Dean Koontz - Strange Highways

P.J. says, "Easy. I could dump the body somewhere it'll never be found."

"You can't do that to her family. They can't spend the rest of their lives

wondering what happened to her. They won't ever have any hope of peace if they think she's… somewhere in pain, lost."

"You're right. Okay. I'm not myself. Obviously, I should leave her where she can be found."

The internal grayness — sifting, sifting — gradually anesthetizes Joey. Minute by minute he feels less, thinks less. This strange detachment is vaguely disturbing on one level, but it is also a great blessing, and he embraces it.

Aware of a new flatness in his voice, Joey says, "But then the cops might find your fingerprints on the tarp. Or find something else, like some of your hair. Lots of ways they might connect you to her."

"Don't worry about fingerprints. There aren't any to find. I've been careful. There's no other evidence either, none, no connections except…"

Joey waits with bleak resignation for his brother — his only and much loved brother — to finish that thought, because he senses that it will be the worst thing with which he has to deal, the hardest thing he will have to accept, other than the discovery of the brutalized body itself.

"… except I knew her," says P.J.

"You knew her?"

"I dated her."

"When?" Joey asks numbly, but he is almost beyond caring. Soon the deepening grayness in him will soften all the sharp edges of his curiosity and his conscience.

"My senior year in high school."

"What's her name?"

"A girl from Coal Valley. You didn't know her."

The rain seems as if it might never end, and Joey has no doubt that the night will go on forever.

P.J. says, "I only dated her twice. We didn't hit it off. But you can see, Joey, how this will look to the cops. I take her body to the sheriff, they find out I knew her… they'll use that against me. It'll be that much harder to prove I'm innocent, that much worse for Mom and Dad and all of us. I'm between a rock and hard place, Joey."

"Yes."

"You see what I mean."

"Yes."

"You see how it is."

"Yes."

"I love you, little brother."

"I know."

"I was sure you'd be there for me when it counted."

"All right."

Deep grayness.

Soothing grayness.

"You and me, kid. Nothing in the world is stronger than you and me if we stick together. We have this bond, brothers, and it's stronger than steel. You know? Stronger than anything. It's the most important thing in the world to me — what we have together, how we've always hung in there, brothers."

They sit in silence for a while.

Beyond the streaming windows of the car, the mountain darkness is deeper than it has ever been before, as if the highest ridges have tilted toward one another, fusing together, blocking out the narrow band of sky and any hope of stars, as if he and P.J. and Mom and Dad now exist in a stone vault without doors or windows.

"You've got to be getting back to college soon," P.J. says. "You've got a long drive tonight."

"Yeah."

"I've got a long one too."

Joey nods.

"You'll have to come visit me in New York."

Joey nods.

"The Big Apple," P.J. says.

"Yeah."

"We'll have some fun."

"Yeah."

"Here, I want you to have this," P.J. says, taking Joey's hand, trying to push something into it.

"What?"

"A little extra spending money."

"I don't want it," Joey says, trying to pull away.

P.J. grips his hand tightly, forcing a wad of bills between his reluctant fingers. "No, I want you to have it. I know how it is in college, you can always use a little extra."

Joey finally wrenches away without accepting the bills.

P.J. is relentless. He tries to shove the money into Joey's coat pocket. "Come on, kid, it's only thirty bucks, it's not a fortune, it's nothing. Humor me, let me play the big shot. I never get to do anything for you, it'll make me feel good."

Resistance is so difficult and seems so pointless — only thirty dollars, an insignificant sum that Joey finally lets his brother put the money in his pocket. He is worn out. He hasn't the energy to resist.

P.J. pats him on the shoulder affectionately. "Better go inside, get you packed up and off to school."

They return to the house.

Their folks are curious.

Dad says, "Hey, did I raise a couple of sons who're too dumb to come in out of the rain?"

Putting an arm around Joey's shoulders, P.J. says, "Just some brother talk, Dad. Big-brother-little-brother stuff. Meaning of life, all that."

With a smile, Mom teasingly says, "Deep, dark secrets."

Joey's love for her at the moment is so intense, so powerful, that the force of it almost drives him to his knees.

In desperation, he retreats deeper into the internal grayness, and all the bright hurts of the world are dimmed, all the sharpness dulled.

He packs quickly and leaves a few minutes before P.J. Of all the goodbye hugs that he receives, the one from his brother is the most all-encompassing, the most fierce.

A couple of miles outside of Asherville, he becomes aware of a car closing rapidly behind him. By the time he reaches the stop sign at the intersection of the county route and Coal Valley Road, the other vehicle has caught up with him. The driver doesn't stop behind Joey but swings around him, casting up great sheets of dirty water, and takes the turn onto Coal Valley Road at too high a speed. When the tire-thrown water washes off the windshield, Joey sees that the car has stopped after traveling a hundred yards onto the other highway

He knows it is P.J.

Waiting.

It isn't too late.

There is still world enough, and time.

Everything hinges on making a left turn.

That is the route he had intended to take anyway.

Just turn left, as planned, and do what must be done.

Red taillights, beacons in the dismal rain. Waiting.

Joey drives through the intersection, straight ahead, passing the turnoff to Coal Valley, taking the county route all the way to the interstate.

And on the interstate, although he still invites the devil of detachment into his heart, he can't prevent himself from recalling certain things that P.J. said, statements that have a more profound meaning now than they'd had earlier: "It's so easy to destroy me, Joey… but… even easier just to believe." As if truth were not an objective view of the facts, as if it could be whatever a person chose to believe. And: "Don't worry about fingerprints. There aren't any to be found. I've been careful." Caution implied intent. A frightened, confused, innocent man wasn't rational enough to be cautious; he didn't take steps to ensure that he'd eradicated all the evidence linking him to a crime.

Had there been any bearded man with greasy hair — or had that been a Charles Manson-inspired convenience? If he'd hit the woman up on Pine Ridge, hit her hard enough to kill her instantly, why wasn't his car damaged?

Southbound in the night, Joey becomes increasingly distraught, and he drives faster, faster, faster, as though he believes that he can outrun all the facts and their dark implications. Then he finds the jar, loses control of the Mustang, spins out, crashes…