The Brotherhood of the Wheel (17 page)

“Look at me now, Pops,” she said. “Look at me now.” She took another drag on the Dixie. Her cell phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her pocket and looked at the screen. It was Russell.

“Hello, Investigator Marcou,” he said with mock formality. “I'm calling about that weirdo case you're not really supposed to be working on.”

Lovina stood from the table, leaving her beer and her gun, and walked into the bedroom. She found her gym bag on a shelf in the closet, unzipped it, and opened it on the bed. “You got something already, Russ? Damn, you're good.”

“Indeed,” Russell said. “But don't let the missus know. The file on that Karen Collie girl—you remember I said it was inactive for over a year?”

“Yeah,” she said as she sniffed a T-shirt, decided it was clean enough, and tossed it into the bag.

“Well, it just became active again, today. Someone with Illinois State Police access opened it up and gave it a good going-over.”

“Hot damn!” she said, and crammed a pair of jeans into the rapidly filling bag. “Can you get me a name, Russ?”

“I will by the time you get to Illinois,” he said. “Still digging on that photo, too.”

Lovina heard a sound in the living room, some movement near the door. Her heart became stone, crushing the air out of her lungs. “I got to go, Russ,” she said softly. “Thanks.”

She heard it again, maybe someone very slowly opening the front door. Someone small, trying to be quiet. Her mind flashed to her service piece, sitting all the way in the kitchen next to a sweating beer. She opened the night-table drawer and pulled out her backup, an oddly elongated-looking revolver with a wide, squat barrel. She checked the load on the Taurus Judge Magnum—the pistol fired three-inch 000 shotgun shells—five-ball buckshot. She clasped the ugly-looking gun with both hands in a Weaver stance, her finger off the trigger as she moved slowly, quietly into the living room, where the noise was coming from, by the door. Lovina held her breath and stepped out, leveling the revolver in the direction of her front door, ready to the take the shot.

Wafflez, the tortoiseshell cat, looked up from wrestling with the TV remote on the floor by the door, where she had dragged it. The remote thudded softly against the door. Wafflez looked slightly annoyed at Lovina, but then she always looked that way. Wafflez meowed.

“Shit,” Lovina said, and lowered the hand cannon. “Good to see you, too, you little asshole.” Wafflez padded over, purring, and rubbed against Lovina's leg. Lovina knelt and rubbed Wafflez's head and neck. The cat purred like a tiny motorboat and nipped gently at Lovina's fingers. “Let's get you fed and the litter box cleaned up and get me on the road before I end up killing some Girl Scouts selling cookies door-to-door.”

*   *   *

There was street parking for the apartments and a small lot in the back, but Lovina paid extra to use a garage down the block to house her dad's car, now her car. She pulled the cover off the 1968 Dodge Charger. The car was matte-black, with a 440 V-8 RB engine and six-pack carbs, a four-speed manual tranny, and a Dana 60 rear axle.

Pops had won the car in 1970, in a very illegal and dangerous race on I-20. He risked his life for the car because of Steve McQueen.
Bullitt
came out in 1968, and Pops fell in love with Chargers and Mustangs. When he saw the car growling like a tiger ready to pounce on the start line, he had to go after her. Lovina was pretty sure that if the Charger had been a woman her parents' marriage would have crashed and burned long before she was ever conceived. She had loved the car because Pops loved it. She had spent long afternoons—Saturdays and Sundays—working on it with him. There was never any doubt in anyone's mind that Lovina would get the Charger. Sometimes, when she missed her father, wanted his advice or just to feel him close, she would work on the car, or take it out on the highway and open it up.

She opened the trunk and tossed in her gym bag. She also set a small canvas bag in the trunk. The bag held the Taurus revolver, a very illegal 12-gauge double-barreled shotgun sawed down to a snout and modified with a pistol grip. There were also handcuffs, a stun gun, boxes of ammo, and shotgun shells for all the guns, a few flash-bang grenades she had “acquired” from a buddy of hers in NOPD SWAT, and a chopped-down, full auto AR-15 with a folding stock, a scope, and extended banana clips. She closed the trunk and climbed into the bucket seat. She turned the ignition, and the Charger purred to life with a throaty snarl. The sound always made her grin. It had made Pops grin, too.

“Okay, Smiley,” she said to herself. “Let's go find some kids and kick some boogieman ass.”

The Charger's tires squealed as she pulled out of the space, turned, and drove out of the darkness of the cool garage and into bright afternoon. Lovina shifted, and felt the car respond like an extension of her own body, perfect humming union; breath and fuel, flowing. She snapped on the radio, and Bayou 95.7 greeted her with Robert Plant's song “Big Log.” The highway beckoned, and she was as ready as she would ever be. Russ would call soon and give her a name in Illinois, whoever had reopened Karen Collie's case file, and she would start there. The music, the purr of the engine, of her heartbeat, all fluid and perfect and right. Lovina drove; Pops rode shotgun.

 

SEVEN

“10-0”

Part of Jimmie's mind wished he hadn't seen the sign, its stuttering fluorescent glow against the summoning of the darkness, as night began to slowly devour the day at the ragged edges of U.S. 150. Only one in a thousand, in ten thousand travelers, would have felt the fear, the nausea, swell in them at the sign the way Jimmie did. That was the whole point, wasn't it?

“Oh, damn it,” Jimmie muttered. He slowed and pulled into the gravel lot to the side of the restaurant. There were other 18-wheelers parked here as well, most with trailers, all empty and still. There was a paved parking area in front of the restaurant, with about a dozen cars filling the painted spaces. There were dingy, unwashed old sedans, a classic VW bug, and a couple of vans and work trucks. At least two of them looked like old police cars that had been purchased at auctions. Even from across the lot, Jimmie could see that most of the cars were stuffed with trash, clothes, books, old newspapers, and magazines. A few had large plastic storage tubs stacked in the seats. A minivan stood out, though. It was clean, new, and had the little white family stickers in the rearview window. A family of five was presented in vinyl pictogram: Mommy, Daddy, Brother, Sister, and Baby Girl. A sun with a smiley face beamed above them.

“Aw, no, no!” Jimmie said, turning off the ignition and tapping on his CB-radio headset. “Break 2-3, break 2-3, anyone got their ears on, c'mon?” Dead, dirty static was the only reply. Jimmie switched on the special scrambler that only other members had, the scrambler that allowed quantum encrypted and decrypted transmissions on Channel 23. It worked off principles like theoretical physics, numerology, and sacred geometry. Jimmie didn't get all the quantum
Star Trek
, big-bang-theory stuff; that was the province of the Builders, who thought the things up, but he knew that if there were any Brethren in range their radios would be receiving a call tone right now, a call to answer. “Break 2-3,” he repeated. “Break 2-3, c'mon, somebody? Anybody, this is Paladin. I got a situation here, c'mon?” No answer. There were so few of them left, and so much highway.

Jimmie sat in the cab for about ten minutes. He wasn't a praying man; he hadn't been since Sunday school as a kid. He'd seen too many prayers, too much begging, pleading through tears and pain, go unanswered to put much faith in, well, faith. But he sat and a tiny part of him, the part that hadn't fully given up on faith, on happy endings, prayed to God Almighty that the family would walk out the door, get into their clean little minivan, and drive away. That the roadside restaurant with the twitchy fluorescent sign declaring it the C
OMPASS
P
OINT
G
RILL
would be no more than a ripple in the family's memory as they drove on to Aunt Sophie's, or wherever the hell they were going; that they would never know the meaning of the symbol that was behind the words on the sign, glowing like a beacon on the side of the highway—a circle intersected by a cross, with the lines of the cross stretching beyond the edges of the circle.

He waited. No one came out. He unlatched the shotgun from the transmission well, checked its load, and then grabbed a box of spare shells, stuffing them into a canvas gym bag along with the 12-gauge. He took a small .380 Colt pistol out of the glove box, jacked a round into the pipe, lowered the hammer, and clicked the safety back on. He slid the small automatic into his jacket pocket and zipped the bag with the shotgun partly up and climbed out of the truck, carrying it. The gravel crunched as he walked. He touched the hood of the minivan and found it still warm. Jimmie closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed through the glass door of the Compass Point. The door had a small placard that announced the hours of operation, a cardboard sign that said O
PEN
, and a smaller red sign in spidery freehand print:
“I
N
G
OD WE TRUST …
E
VERYONE ELSE PAYS
CASH
$.
”

The interior of the Compass Point was fluorescent, counterfeit day. The tiled floor was dirty and scuffed. The fake wood tables, orange plastic chairs, and upholstered booths had all been new in 1972. A plastic plant in a heavy, pebbled planter squatted by the register counter and the door. Old tumors of gum, gnawed-on lollipop sticks, toothpicks, and crushed cigarette butts were scattered in the gravel that filled the planter. Jimmie could smell the warm grease of French fries and onion rings drowning as they fried, the hiss of hamburgers and hash browns—smothered and covered—on a grill that hadn't been cleaned well enough. A jukebox near the restrooms was playing “Dire Wolf,” by the Grateful Dead. Jimmie felt eyes fall on him from every direction, analyzing him, dissecting him, sizing him up, and he knew, he knew his odds in this place. For a second, he wanted to bolt back out the door, but then he heard the children and he knew he couldn't.

*   *   *

Paul Waclaw was trying to keep his ten-year-old son, Ira, from launching the straw paper like a blow-gun dart at his twelve-year-old daughter, Gabby, who had her face buried in her smartphone screen. Baby Jennie cooed as daddy Paul patted her back gently, resting the baby on his chest and shoulder. His wife, Stacy, returned from the restroom and sat down in the booth next to him.

“That bathroom,” Stacy said in a hushed voice. “So clean! I'm surprised this place isn't on any of the travel sites. If the food is decent, I'll give them a really good review.”

“Ira, don't shoot that at your sister,” Paul said, gesturing toward the boy as best he could while balancing Jennie. “Don't shoot that at anyone!”

“Daaaad,” Gabby said, not looking up from her phone. “Ugh, I can't get
annnny
bars in here—this place sucks. Why couldn't we stop at McDoooooonald's instead?”

“Gabby,” Stacy said, “we're trying to support small businesses, remember? McDonald's doesn't need our money, and little mom-and-pop places like this do, dear. Now, put your phone away and look at the menu.”

“I want nuggets!” Ira announced loudly. “And fries!”

“Okay, okay,” Paul said, lowering his voice. “Ira, keep it down. Other people are trying to enjoy their food.”

“Oh,” Stacy said, smiling, “they have little names for their specials; I guess they're named after locals or something. The Albert Fish and Chips sounds good. I'll think I'll have that.”

“This Richard Chase Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese sounds good, huh, Ira? You want that, pal?”

“I guess,” Ira said. “If they don't got nuggets.”

“Okay,” Paul said. “Gabby?”

“Uh,” Gabby said, scanning the laminated menu. “Can I just get this Dean Corll Cheesecake?”

Stacy sighed. “No, young lady, you can't. You need to eat something else.” She looked over the menu at her daughter. “How about this Ed Gein Bar-B-Que? That sounds good!”

“That name's familiar,” Paul said. “I think he was a governor or something.”

The waitress, a tall, gray, gaunt woman in a stained apron and pink polyester pantsuit uniform that might have been stylish around the same time as the furniture, walked over to them, her order pad in hand. She reeked of cigarette smoke and something organic and spoiled.

“Y'all ready to order, hon?” she said, addressing Paul. Her name tag read M
YRTLE.

“Almost there,” he said, slightly apologetic. “You know how it is with kids, right? Like herding cats.” He laughed, and so did Stacy. Myrtle said nothing, but nodded.

“Right. I'll be back with some water for ya'll,” she said and walked away, her stiletto heels clicking on the tile.

“She's sketch,” Gabby said in a whisper. Ira laughed and nodded in agreement. Myrtle looked back at the booth when the boy laughed. She gave them a look that bordered on raw hatred, then went back behind the lunch counter and busied herself filling glasses with water.

“You two stop that!” Paul whispered. Baby Jennie was starting to make fussy sounds, and he handed her off to Stacy without even a thought. “You don't judge people by how they look,” he said. “Even if they are a little creepy … and she is.”

“Paul!” Stacy said as she pulled open her blouse and draped a blanket from the baby bag over her shoulder. “That is an awful thing to tell the children. The poor woman can't help how she looks or comes off.” She looked into her baby's eyes. “Can she, Jennie? No, she can't. You hungry, baby? Come here, sweetheart.” Stacy slipped her breast free of her bra cup under the blanket and then pulled the blanket aside long enough for her daughter to begin suckling, then she slipped the blanket back into place. Paul noticed a change in the diner's clientele. They all froze; many stared at the Waclaws' booth like hungry dogs. Paul felt a palpable energy build in the room. He didn't like it, but he couldn't name it with words or even cogent thoughts. The trucker, with his baseball cap, ponytail, and potbelly, seemed to be the only other one to notice it. He sat at a table near them, and he, too, was scanning the patrons now, his hand slipping into his jacket pocket.