Road Kill - Part 2: Dark Deeds at the Rest Area

After the other two girls, Tina and Nikki left to find the phone, Everett made quick work of collapsing the table into a bed. He pulled out some blankets he had stored in the cabinet above and laid them out for her. And the whole time, he watched Misty carefully.

Misty Pierce wasn’t Everett’s target.

After he found out about the trip to Panama City, he’d started studying her carefully. She was a C student whose only extra-curricular activities were Majorettes during football season and symphonic band the rest of the time. She lived with her alcoholic, divorced mother who spent most of her time either chasing men or a buzz. She was basically a shy girl – too afraid to do anything terribly outlandish.

She was pretty. She had long, straight red hair that she wore in a ponytail at school and straight down at home.

The only bad thing that Everett had seen about her was that she had a thing going on behind the scenes with Nikki’s boyfriend. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing seeing as how Nikki was an awful, rude girl.

"Anything else you need?"

She smiled. "Thank you sir."

"Call me Everett."

He eyed the bed as if to make sure everything was in order.

"Oh, a pillow," he said. He reached up into the cabinet and placed his hand on what he was really after. He quickly cocked the crossbow pistol that he’d bought online for a hundred dollars, loaded it with a bolt and pointed it at her.

Misty was busy looking at the bed and didn’t spot him at first.

When she did look up the whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion. First, she gave him a grimace of confusion as she tried to figure out what he was pointing at her, and then there was a look of horror as he pulled the trigger and the bolt shot straight through her heart.

She stared at him for a moment with disbelief, and then she looked down at her chest and realized that there was a hole in her blue tank top quickly turning red with blood.

She looked up to him and opened her mouth as if to say something, but she had no air. In thirty seconds, she was dead and on the floor.

Everett worked quickly. He replaced the crossbow pistol in the cabinet and brought out two specially-cut tarps, laid the first over the blanket he’d placed across the bed, picked up the body and arranged her in a more-or-less fetal position and placed the second tarp over her. Then he stretched another blanket over the top of her to cover the tarps.

He pulled a sponge and a bottle of Fantastic from beneath the sink and quickly cleaned up the blood spatter, washed his hands and then looked back over his work. The only error was that Misty was still staring wide-eyed at the wall.

He wrapped his hand in a handkerchief and closed her eyes. Then he pulled two other items from the drawer beside the propane stove, a syringe full of his own special concoction and his .44 magnum just in case. Then he shut off the lights and stepped out.

* * * *

Nikki slammed the phone down on the receiver and glared at Tina.

"He’s not accepting the charges. What the hell is wrong with him?"

Tina shook her head. "Try again. I’m going to the bathroom. If your dad doesn’t accept the charges by the time I get out, I’ll call my dad."

"But we’ll get in trouble."

Tina shrugged. "We can’t stay here."

The door opened and Everett Burns stepped in out of the rain.

"I’ll be right back," Tina said and started for the bathroom.

Everett approached her and eyed her sternly.

"Is everything alright?"

Nikki sighed hard. "My Dad’s not accepting the charges."

Everett shook his head, and looked down. "Try calling him the normal way. Surely he’ll pick up then."

"I don’t have any change."

Everett reached into his pocket and pulled out two quarters.

She eyed him and took the quarters from his hand. "Thanks."

"Where’s the other girl?"

She motioned across the brown-tiled hallway past the maple shelves of tourist pamphlets to the restrooms.

Everett nodded.

She turned and inserted the quarters into the payphone, but just as she was about to dial the number. She felt a sharp sting on her neck. Her right hand followed the pain. She found something hard and plastic protruding from her neck.

She felt tired all of a sudden.

She turned and looked to see what had happened and saw Everett standing behind her pressing something against her neck.

She opened her mouth to protest but discovered quickly that she had no energy.

She was very tired all of a sudden.

So Profoundly Tired.

* * * *

Tina hated public toilets.

Images of various venereal diseases from the slide shows in her sophomore health class always reeled through her mind.

She carefully lined the toilet seat with strips of toilet paper, dropped her shorts and squatted just short of sitting on the toilet seat.

Then she relaxed.

Then came the familiar warm and tingling sensation of the urine leaving her body.

But something was wrong.

She felt the burning of eyes upon her.

She tensed and broke off the stream listening hard.

"Nikki?" she called – her voice echoing profusely off the brown-tiled walls.

No answer.

"Is someone there?" she repeated.

Again, only the echo of her voice responded.

She sighed and relaxed again. The tingling of the urine resumed.

Two hard hands shot out from under the stall to her right, grasped her legs, and yanked.

Her head crashed against the left side of the stall, and her right shoulder thudded into the floor.

Pee sprayed down the side of her leg and puddled on the tile.

She kicked as hard as she could but her attacker was much stronger.

He pulled her into the stall to her right, and to her horror, she found Everett Burns, their good Samaritan, on top of her grasping for her throat.

She slapped at his face knocking his hat and glasses from his head. His head beneath was perfectly bald, and without the glasses and hat, he looked much younger. Perhaps only in his early forties.

She kneed him in the groin, but this only seemed to excite him more. He dug his knees into her thighs.

She clawed frantically at his face.

He grasped her wrists and forced her hands to the ground.

"HELP!" she screamed.

He smiled almost whimsically. "Make as much noise as you want, there’s no one around to hear you."

"RAPE," she cried.

Everett smirked. "Don’t flatter yourself."

"NIKKI?"

He shook his head.

"She’s a little out of it."

Tina spat in his face.

He shook his head slowly.

"This would be over quickly if you’d just relax."

She pulled her right hand free and clawed after Everett’s eyes. Everett released her other hand, grasped her right hand by the wrist and twisted hard sending sharp bolts of pain through her shoulder. Then he grasped a handful of her hair and slammed her head as hard as he could into the brown tile.

Pain shot through her head.

He slammed her head into the floor again. This time, a loud crack took her out of consciousness.

* * * *

Everett rose up from Tina slowly and stared at her. He had not intended to take her down last. She was the smartest of the three – a straight A student.

She was not his original target either, but he’d started watching her after he discovered the trip to Panama City.

Tina was an interesting case even though she was not his type. She lived at home with her upper-middle-class family. Her father was a successful car salesman and her mother was a graphic artist who worked for a marketing firm.

She had concerned him at several points in his plan. Tina had three older brothers, and her father was a used car salesman. He had no way of knowing how much she knew about cars – if she would spot the disconnected hot wire to the alternator on Nikki’s car.

Also, Tina’s spot on the Varsity Cheerleading team was the exception rather than the rule. She wasn’t a girly-girl. She wasn’t drop dead gorgeous like Nikki but she was strong and athletic. Her other extra-curricular activities included girls soccer, (strong legs), Varsity girls Basketball, (quick running and agility), and Girls Softball, (good hand-eye coordination).

He had known she was going to be a fight.

It would have been better to just shoot her. Unfortunately, guns have to be the last resort. They kill quickly, but they’re noisy and messy.

He caught his breath, and then he quickly set about the task of lifting Tina back up onto the toilet as best he could. Then he wiped the blood and pee off the floor and flushed the evidence. Once he’d finished, he stepped over to the sink and washed the blood off his hands, and then he retrieved his glasses from the floor and inspected them.

Not the least bit out of shape.

He smiled.

That’s why he’d chosen the Flexon frames.

He replaced his wet hat on his head, and walked quickly out of the women’s restroom, around the corner and past the payphones where Nikki was propped up on a maple bench appearing asleep rather than unconscious.

He had to work quickly now.

Most people didn’t frequent rest stops now, but there was still the occasional truck driver or tourist. He couldn’t risk any exposure.

He walked out into the night.

The rain had intensified.

As he approached his Winnebago, a white and blue police cruiser pulled into the parking lot and slowed to a stop.

He forced himself to slow down.

He willed his heart rate to drop as he always did when he was in trouble.

The police spotlight was upon him.

He stopped and turned toward the light.

"It’s a bit late, isn’t it?" the officer said from within the car.

He walked around to the driver’s side.

"It’s nasty out here. I’m on an all-night trip to visit my grandkids in Pensacola. I just pulled off the road to give the rain a chance to let up."

The officer, a clean-shaven Deputy-Sheriff who looked young enough to be his son eyed him suspiciously.

"Anyone else with you?"

"Just me," he responded.

The officer nodded. "Do you have some ID on you?"

"Sure," he said.

But it was out of hand now. He reached under his poncho and into the pocket of his sweatshirt – a gray sweatshirt he’d bought at Wal-Mart two days ago for this very expedition.

His hand found the butt of his .44 and closed around it. He flipped off the safety with his thumb and aimed as best he could for the officer’s head.

The shot sounded so abruptly that it almost frightened him. The force of the bullet shredded his poncho to ribbons. The officer’s left eye exploded and brain matter shot out all over the gray headrest.

The cop immediately went into convulsions, and his foot slipped off the brakes. The car started rolling forward.

Everett quickly ripped the door of the cruiser open and stomped on the brakes, and then he pushed the gear selector into park.

He pulled out the handkerchief from his jeans pocket and wiped down the gear selector, and then he shut the door of the cruiser and wiped down the door.

His original intention was to sterilize the Rest Area – to leave no evidence that he or the girls had ever been there, but he didn’t have time now.

He had to wipe down anything he touched get the bodies and leave. He had no way of knowing how long it would be until someone came looking for the cop he’d just shot.

(Part 3: Breakfast in the Okefenokee Swamp coming soon)