The Highway (23 page)

“That should be enough time,” Legerski said.

“So what are you going to do?”

Legerski turned from him and fixed on something in the dark outside the windshield. “I’m going to work it from the inside,” he said softly. “I’m going to stay on top of everything that’s going on by making sure I’m in the middle of it. I’m going to take control, because that’s what I do and that’s what I’m good at. I can take this thing to dead-end after dead-end until there’s no place else to go. The case will probably stay open for years, but there’s no way they’ll ever close it. I’ll make sure it gets tied up into knots.”

“You can do that?”

“Hell, yes. I’ve already gotten rid of the only real threat. If someone follows up they won’t have that crazy look in their eyes. We’re dealing with the typical nine-to-fivers here and they don’t have anything to go on.”

Pergram tried to think like a cop, now that he was more relaxed. “But instead of two missing girls we’ve now got a missing cop, too.”

“Ex-cop,” the trooper said. “And no one can ever determine where the girls went missing unless you fucked something up somewhere. They could have disappeared in Yellowstone, or Wyoming, or Idaho. No one knows where they ended up, right? You didn’t fuck anything up?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, his mind spinning, recalling everything that had transpired.

“Then all they’ve got is a suspended alcoholic who drove down here in the middle of the night and never came back. No one saw him except you, me, and Jimmy. They sure as hell won’t find his vehicle. How are they going to figure that one out? Especially if the lead investigator on the highway—me—gently steers them to where there’s nothing to go on?”

Pergram nodded. He got it. Legerski was way out ahead of him already. So far ahead, Pergram thought, that he’d probably already figured out how to throw him under the bus. Except …

“What about Jimmy?”

“We can trust Jimmy.”

“Can we?”

“Yeah,” Legerski said softly, “I’ll make sure Jimmy is no problem.”

He said it in a way that gave Pergram confidence.

“What about the gimp?” he said. “She’s probably running her mouth and scaring the shit out of those new girls. She’ll have them wanting to die before we get to them.”

Legerski nodded, agreeing. “You take care of her.”

“When? Tonight?”

“How long do you want her to keep talking?”

Pergram saw the logic in it. “I’ll never get to sleep,” he said, moaning.

“Neither will I,” the trooper said, gesturing to the phone.

“I need to get all the texts and e-mails off of it so I know what she knows and who I’m dealing with. Then I’ll flush the SIM card and trash the phone. There won’t be a trace of Cody Hoyt to be found. Believe me, I know how to do this.”

The Lizard King nodded. Then, softening his voice, “We could go to the basement now and see how those girls are doing. Before the sun comes up and things start happening.”

Legerski started to object, but caught himself. He seemed to be considering the idea. Pergram felt buoyed.

At that second, the phone in Legerski’s hand lit up and a text message chimed. He looked at it and spat a curse, then turned it toward Pergram.

It read,
CASSIE: I’M ON MY WAY
.

28.

4:56
A.M.
, Wednesday, November 21

“D
O YOU KNOW
what time it is? What day, even?” Gracie asked Danielle.

“I’m not sure,” Danielle said in a soft, slurred voice.

“He took our phones.”

“Yeah.”

Danielle had awakened an hour before and had been sick to her stomach, like Gracie had been. Gracie had cradled her sister, supporting her, while she threw up in the far corner of the room. There was nothing to clean up the mess, though, and the stagnant air was sour.

There was no light and no seepage in the walls to indicate whether it was morning or night. Gracie had become used to the gloom. The single space heater hummed and glowed orange, creating long dark shadows. It didn’t throw out enough light to illuminate the corners of the room but, like an open fire, it had become the center of their world and she found herself staring at it; thin red coils stretching from left to right, the warm air pushed out by a tiny humming fan. Gracie and Danielle sat cross-legged a few feet from the heater, which was positioned next to the ragged woman. She didn’t give any indication that she planned to move from her spot. The concrete beneath them never really warmed up. They shared a thin blanket. Gracie found herself constantly shifting her position as her buttocks and legs got cold. The blanket was too short to double over so both of them could sit on it, and cold seeped through the fabric.

Danielle slumped forward with her arms wrapped around her knees and stared straight ahead. Her face was slack and her mouth was parted. When Gracie reached over and turned her sister’s face toward her, Danielle’s eyes looked frightening—as if there was nothing behind them. And her sister didn’t resist Gracie’s gesture, or blink.

“Danielle?”

No response.

“
Danielle.
”

Danielle leaned back and pulled away. Her sister had always been annoying, but in a superconfident, bubbly way. She’d never seen her like this, even in Yellowstone.

Gracie closed her eyes. The situation they were in seemed like a horrible dream. Her head was foggy and she didn’t feel fully conscious. She wondered if she were in shock, and she preferred the sense of cushion of unreality to what it must really be like to be half-naked and imprisoned in a dark cold room with a frightening one-legged woman.

“I feel sick,” Danielle said, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand. “I feel like I could throw up again.” She shot a glance over her shoulder toward the dark corner.

“Try to hold it,” the woman said. “It reeks enough in here as it is.”

The woman’s voice was grating; scratchy and louder than necessary in the small room, as if she could only speak at one level: annoying. It was the kind of harsh voice that penetrated walls.

“Do
you
know what time it is?” Gracie asked her.

The woman snorted. “You lose track after a while when it’s dark all the time. I don’t have a fucking clue.”

“I’m worried about my sister,” Gracie confessed.

“She’s sick because of the roofies,” the woman said to Gracie. “They usually inject you with roofies. You’ll both be feeling it for a while. My advice is to enjoy it while you can.”

When the woman spoke, her face seemed to collapse in on itself because of her missing teeth.

Gracie nodded, remembering the driver leaning into the car with the needle. Feeling the sharp pain of the needle prick.

“You know,” the woman said, “the date rape drug.”

Gracie nodded, unsure. She feared with Danielle it was something much worse.

Gracie said,
“They?”

“What?” the woman asked.

Danielle looked over, confused.

“You said
they.
We only saw one guy, the truck driver. Are you saying there’s more than him?” The idea terrified her. Not just that there was more than one, but that what the woman suggested was that they were organized. That this wasn’t a first-time thing. That Danielle and her and the woman weren’t the first victims. This room, this terrible place, was a victim
factory.

No, Gracie almost yelled out. She couldn’t let it happen to her and her sister. She’d step up and figure out a way to fight back. First, though, she needed more information in order to help form a plan.

“What’s your name?” Gracie asked the woman, taking her off guard.

“What’s your’n?” the woman asked back, cocking her head suspiciously.

“I’m Gracie Sullivan. This is my sister, Danielle.”

“She don’t say much.”

“That isn’t normal, believe me.”

“Danielle and Gracie,” the woman repeated, trying the names out as if they were a foreign language. “I’m Krystyl. That’s spelled K-R-Y-S-T-Y-L. It’s the second
y
that fucks people up. Krystyl Meecham. I go by my given name, not the name of the asshole I used to be married to.”

Gracie nodded. She’d never met a real person named Krystyl, and thought if she ever did she would probably look like the skeletal one-legged woman a few feet away. But she didn’t say anything, and wanted to get the conversation back to where she’d left it.

“I’m from Salt Lake,” Krystyl said. “Originally. That’s where my family is from. My dad used to say we’re just a tribe of wild-ass redneck jack-Mormons who wouldn’t come to no good. I guess you could look at me and say he was right.”

“You said they,” Gracie prompted.

“Yeah,” Krystyl said, screwing up her face in obvious revulsion. “There’s two of them most of the time, but sometimes there’s three. All of ’em are repulsive fuckers.”

Gracie felt a chill run up her back and it wasn’t from the cold room.

“What … what do they do?” Gracie asked in a whisper.

She couldn’t tell if Krystyl was smiling or grimacing when she said, “What don’t they do? Whatever they can think of. Whatever they want to. You’re just a piece of meat and they do whatever.”

Krystyl sighed and readjusted herself and leaned forward. When she did her body blocked half of the grille panel of the space heater and Gracie felt the absence of heat immediately. “They ream you everywhere. They make you bleed and then they yell at you for bleeding. They put things into you they brought along with them. They’ll laugh and make you feel like a piece of trash until you beg them to just kill you. And they got a camera. They play to the camera.”

Gracie thought Krystyl sounded almost perversely pleased to tell them, and she was physically repelled. Krystyl seemed to have accepted her fate. Gracie couldn’t conceive of giving in.

“I got to admit,” Krystyl said, “I just shut myself off now. I don’t think about what they’re doing to me and I try to think of something nice. I let my mind go far away. Dad used to take us fishing for catfish. I didn’t like it much but that’s what I think about while they’re goin’ at it. Another time and place.”

“Jesus,” Gracie gasped, tears welling in her eyes. She turned to Danielle, horrified. Her sister would likely get the worst of it. But Danielle didn’t seem to understand the conversation.

“Danielle,” Gracie said, “Please
talk
to me?”

Her sister didn’t respond.

Krystyl said, “Maybe they’ll be nicer to you girls. You’re all young and tight and I guess they’d like that. Me, I’m a hag. I wasn’t always this bad but they made me worse. When you get treated like an animal you turn into one, and I’m no better than a fucking animal to them. Or to me.” Strangely, she cackled at that.

“How long have you been here?” Gracie asked.

“Fuck if I know,” Krystyl said, “Couple weeks, I guess. Longer, maybe.”

“Were there others?”

Krystyl cackled again. “Look at the walls, see the scratch marks? See the blood all over the walls and the floors? There have been plenty of others. I met one of ’em when I first got here. Her name was Bonnie. She was from Oregon somewhere, and she was a bitch on wheels. A real nutcase, but maybe she was because of what they done to her.”

Krystyl shook her head and coughed. “I think she was sort of getting used to them, kind of looking forward to them coming to get her. She acted kind of possessive toward me, like I was the other woman or something. Like I was here to break them up. They put us together once and it was a disaster, so they got rid of her.”

“What do you mean?” Gracie asked.

“One of ’em just took a gun and popped her in the back of the head. Right there in front of me. I ain’t never seen something like that before.

“Now I’ve been thinking they’re getting tired of me. They’d rather use me as a fuckin’ punching bag than anything else anymore. But I figured they might keep me around until they could get some fresh meat. And it looks like they did.”

Gracie found it hard to breathe, and she closed her eyes.

“The driver?” Gracie asked.

“Yeah, he’s one of ’em. He likes to be called the Lizard King. I don’t know his real name and I don’t want to know. And don’t ask me who the other two are, I don’t know. All I know is one is big and fat and the other ain’t. You better do whatever they say or they’ll fuck you up.”

“Where are we?” Gracie asked her. She knew the answer would include the word “fuck” since everything else did.

“Fuck if I know.”

“Are we in Montana?”

“It don’t matter, does it? We’re in fucking hell. That could be Montana.”

Gracie scooted herself toward Danielle on the blanket, as much to be closer to her sister as to feel more of the heat from the space heater Krystyl was blocking with her body.

“Where did they grab you?” Gracie asked. “The truck driver, I mean.”

“Outside Gillette, Wyoming,” Krystyl said. “I was workin’ the truck stop servicing drivers…”

And she suddenly stopped speaking and sucked in her breath. Her cheeks went hollow and her eyes bulged.

“What?” Danielle said in sudden terror, but Gracie shushed her. She’d heard it, too. Or felt it. A footfall or thump of some kind outside the room that vibrated through the concrete.

The three of them sat frozen for a moment. A rectangular metal panel slid back on the door revealing a dim wedge of yellow light. Then a pair of eyes filled the wedge for a moment. The man was looking in at them. The slider slammed shut and they heard a jangle of keys outside the solid wood door.

Danielle gasped Gracie by her arm and they scooted back along the floor, legs pumping. They didn’t stop until their backs were flat against the right corner of the room, the corner where Danielle hadn’t gotten sick.

Gracie watched as if in a dream. She was almost beyond terror at this point. The more sounds there were—jangling keys, the thunk of a bolt being thrown back, the aggressive squeak of rusted hinges—the more her mind seemed to check out. It was as if she’d stepped aside into another room to watch herself, like she wasn’t actually there.

The door swung open and someone filled it. Someone large and blocky, like the driver had been, but she was blinded by an intense flashlight beam in her eyes. Because there had been no real light in the room, the beam blinded her fully. She felt Danielle cower next to her, felt her sister pull up her legs and bury her head behind them, sitting in a tight fetal position.