Off Season - Jack Ketchum [16]
PART II
SEPT. 13, 1981
2:15 P.M.
Nick shifted into the front seat and took the wheel. His black ‘69 Dodge shuddered as the cars rolled swiftly by on the highway. It was a bright sunny day and nobody was paying the slightest attention to the speed limit. He reached into his pocket and took out his glasses. He heard the car door close on Jim’s side.
“You wear glasses?” said Jim.
“It’s cheaper than buying a dog,” he said.
He turned the key in the ignition and pulled the car off the shoulder. He patted the steering wheel gently. Good old car, he thought. You’ve been no trouble at all. He hoped things would stay that way.
Beside him, Laura seemed engrossed in the latest issue of Master Detective magazine. Some reading matter this crew has got here, he thought. There was an old Zap comic going around in the back. He glanced at Laura’s cover. NICE KID NEXT DOOR WAS A SEX-KILLER was one story. LURED TO HIS DEATH BY A HOMICIDAL HOMO seemed to be the feature. But the best was in smaller letters at the bottom: Question for Kentucky Homicide Detectives: Where Are the Nurse’s Arms and Legs? Where indeed? There was a posed picture on the cover of a brunette lying on some cheap wall-to-wall carpeting, trying to fend off some guy with a big saw.
Jesus! Laura loved that stuff. Well, he couldn’t kick. He flipped through the rags when she was done with them. He smiled at her.
“How’s the magazine?” he said.
“Tawdry.”
“Which one you reading?”
“‘Who Spooked the Blonde’s Butcher-Knife Killer’?”
“It’s not on the cover,” he observed.
“It’s a sleeper.” She popped a Bazooka bubble-gum bubble at him and made a face.
He smiled again, a little ruefully. It was that kind of stuff that got to him sometimes. Sometimes he thought she was about twelve years old. He had long since gathered that she didn’t mind giving that impression. But at thirty-three he was just a little bit too old for kid stuff. She was a nice girl and he liked her, but it was not exactly his idea of fascinating to be clowning around all the time. He liked her in bed too, but bed was not all he wanted. He wondered what he did want and found no ready answer. Once it had been Carla. He wondered how it would end with Laura; and thought it would probably not end well at all.
He lit a cigarette. The old black Dodge slid heavily down the road.
They decided to take 95 straight on up and skip the Mass. Pike altogether. It had been Marjorie’s idea and now she was glad she’d pressed them on it. It was obviously the nicer route, hugging the coast of Connecticut as far as New London before heading north to skirt Providence and Boston, then returning to the coastline again around Brunswick, Maine. After that, Highway 1 would take them past Bar Harbor nearly all the way to Dead River. There would be decent highways and few truckers right on through. She could sit back and enjoy the trees turning, all the bright reds and golds, and maybe sketch them later when they got to Carla’s, if they didn’t arrive too late in the day.
She’d seriously underestimated the length of the trip. What looked like nine hours on the map was going to be more like twelve. After eight hours on the road, Dead River was still a long way up the coast. They’d probably arrive just before nightfall. Well, thought Marjorie, that would do. They had nearly a week once they got there.
She was beginning to get fidgety. She’d never liked closed-in places or prolonged close proximity to others.
She was one of those people who always wanted an aisle seat in a movie theater, a window seat on a bus, a place at the end of the table. Carla called her eccentric but she knew what she needed.
So far so good, though. Her mood was holding up pretty well, and Carla would have been pleased with her, she thought. Her sister always said Marjie was a bitch to do any long-distance driving with, mostly because Carla liked to speed now and then and Marjie hated