His name was Rodney Casselhart, and he was a long way from home. He was in Ohio, driving a car with Pennsylvania plates, and he had an Iowa driver’s license in his wallet, and other ID that showed an address in Michigan.
She hadn’t wanted to search him, but forced herself, and his wallet was in the first place she looked, his left front pants pocket. The bills compartment held $145, and she found a folded hundred dollar bill tucked behind his license.
Not enough. Driving all around the country, picking up women and killing them? That would take cash. He had a couple of cards, Visa and MasterCard, both in his name, but he wouldn’t want to use them unless he had to.
God, did she really have to do this?
She decided she did, and in his right hip pocket she found a roll of hundreds secured with a thick rubber band. She didn’t waste time counting, just transferred the roll to her own pocket.
Now what?
Just leave everything, she thought.
And the knife? Just leave it in his chest?
They wouldn’t need the knife to know he’d been stabbed. You really couldn’t miss the wounds. And the knife in her possession would tie her to him. She could boil the thing for an hour and not get all his blood out of it.
But suppose she needed it?
Oh, please. You’re wasting time. Just go.
She was a few yards from the road when she heard a car approaching, the first traffic she’d heard since she came to. A ride, she thought, and then she thought, No, don’t be an idiot. She hunkered down where she was, and the car turned out to be a truck, running its high beams, rolling on down the road.
And it was going away from the town, not toward it. She had her bearings now, remembered that they’d spun left when they went off the road, so the town was to her right. She couldn’t guess how far it was, or if there were any turns along the way, but that was the direction she had to take. Because she had to get back to her room, there were things she couldn’t just walk away from.
She waited until the truck’s taillights were out of sight. Then she started walking.
She’d been walking ten or fifteen minutes when she heard a vehicle behind her. She stepped off the road before the headlights could find her, concealed herself in the darkness. This time it was a car, a squareback sedan, with a man driving and a woman seated beside him. She watched them sweep on by and wished she’d been where they could see her. They’d have given her a ride, and they’d certainly have been safe.
But if they noticed the blood—
She probably could have explained it to their satisfaction. Still, she was probably better off walking. How much farther could it be?
She must have heard the motorcycle well before it registered on her. She’d gotten into the rhythm of walking, and her mind found things to think about. She was thinking how Rita had slept with something like a hundred and fifty men just by fucking that whacko Mormon.
Suppose it had been her? Would she have been killing a hundred and fifty men when she took Kellen out of the game?
Then she became aware of the engine noise, even as the pavement brightened in front of her from the bike’s high beams. Too late, she thought, and stepped off onto the shoulder, and turned toward the sound, even as it changed pitch. Whoever he was, he was slowing down. If it was a cop — oh, Jesus, if it was a cop she was screwed.
No point in trying to run. She stood there, waiting, and he braked to a stop. Her eyes registered that he wasn’t a cop, but she was only relieved for an instant.
A big man, clad entirely in black leather. Black leather pants, a black leather jacket with a lot of metal studs and zippers. Black leather gloves. Mirrored biker goggles covered his eyes, and a full dark beard obscured the rest of his face.
She’d have been better off with a cop. She wished she’d kept the knife, then knew it wouldn’t do her any good. This man would snap the blade between his fingers, then fuck her and kill her and eat her. He’d crack her bones for the marrow, floss his teeth with her hair.
“Rough night?”
His voice was low in pitch. Well, no surprise there. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel them taking in the blood, the general disarray.
“Kind of,” she said. “I got a ride with a guy and the car got wrecked.”
“I saw where somebody went off the road about two miles back. That you?”
She nodded.
“You looking to get help?”
She shook her head. “He’s dead.”
“Died in the wreck. I got a phone, if you want to call it in.”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Oh, what the hell. “He was going to kill me,” she said. “Rape me and kill me. I wouldn’t have been the first, either. I went through his bag afterward to find out who he was. There were these rings and bracelets and stuff. You know, women’s personal items.”
“Souvenirs.”
“Yeah.”
“A serial killer, sounds like. You don’t want to report it?”
“No.” He just stood there, waiting for more, so she said, “Going off the road didn’t kill him. It didn’t even knock him out. I had a knife. I—”
“Stabbed him.”
“It was self-defense, but—”
“You don’t want to have to lay that all out for the law.”
“No.”
“I can dig it. You live around here?”
She pointed in the direction she’d been walking, the direction he’d been heading himself. “I have a hotel room. I need to get my stuff. But once I do—”
“You want to get out of Dodge.” He patted the seat behind him. “Hop on.”
She didn’t pass out during the ride, or fall asleep, but it was almost as if she did. The bike sent the rest of the world away. All she heard was its engine, all she felt was the rush of the wind. She had her eyes closed, her arms around his broad back, her face pressed against the black jacket. She breathed in its old leather smell. Her mind took a break, and the next thing she knew the bike had stopped across the street from her hotel.
She said, “Can you wait? I’ll be like two minutes, I just have to grab one or two things.”
“Okay.”
“Or...”
“What?”
“Well, if you could wait, like, ten minutes, I could clean up and change my clothes. But if you’re in a hurry—”
“You ought to do that,” he said. “No rush. I’ll be here.”
She stripped, showered, washed her hair. Dressed in clean clothes, spread out Rodney Casselhart’s white button-down shirt on the bed, piled the clothes she’d been wearing on top of it, and folded it to make a bundle, tying the sleeves to secure it. Everything she could use, like her drugs and cash, or that might point them to her, like her cell phone, went in her shoulder bag.
She left the rest, along with her suitcase, locked the room behind her, and walked past the hotel desk with the bag over her shoulder and the bundled clothes under one arm. The clerk barely registered her presence, and her rent was paid for another five days, and by the time they realized she was gone they’d be past connecting her to the car in the field a few miles up the road, or the dead man behind the wheel.
She wasn’t sure he’d be waiting, but there he was, her knight in black leather armor, standing beside his bike. He reached for the bundle of clothes.
“Everything I was wearing,” she said. “And that was his shirt, I got it from his suitcase.”
“I’ll get rid of it for you.”
He stowed the bundle in a saddlebag. She said, “I’m glad you stayed.”
“I said I would.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t know what I’d have done if you didn’t.”
“You’d have thought of something. Where are you headed?”
Her thoughts hadn’t gone that far. “Just... some other city. Which way are you going?”