CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (3 page)

She knew he suspected as much, but she liked to get it all out in the open from the get-go. She wasn't technically a prostitute yet, but that's what she would have to be in order to survive. She meant to survive no matter what.

"I figured." He spoke with some admiration for her up-front confession. She thought he'd like that. Most of them did.

"I don't need to be saved, redeemed, talked to, lectured at, advised, or otherwise manipulated. I do what I do strictly to take care of myself and I'm not ashamed of it. I'm not looking for a Sugar Daddy or a pimp. I'm my own person." She said all this in one long breath, then sucked in air and turned her face to the window to keep the blush that rose in her cheeks from his view.

"I figured that too."

"Good. Now we're all straight," she said to the night outside the window.

"Want a Coke?" he lifted the lid of the Igloo cooler between the seats and gestured she take one. She screwed off the lid on a sixteen-ouncer and drank thirstily. Coke for supper was her diet when she didn't have Waffle House money. She preferred it over Pepsi. It put hair on her tongue and fire in her belly. He would probably buy her food somewhere later on. Before the night was over he'd no doubt expect repayment, and that was life, this adult life she'd chosen, tit for tat. She'd find a way to turn off her mind while she did it. She had a lot of things to get used to. Sex with strangers was one of them. She couldn't fault herself since she'd tried to find decent work before turning to it. It was as hard on the road as she thought it might be. She'd just have to be tough enough.

She was scheming how to explain to him in some politic fashion that frontal. missionary-position sex was going to be a problem for them when they passed a green road sign for the Pascagoula, Mississippi, exit. Molly never noticed the moment they left the state of Alabama in the wings. She'd crossed two state lines now and wasn't going to be bothered about it. That was the least of her worries. It was money and getting by that she had to do all her worrying about.

"You don't look sixteen," he said, never taking his eyes from the road.

Molly sighed. It was a damn shame she couldn't do something about that. She hunched her shoulders in the seat to shield her breasts. "I need to gain weight," she admitted. She weighed a hundred pounds on her good days. "How old do I look?"

"Thirteen. Fourteen."

Molly took a sip of Coke and nursed her silence. She wished to God she had her boobs back. It was bad enough being young. It was worse to look even younger. What kind of hooker was she going to make if she looked like a kid?

"You're cute. Beautiful hair."

She smiled a little, her lips curving around the bottle top. She lowered the Coke to her lap. "That's what people say. Personally, I don't like red hair. I might bleach it."

"That would be a shame. It certainly makes you stand out from a crowd."

"Irish ancestry kicking in. My dad's hair..." She bit her tongue. She hadn't meant to bring up her father. She didn't want to talk about him. Now she really sounded like a homesick, silly-ass little kid. Damn.

"Red too?" he asked.

"Yeah. Redder. Mine's got a little blond in it to tone it down. His, though, is fiery red."

Cruise whistled low in appreciation.

"Are you one of those old hippies?" Molly wanted to make him feel as uncomfortable as she had just felt when she slipped up and mentioned her father. Tit for tat.

Cruise laughed and this time she didn't get any shivery premonitory hair tricks at the back of her neck. It was a pleased, cheerful kind of laugh.

"I never was a hippie," he said. "Never cared for them."

"You wear your hair like a hippie. Some of the kids do that, stuff with the headbands and peace signs on their jackets and hair to their butts, things like that. I don't know what they think they're doing, reliving the sixties or what. I think it's real dumb."

"I just don't like barbers. It has nothing to do with any group."

Molly waited for further illumination but when he didn't continue, she shrugged her bony shoulders. "Doesn't matter to me. Your hair, I mean. Why you wear it like that. I don't really care. In fact, it makes you look a little bit Christ-like. Like the pictures of Christ, you know." Actually she meant he looked like a crazy ass fallen angel, but she didn't know how to explain that without sounding rude so she settled for Christ.

He gave her a winning smile and she settled into the bucket seat with the bottle of Coke. He was an all-right guy. Very sweet. Not pushy. Not grabby. A real gentleman and regular guy.

She was cruising with Cruise, going where she had never been before, and that's what mattered.

That's all that mattered.

#

Cruise worked at being open, appealing, friendly. It was a knack he had. People warmed to him, always had, and it was an advantage. Little Molly would find out soon enough about him. About the dying. If he played it right, she'd be so caught up in him before he made his next kill, she'd find a way to accept it. Some of them did. It was strange how the kids could adjust to nearly any way of life. Already Molly called herself a prostitute to earn her way. He knew that she was almost certainly from a good middle-class home where morals had been instilled in her. Yet she'd found a way to dump them as soon as she got on her own. Her manner of speech and vocabulary told him she wasn't raised to the life.

She was insecure about her looks and that was why she hunched her shoulders, but she liked compliments. She was no one's dummy. He hoped she wasn't too smart or he'd have to get rid of her in a roadside ditch or leave her remains in a restaurant dumpster. Be a fucking shame.

Sum total, he thought he'd made the perfect choice for his companion. His witness. Little Irish Molly. He thought he could train her. There was time to find out.

He must gain her confidence, learn more about that father she mentioned. Kid might stay in touch with home and that could bollix up plans. She needed to be cut free before he could trust her to any extent. She started thinking about what her father would want her to do or be, she might not bend to his will on the trip west. That would never do.

Pretending to stretch, Cruise leaned back in his seat and reached his left arm over and behind his head. He yawned and grunted, meanwhile lightly touching, checking the back of his head with the pads of his fingers. Underneath the long hair, he kept a small area shaved. He had glued a Velcro patch there and the matching patch to the tiny, four-and-one-half-inch, hooked-end knife he carried. It was too dangerous to drive across country with a weapon the cops might find on casual inspection during a traffic violation. (Bundy had been found with handcuffs in his trunk.
Handcuffs
. That little oversight put him behind bars in Colorado, the stupid bastard.)

Cruise had grown his hair long and kept the knife concealed there for more than three years now. It was stainless steel and razor sharp. The handle was slightly curved so that it fit in a good grip around his index finger when he used it. On the side of the handle was a silver skull and crossbones.

The hook on the business end of the blade caught and ripped flesh. He had found the odd little lethal knife in a pawnshop in Chicago. The idea of strapping it to his head and beneath his hair was a stroke of pure genius. His victims never expected a man to pull Death from his hair and wield it with such lightning-quick movement. Cruise could rip open a man's throat with his special little knife in three seconds flat. In the first second they saw it. The eyes reflected deep, paralyzing fear. In the second instant they felt the cool metal against their warm throats. In the third second Cruise had them; they belonged to him.

Feeling the knife securely in place, he lowered his arm and asked the girl if she wanted something to eat when they reached Hammond, Louisiana.

"Sure. Wake me when we get there, okay?"

He assured her that he would.

He tried to keep his mind occupied by listing the rivers they crossed. Outside of Mobile he began the river name game. He crossed Singing River. Beautiful name for a river. The next was the Biloxi. Then Wolf. The names rolled through his thoughts until he lost their order. There was the Jourdan, Pearl, Arnite, Mississippi River, Whiskey Bay, Atchafalaya, Lake Pelba, Lake Bigbeaux.

His thoughts gradually wandered over to his passenger. Little Molly. Then for the next hundred miles while oncoming lights steamed past on the freeway, and she slept slumped against the car window, he stole lustful glances at her slight body. All the while he admonished himself to take it easy, go slow, work the girl around until she loved him.

Until she worshiped him as a god.

#

Mark Killany knew his daughter was moving away from him on Interstate 10 West. After frantic questioning of her friends, he discovered she was headed to California. At least she had told her friends
that
much. Since their home was in Dania, Flonda, the most direct route to the opposite coast was by 1-10. She had but a few hours start on him. He had left to do some grocery shopping and on his return found her note.

I'm sorry, Daddy, but I have to leave. I can't be perfect the way you want me to. We're driving one another crazy. I'm not going to the counselors anymore. Don't come after me because you won't find me.

Molly

It took him some time to withdraw money from the bank, pack a few clothes, question her friends and acquaintances.

As far as he could tell from investigating her room, she had taken few clothes and no personal articles. She didn't have money except for the ten-dollar allowance he had given her the day before so she had to be traveling as a hitchhiker.

God. Molly on the roads hitching. She could get raped or killed before she left the state. Her chance of making it all the way to California by hitching rides was impossible. That was just one of the illusions she was working under. She was a kid. Just a shavetail kid. She didn't know what she was doing. Even now she might be on the roadside in the rain or stranded at some gas station or off ramp.

He hurried as fast as he could to finish preparations, then he started out. He wasn't going to call the police with a missing person's report. He just couldn't wait that long. He didn't care that the statistics said thousands of kids run away from home every year and just disappear, never to be beard from again, He didn't care, even, that he was probably the responsible party in this debacle. All he cared about was his little girl. He'd get her back safely or spend the rest of his life trying. She was all he had. If he botched her raising, he'd fix it.

A nagging voice said,
You should have fixed it before you lost her
. He shut off the voice. First he must find her and bring her home. No matter what effort or how long it took.

Then he'd repair whatever had caused her to run away.

He thought she might have taken Interstate 95 north to the top of the state since it went right through Dania. That's the route he followed. At every station where he bought gas or stopped to grab food to go, he asked if anyone had seen her, and he showed the latest picture he had, her junior-year school photo. With that red hair and slate-gray eyes, she was memorable. At least he had one thing in his favor. Yet no one had seen her so he doggedly drove north, worrying, scrubbing down his crew-cut red hair, watching the roadside and on ramps for hitchhikers.

"Molly, Molly, Molly..." He said her name aloud repetitively as he drove.

How could his daughter desert him? He must have appeared an ogre to her, a strict disciplinarian who left her no way out but to run. There had been arguments, but he never suspected she was so unhappy she'd leave him.

Maybe he should have remarried, found a woman to help love and raise her. Maybe he should have been more permissive, made fewer restraints on her freedom. Maybe he hadn't listened during the times he should. Maybe the counselor he paid exorbitant fees was right, though he had failed to admit it; he was as much at fault for the conflicts with his teenage daughter as she was. Maybe he should have put her into a private girls' school where she would have been carefully watched.

To hell with it. He had to stop this train of thought. Recriminations wouldn't get Molly back. It produced zero profit. He'd never know what to do right for her until he could find and bring her home.
Then
he could go over the reasons she felt she must escape her home. Let's face it.

Escape
him
. Until then, he had to keep his mind on the road and watch the entrance ramps.

It was not until he hit 1-10 west out of Jacksonville that he found someone who had seen her. He had driven like a maniac, flat out, foot to the pedal, the radar detector signaling with high beeps when a patrol car lurked nearby. He drove all day and was so tired his back ached, his head throbbed. At a Conoco station where he filled up, he took her picture around to the employees, asking each one the same question. "Have you seen this girl?"'

A boy not yet out of his teens recognized Molly. "Yeah, she was here," he said, grinning to show a god-awful overbite.

"Well?"

"Well, what? I saw her. What about it?"

Mark drew on his bank account of patience. If need be, he'd also draw out his wallet and offer a bribe. When his money ran out, he had a bank card good for withdrawals all over the country. He'd get more. He had savings, credit cards, gas cards, his retirement income from the Marines going into direct deposit. Money wasn't the problem.

Mark said, his voice only slightly impatient, "She's my daughter and she's run away from home. Who was she with? What color and kind of car did she leave in?"

The boy pulled the bill of his Conoco cap back on his head and stared out at the pumps. They stood in the service bay where a mechanic was changing a flat tire. The noise from the hydraulic machines clanged in Mark's ears. He waited. Patience running out by the millisecond. He hated slow thinkers. Hated them when he trained them in boot camp. Haled them in the Congress. Hated them at checkout counters in grocery stores. Lost his patience and his temper a dozen tunes a day with them in one way or the other. His C.O. once told him he was a Class A personality type, ripe for a heart attack, quick to anger, volatile when frustrated by the most mundane everyday obstacles. He kicked things out of his way rather than bend over, pick them up, and move them. Then he'd be angry at the dumbfuck who left the mess in his way in the first place.