Cleanup was the part Donaldson hated most, but he always followed a strict procedure. First, he bagged everything associated with the crime. The rubber, the zip tie, the Swiss Army knife, and the two corn cobs, which might have his prints on them. Then he took a spray bottle of bleach solution and a roll of paper towels and cleaned the muddler, shears, and pliers, and swabbed out the interior of his car. He used baby wipes on himself, paying special attention to his fingernails. He put his tools back into his toolbox. Everything else went into the white plastic garbage bag, along with a full can of gasoline and more bleach spray.
He took the money from Brett's wallet-forty lousy bucks-and found nothing of interest in his backpack. These went into the bag as well, and then he soaked that and the body with lighter fluid.
The fire started easily. Donaldson knew from experience that he had about five minutes before the gas can exploded. He drove out of the cornfield at a fast clip, part of him disappointed he couldn't stay to watch the fireworks.
The final result would be a mess for anyone trying to ID the victim, gather evidence, or figure out what exactly had happened. If the body wasn't discovered right away, and the elements and hungry animals added to the chaos, it would be a crime scene investigator's worst nightmare.
Donaldson knew how effective this particular disposal method was, because he'd used it twenty-six times and hadn't ever been so much as questioned by police.
He wondered if the FBI had a nickname for him, something sexy like The Roadside Burner. But he wasn't convinced those jokers had even connected his many crimes. Donaldson's courier route took him all across the country, over a million square miles of hunting ground. He waited at least a year before returning to any particular spot, and he was finding new places to play all the time.
Donaldson knew he would never be caught. He was smart, patient, and never compulsive. He could keep on doing this until he died or his pecker wore out, and they had pills these days to fix that.
He reached I-15 at rush hour, traffic clogging routes both in and out of Salt Lake, and he was feeling happy and immortal until some jerk in a Winnebago decided to drive ten miles under the speed limit. Irritated motorists tagged along like ducklings, many of them using their horns, and everyone taking their good sweet time getting by in the passing lane.
Seriously, they shouldn't allow some people on the road.
Donaldson was considering passing the whole lot of them on the shoulder, and as he surveyed the route and got ready to gun it, he saw a cute chick in pink shoes standing at the cloverleaf. Short, lugging a guitar case, jutting out a hip and shaking her thumb at everyone who passed.
Two in one day? he thought. Do I have the energy?
He cranked open the window to get rid of the bleach smell, and pulled up next to her under the overpass, feeling his arousal returning.
– 2-
She set the guitar case on the pavement and stuck out her thumb. The minivan shrieked by. She turned her head, watched it go-no brakelights. The disappointment blossomed hot and sharp in her gut, like a shot of iced Stoli. Despite the midmorning brilliance of the rising sun, she could feel the cold gnawing through the tips of her gloved fingers, the earflaps of her black woolen hat.
According to her Internet research, 491 (previously 666) ranked as the third least traveled highway in the Lower-Forty-Eight, with an average of four cars passing a fixed point any given hour. Less of course at night. The downside of hitchhiking these little-known thoroughfares was the waiting, but the upside paid generous dividends in privacy.
She exhaled a steaming breath and looked around. Painfully blue sky. Treeless high desert. Mountains thirty miles east. A further range to the northwest. They stood blanketed in snow, and on some level she understood that others would find them dramatic and beautiful, and she wondered what it felt like to be moved by nature.
Two hours later, she lifted her guitar case and walked up the shoulder toward the idling Subaru Outback, heard the front passenger window humming down. She mustered a faint smile as she reached the door. Two young men in the front seats stared at her. They seemed roughly her age and friendly enough, if a little hungover. Open cans of Bud in the center console drink holders had perfumed the interior with the sour stench of beer-a good omen, she thought. Might make things easier.
"Where you headed?" the driver asked. He had sandy hair and an elaborate goatee. Impressive cords of bicep strained the cotton fibers of his muscle shirt. The passenger looked native-dark hair and eyes, brown skin, a thin, implausible mustache.
" Salt Lake," she said.
"We're going to Tahoe. We could take you at least to I-15."
She surveyed the rear storage compartment-crammed with two snowboards and the requisite boots, parkas, snow pants, goggles, and…she suppressed the jolt of pleasure-helmets. She hadn't thought of that before.
A duffle bag took up the left side of the backseat. A little tight, but then she stood just five feet in her pink crocs. She could manage.
"Comfortable back there?" the driver asked.
"Yes."
Their eyes met in the rearview mirror.
"What's your name?"
"Lucy."
"Lucy, I'm Matt. This is Kenny. We were just about to have us a morning toke before we picked you up. Would it bother you if we did?"
"Not at all."
"Pack that pipe, bro."
They got high as they crossed into Utah and became talkative and philosophically confident. They offered her some pot, but she declined. It grew hot in the car and she removed her hat and unbuttoned her black trench coat, breathing the fresh air coming in through the crack at the top of the window.
"So where you going?" the Indian asked her.
" Salt Lake."
"I already asked her that, bro."
"No, I mean what for?"
"See some family."
"We're going to Tahoe. Do some snowboarding at Heavenly."
"Already told her that, bro."
The two men broke up into laughter.
"So you play guitar, huh?" Kenny said.
"Yes."
"Wanna strum something for us?"
"Not just yet."
They stopped at a filling station in Moab. Matt pumped gas and Kenny went inside the convenience store to procure the substantial list of snacks they'd been obsessing on for the last hour. When Matt walked inside to pay, she opened the guitar case and took out the syringe. The smell wafted out-not overpowering by any means, but she wondered if the boys would notice. She hadn't had a chance to properly clean everything in awhile. Lucy reached up between the seats and tested the weight of the two Budweisers in the drink holders: each about half-full. She eyed the entrance to the store-no one coming-and shot a squirt from the syringe into the mouth of each can.
Kenny cracked a can of Bud and said, "Dude, was that shit laced?"
"What are you talking about?"
They sped through a country of red rock and buttes and waterless arroyos.
"What we smoked."
"I don't think so."
"Man, I don't feel right. Where'd you get it?"
"From Tim. Same as always."
Lucy leaned forward and studied the double yellow line through the windshield. After Matt drifted across for a third time, she said, "Would you pull over please?"
"What's wrong?"
"I'm going to be sick."
"Oh God, don't puke on our shit."
Matt pulled over onto the shoulder and Lucy opened her door and stumbled out. As she worked her way down a gentle embankment making fake retching sounds, she heard Matt saying, "Dude? Dude? Come on, dude! Wake up, dude!"
She waited in the bed of the arroyo for ten minutes and then started back up the hill toward the car. Matt had slumped across the center console into Kenny's lap. The man probably weighed two hundred pounds, and it took Lucy ten minutes to shove him, millimeter by millimeter, into the passenger seat on top of Kenny. She climbed in behind the wheel and slid the seat all the way forward and cranked the engine.