The Devil's Road: A SERIAL NOVEL
The Devil's Road: A SERIAL NOVEL
CHAPTER 02: AN OKLAHOMA TRIPTYCH --- ISSUE 02: BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
Welcome to Issue #5 of The Devil’s Road, a serial novel following the exploits of Samantha Hart, a Sequoyah County Sheriff, full of vengeance and fury using her badge to hunt down her sister's killer as she uncovers a trail of bloodshed that coats the heartland.
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And now, please enjoy Chapter 2 Issue 2 of … The Devil’s Road.
In 2004 an Oklahoma Bureau of Investigations analyst discovered a crime pattern along the Interstate 40 corridor between Oklahoma and Mississippi. Subsequently, The Federal Bureau of Investigations (F.B.I.) started the Highway Serial Killings Initiative. They discovered over 500 bodies of women along the interstate highway system with more than 200 potential suspects, a trail of bloodshed that coats the heartland. The Devil’s Road is a serialized novel based on this horrific discovery.
You never want to see them. They are meant as a warning, a harbinger, not of things to come, but of things that have already been. Red and blue police lights pulse across the face of Samantha Hart who sits in her sheriff’s cruiser, but those lights aren’t hers. Reflected from the rearview mirror, they flash across her face. A moment ago she was alone on this ridge line overlooking the Old 64 Truck Stop, but now?
She can hear the sound of water dripping. The shocks on the driver’s side of the vehicle release a light squeal as something in the backseat increases in mass. Samantha stiffens. The something slides from one side of the car to the other. A shadow forms in Sam’s peripheral vision from the rearview mirror. She is not alone, at least for the moment. She doesn’t want to, but she looks up into that mirror to see her.
Sitting in the backseat is Mary Hart, Sam’s little sister. Her wet hair hangs in front of her face. Water drips from the ends and runs down her bruised pale skin to the leather of the backseat. Mary’s body is bathed in the flashing police light, turning red to blue, blue to red. People always said she had such beautiful hair. She was always brushing it away and tucking it behind her ears. It was easier to see her pretty face that way.
Sam pulls the seatbelt across her lap and buckles it, attempting to ignore the visitor in her car. She puts her hand on the shifter. She was going somewhere important, but it seems to have drifted away. She watches Heather run down the hill towards the Old 64 Truck Stop through the windshield. That wasn’t it.
She looks back to her sister in the backseat through the rearview. Turning around would be a mistake, one she’s made before and will not repeat. Mary’s still there, her skin glistening, with a needle protruding from the crook of her arm.
Static erupts on the radio making Sam jump. She flips off the speaker. The shocks groan again as the something in the backseat leaves. She doesn’t have to look up, she knows Mary is gone.
Now what was she about to … “Bandy,” she says to no one. She drops the car’s shifter into drive and jams the gas. The cruiser’s back wheels spin in the loose gravel on the side of the road and she pulls out onto Highway 64 heading towards 4490. Sam glances in the side mirror to see Heather walking through the truck stop’s parking lot, likely a missed opportunity. She flips on her police lights and siren to warn those ahead of her that she is on her way.
Heather is walking past a line of 18-wheelers when Sam’s siren starts to wail. She spins in the direction of the sound with a quickness only known to those used to running from the law. Not for her.
“Ready to clock in, little darlin’?” A wire-thin trucker leans out of his window from above, eye-balling Heather with ill intentions. She tosses him a false smile, “Not before breakfast, big fella.” He lets out a mucus-laden laugh as he pulls a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket. There’s never a shortage of customers.
Inside the truck stop, Darlene stands behind the counter. A Virginia Slim rests between her tar-stained teeth. She takes a sip from a can of warm Diet Dr. Pepper, as Heather comes through the front door with a ding from an unseen sensor. Heather slides up to the counter and leans over to try to see the monitor hidden below.
“Mind if I get a shower?” Heather asks.
Darlene squats below the counter to take a look. The monitor shows security camera footage from inside the shower room. The flabby wet body of a man slams against the backside of an equally large woman and a small red “REC” flashes in the corner of the black-and-white image.
“Might be another minute or two,” Darlene says.
Heather walks down the candy aisle, grabs the last pack of Little Debbie cupcakes, and slides them under her shirt. Darlene pretends not to notice.
Next, she hits the coffee station where ancient spills have forever stained the linoleum countertop a color that could just as easily be confused for blood as coffee. She starts with the cardboard tube of sugar, upending it into a styrofoam cup. It’s an excessive amount of sugar. She pours the coffee and stirs it with her finger, takes a sip, and pours a little more sugar in before she’s satisfied with the taste.
Three crumpled singles come out of her cutoff shorts and she puts them on the counter in front of Darlene and looks up at the cigarette rack overhead. “Pack of Reds, too.”
Darlene grabs the smokes and the cash. “You keep stealing those cupcakes Big Jim’s gonna notice,” she says.
“Yeah, how you figure?” Heather asks.
“Nobody eats that shit except you, and you never pay for ‘em.” The VCR recorder under the counter clicks as it finds the end of the tape.
“Shit,” Darlene swears as she leans over and quickly hits the eject button. She pulls open a drawer full of blanks and shoves a new one into the machine, hits record, and checks the monitor. “Missed a bit, but I’ll still catch the good part,” she says with a crooked smile.
Heather tosses another fifty cents on the counter. “That’s for the shower, not the snacks,” and walks back outside.
Moses Blackrock holds a steady fifty-five miles per hour on his government-issued beaten-up black sedan. He kneads the steering wheel with his large, worn hands occasionally sparing a glance at the blue duffel bag that sits in the passenger seat. His low and tight flat top, white button-up, and black tie are a dead giveaway, but for the uninitiated, he’s an F.B.I. agent.
He turns the dial on the air conditioner, but it’s already maxed. He adjusts the vents, but sweat is already forming under his arms. He’ll need a new shirt before noon.
You wouldn’t think it could induce fear in a fellow law enforcement officer, but when you’re also a drug mule, red and blue lights activate that almond-shaped bundle of nerves in the brain sending fear signals to all the hairs on the body, but most unfortunately to the sweat glands under the arms. Sam’s cruiser approaches in the distance.
Moses eases his foot off the accelerator and coasts to a stop on the shoulder of the road. He kills the engine, leans his seat back far enough to make the car look abandoned, and grabs the duffle bag, holding it against his chest. He can hear the sirens now. Time to wait.
Sam’s cruiser flies past Moses’s black sedan without so much as a brake pump. Once they are clear he raises his seat, turns the car back on, and restarts the air conditioning.
A small notebook in his breast pocket comes out. The pen hovers over the notebook as Moses considers the depth of his message. Once he’s satisfied he touches the tip to the paper and writes, “LAST ONE. FUCK YOU!” and drops the note in the bag. Inside is a pile of clear ziplock bags filled with blue-ish white crystals.
He zips the duffle and turns as he tosses it in the backseat. Through the rear glass, he watches as Samantha’s cruiser disappears along the horizon, its siren fading much faster than it arrived. Thankfully, that one wasn’t for him, but he knows there’s eventually going to be one coming his direction. Everybody gets caught, but those lights weren’t for him.
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