The Shadow Highway
THE DEVIL’S ROAD Chapter 05: Follow the Lead --- Issue 01: The Shadow Highway
Welcome to Issue #16 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. If you missed it, you can read last week’s Chapter 4: Tall in the Saddle, Issue 04: Cold on the Slab.
If you are new to the series, I recommend you check out Chapter 1 which you can read or listen to for free here:
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And now, please enjoy Chapter 5 Issue 1 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.
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.
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