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I headed south on I-5 and switched to 99 to bypass the I-5 Woodburn Port of Entry. I didn't want to be documented going south and I didn't want a nosy cop to check my load. I approached GI Joe's from the south, off Highway 22.

I saw that the back light wasn't working in the parking lot and a few container trailers were butted against the fence. There were plenty of vines to hide the body and some loose trash blowing around as well. A six-foot fence border obscured the property.
Perfect.

It was around 2:00
A.M
. and really dark. I took a wide sweeping turn so my rig wouldn't scratch the fence and leave a paint stain. With flashlight in hand I looked the place over for security. It was empty.

I opened the sleeper door and pulled the whore out by her hair. She fell on her head with a thud, six feet straight down. I dragged her against the fence and covered her with leaves. A good night's work.

 

I drove to Waremart, a hundred yards down the street, took a nap and delivered my load in the morning. I called my office from Brooks, Oregon, and stopped in Longview, Washington, to wash my bedroll. I thought,
At one time that dumb bitch could have saved her life, but she wouldn't listen. It's never wise to threaten somebody that outweighs you by 150 pounds.

 

After I cooled down and began to think logically, I realized that I had to stop killing, if only because I was bound to get caught sooner or later. It was too easy for a long-haul truck driver. And too exciting. This was three deaths in the last four months. I wondered if I would have to quit trucking to quit killing. Or if I even wanted to quit. I didn't know my own mind. I guess I never had.

Four months after Laurie Pentland I was headed south on I-5 in the early evening of a cold, rainy March day when I pulled into the Petro Truck Stop in Corning, California. A thick fog was rolling in off the ocean, and I had to clean the droplets off my glasses. I locked the truck but left it idling so I wouldn't lose the heat in the cab.

The café was jammed. It looked like the spring rains had flushed the street people out of their cardboard shelters. Some even sat in the hallway. I had a craving for fruit, so I piled up my plate at the buffet table. I was watching my weight, but I couldn't drink one more container of Slim Fast.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a wet-looking gal at the counter, staring at the food that passed under her nose. She sipped her coffee and looked half-starved. She was definitely a street person—reddish complexion, wet stringy hair, no makeup, wide-rimmed glasses. A long dress gave her kind of a motherly look or a schoolmarm down on her luck. I could tell she wanted to score a meal.

I didn't know what clicked in my head, but I decided right then and there that I had to take this woman. Why? Did she remind me of schoolteachers I'd liked—or hated? Did she remind me of my mother or my aunts or some of the neighbor women I knew as a kid? I never gave things like that a second's thought. All I knew was I intended to take this woman. This was one of those perfect opportunities that only came because I was driving truck.

I told my waitress, “See that drowned gal sitting over there? Give her anything she wants and put it on my check. But don't tell her who bought it. I don't need somebody following me around like a lost puppy.” I didn't want the waitress to make any connections later.

The woman ate like a famished rat. Then she gave me a sweet look like she'd known all along who bought her dinner. I motioned her over and she joined me in my booth.

“Thanks,” she said. I nodded like it was nothing to a big spender like me.

She talked a lot but without really telling me anything except that her name was Cindy and she was curious as hell about the nice truck driver. I tried to avoid the personal stuff and the big question of where I was headed. Some of these just want a warm bed and a roof over their head without the worry of being rolled out of their cardboard box in the middle of the night, but others want money for drugs and would knock you in the head to get it. You can't tell just by talking to them.

 

It was getting late and I knew she would soon be thrown out along with the other hippies. She seemed like a nice-enough person and quite intelligent. I decided to satisfy her curiosity about me. I said, “I'm headed for Salinas to pick up a load of produce for Seattle.”

She said, “Then you'll go through Sacramento?”

“I could. Or I could take 505 and bypass Sacramento to 680 South and then 101 South. Or I could go to Sacramento and go through Stockton and Santa Nella and across 152 to 101 South.”

“Please,” she said, “take me to Sacramento! I have a sister there, and I can stay with her. You won't be sorry. I'll behave myself.
Please!”

I hate it when they beg. They do it so well. That's what I mean by asking to be killed.

“I have to be in Salinas in the morning,” I said. “So I can't linger in Sacramento. You still want to come?”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

I pulled a twenty from my pocket for our meals. I bought a half-gallon of orange juice to wash down my NoDoz. When we got to the truck I saw that everything she owned was on her back. A bad sign. Claudia didn't have anything either.

I made a mental note to watch my ass as I steered my rig onto I-5. I kept the heater on high to dry her hair, also to make her shed her coat so I could get a better look at her tits.

Thirty miles south I stopped at the Shell station to look for other trucks from my company and found none. I was clear to do what I wanted.

Both of us used the bathroom. When she came back, I smelt some perfume and noticed that she'd combed her hair and enhanced her face with makeup. She was smiling and her top three buttons were undone. That was no accident. I could see her small breasts.

 

The Williams rest area came up in ten miles, and after I got rid of more of my coffee in the restroom I climbed back in the truck and kissed her. She kissed back as if she'd wanted it for a long time. I took off her glasses and touched her cheek. She bent her head into my hand to feel my strength.

In the sleeper she asked if I had a rubber. I did. I helped her out of her clothes and we snuggled under the blankets. After a little foreplay she guided me in. We kept at it for a few hours and then I pushed her away. I'd covered my mattress with a plastic protector to make it easier to keep clean.

She said, “This is so cozy and warm. Let's spend the night back here.”

I said, “Oh, we will, we will.” I thought,
This woman is mine. I own every inch. I might as well let her in on the secret
. I said, “But you won't be around to enjoy it.”

She sat up and said, “What does
that
mean?”

“It means I'm gonna kill you.”

She just stared at me in disbelief. The thought of owning and killing this woman made me hard again and I tried to get it back into her, but she fought off my uncovered penis. Seemed like she was more afraid of pregnancy than death.

I pumped my last orgasm into her and began the death game. She came back to life four or five times before I crushed her neck for good.

I thought long and hard on what to do next. I dressed her and placed her body next to the sleeper door. I was still under the false impression that I had to hide their bodies so they didn't get found too soon. Little did I know that it made no difference in the end. When killing strangers, it's only necessary to make a clean getaway. A dead body has no traceable links when you're driving cross-country.

I took her down I-5 to 152 and then west about a mile past the truck scales. I deposited her body behind a pile of rocks in thick brush. Then I drove back to US 101 and the Shell Truck Stop at Gilroy. The rain had stopped and it was a beautiful night. I slept like a baby.

In the fall of 1993 I dropped in on my old friend Billy Smith again. I hadn't killed in five or six months, ever since Cindy in March, but I was nervous because I wanted to do it again. When the feeling was on me, it was all I cared about.

After Bill helped me adjust my clutch, I couldn't keep my secret another minute. I said, “Billy, I got a problem.” We were standing in front of his apartment.

He said, “Man, you
are
a problem.” That's the way we talked.

I said, “Billy, I'm killing people, and I can't stop.”

He looked at me like I'd just farted.

“I mean it, man. I've already killed five women. What can I do?”

He said, “Wimpy Keith is killing women?”

It took a while to convince him I was serious. “Look,” he said, “you used to be a fighter. Take a heavy bag with you and knock the shit out of it. Don't be pounding on any more women.”

“You don't get it, Billy. I'm not pounding, I'm
killing.”

He looked exasperated. I could see he wasn't enjoying this conversation. He said, “You should see a shrink.”

“Yeah, sure. He's gonna run straight out his back door to the cops.”

Billy shrugged, like he wanted to get on another subject. I said, “What can I do to stop? Or am I just gonna keep doing this?”

He shook his head and frowned. He said, “Why do you do this?”

“I enjoy it,” I said, “but…honest to God, I'm fighting it.” I wanted to give him names, times and places, but I could see my friend had heard enough.

A few months later I was having coffee at the Burns Brothers Truck Stop in Troutdale, Oregon, when I spotted a blonde, about five-two and maybe one hundred pounds, blue eyes—looked a little like Maggie in
Northern Exposure,
add ten or fifteen years. She sat with her back to me in the next booth. I said, “Now
there's
a back I'd like to rub.” She laughed and motioned me over.

She said her name was Julie Winningham and she couldn't believe her luck to run into me. She said, “Where did
you
come from?” A lot of truck-stop women felt that way about me. There weren't many six-foot-six truckers around, especially ones that kept their weight down and had wavy brown hair and a good profile.

 

We talked for two hours and found out we were definitely on the same wavelength. We got so close that I asked her to take a trip with me. I promised never to force myself on her and told her she would always have the option of falling in love—her choice, no pressure. I really felt that way about her. She was a cut above most of the lot lizards.

I had a load for Seattle and was scheduled for engine maintenance in Yakima the next day. Then I'd be hauling a load of potatoes to the Lucky Stores Warehouse in Irvine, California. I asked her to come along.

She said it sounded like an interesting ride. In a few minutes she was on the way to the parking lot to put a note in her car window saying she'd be gone for a while. She came back with an overnight bag and said, “Let's go!” I couldn't believe how easy it was.

 

We pulled into Seattle in plenty of time. After we made out in my sleeper, we headed back to Yakima. In the shop my friend Butch asked if the pretty girl was a true blonde. I hadn't screwed her yet, but that's about all I hadn't done. I told Butch she was blonde all over.

Julie and I took my Mercury Topaz downtown and ate. She was a hit wherever we went. She told everybody she wasn't so sure about me but she'd fallen in love with my '89 Peterbilt. I was in the process of buying it from another trucker. Her ex-husband drove truck and she knew which ones were good and which ones were all chrome and no balls.

 

After our Friday-night dinner we started our trip together. Irvine is just south of L.A., and I had to deliver by Sunday morning. By driving nonstop I made Irvine just after midnight Saturday. After the potatoes were unloaded at dawn, I had a free day and took Julie to Knott's Berry Farm. We partied on the rides till closing, and I bought her a silver necklace and matching bracelet and had her picture taken on a fake newsmagazine cover. Later she gave that picture to her mother and it ended up splashed in all the papers. There was only one bad sign: she acted annoyed that I didn't do drugs or pot.

 

That night we parked at Truck Town on Cherry Avenue just north of I-10 in Fontana, halfway between L.A. and San Bernardino. The sex was okay, but she didn't make any extra effort. I thought I deserved better after dropping a couple hundred on her jewelry.

I went to a phone booth to check in with my company, and when I got back to the truck she was trying to score some drugs over the CB. She said that pot made her horny and made her a better lover.

After we kissed a few times, she asked me to marry her because she really loved me and wanted to be mine forever. What I didn't know was that she was on the prowl for some big dumb idiot to buy her things and pay her way, and big dumb Keith had taken the bait.

I told her not to try to buy any pot over my radio. The cops monitored all the frequencies. I bought a joint off the truck-stop guy while he was polishing our wheels. Charged me forty bucks—was I shocked!

Julie and I drank doubles at a motel bar in Bakersfield and retired into a sex orgy. She was drunk and horny and we enjoyed each other a long time—not the best sex I ever had, but good enough.

The next morning we picked up another load and headed back to Oregon. She retrieved her car and drove it home. I spent the night with her and then headed back south.

 

For a long time after that, I would stop by and see her whenever I got a chance. I introduced her to my friends Billy and Ginny Smith, and the three of them got drunk and friendly and she ended up renting a room in their house.

Every time I was routed near her place, I'd call her on the phone and we'd get together. But after a while I realized that something was wrong. My pal Billy had wanted into her pants and I knew it. He was always looking for outside pussy.

I dropped Julie when I realized she was making it with him and didn't care about me and never had. All she wanted was my car, party money and a steady supply of pot. She'd say, “Don't you want me to have fun while you're gone, Keith? Don't you want me to feel good? You have to get me a better car. Don't you want me to be safe?”

I told her I didn't intend to buy her a car or supply her drug habit. We had sex one more night, but she was like a rag doll. In the morning I took her to breakfast and told her we were finished. We'd dated for almost a year, off and on. We got along great at times, but I didn't smoke, and pot was the biggest event in her life. How could I have hooked up with someone like her?

I said to myself,
If I ever see that money-grubbing pothead again, I'm gonna run as fast as I can
. It was a good idea. If only I'd carried it out.