The Kit Tolliver Stories

Don’t Get in the Car

One.

A bus, a plane, another bus. A Rust Belt city in east-central Ohio, immune to economic cycles because it had been in its own permanent recession ever since the end of the Second World War. A dingy SRO hotel, her drab room so small that the initials might as easily have stood for Standing Room Only as Single Room Occupancy.

And a minimum-wage job two blocks away, in a shop that sold rolling papers and recycled jeans. She wore the same basic outfit every day, loose jeans and a bulky sweater, and she didn’t put on makeup or lipstick, or do anything with her hair. She kept herself as unattractive as possible short of putting on weight or breaking out in pimples, but a certain number of guys hit on her anyway. Some guys were like that; the mere possibility that you might be the possessor of a vagina was all it took to arouse their interest.

She deflected any attention that came her way, meeting their gaze with a slack-jawed, bovine stare, missing the point of their innuendo. Some of them probably thought she was retarded. One way or the other, they all lost what minimal interest she’d inspired.

After work she’d pick up half a barbecued chicken or some Chinese take-out and eat in her room; when that got old she’d stop at a diner and sit in a rear booth reading the paper while she ate. Back in her room she read library books until it was bedtime. She went to bed early and didn’t get up until she had to. If this city was a place to hide, well, so was sleep.

It was strange. She’d felt uplifted after she left Hedgemont, felt she’d done something good, something transcendent. She’d given Alvin Kirkaby something he longed for, and something no one else could or would have given him — the liberation of a peaceful death.

And that made her feel good, in an unfamiliar way, and she enjoyed the feeling while it lasted.

But it didn’t last very long, and when it passed it gave way to a feeling of emptiness. Her life stretched out in front of her, and she saw herself going on like this forever, hooking up with men, sleeping with them, killing them, and moving on. What she had always enjoyed, what had indeed never failed to thrill her, all at once seemed unendurable.

So she worked in the daytime and read in the evenings and slept at night. And put everything on hold, waiting.

One afternoon she bought a phone. Prepaid, good for a couple of hours of calls. You could trace it back to the store where she bought it, but no further than that. They didn’t make her give a name, let alone show ID.

She took it back to her room, put it in a drawer. Three nights later she picked it up and made a call.

“Kimmie!”

“Hi, Rita.”

“I was wondering if I’d ever hear from you again.”

“Oh, I’m harder to shake than a summer cold.”

“It’s so good to hear your voice. Only the thing is—”

“You’ve got company.”

“How’d you know?”

“Is he cute? Has he got a nice cock?”

“Kimmie...”

“You want to call me back when you’re done? I’ll give you my number.”

There’d been no calls, to Rita or to anyone else, since she left Hedgemont. There’d been no phone — she’d left the battery in one trash receptacle and the phone in another, and hadn’t bothered to get a new phone until just the other day, when a store she’d passed every day suddenly drew her in.

And then, the new phone in her possession, she’d left it alone until tonight. She’d bought it for one reason and one reason only, to call Rita. So why did it take her three days to get around to making the call?

“So did you fuck him?”

“Kimmie! Suppose it was somebody else calling?”

“Not much chance of that. Nobody else has the number. Anyway, I know the answer. Either you fucked him or there was something really good on TV, because I was just about ready to give up on you and go to sleep.”

“What, at nine-thirty? Oh, you must be in one of those weird eastern time zones.”

“Central. It’s eleven-thirty here.”

Talking, back and forth. She found herself talking a little about her job, about the place where she was staying. And realized how she’d missed this contact, this connection.

“Such an exciting life,” Rita was saying. “A new job, a new address...”

“Feeding a Xerox machine. Picking up General Tso’s chicken on my way home. I don’t know if my heart can stand the excitement.”

“I guess you don’t want to hear how I spent the evening.”

“By the fireside, knitting sweaters for our troops in Siberia.”

“We have troops in Siberia?”

“Not yet. Well? Let’s hear it.”

“Let’s see, you called me when, two hours ago?”

“More like two and a half.”

“How time flies. Well, in those two and a half hours I slept with over a hundred and fifty men.”

“Huh?”

“One hundred and fifty-two, to be precise. You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Not a clue.”

“He was a Mormon, Kimmie.”

“The guy.”

“Yeah.”

“So he had what, five or ten wives? How does that put you in bed with a hundred and fifty guys?”

“A hundred fifty-two.”

“Whatever.”

“And he’s not polygamous. He’s not even married. He’s engaged to be married, but the wedding’s not until sometime next year.”

“I’ll clear my calendar. I still don’t get it.”

“Okay, I’ll explain. There were two of them, and they came to my door and rang the bell.”

“Him and his fiancée?”

“No, she’s back in Utah. Him and another guy. What happened, I was online a month or two ago, I can’t even remember, and I guess I checked something about wanting information on the Mormon faith. I thought they were going to send me a book.”

“And instead they sent you two guys? And you fucked them both? That still leaves a hundred fifty unaccounted for.”

“I only fucked one of them. They were there to hand-deliver a copy of the Book of Mormon and some other literature, and, you know, to convert me. And one of them was really drippy-looking, like he’d have been a nerd but his IQ wasn’t high enough.”

“But you liked the other one.”

“Kellen, his name was. Tall, blond, big shoulders, small waist.”

“Your basic hunk.”

“And, you know, we connected. I managed to get him away from his buddy—”

“The failed nerd.”

“—and we set it up that he’d ditch Dopey and come back. And he did, and things were moving along nicely, and then you called.”

“Sorry about the timing.”

“It was no problem. I got off the phone, and then, well—”

“You got off.”

“You bet. And no, I didn’t wear the butt plug. I thought I might have my own personal Mormon butt plug, but that was out because of his fiancée back in Provo. See, ass-fucking is one of the things he’s saving for marriage. But the man couldn’t get enough of my pussy. Listen to me, will you? I don’t know why I’m talking like this.”

“Don’t stop now.”

“Are you wet, Kimmie? Are you touching yourself?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, don’t stop. Because it was really hot...”

“Rita, you’re something else.”

“Did you come good, Kimmie?”

“You know I did.”

“Me too. When he was doing me, and I was really into it and everything, I couldn’t stop thinking how I’d call you back and tell you all about it. And once we were done I couldn’t wait to get rid of him so I could call you. I don’t care if we’re lesbians.”

“You’d probably have a tough time convincing Kellen you’re a lesbian. Speaking of Kellen—”

“I know, I still didn’t tell you how he got to be a hundred and fifty-two people.”

“Right.”

“He was baptized.”

“Well, so was I, not that I can claim to remember it. And it didn’t make me sprout a hundred clones. I’m still only one person.”

“One very special person. If I’m a lesbian, I’m just a lesbian for you, you know. If you were here right now—”

“We’d go down on each other.”

“Yes, we would.”

“And do a lot of other things.”

“Most of which I’ve been thinking about.”

Deep breath. “Can we get back to Kellen, Rita?”

“He was baptized a hundred and fifty-two times.”

“He was? Why, for God’s sake?”

“Exactly.”

“Huh?”

“For God’s sake, and for the sake of a hundred and fifty-one poor souls who went through life without being baptized. It’s a Mormon thing, Kimmie. It’s called proxy baptism. You know how they’ve got this big genealogical research project in Salt Lake City? How they’re trying to get the names of everybody who ever lived?”

“I guess I read something about that.”

“Well, their goal is to baptize all the people who lived and died without going through that sacrament. And participating in the process is one form of missionary work. Instead of turning up on people’s doorsteps—”

“And fucking them senseless.”

“—you go through a ceremony designed to get the unbaptized dead into Heaven.”

“Salvation for the unsaved.”

“That’s the idea. New hope for the dead.”

“I never heard of that before,” she said. “It’s deeply weird.”

“Well, so was Kellen. He wouldn’t go down on me.”

“He wouldn’t? The moron. I would.”

“Would you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, tell me. Tell me what you’d do.”

In the morning she showered and put on her sweater and jeans and walked to work. On her break she sat down at one of the back-office computers and Googled her way to Mormon proxy baptism. It was pretty much as Rita had reported, and there was no question about it, the whole business was deeply weird.

On the other hand, who was she to hang that label on anything anybody did? She was crisscrossing the country, trying to regrow her psychic hymen by killing every man who ever had sex with her, and she was involved in a wildly exciting lesbian affair with a woman she’d never laid a hand on. How was that for weird?

Two nights later she couldn’t sleep. She’d sat in her room reading until she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and then she got undressed and slipped under the blanket and hovered for half an hour on the edge of consciousness. She almost went under, and then she surfaced, and she sat up in bed, knowing it wasn’t going to happen.

There was one man left, one blot on her record, and no way on earth to track him down. You could find anything and anybody with Google, but you had to have at least a vague idea what you were searching for, and all she had was a first name and the vaguest possible recollection of a face, undefined in her mind but for a gap between his two top incisors.

And she knew where she’d picked him up, in a Race Street bar in Philadelphia, but all that told her was that he was from some place other than Philadelphia, because he took her to his hotel room, and he wouldn’t be staying in a hotel if he lived there, would he? And he’d told her his name was Sid, and maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, and where did that leave her? The one man who’d fucked her and lived to tell the tale was not from Philadelphia, and his name was or wasn’t Sid. And, just to narrow it down still further, he had a gap between his teeth.

Wonderful. Google that, see where it gets you.

She got out of bed, put on the clothes she’d worn earlier. Was it too late to call Rita? No, not with the time difference. She picked up the phone, put it down again. It was, she decided, not too late to call but too early. Maybe in a few days, maybe in a week, but not yet.

She didn’t know what she was going to do about Rita. Well, how could she? She didn’t know what she was going to do about her whole goddamn life.

She couldn’t keep on doing this forever, could she? Shedding one name and taking on another, leaving one town and moving on to another, sleeping with men and leaving them lifeless? How long could you do that?

She’d rarely stopped to take long views, living in the moment, but something had happened to her in Hedgemont. She couldn’t define it or figure it out, but it had changed her by more than the simple subtraction of a name from her list. She’d left North Carolina feeling somehow ennobled, and ever since then she’d seen herself and her life not in extreme close-up but as if from a distance.

Like she was seeing a bigger picture, sort of.

She added a hoodie for warmth and walked down a flight of stairs and out of the hotel. The city shut down early, and the streets were empty, with no traffic to speak of. The bars were closed. There was sure to be an all-night café somewhere, but she wasn’t hungry, didn’t want coffee, didn’t want company. She just felt like walking for a while and letting her thoughts run free.

Could she possibly have a life? A life, say, where she stayed in one place, and had the same name all the time? A life she might even share with another human being?

Like, for example, Rita?

It seemed ridiculous even to imagine it. She’d never had sex with another woman, never wanted to, never really gave it a thought. Then she and Rita spent one unplanned night, having a weird sort of phoneless phone sex, and the next day she was out of there like a bat out of hell. And since then they’d had real phone sex, which is to say they did it over the phone, telling each other stories, and most recently talking about what they’d do to each other if they ever found themselves under the same roof again.

Would she even want to?

Would it be repulsive to kiss another woman on the mouth? Or on the breasts? Would it turn her on to go down on another woman? Or would it turn her stomach?

She’d done just about everything there was to do with men, and she always enjoyed it. The fact that some people regarded an act as perverted or unnatural never bothered her. For God’s sake, hadn’t she killed a guy, crossed him off her list, and then fucked him one last time? If she could get off doing that, why draw the line at eating pussy?

No, that wasn’t the problem. The sex would be all right. It might be quieter and less exciting if it was girl on girl, but it might just as easily be better.

The question was what came afterward.

With men, there was no question. The bed a man shared with her was his death bed. As soon as she could arrange it, she whisked him out of the world and wiped him off the slate.

And with women? Would she feel the same compulsion, the same genuine need to take her partner’s life?

Maybe. Maybe not. She could see the logic in either answer.

It was her father’s sexual abuse that sent her down the path she’d been walking all her life. He’d been her first lover, and she’d killed him for it, and all the men since then had been her lovers on the way to becoming her victims. If she slept with a woman, that wouldn’t be her father all over again, would it? Women were different. Women were soft where men were hard, yielding where men were obdurate. Women had never abused her.

And yet...

The first person she ever killed was her mother.

That was something she didn’t think about too often. For some reason it was easy to forget, even as her mother had been an essentially forgettable person. And it was easy, too, to regard her mother’s death as a means to an end. By killing her mother, she set the stage for the murder/suicide the police would discover.

Still, it was hard to pass off matricide as an afterthought. And, no question, she blamed her mother for the abuse. Either the woman deliberately overlooked it or she was willfully obtuse, refusing to see what was right in front of her eyes. She probably welcomed it, because it saved her from the unpleasant duty of satisfying her husband.

Well, she had a lot of ways to look at it. But it was hard to get past the fact that she’d killed the woman, and would she feel a need to kill other women?

She didn’t want that to happen to Rita.

For God’s sake, she had fun with Rita. She enjoyed being with Rita. And it wasn’t just girls being pals, girls dashing off to the bathroom together to talk about which boys were cute and which weren’t.

No, it was sexual. It was sharing sex histories — Jesus, getting her gay hairdresser to teach her how to give a blowjob! And it was phone sex without a phone, and then phone sex with a phone, and lots of mutual assurances that there was nothing genuinely lesbian about what they were doing, until they’d passed that point and recognized that it didn’t matter whether their actions made them lesbians. If you were here I’d touch you. If you were here I’d go down on you. Wish you were here...

All she had to do was get on a plane to Seattle. A nice dinner for two in a comfortable suburban house. Rita would cook, she’d bring the wine. Nuits-Saint-Georges, because it had certainly done the job before.

And then what?

What was required, she realized, was an experiment. She had to go to bed with a woman and see what happened. Not what happened in bed, although it would be good to know if the acts repelled or delighted her, but what happened afterward. If she could walk away from her female partner without harming her, and if the woman’s continued existence didn’t drive her crazy, then maybe she and Rita had a chance.

If not, she’d stay the hell away from the whole state of Washington. Because she didn’t want anything bad to happen to Rita. Because, well, she seemed to care about Rita.

Maybe even loved her. Whatever the hell that was, and it wasn’t something to think about, not now. If ever.

First things first. Was there even a lesbian bar in this perfect shithole of a town?

There almost had to be, and it couldn’t be too hard to find. But it would be closed at this hour, and in any case she wasn’t in shape to go cruising. Not in this outfit, not with her hair such a mess, not when she sorely needed a shower. It wouldn’t be hard to pass as a lesbian, dressed and groomed as she was, but it might be tricky to find somebody who’d want to go home with her.

A different outfit, she thought. And her hair fixed in a more becoming fashion, and maybe just a touch of lipstick.

She had to get out of this town. But when?

“Little late to be out walking.”

She’d been aware of the car alongside her but hadn’t paid attention until the driver lowered the window and spoke. She turned her head, took in the dark late-model sedan, the driver’s face hard to make out. And just then the dome light came on, as if a look at him would be reassuring.

And it was, sort of. Forties, jacket and tie, eyeglasses, balding, hair still dark. A little jowly, a little pudgy. A businessman, maybe a corporate guy. A solid citizen, for sure.

“Neighborhood’s coming back,” he went on. “Still, I have to say it’s got a ways to go. Young woman like yourself shouldn’t be walking around at this hour.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.

“Neither could I. Full moon, gets me every time.” He leaned across the seat, opened the door in invitation.

She had to get out of this town. There might be a lesbian bar here, but there’d be a lesbian bar in another city, and she could go there and get a fresh start. But it was so easy to give in to inertia, to wear the same schlumpy clothes to the same time-killer job, to bring home take-out food to her squalid little room, to put the world on hold while the days turned into weeks.

All she had to do was get in the car and that would change. The back pocket of her jeans held a folding knife, and its four-inch blade was long enough to reach his heart. By the time his body worked its way down to room temperature, she’d be on a bus out of here.

She’d leave because she’d have to leave. That made him her ticket out.

So what was she waiting for?

Not a good idea, a little voice warned her. Say something, or don’t say anything, but turn around and go back to the hotel. Whatever you do, don’t get in the car.

She got into the car.

“Seat belt,” he said.

He was looking straight ahead, hadn’t glanced at her since he pulled away from the curb. So he’d noticed earlier that she hadn’t fastened her seat belt, but waited until the car was rolling before saying anything.

Because she might have changed her mind and opened the door, but it had locked automatically when the gears engaged. She noted the set of his jaw, the sheen of perspiration on is forehead.

Whatever you do, don’t get in the car.

Yeah, well. I heard you loud and clear, little voice. I just didn’t pay attention.

He said it again, wrapping the words in a smile. “Seat belt. There’s a state law, I could get a ticket.”

“You’re not wearing yours.”

His face registered surprise. “Had to unhook it to open the door for you,” he said. And he fastened his own belt, and she could almost hear his thought: Won’t take me any time to unhook it again. And you’re not going anywhere, little girl.

Any reason to stall? None she could think of. It would just put him on guard, and that was the last thing she wanted. He outweighed her by eighty or a hundred pounds, and there looked to be muscle under that corporate façade. Surprise was the only edge she had.

She fastened her seat belt.

He hadn’t asked where she lived, where she was headed, where she wanted to go. Hadn’t asked her name, hadn’t told her his.

Because she knew she’d stopped being a person in his eyes the minute she got in the car. Not that she’d been a person before that. She’d been a quarry, to be tracked and played, and he’d played her well enough because here she was, in his car, and now all he had to do was make use of her. And that was easier if she was depersonalized.

So she wasn’t a person anymore. Once her bottom was planted in the passenger seat, once her seat belt was fastened, she no longer existed as a human being. She was whatever he’d leave when he was done raping and torturing her. She was dead meat. She was body parts.

“Where are we going?”

She didn’t think he was going to answer. She was trying to decide whether to repeat the question, whether to let a touch of panic come into her voice, when he said, “There’s a place I think you’ll like.”

“Oh?”

“Near the lake.”

Was there a lake nearby? She hadn’t paid any attention to the local geography, but she supposed there was always a lake in the area, unless you were out in the middle of the desert.

“I hope it’s not too far.”

“Why? You got a train to catch?”

“I was just thinking that I’d like to suck your dick. You know, while you’re driving? But I can’t as long as I’m wearing my seat belt.”

Well, he hadn’t expected that. She was watching his face, and saw his expression change. She couldn’t read it, not looking at him in profile, but something registered.

“Whore.”

It was remarkable how much contempt he could get into a single syllable. He hated her, just plain hated her. But she responded as if oblivious to all that.

“I know,” she said. “I’m just terrible. I’m a bad little girl and I just can’t help myself.”

He was breathing a little faster. And was it her imagination or had his grip tightened on the steering wheel?

“It’s probably the full moon,” she went on. “I get restless and all I can think about is sucking cock.”

“You’re a fucking whore.”

“I know,” she said. “Look, let me suck it now, while you’re driving. Okay? And then when we get to where we’re going, you can punish me for being bad.” She uncoupled her seat belt. “Would you do that? Would you give me a spanking for being so bad? And maybe you could think of other things to do, so I’ll really learn my lesson.”

She swung around, brought her face to his crotch. Unbuttoned his pants, lowered his zipper. No underwear. A suit and a necktie, but no underwear, and no great commitment to personal hygiene, either. His uncircumcised penis, soft and small, did not smell like anything you’d want to put in your mouth, or even be in the same room with.

But if there’d been any question in her mind, this answered it. He’d been out hunting, and he meant to kill her.

She took hold of him with her left hand, reached around with her right hand for the knife in her hip pocket. Her mouth took him in even as her fingers fumbled with the knife, finally got it out of the pocket. She palmed it, held it out of sight, and he didn’t seem to have noticed.

Now if she could only get it open. There were knives you could open readily with one hand, switchblades and gravity knives, but this was your basic Dollar Store jackknife, with fake mother-of-pearl grips and a single four-inch blade. She tried to open it with one hand, couldn’t.

Maybe the blowjob would be distraction enough. But he didn’t seem to be responding. He was breathing more rapidly, but he wasn’t getting hard. Well, that almost figured; he was a sadist, a killer, and he’d only get an erection if he was in control and she was in pain.

Just as she had that thought, she felt his hand on her throat.

His right hand, because he was still driving the car, still had his left hand on the steering wheel. His fingers settled on the back of her neck, his thumb at the base of her throat.

His grip tightened.

Don’t panic, she told herself. You can’t strangle a person with one hand. It’s hard enough with both hands.

But was that necessarily true? He was strong, he had big hands, and he was exerting a lot of pressure. Jesus, what a way to die, with a truly disgusting dick in your mouth and one huge hand throttling the life out of you.

And he was saying something. Hard to make out at first because he was muttering, but he was saying the same thing over and over and eventually she got it. “You filthy cunt you’re gonna die you filthy cunt you’re gonna die you filthy cunt...”

She used both hands, fought to get a grip on the knife blade, fought for breath. He was cutting off her air and it made her head swim and turned her hands clumsy. Then she got the knife open.

She bit down on his cock as hard as she could. His grip softened. She gasped for air and sank the knife blade into his balls.

The car was all over the road. He’d let go of the wheel and made fists of both hands, raining blows on the back of her head. She kept stabbing with the knife — his balls, his belly — and when the pain was enough to stop his fists, she reached out blindly and found the key in the ignition, turned it, shut off the engine.

The car was veering off the road, and he grabbed the wheel to right it, but with the engine off the steering was locked. The car powered through a wire farm fence, bounced crazily over uneven ground, and by the time it stopped moving she had managed to get the knife in his chest.

She had to get out. Had to catch her breath, had to unlock the doors, had to get out of the car and find her way back to her hotel.

But she’d been holding the darkness at bay ever since his hand fastened around her throat, and it had taken all her strength. Now she sighed and let go, and a tide of black rolled in and swept her under.

She never knew how long she was out. The darkness carried her away, and at some point another wave brought her back. She opened her eyes to darkness, listened to silence, and wondered for a moment if she was dead. But dead people didn’t feel pain, and she had pain in her head and neck and shoulders, and she sat up and confirmed that she was alive.

And he was dead. She remembered stabbing him in the groin, then in the chest, but she’d evidently stabbed him more times than she’d realized, and the whole front of him was a lake of blood from multiple wounds in the chest and abdomen. Her hands were bloody, and her face, and her hair. Blood everywhere, and it smelled, everything smelled. She had to get out of there but she couldn’t because the doors were locked and she was trapped with his rotting corpse and—

She breathed against the panic, stuffed it down, willed herself to rise above it. She figured out how to work the locks, opened the door on the passenger side, stepped out into the middle of a field. The car had continued some fifty yards after it left the road, and whether she’d been unconscious for three minutes or as many hours, no one had yet taken any notice of it.

She put a hand on the car for balance, drew in deep breaths. She listened intently but couldn’t hear anything. No traffic, no human sounds. The sky was dark overhead. He’d said something about a full moon, but if the moon was indeed full it was no match for the clouds. No moon, no stars, and she was stuck in the middle of nowhere, and soaked in blood in the bargain.

All right. You’re alive and he’s dead, which wasn’t the way he planned it. You can get out of this. One step at a time and you can get out of this just fine.

The first thing she got out of was the bloody sweatshirt. She had a plain T-shirt underneath, and there was likely to be blood on it, but it wasn’t soaked and sticky the way the outer garment was. She found a clean portion of the sweatshirt and used it to wipe her hands and face, then tossed it aside. It would be crime scene evidence, but of what? The blood on it was his. As for her own DNA and fingerprints, she couldn’t worry about that, not now.

She returned to the car, found the button to open the trunk. There was a suitcase, locked, but there was also a tire iron, and she picked it up and smacked the locks until they popped open. She did some more cleanup with one of his T-shirts, then drew out a white button-down shirt still in its wrapper from the laundry. It was much too big for her, but with the sleeves rolled up and the tails overhanging her jeans, it didn’t look too ridiculous.

She went through the suitcase, not sure what she was looking for, and had just about decided she was wasting precious time when she found the little drawstring pouch. She weighed it in her hands. Pennies? Gold coins?

She opened it, and poured its contents into the open suitcase. Rings, a bracelet, a wristwatch, some earrings. Souvenirs.

Well, why should she be surprised? It was hardly news that the son of a bitch had done this before.

His name was Rodney Casselhart, and he was a long way from home. He was in Ohio, driving a car with Pennsylvania plates, and he had an Iowa driver’s license in his wallet, and other ID that showed an address in Michigan.

She hadn’t wanted to search him, but forced herself, and his wallet was in the first place she looked, his left front pants pocket. The bills compartment held $145, and she found a folded hundred dollar bill tucked behind his license.

Not enough. Driving all around the country, picking up women and killing them? That would take cash. He had a couple of cards, Visa and MasterCard, both in his name, but he wouldn’t want to use them unless he had to.

God, did she really have to do this?

She decided she did, and in his right hip pocket she found a roll of hundreds secured with a thick rubber band. She didn’t waste time counting, just transferred the roll to her own pocket.

Now what?

Just leave everything, she thought.

And the knife? Just leave it in his chest?

They wouldn’t need the knife to know he’d been stabbed. You really couldn’t miss the wounds. And the knife in her possession would tie her to him. She could boil the thing for an hour and not get all his blood out of it.

But suppose she needed it?

Oh, please. You’re wasting time. Just go.

She was a few yards from the road when she heard a car approaching, the first traffic she’d heard since she came to. A ride, she thought, and then she thought, No, don’t be an idiot. She hunkered down where she was, and the car turned out to be a truck, running its high beams, rolling on down the road.

And it was going away from the town, not toward it. She had her bearings now, remembered that they’d spun left when they went off the road, so the town was to her right. She couldn’t guess how far it was, or if there were any turns along the way, but that was the direction she had to take. Because she had to get back to her room, there were things she couldn’t just walk away from.

She waited until the truck’s taillights were out of sight. Then she started walking.

She’d been walking ten or fifteen minutes when she heard a vehicle behind her. She stepped off the road before the headlights could find her, concealed herself in the darkness. This time it was a car, a squareback sedan, with a man driving and a woman seated beside him. She watched them sweep on by and wished she’d been where they could see her. They’d have given her a ride, and they’d certainly have been safe.

But if they noticed the blood—

She probably could have explained it to their satisfaction. Still, she was probably better off walking. How much farther could it be?

She must have heard the motorcycle well before it registered on her. She’d gotten into the rhythm of walking, and her mind found things to think about. She was thinking how Rita had slept with something like a hundred and fifty men just by fucking that whacko Mormon.

Suppose it had been her? Would she have been killing a hundred and fifty men when she took Kellen out of the game?

Then she became aware of the engine noise, even as the pavement brightened in front of her from the bike’s high beams. Too late, she thought, and stepped off onto the shoulder, and turned toward the sound, even as it changed pitch. Whoever he was, he was slowing down. If it was a cop — oh, Jesus, if it was a cop she was screwed.

No point in trying to run. She stood there, waiting, and he braked to a stop. Her eyes registered that he wasn’t a cop, but she was only relieved for an instant.

A big man, clad entirely in black leather. Black leather pants, a black leather jacket with a lot of metal studs and zippers. Black leather gloves. Mirrored biker goggles covered his eyes, and a full dark beard obscured the rest of his face.

She’d have been better off with a cop. She wished she’d kept the knife, then knew it wouldn’t do her any good. This man would snap the blade between his fingers, then fuck her and kill her and eat her. He’d crack her bones for the marrow, floss his teeth with her hair.

“Rough night?”

His voice was low in pitch. Well, no surprise there. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel them taking in the blood, the general disarray.

“Kind of,” she said. “I got a ride with a guy and the car got wrecked.”

“I saw where somebody went off the road about two miles back. That you?”

She nodded.

“You looking to get help?”

She shook her head. “He’s dead.”

“Died in the wreck. I got a phone, if you want to call it in.”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Oh, what the hell. “He was going to kill me,” she said. “Rape me and kill me. I wouldn’t have been the first, either. I went through his bag afterward to find out who he was. There were these rings and bracelets and stuff. You know, women’s personal items.”

“Souvenirs.”

“Yeah.”

“A serial killer, sounds like. You don’t want to report it?”

“No.” He just stood there, waiting for more, so she said, “Going off the road didn’t kill him. It didn’t even knock him out. I had a knife. I—”

“Stabbed him.”

“It was self-defense, but—”

“You don’t want to have to lay that all out for the law.”

“No.”

“I can dig it. You live around here?”

She pointed in the direction she’d been walking, the direction he’d been heading himself. “I have a hotel room. I need to get my stuff. But once I do—”

“You want to get out of Dodge.” He patted the seat behind him. “Hop on.”

She didn’t pass out during the ride, or fall asleep, but it was almost as if she did. The bike sent the rest of the world away. All she heard was its engine, all she felt was the rush of the wind. She had her eyes closed, her arms around his broad back, her face pressed against the black jacket. She breathed in its old leather smell. Her mind took a break, and the next thing she knew the bike had stopped across the street from her hotel.

She said, “Can you wait? I’ll be like two minutes, I just have to grab one or two things.”

“Okay.”

“Or...”

“What?”

“Well, if you could wait, like, ten minutes, I could clean up and change my clothes. But if you’re in a hurry—”

“You ought to do that,” he said. “No rush. I’ll be here.”

She stripped, showered, washed her hair. Dressed in clean clothes, spread out Rodney Casselhart’s white button-down shirt on the bed, piled the clothes she’d been wearing on top of it, and folded it to make a bundle, tying the sleeves to secure it. Everything she could use, like her drugs and cash, or that might point them to her, like her cell phone, went in her shoulder bag.

She left the rest, along with her suitcase, locked the room behind her, and walked past the hotel desk with the bag over her shoulder and the bundled clothes under one arm. The clerk barely registered her presence, and her rent was paid for another five days, and by the time they realized she was gone they’d be past connecting her to the car in the field a few miles up the road, or the dead man behind the wheel.

She wasn’t sure he’d be waiting, but there he was, her knight in black leather armor, standing beside his bike. He reached for the bundle of clothes.

“Everything I was wearing,” she said. “And that was his shirt, I got it from his suitcase.”

“I’ll get rid of it for you.”

He stowed the bundle in a saddlebag. She said, “I’m glad you stayed.”

“I said I would.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t know what I’d have done if you didn’t.”

“You’d have thought of something. Where are you headed?”

Her thoughts hadn’t gone that far. “Just... some other city. Which way are you going?”

“South and west. Cincinnati for starters, but you probably want to get on the other side of a state line.”

“Probably, but if you could get me that far...”

“I could cut west now,” he said, “but that’d be Indiana, and I got reason not to go there.”

“Oh.”

“So I’ll run you through Cinci and into Kentucky. Let you off in Lexington or Lou’ville. That be all right?”

“Sure.”

He patted the seat behind him.

She said, “I really appreciate this. You’re going to a lot of trouble for me.”

“Not that much trouble.”

“Well, the thing is, if there’s anything I can do—”

“You could kick in ten or twenty bucks for gas. But if you’re short on dough, don’t worry about it.”

“No, that’s easy. And if there’s anything else—”

“You pay for gas and breakfast’s on me. But not until we’re on the other side of the Ohio River. There’s a good place in Covington. Can you hold out until then?”

“Sure. But what I meant—”

He turned to look at her, his eyes invisible behind the glasses.

“Just if there was, you know, anything else you wanted. It’d be okay.”

“Oh,” he said.

“I just—”

“Thing is,” he said, “I’m not really into girls these days.”

“Oh.”

“Girls, women. Or guys either. I’m just, you know, keeping it real simple these days.”

“Me too,” she said. “Real simple.”

She paid for their breakfast in Covington — eggs and grits and link sausage, and coffee that had stayed too long on the hot plate. She gave him twenty dollars for gas, and he took it only after she’d assured him that she was okay for cash. When he dropped her at a Louisville hotel, she still hadn’t told him her name, or learned his.

She dismounted, then remembered the dirty clothes in the saddlebag. He waved a hand dismissively, said he’d toss them once he’d crossed another state line. She wanted to say something, but all she could think of was “Thank you.”

“We’re cool,” he said, and reached out a gloved hand to touch her lightly on the shoulder. Her eyes stayed on him until he and his bike were around the corner and out of sight.

She took a room and paid cash in advance for four days, which was as much time as she figured she needed to spend in Louisville. Two hours later she was back at the hotel with new clothes and a suitcase. She took a long shower and put on some of the clothes she’d just bought, and decided to throw out the ones she’d arrived in.

By now, she thought, he’d probably crossed another state line.

Would she ever see him again? Jesus, would she even recognize him if she did? She didn’t know what he looked like, and except for his nose she hadn’t seen any portion of him that wasn’t covered by goggles or leather or beard.

She could smell his leather jacket. She could feel the touch of his gloved hand on her shoulder.

She couldn’t keep from having fantasies about him. They were full of the physical presence of him, and yet they weren’t specifically sexual. She envisioned the two of them on the bike, crisscrossing the nation together, stopping for gas, stopping for food, then moving on. They barely spoke, even as they’d barely spoken during their time together. You couldn’t talk over the roar of the engine, and the rest of the time there was no need for talk — as there’d been no need for it earlier.

He’d looked so scary. But the look that she’d feared at first glance had turned out to be a comfort. There was an individual beneath the leather, behind the mirrored lenses. There was a person with a history and an outlook and a world of likes and dislikes. But she didn’t get to see any of that, didn’t need to know any of it. There was safety, somehow, in all that impersonality.

I’m just keeping it real simple these days.

An older brother, she thought. A male cousin. Or, oh, a guardian angel, if you believed in that sort of thing.

She stayed in the Louisville hotel for the four nights she’d paid for. Took long walks, went to the movies, watched TV in her room. Ate three meals a day at the Denny’s on the next block. Took two showers a day, sometimes three.

By the time she left — a cab to the airport, a plane to Memphis — she had let go of the memories. They were still there, but they’d lost their edge. The man who would have killed her, the man who got her out of there, were both now just a part of the past.