Night Kills

10

They were driving route 494, out by the airport, when he took an exit abruptly, hitting first an access road and then a gravel road.

"Where we going?" the girl asked.

"Nowhere in particular."

"I'm kinda hungry."

"How about afterward we go to a Perkins'?"

"Can you get pancakes this late?"

"Far as I know."

"I love their pancakes," she said. It was the first time she'd sounded enthusiastic about anything.

She fiddled with the stations. Trying to get the very best rocker. He wondered about her taste. So far she'd tuned past Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and Elton John. Whom did she like anyway? Then a soul group came on-a pretty good soul group actually, though he had no idea who they were-and she settled back and closed her eyes and gave herself over to the music. He saw her slight body sway in rhythm to the radio. He felt his erection stiffen. Definitely an erotic little trick. Definitely.

In ten minutes they were driving past a new housing development. It was one of those projects that looked as if it had been hurled up over the past twenty-four hours-boxy designs and low-pitched roofs and asymmetrical front facades. Its lights seemed obstinate against the rolling prairie night. Then it was gone, a dim fluttering light on the horizon behind, and they were once again in headlight darkness, dust rolling up and coating the car a rough silver.

It was probably going to be much like the other night. He had the same knife, same tarpaulin. Only this time Brolan wasn't going to get a chance to do anything with the body. Fucking Brolan. Smart-ass. Or thought he was, anyway.

He pulled off the road onto a hard mud path where tractors were driven through a gate in the surrounding fence.

"I thought I was going to do you while you were driving."

"Changed my mind," he said.

She looked around. An owl sang lonely on the night. "I don't like it out here. Creepy."

"I think it's pleasant. No hassles."

"You going to let me see your condom?"

"Sure." He reached in his rear pocket and took out his wallet. Three Trojans in red cellophane crackled as he took them out. He waggled them at her. "See?"

"Okay," she said. She shrugged. "You want to-uh, do it or what?"

"Why don't we just kind of hold each other first?"

"Sure. I like it when people hold me. Sometimes I even have daydreams about it. People just holding me, I mean. Sort of like my mother used to."

"I'll bet she was a nice woman."

"She was real nice." Denise sounded as if she were going to cry.

He reached across the car and brought her to him.

She kissed incredibly well, her little tongue moving quickly inside his mouth. He took her right hand and guided it to his erection. She took it with a hard, professional grip, beginning to stroke him immediately through the material of his trousers. He began gently bucking against her. It was as if she'd grabbed his joy stick and was literally steering his body around the car.

It was difficult to concentrate on what came next. While they were still kissing, while the thought of orgasm began to have overwhelming appeal to him, he brought his hands up from behind her back and fixed them quickly on her throat.

She knew at once what was happening. She tried to say something, to call out, perhaps.

But his hands were tight on her throat-he could feel the muscle and bone of it-and he knew that only after he had killed her would the sex be truly satisfactory.

She startled him by getting one of her small hands up free and raking her fingernails across his throat.

This time it was he who cried out. little bitch.

He heard the door open behind him-he hadn't thought to lock the doors, a very bad mistake-her taking advantage of the moment when she'd stunned him with her nails.

Then she got her knee and foot into the action, finding enough purchase in the car to start kicking him as he continued to strangle her.

He paused long enough to slap her very hard across the mouth, to reassert his domination, but she continued to kick, and her kicks were starting to hurt-on the shin and two or three times in the stomach.

Then she was free.

Screaming.

Falling backwards out of the car.

Panic blinded him for a moment And paralysis.

He looked down and saw her hit the dirt path they'd pulled onto. But before he could move to do anything, she was scrambling to her feet and running down the road in the direction they'd just come.

Little bitch.

Jerking the car into reverse, whipping around so he would have a straight shot at her, he started down the road.

She looked as if she were crazy. She ran with her arms flailing and her voice so shrill, she was probably giving herself a sore throat.

He knew then what he'd have to do. He aimed the car to the left-hand shoulder of the road, directly at the point she was running. Even a glancing blow from the car would stop her. Maybe not kill her. But stop her. And he could finish the job himself. Hell, at this point, given all that she had done, he wanted to.

She was smart, the little bitch.

Just as his hood ornament matched up with her spine, she surprised him by pitching herself straight down in the gully running beside the road. She vanished.

He had to fight with the brakes to keep the car from going down into the gully, one of those slow, fishtailing, stomach-turning halts that you're not sure will work till the very last second.

In the splash of his headlights, he saw her scrabbling up the dusty gully on the other side. When she reached the top, she grabbed on to some rusty barbed wire, crying out as her hands were cut, then hurling herself through the strands of wire. She landed with a dead thump he could hear all the way from where he was. But then she was on her feet and running across a cornfield.

He whipped the car as close to the edge of the gully as possible, killed lights and engine, and took off, running.

Down the gully, up the gully, through the barbed wire (not cutting himself as she had), and then into the cornfield proper. With the stalks all dead and lying on the ground, he had no trouble seeing her. His first impression was that she was running to nowhere in particular. Just running to escape him.

But as he bore on-chest heaving, heart pounding, a million vile words for the little bitch filling his mind-he finally saw what she obviously saw.

The twinkling lights of a farmhouse on the low, dark horizon.

Only then did he begin to notice the wind and the rain that was fast becoming sleet

Only then did he begin to notice that she was outdistancing him very badly.

Only then did he begin to notice that he would never catch her.

Bitch.

Fucking bitch.

Exhausted, he fell to his knees in the dead cornfield, stalks crackling beneath him like snapping plastic.

Sleet washed his face; wind took the sweat from his scalp. He took off the wig and the beard then, right there in the cornfield.

She would report a man with dark hair and a Vandyke beard. She would also report a car that within the hour would be returned to the rental agency.

Nothing to go on.

Absolutely nothing.

Then he felt in his back pocket for the wallet he'd planned to plant near the murder scene (just far enough away that it looked accidental). It was gone.

And then, there in the cornfield, he started laughing. There was panic in the laugh and frenzy, but there was also ironic satisfaction.

The little bitch had taken Brolan's wallet.