The Lonely Mile

by Allan Leverone

  Bill could see his ex-wife giving serious consideration to their logic, turning the words over in her mind, looking for flaws. He had spent nearly sixteen years married to Sandra, and he could still read her expressions with ease. She would have made a lousy poker player. It pained him to offer up a solution that would mean he didn’t get to see his little girl for nearly three months, but he had to admit, he was more than a little concerned for her safety, regardless of Canfield’s assurances. If leaving the area for a while was what it took to keep her out of harm’s way, he was one hundred percent in favor of the idea.

  The kitchen was silent as the small group awaited Sandra’s reaction. “Well, there aren’t many options. It’s either pack up and leave today or wait just a few more days. Either way, we’re getting her out of here.” Still, nobody spoke. She sighed and turned to her husband. “I want you to call the travel agent, right now, and book a trip for us. For the summer. Starting the day after graduation.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Where would you like to go?”

  “I don’t care—somewhere well away from here.”

  CHAPTER 28

  MARTIN FELT STRANGELY AT ease as he sat in the school bus, just another driver waiting in the long line of buses outside the high school at the end of the day. The big vehicles rumbled, filling the air with the oily smell of dozens of diesel engines. He had been a little concerned about other drivers poking their heads into the bus with the intention of chit-chatting with their dead friend while they waited for their passengers, so he had prepared a cover story about being a newly hired substitute driver, just in case, but it hadn’t turned out to be a problem.

  His fellow drivers sat behind the wheels of their vehicles, staring straight ahead through the tinted windshields like automatons. Probably regulations, Martin decided; they weren’t permitted to leave the cabs with their engines running just in case one of the budding, young delinquents came out of school early and decided to take a bus for a joy ride.

  After disposing of the driver’s body inside the stolen Hyundai and then hiking back to her house, Martin had pulled his disguise out of his backpack and hurriedly applied it. It was nothing elaborate, just a mullet wig—making him look like a 1980s vintage Billy Ray Cyrus—which he then covered with a green, John Deere baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Above his upper lip he applied a fake brown mustache, and he was good to go.

  There was no point going overboard; it wasn’t like he was trying to fool Sherlock Holmes, for crying out loud. All he had to do was alter his appearance just enough so a seventeen-year-old girl wouldn’t recognize him; a girl who would undoubtedly be distracted and not paying the slightest attention to who was behind the wheel of her bus anyway. She would be engrossed in a conversation with her best friend, frantically texting another friend, or lost in the music of her iPod. Or, more likely, all three at once. Whatever.

  Martin felt confident Carli Ferguson would not walk onto the bus and examine the face of her driver to ensure it was not the same guy who had handed her the threatening letter two days ago. No one would expect him to take the bold step he was planning today, least of all a naïve, small-town high-school girl, which was exactly why he was doing it.

  The front doors of the school were thrown open, and a swarm of students began to exit, moving faster and looking more alert than they probably had all day. After squeezing through the natural bottleneck of the doorway, the kids fanned out and began searching for their buses, scanning the long yellow row of vehicles parked along the access road leading from the street to the paved parking lot behind the school.

  Each bus had its own number on a white placard in the side window. The students searched the row of buses for their number, then clambered aboard. Martin knew the process would take only about five minutes after the school’s doors had swung open; the students weren’t anxious to spend any more time at the school than was absolutely necessary.

  Martin held a newspaper to his face and pretended to read as the kids boarded, confident in the anonymity his disguise afforded but doing his best not to watch as the teens climbed on. He was anxious and nervous but trying to project an air of routine boredom. It was not an easy look to achieve, especially knowing that any one of the girls climbing the aluminum steps and brushing his arm on the way down the center row might be his angel, the girl with whom he would soon be enjoying a glorious week of unbridled passion.

  The bus was roughly half full, and things were progressing smoothly when one of the boarding students peered at him closely and asked, “Where’s Mrs. Bengston?”

  Martin’s heart began hammering a staccato beat in his chest, and, for a brief moment, he feared maybe the kid could hear it. His first instinct was to reach for the semi-automatic pistol concealed under the waistband of his jeans, but he controlled it. There was no reason to overreact. Yet.

  He looked over the top of his newspaper at a pimply-faced boy of maybe sixteen, with curly hair about a day overdue for a shampoo and black, horn-rimmed glasses that had slid halfway down his greasy nose. He shrugged. “I dunno, sick, I guess.” The kid just stood there. “I’m the substitute,” he added lamely. Then he waved the kid down the aisle. “Let’s go,” he finally added firmly, figuring the best defense had to be a good offense. “Move it, you’re holding up the line.”

  Martin dropped his face back behind the open newspaper, ready to pull his weapon and wheel the big bus out of line and away from the school if necessary. He hoped he wouldn’t have to, because he had no way of knowing whether his Carli was even on board yet. Finally the kid shrugged and slouched down the aisle, and the boarding process continued. No one else said a word to him or even acknowledged his existence, which was exactly what he had been counting on.

  As the last of the kids filed onto the bus, Martin considered what might have caused the one teenager to question him. He figured the kid must have heard the story of the I-90 Killer approaching one of his schoolmates and wondered if that had played any part in it, but that seemed unlikely. Probably the kid was related to “Mrs. Bengston” or lived down the road from her or something; this hick town was so small, that seemed the most obvious possibility.

  Approximately two-thirds of the available seats had been filled when the last of the students shuffled in and sat down. Martin waited for the bus ahead of him to close its doors and begin pulling ahead, as he had seen the drivers do when he performed his surveillance. The urge to check the young faces in the oversized mirror looming above his sun visor was almost overwhelming, but he controlled himself. Patience was key.

  Finally the conga line of vehicles began moving. Martin shifted into drive, and the big diesel engine pulled the bus forward as he eased down on the accelerator. He was almost there. The only thing that could go wrong now was if Carli Ferguson had missed school today for some reason and wasn’t on the bus. Martin refused to acknowledge that possibility. If she had attended classes yesterday, one day after being approached by the infamous I-90 Killer, Martin figured she almost certainly would have done so today as well. Of course, there was always the possibility she had gotten sick or stayed home for some other reason.

  No matter. If Carli wasn’t on the bus today, Martin would simply drop back and punt—return home and develop an alternative plan to wrest Carli from the hands of her parents. The line of buses burst out of the school driveway, one after the other, half turning right and the other half left, as oncoming traffic ground to a halt in both directions, stopped by a police officer stationed in the middle of the road. Martin appreciated the courtesy.

  He made the left turn as a low buzz of conversation filled the bus. The line moved steadily, and, one by one, the vehicles in front of Martin veered off the main road onto side streets as they began the process of running their routes. When he had traveled roughly half the distance between the school and the convenience store where Martin met his angel two days ago, he pulled off the road, turning into the mostly empty parking lot of a strip mall that had seen better days. The tired-lo
oking complex housed a hair salon, a donut shop, and an auto-parts store, as well as two sagging, empty storefronts standing as mute testimony to a sputtering economy in a struggling town.

  Immediately after turning into the lot, Martin cut the wheel to the left, rolling the bus to a stop parallel to the street it had just turned off. This was not a scheduled stop, and even the most unobservant of the children had by now realized something was not quite right. The first stop on this route was not supposed to occur for nearly another half-mile.

  A jumble of confused but not particularly concerned voices drifted forward, some kids questioning the unexplained stop but most simply complaining about the unscheduled delay.

  “What the—”

  “Come on, let’s move it.”

  “I’ve got stuff to do!”

  The comments were all directed toward the front of the bus in general and Martin in particular, but he ignored them. What was he going to say? “Oh, it’s okay, none of you have to worry. Except, of course, for Carli, my sweetheart, my angel, my chosen one!”

  Instead of responding to the grumbling, Martin slammed the gearshift into park and stood, pivoting to face the kids, a few of the more adventurous of whom had begun standing and moving into the aisle. What exactly they thought they were doing Martin had no idea, but he decided it would be wise to put an immediate stop to the activity. He drew his gun and held it up next to his ear so it would be clearly visible, even in the back. For now, he kept it pointing at the roof.

  Everyone froze. One boy who had been halfway to a standing position eased back down into his seat but he was the only one who moved. Everyone else froze, doing their best to will themselves invisible. No one had yet screamed, although that could change at any moment.

  Martin used the silence as an opportunity to address the crowd. “No one has anything to worry about as long as nobody does anything stupid.”

  Silence.

  Martin continued. “Would Carli Ferguson please stand up?”

  Still nobody moved. Cars cruised by in the parking lot, and people walked in and out of the stores at the other end of the pavement, none of them paying any attention to the drama playing out in the stationary school bus out near the road. Martin had known they wouldn’t, but he also knew that if a police car should happen to drive by and see the bus parked where it didn’t belong, the complexion of the entire scenario would change in an instant. It was time to move things along.

  He scanned the rows of drab green, vinyl-covered double seats quickly and his heart soared when his eyes came to rest on his angel. She was there! Carli sat by herself, cringing, pushing herself into the back of her seat as if she thought she might be able to disappear, her eyes wide and terrified. Apparently, her friend Lauren had not taken the bus home today. Martin wanted to tell her not to be afraid, that he would never do anything to harm his girl—provided, of course, she did exactly as she was told.

  He began opening his mouth to tell her, “Look, I’m pointing the gun at the ceiling so nobody gets hurt!” when he sensed rather than felt furtive movement diagonally off to his left. Immediately, he pivoted and found himself face to face with a big kid, a junior or a senior, probably a football player pumped up and strong; full of himself.

  It was arrogant bullies just like this that had made Martin’s life miserable back when he was in school, and this fool was obviously just as stupid as all of them had been. The moron had been going to make a play for Martin’s gun, he was sure of it. Martin leaned forward, jamming the barrel of the pistol against the middle of the hero’s forehead, remembering his humiliation at the hands of that busybody Bill Ferguson who had refused to mind his own business. This guy was younger, but otherwise, they were two peas out of the same pod.

  The kid whimpered, yanking his head back reflexively, smacking the back of it against the window, murmuring “No, no, no.”

  Through gritted teeth, Martin asked, “Something I can do for you?”

  The kid shook his head. He looked like he was about to crap his pants. Maybe he already had.

  “What part of, ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ did you not understand?” he asked, and the kid said nothing. His lips were trembling, and his face was sheet-white. Martin said, “Sit down, and don’t you move again. Not one inch.” The kid nodded and sat back down quickly.

  Turning his attention back to Carli, Martin was surprised to see her standing in the aisle, hands raised with her palms forward, held in front of her face in a gesture of submission. “Please,” she said softly, as if afraid she might spook him, “please don’t hurt him, and I’ll come with you. I won’t be a problem, just don’t hurt anybody, please.”

  The bus was deathly silent. Martin could hear the hero breathing heavily in the seat to his left. It sounded like he was sobbing. He could hear Carli Ferguson’s footsteps as she moved slowly up the aisle, dragging her feet on the floor as if her body was resisting what her mind was telling it to do. The students who had risen from their seats and moved into the aisle stepped aside en masse, taking their seats, clearing the way for their schoolmate to move toward the man with the gun, any thoughts of heroism choked back by Martin’s brutal response to the one alpha male who had tried to interfere.

  Martin backed toward the dashboard of the bus, pointing the gun in the general direction of the students huddled in their seats. There was no real reason to be careful now that he knew Carli’s location. He had been afraid before that if the gun went off he might strike his girl by accident, but there was nothing to worry about now on that score. He had no desire to hurt or kill any of the snotty brats, but no real problem with it, either, if it should come to that.

  By now, Carli had reached the front of the bus and stood facing him. A look of terror marred her beautiful features but there was more: a quiet dignity that surprised Martin. He had expected to have to deal with a screaming, hysterical mess, but Carli Ferguson seemed composed beyond her years, further confirming Martin’s conviction—not that he needed any more confirmation—that she was special.

  For a moment, Martin had the strangest sense of déjà vu. Carli’s father had stood facing him just days before in virtually the same position at virtually the same distance, just before everything had gone to hell. He felt a palpable sense of victory. He wished that no-good busybody Bill Ferguson were here so he could see this moment, but took solace in the knowledge that the testimony of an entire bus full of witnesses would ensure the wannabe hero learned every detail of how his daughter’s disappearance had gone down.

  A wide smile creased Martin’s features, and a look of alarm filled Carli’s eyes. This was not what she had been expecting. “I’m not going to hurt you, baby,” he whispered, and reached over with his free hand to pull the lever which would open the bus’s door. He looked down the aisle of the bus for one last time and said, loudly, “Don’t anybody move for at least ten minutes, or I’ll come back in here and kill every last one of you.”

  Utter funereal silence greeted this pronouncement, and Martin decided the baby sheep would stay in their seats at least as long as he needed them to, which was only a few seconds anyway. He used the pistol to nudge his angel down the steps and then followed her out the door of the bus into the intense May heat, slipping the gun into his pocket as he did. A couple of people glanced suspiciously at the bus but obviously did not see the gun as they made no move to run or scream or do anything other than take a quick peek and then retreat back into the comfort of their own lives inside their insulated cocoons.

  Parked directly in front of the bus, two car-lengths away, was a maroon Toyota, nearly brand new, clean and shiny. Martin had jacked it specifically to impress Carli. It was slightly more conspicuous—newer and more expensive—than the type of car he would normally steal, but it was still fairly unassuming, so it was nearly invisible. Besides, it seemed appropriate to let his angel know how much she meant to him. The car had been sitting in the lot for a couple of hours now, but, with a set of stolen license plates on it, Martin had known
it would still be here when he needed it, and here it was.

  He fumbled for the key fob in his pocket, finally locating it and flipping the automatic locks. “Get in the driver’s door and then slide over to the passenger side,” he muttered under his breath to Carli, who complied without argument.

  “Just don’t hurt anyone,” she said again as if Martin were some sort of monster, an implication that cut him to the quick. He choked down the anger that rose like bile in his throat, resolving to show his little angel how deeply he cared and how hurtful it was that she didn’t trust him or understand his motives.

  The instant she had begun sliding over the center console, Martin climbed in behind her, pulling the gun out of his pocket and training it squarely on her back. He didn’t think she would try to burst out the other side of the car and run, but he wasn’t completely convinced. He needn’t have worried. His angel settled into the passenger’s seat and stared resolutely out the side window as if silently imploring someone, anyone, to come along and save her. Fat chance. Martin had gone to a lot of trouble and taken more than a few chances to maneuver Carli Ferguson to his side where she belonged; he wasn’t about to let her slip away now. He used the button on his side to lock all doors.

  The Toyota started up on the first try and rolled smoothly forward. In seconds, Martin and his precious cargo had reached the parking lot’s exit. He flicked his left turn signal, waited for an opening in the passing traffic, and then accelerated onto Main Street. In the rearview mirror he checked on the school bus, a big, yellow, beached whale alone in the parking lot, its red hazard lights flashing an automatic warning with the door hanging open.

  The bus steadily shrank in size as Martin sped away, until it disappeared from view. The maroon Toyota passed the high school on the right and continued out of town, moving toward the interstate and anonymity. In five minutes, Martin and his reluctant passenger had left Stockton behind.