C. Box - The Highway

Pergram simply stared back. To this day, he wondered what it was that stopped him from killing Legerski right there. Was it something in the trooper’s eyes, or the tone of his voice? Or simply because the thing was playing all wrong?

Then Legerski said, “I think you might be a man after my own heart, is what I’m saying.”

It took a moment to understand.

“I bought some property down south of here. You know the old Schweitzer place?”

Pergram found himself nodding. He was familiar with it because it was less than four miles from his mother’s house. Eighty or ninety acres in a steep mountain valley surrounded by walls of mountains on each side. There was a beat-up old house with the windows smashed out on it, but that wasn’t what was unique about the property. Schweitzer, it was said, was a crazy old coot. He’d built a bunker somewhere on his land. A concrete underground bunker that would withstand a nuclear or chemical war. But he’d died before he ever had to use it. The property had been on the market for years because it was remote, without good water, and didn’t have enough grass for a profitable herd of cows.

“I know it,” Pergram said.

“How about you meet me out there? When I get off duty, say six thirty tonight?”

“I can do that.”

“Bring your friend.”

That’s how it started.

* * *

He parked the Buick on the side of the house and got out. The wind had picked up and was shaking the Russian olive bushes, vibrating them with angry urgency.

Pergram rubbed his face with his hands before entering the house. The white crosses had worn off and he was dead tired and hungry. But he was also excited. Seeing those two girls in their underwear when he grabbed the gimp, knowing they were there, stirred him. The gimp had done nothing for him. There was some relief, sure, but it was temporary. It was like eating a dish of dry dog food when steaks were a few feet away behind a closed door.

As silently as he could, he entered the house. He couldn’t see or hear her. He hoped she’d gone back to bed and was still sleeping. But as he navigated through the passageway toward the kitchen he smelled coffee and there she was, at the table where she’d been the night before, glaring at him.

“I seen you out there,” she said. “You took my car again without asking.”

He flushed.

“Where do you go when you take my car? Why don’t you take your own truck and use your own gas? I’m on a fixed income. I can’t afford to keep putting gas in that car when I’m not even using it.”

“I’ll fill it up later today,” he said, shinnying around her and kicking a stack of newspapers aside so he could open the door of the ancient pantry.

“When you going back out on the road?”

He ignored her. The pantry was crammed full with canned goods. Some of the labels were so old they were yellow and peeling off the tin.

“What are you looking for, Ronald?”

“Something to eat that isn’t shitty or expired.”

“There’s nothing wrong with those cans,” she said, disgusted with him.

He reached in and pulled out a Campbell’s soup can of split pea soup and shook it at her. “This has been in here as long as I can remember. I remember looking at this when I was ten years old and wondering what kind of people wanted to eat it. And here it is today.”

She scowled and looked away.

He fixed his eyes on the back of her head. Her hair was white and wispy. He could see her scalp through it. For a second, he considered how hard he’d have to hit her with the can to break her skull.

“I can cook you something,” she said. “There’s some Dinty Moore stew in the refrigerator.”

“I told you I hate that.”

He snatched a fairly contemporary can of pork and beans from the pantry, slammed the door, and left her there.

* * *

He closed and locked the door of his room and stood there for a few minutes to make sure she wasn’t on the other side. Sometimes she did that, he knew. Just stood there on the other side of the door to listen to what he was doing. He should have brained her with the can of soup, he thought.

Pergram opened the beans with his Swiss army knife and wolfed it down. He put the empty can in the garbage. He hated clutter, unlike her.

He lay on his bed in the dark and closed his eyes but visions of those two girls started showing up on the inside of his eyelids. The way they cowered in the corner, those firm long legs on the nice-looking one.

He opened his eyes because he knew what he had to do next or he’d never get any sleep.

His collection of videotapes was hidden beneath the floor under his bed. Dozens of tapes and DVDs he’d made of his conquests. Along with the girls, Legerski was in many of them. Jimmy was in a few. He’d made a set for the trooper, in fact, but refused to hand over the originals when Legerski asked for them.

The tape collection was now what kept him alive, he thought. Legerski wouldn’t dare turn on him if there was a risk the tapes and disks could be found that would implicate him. Pergram had insinuated more than once there was.

“You’re fucking lying,” Legerski had said, “there is no way I can be identified.” But there was a hint of panic in his voice.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Pergram had said back.

The tapes were Pergram’s life insurance policy.

On his hands and knees, he reached under his bed until his fingers closed around a ring bolt. He opened the lid and set it to the side, then reached into the hole.

Under the floorboards were two green army surplus ammunition cans fitted with tight swing-back covers that kept the contents safe and dry and could be opened by prying up on a side panel. The stencils on the sides revealed them to have once stored.50 caliber machine gun rounds. He didn’t disturb the can he thought of as his “Oh Shit” Box. It contained carefully thought-out and collected items he’d need if his world went completely upside down and he had to run for it.

The other box was the collection of tapes and DVDs that was the history and culmination of his secret world; old VHS tapes and newer digital DVDs. He brought it out and opened it and fished through the collection, trying to find one that matched his mood. He selected one from three years before, the time he’d defied Legerski and dragged two girls into the room for himself. He didn’t want to see Legerski, to be reminded of him right now.

Legerski had retaliated for him breaking their agreement that they both be present with the girls at the bunker. He’d disguised himself and made his own tape and did depraved things to the two lot lizards there at the time and killed them both afterwards. Then he left the tape to be discovered and viewed by Pergram who would instantly understand the message sent. Without telling Legerski, Pergram had made an additional copy.

Later, over breakfast at the First National Bar, Legerski looked up and said, “This is what happens when you fuck with me, Ronald. Now you’ve got to go get another one.”

He did. And he never defied Legerski since. He’d viewed the disk only once, and now he set it aside and chose another.

Pergram sat on his bed and inserted the disk into his laptop computer and put on his headphones. It started with him looking into the camera, grinning. The two girls were in the background, bound and gagged.

Again, he wondered what Legerski and the lady cop from Helena were talking about.

And how long he had.

9:05 A.M., Wednesday, November 21

Cassie Dewell’s egg-white and mushroom omelette arrived at the center table in the First National Bar of Montana, delivered by the cook-slash-owner named Jimmy. Jimmy placed a set of silverware wrapped tight in a paper napkin by her plate and said, “You said without the bacon or sausage that comes with it, right? I hope you like it. I don’t make too many of those around here.”