Джеффри Дивер - Nothing Good Happens After Midnight - A Suspense Magazine Anthology

“Really? What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t quite work out for her. She got messed up. Drugs. It happens a lot in Nashville.”

“What’s your name?” She countered.

“Hal. Hal Benson.”

“Is that your real name, or a made-up one?”

He had to laugh. “My real name is Harvey. Horrible name.”

They drove on, the headlight beams cutting swathes of light through the darkness. The girl dozed off. He glanced at her from time to time, looking incredibly young with her long dark hair falling across her cheek, clutching her backpack as if it was a stuffed teddy bear. And for a moment he felt a tenderness toward her — the daughter he’d never had. He had never married. Too easy to find women without being tied down to one.

The first streaks of dawn were in the sky when he pulled off into a deserted rest area. The girl woke up as cold wind swept into the car.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“A couple of hours from Tucson, I think. Rest area. I need to visit the restroom. You might want to use it too.”

“Okay.” She got out, taking her backpack with her. He noticed she never said thank you. Badly raised, he thought.

When she returned from the restroom she stopped, finding a blanket on the ground beside the car. “What’s this?”

He had a strange, predatory smile on his face. “You didn’t think you’d get to ride with me without paying your fare, did you? Come on. You’ve done it before.”

She took an involuntary step back. “I haven’t, actually.”

“A virgin. How delightful. That is a bonus. And you’re going to thank me for it. I’m an expert, you know. It won’t be with one of those clumsy and panting boys. Now take your jeans off.”

“It’s cold out here.”

“Well, there’s not enough room on the back seat. Come on. Let’s do this before we freeze.”

She looked around. He sensed her panic.

“I wouldn’t think of running away. There’s nothing for miles.”

“I wouldn’t leave my guitar, anyway.” She started to unzip her jeans, then tried to pull them down. They were tight. “I usually have to sit on the ground to get them off,” she said. “Aren’t you going to take your clothes off too?”

“Like you said, it’s cold.”

“What if I refuse?”

“Simple. I drive on. Leave you here. Hope someone finds you before the coyotes. Or I get impatient and rape you.”

She struggled with the last of the jeans. He sank to his knees on the rug beside her. In the first light of dawn his face was hard with desire. “You’re wasting my time. Come here, you little bitch.”

He grabbed at her ankles and brought her toppling down onto the blanket. He laughed as he tried to pin her in place. She grabbed his hand, sank her teeth into it. As he cried out, she scrambled to her feet.

“Oh, I love a good fight,” he said, getting to his knees.

“Stop. You might want to hear this,” she said.

He frowned. “No pleading to spare you because of your aged mother!” And he laughed.

“Not aged. Just dying.” There was a sudden silence with only the whispering of the wind through sagebrush. “I didn’t go to Nashville to be a music star,” she said. “I went to find my mother. She dumped me with my grandma when I was born. I never met her. I was curious.”

“Oh, spare me the sob story,” he said.

“You need to hear this,” she said. “I found her. She’s pitiful. A heroin addict. Skin and bone. Stringy hair, hollow eyes. But she told me about you.”

“Me?”

“How you promised to make her a star, then you got her hooked on drugs and then you got her pregnant. And you wanted nothing more to do with her. Denied I was your baby.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Her name is Jolene, not mine. I’m Carrie, actually. Remember that Jolene you knew? The one who was the good singer? Oh, I’ve been learning all about you. And I made it my mission to find you. I’ve followed you this far. And I don’t think you want to rape your daughter, do you, Daddy?”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” he said, but he sounded unsure.

“Why do you think I was sitting beside your car, waiting for you tonight? I wanted to see for myself if you were the rat my mother said you were. And you are.”

“Now listen you little...” He was trying to get to his feet when she picked up a rock and brought it crashing down onto the back of his head. He gave a grunt and pitched forward. She stared at him, feeling horror mixed with triumph. Then she turned him over. He wasn’t breathing. For a moment she had a wild fantasy about driving off in his car, leaving him for the vultures and coyotes. But decided against it. That would be stupid. They’d track her down and accuse her of murder. Instead she retrieved her jeans and put them on again, finding it hard with her hands shaking from cold and emotion. Then she turned her attention to him and carefully removed his trousers.

She took out her cellphone and was pleasantly surprised to find a signal.

“There’s been a horrible accident,” she gasped when the 911 operator answered. “A man gave me a ride in his car. He stopped and tried to rape me. I pushed him away. He tripped over a rock and fell and hit his head. I think he’s dead.”

The operator was kind and soothing. Carrie sat in the car until state troopers arrived half an hour later. They, too, were kind and understanding. They took in the sprawled body, his trousers lying neatly on the driver’s seat. “Come on, honey. Let’s get you home,” one of them said.

She drove off in the squad car without looking back.

Carrie McKay’s cellphone alarm went off at midnight and after taking a moment trying to figure out where she was and what she’d set the darn thing for, she rolled over and killed the noise, which sounded far louder than it had ever sounded before in the daytime.

She lay back down, holding the now blessedly silent phone and listening for any other sounds it might have roused in the house. Her mom and dad were just across the hall in their bedroom, hopefully still deep in slumber. Her brother Kyle’s room was adjacent to hers, with just the one wall separating them. But she knew that he usually slept like a rock and probably wouldn’t have heard the alarm. Probably.

Still, she waited, listening, making sure.

After a minute that seemed like a half hour, she finally decided that the alarm hadn’t awakened anyone. She threw back her covers, turned and sat up. Her stomach growled as though she was hungry; she put her hand flat on her belly and tried to breathe out the tension. But she knew that it wasn’t lack of food roiling her insides.

It was nerves.

She was starting to realize, because she really wasn’t cut out for it, that she never should have told Dawn and Emily that she’d be part of the raid to TP Jason Trent’s house tonight. After all, he was Dawn’s boyfriend. Carrie didn’t think she’d ever even said hi to him. But you didn’t say no to Dawn if she wanted you to do something with her. She was definitely the leader of the cool kids at school, and Carrie had been aching to be one of them herself, always just not quite making it.

She was afraid that she wasn’t really a natural for something like this, actually sneaking out in the middle of the night. It had been bad enough when she went into Target two days ago to buy the Super-Size pack of twenty-four rolls of Charmin’, waiting in the checkout line, hoping and praying that she wouldn’t run into somebody she knew, especially one of her friend’s mothers. But no big deal, she’d told herself. Everybody had to buy toilet paper. She could always say she was just running some errands for her mother. Nothing sinister going on. She was one of the good kids, after all, and nobody would think anything about it.