The Highway (10 page)

“Probably not,” she said.

“Maybe you guys can stay here tonight and I can talk with her and you can go see your dad in the morning. I can talk to my mom about making up the spare bedroom. But telling her … man, that won’t be fun. You know how she gets when she’s mad…”

“You’re telling
me
?” Gracie said.

Justin laughed.

“What are you two talking about?” Danielle spat. “Are you talking about me?”

“Okay, so what we’ll do is make sure you get here in one piece.” Justin sighed, “Then we’ll worry about the rest later.”

“Okay,” Gracie said. She anticipated Danielle trying to wrest the phone from her and dodged her sister’s outstretched and grasping hand.

“Let me look at the computer,” Justin said, and she could hear keystrokes. While he found the site he wanted, he said, “So you bumped heads with a trucker, huh? Some of those truckers think they own the road, don’t they?”

“This one did.” She glanced up and there were no headlights in her rearview mirror. “He’s way behind us now.”

“Cool,” Justin said. She could hear voices of other boys in the background. Someone whooped, and Justin shushed him. “Okay, I’m sitting at my friend Eric’s computer and I’ve got Google Maps up. Where are you exactly?”

“Just a few miles from Laurel,” Gracie said. “Maybe three.”

“Great. I see where you’re at. The Montana Department of Transportation site says the road is closed between Park City and Columbus. But you’ll hit Laurel before you get there and that’s the place where you can get off the interstate and go around. It says they might keep the road closed all night so this is the smart thing to do. Now let me talk you through this. I’ve gone on this road before with my dad, and it’s a really cool drive. It goes right on top of the mountains and drops down and cuts the corner of Yellowstone Park and comes back up into Montana.”

“Yellowstone,” she repeated. “That place doesn’t have a lot of good memories.”

Danielle had stopped grabbing at the phone now that she was assured they were talking about the route to Helena.

“Believe me, I know,” he said. “But you won’t even be close to where we were on that pack trip. Not even close. And you won’t need to get off the paved road. You’ll barely be in the park and if you keep going you’ll come up through Mammoth Hot Springs and be back on track.”

He outlined the route on 212 from Laurel south through Rockvale to Red Lodge, and from there to Cooke City and Silver Gate via the Beartooth Highway and into the northeast corner of the park. Then they should exit the park at Gardiner, Montana, and drive north on Highway 89 to Livingston through the Yellowstone River canyon back up to I-90 and on to Helena via Bozeman.

“It sounds complicated,” she said.

“Yeah, but it isn’t,” he said. “There are only a few roads and I’d guess there won’t be much traffic at all except for other people who know how to go around the closed road. I’m looking and it doesn’t seem to be snowing on top of the mountains. That could be a big problem. But right now it looks like a clear drive and I’ll be right here the whole time tracking you on the screen. If you get confused, just call and talk to me.”

She took a deep breath but said nothing.

He said, “It’s too bad you guys don’t have a GPS.”

“Oh, but we do have a GPS,” Gracie said, shooting a look toward Danielle who looked back as if wounded. “It’s in the trunk of the car.”

“The trunk?”

“She’s
your
girlfriend.”

Justin laughed wearily, and said under his breath, “Not for long.”

“Hey,” Danielle protested. “Quit talking about me, you two. I’m right here. And if you want to pull over somewhere, I’ll get the GPS out and try to figure out how it works. Geez…”

“You heard?” Gracie asked Justin.

“Tell her it’s a good idea. That way we’ll both know exactly where you are.”

“One more thing,” Gracie said, “The check engine light is on. I don’t know what that means and neither does Danielle.”

Justin sighed and asked how long.

“Forever,” Gracie said.

“Is the car getting hot or doing anything strange?”

“Not yet.”

There was a long pause and she could hear him asking one of his friends about it.

“Eric says it could be a short or it could be serious.”

“Great.”

“He can look at it tomorrow morning,” Justin said. “I mean, if you get here.”

Gracie sighed.

“But, Gracie,” he said, “keep in touch with me. There are some cell phone dead spots, but if I know where you’re at and something happens I can call my dad. He’ll know what to do.”

Gracie recalled meeting Justin’s dad Cody. He scared her at first, but she ended up liking him. And he seemed to like her.

“I don’t know where he is right now,” Justin said. “He didn’t make it home for dinner. But he’s got a cell phone and I’ll give him a call if we need to.”

She found herself smiling and felt her shoulders relax. Justin’s voice was soothing, and he was saying all the right things. Danielle, she thought, never did deserve him.

Gracie felt a pang and lowered the phone to her lap and covered the receiver with her hand.

“Danielle,” she said, “maybe this is a really bad idea. It’s not too late to turn around and go back.”

“What? Are you out of your mind? We’re practically there.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” her sister said, tears glinting in her eyes. “We’ve come all this way to see Justin, and I’m going to see Justin.”

And Gracie realized Danielle wasn’t oblivious after all. She
knew
. She just couldn’t accept it and probably thought she could talk him out of it. And maybe, Gracie conceded, that would happen. Danielle could be very persuasive, especially with boys.

Gracie raised the phone. “Okay,” she said, “what do we do when we get to Laurel?”

Danielle let go of the wheel, pumped her fist in the air, and shouted,
“Yes!”

13.

6:38
P.M.
, Tuesday, November 20

T
HE
L
IZARD
K
ING
LOOKED AHEAD
and to the left on the highway and saw the familiar halo of the inferno lighting up the misty sky—the refinery on the outskirts of Laurel. Rolls of steam lit by flames from the flare stacks hung low to the ground in the low pressure and mist, making the facility look otherworldly.

It fit his mood. He was locked in, engaged. His rage had receded into a dark steel box in the back of his mind to be unleashed later.

Since the red Ford had passed him a few miles before, he’d pushed his Peterbilt hard on the flat, keeping his eyes out for the two little taillights. He’d passed several other cars and trucks, and he was surprised he hadn’t yet caught up with the Colorado girls. He kept thinking of the dark-haired one and the way she’d sneered at him. Thinking of that full red mouth and that glimpse of white teeth.

How the boys must like her, he thought. She was one of
those
 … filled with attitude and always flipping her hair around. It was always gratifying, he thought, how quickly their attitudes changed in the right circumstances.

*   *   *

Part of his ritual with the lot lizards, usually toward the end, was to ask them, “Tell me what you were like in high school?” He made them re-create those years, even to the point of describing what they wore and who they hung with. Most of them had never graduated, but a few had. And most of them had been druggies and losers. A number of whores couldn’t even recall the details.

But there were a few—he thought specifically of that redhead from Amarillo with the butterfly tats—who could recall high school with clarity and fondness. She told him how she bounced between the cheerleading crowd and the heavy metal drug crowd. How she’d gone to three of four proms but skipped the last one because by then she was into meth and goth. How she’d barely graduated and gotten hooked up with older men who didn’t look out for her best interests. But he didn’t care about what she’d become—it was obvious. He pressed her for details of her first three years. As long as she was talking, he kept her around. She admitted, finally, she’d probably been too cruel to some of the boys who weren’t good-looking or athletes. When he asked her if she regretted the way she’d been, she didn’t comprehend the question.

Then he ended it.

She had been his favorite so far.

*   *   *

Two things would ruin his night, he thought. The Colorado girls could just keep going past Laurel until they were slowed down by troopers enforcing the roadblock. There they’d sit with dozens of other vehicles with more stacking up behind them. It could be hours, and there would be too many eyes.

They could also turn off the highway before they got to where the crash was located. Maybe to get gas, maybe to get some food or directions. Either way, he’d probably lose them.

Or …

Far up ahead, in the fused ambient light of the mist from the Laurel refinery, he saw the red Ford. The girls were easing over to the right with the turn signal blinking.

He felt a charge of electricity shoot through him.
The Colorado girls knew the way around the roadblock.
There was still a chance their destination was this way, maybe Red Lodge, but he’d bet dollars to donuts they’d be taking the same route he intended to take—over the Beartooth Highway, into Yellowstone, out Mammoth, and toward Livingston to get back on the interstate.

The Lizard King eased off the pedal and downshifted to slow down the truck. He didn’t want to get close enough that they’d know he was still with them. He pulled over onto the shoulder and doused his headlights after he braked the truck to a stop. Good thing, too, because the Colorado girls had stopped as well.

He didn’t hit his emergency flashers because he didn’t want them to see him. The big rig sat still in the dark on the side of the highway, lights out, steaming and rumbling in the cold night.

The body of the lot lizard was surprisingly light. He hefted it back onto the bunk and secured it with long strips of tape. Just to make sure, he pressed his palm against the plastic sheeting where her mouth was. No warmth. No reaction. The body was already stiffening up. He wondered if bodies stiffened quicker when there was no meat on them.

*   *   *

He found his binoculars in a side pocket on his door and sat back in the driver’s seat and brought them up as the dome light of the Ford went on and the dark-haired passenger got out. He focused on her as she opened the trunk and was rewarded with a fine view of her heart-shaped ass that sent a tingle down his inner thighs. She found whatever she was looking for, slammed the trunk lid, and climbed back into the car. He waited until the Ford’s brake lights flashed and it started up the off-ramp to Laurel before lowering the glasses and reaching for the gearshift. He held in place until they were moving again.

As he climbed through the gears and rolled past the refinery he placed two calls from his cell phone. The first was to his dispatcher. He held the phone away from his ear until her railing subsided and then raised it back up.

“I told you,” he said, “Your Qualcomm unit is acting up, just like before. It ain’t my fault you installed a defective unit.”

“I still can’t find you,” she said. Her name was Yvonne and she was a bleached-blond fatty with moles on the folds of her neck. Like all dispatchers, she thought she was God.

“I told you,” he said, “I’m sitting in traffic outside of Park City. The state patrol has the roads shut down and I don’t know how long I’ll be sitting here before they let us go.”

Yvonne started screeching about his failure to call her sooner or she could have
told
him about the accident. That it could be hours before they’d open the interstate again.

“What do you care?” he said. “I’m half empty and every delivery was on schedule. I’m on my own time now.”

“You know you need to come into the office,” she said contemptuously, and he hoped no other truckers were listening in. “You’ve got a month’s worth of logs and receipts to turn in. DOT wants an audit on all our drivers like I told you weeks ago.”

“Screw ’em,” he said. Nearly adding,
Screw you, too.

The Lizard King was an independent contractor, although it didn’t ever seem like it. The trucking company he was signed on with took 15 percent of every payday in exchange for brokering trips and administration. Between his company, the state regulations and rules, and the ever-growing federal regulations and mandates, it seemed like there was a conspiracy to throw every long-haul trucker off the road. There was the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Safety Measurement System (CSA scores), random drug testing, rising fuel costs …

He pressed the phone against his groin so she could talk to his genitals.

Finally, he said, “I’ll call tomorrow after I get some sleep.”

“You need to get that Qualcomm looked at—”

He punched off.

*   *   *

Then he made another call as he exited the ramp. The Ford was a long way ahead but he could see the lights. It didn’t turn at Laurel, which meant they were headed for the Beartooth Pass. As it rang, he could imagine her cursing, pushing away her lap blanket, and struggling to get up to answer the phone. He could see her two large hands folding over the grips on the walker like reptilian claws and the lenses of her steel-framed glasses winking in the reflected light from the television screen. Her massive thighs rubbing together as she moved, those fat white cylinder-like ankles pinched into dirty shoes …

Just picturing her as she grunted and shuffled in that close house with dark paneling that smelled of stale cabbage and bacon and rotten garbage made the bile rise in his throat.

14.

7:32
P.M.
, Tuesday, November 20

D
ANIELLE AND
G
RACIE
were in Yellowstone and it was spooky. The roads were fine—no snow—but it was oppressively dark and it seemed like someone had flipped a switch and turned out all the lights. The sky was clear and it had stopped raining but the only illumination came from a thin sliver of moon and the gauzy, ghostly wash of a million stars that seemed close, as if tamped down by an unseen hand from above. The road was banked with walls of thick black pines that occasionally opened up to reveal grassy meadows. Although the tires hummed on the pavement, Gracie got a sense of immense quiet all around them. They’d encountered no oncoming cars since they’d entered the park out of Silver Gate, a tiny and sleepy town where the only human activity existed around a couple of bars.