Rage Against the Dying Read online

  The historic Route 66 had been transformed into Interstate Highway 40, well paved and well traveled. We thought he might be a trucker who drove that route regularly, either a long-haul eighteen-wheeler cross-country or a smaller rig between nearby towns. We checked with every single company that ran trucks through that route and checked out every goddamn trucker who drove them. Found nobody we could pin it on. Over the years I was going a little nuts, thought all during the year about those summer months and how I was going to get him before he killed again. I thought that way for four years before Jessica signed on and we trained her to do what I no longer could.

  Black Ops Baxter was dead by that time, but I trained Jessica myself. While we were engaged in the usual crime fighting, from January to June at any available time Sig worked with her on unmasking a killer and I showed her all the techniques for subduing him—where to apply fourteen pounds of pressure to break a collarbone, that kind of thing. By early June I was convinced she was ready for the job. At least by early June I told myself she was ready for the job. I really wanted to catch that asshole.

  The afternoon of August 1, 2004, seventy-nine miles west of Tucumcari, New Mexico, there I was sitting in one of those vans all decked out with electronic surveillance equipment and two other agents who knew how to use it. We had the AC on but it still smelled like sweat, the kind I used to remember when Dad would take us fishing off the Hillsboro Pier. It was the sweat not so much from the Florida humidity as from waiting for the barracuda to strike the bait. That was what we were doing that night, waiting for the fish to strike the bait we’d put into the water. Trolling Jessica. Like in Florida, where you seldom got anything but angel fish off the end of the pier, our chances were slim that this one girl would meet up with the killer. But this had been going on for four summers, and we were willing to spend the man hours and dollars to keep it from happening one more time.

  We had Jessica wired for sound and on GPS. She could hear us through a device that posed as a CD player with a headset. I remember how we laughed when she rocked her head to the beat of the music she pretended to hear. We had the van parked a half mile off the road so that no one driving by would see it and get suspicious. Keeping just close enough to her to preserve the signal. If she got picked up by a suspicious individual, we were ready to go after her and alert highway patrol down the road as well.

  I remember now another smell in the van, Doritos, Cool Ranch. Tony Vinzetti, one of the supertechs on loan from the Albuquerque Bureau office for the summer, munched bag after bag of Doritos to relieve the monotony. Jessica liked them, too, and had taken one of the bags with her to eat as she walked the stretch of highway.

  You might think we’d have her dressed like a hooker, miniskirt and spangled halter top, but that would have been like hanging a sign on her that said Victim. With her diminutive size we went for the runaway look instead, easier pickings than the college girls who sometimes traveled together and not as suspicious as a prostitute walking in the middle of nowhere. Besides, it was easier to hide the wires under jeans and a T-shirt just tight enough to be naive. Her shirt was vintage Rolling Stones, that tongue.

  To complete the ensemble she carried a backpack with some clothes in it, under which we hid the GPS tracker. She had painted a peace sign on the back with red nail polish, a nice touch. A small pistol was strapped to her ankle underneath the flared jeans. No need to be really discreet because it wasn’t like she was going into a Mafia meeting. Whoever picked her up wouldn’t frisk her, and if he tried, she would immobilize him immediately and wait for us to catch up.

  I remember those Doritos that Tony was eating drove me crazy that night.

  “Must you crunch like that?” I asked.

  Tony crunched harder if that’s possible.

  I turned to the other guy, around the same age as Tony but more mature. I can’t remember his last name, Yves Something-French. The whole time we waited he kept his nose in a paperback novel. Émile Zola, I recall. L’Assommoir. I remember that name because I kept whispering it, liking the feel of it in on my tongue. I had asked him what it meant and he said “Hard to translate.” I was just making small talk, so I didn’t ask him to try. He was born in Montreal, was angling for an international posting. I remember everything from that night.

  “Doesn’t that drive you crazy?” I asked him about Tony’s crunching.

  He turned slightly glazed eyes up at me so I could see he hadn’t really left the book, was possibly still thinking in French. “Huh?” he said.

  “Never mind.”

  Yves went back into the world he could put down when he needed to.

  “At least suck on them a little before you bite down, would you, Tony? Soften them up so they’re not so loud. How do you expect to hear Jessica with all that racket?”

  I heard a crunch through my headphones as Jessica responded to my words. She could hear us as well as we could hear her. “Hey, Tony,” she said around a mouthful of Doritos, and swallowed so her next words were a little easier to understand. “Let’s do an experiment. See how much sucking it takes to soften one of these things. Mark the time and … go.” Then there was a loud sucking sound that was worse than the crunching. Even Yves laughed. They were all against me that night, the little bastards. And they were both in love with Jessica.

  We couldn’t be sure the killer operated only at night so we’d been there from the late afternoon when it cooled down a bit and a hitchhiker out on the road was a little more believable. The hours dragged by, alleviated by spots of high alert when something might happen but didn’t. Jessica and I talked a little but mostly she and Tony talked, about musical groups and television shows and celebrities I didn’t know.

  Then Jessica said a car was slowing down. She took a look at it. “Looks like a man, twenties, driving a small flatbed. Should I?”

  I have her face in my head, can picture the way she turned it slightly from the truck so there would be no chance of the driver seeing her lips move.

  “Go for it,” I said. “You’re close to the truck stop so it doesn’t have to take long if you exclude him.”

  He pulled up. Jessica waited for his window to go down. I can picture her easing her little backpack off her shoulder as if in preparation for getting into the car. “Give me a lift?” she said in her little-girl voice.

  We heard the guy say, “Give me a blow job?”

  Jessica was silent; I can imagine her pretending to consider. Because of Sig I knew we were looking for someone with better conning skills than that, someone with charm and apparent sympathy. I whispered, “Not our man. He wouldn’t say anything that stupid before he got you into the car. Throw him back.”

  “Up yours,” Jessica said, and the man drove off, laughing.

  She kept walking. A number of cars she thought might be possibilities, those with men driving alone, passed her by. The record shows that at 9:17 P.M. she was picked up by another young male, this one more polite than the last. I use the generic young male because that was all she had time to murmur before she got into a car. No way to give a description without tipping him off that she was wired, of course.

  The three of us listened to banal conversation for a while.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Natalie. What’s yours?”

  “Richard. Richard Rogers.”

  “Oh, come on,” I whispered, but none of the others seemed to think this name was fake.

  He said, “What are you listening to?”

  “The Ramones.”

  “That’s a pretty old group. How old are you?”

  “Seventeen,” she said after a pause that made it seem like a lie.

  Pause. “This road is a pretty far distance from any place.”

  “So?”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  We had determined in advance this part of the script. I could see Tony mouth the words as Jessica said them. “Things got bad at home. I’m heading out.”

  “Things would have to get
pretty bad to do that; it’s never been that bad for me. I guess I’ve been blessed.”

  Open-ended comment; Jessica kept her mouth shut. They drove on for a few more minutes. Then he said, his tone lower, slower, more serious. “Tell me, Natalie, do you think you’re prepared to die?”

  Tony and Yves jerked as if the surveillance equipment had short-circuited. I bit down hard and was aware of my right thumb trembling all by itself. “Easy, Jess. We’re here with you,” I whispered. “Take it to the next level. Put the pressure on him.”

  Jessica sounded more than a little nervous. If she was putting it on she was a damn good actress. Her voice had a little tremble in it to make her sound weak, victimlike. “Would you please let me out here, Richard?”

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” he said.

  “Stop the car. Let me out.”

  “What’s wrong?” he started.

  “You’re scaring me.” She sounded vulnerable.

  There was a long pause, and then he laughed. “Wait a minute, did you think I was threatening you with that dying business?”

  “He could be toying with you,” I whispered. “Keep up the pressure.”

  “I want to get out of the car now,” Jessica said.

  The male did not slow the car. “I’m sorry. I’m just doing my missionary duty. I’m with the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. You know, Mormons. I didn’t mean to scare you. Honest. I mean, look at me.” Apparently he risked turning his head from the road ahead so she could see into his eyes.

  “You totally creeped me out, dude,” Jessica ad-libbed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, and really did sound contrite. “I was just trying to find out if you were secure enough in the Lord to ensure everlasting peace.”

  “Sweet,” Jessica said, still sounding suspicious.

  There was a pause. I could tell Jess was waiting for instructions. “Not our fish. Throw him back, Rookie,” I said.

  Richard said, “I messed that up, didn’t I? I guess I don’t have my pitch quite right yet.” He really did sound stricken, like if we could see him he’d be banging his head against the steering wheel.

  Jessica said, “Look, just drop me off at the next truck stop.”

  “I swear I’m cool. I won’t hurt you and I could use the company. It’s kind of lonely out here when no one wants to talk about God.”

  “I feel you, man. I need to make a phone call.”

  “There’s a Flying J about five miles ahead. But would you like to use my cell?”

  “Uh, no,” Jessica said, not bothering to make up an excuse.

  I whispered to her, “Even runaways would have a cell phone. Next time tell him you’re meeting a friend there.” I could imagine her give a tiny nod though we couldn’t see.

  Richard Rogers dropped Jessica off at the Flying J and headed on. After checking to make sure she wasn’t spotted making the switch, she started walking in the opposite direction from where they came. No killer would pick her up at the truck stop when it was still light out, the possibility of witnesses. But they might follow her from here. As she walked we talked a bit.

  “Hey Rookie, did you by any chance notice that kid was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and thin black tie?” I asked

  “They always ride bicycles, so fuck you, Coach,” she said mildly, in a companionable way. I could feel her smile echoing mine. She was into this as much as I was when I was her age. I knew then she was going to be good.

  We alerted again when she got picked up by a nice-looking older male (for Jessica that would have been somewhere in his late forties). He came on to her but didn’t make threats or try anything rough. “Too obvious. Let him go,” I said. She asked to get out on the side of the road. He didn’t slow down. I felt the nerve spark in the side of my neck. Breathing in the van stopped. He offered her a beer.

  We heard her say, “I shouldn’t. I’m only fourteen.”

  We heard the car stop and a door open and shut, then the car start up again. Jessica yawned loudly.

  “Are we boring you?” I asked.

  “Nah, I’m just getting warm. It’s a warm night, isn’t it?”

  None of us answered, wondering whether it was warmer inside or outside the van. She sounded like it didn’t matter if we answered her; she was talking more to herself. “It’s kind of nice knowing you’re all there even though I’m totally in control. Sort of like being a stunt double with a safety harness.” She walked a bit more. “I don’t think he’s out here,” she said.

  “Oh, he’s out there,” I said. “You ever see the movie Jaws?”

  Back over the wire we all heard, “Na, na. Na, na. Na-na-na-na-na…”

  Tony and Yves both laughed again. Jessica said, “How young do you think I am, Coach?”

  “Just a slip of a girl,” I said, and stretched, thinking of getting back to the hotel and pressing a cold scotch on the knot on my back. “We should pack it in for the evening. Gets any later and anyone will be suspicious of a young girl in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Want to pick me up? Wait, so you don’t have to make a big swing maybe I can do one more ride to the truck stop at the other end.”

  “We can come and get you, no problem.” I gave Tony a nudge to get his attention so he’d shut down the surveillance equipment.

  Before Tony could snap the button that would shut down the radio Jessica said, “Woman slowing down. Gonna get another dose of religion, I bet.”

  “Send her on her way. We’ll come get you.”

  We heard a door open and Jessica whispering, “She’s got AC.”

  We were tired, we were fooling around, we were getting punchy, we were letting our guard down—maybe ten excuses would serve to explain what happened next.

  I held up a finger to stop Tony from shutting off the radio and said to Jess, “You are so bullheaded. Okay, when you get to the truck stop get out but walk a little more east so you’re out from under the lights when we pick you up.”

  “Ten-four, Coach,” in the same whisper as before.

  “Over and out.”

  We both chuckled at the cop speak and I took off my headphones. Yves put the van in gear and bumped us out of the patch of hard sand onto the highway. He took his time driving because Jess was at least twenty miles west of us and would take a little time to catch up. In about ten minutes’ time we pulled into the truck stop. Yves and Tony went in to stock up on more junk food for the ride back to the hotel, came out with a large bag, and asked if I wanted some raspberry Twizzlers. I declined that, but took a Coke. Yves got gas for the van. You could tell he was looking forward to the day when gassing up vans wouldn’t be part of his job.

  We drove through the parking lot, past a dozen eighteen-wheelers parked in a row, all dark, their drivers either sleeping or in the truck stop eating, taking showers, checking e-mail. All the truck stops offered free computers.

  We found a spot to pull off on the shoulder just before the exit/entrance ramps. Yves turned on a small flashlight and went back to his book. Tony shut his eyes and sucked on a Twizzler. Twizzlers he sucked on, go figure. I kept an eye out the back window of the van for Jessica, who should have been walking up the road at any moment.

  Only she didn’t. I look at the digital clock on the van’s dashboard. 10:52 P.M.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said.

  Maybe from the tone of my voice, even Yves looked up. Without asking what or why, he put the van in drive and made a U-turn that took us back into the parking lot. While he did that Tony turned the radio and the GPS back on.

  “Jessica, come in,” I said.

  Nothing.

  “Jessica, are you there?”

  Nothing.

  “You got her?” I asked Tony.

  “I do,” he said, and scowled. “Her coordinates are further away than they should be.”

  “We traveled some, too,” I said, arguing foolishly with the expert.

  “She’s further west than she was when she last repo
rted in. Looks like she headed in the opposite direction.”

  “How fast is she moving?”

  “Stationary.”

  “Is she too far away for the radio? Is that why she’s not answering?”

  “Could be.”

  “Yves, let’s go.”

  Yves revved up the engine and busted us out of the truck stop heading back west the twenty-five miles or so to the spot that the GPS tracker indicated. I talked to Jessica along the way, hoping each time I spoke that it was just a matter of distance that we were closing, that the woman had needed to go in the opposite direction and Jessica couldn’t say anything to let us know. She would trust we’d be on her.

  Then I did hear something. Music.

  “What the fuck,” Tony said.

  “When the moon comes over the moun-ta-a-a-ne…”

  “It’s either a CD playing or the driver can do a really good Kate Smith impression,” I said.

  “Who?” Tony asked.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said, listening intently, made only slightly less nervous by thinking of the kind of person who listens to Kate Smith.

  “Is this one of Jessica’s practical jokes?” Tony asked.

  “I’ll kill her if it is. Be prepared to call for backup,” I said. “Yves, punch it.”

  He did, holding at about a hundred, while the singing continued, now “God Bless America, my home sweet ho-o-o-o-me.”

  “Closing in on coordinates,” Tony said, in about fifteen minutes of the time we left the pickup point. “Stop,” he said.

  “Stop where?” Yves said, losing his cool, irritation in his voice. “I don’t see anything.”

  He was right. The highway was black, and the moon such a sliver you couldn’t see off-road outside of the high beams. Still, Yves pulled off onto the shoulder. We sat for a second, quiet, as if we’d be able to hear her. All we heard was Kate Smith singing “Born free, as free as the wind blows…”