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When 1992 rolled around, my ex-wife and kids were still living in Spokane, my girlfriend Peggy was at her mother's house in Portland, and I was living out of truck No. 22 of A&G Trucking. It was a 1989 379-Series Peterbilt conventional tractor with a 244-inch wheelbase, low-profile 24.5 tires, and a fifteen-speed transmission. My four-hundred-ATAC Caterpillar engine pulled a loaded forty-eight-foot reefer like it was a toy wagon—no strain at all. My rig always drew stares—plum-purple-blue metallic paint, dual chrome stacks, polished aluminum wheels and all the extra chrome the company could afford. I had Christmas-tree lights and a Vari-shield to push air over the top of the reefer. I loved that truck. I tried to give both of us a wash every day or two. A truck that fine, it was worth the extra money.

It wasn't easy being on the road all the time, missing Peg and my kids, but I made the best of it. I had a forty-eight-inch sleeper with two built-in closets and a mattress seven feet long—six inches longer than me. At night I'd lay in bed and read and listen to the other trucks pulling in and settling down for the night—drivers talking, jacking around, flirting with the lizards. Inside my sleeper I was the king of the road.

I had a standard Uniden forty-channel sidebander, but I pretty much stayed off the air. I tried to avoid that “breaker breaker” shit, trading inside information and jokes, telling where the Smokies were hiding. Instead I just listened. My high-power Cobra 25 radio brought in signals from forty miles away. I'd hear all the gossip.

 

There was never a shortage of sex for truckers, but I was still a little nervous about being alone with women after taking that blast of pepper spray. Then I got another chance to get into the same kind of trouble, and I was too stupid to say no.

It was a hot summer day in 1992, and I was parked at the brake-check area on I-15 just before it dropped down the hill to San Bernardino, California. I had my coveralls on and I was under the truck, setting my brakes in case the scale-house guard decided to inspect.

I was just about done when I heard a woman's voice, “Hey, can I get a ride?”

I looked around and didn't see anybody.

“Hey, can I get a ride!”

I peeked around a tire and here's this girl looking at me—tight bleached-out blue jeans, a loose white top, big tits. She wasn't beautiful, but pretty enough. I was down-wind and she smelt nice. She asked again and I said, “Yeah, sure! Where you going?”

She said, “Well, L.A. Or…anywhere we end up.”

I said, “Who are you and where in hell did you come from?”

She giggled and said, “Oh, I'm just a throw-away woman. I got a ride with that guy over there.”

I saw a parked Albertson's grocery truck. They weren't allowed to pick up riders. That was why the driver dropped her off before the scale house.

I said, “Wait a minute.” I crawled out and asked where she really wanted to go. I'd been through this conversation a hundred times.

She said, “Phoenix.”

“Somebody meeting you?”

“No. It just sounds like a nice place.”

I pulled off my dirty old coveralls. It was broad daylight, hot as a welder's torch in that damn desert town. She waved good-bye to the Albertson trucker and climbed into my cab. I thought,
God, this is the one.

She told me her name was Claudia. She looked clean, but she had no luggage—a bad sign. It meant she could be a female hobo mooching off drivers. She could be a doper looking for a fix.

She sat back and lit a cigarette while I went into the restaurant to get a couple of ice teas to go. We drove east past the Banning scales to the Burns Brothers truck stop at Coachella. After a brief lunch we walked through the store, and I could see that she expected me to buy her some clothes. When I promised to buy her a new outfit at the mall in Phoenix, we went back to the truck and climbed into the air-conditioned sleeper.

I leaned over and kissed her, but she didn't kiss back. She said, “If you want sex, just ask for it and I'll tell you how much.”

I said, “I don't pay for it.”

I tried to kiss her again and she pressed her lips together. I readjusted her position on the bed and started yanking off her clothes. When she was naked, I stripped and began to grope her body. I had to force her legs apart to enter her and that made the sex even better. I orgasmed fast.

Not wanting this to end too quick, I waited for my hardness to return. I was thinking,
This bitch is mine. I'll do what I want to her.

We had more sex and she pretended to get into it. I knew what she was thinking. If she convinced me we were friends, I wouldn't hurt her. I was on to her act.

We stopped at the next truck stop, ate and showered. I wondered why she didn't just take off, but after I bought her some cigarettes I found out what she was really looking for. She asked me for some “crank,” and when I told her I didn't fool with drugs, she got agitated. She grabbed my CB microphone and asked the whole damn world if anybody had crank.

I pulled the mike away and told her I didn't allow drugs of any kind in my truck and to stay the hell off my radio. I said, “Calm down! Look, you won't starve if you ride with me. I'll take care of your needs, but—no dope. Forget about it.”

She said, “Well, how about some spending money then?”

She took my twenty-dollar bill and whined, “That's all?” She said she'd allowed me to have sex with her and she was worth a lot more than twenty dollars. I reminded her that I didn't pay for pussy.

She said, “Gimme the money I saw in your wallet or I'll blow the whistle on you.”

I said, “For what?”

She said, “Gimme the money and I'll walk away. No questions asked. Otherwise I'll tell that security guard how you assaulted me.”

My mind was going wild with the possibilities. I said, “Are you
crazy?”

She said, “What's it gonna be? Your money or jail?”

I reached over and locked the doors. I said, “Neither one, bitch.”

I grabbed the roll of duct tape under my pillow and taped her arms in front of her. Then I taped her ankles together.

I looked out over the parking lot and saw it was empty. I pushed my fist into her neck like I did to Taunja and she went to sleep. Just like that.

I was trying to decide what to do with her body when she opened her mouth and said, “This is bullshit! You can't kill me!”

I taped her arms to the side vent so that she wouldn't fall off the bed. I got dressed and told her to shut up. Now that I was heading toward my second murder I knew I'd be facing the devil someday, and to please him I had to do a better job of killing. That made this murder easier morally because God had nothing to do with it. Neither did right and wrong. It was me and the devil doing our thing. Now I could concentrate on killing.

I'm raping her in the sleeper again when I hear two cars pull up in the shadow of my truck. Cops! One was a K-9 unit with a dog. They were using my shade to cool the dog while they went inside and ate.

I eased away nice and easy and got back on I-10. By the time we reached Indio, she'd worked herself out of the tape and was trying to get dressed. I open the curtain and I see she's ready to pop out and run. She was just waiting for me to stop.

I drove my plum Pete toward a wide graveled area and yanked the maxi air brake. I pushed her down and taped her all over again, this time good and tight. She kept saying, “I'm tired of this,
I'm tired of this.”
Well, who the hell wasn't?

At the next truck stop I screwed her till I couldn't get it up anymore. It was supreme, it was total gratification.
I'm running this show, bitch. You're mine!

I started to play a little death game with her, use her like a toy, an amusement. I choked her, let her wake up, choked her again, let her wake up again. That's the kind of game I should've played with Taunja.

Each time this woman came to, she made threats. “You bastard, I'm not gonna take this shit. I'll turn you into the cops, you son of a bitch.” For somebody who was already half-dead, she was sure cocky.

After I choked her the third time, I waited ten or fifteen minutes till she revived. I said, “Take a deep breath. Count to ten. Now—hold your breath.” Then I choked her out again.

When she woke up, I told her to count to nine and squeezed her neck again. I was playing with her like a cat with a mouse. As the game went on I'd tell her to count to eight, then seven, six, five. I was breaking her mind. I wanted her to accept that one of these times she wouldn't wake up. Finally she caught on and just accepted the game.

My adrenaline rushed as I squeezed the breath out of her lungs for the last time. The power in my hands was supernatural, and even though I was wiped out, it gave me another hard-on.

I needed to get rid of her body. But where? I went into the truck stop restaurant and relaxed with an ice tea. I was surprised at how calm I felt. I knew I should feel remorse, but I just wished I could start all over again.

I drove east to look for a dumping place. It was late afternoon but still hot. I decided to go to the shady side of the San Bernardino Mountains and wait till dark. Near the Patton War Museum exit I saw a place that looked promising and I parked off to the side. I scouted a deep ravine next to the truck and decided to take a nap before I made my move. With a blanket between me and Claudia, I fell into a light sleep as the afternoon slipped away.

 

Around 7:00
P.M
., I heard some truckers talking on the CB radio about a Smoky Bear parked by a purple truck on the eastbound side. I thought,
A purple truck? My God, that's me!
I climbed into the front and looked out my window. He was sitting twenty feet away.

I glanced back to make sure she was still dead. I touched her, and her body was getting stiff. I sat up and waited for the knock.
What was he doing there?
I thought,
Why don't I step out and ask him?

I grabbed two Cokes from my cooler and walked over. We socialized for five or ten minutes. He wouldn't accept a drink, but he was friendly. I told him I stopped because my tires got hot. He told me that a spotter plane was working and to be careful about my speed.

I walked back to my truck and acted like I was checking the tread. I climbed into my cab and pulled out my logbooks and wrote down my hours of service in plain sight of the trooper. I didn't need him to check my logbooks and start sniffing around. Cops know dead bodies. They have a smell of their own.

I honked and waved as I eased back on the interstate toward Arizona. I wondered if he made any notes about truck number twenty-two of A&G Trucking on a certain date and time. I decided to put some miles between us before I dumped the body.

I drove two hours to the desert town of Blythe, just east of Palm Springs near the Arizona border. I breathed better when I saw that I wasn't followed.

At Highway 95 I turned south into the foothills and drove six or eight miles to a wide spot where I could park. I waited till the sun went behind the hill so I could have just enough light to do the job but not enough to be observed. I dragged Claudia into a brushy canyon and covered her with tumbleweed.

 

At the Flying J Truck Stop at Arizona Exit 1, I threw my sleeping bag in the shower to get rid of the death smell and dried it on the way to Phoenix by hanging it over my Vari-shield windjammer. My thoughts were not of remorse. This woman deserved to die for the threats she made against me. I was just keeping another Jean from getting some other poor fool in trouble by giving false testimony to the police. Since I'd gotten away with the Taunja Bennett death, I was beginning to feel immortal. It was a game now. I was boss, and I was invulnerable.

I drove into Phoenix and delivered my load the next morning. I threw away my bedding and bought new sheets and pillow slips. All day long I kept thinking how easy it was to kill. I had everything going for me. I was highly mobile. Nobody questioned a girl riding in a truck, and my sleeper was enclosed. In fact, the truckers' lingo for a sleeper was “coffin.” Nobody could see the bed when I closed the curtain. I was in Keith's World again.