Jack Ketchum - The Passenger

“Pay for this for me, will you, friend? I’m short on cash.”

The man glanced at the whiskey and the beer. He shook his head.

“Crazy sumbitch,” he muttered.

He moved toward the door again, and Emil flung his arm across her shoulders from behind and pulled her between the man and the door. When she felt the gun against her cheek the gasp was real.

“Pay for it. Or I shoot the lady and then I shoot you.”

“He means it,” Billy said. “He’s not facetious.” “And you behind the counter. Don’t move.”

You could see the old guy sizing up the situation. She wondered what war he’d served in. He wasn’t particularly rattled. Tough old bird.

She was doing all right so far though, she thought, playing the victim, eyes wide and mouth hung open in what she hoped looked like sheer terror though she was practically coming in her pants here for god’s sake- and then Emil made things worse by sliding his hand down over her breast and squeezing and the old guy seemed to get the picture all at once. His face changed, hardened. And Emil must have seen that too because that was when he turned the gun and fired and the old man dropped to the floor howling and clutching his left foot, the Old Times bursting beside him.

“I forgot to mention that I could just as easily do it reverse order,” Emil said. “Bag it. Ring it up,” he told the clerk. He caressed her breast and she couldn’t help it now and didn’t try, she moaned. “Soon as he can, I know he’ll be happy to pay up.”

Which was exactly what both of them did.

They’d come whooping out of the package store like schoolkids at a panty raid but she’d heard the muted gunshot and now Billy was driving, with Emil and Marion in the back with Ray and she glanced around and saw the two of them kissing and his hand between her legs, so that she wasn’t at all surprised when he told Billy to pull onto the narrow dirt access road and then to stop and cut the lights. They got out, a bottle of scotch in Emil’s hand, and went running, laughing, for the woods.

They didn’t go far. Just behind a stand of pines. She could hear them over the drone of crickets through the open window. Marion giggling and then groaning. Emil grunting like a goddamn animal. Brush crackling beneath them in the still air.

They were animals. So was the one Ray with the gun against her cheek, running it along first one side of her face and then the other so that each time she had to pull away and finally rapping her head with the barrel to make her sit still-rapping her lightly but her head was taking such a beating tonight it still hurt like hell-and then she could feel him lean over her, could smell the beer on his breath as he ran the barrel down over her neck and collarbone, heading for her breast and she could feel Billy’s eyes on both of them.

You’ve got to stop this, she thought. Now. Already she felt bathed in filth.

“You’d better be ready to kill me,” she said. “Just one more inch.”

“Who says I’m not?”

“You didn’t do the cop. He did the cop. You get caught, I can say that. You kill me, I can’t. You’ve heard of state’s evidence?”

“Uh-huh.”

“ Course he has,” Billy said. “Everybody has. It’s where you angle in on somebody and you get impunity.”

The little guy was short a few major cable stations. She’d keep her pitch to Ray, who at least appeared to be somewhat sane-and she’d damn well have to hurry. The sounds from the bushes had all but stopped now.

“If you don’t hurt me and you don’t abuse me I can help you. I know what I’m talking about. I’m a lawyer. It’s my job to know.”

“A lawyer?”

“A defense attorney.”

“Bullshit.”

She’d expected that. She dug into her purse for the wallet, opened it and flashed the laminated card at him.

“See that? That’s a court pass. They don’t come in cereal boxes, Ray.”

He took it from her. The gun no longer pressed her flesh.

“I’ll be damned.”

He studied it a moment and handed it back to her. “Well,” he said, “I probably wouldn’t be the one to shoot you anyway, truth be known. ’Less you started something. I’m a family man, you know. Want to see?” She heard him digging into his back pocket, pulling out his own wallet and flipping through the plastic inserts. He couldn’t seem to find what he was looking for.

“I had a lawyer once,” he said. “I kinda liked the man. I appreciated his efforts on my behalf.”

Then she heard him slap the wallet closed and abruptly shove it back into his jeans and turned and saw Marion and Emil come thrashing through the brush. Marion leaned in through Janet’s window and smiled. “Nothing like the great outdoors, hon. Shove over.”

Alan was already thirty yards past it and headed along the downslope, briefs for the Mohica case foremost on his mind, when he registered Janet’s blue Taurus, warning lights blinking like fireflies, dark and silent by the road. It wasn’t safe to pull a U-turn here on the hill so he continued to the bottom and turned and drove back up again. He crossed lanes and parked into her dead headlights and got out of the car and peered in through the window. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or not to find that there was nobody home.

He got back into his car and tried her on his cell phone but all he got was the machine and that definitely didn’t relieve him. The gas station, maybe? Arranging for jumper cables or a tow truck? Could be. He got Kaltzas’s number from Information but when he tried it the line was busy.

The anxiety really didn’t hit him until he reached the roadhouse and saw the side of the road swarming with cops, saw the jackknifed car and the Jeep and the crime- scene tape and the forensics team working over the body of a man and then it really hit him when he saw the paramedics wheeling a woman into an ambulance. Janet? My god, he thought. He didn’t know why he thought it-the woman could have been anybody-but it came unbidden and pounded through his blood. He slowed and then stopped even as the officer waved him on. He flashed his ID. The officer frowned at him anyway.

“What happened? Accident?”

“Shooting. One dead. One of ours, dammit.”

“The woman?”

“Girl. Can’t be more’n seventeen. Concussion, fractures, god knows what else. It’s a helluva mess.”

He nodded. “Thanks, Officer. Good luck. Hope you get the bastard.”

“Bastards,” he said. “Three of them.”

Alan guessed it was just his night to be corrected. He pulled out and tried her again on the cell phone.

“ Leave a message,” she said.

“Vehicle described as a late-model four-door Buick station wagon, light blue. Suspects are assumed to be armed and..

“Dangerous,” said Emil.

Billy reached over and flipped off the police band and pounded once at the steering wheel. “Shit,” he said. “How’d they make the wagon?” said Ray.

“The car that passed us by back there. While Billy was toyin’ with the Man.”

“Shit!” He pounded the wheel again.

“Called us in as an accident, probably. Good citizen. Well hell, we are an accident. An accident waitin’ to happen!”

It seemed to break the tension and they laughed. Broke it for them, anyway, if not exactly for Janet. They were all too damn matter-of-fact about this. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t normal. And Emil. Couldn’t anything shake Emil?

“We’ll just find us another car, that’s all,” he said. “Meantime we better get off the road awhile.” He turned to Marion. “You know a place?”

She looked at Janet.

“Do I know a place? Hell, yes.”

She draped her arm over Janet’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze.