NIGHT CRUISING

NIGHT CRUISING

By

Billie Sue
Mosiman

A Jove Bantam book
published as NIGHT CRUISE, November l992.

Copyright Billie Sue
Mosiman l992.

E-book Digital
Copyright Billie Sue Mosiman 20l2, All Rights Reserved

Nominated for the Edgar
Award for Best Paperback Novel, l992

OTHER BOOKS BY BILLIE
SUE MOSIMAN

BANISHED

WIDOW

BAD TRIP SOUTH

WIREMAN

UNIDENTIFIED

GOLD RUSH DREAM

ANGELIQUE

INTERVIEW WITH A PSYCHO

SCROLLS OF THE DEAD

LEGIONS OF THE DARK

RISE OF THE LEGEND

HUNTER OF THE DEAD

HORROR TALES

HORROR TALES 2

FROM A HIGH WINDOW

LIFE NEAR THE BONE

CREATURES

DARK REALITY

SPARKLE

PROSPER BANE

CRYPT TALES-9 SCARY
STORIES

THE SCREAM

THE LONELY WALK

This cautionary tale is
for my children, the best daughters a mother could want.

Death tugs at my ear
and says, "Live, I am coming."

----Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Sr.

THE FIRST
NIGHT--l989--IN AMERICA

The highways and byways
of the great United States belonged to Herod "Cruise"
Lavanic. There had been others before him who claimed possession of
the roads, notably one Henry Lee Lucas, the lying bastard. Bragged to
the Texas cops that he'd murdered hundreds--three hundred, five
hundred--the dude could never make up his puny, maladjusted mind. Now
look where he was. Sitting on Death Row where the son of a bitch
belonged.

Then there was Ted
Bundy killing his way from one coast to the other, from Washington
State to Florida, with a couple of stops in between, but Bundy was
Mickey Mouse. Preened pretty for the press. Had a good face. Showed
some cleverness before the cameras. Should have been a movie star.
Now the only roads he owned were the roads of hell. He was fried and
buried. Cruise and everyone else in the world knew the cowardly cock
went down begging and lying just as vain and wild as Henry Lee.

So these days the
highways and byways truly belonged to Cruise. No one knew it, of
course. If they knew it, they'd stop him. Or try to. There was not
yet an inkling of uneasiness about Cruise Lavanic. He knew his
qualities, and they were the ones keeping him out of jail. He had
been told, and he believed, that he possessed sunny features, a
strong, masculine face, an art for sweet talk, and an ability to
think on his feet. With his boy-next-door mannerisms and his lack of
an arrest record, he was unknown, unsuspected. Except to his victims.
They knew him. In their last moments on earth, they knew him better
than anyone.

This
night, he searched for a hostage. A witness, really. Traveling wasn't
any fun without a witness along to see him work. He cruised in a l979
silver-blue Chrysler Newport, 3l8 engine with a four barrel. Big
square car, looked like an old undercover cop car. Cruise kept a
magnetized CB antenna on the trunk to make the car look even more
official. He'd taken out the front bench seat and put in a set of
blue bucket seats. Never liked the witness to get too near him when
he was driving. Between the bucket seats he had installed a small
blue igloo cooler for bottled Cokes. Pepsi was too sweet. Coke, even
the rip-off Classic brew the Coca-Cola Company claimed was made from
the original recipe though it didn't taste that way to Cruise, had a
carbonated kick his stomach lived for.

Cruise crisscrossed the
country and lived hand-to-mouth. Sometimes, when he killed, he took
money from the victim, but it was never a big take. He didn't kill
those too high up the social ladder, people with too much class or
influence--or too much to lose. Cops would chase him then, put out
APBs, write up a profile, start up a task force. Staying free
entailed all kinds of precautions and rule number one, as Henry Lee
might point out, was to kill the little people nobody'd miss.

He had left New York
City the week before, driven down the Eastern Seaboard into the
Carolinas, and caught Interstate l0 in Florida to head west. He did
all his driving at night, stayed in motels, truck stops, or his car
during the day. If Cruise possessed an outstanding eccentricity, it
was his love of the dark hours. He had not slept at night since he
was a boy. He had not killed during the day for seven years.

In his wallet he
carried one hundred ten dollars. Next to him sat the igloo cooler of
Coke. No one was looking for him. He should have been more content,
but he was lonesome. Shit, he was singing songs to himself to cheer
up, he was so lonesome. "Camptown Races." Do da. "Little
Deuce Coupe." You don't know what I've got.

It was sickening. He
was getting on his own nerves.

Outside of Mobile,
Alabama, he drove five miles below the speed limit, not slow enough
to attract attention, not fast enough to miss something important.
Just cruising, eyes watching the cars that passed him, watching the
roadside, the pine forests blue-black in the night, the long straight
stretch of white pavement rolling ahead. Mind on idle.

Billboards loomed and
flashed past. BELINGRATH GARDENS. MICKEY'S BARBECUE. STUCKEY'S.
GENERAY'S TRUCK STOP.

Cruise took the off
ramp, slowed at the stop sign, and turned toward the truck stop where
the tall utility poles held up the huge orange GENE RAY'S sign.
Eighteen-wheelers rolled slowly around the lot or sat like dull
dinosaurs in the diesel slots. Several trucks were parked behind the
low brown building. The moon had not risen from behind a pine
thicket. Night shadows and the orange sign overhead conspired to turn
the red clay ringing the paved area into splotches the color of dried
blood The joint smelled of fuel and grease and exhaust. Just how
Cruise liked his fresh air.

With the Newport
rolling quietly forward, he checked his gas gauge, remembered he'd
filled up in Spanish Fort on the other side of Mobile. Well, gas
needs didn't dictate his stops and never had. He was cruising. He
didn't have to have a reason for stopping. He could always order a
Coke in the truck stop cafe and make them put in plenty of ice. Slurp
it through a straw. Get his tongue carbonated all to hell and back.

He angled the Newport
into a parking slot facing away from the building. The spots on each
side were empty. This didn't look like a place where too many car
travelers spent any time. It was strictly Cowboy Trucker City.

As he smoothly
maneuvered the bulk of his six-foot-four, two-hundred-seventy pound
frame from the bucket seat, Cruise took his time closing the driver's
door. He noticed a couple of Lot Lizards. One working the back area
where the truckers took their rigs to rest awhile before hitting the
road again. One standing near the front entrance to the cafe.

The one in back didn't
fit in. She was a kid, fourteen, fifteen. Too young for truckers.
Inexperienced too if he was to judge by the way she slumped her
skinny shoulders as if against a gale tearing at her back. Kid looked
ashamed. Scared, maybe. Ought to be home with Mommy and Daddy
watching Wheel of Fortune and munching Fritos.

Cruise kept her in
sight as he walked to the cafe door. If she was still there when he
came out, she'd make a good witness. Most times he took young boys.
Less trouble in the long run, but he had a need for girls, too, on
occasion. Runaways of either gender were tender meat, easy to snag,
and effortless to dispose of when the journey ended.

Besides. This little
no-account redhead looked lost. She needed a guide to help her get by
in the cold, cruel, friendless world.

She needed to cruise.

#

Nothing in all the
world belonged to Molly Killany. Or so she thought at the uninformed
age of sixteen. Oh, at home with her father she had her own bedroom,
but it wasn't really
hers
. She realized by the time she was
around nine years old that she was a boarder in the house and nothing
she touched belonged to her. Not the stuffed animals or the Panasonic
stereo she had received for a Christmas present when she was fifteen,
or even the clothes hanging in the closet. Kids were chattel
possessed by parents. That was a new word she'd learned in vocabulary
lessons. Chattel. In the archaic form it meant "slave." The
life of a minor was not his own, so he was a slave to the whims of a
parent.

Her father, a retired
colonel from the U.S. Marines, often told his only daughter that
lives weren't always shaped by self-will, but by circumstance. He
used this argument when speaking of her mother's death when Molly was
born. "We never planned that you'd grow up motherless, Molly. I
never thought I'd raise you alone, that I'd never be able to . . . to
love another woman."

When Molly ran away
from home it had more than a little to do with feeling owned and
without possession. It also had to do with the high school she
attended where everyone was a snob. They thought they owned the world
and everything in it. They didn't have a clue about the reality of
their situation—how they were owned lock, stock, and Reeboks.

Most of all, it had to
do with Mark Killany, her father. Once he retired, after spending
twenty years with the Marines, he made too much effort to control her
destiny. She became his focus, his darling. His chattel. Not that he
ever beat or mistreated her. It could be that he cared too much and
that was the real problem. All he did was lecture her constantly.
Don't do this, don't do that, watch out for the wrong crowd, don't
stay out past eleven, don't
even think
about sex. Everything
was taboo. Everything potentially threatening. Molly felt so
suffocated she nearly stopped eating. Look at her. Skinny as a fence
post. Even her breasts, which had been her crowning glory in the
physical beauty department (although most people cited her glowing
red shoulder-length hair), had squeezed themselves down to little
nubs on her washboard-ribbed chest. She'd taken to wearing padded
bras to give her any shape at all.

Even now as she walked
around in the orange glow of the truck stop, she hunched her
shoulders so as not to bring attention to The Nubs, as she thought of
them.

Her intention at the
truck stop would have given her father a fit. In fact, the idea was
giving her a fit too. Though she had made up her mind that no one
owned her, that she owned herself and it was herself that she would
sell, if she had to, she was finding it impossible not to think
about. How was she going to do it? How could she? The thought not
only depressed her, but repulsed her more than she had thought it
would. The only way she was going to face it was to turn her mind
off, but so far she'd had no luck. Her head kept rattling thoughts
around, some of them silent screams, some of them whispered worries.
You can't have sex with some guy, just any guy!
(If you do,
you're garbage, you're scum, and you're going to regret it.)
It's
going to be awful!
(He will touch you and play with you and you
will probably get sick all over him.)

If she'd had jewelry to
hock or if someone would have given her an honest job at her age, she
wouldn't do it, but she didn't and they hadn't and she was on her own
with nothing to her name, not a slim dime, nothing for barter but her
bony, nubby, redheaded self. Yet even these realities wouldn't quite
kick in and save her from the war going on in her mind. She kept
trying to think of another way. She just couldn't find one.

It was amazing that
she'd made it all the way from Florida to Alabama hitchhiking without
already having to trade on her flesh.

Just outside of
Jacksonville, she'd asked if they needed help in the restaurant where
her ride stopped for a meal.

"To do what?"
The waitress was sincerely befuddled.

"Uh, you know, a
job."

"Like being a
waitress or something?" More befuddlement.

Molly began to wonder
if the woman's brain had taken a hike.

"Sure, like a
waitress," Molly said. "Like a dishwasher, like a salad
maker, like anything. I need work."

"You need work?"
the waitress repeated.

My God Almighty. This
woman needed major head surgery. She just couldn't seem to get it
together. "Yes," Molly explained clearly and slowly. "I'd
like to know if your boss is hiring, please." She added the last
word with an emphasis the waitress couldn't miss.

The woman seemed to
snap out of it. "Listen, you don't stand a chance. How old are
you, kid? Thirteen? You can't work when you're just thirteen. Why,
it's against the law!"

Molly stood as tall as
she could, never mind the front of her poking out so miserably small.
"I'm sixteen years old," she said. "I am not a little
kid."

The woman shook her
head either in amazement or disbelief, Molly didn't know which.
"You'd have to have your parents sign a permission form. And
besides, we don't need anybody here. Sorry."