The Highway Read online

  Justin sighed and asked how long.

  “Forever,” Gracie said.

  “Is the car getting hot or doing anything strange?”

  “Not yet.”

  There was a long pause and she could hear him asking one of his friends about it.

  “Eric says it could be a short or it could be serious.”

  “Great.”

  “He can look at it tomorrow morning,” Justin said. “I mean, if you get here.”

  Gracie sighed.

  “But, Gracie,” he said, “keep in touch with me. There are some cell phone dead spots, but if I know where you’re at and something happens I can call my dad. He’ll know what to do.”

  Gracie recalled meeting Justin’s dad Cody. He scared her at first, but she ended up liking him. And he seemed to like her.

  “I don’t know where he is right now,” Justin said. “He didn’t make it home for dinner. But he’s got a cell phone and I’ll give him a call if we need to.”

  She found herself smiling and felt her shoulders relax. Justin’s voice was soothing, and he was saying all the right things. Danielle, she thought, never did deserve him.

  Gracie felt a pang and lowered the phone to her lap and covered the receiver with her hand.

  “Danielle,” she said, “maybe this is a really bad idea. It’s not too late to turn around and go back.”

  “What? Are you out of your mind? We’re practically there.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” her sister said, tears glinting in her eyes. “We’ve come all this way to see Justin, and I’m going to see Justin.”

  And Gracie realized Danielle wasn’t oblivious after all. She knew. She just couldn’t accept it and probably thought she could talk him out of it. And maybe, Gracie conceded, that would happen. Danielle could be very persuasive, especially with boys.

  Gracie raised the phone. “Okay,” she said, “what do we do when we get to Laurel?”

  Danielle let go of the wheel, pumped her fist in the air, and shouted, “Yes!”

  13.

  6:38 P.M., Tuesday, November 20

  THE LIZARD KING LOOKED AHEAD and to the left on the highway and saw the familiar halo of the inferno lighting up the misty sky—the refinery on the outskirts of Laurel. Rolls of steam lit by flames from the flare stacks hung low to the ground in the low pressure and mist, making the facility look otherworldly.

  It fit his mood. He was locked in, engaged. His rage had receded into a dark steel box in the back of his mind to be unleashed later.

  Since the red Ford had passed him a few miles before, he’d pushed his Peterbilt hard on the flat, keeping his eyes out for the two little taillights. He’d passed several other cars and trucks, and he was surprised he hadn’t yet caught up with the Colorado girls. He kept thinking of the dark-haired one and the way she’d sneered at him. Thinking of that full red mouth and that glimpse of white teeth.

  How the boys must like her, he thought. She was one of those … filled with attitude and always flipping her hair around. It was always gratifying, he thought, how quickly their attitudes changed in the right circumstances.

  * * *

  Part of his ritual with the lot lizards, usually toward the end, was to ask them, “Tell me what you were like in high school?” He made them re-create those years, even to the point of describing what they wore and who they hung with. Most of them had never graduated, but a few had. And most of them had been druggies and losers. A number of whores couldn’t even recall the details.

  But there were a few—he thought specifically of that redhead from Amarillo with the butterfly tats—who could recall high school with clarity and fondness. She told him how she bounced between the cheerleading crowd and the heavy metal drug crowd. How she’d gone to three of four proms but skipped the last one because by then she was into meth and goth. How she’d barely graduated and gotten hooked up with older men who didn’t look out for her best interests. But he didn’t care about what she’d become—it was obvious. He pressed her for details of her first three years. As long as she was talking, he kept her around. She admitted, finally, she’d probably been too cruel to some of the boys who weren’t good-looking or athletes. When he asked her if she regretted the way she’d been, she didn’t comprehend the question.

  Then he ended it.

  She had been his favorite so far.

  * * *

  Two things would ruin his night, he thought. The Colorado girls could just keep going past Laurel until they were slowed down by troopers enforcing the roadblock. There they’d sit with dozens of other vehicles with more stacking up behind them. It could be hours, and there would be too many eyes.

  They could also turn off the highway before they got to where the crash was located. Maybe to get gas, maybe to get some food or directions. Either way, he’d probably lose them.

  Or …

  Far up ahead, in the fused ambient light of the mist from the Laurel refinery, he saw the red Ford. The girls were easing over to the right with the turn signal blinking.

  He felt a charge of electricity shoot through him. The Colorado girls knew the way around the roadblock. There was still a chance their destination was this way, maybe Red Lodge, but he’d bet dollars to donuts they’d be taking the same route he intended to take—over the Beartooth Highway, into Yellowstone, out Mammoth, and toward Livingston to get back on the interstate.

  The Lizard King eased off the pedal and downshifted to slow down the truck. He didn’t want to get close enough that they’d know he was still with them. He pulled over onto the shoulder and doused his headlights after he braked the truck to a stop. Good thing, too, because the Colorado girls had stopped as well.

  He didn’t hit his emergency flashers because he didn’t want them to see him. The big rig sat still in the dark on the side of the highway, lights out, steaming and rumbling in the cold night.

  The body of the lot lizard was surprisingly light. He hefted it back onto the bunk and secured it with long strips of tape. Just to make sure, he pressed his palm against the plastic sheeting where her mouth was. No warmth. No reaction. The body was already stiffening up. He wondered if bodies stiffened quicker when there was no meat on them.

  * * *

  He found his binoculars in a side pocket on his door and sat back in the driver’s seat and brought them up as the dome light of the Ford went on and the dark-haired passenger got out. He focused on her as she opened the trunk and was rewarded with a fine view of her heart-shaped ass that sent a tingle down his inner thighs. She found whatever she was looking for, slammed the trunk lid, and climbed back into the car. He waited until the Ford’s brake lights flashed and it started up the off-ramp to Laurel before lowering the glasses and reaching for the gearshift. He held in place until they were moving again.

  As he climbed through the gears and rolled past the refinery he placed two calls from his cell phone. The first was to his dispatcher. He held the phone away from his ear until her railing subsided and then raised it back up.

  “I told you,” he said, “Your Qualcomm unit is acting up, just like before. It ain’t my fault you installed a defective unit.”

  “I still can’t find you,” she said. Her name was Yvonne and she was a bleached-blond fatty with moles on the folds of her neck. Like all dispatchers, she thought she was God.

  “I told you,” he said, “I’m sitting in traffic outside of Park City. The state patrol has the roads shut down and I don’t know how long I’ll be sitting here before they let us go.”

  Yvonne started screeching about his failure to call her sooner or she could have told him about the accident. That it could be hours before they’d open the interstate again.

  “What do you care?” he said. “I’m half empty and every delivery was on schedule. I’m on my own time now.”

  “You know you need to come into the office,” she said contemptuously, and he hoped no other truckers were listening in. “You’ve got a month’s worth of logs and receip
ts to turn in. DOT wants an audit on all our drivers like I told you weeks ago.”

  “Screw ’em,” he said. Nearly adding, Screw you, too.

  The Lizard King was an independent contractor, although it didn’t ever seem like it. The trucking company he was signed on with took 15 percent of every payday in exchange for brokering trips and administration. Between his company, the state regulations and rules, and the ever-growing federal regulations and mandates, it seemed like there was a conspiracy to throw every long-haul trucker off the road. There was the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Safety Measurement System (CSA scores), random drug testing, rising fuel costs …

  He pressed the phone against his groin so she could talk to his genitals.

  Finally, he said, “I’ll call tomorrow after I get some sleep.”

  “You need to get that Qualcomm looked at—”

  He punched off.

  * * *

  Then he made another call as he exited the ramp. The Ford was a long way ahead but he could see the lights. It didn’t turn at Laurel, which meant they were headed for the Beartooth Pass. As it rang, he could imagine her cursing, pushing away her lap blanket, and struggling to get up to answer the phone. He could see her two large hands folding over the grips on the walker like reptilian claws and the lenses of her steel-framed glasses winking in the reflected light from the television screen. Her massive thighs rubbing together as she moved, those fat white cylinder-like ankles pinched into dirty shoes …

  Just picturing her as she grunted and shuffled in that close house with dark paneling that smelled of stale cabbage and bacon and rotten garbage made the bile rise in his throat.

  14.

  7:32 P.M., Tuesday, November 20

  DANIELLE AND GRACIE were in Yellowstone and it was spooky. The roads were fine—no snow—but it was oppressively dark and it seemed like someone had flipped a switch and turned out all the lights. The sky was clear and it had stopped raining but the only illumination came from a thin sliver of moon and the gauzy, ghostly wash of a million stars that seemed close, as if tamped down by an unseen hand from above. The road was banked with walls of thick black pines that occasionally opened up to reveal grassy meadows. Although the tires hummed on the pavement, Gracie got a sense of immense quiet all around them. They’d encountered no oncoming cars since they’d entered the park out of Silver Gate, a tiny and sleepy town where the only human activity existed around a couple of bars.

  “We’re back,” she whispered to Danielle.

  “So let’s get the hell out of here as fast as we can.”

  “The speed limit is forty-five,” Gracie said.

  “Screw that.”

  But her sister’s emphasis wasn’t on the circumstance that they were back in Yellowstone, Gracie thought, but because she wanted to see Justin and talk to him. Talk him back onto Planet Danielle.

  Simply being in the park wasn’t as horrifying to Gracie as she’s anticipated it would be. The things that had happened to them there were the result of evil people, not the place itself. She still had nightmares, but they weren’t about Yellowstone. Her nightmares came from what she saw and experienced when the door had opened to reveal evil and violence that until that trip had been closed to her. Now she knew what some people—despite their manner and packaging—were capable of. It still shook her to her core.

  And there was a bizarre kind of symmetry going on, she thought. They’d met Justin and his father Cody in Yellowstone and the bonds they’d forged were so strong that here they were, some time later, going to see them in Montana.

  Gracie didn’t know how she felt about leaving the interstate highway. Despite their size and dominance and the close encounter they’d had with one, the stream of big trucks was also reassuring because it meant there were people on the road if something went wrong. Now it felt like they would be alone out there.

  * * *

  They rounded a corner to a constellation of piercing green dots ahead in the road. Danielle braked and waited for the small herd of buffalo, whose eyes reflected back green in her headlights, to amble across the cracked blacktop.

  “That’s why you shouldn’t go so fast,” Gracie said. “Can you imagine hitting one?”

  “My poor car,” Danielle said, petting the dashboard.

  Danielle had attached the GPS unit to the windshield by its suction cup assembly and after fumbling around for twenty minutes finally figured out how to plug it into the AC outlet. Its glow and brightly delineated roads and lines was a comfort to Gracie and made it seem less like they were in the middle of Siberia. The feature she prized the most was the readout that claimed they were three hours and thirty-eight minutes from Helena.

  * * *

  “Oh my God,” Danielle gasped.

  Her tone frightened Gracie, who peered ahead on the two-lane to see what had alarmed her sister.

  “No signal,” Danielle said, staring at her phone. “I forgot there’s no cell service in this stupid place.”

  Gracie said, “I can’t believe you forgot that. Don’t you remember getting hysterical about it when we were here? I do.”

  * * *

  Gracie sniffed the air and asked, “What’s that smell?”

  “What smell?”

  “Like something burning. Don’t you smell it?”

  Danielle rolled her eyes. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

  “How do you know? It seems like it’s coming from the motor.”

  “Because I know my own car,” Danielle said with anger. “She’s been running for hours and she’s probably getting tired. Just don’t worry.”

  “You mean you’ve smelled this before?”

  “Of course,” Danielle said. “Besides, we’re in Yellowstone with all the geysers and such. They all smell a little like toilets.”

  But Gracie wasn’t sure she believed her.

  * * *

  There was a long straight run and Danielle obviously felt comfortable speeding up. To the south was a wide-open vista that stretched out for several miles until it butted against dark tree-covered foothills. A wide black river serpentined through the meadow, the surface of the inky water reflecting the sliver of moon and the stars. Elk and bison grazed near the banks framed by wisps of thermal steam. Huge white trumpeter swans nested in the tall grass near the river. Danielle seemed transfixed by the screen of her cell phone and the NO SIGNAL message where bars should have been.

  “It’s really kind of pretty,” Gracie said.

  “What is?”

  “Look out there. You can see wildlife in the starlight.”

  “I thought they were cows.”

  “This is Yellowstone Park, Danielle,” Gracie said. “They don’t graze cows in a national park.”

  Danielle seemed to be thinking it over. Then she said, “I heard cow farts are one of the leading causes of global warming. That’s why we shouldn’t eat so much red meat.”

  Gracie sighed.

  But as they started a slow turn away from the Lamar River valley, she noticed a tiny wink of light through the back window in her rearview mirror a long distance behind.

  “At least we aren’t the only people on the road,” she said.

  “What?”

  * * *

  As they crossed over a long expansion bridge with a thin angry river far below them, Gracie could see a smudge of light ahead coming from beyond a shoulder of mountain. Then a small wooden sign reading: MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS, 2 MILES. She glanced at the GPS. Three more hours.

  “We’re just about out of the park,” she said.

  “And I have a signal!” Danielle shrieked. As she said it her text box lit up.

  “Two texts from Justin,” Danielle said. “That’s so sweet. He was worried about me.” To the phone, she said, “Don’t worry about me, J-Man. I’m coming to save you.” She began to text.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes LATER, Danielle’s phone chirped. “He wants to know where we are.”

  A beat passed, and
Gracie said, “So tell him.”

  “Where are we?”

  Gracie sighed, looked at the GPS display, and said, “Tell him we’re in Montana again. We just drove through Mammoth Hot Springs and Gardiner and we’re going north on Highway 89.”

  “Slow down,” Danielle said, tapping the keys.

  “You could look at the screen, you know. It says we’re close to Yankee Jim Canyon.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” her sister muttered.

  The highway paralleled a river and there were high canyon walls on both sides. The night sky was a belt of stars straight above them, its expanse narrowed to a trough by the walls. Gracie thought the sky looked like a mirror of the river they were driving by.

  Suddenly, the car lurched.

  Gracie looked up, “What was that?”

  “I don’t know,” Danielle said. But when Gracie leaned over and checked the temperature gauge she saw the needle had not only entered the red but was pressed tight to the far corner of it. The engine lurched again and went silent. It was as if the soul of the little car had left it, leaving the slowly rolling husk.

  “Oh, no,” Gracie said.

  “What is it?” Danielle asked, frantic. The Ford slowed.

  “Something happened to the motor. The steering wheel is all stiff.”

  It was a struggle for Danielle to crank the wheel even a quarter of the way but she was able to slightly turn the front wheels. When she pressed on the brake it barely responded, as if the life had gone out of it.

  “Oh, no,” Gracie said again as the little Ford coasted to a stop a few feet before the front bumper tapped a crooked delineator post. The headlights still shined and the GPS screen glowed, but the car was dead.

  Danielle tried several times to start the motor but it simply produced a grinding sound. She pumped the gas furiously and tried again. Nothing.

  “We’re going to be here all night,” Gracie cried.

  “Shut up and don’t think the worst. Here, you try it,” Danielle said to her sister.

  “What can I do?”

  “I don’t know,” Danielle said, quickly getting out and walking over to Gracie’s side. She opened the door. “Scoot over and give it a try,” she said.