Tristan frantically tried to find her way down the dark highway. She knew she had to turn the car around somewhere and get on I-80 east. There was no way in hell she was pulling a U-turn. She had an idea of what would happen. Kendricks would be making his way up the highway to the nearest phone, and somehow, someway, he'd stop her. But the more she thought about it, the warier she became. She would be more likely to get lost in the back roads of the woods than on the highway. Against her better judgment, she turned the battered car onto the grassy knoll that separated I-80 west and east.
"If he gets in my way, I'll run him over with the car,” said Tristan, her determination getting strong and stronger by the minute. She was getting closer to the point where she had left Kendricks on the opposite side of the highway. She peered across the highway trying to see if she could spot him, but she saw nothing. “Thank God,” said Tristan, as she moved her eyes back to the road in front of her.
Focusing on the darkening highway she nearly brought the car to a complete stop when she saw the man standing in the road just ten feet in front of her. The darkness of night cloaking him ominously under the glow of the moon, Tristan was frozen still in shock. He stared at her with a putrid hatred that frankly scared the living hell out of her. Standing quite still, he looked like the devil incarnate himself. She stomped on the gas pedal, tires screeching underneath of her, as Tristan narrowly escaped hitting Bernard Kendricks over with the car. As she sped off down the dark highway, a terrible scream erupted into the night.
Chapter Seventeen
Nova Recovered
October 9, 1997
Early Evening
Elkhart, PA
Frank stood at the on-ramp of Cavegat Pass brightly illuminated in his orange Department of Transportation vest as he stopped cars that intended to climb the mountain road that led to Fox Hollow. On the opposite side of the road, Blake, Tommy, and Shane tackled traffic from the off-ramp, making sure every car that passed through knew what had happened to their father and sister. Looking each driver in the face for identification, Frank handed them each a missing person’s poster with Tristan’s face featured largely in the center. Local media still had not picked up the story about Tristan’s original disappearance, let alone the recent turn of events, so Frank was trying to get word out, and make sure the community knew so they could help too.
Cole and Joe Piedmonte had helped by stapling missing flyers to all the utility poles in town, as well as taping flyers in store windows. Once Joe found out what happened at the hospital, he transformed his large road side sign that typically housed his daily specials into a roadside headline, “Steeplechase Teacher Kidnapped Student and Shot Parent. Please Help! Come to Monte’s!” Deputy Cope tried to get him to take the sign down several times, but Joe refused, saying that it was his sign, his property, and he had to right to express himself however he saw fit.
The crowd began to gather around dinner time in the parking lot of Monte’s, community members wanting to know how they could help. Joe passed out flyers while Cole talked to some of the men that came down from the Elkhart Gun Club about what happened to his girlfriend, and what Kendricks looked like, while the sportsmen looked eager to go on a countywide hunt for the man responsible for all this heartache. A large group of parents of Steeplechase students had begun to congregate in the entryway of Monte’s demanding to know what had happened, with one mother screaming hysterically, “It could have been any of our children!” as tears flooded down her face.