Maps of Hell

Five

The midafternoon sun was hardly strong enough to cut through the clouds over Iowa and a light drizzle was falling. Twenty miles east of Des Moines, Richard Bonhoff steered his ten-year-old Chevrolet pickup onto Interstate 80 and floored the gas pedal. He’d left the farm an hour earlier after a screaming argument with Melissa. Only now did it strike him that he’d failed to tell her where he was going. It was better she didn’t know.

He passed a Winnebago with difficulty and went over to the outside lane. The pickup’s engine had been giving him trouble for months. Chances were it would never get him to Washington, D.C., and then what would he do? Sit on the grass and weep, probably.

That had been the starting point of his disagreement with his wife. Melissa had come in tired from the yard and found him at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. She’d immediately told him how pathetic that was. Why couldn’t he be a man and get on with his work? Lord knows there was enough of it to do now there were only the two of them. Richard hadn’t replied. Then she’d said that he should stop moping over the twins’ decision to leave home. Randy and Gwen were twenty-one years old. They were grown-ups, entitled to make their own decisions about their future.

“Yeah,” he’d said, finally raising his head. “But we’re entitled to know where they’ve gone, Mel. It’s nearly three months now. How can you be sure they’re okay? I mean, I come down at six in the morning and find them already gone, no note, no explanation-then a phone call in the evening, saying there’s something they gotta do and not to expect them back soon. Since then, nothing. For God’s sake, they could have been kidnapped.”

“And the kidnappers held guns to their heads when they made the call? The state police told you what they thought about that idea. Anyway, where’s the ransom note?” She gave a bitter laugh. “Not that we’re gonna be able to pay. Get over it, Richard. They’re not kids anymore. You have to let them go.” His wife stomped into the utility room and started emptying the drier. “And, Richard?” she shouted. “If you don’t fix the lights in the cattle shed today, I’m gonna get Ned to do it.”

Melissa knew exactly how to get to him. She’d been screwing Ned Bartlett from the neighboring place on and off for ten years. He’d never had the balls to confront her about it, even though she hadn’t been subtle. Well, to hell with her. If she was more worried about the livestock than her own children, she couldn’t expect him to share his plan with her. He’d already put a bag full of clothes in the pickup. That was all he needed.

Fifty miles from home, Richard was still fixed in his resolve. The thing was, Melissa was right. Their beautiful kids were legally old enough to take charge of their own lives. That was why the cops couldn’t give a shit about their disappearance. Oh, sure, they’d added their names to some list, passed it to the FBI, but according to Sergeant Onions, thousands of new names showed up every week across the country. It was up to Randy and Gwen to get in touch and that was all there was to it. Unless Richard had any evidence to suggest a crime had been committed?

Well, no, he hadn’t-nothing that a policeman would understand, nothing concrete. But he knew something wasn’t right. The twins had been weird ever since they’d won that newspaper competition last winter. They were both at college-Randy doing agricultural engineering and Gwen learning how to do accounts-when they’d gotten the news. They’d entered some competition in one of the supermarket tabloids and they’d won third prize. Third prize had been a weekend at a luxury hotel in Washington, D.C., with all expenses paid and a thousand dollars spending money to boot.

Richard tried to coax the pickup past an eighteen-wheeler and got honked at by an asshole in a Porsche. He went back into the slow lane and played it safe. So the kids flew off to the capital and had a great time, they said. Went to the White House, took in a concert, saw the Redskins get stomped all over. They were even spotted by a talent scout from some photo agency-apparently there was always demand for twins. But ever since then, they’d been different. They didn’t come home from college at the weekends like most of the local kids, but they wouldn’t say what kept them in town. They didn’t come home during vacations for more than a few days. Richard had gone down to surprise them once and found them both away. Their roommates didn’t know where they were, and Randy and Gwen wouldn’t say where they’d been when they eventually came home. At least they still seemed to be close; if anything, they were even more involved with each other’s thoughts and emotions. Neither of them seemed to have close friends.

Richard saw that he was low on gas. He didn’t have much cash and his credit cards were almost maxed out. The trip to D.C. would leave him with zero funds. He saw a sign for a service station and took the exit.

After filling up the tank, he went to pay. There was an array of newspapers on the way into the store. He immediately picked out the Star Reporter. Even surrounded by the other tabloids, it looked cheap and nasty, the paper off-white and the print faintly smudged. Today the front page had a photo of a shrouded body on a gurney. The headline screamed Satanic Singer’s Ears Skewered! He picked it up, not because he was interested in the story but because the Star Reporter was the paper that had paid for the twins’ trip to D.C. and provided an escort. He was going to find out exactly what had gone on during that long weekend last winter, even if he had to camp out on the editor’s doorstep.

Richard looked toward the pay phone. He told himself that he would hang up the moment Melissa started shouting, but he knew he wouldn’t be strong enough to keep that resolution. If only Randy and Gwen hadn’t gone. He used to be able to stand up to his wife when the twins were around. He turned away and went back to the pickup.