Deception (A Miranda Murphy Thriller) (10 page)

Well, let’s hope it is going to be a fun ride.

#

“You can put your bag in the back of the car,” instructed the driver.

“Okay.” He carefully placed his bag on the rear seat and shut the door.

“So you are going to Redding?” the driver said, pressing the gas pedal. He appeared to be around thirty and wore blue washed jeans and a grey short-sleeved shirt.

“Yeah, Redding,” he answered.

“My name’s David.” The driver offered his right hand for a handshake.

“Ron,” he replied and shook David’s hand.

“Pleasure to meet you, Ron.” The driver flashed a sincere smile, which gave Ron a tingling warm feeling in his stomach and chest. Ron thought it would be difficult to make himself murder this guy without some sort of penitence.

He could kill him when they made a stop at an uninhabited spot down the freeway. He could arrange that stop easily: he would say he badly needed to pee or throw up. What was he going to do with the car? This Malibu was nice, and he could use it for a couple of thrilling chores. He wondered how soon the driver would be missed after he vanished.

“I’m heading to Salem, the Beaver State capital, so it’s your lucky day.” David giggled quietly. “I’ve had my share of hitchhiking, and I remember very well how hard it was to flag down a car. People don’t trust hitchhikers, and I understand them. There are quite nutty individuals out there. Besides, you can rarely get wherever you need to go just in one car. It’s never happened to me.”

“Yeah, I got lucky,” agreed Ron.

Anyway, he didn’t have to kill David. He could play with him instead. What would Zack say? Damn, he wished he could tell David that dazzling story. He was no blabbermouth, nevertheless lately he’d been dying to share this amazing secret with every stranger he’d met. But if he told the story to David he would have to kill him afterwards.

“It’s hot today,” said the driver.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Ron wiped sweat off his forehead with his left palm. “Hot like in hell. I should have put on sandals.” He tapped on the floor with his dusty sneakers.

“It’s May, what else can you expect?” David adjusted the right air vent so that his passenger could cool down faster. “The guy who invented the car air conditioning is a saint.”

#

Okay, now it is time for the dazzling story. Once there was a guy in his early thirties, let’s call him George, who sold auto parts in Southern California. His pregnant wife, let’s call her Janet, liked to walk every morning in a park not far away from their home. One fine winter day two friends saw that woman in the park and decided to have fun with her. They were quite peculiar people, you know. For a number of reasons they loved hurting young women, and Janet was a great specimen. They approached her, asked how she was doing, with a smile of course, and then one of them hit her really hard in the temple with a fist, thus rendering the poor woman unconscious.

The two friends brought Janet to their cabin in a forest in the Sierra Mountains and locked her in the basement. The fact that she was pregnant added delightful zest to the whole affair. The intensity of pleasure quadrupled when the story of the missing woman went national. For some reason every major TV channel and newspaper decided that the Americans needed to know just about every little detail of that particular case, which quickly became a murder investigation. Main suspect? Of course Janet’s husband.

#

“You have a cool car,” said Ron. “These Malibu are neat.”

“I am a fan of Chevy. They make classy and reliable cars. And affordable, too. Do you like the color?”

“Yeah, I do. What year is it?”

“I bought it three years ago and never regretted.”

“What are you going to do in Salem?” asked Ron.

“I’ve got to pick up my wife and son. My mother-in-law lives in Salem, so they went there to see her. They are very beautiful. Want to take a look?” Without waiting for Ron’s answer, David pulled out his wallet and unfolded it, letting out the photo holder. “My wife’s name is Laura.” His eyes on the road, he handed the wallet to Ron, who, probably out of politeness, started examining the pictures. “My son’s name is Tony. He is four. He has my nose and mouth. Do you see that?”

“I guess he does.” Ron returned the wallet.

“My mother-in-law is an all-right lady. Have you ever been to Salem?”

Ron shook his head.

“I’m going to stay there overnight, and tomorrow all three of us will get back home, to Oceanside. Ever been to Oceanside?”

“No. I’m sure it’s a gorgeous place.”

“It is a great place. But I’ve always dreamed of spending a few years in Las Vegas. All those neon lights, casinos, seething nightlife. Fascinating.”

#

Okay, back to the story. George was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife. To make things even worse for him, it turned out that he had been cheating on his wife for many years. And his latest paramour was so treacherous as to tape her phone conversations with George at the request of the local police.

George claimed he had an alibi: on the day Janet had gone missing he had been fishing in a bay several miles south of Arroyo Grande, one hundred and fifty miles away from his home. That was his biggest mistake after trusting his perfidious mistress. That critical information about the alibi was immediately made public by the media. The two friends, who were still holding Janet captive in the basement of their cabin, decided it was a great opportunity to safely get rid of the woman that had no appeal to them anymore. They killed her and dumped the body in the bay where George had been fishing on the day of his wife’s disappearance.

Result: George got convicted and sentenced to death. Who knows what the outcome of the trial would have been if there hadn’t been so much hype about the case. After all, the prosecution had no material evidence of George’s guilt; they even failed to determine the cause of Janet’s death. Moral of the story: never think you can’t be framed.

#

“I’ll go buy us some Pepsi,” said David a few minutes after they had passed Merced--at the end of the first hour of their acquaintance. “I bet you want to drink as badly as I do.” He steered towards the parking lot near the convenience store on the side of the road. “Is Pepsi okay?”

“Yeah, Pepsi’s okay,” replied Ron. “Thanks, you saved me once again.” When the driver was halfway to the entrance, Ron shouted: “Just not Diet Pepsi.”

David entered the store and, after glancing over the shelves for orientation, walked over to the coolers. In the background, Kenny Chesney was singing about a keg in the closet and pizza on the floor. He spent half a minute deciding whether he wanted diet or regular, then opened the cooler’s door, enjoyed the chill for a few moments, and finally picked up four eight ounce bottles of regular. When David came over to the counter, Kenny was complaining about separate ways that they had gone. David wanted to make a remark that ninety percent of country songs were so depressing, but changed his mind. His ear caught a portion of a phrase from a small TV set sitting on the counter in front of the salesperson, a slender man on the older end of middle age. David shot a look at the TV, which now was displaying a sketch of a suspect who had allegedly murdered four people in Nevada.

“Four people,” the sales clerk nodded at the sketch, having noticed David’s interest. “Some crazy dude.”

David stooped over the counter to get a better view of the TV screen and had several seconds to scan the suspect’s face before the picture changed. He murmured: “Yeah,” exchanged glances with the clerk, and, after paying for the soda, left the store.

White male, twenty five to thirty five years old, height 5’9” to 6’1”, light brown hair, white complexion. Even though it was California, there were thousands of people fitting that description. For Pete’s sake, even he possessed all of the above characteristics. Good thing they had that sketch. Narrowed the suspects’ pool pretty damn significantly, didn’t it? David wondered how they had managed to do it. Had one of this moron’s victims survived?

The second he stepped under the scorching sunlight David started devising a plan to neutralize Ron: it was his face he had just seen on television, you know.

#

They made another stop several miles past Atwater after Ron said he needed to call his friend and asked if David had a cell-phone.

“Sorry, my wife took it because hers had broken,” said David. “But I bet there is a payphone at a gas station.”

“Could you lend some quarters when we get to a gas station? I don’t think they’re going to change my dollar unless I buy something.”

“Yes, some of those folks are unscrupulous. I’ll give you quarters, no problem.” David took a bunch of coins out of his pocket and spilled them on Ron’s palm.

“State quarter,” announced Ron, showing David the reverse side of one of the coins. It was a Minnesota state quarter with a loon making ripples on water and a pair of fishermen in a boat.

“They all are state quarters,” remarked David.

“Yeah, I see now. I like them.” Ron laid out the eight coins tails up in two rows on his palm. “These are so shiny.”

“They are neat,” David agreed. “I can’t say I collect state quarters. I just keep them as long as possible. For some reason I don’t feel like spending them.”

As Ron left the car for the gas station mini mart, David finally made up his mind: he would not follow Ron to make sure he did not run away. Instead, he would examine the suspected killer’s bag.

#

Back there at the convenience store, he only looked at the TV because he was afraid, for a second, that it could have been a report about him. Imagine what a quandary it would have been for him if they had
actually
shown his sketch on the screen? Would he have killed that poor sales clerk? What do you think? Well, would he have had a choice? That man paid so much attention to the news of a killer on the loose that one could believe he really cared about the victims.

David squinted at the bag, then cast an eye at Ron--who was already on the porch of the mini mart--then looked at the bag again. What the heck was he waiting for? He reached out his hand between the seats and started patting the bag.

If there were anything incriminating in the bag, he would not have left it in the car, right?

Clink. It seemed to David he had just heard a clink. He began squeezing the area of the bag he had patted a moment ago and tried to figure out what the source of the chinking could be. His heart racing, David glanced over his left shoulder to check if Ron had left the store. Even though he had murdered people himself--sometimes with his bare hands--the prospect of getting caught in the act by a crazy serial killer did not cheer him one bit. Thankfully, Ron was still inside the building, and David continued to squeeze the bag. More clinking. He nipped the suspicious end of the bag and jiggled it up and down. Dammit, there was a metallic object in there whose shape was consistent with an outline of a knife! Probably it was two knives: that would explain the clinking. David stretched his hand further and hastily explored the most distant end of the bag. It appeared that there was something solid and oval and as big as a human head. Actually the human head was the first hypothesis that came to his mind.

But it could hardly be a head. No sane person would carry around such inculpating evidence as a severed head. What if someone accidentally opened the bag? Besides, there was a risk of having blood find its way through the wrapping and soak through the fabric of the bag, which might attract unwelcome attention.

Four more minutes had passed before Ron returned to the car.

“Did you make the call?” asked David, starting the Malibu.

“Yes, I did. We had a good talk. Thanks for the quarters, Dave.” Ron opened his bottle of Pepsi, took a few sips, let his head fall back on the headrest. David said he was welcome and pulled away from the roadside.

#

When they drove eight miles past Lodi, David discerned a short strip of buildings a few hundred yards ahead down the freeway and asked if Ron was hungry.

“Last time I ate was early in the morning, so I think I could use a hamburger,” he said. “If they have a diner there I’m pulling over.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” agreed Ron.

Before leaving for the diner, Ron picked up his bag.

“It’s time to change my not-so-fresh shirt,” he explained.

After scrutinizing the unimpressive menu, David picked a grilled chicken, Ron chose a roast beef, and they both ordered a garden salad and orange juice. David was eating as slowly as he could in order to have more time to collect his thoughts and mull over his plan regarding Ron. The diner was a safe convenient place to relax and stop sweating about an unexpected move on the part of this killer. Of course he had stashed a brand new knife under the driver’s seat but would he be able to grab it when Ron attacked him?

David could not help smiling. Wasn’t that ironic? Ron, or whatever his real name was, would most likely try to pull the same trick on him as David did on Kevin Conway, the legal owner of this Malibu. Well, Ron was going to be extremely surprised very soon. Yes, he had to step up his efforts: it was about two hours since he had learned Ron’s horrible secret and he had not made much progress yet.

When they finished their meals, Ron made David put away his wallet and paid the check with his own money. They went to the restroom together: David wanted to relieve himself and Ron to change his shirt. For a moment David regretted he had not taken the knife with him. Then he told himself that he was strong enough to beat off Ron’s assault; after all, he only needed a few seconds to run out of the restroom and call for help. Funny fact: it could be his first lawful murder if he killed Ron in self-defense in the toilet.

#

So far so good: he emptied his bladder without an incident. And Ron did exactly what he had planned to do--put on a fresh shirt. Watching his new friend out of the corner of his eye, David let out a small puddle of soap from the dispenser on his left palm and began to turn on the water.

“I know who you are, David,” Ron said, combing his hair and peeking at David’s reflection in the mirror.