The Lonely Mile (11 page)

Interspersed among these nonspecific visions of impending doom were other, more detailed dreams. They were like subconscious commercials, breaking up the longer. television-show dreams that spelled out in excruciating detail Bill’s demise or, he thought later as he considered their significance, the demise of someone close to him.

Carli, of course.

The shorter dreams were different; they felt more like flashes of something resembling memory than actual scenarios containing a beginning, a middle, and an end. Repressed consciousness or some such similar psychobabble crap, perhaps.

The dreams continued on and off all night and finally, as dawn approached, Bill watched for what felt like hours, rather than just a couple of short seconds, as the man drove past in his repainted off-white box truck, the one with no identifying markings, the one that had obviously been repainted so it could
not
be identified. He stared and stared at the truck as it receded, hanging before his searching eyes forever as the I-90 Killer drove away. Something was not quite right, but Bill could not put his finger on what it might be. He felt frustrated and angry, like he was missing something of importance.

These short snippets of the remembered encounter were the mini-commercials interspersed with the longer dreams—the main event, nocturnally speaking—where his body was rent; ripped and torn apart painfully, agonizingly, his screams echoing on and on until they were all he could hear. They were everything. It was the longest night of Bill Ferguson’s life.

He awoke to the sound of his dying screams echoing through the tiny bedroom, wondering how many neighbors were cursing him, wondering when the cops were going to show up and serve him with a Disturbing the Peace citation. But they never did. He listened to his heart hammering in his chest as he wiped the sour perspiration from his face with his bed sheet and turned his pillow over, trying, unsuccessfully, to escape the uncomfortable slick of hot sweat.

Finally, as the first hint of dawn’s watery arrival began to pry its way into his bedroom, Bill raised the white flag of surrender against his subconscious. He threw off the bedcovers, listening to his joints creak and complain as he drew stiffly up to his full height and stumbled into the bathroom to brush his teeth and face the day.

He wondered if he had gotten more than ten or fifteen minutes of truly restful sleep. He doubted it. The entire, exhausting night was nothing more than a jumble of half-remembered nightmares and confusing dream sequences. Bill Ferguson was a man who rarely dreamed; or if he did, he certainly never remembered most of them. He normally awoke refreshed and invigorated.

Today, though, was just the opposite. He tried to make some kind of sense of the vivid nightmares as he dragged his toothbrush back and forth across his teeth and gums, doing his best to saw away the sickly taste of fear and foreboding, and mostly failing.

Bill walked down the short hallway to his kitchen, the worn vinyl flooring cool and refreshing on the soles of his feet. He started the coffee machine, hoping a good, strong shot of caffeine might reduce the pounding in his temples. If these dreams continued, he might have to invest in a new coffeemaker, one of the fancy models with a timer so the coffee would be ready for him, hot and fresh, when he stumbled out of bed after suffering through eight hours of tortured, sleepless misery.

The kitchen table felt foreign as he leaned on it with his elbows, holding the hot coffee with two hands in front of his face, blowing lightly on the steam rising in curlicue patterns off the top. He sipped his coffee and thought about Carli, presumably safe in her bed in Sandra and Howard’s house. He wondered what the I-90 Killer was doing right now and prayed to God Agent Canfield was right when she said the nut job had sought out Carli and written the letter only as some sort of cruel head game. He didn’t care about being messed with; he welcomed it, in fact, if it was all the perverted psycho had in mind. He could live with the strange dreams and the frightening nightmares of half-remembered significance if it meant only
he,
and not Carli, was being targeted.

But the problem was he couldn’t be positive that was the case. Sure, Agent Canfield was the professional, she had probably dealt with dozens of cases similar to this one or maybe, God forbid, even worse. And her take on the note made sense. But what if he really was spelling out his plans for the immediate future in that letter? What if he really
was
coming for Carli, just as he had stated in plain English?

If the sick bastard was coming for Carli, then his reasons were irrelevant, whether it was to get even with Bill or because Carli really did fit his twisted image of female perfection.

Because it was all Bill’s fault.

CHAPTER 25

THE DREAM IS ALWAYS
the same. You swear you’re going to tell your mother what the man is doing to you at night, in the dark, when he comes to you while she is fast asleep and safe in her bed. You swear you’re going to tell her, but you never do.

Instead you make a promise to yourself. You promise yourself that you will survive and get even someday. Even if it doesn’t happen until you are a full-grown adult, even if it doesn’t happen for twenty years, you will get even.

You lie in the dark, hardening your heart, visualizing what you will do to even the score and how you will do it, and gradually, slowly, ever so slowly, your tears stop flowing, and your sobs stop choking you, and you begin to calm your frazzled nerves, and you begin to feel like you might actually be able to survive, to hold on for one more day. Picturing the vengeance you will reap when you’re older works for you, makes it possible for you to struggle through one more endless assault.

The dream is always the same. You are terrified and humiliated and in pain, and you get through the night by promising to get even. Someday you will get even.

CHAPTER 26

May 27 

THERE WASN’T REALLY ALL that much to the plan, when you came right down to it. Despite the fact he had told them what he was going to do, Martin determined it wouldn’t be that hard to take Carli Ferguson. He was a predator, and a good one at that. He was smarter, better-prepared, and far more motivated than the herds of sheep surrounding him. Even if you warned the sheep the wolf was coming for them, they still, ultimately, were only as bright as…well…
sheep,
and sheep were no match for the cunning wolf.

So even though it would have been much easier to snatch Carli Ferguson two days ago when she had stood so tantalizingly within his reach—he could have waited until her friend went home, or sliced her friend’s throat, grabbed Carli, and been into his car and gone before any of the grazing sheep even sensed something was amiss—doing it this way would be much more satisfying. He felt like a cat toying with a mouse. Except that, when he was finished toying, he would have sweet Carli—his beautiful young angel—who represented a much more desirable prize than a nasty rodent. And they would share seven days of unimaginable bliss together before he sent her on to her final destination, trained to please.

Unless, of course, he decided to keep her for himself.

The time now was just past noon, and the drive from his home to Stockton High School would take no more than thirty minutes. Dismissal time at SHS wasn’t until just after two o’clock. That was one of the first details Martin had checked, so there was no need to rush.He had figured, teenage obstinacy being what it was, that Carli would convince her mother to let her take the bus to and from school for the foreseeable future. Obviously, she wouldn’t be walking home any more—her mother would never allow that and neither would the police. He knew she didn’t own a car and was pretty confident she would flatly shoot down any plan that required her to be picked up at the front door of the high school by Mommy—that would constitute the most flagrant form of teenage humiliation imaginable, especially for a senior.

Thus the school bus would be left as the only reasonable alternative, and after discussing the matter with the police, who were almost certainly staking out the Ferguson home, the reluctant mother would agree to allow her child to ride the bus. She would hesitate, but the police would eventually convince her that they could keep Carli in their sights as she walked the short distance from the bus to her front door. Carli would insist she was not going to be picked up at school by her mommy—Martin smiled as he pictured his angel stamping her foot, hands on her hips, to make her point—and the mother would cave.

That had been his working theory, and he had been right on target. He waited in a lot around the corner from the store where he had met with Carli a couple of days ago—he wasn’t crazy enough to park in the convenience store lot for a third time—and, as the bus turned the corner, he pulled out behind it, three cars back but still with an excellent view of the passengers as they exited at their stops.

When the bus had screeched to a stop in front of Carli’s house a few moments later, he watched intently as one solitary passenger—his angel!—ran down the steps and hurried across the front lawn and into her house. The police were parked across the street in an unmarked blue Caprice, about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the side of the head. Of course, the whole thing was just a show of force; they had no reason to believe he would be bold enough to try to snatch her here. The cops were so intent on tracking Carli as she crossed the lawn that they didn’t pay the slightest attention to his car when he drove past them after she disappeared into her house. Idiots.

That was yesterday, and his little sortie behind enemy lines had given Martin all the information he needed. Today would be the day. It was very soon, some might say too soon after giving the police and that interfering busybody the advance warning of his intentions, but the plan was pretty much foolproof, so there was really no reason to delay.

Plus, and here was the real reason he didn’t want to wait, he absolutely ached with need. He missed his angel with an almost physical hurt, he was simply lost without her, and he knew he would continue to feel that way until she was at his side, where she belonged.

Well, he wouldn’t have to wait long. Just a couple more hours.

***

Martin wondered why anyone would ever want to drive a school bus. Despite the fact that he was drawn to teenage girls like a moth to flame, the notion of spending most of every day trapped inside a gigantic tin can with dozens of them, with their snotty attitudes and lack of manners, was more than he could stomach. He knew if he drove a school bus, kids would end up dead, probably before the end of the first run on his first day at work.

He wondered about the apparent contradiction of a man who preferred the company of children—pedophile was the proper term, but he steadfastly refused to use or acknowledge that word; the girls he chose as companions were practically full-grown adults!—choosing to avoid them for the most part.

Maybe that was why he would never be caught. He was very different from most others of his ilk: men who worked as schoolteachers or counselors or sports coaches or scout leaders or priests because of the opportunities those positions afforded to get close to children. Martin had never really enjoyed being around children, with the exception, of course, of the select few, the nubile, developed, but still naïve girls he picked out to serve as his special companions.

Thus far, three-and-a-half years into his project, he had chosen well on some occasions and poorly on others, but he knew, he was absolutely, one hundred percent
certain,
that Carli Ferguson would be perfect for him. And why wouldn’t she be? He hadn’t chosen her, after all, the fates had. And that made all the difference in the world.

Martin sat inside his idling car, pondering these and other issues as he waited on the side of a quiet, redneck back road somewhere on the outskirts of town, the farthest fringes of Stockton, past the water treatment plant, on the very edge of civilization where the forest reclaimed the landscape. The nearest home was probably a quarter-mile away, assuming the broken-down double-wide with the front door hanging halfway off its hinges was even inhabited.

This was where Carli’s bus driver lived. Martin knew it was where she lived because he had followed her home last night at the end of her long shift.

In this little town, as in small towns everywhere, the school bus drivers ferried kids to the high school first thing in the morning, then a few minutes later, they ran the very same routes all over again, this time bringing kids of a slightly younger age to the middle school, and then repeated the whole routine one more time a to bring the youngest children to the town’s only grade school.

At the end of the school day they performed the same ritual all over again, bringing the kids back to their homes from the three schools in the same order: the high school classes ended first, followed by the middle school, and lastly, the grade school. In between, the drivers had a couple of hours to themselves and were allowed to park their buses at their homes rather than take them all the way to the bus company’s lot and then have to pick them up later.

The driver of Carli’s bus, a squat, middle-aged woman with a head of massively frizzy brown hair and sweat stains under her armpits, should be walking out the front door of her dumpy little ranch-style home to begin the afternoon shift any second now, and Martin would be waiting for her. She had backed the bus into her gravel driveway after the morning shift, a fairly impressive feat, he thought, considering the relative sizes of bus and driveway. Now it loomed next to her house, a hulking yellow tin can, facing the road as if prepared for a quick getaway.

Right on cue, the front door swung wide and out waddled the frumpy driver. Martin gunned his engine, pulling the little car skillfully across the end of the driveway, coasting to a stop in front of the bus’s grille as the woman watched, her mouth forming a surprised “O.” Martin could almost see the question mark hanging in the air over her head. She wasn’t afraid, at least not yet, she was just curious. That was why he had come in so fast. Martin had discovered that if you caught them before they had time to realize they should be scared, the sheep were much easier to deal with. More compliant.