The Lonely Mile (7 page)

They slid into an unmarked Chevrolet Caprice, and Canfield cranked the engine. “I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to think about this, but the media is going to be all over you when we get back to the crime scene. I called our people at the plaza, and there are television trucks and reporters everywhere. We can’t order you not to talk to them but would prefer that you don’t—”

“Don’t worry about that,” Bill interrupted. “I have zero desire to be a reality TV star.”

“Good. We will be behind most of the assembled media when we enter the parking lot, so, with a little luck, you might be able to make it to your van unseen, but I wouldn’t hold out too much hope on that score. I’m sure they’re staking out your vehicle, just waiting for you to come back to pick it up.”

“If they know which one it is.”

“They’ll know.”

The pair cruised westbound along the interstate to Exit 1, then crossed over the highway and turned back east. Less than five minutes later, Canfield eased the unmarked vehicle into the massive service area parking lot. She hadn’t been kidding. The media were buzzing around the location like bees at a honey pot. He pointed out his van and the FBI Special Agent pulled to a stop as close to it as she could manage without alerting the throng of reporters to their presence.

“Good luck,” she said as he opened his door, “and remember what I told you. Feel free to call me any time if you think of anything else that might be helpful. No detail is too small.”

Canfield handed him his gun with a smile. “I know it will be tempting, but try not to use this on those vultures out there.” She nodded toward the gathered mass of television and newspaper reporters milling about at the front of the parking lot.

Bill secured the weapon in the shoulder holster under his jacket and stepped out of the car, walking casually toward his van, covering roughly half the distance before being spotted. The horde of media turned their attention from the front of the service plaza toward Bill as he picked up his pace. Television cameras tracked his progress, questions were shouted, flashbulbs popped. He reached his van and yanked open the driver’s side door as the quickest of the news people shoved microphones in his face.

“I have no comment,” Bill said, grimacing and shaking his head at the chaotic scene. It occurred to him that he had felt safer and more in control with the I-90 Killer’s gun stuck in his face than he did right now. He eased the door closed, using his right hand to shove three stubborn microphones out of the way while he pulled on the handle with his left. He could have closed the door on the reporters’ hands with no problem at all. These people were relentless.

The van started with a rumble, and Bill pulled carefully around the men and women holding cameras, microphones, and notebooks, making his way slowly but steadily toward the on-ramp and the freedom of the interstate. Finally, he broke loose from the crowd and accelerated smoothly away, anxious see Carli, who by now would be home from school. It was a weekday, so she would be at Sandra and Howard’s home rather than at Bill’s apartment, but he didn’t think Sandra would mind him stopping by for a few minutes to chat with Carli. It was something he really needed to do.

That blonde teen who had come so close to being taken by the gunman at the service stop reminded him so much of his own seventeen-year-old daughter that he needed to see his little girl for himself, to hug her and tousle her hair the way she hated, to see her and talk to her and feel her. To convince himself she was okay and not the unwitting victim of some random act of violence committed by a sociopath with a gun.

Because you never know. That was the lesson of the day—you just never know.

CHAPTER 14

MARTIN KRALL SAT ON his threadbare couch staring at the TV, a dirty glass of flat cola warming on the table next to him. The porn videos he had planned on watching were forgotten because something even more interesting had caught his attention. The moment he arrived home he had flicked on the television, certain he would be able to find breaking news reports from back at the rest stop, but he almost couldn’t believe the scene that greeted his eyes.

The highway rest area was a madhouse. All of the local stations had preempted their afternoon programming in favor of live coverage of the attempted kidnapping. Apparently, the breathless reports went, a citizen inside the building had thwarted the I-90 Killer in his attempt to abduct another girl, his fourteenth over the past three-and-a-half years, the first time the infamous outlaw had ever been unsuccessful.

On the screen, reporters interviewed the victim’s tearful mother as she stood in the shade of the overhang on the top step just outside the entrance to the rest stop. Her arm was wrapped tightly around her daughter’s shoulder, and it appeared she had no intention of ever removing it. The blonde girl looked exhausted.

Martin’s heart ached. She was so beautiful. He already missed her immensely.

“It was incredible,” the woman was telling an unseen reporter. “This man, Bill Ferguson, risked his life to save my little girl. He stared down the barrel of that lunatic’s gun. Then, the police came and he just disappeared. I don’t know what happened to him or where he went, but I didn’t have a chance to talk to him or even thank him for the tremendous risk he took. Mr. Ferguson, if you’re out there, you are a true hero. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Martin felt a tide of anger rising inside him as he watched the disgusting display on his television. He wanted to pull his gun out and shoot the woman right through the screen. That girl she was so obsessively hugging to her bosom should have been
his
. She was rightfully his and she’d been taken away by that stupid busybody who didn’t have a shred of common sense. Why in the holy hell did he have to stick his nose into a situation that was clearly none of his business?

Didn’t a loaded gun mean anything anymore? Martin was flabbergasted. He could not understand it.

The more he thought about, the more he realized he had been wronged, had suffered a personal insult, and he was not about to take it lying down. The old Martin Krall would have curled up in the fetal position like some pathetic loser when life dealt him a bad hand. No more. The new and improved Martin Krall had learned that you had to fight for yourself in this world; you had to go after what you wanted, because no one else was going to get it for you.

On television, the cameras tracked the reluctant hero as he climbed into his vehicle, clearly anxious to escape. Questions were shouted at him from every direction and he ignored them all. “No comment,” he said as he pulled his door shut and started his van’s engine. He pulled forward slowly and carefully, the reporters moving out of the way only with the utmost reluctance and only at the point of being run down.

The man’s van lumbered left to right across the screen as he accelerated toward the on-ramp to the highway. He was driving a Ford Econoline panel van. Stenciled across the side in big, gold, block letters against a blue background were the words “Ferguson Hardware.” Underneath, in smaller print, were words Martin could not make out. He assumed they were the locations and telephone numbers of his stores.

No matter. Bill Ferguson was the man’s name, and he owned a hardware store. How many Bill Fergusons could there be in the area who also owned hardware stores? This guy would be very easy to find.

He took a sip of his warm, flat cola and reached for his remote, changing the input on his television so he could watch a DVD. A long, lonely night stretched endlessly in front of him with no blonde teenaged companionship to help pass the time. That was the fault of one person and one person only. But it was okay, because Martin had all the information he needed to begin rectifying the situation.

It was time for a little porn and some planning.

CHAPTER 15

BILL STOOD ON THE varnished surface of the oversized farmer’s porch running the length of the colonial style home and rang the doorbell. He hoped Carli would be the one to answer the door, but knew that was unlikely. She was probably upstairs, finishing her homework or listening to music or texting her friends. The intense heat had barely abated even though it was now nearly dinnertime, and Bill was thankful for the shade the porch provided. He hadn’t realized how much the confrontation with the I-90 Killer had taken out of him until just now. He felt shaky, washed out. As soon as he was done here, he would drive straight to his apartment in town and put his feet up, crack a beer, and watch the Sox game.

Heavy footsteps approached the door, and as it opened inward, Bill found himself staring into the face of his ex. Crow’s feet were beginning to show around her eyes, and a touch of grey was making inroads on her blonde locks, but otherwise, Sandra and her daughter were dead ringers. He felt the familiar ache for just a moment and then swallowed it down, locking it away, pasting a pleasant smile on his face.

He never blamed Sandra for leaving; not even after the affair she had begun with her now-husband Howard while still married to Bill. He knew it wasn’t easy being the wife of a small business owner, especially when the business in question was a pair of hardware stores continually in danger of being forced into bankruptcy by the big chains. Mom and Pop stores everywhere in the hardware game were disappearing, but through gargantuan effort, Bill had thus far managed to keep his stores afloat.

That effort came at a price, though. A steep one. All that driving from one store to the other trying to keep his business going with the growing competition from the big box stores translated into time spent away from home. Time spent away from Sandra and Carli.

Eventually, all those lonely hours, nights, and weeks, had become too much for his wife to endure. She began a relationship with an old high school boyfriend who still lived in the area. Howard Mitchell had never married. He was a successful dentist, complete with a thriving practice, a big house, a pool, and expensive cars. Most importantly, Bill knew, Howard Mitchell was home most evenings for his family, which, to Sandra, translated into a considerable upgrade over her husband.

It had been two years now since Sandra left him, marrying Howard Mitchell six months after that, but no matter how much time passed, Bill knew he would always feel a momentary tug of sadness, of pain and regret, whenever he laid eyes on his former wife.

“Bill,” she said in surprise, brushing a stray hair out of her eyes, stepping back into the foyer out of the unseasonable late-afternoon heat. “What are you doing here? Are you all right?”

“Sure, I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Why wouldn’t you be? You’ve been all over the news this afternoon. Fighting with that horrible I-90 Killer. You could’ve been killed!”

“Oh, that, yeah,” he said. “Sorry. I don’t know why, but it didn’t occur to me you might have seen the reports. I mean, I saw all the news trucks and the reporters at the rest area, but it all seemed a little unreal to me.

“Anyway,” he said, suddenly feeling silly but not letting it stop him. “I was wondering if I could see Carli for a couple of minutes. It’s been…I don’t know…kind of a long day, and I just wanted to say hi to her.”

She hesitated for half a second and then pulled the heavy door open wider. “Of course. Come on in out of the heat. Wait right here and I’ll get her.”

Bill stepped inside, and his ex-wife pushed the front door closed. The house felt cool and comfortable, a far cry from the stifling temperatures he knew he would face when he went home. A window fan moving stale air around a second-floor one-bedroom apartment could not compare with the comfort of central air conditioning. He stood awkwardly on the gleaming hardwood floor of the foyer as Sandra brushed past, stopping at the foot of the stairway and yelling upstairs to his daughter. To their daughter. “Carli, your dad’s here!”

From somewhere down the second-story hallway came a muffled reply. “Be right there,” it sounded like, but Bill could not be sure. She was obviously in her room behind closed doors. Sandra smiled at him, and his heart ached.

“So, what the heck happened today?” she asked.

He shook his head. “It all went down so fast, I’m not exactly sure. I was having a cup of Smokin’ Joe’s Coffee at the highway rest stop—”

She laughed. “You always loved their coffee, and I never understood why.”

“Hey, it’s really good,” he protested. “Give it a chance and you’ll be hooked. Anyway, there I was, minding my own business, getting ready to go back out to the van, when this guy pulls a gun on a teenage girl. He was right in front of me when he did it, Sandra, and nobody else saw a thing. He was hustling her out to the parking lot and, in about three seconds, would have had her out the door and she would have been gone. And still nobody noticed. So I just reacted and did what I had to do. What anyone would have done, hopefully.”

From the top of the carpeted stairway came an excited shriek. “Dad, you’re a hero!”

Carli bounded down the stairs like a whirlwind, taking them two at a time, launching herself at him off the bottom step and nearly driving him through the closed door and into the front yard. Bill laughed and caught her, wrapping his arms around her slim body in a bear hug, one he wished he could hold forever. Sandra turned and walked up the hallway toward the kitchen. “I’ll give you two some privacy,” she said as she rounded the corner.

“Dad, are you okay? The whole school was talking about what you did today. Even the principal made a big speech during closing announcements about how you saved some girl from the I-90 Kidnapper, and guess what?” she said, her eyes shining with excitement.

Bill smiled. His day was looking up already. “Yes, I’m okay. And what?”

“Cody Small—he’s the captain of the football team, Dad—he came up to me and talked with me all the way to the bus. Cody Small has never paid any attention to me before. I didn’t even think he knew who I was!”

“Well, then, it was all worth it.” He looked his daughter in the eyes gravely. “Can I let you in on a little secret?”