The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [126]
Eventually, he came to a dirt road, which he followed because it seemed to be modestly more promising than tramping through the woods. On top of his scabby crimson sunburn, he now had hundreds of bites from mosquitoes and flies. His eyes and lips swelled; his joints thickened. He didn’t just feel exhausted; he felt old.
The dirt path led him to a paved access road, which he followed to a busy rest stop along I-80. He was on the westbound end, but the restaurant and shops were suspended over the highway, so travelers could enter and exit from either side. Wayne walked across the parking lot, swollen eyes bouncing in his head, this way and that. He didn’t see any cops. He pushed inside.
The facility had a Wendy’s and a Krispy Kreme and a little convenience store and an information kiosk where you could buy an electronic toll pass or a lottery ticket. Wayne was starting to entertain the idea of stealing a car. He didn’t want to, didn’t want to be pushed to that and wasn’t even sure how he’d do it unless somebody had left a door unlocked and the keys inside. He didn’t know what choice he had. Just being out in the open like this seemed like an unacceptable risk.
Wayne wondered at what point he would stop calculating risk altogether.
He saw them across the center food court. Two state troopers unwrapping foil from their cheese-melted Wendy’s. On the table between them was a stack of flyers with what looked like a photograph and several bullet points. Wayne couldn’t see it from where he stood, but he was willing to bet he’d recognize the photo.
He stepped quickly inside the men’s room and turned to a urinal, face toward the wall, before anyone could get a decent look at him. He unzipped his pants and tried to take a leak. He looked up. Taped to the wall, exactly at eye height, was his Colossus staff photo. His full name, his height and weight, his age. “Assumed dangerous. Wanted for questioning in connection with murder.” A toll-free tip line. No reward. Yet.
Wayne stood at the urinal, staring at his own hastily produced wanted poster for far too long. He flushed and zipped and washed and brought cupped handfuls of water to his mouth, all without raising his head. He stepped outside and quickly ducked behind a display of tourism brochures. The troopers were standing, getting ready to leave. They balled the ketchup-stained detritus of their meal and unconsciously brushed the backs of their fingers against the guns buttoned into their holsters. On the way to the door—the eastbound door, where Wayne needed to go—they stopped several people and showed them the flyer with Wayne’s picture. Each traveler shook his head and walked on.
Wayne counted to one hundred and followed them out. No cops in sight. He peered into three or four locked cars before feeling exposed, then walked briskly to the adjacent lot, where about twenty semitrucks were parked. He hid himself on the hot pavement between trailers and tried to decide what to do. Turn himself in, perhaps. Maybe he could explain it. Maybe they’d believe him, even if he still had Amoyo’s blood on his pants. Maybe they’d figure it out. Hoover might vouch for him. Maybe when they calculated the time of Amoyo’s death they’d realize Wayne couldn’t have killed him. He’d sure acted guilty to this point, though. And if someone was really trying to frame him, if someone had planted his knife, Wayne had no idea what other evidence they’d planted or how he would explain it away.
He looked up and to his left. That truck had a logo for some hauling company