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

George is alight now. He jumps his big body into the cab, yanks the door shut. He cranks on the engine and immediately heat blasts into the double cab and up on the windshield. He hits his powerful windshield wipers, which makes short life of the layer of snow that accumulated while he was inside.

He doesn’t wait for the engine or cab to heat; he jams into reverse, rocks the tires back and forth a few times, and guns the gas to launch out of his parking space, swerving onto the mountain road, which, thanks to the Mountain’s extra tax payments, has been plowed and salted ten times already tonight.

Richard’s Mountain is the Vermont mountain that consistently holds the record for most open lift days with clearest access roads. And such aggressive maintenance means the mountain is always short on, and therefore, hiring staff. Always.

That bastard, Kyle! I’ll knock him into next winter!

George’s rage to get to the mountain and find Kyle, who surely took his knife and book, makes George feel he is driving through the thickest of road shadows, snagging his progress. He can’t get there fast enough.

A fear tickles at the back of George’s mind. He looks in his rearview mirror and sees headlights approaching. He thinks maybe the headlights approach too fast, but whoever is behind slows and keeps at a distance. In truth, although the roads are plowed and George thought he was gunning it, he crawls, as does whoever is behind him, at 20 m.p.h.

In looking again in his rearview mirror, a sudden recollection replays in his mind. That same day, the very day he proposed to Martha, they were driving home to Vermont. She was smiling in a cushiony happy way in the passenger’s seat of George’s civilian Volvo, as they crossed the Mid-Hudson Bridge. It was then that George, like tonight, had a creepy feeling on his neck when he looked in his rearview mirror. Tonight, as he does the same, he tells himself he is not seeing what he saw back then, again, now, tonight. Back then when he looked in the rearview on the Mid-Hudson, in broad daylight, there, in the car behind, the driver of a gray Ford four-door wore a robot head make out of a cardboard box. Two holes for eyes. Red balls, or suction cups, were glued on as buttons. And wires, maybe un-bent hangers, were antennas.

The robot waved at George through the rearview mirror.

Back then, George fluttered his eyelids, thinking he was hallucinating. He opened his eyes wide, and sure enough, still there. A man, George could tell from the hairy waving hand, with a cardboard-box robot head, was driving, riding up on George’s bumper, as if following.

“I’m pulling off for gas in Poughkeepsie,” George said to Martha.

“Maybe I’ll get us some Combos and Cokes in the store then,” Martha said. “And a bone to bring home to Cope.”

“Sounds good,” George said, distracted and keeping one eye on the still-waving robot behind. He didn’t want to alarm Martha. Didn’t point any of this out, which he might have normally, had he thought this to be some roadway stranger prank. George felt it was something different. He’d tell her once they were safe off the highway.

They pulled into the Poughkeepsie gas station. He remembers pumping the gas and feeling safe, for he didn’t see the robot driver pull off behind them. Martha was in the store. There were no other customers. When done with the gas, George pulled up to the air machine on the side of the station to plump one of the Volvo’s tires. Then, in a snap, as Martha came out and rounded the station’s corner, the gray Ford pulled in fast, drove to the side of the station a half-length beyond George, who was busy with the air nozzle on the driver’s side front tire. The man with a robot head sprung from his car, ran to Martha, stabbed her three deep times in the chest, and, later confirmed, in the heart, returned to his car and, before throwing his body back in to speed off, yelled to George, “Payback, rude boy.”

It was three seconds and done. Martha died of blood loss and body trauma ten minutes later in George’s arms. He cried to police that a man in a robot costume did it, had followed them over the bridge. Had called him “rude boy,” and that this was “payback,” but George had no clue what any of it was about. The police could only confirm, given the strangest angles of two separate exterior cameras at the station, that indeed a gray Ford with no plates pulled in, as George said, and a man, of whom all they could see were his legs and thrusting knife, stabbed Martha. They could see George fully, airing his tires, and caught unaware and in shock the full three seconds the murder took place.

When George got home, after all the official fuss, three days later, Cope sniffed Martha’s dried blood on George’s sweaty undershirt and fled into the Vermont mountains.

In looking through the rearview now, George calms a half fraction to realize he can’t make out the driver behind, as it is too dark between snowfall and the driver’s headlights colliding with George’s taillights, and so, not much can be seen except a blur of black and white. So George cannot confirm, this way or that, whether a man dressed as a robot pursues him again. But he has that same prickling feeling.

Chill the fuck out and get to that asshole Kyle.

George pulls into staff parking at Richard’s Mountain. He wastes not a second in parking, exiting, and shouting to the General Manager of the mountain, who’s waiting on staff in the parking lot, wearing his multi-pocketed managerial coat.

“Where’s Kyle?” George yells.

The General Manager walks up to George, looking up from a shielded clip-board and from under a wide brimmed hat. Snow falls between and on the two men. “Prick’s gone, George. Just left. You seem about as pissed as I for that fucker.”

“He just left the bar. He couldn’t have gotten here more than ten minutes before me.”

“Yeah, that’s right. He got here about five minutes ago, and I was waiting for him. After he parked, I made him give me the keys, and told him to hike his sorry ass with security back to his staff cottage and clear out by 2:00 a.m.”

“Holy shit. What the fuck did he do?”

“He ain’t who he says he is. He started last week, yeah. Promises about referrals, all that shit. Well I let him start, dumb fucking me, while I wait on references and background to clear. His name sure as fuck isn’t Kyle whateverthefuck he said his name was. When I faxed his picture to all the referrals, not a one knew who he was. So I have a cop buddy run his prints. This prick just got out of Rockingham Prison two weeks ago. He ain’t no Kyle, he’s some Brett Brickadick, whatever, asshole, who cares. Did nine years for killing a lady in Keene while robbing her in a home invasion.”

“Well the bastard stole my knife and worse yet, the book I gave Martha to propose.”

“Not the Dickinson?”

“Yeah, the Dickinson.”

“Shit.”

As they were talking, another couple of staff trucks had pulled in. Bob, Eli. A few others. They didn’t interrupt the big boss with George, and quick-stepped to the staff lounge to punch in. Another car arrived as well, a non-descript Bronco that could have been gray or white. That person now walks toward the big boss and George. A parking lot lamp shines a cone of light around the big boss and George; this new man remains in the blackness just beyond. His features are undefined given the snow and shadows.

“Ah, Reeker. Reeker, come on here, come closer. Reeker, this is George, head of engineering. You’ll ride with him tonight. He does cold side of the mountain, so he’ll show you what working a blizzard is all about. We have to be open by 9:00 a.m., no matter what. We got a record to maintain.” From one of ten exterior pockets on his manager’s utility coat, the big boss pulls out and shoves a giant, weather-proof walkie in George’s hands. He does the same to Reeker. “Take him up.”