Hooking his thumb around in an arc behind his shoulder, the clerk said, “Back out around the side.”
Nodding, Dana stepped back outside and walked around the corner, past an ice machine and another stack of tires, these painted in alternating red and white layers. She supposed it was meant to be festive, but they still came across as sloppy. The phrase “lipstick on a pig” came to mind, which made her think of Aaron’s horrendous ham and egg fable, and she chuckled. The man was gorgeous, with a sense of style, but sometimes displayed a jarring lack of common sense.
Between a brick wall painted white and a partial privacy fence she found the door to the ambitiously signed “Ladies’ Lounge.” Because she was at a gas station, not a nightclub, she kept her expectations suitably low. Clean and functional would suffice.
Prepared for the worst, she stepped inside the restroom.
Reasonably clean, she thought, but the odor leaves something to be desired.
Pulling a paper towel from the dispenser, she approached the row of three stalls. Using the paper rather than her bare hands, she pushed open the first door and grimaced. Second stall… not much better. Figurative fingers crossed, she opened the last stall door. It was… acceptable.
She ducked inside, closed and locked the door, set down her bag and took a seat.
Absently, Aaron watched the Holy Apostle Church van drive away. Then he caught himself staring off into space, much as the old woman had been. Maybe she hadn’t been looking at him after all. With a mechanical thump, the gas pump handle shut off, signaling a full tank. Aaron wondered if one full tank would get them through the rest of their field research.
Aaron noticed a piece of paper shoved into the credit-card slot of the fuel pump: PLEASE PAY INSIDE.
Aaron looked around the empty lot.
Dana still hadn’t returned.
He called her name.
Sitting on the only acceptable toilet seat in the so-called Ladies’ Lounge, Dana amused herself by reading the graffiti scrawled on the walls and door of the stall. One to her left read, “Amazing Grace come sit on my face. Don’t make me cry, I need your… pie.”
Dana wondered if this “Grace” person was real and, if so, what about her made her so amazing. From her bag, Dana withdrew a permanent marker and crossed out the word “pie.” Right above it she wrote “smile.” Thinking of Aaron this morning, she chuckled to herself.
As the bathroom door opened, she fell silent, self-conscious.
She heard measured footfalls on the tiled floor. Not the click-click of high heels or the squeak of rubber-soled trainers. Heavier…
The first stall door thumped open, rebounding with force.
Dana flinched at the noise.
In the ensuing pause, she heard breathing. Steady breathing, but, again, a heavy sound.
She sat still, afraid to move a muscle, her own breathing shallow.
The footfalls moved closer, stopping at the second stall.
Even though she braced herself, the abrupt bang as the second door slammed open and shook the partition between stalls made her jump.
Aaron walked to the service station’s small office and opened the door to pay the clerk for his gas. A chime sounded as he walked through the doorway—and froze.
The clerk’s lifeless body sat slumped over the counter, one arm flung over a transistor radio and a blood-flecked cash register, his neck twisted at an extreme angle to reveal his broken and bloody jaw, all but ripped out of his face. Most of his teeth had been smashed out. The pool of blood spreading around his head glued his face to the pages of a newspaper.
“Dana!” Aaron called.
A plate-glass door to his left led into the garage, a pickup truck in the first bay, its hood propped open for service. Aaron surveyed the room through the glass but saw no sign of the mechanic. Slipping through the doorway into the garage, he called out, “Hello! I need help! Have you seen—?”
Again, Aaron froze.
First, he saw blood splattered over the engine block, some dripping to the floor below. Then he saw the man’s body, clad only in a dingy white t-shirt and briefs, lying face down in a larger pool of blood near a wooden-handled mini sledgehammer. The back of the man’s head looked like raw meat—wet clumps of brain matter mixed with bone splinters. Someone had crept up behind him while he worked on the truck and caved his head in with the hammer, then taken the dark coveralls from his lifeless body.
Frantic, Aaron yelled, “DANA?”
Other than the dead mechanic, the cluttered garage seemed unoccupied.
Casting about for anything useful, Aaron spotted a crowbar on a workbench and grabbed it.
15
Dana stared at the pair of dirty work boots visible below her stall door. A man’s boots. She recognized the cuffs of the coveralls the mechanic and the clerk had been wearing—the service station’s de facto uniform. Why would a man—even a service station employee—enter an occupied “Ladies’ Lounge” and behave this way? She had no good answers.
“Excuse me,” she said indignantly, fighting the tremor in her voice. “Someone’s in here.”
A closed, bloodstained hand appeared over the top of the stall door.
Slowly the fingers spread, releasing what appeared to be a dozen white pebbles that fell to the floor, clattering around her feet. Glancing down, she gasped. Not pebbles. Teeth! Human teeth—ripped out by the root and streaked with blood.
Looking up again, she now saw two hands as they clamped down on the top of the stall door in a white-knuckled grip. They shook the door violently back and forth, testing the strength of the simple slide lock and hinges. The partition walls trembled, the screws securing them to the wall creaking. In seconds, the metal of the door twisted under the extreme pressure.
Dana rose from the seat in a hunched-over stance to keep clear of those hands and yanked up her pants before dropping to the floor on her rear. Flipping onto her stomach, she began to crawl under the partition into the second stall. She made it halfway before the door to her former stall gave way and burst open. There was a rustle of movement before the intruder grabbed her legs and yanked her backward.
With a shriek, she twisted around, raising both arms to catch herself on the partition between stalls. Strong hands grabbed both her ankles for more leverage.
Her own hands slid across the slippery metal surface of the partition, scrambling for purchase but finding none. She hooked the fingers of her right hand through the toilet paper holder to buy herself a precious second or two. Then kicked furiously against the hands clutching her ankles.
Suddenly—heart racing and gasping for air—she broke free of the powerful grip and scrambled up, slammed the door shut and engaged the slide lock. A moment’s reprieve, time enough to catch her breath before—
Fists banged on the stall door, rattling it against the lock.
The Ladies’ Lounge door swung open again.
Crouching to peer under the door, Dana saw gray trainers—
“Aaron?” she called. “Help!”
As she backed away from the door, she saw a crowbar come down from an overhead swing to strike her attacker three times in rapid succession. With each blow, Aaron yelled, “Down! Down! Down!”
Two sets of arms wrestled for control of the crowbar.
Beneath the stall door, Dana watched as two pairs of feet became entangled. Slowly, the heels of Aaron’s trainers rose off the tile floor. He cried out briefly then began to cough and gasp.
“No!” she screamed.
The crowbar clanged on the tiles.
Crouching, Dana reached across the gap under the door and grabbed the crowbar before her attacker could snatch it. Then she jumped back and climbed onto the toilet seat, one boot braced on each side, for a higher vantage point.