Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

A couple of people tried speaking to him. He didn’t reply, or give any clear indication that he had heard them. There was a wild look in his eyes; they seemed to be focused off in the middle distance somewhere. He walked at a good pace, his arms swinging madly at his sides, his back ramrod-straight.

After he had gone perhaps half a mile he became aware of the car keys. He looked at them as if unable to guess what they were or where they’d come from. Then he reared back and hurled them into the field to his left.

Another half mile down the road he shrugged out of his suit jacket, compressed it into a ball, and flung it into the field. His vest was the next to go, after another quarter mile. Then his necktie. Then his wristwatch.

Not too surprisingly, he had attracted a great deal of attention. No one was quite prepared to interfere, but everybody was waiting to see what he would litter the landscape with next.

But instead he walked for the next half hour without discarding anything. Gradually his arm movements became less exaggerated and his face lost its look of manic concentration. He had been staring straight ahead; now he occasionally looked to the left or right. Twice he yawned.

Then he said, “My name’s Jerry. Christ, I’m hungry, I don’t mind telling you. Anybody know where you can get a sandwich around here?”

“You win,” Bev told Douglas. “The hell with it, I don’t care, I’ll be a lemming too. You win.”

Hitchhikers were so easy. It seemed to Mark that they were virtually asking to be killed, and he wondered if there wasn’t something fundamentally suicidal about a girl who stood alone by the side of the road, actively seeking rides from passing strangers.

He’d been driving on 1-70, heading toward St. Louis, and at Columbia he’d left the Interstate and drove north on 63. The main campus of the University of Missouri was in Columbia, and there were always students on roads in the area, thumb out, looking for a ride.

Today was no exception. It was right around the end of the term and the highway was full of young people in jeans, most of them with suitcases or duffel bags in tow. There were more boys than girls on the road, and what girls he saw were accompanied, either by other girls or by boys. He slowed once at the sight of two girls. He had never done two at once outside of fantasy, and his pulse quickened at the thought, but he knew the risk was far too great. One of them would stand a very good chance of getting away, and if that happened he would be in trouble.

Still, he braked the car almost to a stop just to let himself get a good look at them. They were both blondes, both clad in jeans and sneakers and school sweatshirts, both round-faced and pug-nosed and plump. And both gave him the finger when, just as they rose to approach the Lincoln, he bore down on the gas pedal and sped away.

He smiled at their reflection in the rearview mirror. He wondered if they were sisters and decided they probably were. He had slowed down to look at them in the expectation that it would fuel his fantasy, and indeed it did. He saw himself with the two of them, making one watch while he did the other, letting her know just what was coming, and then finishing her off.

Oh, nice.

He kept driving, slowing down again at the sight of a woman alone, speeding up angrily when a second glance revealed a slim boy with long hair.

A couple miles farther he found her.

She was perfect. Jeans, UM sweatshirt, Birkenstock sandals on dirty feet. Long dark brown hair in a pony tail secured by a rubber band. An oval face. Pale blue eyes, a short straight nose, pale thin lips, even teeth. Unplucked eyebrows, unpolished nails. No makeup, no lipstick.

Narrow waist, slim hips, nice little ass. Hard to tell about the breasts because the sweatshirt was baggy.

Time would tell.

She had to struggle to get the duffel bag into the backseat. Then she climbed in front, propping her large handbag on her lap, reaching over to fasten her seat belt across her body. She said, “Are you going as far as Kirksville? I live in Edina, that’s down the road from Kirksville.”

“Well, I can run you all the way to Kirksville.”

“Oh, that’s great,” she said. “This is a great car, too. This a Lincoln?” He said it was. “I guess they’re nicer than Cadillacs, aren’t they?” He said it was probably a toss-up. “I’m getting a car in the fall. They didn’t want me to have one my first year, like it’d be too distracting? Like if I had a car I wouldn’t go to my classes, but if I didn’t have a car I’d have to study out of boredom? But, you know, that’s how parents think, isn’t it?”

She chatted and he made conversation, not really paying any mind to the words she spoke. She was just right and he was going to do her and the excitement was absolutely wonderful. On the one hand he wanted to drive forever, putting off the act indefinitely, prolonging the tantalizing feeling that gripped him now. And, at the same time, he wanted to stop the car that instant, to kill her oh God yes before another moment went by.

He waited, and a third impulse came. He had the thought of letting her go, of driving her all the way to Kirksville, even turning there and taking her straight to her home in Edina, and of never touching her, never doing her the slightest injury. She would hop out of the car and drag her duffel bag up the driveway to her house, never knowing how close she had come to death.

He had that urge some of the time. Every now and then he acted on it. Every now and then he would open his hand and release the helpless bird that fluttered within, watching benevolently as she flew away. He entertained the thought, then dismissed it. No, not this one. This bird would not be doing any more flying.

A mile down the road, he braked smoothly and turned onto a gravel road heading east.

“Where are we going?”

“There’s construction up ahead,” he told her.

“I didn’t see a sign.”

“I don’t think there was one. I came down this way this morning and everything was all snarled up. We’ll cut over to the next road going north and miss all that traffic.”

Her eyes were wary. She thought it was going to be okay, she still felt pretty safe, but it had at least occurred to her that it might not be, and it was giving her something to think about.

He slowed, turned left onto a narrower road.

She said, “Are you sure this is a road? It’s just a dirt road, I think it’s just a farm road—”

“It goes through.”

She was fumbling in her purse, and some instinct warned him. He slammed the brake pedal to the floor. She was propelled forward against her seat belt. He held the wheel with his left hand and swung his right, backhanding her full force across the mouth. She cried out.

He took the bag from her lap. Just below the top layer of articles he found a canister of Chemical Mace. She cringed when he displayed it.

“I wasn’t going to do anything,” she said. “I swear I wasn’t.”

He looked at her.

“I just got scared and I wanted to hold it,” she said. “I got frightened, I… please don’t hurt me.”

“Be quiet.”

“I’ll do anything you want. Just don’t hurt me.”

“Be quiet. And sit still.”

It was, as she had guessed, just a farm road. It would probably be safe for the next few minutes. But it would be safer still off the road, and he had her cowed now, she wouldn’t try anything. Off the road, screened from sight by shrubbery, there would be no need to hurry.

He got the car where he wanted it and cut the ignition. She was calmer now, and a little more sure of herself. “I’ll do anything you want,” she said. “Honest, anything. Just so you don’t hurt me.”