Winter's Journey Read online

  Chapter 5

  LORETTA LEFT HER PURSE locked in the truck, stuffing her keys, wallet, and cash into her coat pocket. She hated lugging a purse around. It was easier to carry what she needed.

  They strolled between a state trooper car and a local police car in the parking lot. She caught the guarded look Sam gave the vehicles. He acted as jumpy as a rabbit on hot tar, and he didn’t bother to take her hand this time.

  The rain slaked off as they approached the diner, but the night was freezing, the air an invisible barrier of ice particles. She could see her breath. The roads were getting slicker every hour and she could smell snow in the air. It was coming. She entered the diner with bright lights and laughing people and her cheeks tingled with the warmth.

  The joint was a classic trucker’s haven, wall-to-wall with rough-looking types from the road. Bikers with long hair and earrings, and truckers in cowboy hats and muddy boots sat side by side at scarred wooden tables with aged Formica tops. Loretta stepped across the wet dirty floor to search for an empty booth.

  The place was dingy but busy, a place where things could get rough if it was late enough and enough beer had been served. She’d been in a hundred places just like it, but this diner advertised real home-cooked food. Waitresses bustled from customer to customer with heavy trays of fried chicken and steaming hamburgers that smelled as good as they looked.

  The neon lit jukebox had been knobbed down to a drone and an old Johnny Cash song was playing. A couple of people danced on a tiny empty area in the corner. Loretta squeezed past a table where a state trooper in a drab brown uniform quietly conversed with a local police officer in blue. They must have been the owners of the squad cars. The local cop was small and wiry with dark curly hair and a mustache. He bit into a chicken leg and shook his head at something the state trooper said.

  The trooper glanced up as they went by; his penetrating and shrewd gaze belied his looks. He was heavy with a day-old beard on his chubby face. His brown uniform was wrinkled and dappled with wet spots. He must have come in moments before Loretta and Sam. There wasn’t even a cup of coffee in front of him yet. She could feel his eyes on her back as she and Sam slid into the adjoining booth. The police officers made her nervous, but she picked the table next to them on purpose hoping to eavesdrop a bit. She had the hunch they were looking for someone.

  She considered reporting that tailgating trucker to them but was wary of putting Sam in line of their radar until she had a chance to clear things up with him. Besides, the Freightliner hadn’t actually done anything to her. It hadn’t damaged her rig or caused her to crash. She should chalk it up to a case of random road rage and let it go. Perhaps she’d somehow made the other guy angry without knowing it? Maybe she’d cut him off or crowded him somehow and gave him a reason to be mad. It could have happened.

  Without the license number there wasn’t much the police could do to find it, anyway. There were hundreds of such trucks on the road. She’d look silly reporting it.

  When a lull in the rain came, Sam went outside again, concerned about checking something on the truck. “I won’t be long. Would you order coffee for me, please?”

  “Okay.” Loretta, lounging back in the dimness of the booth, watched Sam walk away, detouring as far around the cops as he could get. Again she had a weird impression. Was Sam hiding from them? Was that why he’d made a lame excuse and left?

  Gosh, she hoped he was coming back.

  But she was grateful to be alone for a bit so she could mull over how to bring up the trucker’s killing to Sam. How could she present her fears without making a fool of herself or, if Sam by some cruel twist of fate was the one who’d disposed of that trucker, putting herself in danger? Again she chided herself for being paranoid. She wasn’t sure how she’d handle it, but something would come to her.

  She would hate to leave Sam behind for a lot of reasons, yet she’d do it if she had to. Her safety was more important than the stirrings of attachment she was feeling.

  She ordered their coffee and, setting all her misgivings aside, used her cell phone and tried to call Tessa. The connection was weak but adequate, and Tessa was happy to hear from her. Loretta pretended to be optimistic and made small chitchat about her trip. She and her daughter had talked only a few minutes when their reception began to cut in and out. Loretta said goodbye and Sam had still not returned to the table.

  She battled exhaustion as she waited for him and eavesdropped on the cops’ conversation behind her. The state trooper answered a call on his cell phone. She could hear his curt one-sided responses.

  “Jesus, not another one? Yes, I’m leaving now. I’ll report in once I get there.” The officer ended the call and stood up. She wasn’t looking his way but heard his leather gun belt creak and his tired sigh. “Looks like I’m not going to get that cup of coffee,” he complained to his friend.

  “That’s the job, Sergeant. We’re always in a hurry, always leaving the table before we’re done, hungry or not. Better luck next time,” the local officer replied in a sympathetic tone.

  “Yeah, yeah. You say that over a finished meal. You dog.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Their voices hushed and she strained to separate their words from the background noise and the sudden pounding of her heart. The standing officer was speaking again. “Rest stop back on eighty-six, two bodies found in a Volvo Semi, throats slashed, similar to that I-55 trucker. They want me there pronto. You want to tag along?”

  “Sorry, Sergeant, that’s out of my jurisdiction,” the local officer replied. “If I was going off duty I might come along, but I have another two hours before my shift’s done. I’ll see you tomorrow and you can give me the grisly details.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I wish you were on this case instead of me, Hayden. It’s getting too weird. That trucker at the I-55 and now this. No apparent motives. Nothing stolen. No evidence left behind whatsoever. This is the work of a serial sicko if you ask me. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Loretta gripped the edge of the table, trying to catch her breath.

  Two more murders! A serial killer. Oh, no.

  The rest stop on eighty-six was the same one Sam and she had been at earlier. Loretta remembered the red Volvo Semi with the open door. She frantically tried to make excuses, but she knew the odds of being at the scene of two related crimes in two days had to be infinitesimally small. What did it mean?

  That Sam could be a killer.

  You should run away now, Loretta. Get up, go out the door and drive off before Sam gets back. Leave him behind along with your fears that he’s the murderer.

  Yet doubts filled her. They’d only been apart as long as she’d been in the bathroom and that hadn’t been more than fifteen minutes. Was that enough time to kill two people? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know.

  But why would Sam kill anyone? It made no sense. Only a deranged maniac would kill complete strangers like that. Only a deranged maniac.

  The state trooper left and, stealing a peek, Loretta saw him push through the crowd toward the front of the diner.

  She looked at the door. Sam would return any second. What was she going to do? She desperately wanted to talk to the trooper about the murders and try to get some information that would help her to decide. The officer would know more about the crimes than she did.

  She was frozen like a bug in an ice cube. Her head warred with her heart. Was it worth it to be so wrong about Sam when being wrong could risk her life? What if Sam were a killer? Then why hadn’t he killed her, too? Unless he needed her and her truck to get away. What would happen when he no longer needed her? She didn’t dwell on that possibility.

  Her eyes followed the state trooper as he halted at the cash register and spoke to a man in a stained apron who probably ran or owned the diner. The man’s face clouded up and his friendly grin faded as the trooper grabbed a wet rain slicker off a wall of other coats and fled. The diner’s owner knew about the new murders now, too.

  The
man in the apron hurried over to a waitress serving coffee to a bearded guy in a plaid shirt. The three of them huddled together, whispering.

  At a nearby table, a thin woman with dull brown hair and too much make-up asked for more coffee and the waitress with the coffeepot bustled over. The two gossiped as the coffee poured, and after the waitress had gone on to another customer, the thin woman leaned over and yakked excitedly to another woman. There was murder in her eyes.

  The bad news was spreading.

  Loretta was poised to jump up and run to the other cop’s table when she caught sight of Sam working his way to her through the crowd. It was too late. There was no way she could get to the officer and ask for help before Sam got to her. She could run for it, but Sam was only a few feet away. She could see the fake empathy on his face, see his lying eyes above a killer’s smile that she’d been so foolish to mistake as being sexy. She knew that if she tried to run he’d come after her. Maybe he’d even kill her to keep his secrets.

  She slid back down into her seat. Calm down, she told herself, and pretend nothing is wrong. She ordered her body to stop shaking and smiled weakly as Sam reclaimed the seat across from her.

  As she studied him, every look and move he made became sinister. He was a killer all right. Why hadn’t she seen that before?

  “What’s wrong, Loretta?” he asked right off, as sensitive to her mood as he seemed to be to the unrest that brewed around them. It was as if he had a sixth sense for it.

  Or as if he knew something she didn’t.

  She couldn’t lie. The news would soon be all over the diner. He’d hear it if he hadn’t heard about it already. The room was buzzing like a beehive and the panic was spreading. It occurred to Loretta that some of these people might have also known the victims because the trucking world was at times like a small, close-knit family. A lot of people knew each other in one way or another.

  Here goes nothing, she steeled herself and opened her mouth. “There’s been a series of murders in the last two days, Sam. Three truckers have been killed, along the route we’ve been traveling, actually.” She got the words out but her voice cracked and she knew her face was stiff. Things suddenly felt unreal.

  If she wouldn’t have known better, the instant shock Sam showed would have seemed genuine, but she didn’t believe it anymore.

  “There’s been murders?” he breathed as if he hadn’t heard a thing about them until that very second. Good act. “Tell me what you’ve heard.” His fingers surrounded her wrist but his grasp was light.

  She pulled her hand away as gracefully as she could and hid her true emotions. Observing his reactions carefully, she told him everything she knew...well, almost everything.

  If he was the killer he was an expert at concealing it. She couldn’t tell if he was guilty or not. There wasn’t a clue in his behavior to tip her off one way or another.

  Other than his eyes. He nervously observed the people around them and stared through the gloomy windows out into the night as if he was scared of something out there. The rain was falling again, laced with ice, and more forceful than before. It slammed against the frosted windowpanes and gushed down the outside in streaming torrents. For some reason, it made her think of building an ark.

  “Sounds like everyone knows about these killings already, don’t they?” Sam commented hoarsely and avoided her gaze.

  The bearded guy in the plaid shirt approached the local police officer. The two were having a heated discussion and from what Loretta could overhear it was about the murders. The bearded guy was upset.

  Sam touched her hand again tenderly, slid his fingers to her fingertips and held on. She was afraid to pull away. He already knew something was wrong. “We’re going to have to be careful, Loretta, with a serial killer out there dogging our wheels. From now on I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  Loretta looked up into his worried eyes and bobbed her head. All she could think about was that he could be a serial killer, which meant he could kill again. On the other hand, if Sam wasn’t the murderer, they could both be targets. She was a trucker and so was Sam.

  “Who’d want to kill truckers, Sam? Most of us don’t have much money. We do our job and mind our own business.”

  “I don’t know. Who knows why killers do what they do. I only know I’m frightened for both of us. Are you okay? There’s something else, isn’t there? There has been since this morning. Please talk to me.”

  She had to think fast. She had to tell him everything. Now. She couldn’t. She was afraid and, glancing over at the cop, wondered if she’d need the police for protection. Sam followed her gaze. The second cop was getting up and was preparing to go.

  She didn’t have much time and needed a distraction.

  As Sam was busy watching the police officer leave, she snatched a handful of sugar packets from the ceramic holder on the table and silently dropped them to the floor, moving her body and feet to cover the noise.

  “We’re out of sugar, Sam, and we need it for the coffee. I’ll get us some.” She slipped out of the booth and practically ran toward the local cop now standing before the cash register, nearly knocking over the burly trucker in the plaid shirt who was rising from his chair.

  Too late Loretta realized the officer was heading in the direction of the restrooms and not the exit, and she detoured to the checkout counter as if she were going to ask for more sugar. Perhaps she could get outside and wait at the cop’s squad car? She wavered. Sam was watching her from the booth with a brooding look on his face.

  The man she’d almost collided with was behind her in line and purposely bumped into her. Taking her arm, he said, “Hey, anybody ever tell you you’re real pretty, Miss?” He gave her a friendly wink. “You married?”

  “No, I’m a widow.” She hadn’t meant her words to come out as sharply as they did, but she was flustered. She only wanted to get away and now some man was trying to keep her from the door. “Excuse me,” she whispered, “I was just on my way out. Please let me by.”

  The man holding her arm was four inches taller and wider than she was, a good decade older, and his plaid shirt was green and red. Christmas early. His eyes were gray and covered with bushy eyebrows; his face was pudgy. He seemed like a nice man, but persistent.

  “You alone?” he pressed, ignoring her request. His hand fell away from her arm, but he wouldn’t let her pass.

  She knew he was just being friendly, but she was in no mood for it. He’d gone too far when he put his hand on her. What was it with her and men lately? Had she turned into a man magnet or something? She was trying not to call attention to them so Sam wouldn’t see.

  “No, I’m not alone,” she added softly as if it were a secret between them. She was fighting desperation, and it was winning. “It was nice meeting you, but now I have to go.”

  The man looked at her. “I’m sorry, but with that strawberry hair of yours and those green eyes you remind me of my first wife, Delores. She had red hair, too. I loved that woman but she ran off with a salesman who was trying to sell her home art lessons. She said I was on the road too much; her leaving broke my heart. Today would have been our fifteenth wedding anniversary, and I guess I’m missing her. I heard she died last month of pneumonia. It’s eerie. You could be her twin. I had to say something to you.”

  Alison Krause’s “Ghost In This House” crooned out of the jukebox and his eyes were sad. “In honor of the occasion and that you look so like her, before you go, how about a quick dance? You can’t be in that much of a hurry. What do you say?”

  She felt sorry for the man but she couldn’t dance with him. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. Some other time perhaps?”

  “Just a few turns around the dance floor? I won’t keep you long. Seeing you and remembering the way I once loved Delores brought all the bad and good times back to me. Please?”

  She made the mistake of wavering a moment and that was all it took.

  With a melancholy laugh, and before she knew it, he’d swept he
r to the small spot cleared for dancing. He held her delicately but she couldn’t get away. His cronies at the table laughed, good-naturedly egged him on, and most likely made bets on how long it would be before she stomped down on his toes and ran away.

  But it was the tears on the man’s face that kept her from doing that. His wife must have really hurt him when she’d left. She’d placate him for a minute or two, then wiggle out of his embrace and get out of there. She was trying not to draw attention to them.

  She pushed away from the man halfway through the sad song. “That’s enough dancing. I’m sorry, I have to go now.” He wouldn’t let go of her hands.

  Then someone tore them apart. Sam.

  The suddenness of the separation sent her reeling backwards. She hit a chair or something and found herself on the floor. When she looked up, Sam’s eyes were a battle and his face was stone. He didn’t resemble her Sam at all.

  “The lady said she didn’t want to dance, partner,” Sam spoke in a restrained voice and shoved the other man away. He pushed too hard, and like her, the trucker stumbled against a nearby table and also landed on the floor. His friends hooted and his face filled with anger.

  Uh, oh.

  The trucker scrambled to his feet and retaliated with indignation. “Why’d you do that for? I didn’t mean her any harm. She reminded me of my ex-wife and all I wanted was a dance in memory of her. That’s all, friend. Is she your woman or something?”

  “Something like that. She’s my driving partner. You had your hands on her and she didn’t want them on her.”

  “It’s okay, Sam.” From the floor she attempted to defuse the episode, which was quickly getting out of hand.

  “It’s not okay, Loretta. He put his hands on you.” The wrath still sparked in Sam’s eyes and it was growing.

  Loretta got to her feet and inched away. She was frightened by the look of uncontrolled rage on Sam’s flushed face. His fists were clenched knuckle-white at his side. What else would that rage allow him to do...kill someone?