The Lonely Mile (2 page)

At least it looked as though there would be no gag stuffed into her mouth—why bother if nobody could hear her scream anyway? When he reached the door and swung it open, taking one last long look back at her, she threw up all over the floor.

Her captor shook his head in silent rebuke and walked out the door into the bright May sunshine. It slanted in through the open door for just a moment like an unfulfilled promise, and Amanda wondered if she would ever see the sun again. He closed and locked the door. She waited to hear the sound of his rattletrap truck starting up, of him driving away, but she didn’t hear a thing. Of course, the incredibly expensive acoustical soundproofing tiles.

She counted to one hundred in her head, nice and slow, and when she was sure he must be gone, she tested his theory about the tiles. Amanda Lawton screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

And he must have been right. Because nobody came.

CHAPTER 2

May 22 

MARTIN KRALL WAS A ghost. He was a wraith. He was legendary. He haunted Interstate 90, its ribbons of pavement winding their way through the mostly rural towns and thickly forested hills of western Massachusetts and eastern New York. He was invisible, ethereal, terrifying. In the mental movie playing nonstop inside Martin Krall’s head, he saw himself as omnipotent, invincible, taking what he wanted when he wanted it. The mere mortals populating the surrounding areas were powerless to stop him and afraid to try.

Today, what Martin Krall wanted was a girl. A teenage girl, specifically, closer in age to twenty than ten. Someone developed, with curves. Martin was not into the nasty stuff that so many of his contemporaries were hung up on, the guys who took young children and did disgusting things with them. He never understood the urge to enjoy a child in that way and was thankful he was more advanced than that. More evolved.

He pulled his aging, white, cargo truck—it was practically invisible, like a raggedy street person sleeping in a cardboard box, ignored by the passers-by—off I-90 and onto the access ramp leading to the massive parking lot of the interstate rest area. He passed a sign on the right directing the big eighteen-wheel tractor-trailers to “Keep right here.” Those gigantic dinosaurs merited their own special place in the lot. Martin slowed as he drove past and then eased into the second right turn, the one leading to the parking area for normal-sized vehicles.

He cruised the access lane, scanning the rows of parked cars and trucks as he eased past, finally selecting a parking spot three rows from the entrance to the travelers’ plaza and shutting the engine down. It knocked and bucked for a couple of seconds, as if disagreeing with Martin’s decision, and then gave up. Martin made a mental note to get the old piece of crap tuned up soon. He couldn’t really afford the expense, but on the other hand, he didn’t want to risk getting stuck somewhere like this with a vehicle that wouldn’t start. That sort of disaster could land him on death row.

The authorities had been chasing Martin for years, ever since the first kidnapping way back, more than three years ago now, but they had never come close to catching him. Martin was confident they never would, despite the fact that he always used the same five-hundred-mile stretch of highway as his hunting ground. He was smart, and, much more importantly, he was careful.

So many of the men who shared his particular predilection made the mistake of getting careless or resorting to boastful, showboating tactics that invariably led to their downfall. Things like taunting the police with cutesy notes or ill-advised telephone calls, or leaving behind little “calling cards” for the media, as if they thrived on the attention and notoriety.

Martin wondered what these idiots were thinking when they did such self-destructive things, virtually ensuring themselves an appointment with a lethal injection, all in the name of notoriety. Of cheap self-promotion.

Martin hated publicity. He would have preferred that the public never learn of his existence, although by now that dream was nothing more than the most baseless sort of wishful thinking. Somewhere around the third kidnapping, a clever television news reporter hung a nickname on Martin, a nickname that stuck to him like vacuum wrap and forever removed his cloak of anonymity.

Martin Krall was “The I-90 Killer.”

He stepped out of the cab onto the parking lot, the searing midday heat softening the pavement and radiating off it, warming his legs beneath his jeans and causing a sheen of sweat to break out on his forehead. Martin slammed the driver’s side door, leaving it unlocked, and turned toward the plaza entrance. It would be foolish to lock the truck; it was a work truck, with no remote control locks, and Martin knew he might be leaving in a hurry, hopefully with a new playmate in tow. Plus, he was a ghost and his truck was as invisible as he—who would pay the least bit of attention to a nondescript, beat-up old box truck adrift in a sea of shiny, much newer vehicles?

Things slowed as they always did when Martin was hunting, seeming to move at half-speed as he strode purposefully toward the glass double doors of the travelers’ plaza. Families with children of varying ages jostled Martin as he walked, some moving, as he was, toward the rest area, and some away from it and back to their cars, refreshed and ready to hit the highway. They all looked to Martin like they were walking underwater, their movements almost painfully slow and exaggerated. Martin assumed this strange phenomenon, a sensation he experienced every time he hunted, was a function of his heightened sense of awareness, of his advanced, predatory instincts.

All of the travelers were potential victims, although they didn’t know it, and none saw him or were even aware of his presence among them; he was a lion stalking among oblivious sheep. It made sense, though. Martin Krall was a ghost—invisible, ethereal and terrifying. The sheep instinctively seemed to move away as he approached, the Red Sea parting for Moses, mothers holding their children’s hands a little tighter without even realizing they were doing it.

Martin felt incredibly alive and hyper-aware. Today was a special day. Today Martin Krall would add another victim to his collection.

CHAPTER 3

BILL FERGUSON SAT ALONE at his table, one arm resting along the back of the booth’s bench seat, legs stretched comfortably across the red vinyl. Steam swirled lazily from his mug as he sipped his coffee. He loved the coffee they served at this busy rest station off Interstate 90 in western Massachusetts. It wasn’t the fancy upscale stuff the yuppies seemed to enjoy overpaying for, but it definitely hit the spot.

As the owner of a pair of moderately successful independent hardware stores, one located in rural Massachusetts and one in rural upstate New York, Bill had occasion to travel I-90 often, ferrying inventory between stores and taking cash receipts to the bank. Whenever possible, he tried to take a few precious minutes out of his day to sit back and enjoy the coffee while watching the world pass by, here, at this rest stop.

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.

Besides, it’s not like I’ll forget any of them, with my trophy case stocked with precious souvenirs, ready to display more.
He thought about the collection of locks of hair and the rings, watches, and other jewelry he had saved from his conquests, and he knew that, as risky as keeping the prizes was—if the authorities ever searched his house, they would certainly be his undoing—it was well worth it. Besides, he was much smarter than the people pursuing him, so as long as he continued to exercise caution in his hunting, he knew he had nothing to fear. What exactly was the point of exercising his admittedly peculiar interest if he could not enjoy the fruits of his hard-fought labors?

Martin scanned the plaza, his practiced eye immediately zeroing in on a few potential targets, attractive girls in their late teens or early twenties. He was fortunate that he was mostly permitted to indulge his taste for slim blondes and brunettes; his contact only demanded that they be young and attractive. This process of selecting a companion was where things could get a little dicey. He had to be careful to choose a target whose family or friends weren’t paying too much attention to her. It was getting more and more difficult. With each passing success, the media coverage of the I-90 Killer became more and more sensational, causing nervous parents to pay that much more attention to their daughters.