“Why worry about her?” Woody asked, chewing his egg sandwich.
“What?”
“When she finds a ride,” Woody said, “she won’t be traveling alone.”
The cop chuckled. “Problem is, she might not find one. I’m going that way myself when I finish up here, but I can’t take her with me — that’s strictly against the rules. And I don’t have a good feeling about her standing beside the road with her thumb stuck out.” Then he paused, looked at both Anna and Woody, and cocked an eyebrow. “Unless...”
“We’re only going as far as Starkville,” Anna said quickly.
“That’s on her way. From there she could find a ride to Tupelo, then maybe catch the Trace up to Nashville and points north. Or stay on Highway 45 up to I-40 and—”
“Sure,” Woody said. “We could take her to Starkville at least.”
Anna was scowling.
“You don’t want to?” Woody said.
She shrugged. “It’s just — well...”
“Well what?”
Anna swallowed and lowered her voice. “Nobody knows who this killer is, Woody. We don’t even know if it’s a man or a woman.”
“I doubt it’s a woman,” Jack said. “All three victims disappeared without a trace, or any sign of a struggle. For that to happen, there was probably some lifting and carrying of a body. Miss Flower Child over there’s not big and strong enough for that kind of thing.”
“He’s right, Anna. There’s no risk. We could at least help her out.”
Anna sighed, thought it over, and nodded. Who knows, maybe three traveling together would be even safer than two. But she kept that thought to herself.
When they’d finished their breakfast, Woody threaded his way over to the girl’s table — her name was Mary, she told him — and invited her to join them on their trip. Our good deed for the week, Anna thought. Mary gratefully accepted and, after they were introduced, gave Anna a smile that warmed her heart and made her ashamed of her doubts. The three of them waved a goodbye to the cop, left the restaurant, piled themselves and Mary’s travel bag into the Toyota, and headed east into the morning sun. Four miles later the route curved northeast toward the towns of Carthage and Louisville and Starkville. Lakeland Drive, when the trees beside it started outnumbering the businesses, was better known as State Highway 25. Anna tried not to think about that.
Besides, it was a gorgeous day for traveling.
Mary and Anna exchanged some polite small talk for the next ten minutes or so. Mary revealed that her brother was moving from their hometown in Lexington, Kentucky, to Jackson later this year, to work for an engineering firm there, and they all agreed that it was indeed a small world. Mary herself was on her way back to Kentucky, returning from a visit to an old girlfriend in Baton Rouge. Her junk heap of a car had died on a back road on Highway 61 near the Mississippi/Louisiana line, and was now in a repair shop owned by a friend of a friend in Natchez. She’d retrieve it later, after her brother moved here and got settled in, she said, although she wasn’t sure the car was worth retrieving. She traveled light, and despite the safety issues she didn’t mind hitching rides.
“Pretty trusting of you,” Anna said.
Mary smiled. “I’m a trustful person. It’s a prerequisite for my job.”
“Your job?”
“I’m a nun,” Mary said.
Woody almost ran off the road, and even Anna gasped aloud. “You’re kidding,” they blurted at the same time.
“Strange but true,” Mary said. “I’m Sister Mary Patrick. Or at least I will be, when I finish my training. St. Anthony’s Convent in Elizabethtown.”
“A nun,” Woody said, as if tasting the word.
“Don’t worry, I won’t try to talk you into choir practice or bless your car or anything.”
“Actually, my mother’ll be pleased,” Anna said. “She worries sometimes about the company I keep.”
“I hope you’re not referring to me,” Woody said.
She leaned over to Mary and whispered, “I’m referring specifically to him.” They both laughed.
Ignoring that, Woody said, “I couldn’t help noticing your jewelry.” He nodded toward a bracelet of sparkling green stones Mary wore on her left wrist. “It doesn’t look very nunlike.”
She grinned at him. “It’s not. It’s way too expensive. But it was a gift, and I never take it off.”
“Girls will be girls?” Anna said.
“I told you, I’m just a trainee.”
As they made their way north, Anna filled Mary in on her background, her family, her plans to be a schoolteacher. She’d been raised not far from here, Anna said; they would even be able to stop tonight on the way back and say hello to one of her uncles, since he worked at a Walmart right beside the highway up in Winston County. Most of her relatives still lived in that area, and most were miffed that she hadn’t chosen to attend the university in nearby Starkville. But the scholarship she’d gotten three years ago to Millsaps, in Jackson, had been too good to pass up.
“Did the two of you meet there?” Mary cut her eyes over to Woody, who seemed to have tuned them out and was focused on his driving.
“No, Mr. Cool over here went to Mississippi State. He graduated last year, I met him at a party that summer, and I’ve been trying to educate him ever since.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about the schools down here,” Mary said.
“He doesn’t either,” Anna replied, grinning.
The subject eventually changed to the Night Stalker — even Mary had heard about it on the news — and Woody said he’d been able to see in Jack Speerman’s face this morning the pressure he’d been under lately. Especially since most everyone knew about Jack’s brother’s errant ways and had never seemed entirely trustful toward him because of it. In Woody’s opinion, the fact that Route 25 was Jack’s assigned territory this past year or so, and the fact that all the killings had taken place along that highway, was both good and bad. Bad for the obvious reasons, but good because if Jack could somehow help break the case, he’d be a hero.
“Forget the hero part,” Anna said. “If I were him, I’d ask to get reassigned.”
Woody shook his head. “That’d be hard, in more ways that one. This is the ideal work territory for him — he lives near here, and only about a hundred yards off the road. Besides, he’s smart, and good at what he does. Hell, he really could — oops, excuse me, Sister Mary.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
“—he really could be the one who solves all these killings.”
“Wish he’d hurry up and do it, then,” Anna said. She felt a chill ripple its way up her spine.
On that note they fell silent. The next half hour was smooth sailing: they cranked down the windows and cranked up the radio and occasionally hummed along with an oldies station, the autumn sun in their laps and the wind whipping their hair around. Anna was suddenly glad she’d agreed to the trip.
It was almost ten o’clock when Sister Mary Patrick asked Woody if they could stop at the gas station just ahead on their left — the last one, Anna knew, before a particularly long stretch of forest and pastureland. “Too much coffee back at Wendy’s,” Mary explained, and was the first one out the door when Woody pulled the little Toyota into the station. They parked beside a metal trash bin almost as big as the car.
“Think I’ll make a pit stop too,” Anna told Woody. She followed Mary into the minimart section of the building and waited in the hallway outside the restroom door until Mary was done. When Mary came out and they squeezed past each other, Anna said to her, “Tell Woody to amuse himself for a while — when I finish in here I’m gonna buy some snacks before we leave, to bring along with us.”