The Devil’s Road Chapter 5: Secrets Unravel as a Storm Builds on The Devil’s Road
As Sheriff Samantha Hart closes in on a lead, Heather and Madeline’s fragile bond teeters on the edge, with shadows gathering on the horizon and a storm brewing beneath the surface.
The road stretches on, Faithful Rambler, as we delve deeper into the blood-soaked highways with Chapter 5 of The Devil’s Road. Today, we return to the little trailer where Heather and Madeline cling to what remains of their fragile life together. But with Heather’s latest discovery, the cracks are widening, and the storm building in the distance is nothing compared to what’s coming between them.
For those just joining, there’s a trail of death stretching behind us(ch. 1, ch. 2, ch. 3 & ch. 4), and with each chapter, we draw closer to uncovering the truth buried in the dust.
With each passing day, you’ll receive the next installment, unraveling the mystery piece by piece. So buckle up, stay wary of desolate truck stops, and remember to share this gothic tale of highways haunted by both the living and the dead.
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.
Chapter 5: Follow the Lead
issue one — shadow highway
Lieutenant Samantha Hart uses every ounce of willpower to pull her foot free from the accelerator, which is currently pressed to the floorboard. The Sequoyah County police cruiser slips through the night along Highway 64, the speedometer needle buried below the last number on the dial. All perfectly legal if she had turned on her siren and lights, but that’s the furthest thing from her mind.
She needs to get back to the site and do one more walkthrough before heading into he office. All she can think about is that bag floating off into the wind. She should have done a better inspection of the contents before moving. A dead body shows up on the side of a road with a poor girl’s face torn off and sewn back on, and the sheriff’s department can’t seem to collect all the evidence. No doubt, had the body shown up at the Fort Smith Country Club, there would have been more attention to detail.
The pattern is clear to Sam. Her stack of case files now numbers twelve. If you follow the dates, it’s easy to see they have a serial killer on their hands. Four victims are redheads. The most recent one wore a red wig. Nine of them are white, the other three are Native American. That’s where he started, in the reservations. Every victim appears to have dabbled in prostitution. All have been beaten, and the recent bodies have been mutilated. Whoever he is, he’s refining his process.
Sam has made every effort to handle this through proper channels, but Captain James is only interested in keeping his office. If it doesn’t win more votes, it’s not worth the effort, but she has family on the line. Her sister is one of the files in that box. Votes be damned.
The car is in neutral now, tires humming as it coasts at eighty miles per hour toward the intersection of Highway 64 and County Road 4490. She pulls the steering wheel hard, squealing into the turn before dropping the transmission back into drive and punching the accelerator. In another two miles, she’ll be at the site.
A beam cuts across the roadside, illuminating a loose flap of yellow, “DO NOT CROSS,” police tape. Sam grabs it and ties it back to a stake in the ground. The headlights from her cruiser light up the hillside. She walks to the hilltop where, earlier today, she stood next to a dead body.
The grass has been trampled flat. She pans her light over the hill in all directions, looking for the bag. If the Captain hadn’t sent her off on another assignment, she’d have located the bag in the daylight, but we are where we are.
Walking in concentric circles around the hill yields nothing but disappointment. The bag is gone. Sam gets back in her cruiser and does a U-turn to return to the highway. As her lights sweep across the dead prairie grass. That’s when she sees it. The plastic bag flits in the wind, stuck to barbwire fence on the opposite of the road.
Sam stands over the plastic bag. Her flash fires on her camera as she snaps a photo. Inside, she can see the stained rags, just like the bag she found in Mac Gibbons’ car. It’s got the same logo, the generic flaming red wheel.
Sliding the flashlight between her cheek and shoulder, she pokes through the rags in the bag with her ballpoint pen. They are stained a dark maroon color, the color of blood. At the bottom, there’s a receipt.
Sam puts on a pair of gloves and reaches into the bag to pull out the receipt. There were four items purchased: a bundle of shop towels, hydraulic fluid, an egg salad sandwich, and a pack of Camel Wide cigarettes. The receipt is from the Ole’ 64 Truck Stop. It was paid in cash.
Again, the accelerator hovers a quarter inch off the floorboard. The digital clock on the dash now reads 3:58 AM. She’s been on duty for twenty-two hours, but who’s counting.
Sam’s never had a lead. For over two and a half years, there’s been nothing but the collection of evidence. She pieces together what might be and is ridiculed by her entire department. At first, she thought it was because she was the only woman on the force, breaking up the boys’ club. However, after a while, she figured out the real reason no one cared. Prostitutes don’t vote, and newspapers don’t care about dead sex workers. But then her sister was added to the list of bodies. Sam finds that last quarter inch of room between her foot and the floorboard, pushing her cruiser’s engine to a full roar as she flies towards the Ole’ 64 Truck Stop and the first opening in the case that could solve her sister’s murder.
issue two — midnight mirage
After a certain number of hours without sleep, your body tosses off the heavy blanket of rest and flips all the light switches on at the same time. It’s euphoric and clinically proven to cause hallucinations, not that Sheriff Samantha Hart needs to stay up over 36 hours to see her dead sister standing outside of her parked cruiser.
The Sequoyah County Sheriff’s vehicle is parked across the street from the Old 64 Truck Stop. For the past month, this has been Sam’s usual perch, the place where she often encounters visions of her sister, Mary. However, this is the first time she’s appeared outside the car. That’s interesting.
Sam holds up the Polaroid she found late yesterday in Mac Gibbons’ doomsday shelter. In her peripheral vision, she notices Mary’s hand press against the glass. Teeth marks curve from her pinky around to the meaty part of her palm. Sam remembers that hand laying in her lap on the side of the road, raindrops filling up the little holes left behind by the teeth of her sister’s perpetrator.
With the Polaroid tucked into the window seal to hold it there, Sam now puts the evidence bag with a receipt next to the photo. The window creaks as Mary’s palm presses harder against the glass. She can’t take it any longer. Sam turns to see her sister’s face, but there’s nothing outside the door. Whatever was there has left.
The parking lot of the Old 64 Truck Stop is nearly abandoned at this hour in the morning. A single beat-down sedan is parked near the back door, and a couple of tractor-trailers idle just outside the large cone of light from the overheads.
Sam rolls the cruiser into the overhead lights of the lot, headlights off. She parks in the rear next to the sedan. Her car keys jingle on the steering column as they tap against her bouncing knee. The evidence bag with the receipt and her sister’s photo sits in her lap. The date on the receipt from the Old 64 is from three days prior. The time was 6:54 PM. She pulls her logbook out and flips the pages back three days. She had been at her perch, watching.
The rhythmic jingle of the keys bouncing on Sam’s knee finally registers in her ear. She has to place a hand on her leg to make it stop. The back wall of the business is clean, no cameras. She pulls out an ankle holster holding a .357 Smith and Wesson snub nose revolver. It goes under the trouser leg of her Sheriff’s uniform.
Opening the trunk, she pulls out this morning’s Jane Doe file and removes the Polaroid affixed to her death certificate. She had asked Bart to take one with the wig on and one with it off. Hopefully, someone local will recognize her face.
She sticks close to the building as she walks around the side. Peering around to the well-lit front, she spots a camera over the door. It’s pointed at the pumps, so she walks under it unseen.
The bell dings as Sam opens the glass door to the store. All this time looking at it through her binoculars and she’s never stepped inside. It’s much larger than it appears from the outside. Three long aisles with all the particulars you would expect at a roadside convenience store. You can get a Yoo-hoo and also pick up a replacement push-button lighter for your car, and thankfully, no cameras in sight.
Behind the counter sits Big Jim. Jim’s the store’s owner, and his nickname is not ironic. Between a half-gallon of whiskey every other night and a consistent diet of anything that’s not green, Jim is large. Not only large, but in a constant state of congestive heart failure, which is evident by his ever-present wheeze. He’s out of breath as soon as he wakes up in the morning.
“Help ya?” Jim hollers from his stool behind the counter. One large palm lays on top of a Penthouse magazine he’s just laid on the counter, but the right hand hangs just out of Sam’s view, below the countertop. She knows he’ll likely have a weapon back there.
“I need to see footage from your security cameras, specifically between six and eight in the evening, three days ago,” Sam asks as she approaches the counter. She holds up the receipt inside the clear baggy. “Found at a murder site this morning. Hoping you can assist us in an investigation.”
Big Jim doesn’t even look at the receipt before he says, “Gotta warrant?”
“Look,” Sam leans toward Jim, “we found the body this morning. A warrant is going to take a couple of days. Why don’t you just let me take a look? I’ll come back with the official paperwork. Wouldn’t want this guy getting down the road too far, you know?”
“Honestly, I could give a fuck,” Jim says as he leans in as well, “but you could make it worth my while.” He stretches his thin, cracked lips across his nicotine-stained teeth and lets out a phlegm-filled laugh. Sam tucks the receipt back in her pocket. Jim’s laughter gets even louder as she turns to leave, but then she sees her.
Mary Hart is walking down a hallway at the end of the aisle. She’s in full view of Sam. Mary reaches a door at the end of the hall and opens it. She gives Sam a quick glance as she disappears behind the door. Sam follows.
Over the back wall is an angled mirror, used to make sure customers aren’t stuffing their pockets with sugary treats. Sam watches as Jim makes an attempt to stand up from his stool. His right hand now tucked behind his back.
Sam runs toward the door that Mary disappeared behind, trying to catch it before it closes. Jim’s laughter dies off.
“Hey! Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Jim shouts in Sam’s direction as she disappears into the hallway out of view. The door slides shut just as she gets her fingers around the handle. It’s locked, but before it closed, she saw monitors sitting on a desk inside. This has to be where he keeps the tapes. She grabs the handle with both hands and torques it with all she’s got.
“Stay the hell outta there! You can’t do that,” Jim’s desperate to catch up to Sam before she can make it into the back room. Loud bangs echo through the store as Sam slams her shoulder into the door.
Jim shuffles around the counter. Sam grabs the handle again and turns, but her hands slip off with the force. She grabs it again. This time she leans with all her weight onto the handle. The metal groans and finally snaps. The door does not open.
“Open the door!” Sam demands as she beats the broken handle against the door.
“Ain’t nobody in there. Who the fuck do you think you are? You think that badge makes me scared of you?” Jim is still trying to make it to the back of the store. His slow shuffle rhythmically timing with Sam’s effort to catch her breath from struggling with the door. She looks down at the broken door handle in one hand. On the stained tile floor, she can see a shadow break the light coming from under the door. Someone was in there, but was she the only one who could see that someone? Sam turns to Big Jim, who is still hiding something behind his back.
“What’s in your right hand?” Sam asks Jim, who now rests against the entrance to the hallway.
“What?” he says as he doubles over into a coughing fit. When he catches his breath again, he’s looking down the barrel of a snub-nose revolver.
“What’s in your right hand?” Sam asks again, less friendly this time.
Jim carefully and slowly reveals his right hand. As a young man, Jim had been in construction. It was cut short when he fed his hand into a table saw. Once the metal blade got a hold of his middle finger, it ate his arm nearly halfway to the elbow. He retained his thumb and pinky, but he was never holding a gun with that hand again.
Sleep-deprived euphoria melts from Sam’s brain as she takes in her current situation. There is a gun in her hand. The gun isn’t her service revolver. It’s her special gun. The one that no one knows about. The one without a serial number. The one she’s saving for her sister’s killer. Was this the guy? Did he deserve the gift of her bullet?
Jim is calm. This isn’t the first time he’s had a gun in his face, but he wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. However, he’s having a hard time keeping his balance standing on his own two feet with his hands now in the air. Sam pulls out the photo of the Jane Doe and shows it to Jim.
“What about her?” Sam asks as she holds up the Polaroid. Jim looks at the photo, and then back at Sam. He takes note of the name on her badge.
“Sheriff Hart, I didn’t have anything to do with your sister’s death,” Jim says as he puts his hands down and leans again on the wall. Samantha flips the photo around and realizes she showed him a picture of Mary, not her Jane Doe.
Sam glances back at the light coming from under the closed door. The shadow is gone if it was ever there. She lowers her gun and leaves, muttering an “I’m sorry,” as she walks past Big Jim.
When she opens the box with the files in her trunk, she sees the Jane Doe photo still paper clipped to the death certificate. She tosses the receipt and Mary’s photo in the box and gets back in her cruiser.
There’s the faintest glow on the horizon in the east. The Oklahoma prairie is always beautiful at sunrise, but tonight there’s a storm rolling in from the west, and the cloud cover is already getting dense in the humid air. It’ll be raining before noon.
issue three — paperwork
A bright, white light slips across the face of Sheriff Samantha Hart as she leans over the copy machine. Beside her is a cardboard box full of files she’s been carrying for the past month. The files are of forgotten victims, murdered by a man who uses her backyard as his hunting ground.
She finishes copying the most recent addition, a poor Jane Doe whose body she found nearly twenty-four hours earlier tied to a chair. Her face had been removed with a surgical razor and stitched back on with dental floss. All the deaths in the files are gruesome, but this most recent one makes it clear that the level of violence is escalating.
There is Donna Sue Wesley; her skeletal remains were found with a hole in her skull and number four shotgun pellets still inside. The next file sliding over the scanner is Michelle Farmer. A couple traveling cross-country from Florida reported seeing something suspicious while driving. At first, they were sure it was a mannequin, but as they drove further from the spot where they saw the legs protruding from the snow, they grew less certain.
Now halfway through the stack, Sam pulls out the thickest file of the bunch. As the stack of paper slides across the photocopier’s scanner, she watches the black-and-white copies drop into the paper tray. Debbie Traylor was missing for nearly three years before her body was found. She had been tortured with what Dr. Laurent assumed was a welding torch before she was strangled with her pantyhose. They were still tied around her neck when she was found. The family flew in from Jackson, Mississippi to identify the body. Sam was in the room when Debbie’s mother collapsed to the floor beside the metal table that held her little girl’s body. Debbie was seventeen and ten weeks pregnant.
The loud thunk echoes through the empty office as Sam closes the copier lid with more force than necessary. The next file, the last file, is the hardest one to open. Her hand hovers over the file, a picture of her sister’s lifeless corpse clipped on the inside cover. She stares at the photo like she hasn’t already spent hours examining every detail.
At the time, her death seemed so brutal: a syringe protruding from her neck, delivering a deadly dose of methamphetamines into her jugular. Then the killer began to bite her. She had teeth marks all over her body, but he never penetrated the skin. The now familiar and repeated elongated bruise over the eye socket, crossing from the cheekbone to the forehead. The angle is different, but it’s the same shape as the one she found on her Jane Doe this morning. She’s getting closer.
The folder’s contents begin to blur and disappear as Sam fights back the coming tears forming. It’s a useless fight. Why Mary? She wasn’t like the rest. She wasn’t selling her body for sex. She was happily married, two twin girls at home, and nothing but bright sky in her future. Could that mean these files contain others like her? Perhaps, but wallowing pity and wondering about what could have been wasn’t going to bring justice to the women in these files. There’s no time for weakness.
Sam slides the box onto the bottom of the dusty shelf in the evidence closet. There couldn’t be a more fitting metaphor for the lack of justice than this locked room full of dusty shelves of forgotten cases. It’s a closet of monsters too slippery to catch, but Sam’s still got a key to the door.
Captain James wants them returned, but he didn’t say anything about making copies. She’s too close to solving her sister’s murder to stop now. She drops the copies in her desk drawer and plugs her camera into her desktop to upload all of the crime scene photos from the morning.
Photos of Jane Doe’s body tied to a chair flash across the screen: the red wig clinging to her skull, dried blood running down her fingers from the bindings on her wrist, the attempt to create a smile by looping the dental floss between the incision under the ear and the corners of her mouth. Sam watches them all as they flash one after the other. Her eyes finally get heavy with sleep as the sun’s rays begin to creep through the blinds behind her desk. She dozes off to the macabre slideshow.
There’s a weight, a shadow hovering over her. Her breath quickens. Her heart rate increases. Sam’s eyes fling open and she sees Captain James with his arms crossed, leaning on her desk. The screen on her computer is off and the camera that was finishing its upload is gone. “Make any copies?” Captain James asks.
“No, sir,” Sam says, a little befuddled. She looks at the clock on the wall. She has only been asleep for a couple of hours and is still swimming in a drowsy fog. Captain James opens the file drawer in her desk and Sam stiffens. A few loose office supplies roll around at the bottom of the drawer, and he slams it shut.
“Morning, Lieutenant,” Bandy says as he places a cup of coffee on Sam’s desk. He takes a sip from his own and sits down at his desk next to hers.
“Heard you two were out at the Gibbons place pretty late last night, left to play all by yourselves,” Captain James says as he picks up the coffee on Bandy’s desk.
“Not a soul lazier in law enforcement than a fucking federal agent. Get me the full report on that munitions find from yesterday, and get back out in the field. Weather service has got a real doozy dialed up starting later today. Gonna be a real gully washer,” Captain James finishes as he walks away with Bandy’s coffee.
“Hope he likes a whole lotta Hazelnut creamer in his coffee,” Bandy says with a chuckle. He turns his attention to Sam with a large grin on his face. Something’s up. Where are the files?
She reopens the drawer where she put the files. Yep, it’s still empty.
“Missing something?” Bandy says with a grin. He opens his desk drawer, slides some empty folders off the top of a stack to reveal her copies. “Thought I’d come in early to give you a hand. I knew you wouldn’t go home after the day we had yesterday. Good thing too, I guess.”
Sam gives him a nod of thanks, takes a big gulp from her coffee and fires up her computer to get started on the report. Bandy lingers, as he’s wont to do.
“If I say thank you, will you quit staring at me?” Sam asks Bandy.
“The way I figure, I’ve earned a spot on your little personal mission you’ve got goin’. Mind if I join you on the morning stake out over at the Old ‘64?” Bandy asks.
Sam takes a moment to consider before she says, “How fast can you type up that report on Gibbons?”
From the other side of the office there’s a loud crash followed by Captain James hollering, “Godddamit! What the fuck is in this coffee?”
Bandy and Sam share a smile and then he’s off to the races on the keyboard, banging out the report on yesterday’s munition raid. Sam looks through the slits in the blinds over the windows as Bandy’s keystrokes tap out yesterday’s details. Storm clouds are gathering on the horizon darkening the prairie landscape below. She can see the shimmering heat already emanating from the dark asphalt roadways. It’s a powder keg building up steam. Today’s going to be full of thunder and danger.
She probably shouldn’t show her face in that truck-stop again, at least not when that big fella’s in there. If he calls in a report on what she did, she’ll get suspended, at the very least. Captain James might just take her badge and gun. Not that it’ll make a difference in her pursuit. She’ll find the madman running up and down the highway, hunting for their next victim.
The receipt proves she’s getting close. She’s going to have to find a way to get access to the security footage. If she gets a still of him, it’ll be over really quick. Can she trust Bandy to keep it all between them? He’s got a puppy dog demeanor that might cause him to freeze up when she needs him in the heat of the moment. She has no intent of actually arresting this monster. No, that’d be too easy. He’s going to suffer. If Bandy gets in the way … well, she’ll cross that road when she gets there.
issue four — cracks in the glass
A small ceramic tube affixed to a circuit board senses the increasing temperature inside Heather’s trailer. The sun’s rays creep up the exterior walls of the little home, steadily increasing the heat inside. The tiny tube’s electrical resistance decreases with every degree. As resistance drops, more and more electricity flows, electrifying the connection as the day gets hotter and hotter.
Heather’s been awake for a couple of hours. The single crystal she pulled from the bag yesterday sits on the upturned plastic bin, her makeshift coffee table, in front of her. She’s been staring at it since her eyes opened. She doesn’t remember getting out of bed. She doesn’t remember where she got the pipe she’s holding. She’s just negotiating with herself, and so far, the better angels of her nature are winning.
Heather jumps when the window unit’s compressor kicks on, and cool air slides across the tiny living room. The sun’s peeking through the cracks in the blinds, and Madeline will be up soon enough. It’s time to call this one a draw.
The pipe and crystal disappear into Heather’s pockets as she walks back to the bedroom. She peeks in to see Madeline still wrapped up in the sheets. Heather slips back into bed quietly and closes her eyes to enjoy a few more moments of peace.
“Never heard somebody who thinks as loud as you do,” Madeline whispers.
“I wake you up?” Heather apologizes.
“Yeah, like two hours ago when you went into the other room. I’ve been lying here wondering when you’d come back to bed. It got so quiet in there. I kept thinking about getting up, but I was…”
Madeline trails off, unable to finish the thought. She and Heather share the same fear, but Madeline has no idea how close to reality it came this morning. The pipe in Heather’s pocket presses against her leg. She probably should’ve put it away before getting back into bed.
“Maybe we should just throw it all away,” Heather concedes.
Madeline rolls over, and the two lay nearly nose to nose. They look into each other’s eyes. Madeline’s weighing the truth of Heather’s words. It’s not like Heather to pass up an opportunity like this unless she’s genuinely afraid.
“Anything else you remember about yesterday? Anybody hanging around that might come back today looking for that lost duffle?” Madeline asks, watching her closely.
Heather thinks earnestly for a moment. It was the same old truck lines. Actually, it was slower than usual. Probably because of the storms coming in.
“No, I don’t think so,” Heather says.
For a moment, Madeline imagines them throwing it away. They could drive out into the prairie, find one of the many lonely highways, and just toss it into a ditch. It would be easy to pretend none of this ever happened. But maybe not for Heather.
Heather grew up knowing nothing but the hustle. She’s lived in more hotel rooms than homes, dragged from small town to small town by her father. He was always looking for the next mark in his game. Could Madeline stay if they got rid of the drugs? Would Heather just go back and get them when she wasn’t around? Madeline knew that she would. So far, Heather hadn’t smoked any, but Madeline could smell it. It was in the house. It was on Heather.
Madeline places her hand on Heather’s jaw and twirls a lock of her hair between her fingers.
“Did you take any of it?” Madeline asks.
Heather stiffens. “I told you I wouldn’t, and I meant it.”
Madeline searches her eyes and, after a beat, nods. “Okay. Then there’s nothing else to worry about.”
She wraps Heather in her arms, and they embrace in the filtered morning light as it spills over the sheets. The air conditioner has cooled the room enough to make it that much harder to get out of bed. Madeline gives in first, sitting up and swinging her legs over the edge.
Madeline pulls her long red hair into a bun on top of her head as she slowly gets dressed. Heather watches as she pulls on her blue jeans and boots. One strand of hair falls loose, dangling between her shoulder blades.
“Looks kinda curly this morning,” Heather says.
“Yeah, well, I guess that’s your fault,” Madeline replies with a smile as she leaves the room. Normally, that would’ve made Heather smile, too, but the pressure to take the pipe out of her pocket is mounting. She feels the heat rising inside her, an electricity that, if sparked, will burn down her entire world.
From the bed, Heather hears Madeline getting the coffee started. She reaches into her pocket and fingers the pipe. She made it through another night. It was easier when you had someone to…
What did she do with the crystal?
Heather feels around in one pocket, then shoves her hand into the other one. It’s gone. She tosses the sheets back to search the bed. There’s a light tapping sound as something small and hard hits the floor.
Shit!
Heather pops out of bed, down on her hands and knees. Her pulse quickens, and she can hear her heartbeat in her ears. She’s got to find it.
There’s a beep from the kitchen as Madeline finishes the coffee setup. Heather’s eyes dart from under the bed to under the dresser. Her hands slide over the floor, feeling for the hard little rock. Every second feels like an hour.
Heather sees it. It rolled all the way to the back of the dresser. She stretches to reach it, her fingers rolling it forward on the linoleum floor until she finally palms it.
“What are you doing? Did you drop something?” Madeline asks, stepping back into the room.
“No. No, I just dropped a, uh…” Heather stammers as she stands, slipping the rock into her back pocket and pushing past Madeline into the living room.
“Coffee ready?” Heather asks, trying to change the subject.
“What did you drop?” Madeline presses.
Heather pours herself a cup of coffee, ignoring the question. Madeline senses the rising tension.
“What did you get out from under the dresser, Heather?” Madeline demands.
Heather pulls the crystal and pipe from her back pocket and sets them on the kitchen counter. Madeline’s face flushes with anger. She needs to get this shit out of here.
“Did you take any more?” Madeline asks as she picks up the rock and pipe.
Heather shakes her head, tears welling in her eyes. Madeline believes her.
“It’s just so much, and I thought maybe I could take a little, but…” Heather trails off, her voice breaking as she struggles to maintain control. Her body shakes with anxiety and anger—anger at getting caught, at giving up her stash, at being back in the same place she always ends up.
Madeline slips the pipe and crystal into the duffle full of meth.
“The rest of it’s in here?” Madeline asks, holding up the bag.
Heather nods.
“I’ll be back tonight,” Madeline says, and Heather looks at her like a cornered animal.
“You coming back?” Heather asks, her raw state on full display for the woman she loves.
With her hand on the door, Madeline hesitates. She doesn’t know. The smart thing to do would be to leave. Leave this shitty little trailer and take the money for herself. Heather will always be an addict. They will always be one bad day away from tragedy.
“Pack this shit hole up. We’re moving to California tomorrow,” Madeline says as she walks out the door.
Heather crumples to the kitchen floor, overcome by a mix of relief and sadness. She has no resistance left. The air conditioning shuts off. The little ceramic tube’s resistance builds back up in the cooler air, but the heat inside her is still smoldering. Her tears finally fall freely, cooling her soul in the raw, ugly aftermath.
issue five — distant thunder
After thirty hours on the clock, with only a light doze before the sun came up to count for rest, most folks would be looking for a place to lie down. Samantha Hart, on the other hand, hasn’t even touched the coffee sitting on the hood of her car. For over a year, it’s been nothing but more bodies, more photos of women found on the side of the road, and more files to put in that dusty box of forgotten souls. Now, she’s got a lead.
Last night, she found a receipt with the Old 64 Truck Stop logo. It’s three days old. Sam shouldn’t have let her… emotions, if that’s what she’s going to call them, take over. It led her, half-cocked like a rookie, straight into a mess. She’s been impulsive. She won’t let that become a problem again.
Sheriff Bandy Williamson leans against Sam’s cruiser, feeling in peak form with his mirrored sunglasses on and a jelly doughnut in hand. He takes a sip of his coffee to wash down the doughy goodness of his breakfast, licking the powdered sugar from his whiskers.
“Sweet Christ, Bandy, do you have to be the embodiment of a joke?” Sam asks without so much as a glance in his direction. Her gaze is locked across the horizon as she looks through her binoculars. The two are perched on an elevated hilltop overlooking the Old 64 Truck Stop—Sam’s regular first stop in the morning.
“What, I’m not supposed to eat doughnuts because I chose law enforcement as my primary occupation?” Bandy mumbles as he chews and swallows the last bite. He licks his fingers clean and picks up his binoculars as well. The two stare down at the scene.
Sam is focused on Heather’s trailer, which sits a little way behind the truck stop. The front door opens, and a woman stands in the threshold. It’s Madeline. She talks to someone inside, then slams the door.
“So, what are we looking for?” Bandy asks.
“Shut up,” Sam responds curtly.
Bandy tries to follow Sam’s line of sight and spots Madeline getting into her sky-blue hatchback. She’s carrying a small duffle bag, which she tosses into the back seat.
“Who’s that?” Bandy asks.
“For Christ’s sake, Bandy. I don’t know. Now will you shut the hell up?” Sam says, keeping her binoculars trained on the trailer’s front door.
Heather comes running out of the trailer. Madeline tries to get into her car before Heather can catch her, but she isn’t fast enough. Madeline tugs on the car door, trying to shut it, while Heather pulls from the outside. Their voices float across the highway as they scream at each other.
“Guess she forgot to pay,” Bandy says with a chuckle.
Sam elbows him in the ribs. “I told you, you could come along, but if you don’t shut your mouth and pay attention, I’m gonna ask you to leave.”
Madeline eventually wins the tug-of-war, slamming the door shut—but the window is down. Heather dives into the car. The vehicle rocks on its shocks as the struggle continues, but then it settles. Through the windshield, Sam and Bandy watch as Heather and Madeline embrace deeply, Heather crying in Madeline’s arms.
“Bandy, write down the license plate number of that car,” Sam orders.
“Want me to run a check?” Bandy asks as he runs back to his car, rummaging in the glove box until he finds a pad and pen.
“Yeah,” Sam says, keeping her gaze fixed on the couple across the highway.
Heather crawls out of the driver’s window and now leans against the door’s open window, talking to Madeline. Sam lowers her binoculars for a brief moment to jot down the time, a description of Madeline, and the duffle bag she carried.
Through the binoculars, Sam watches as Madeline pulls away, Heather waving as she leaves. Whatever they’d been arguing about seems to have settled, at least enough to dial down the temperature. Bandy returns to Sam with additional notes on his pad.
“The vehicle is registered to a Madeline Gaines. Driver’s license from Tulsa. No warrants, but she was reported missing at 17. Self-reported after her 18th birthday. No other details on that,” Bandy reports.
“Age?” Sam asks.
Bandy checks his notes. “Twenty-six.”
“Notice anything unique about her, Bandy?” Sam asks.
“You mean besides the missing person thing?” Bandy says, tapping his pen against the pad as he thinks about it.
“What do all our recent victims have in common?” Sam asks, hoping Bandy has been paying attention.
“Well… she’s got red hair,” Bandy says with an unsure shrug.
“That’s right. Good job. Now follow her,” Sam says, going back to her binoculars.
“The hatchback?” Bandy asks.
“She’s already on the highway. You better hurry,” Sam says without looking his way.
Bandy runs back to his car, tosses the pad and pen onto the seat, and drops the cruiser into reverse to pull out.
“No lights!” Sam shouts as Bandy’s cruiser heads down the hillside toward the highway, where Madeline’s car is picking up speed, heading east on Highway 64.
Across the highway, Heather digs into her pocket for a cigarette. She sits on the steps of her trailer, now hunting for a lighter. She thought she’d nearly lost Madeline. It would have been so easy for her to just take off and never come back.
Heather had made a promise. She promised to let Madeline keep the money—all of it. That way, she wouldn’t let the animal urge to feed her addiction take over again. She’d won the fight this morning, but even she isn’t sure she can be that strong every time. With a couple hundred thousand dollars at her disposal, she could be a complete disaster.
Heather lights her cigarette and looks up at the horizon to see Sheriff Samantha Hart standing on the ridgeline across the highway, watching her through binoculars.
“That fuckin’ bitch,” Heather mutters under her breath as she exhales her first pull from the Marlboro Red. She jumps up and tries to make both of her middle fingers as visible as possible from the distance.
A smile crosses Sam’s face as she watches Heather dance with her middle fingers high in the air. Whether Heather likes being watched or not doesn’t matter. Someone is out there hunting people like her, and more specifically, people like the one she seems to care about. Maybe there’s an angle here. Maybe Sam could get some help from the inside.
That old bastard who runs the Old 64 Truck Stop won’t be any help now that she’s pulled a gun on him. Not that he would have been much help before. But maybe this trailer park call girl could get her access to the video. If Heather knew what was hunting her, it’d be hard for her to refuse.
Heather has to stop and catch her breath after giving everything she had to that big “fuck you.” She picks up her cigarette from the ground and takes another long pull. That’s when she sees the other cruiser.
Bandy’s cruiser rolls slowly down the dirt road, turning in the same direction Madeline just left. Do they know about the drugs? Is this a bust?
“Shit,” Heather mutters as she thumps her cigarette into the wind and runs toward the payphone at the truck stop. She has to warn Madeline.
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