The weather today was atypical for a late spring day: hot and humid; more like August than May. Sweaty travelers, most dressed in shorts and t-shirts, hurried inside to use the facilities and stock up on food and drinks before barreling back onto the highway to mix it up with the rest of the early-season vacationers. The chaotic activity had a certain anonymity to it—like the practiced avoidance of the big city, where people could be packed, shoulder to shoulder, on public transit or elevators and still manage to ignore the strangers around them. Most of the vacationers’ interactions here were limited to completing a transaction at one of the fast food franchises inside the plaza, wolfing down their food and drinks, and heading out.
In contrast, long-haul truckers slouched in to sit around long tables, sipping coffee and shooting the breeze with their buddies as they falsified their drivers’ logbooks in case of a surprise inspection by the DOT somewhere down the road. Bill could pick out the longtime truck drivers pretty easily; they carried themselves low to the ground like sports cars, as if the gravitational pull from decades of sitting in the driver’s seat had somehow gradually compressed them. The truckers spent their days in solitude, breathing exhaust fumes and covering mile after mile of paved highway with only the radio for company. Unlike the vacationers, who seemed to view the people around them as intrusions to be avoided at all costs, the truckers tended to be outgoing and talkative here, at least to others who earned their living behind the wheel.
Bill raised his coffee to his lips with his left hand, enjoying the slightly acidic taste as it burned its way down his gullet. With his right, he absently traced the bulge of the Browning Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol secured in his worn, leather, shoulder holster. A loose-fitting blue windbreaker with “Ferguson Hardware” stitched with off-white thread on the breast pocket concealed the handgun nicely. He carried the weapon whenever it was necessary to transport cash or valuable merchandise for his stores, and, in sixteen years, he had never had occasion to pull it out of the holster unless he was at the practice range.
Running his hand over the outline of the weapon, Bill caressed it like a security blanket, which he supposed, in a way, it was. Carrying large sums of money at all hours of the day or night on an interstate highway, often lonely and secluded over the forty-mile stretch between exits for his stores, was no kind of avenue to a long and healthy life, and, although Bill had never yet run into trouble, he knew you could never be too careful.
He drained his coffee with a satisfied sigh and stretched his muscles, feeling the usual popping and cracking of bones and tendons—signs of turning forty last year. He set his mug on the table and rose. The coffee was good, but nothing lasted forever. His failed marriage testified to the wisdom of that theory.
Oh, well. It was time to use the facilities, hit the road, and get back to work.
CHAPTER 4
MARTIN PUSHED OPEN THE door and entered the rest stop, grateful to be out of the heavy, hot, summery air. Already, his light t-shirt stuck to his back uncomfortably. He mopped his brow with the palm of his hand, scanning the interior of the crowded building for any cops who might be sitting on their fat butts drinking coffee and eating donuts like some stupid, living cliché. There were none. He relaxed a bit and began the process of searching for a likely prospect. The plaza was set up like a shopping mall food court, with counters running in a long semicircle around the back of the room, beginning immediately to the left of the glass double doors and terminating to Martin’s right at the entrances to the men’s and women’s restrooms.
Spaced at intervals behind the counters were the usual fast food suspects: the pizza place, the fried chicken place, the burger joint, the coffee shop, the ice cream and frozen yogurt franchise. Tables and booths filled the spacious open dining area, with carts and stands more or less randomly scattered throughout the room hawking t-shirts, knickknacks and cheap collectibles.
The place was filled. Martin loved the bustling activity, the way all the people were so absorbed in themselves, in their own little worlds, that they took note of little else. Even now, after more than a dozen kidnappings in plazas like this one all along the eastern portion of I-90, most people remained blissfully ignorant, unaware of their surroundings, certain of their own safety, apparently believing that random tragedy would always strike the other guy.
Martin walked slowly toward the pizza counter, not because he was interested in eating, but because that vantage point offered the clearest view of the open room, and thus it offered the best opportunity to scan for potentials. He was reasonably certain he had already made one “withdrawal” from this particular plaza, maybe even his very first, but there had been so many over the last three-and-a-half years that they all began to blend together, a satisfying mishmash of pretty young things forcibly abducted in broad daylight in front of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of potential witnesses.
He regretted losing clarity in the memories of his earliest conquests, but it was inevitable, really. In a way, those fuzzy remembrances served as testament to his methods, to the fact that he was so good at what he did. He had been at it so long and taken so many girls that the details of all but the most recent kidnappings had begun to merge together into a kind of delicious, nostalgic stew. Perhaps he couldn’t recall the specifics of all of them, but, in total, the memories served to warm his heart, to cause a little tingle in his belly whenever he thought about them. You couldn’t ask for much more than that in this world.