel!—ran down the steps and hurried across the front lawn and into her house. The police were parked across the street in an unmarked blue Caprice, about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the side of the head. Of course, the whole thing was just a show of force; they had no reason to believe he would be bold enough to try to snatch her here. The cops were so intent on tracking Carli as she crossed the lawn that they didn’t pay the slightest attention to his car when he drove past them after she disappeared into her house. Idiots.

  That was yesterday, and his little sortie behind enemy lines had given Martin all the information he needed. Today would be the day. It was very soon, some might say too soon after giving the police and that interfering busybody the advance warning of his intentions, but the plan was pretty much foolproof, so there was really no reason to delay.

  Plus, and here was the real reason he didn’t want to wait, he absolutely ached with need. He missed his angel with an almost physical hurt, he was simply lost without her, and he knew he would continue to feel that way until she was at his side, where she belonged.

  Well, he wouldn’t have to wait long. Just a couple more hours.

  ***

  Martin wondered why anyone would ever want to drive a school bus. Despite the fact that he was drawn to teenage girls like a moth to flame, the notion of spending most of every day trapped inside a gigantic tin can with dozens of them, with their snotty attitudes and lack of manners, was more than he could stomach. He knew if he drove a school bus, kids would end up dead, probably before the end of the first run on his first day at work.

  He wondered about the apparent contradiction of a man who preferred the company of children—pedophile was the proper term, but he steadfastly refused to use or acknowledge that word; the girls he chose as companions were practically full-grown adults!—choosing to avoid them for the most part.

  Maybe that was why he would never be caught. He was very different from most others of his ilk: men who worked as schoolteachers or counselors or sports coaches or scout leaders or priests because of the opportunities those positions afforded to get close to children. Martin had never really enjoyed being around children, with the exception, of course, of the select few, the nubile, developed, but still naïve girls he picked out to serve as his special companions.

  Thus far, three-and-a-half years into his project, he had chosen well on some occasions and poorly on others, but he knew, he was absolutely, one hundred percent certain, that Carli Ferguson would be perfect for him. And why wouldn’t she be? He hadn’t chosen her, after all, the fates had. And that made all the difference in the world.

  Martin sat inside his idling car, pondering these and other issues as he waited on the side of a quiet, redneck back road somewhere on the outskirts of town, the farthest fringes of Stockton, past the water treatment plant, on the very edge of civilization where the forest reclaimed the landscape. The nearest home was probably a quarter-mile away, assuming the broken-down double-wide with the front door hanging halfway off its hinges was even inhabited.

  This was where Carli’s bus driver lived. Martin knew it was where she lived because he had followed her home last night at the end of her long shift.

  In this little town, as in small towns everywhere, the school bus drivers ferried kids to the high school first thing in the morning, then a few minutes later, they ran the very same routes all over again, this time bringing kids of a slightly younger age to the middle school, and then repeated the whole routine one more time a to bring the youngest children to the town’s only grade school.

  At the end of the school day they performed the same ritual all over again, bringing the kids back to their homes from the three schools in the same order: the high school classes ended first, followed by the middle school, and lastly, the grade school. In between, the drivers had a couple of hours to themselves and were allowed to park their buses at their homes rather than take them all the way to the bus company’s lot and then have to pick them up later.

  The driver of Carli’s bus, a squat, middle-aged woman with a head of massively frizzy brown
hair and sweat stains under her armpits, should be walking out the front door of her dumpy little ranch-style home to begin the afternoon shift any second now, and Martin would be waiting for her. She had backed the bus into her gravel driveway after the morning shift, a fairly impressive feat, he thought, considering the relative sizes of bus and driveway. Now it loomed next to her house, a hulking yellow tin can, facing the road as if prepared for a quick getaway.

  Right on cue, the front door swung wide and out waddled the frumpy driver. Martin gunned his engine, pulling the little car skillfully across the end of the driveway, coasting to a stop in front of the bus’s grille as the woman watched, her mouth forming a surprised “O.” Martin could almost see the question mark hanging in the air over her head. She wasn’t afraid, at least not yet, she was just curious. That was why he had come in so fast. Martin had discovered that if you caught them before they had time to realize they should be scared, the sheep were much easier to deal with. More compliant.

  He put his best, insincere, I’m-just-a-huckster-with-some-swampland-to-sell-you smile on his face and stepped out of the car, crossing the burned-out brown grass of the small front yard in a few, long strides. It was obvious the woman didn’t give a crap about the condition of her property. It was only late May for crying out loud; the lawn shouldn’t be in this kind of horrible condition for another two months yet.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he started out, “I’m so sorry to intrude, but I was wondering…” He was making it up as he went, riffing, enjoying the opportunity to mess with a stranger. He hardly ever interacted with people, and this was kind of fun. He really should get out more, he thought to himself.

  By now he had almost reached the woman and it was just beginning to dawn on her that something was seriously wrong. The grin Martin had plastered on his face was only effective from a distance. Up close, people seemed to recognize that the smile was put-on, probably because the good humor it implied never quite reached his eyes. Martin could see the exact moment the alarm bells started going off in her head, the panic beginning to blossom in her eyes, but by then it was much too late.

  She took a couple of shuffling steps backward, wanting to turn and run for the safety of her house but afraid to turn her back on this man who was approaching her for some unknown purpose. It was the wrong move, although by now, it didn’t really matter much. By backing up instead of running she was missing the opportunity to prolong her lifespan by maybe two or three seconds.

  As he arrived at a point roughly three feet from the now-fearful bus driver, Martin reached behind his back with his right hand and pulled a razor-sharp combat knife out of a leather sheath on his belt. He held it up with a flourish in front of the astonished woman’s eyes. She drew in a great wheezing breath, about to scream, but didn’t get the chance. With the grace born of practice and preparation, two things Martin Krall believed in greatly, he sliced her throat deftly from right to left, severing her vocal cords, opening a great yawning chasm from which blood splattered like crimson water out of a fire hose.

  The woman knitted her eyebrows as if the events of the last thirty seconds were beyond her comprehension, which, given the circumstances, they probably were. She shot Martin a look of extreme reproach, as if he had farted in church or something, then finally staggered backward and reached for the spurting neck wound with both hands to try to stanch the flow of blood.

  It wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t going to come close to working.

  Martin danced out of range of the arterial spray as the bus driver dropped, face down on her front lawn. Martin wondered if she was sorry now she hadn’t taken better care of it; the dry brown grass did little to cushion her fall. Just seconds after she fell, she stopped twitching and Martin got to work. He had a lot to do and not much time to get it done.

  He dragged her to his car, doing his best to minimize the amount of blood slopping out of the gaping wound. His body he didn’t care about; he had worn a long-sleeved jumpsuit, which he would later peel off and dispose of. The woman was sturdy, built like a block of wood, and Martin struggled to pull her along. He popped the trunk with the remote control on the key fob and managed to hoist her body up, dumping it in the trunk before slamming the lid on the still-warm corpse.

  There was nothing he could do about the blood staining the dusty yard where she had fallen. He just had to hope no one would come traipsing up to the front door for a while. She was too old to have school-age children, so that didn’t seem to be an issue, but you could never tell when a neighbor might drop by to borrow a cup of sugar or do whatever the sheep living in this miserable hellhole did to pass the time. On the bright side, the area was relatively far from town and sparsely populated, so the likelihood of anyone simply stopping in for a visit seemed remote.

  Martin jumped behind the wheel and backed out of the driveway, moving quickly but being careful to avoid scraping the front of the bus. He drove the Hyundai he had jacked off an old lady up the country road a couple hundred yards. When he had gotten just far enough to be out of sight of the murdered woman’s house, Martin yanked the wheel sharply to the right and hit the gas, forcing the little vehicle as far into the woods as possible. It jounced and stuttered over uneven ground, finally coming to rest against a massive oak tree.

  Satisfied the Hyundai was more or less screened from the view of anyone driving past, Martin grabbed a backpack off the seat next to him, then opened the door and stepped out into the woods. He quickly stripped off the jumpsuit, balling it up and tossing it into the trunk with the murdered bus driver before slamming the lid back down. He wasn’t concerned about leaving behind DNA evidence—there was none of his on file anywhere to match it, and in the unlikely event he was ever caught, he knew he would never see the light of day again. So why worry?

  Martin trudged out of the woods the way the car had come in, doing his best to straighten the crushed tree branches and scrub brush the car had smashed down on the way in. When he reached the pavement, he peered back at his handiwork. It wasn’t perfect, but the foliage above was thick, it was dark as a hooker’s heart in there, so it would probably not be discovered for a little while, and a little while was all he needed. The camouflage job didn’t have to be perfect. In another hour or so, Martin would depart this little town for good, and after that, it wouldn’t matter whether anyone found the lady or not.

  He jogged back along the edge of the road, thankful for small towns and people who valued their privacy. There wasn’t one nosy neighbor to worry about and not a single car had passed by on this little, out-of-the-way cow path the entire time Martin had been here, and that included the time he sat parked up the road waiting for the driver to come out of her house. The whole thing had all gone down so easy it almost didn’t seem fair. But he wasn’t done yet; the most challenging portion of the day’s activities was still to come.

  Martin retraced his steps to the scene of the murder and picked the bus key off the ground. The driver had been so busy dying, she had forgotten all about it. It was slick with her blood, and he was momentarily disgusted. Who knew what nasty diseases the old bat had been carrying around? It was one thing to get her blood on his overalls; he could deal with that, but all over his hands? The idea was just repulsive. He wiped the key off as best he could on the ground, succeeding mostly in getting dirt and dead brown grass all over it.

  Oh, well. You couldn’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, as the expression went, and Carli Ferguson was going to make one tasty omelet.

  CHAPTER 27

  BILL WATCHED AS SANDRA Mitchell stood with her hands on her hips in the middle of her spacious kitchen, facing him and the others seated at the kitchen table, a group which included her husband, Howard, and the FBI Special Agent in charge of the I-90 Killer case, Angela Canfield. He was glad Carli was safe at school. “I think we should just take Carli and leave town, go on a vacation, do anything to get her out of the sights of that madman.”

  Canfield nodded placatingly, holding her hands o
ut in front of her, palms forward, as if trying to ward off an evil spirit. Bill felt a little sorry for her. He had been in similar situations many times during arguments with his ex-wife, and knew that getting her to change her mind when it was made up was like trying to stop the sun from setting in the west.

  “Believe me, I understand how you feel,” Canfield said gamely. “But, as I explained already, I believe this letter is nothing more than a bluff, a chance for the dirt bag to put the unsuccessful kidnapping behind him while at the same time tweaking the man he holds responsible for his failure. He’s probably very frustrated at the moment because he has never experienced anything approaching this level of failure before.”

  “You believe he’s bluffing, but you really don’t know,” Sandra countered. “Let’s face it, Agent Canfield, if you really knew what was going on with this man, you would have caught him years ago. But he’s still on the loose, terrorizing innocent young girls. So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t put a whole lot of stock in what you have to say.”

  “Can I offer a compromise?” Bill interrupted. “There are only a few days of school left. Graduation activities start soon and it’d be a shame for Carli to miss them after spending the last twelve years with her friends, right?” Nobody argued, so he carried on. “How about letting her finish out the year, just these last few days, letting her take part in graduation? Then you can whisk her off to Europe or wherever. You can disappear all summer if you’d like; I won’t even put up an argument, custody-wise. Just let her finish out her high school career. She deserves that.”

  “Obviously, it’s your choice, Mrs. Mitchell,” Agent Canfield added. “But you’ve seen the police presence we have established right outside your door, and I can assure you, it is just as strong at the high school. Carli is safe at school during the day, as we’ve impressed upon her not to leave the grounds for any reason until classes have ended. And she’ll come home on the bus and be met here, so I don’t see any way there can be a problem.”