Drive by Sam Kepfield

When you’ve got four cups of coffee under your belt and in your bladder, the mile and odd yards from the green sign proclaiming REST STOP 1 MILE to the urinal takes on a life of its own. I shoulda stopped at the truck stop a few miles back, Paul Griffin thought grouchily. But I’m so pressed for time in this damned weather that I let it go, and now I’m trying to keep from letting it go.

He slowed and turned the Ford Aspire into the rest stop at Mile 265 on Interstate 70 East. He was a few miles east of Salina, Kansas and it was a few minutes past midnight and his eyeballs were turning yellow and his teeth were floating.

To take his mind off his bladder, he cursed the late start that had delayed him. A jury trial for two drug dealers busted a hundred or so miles west on this road turned into a three-day ordeal owing to the attorney for the other dealer. The guy charged ten grand just to look at a case, and obviously though he was getting paid by the word. A ten minute cross dragged on for three hours. Jury instructions, normally a half-hour procedure, took two hours. Both sides had rested and the jury had gone out at ten to five, and the jury had decided to stay out until a verdict was reached, no breaks. The verdict came at quarter of ten. Guilty on all counts. Then he had to go to the jail and chat with his client for what turned out to be an hour, the guy just pissing and moaning about how it wasn’t fair the cops could charge him for this, he was just along for the ride, and yes he wanted to appeal the decision, how the fuck was a brother supposed to get anything but a raw deal from an all-white jury in this cracker county? Griffin patiently waited for the words to run out, said the right reassuring things, and left. He had been starving, but a quick stop at McDonald’s turned into a marathon when he got in behind a high school band bus. Another hour blown as the snow turned from a dusting to a blizzard. Motels in Salina were booked up, filled with people who had the luxury of time to rent a room for this night. He couldn’t sleep in the lobby, and wanted to get home. Home was in Topeka, two hours east of here in good weather, closer to two now, with Sandy nestled in their bed, blond and blue-eyed and naked under the covers. There might be a motel open in Junction City, twenty-five miles up ahead. He was seriously considering parking the Ford, putting the seat down and sleeping here.

The rest stop was deserted, he saw, through the heavy snow. Check that, he thought, almost deserted. He saw a large black SUV parked diagonally in front of the stop. Exhaust was coming from the tailpipe; in this weather, it paid to idle and let the heater run. Griffin left the Ford running. Anyone out jacking cars tonight was going to be a few tacos short of a combo plate. Nothing valuable inside save for a briefcase and an overnight bag. He flicked the passenger door lock up, so as not to lock himself out (a habit born long ago), and hopped out of the car. He turned his collar up and held it together against the frigid Arctic wind roaring down from the Yukon. His steps were light, as he tried not to slip on the slippery snow. Five yards from the door, he had to grab his dick. Some unconscious signal had gone from his eyes to his brain to his bladder, which had tried to get an early start on things. Don’t let me piss my pants, he groaned, shoving the door open. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that he was entering the women’s room. It took a split second for him to decide that he was past caring where he went, another thirty seconds at most and he was going to piss his pants, and wouldn’t that feel nice on this chilly night?

The harsh fluorescents glaring off beige tile and yellow cinderblock caused him to squint as he rounded the corner and headed towards the stalls. He dashed to the first stall, flung open the stall door, tore open the front of his coat, hastily undid his belt and yanked the front of his jeans open (goddamned button fly 501s anyway) and produced his member just in time, as the pressure reached critical mass, and a clear stream of urine shot out and splashed the wall and the chrome piping before he got it under control and directed it to the bowl. He leaned against the wall with his free hand, letting blessed relief wash over him.

It was then that he heard the noise. A gurgling, scratching noise. Not the sound of something leaving the body, surely. Griffin’s sphincter tightened—thank God that wasn’t in use at the moment—and he held his breath. Say nothing, finish the job, walk quietly out of here, forget about washing the hands, and it never happened. See, lady, I’m not a pervert, I’m just a guy who had too much coffee to drink and didn’t have the brains to stop ten miles ago and take a pee—

It came again. Not vomiting, not dry heaves. It sounded like someone trying to talk. “H—h—h—h,” guttural and phlegmy. And, if he wasn’t mistaken, two stalls over.

The stream of urine slackened and reduced to a trickle as his bladder finally emptied. Shaking off, Griffin pushed the chrome handle and flushed. Just walk outta here, his mind told him, listening to the water rush down the pipes. A sucking sound, and then silence as the tank refilled.

And another gurgling, louder this time. Like they were trying to call him. He resisted. Don’t get involved, don’t pay attention, just turn around and get the fuck out NOW, as he opened the stall door. Reflexively he glanced down the row of stalls as he exited, and then wished for all the world that he hadn’t.

The floor around the stool two stalls down was surrounded not by yellow, or Technicolor chunkiness.

It was awash in red. The thick, deep red of arterial blood.

Hypnotized, horrified, his mind protesting as his legs carried him nearer, Griffin inched towards the stall. His arm on autopilot and against his better instincts—just leave nobody is going to know you were here don’t get involved whatever you do—pushed the stall door open and he stood squarely in front of it and saw—

A woman sat on the porcelain stool, clad in blue jeans and a winter coat, tennis shoes on her feet. Young, no more than twenty-five, fair complexion and light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, face between plain and pretty, nose a bit too big, chin a little weak. Her brown eyes looked up at him, blankly he thought at first but then pleading, her mouth opened in an O. Blood trickled out of both sides of her mouth, but not enough to cause the pool on the filthy tiles.

She had been stabbed. Repeatedly. Viciously. Her shirt—it was impossible to tell what color it had been but it was now red—was torn open. Two cups of a brasseire hung, the thin band of connecting fabric cut by a knife showing the hint of small white breasts. Griffin counted a half dozen wounds, then eight, then he quit counting, wounds in her abdomen, some mere vagina-like slits, a couple gaping, where the knife had gone in and twisted. The walls of the stall were spattered with blood that had spurted from her body, was still spurting as he came up her. One burst landed on the leg of his jeans, and he jumped back.

She tried raising one arm, and it fell limply back to her side. “H—h—h—” she repeated, tongue almost out of her mouth, blood bubbling on her lips, eyes now imploring him to help her, do something, anything, sew up the wounds, stop the bleeding, repair the sliced liver and intestines and the pierced lungs and heart.

Griffin stood there, frozen, dumbly unmoving, the sight and situation so utterly unexpected that his brain had shut down in order to process, like rebooting. System Error, Current Drive Not Selected, Please Press A Key And Try Again. He’d been driving highways for twenty-five years, been in a few dozen states and hundreds of rest stops but had never remotely encountered anything like this. He’d once come upon a couple—homosexual—shut in a stall with various wet sounds emanating one time, but that was it.

A last gurgle, more bubbles frothing from her lips, and the body went ever more slack, the eyes unfocused as the spark left them, a misty gray sheen beginning to form. Dead already and didn’t even fucking know it.

He was rooted to the spot, a dozen thoughts going through his head, different options and scenarios. Leave? Stay? Call 911 on the payphone? Keep quiet? Look for ID? Look for—

Look for the (his mind had to wrap itself around the term, now that it was so up close and intimate) killer?

Who was, it dawned on him, most likely within a few yards. The blood was fresh, still running out of her wounds, though the spurting had stopped with her heartbeat. The SUV parked out front, still running, this couldn’t have happened more than a couple of minutes ago, what are the odds that at midnight someone gets killed in the women’s room and there’s a car outside and a guy in the men’s pisser who doesn’t see it? Slim and none, old pal. Griffin bent over, looking under the other stalls, half-expecting to see a pair of legs standing one over and a hulking psycho with a chainsaw and hockey mask jump out at him. But they were empty.

Griffin jerked back up, looking at the woman again, and in a split second his mind crystallized. There wasn’t anything he could do for her—hell, hadn’t been even while she was breathing her last. The only thing he could do was get the tag number of the SUV, forget about a description, get out and get to a phone.

A phone. There was a pay phone out front, and the next one was ten miles up. His own cell phone sat useless in the car, the charge having run out sometime that afternoon, and the charger was back in his office.

Like moving through mud or deep snow, his legs began working, taking him backwards through the bathroom. His back hit the door, pushing it open, and he craned his neck to get one last look at the horrific scene. He whirled around and began walking to his car, tiptoeing so as not to slip on the snow, the car was only twenty yards in front of him, lights on, warm inside, ready to take him away from this nightmare . . .

A thump and door moving on hinges, Griffin glanced to his right, and saw a man emerging from the men’s room. Clad in a long, dark coat, he carried something in a towel in his right hand, visible in the orange sodium light vapor illuminating the rest stop. Griffin slowed, then stopped, just as the man—it was a man, clearly, with strong jaw and shaved head and tattoos visible on the neck beneath ears—caught sight of Griffin and halted. For a moment their eyes met through the driving snow. The other’s eyes were light, icy, filled with dark purpose that was not yet finished.

Griffin paused, and then broke into a run. Dumb, dumb, now he knows that you saw something. Griffin lost his footing and went down on the pavement, his hand scraping on ice and then concrete, his knee hitting hard. Gasping, he stood, pain shooting through his knee, looked over his shoulder and the man was running now, the towel off what was a long knife, not a Swiss Army knife but a big fucking Rambo knife, a military-surplus Ka-Bar painted dull black with a serrated edge, just perfect to fillet a human being like a rainbow trout.

Griffin slid around his car, grabbed the door hand, threw open the door and jumped into the driver’s seat, put the car in reverse just as the man reached him. He reached up and locked the door as he floored the accelerator, leaving the other grabbing at air and slipping. He braked, feeling the car slide, shifted into first, and felt the tires grab briefly. Fighting the urge to floor it, since he’d just spin his wheels, Griffin eased on the gas and the car moved along the access road, towards the interstate. He looked over his shoulder, and the figure was now getting up, and heading for the SUV. Griffin shifted up, gaining speed, looking in the side mirror. Nothing. The interstate wouldn’t be too busy at this hour even in good weather. At one a.m., though, with winter weather advisories and every radio and TV station in the state telling people to stay home unless absolutely necessary, it was almost deserted.

For all his road time, Griffin invented a little game he played, while listening to the radio. Each car or truck was a story he concocted in his mind to pass the time. The young college couple meeting each other’s parents for the first time. The elderly couple going to visit grandchildren. The mother driving children to a gymnastics meet. Just my luck I get the car with the slasher flick for a story.

In the rear view mirror, he could see the black SUV merge onto the interstate. Shit, Griffin thought. This isn’t happening, this is a bad movie script, crazed killer knocking off accidental witness. Of course, the movies treated the incidental unplanned victims as meat, not as living, breathing human beings with wives and children and careers and hopes and dreams and loved ones to mourn . . . I’m real, and this guy wants to kill me. For real. I’m the meat..

The SUV gained at an alarming rate, moving faster than Griffin would have thought safe or possible in this weather. Before he could goose the accelerator, there was a thunk! A striking, crunching noise and the Ford lurched ahead alarmingly. Griffin’s heart sped up as his brain slowed down. The Ford skidded, and adrenaline-fueled reflexes took over. He let his foot off the gas, corrected as the car began fishtailing, heading for the right lane. He steered it between two cones, and straightened the Ford. There was not, fortunately, any real road work here but it hadn’t been plowed or traveled, and he wasn’t about to stay on the snow more than he had to. He looked in the rear view mirror, saw the SUV behind him, brights on. As he watched, it moved into the right lane, plowing over two cones—does he really think I’m going to stop here on the shoulder and talk about this in subzero weather? Griffin slowed the Ford down to thirty, downshifted to second, hearing the RPMs go up and the engine rev, and he carefully steered the Aspire between two cones and was back in the left lane. He shifted, brought the speed back up to 50, and let his heart slow down.

The Escalade again bore down on the rear hatch of his Ford, maybe a car length behind him—way too close, one car length for each 10 m.p.h, so you’re about four too short, add a few more for weather. Through the windshield, he could dimly see the driver, who seemed to be pounding on the steering wheel, imagined a face twisted in hate—no, make that determination, as a lynx hunts down a jackrabbit, and Griffin was the prey.

Twenty years of criminal behavior rushed back at him. The teenager charged with murder because another kid wearing the wrong color coat had dissed him, his voice bearing not a single word of remorse or regret, a brave façade when was sent to prison for fifty years. The store clerk accused of raping his eleven year old daughter, in calm tones rationalizing it by detailing the provocative clothes she wore around the house, surprised when it was suggested that maybe she really wasn’t coming on to him after all. The middle-aged factory worker who broke into his wife’s apartment after she filed for divorce, beat and raped her, told the judge and prosecutor at his first court appearance that she was “my bitch and my problem,” defiant up to the moment he was sent to prison for over sixty years, effectively a life sentence. Dozens of others, and not a damned one of them really believed that they had done wrong.

That mentality was what sat behind the wheel of the Escalade which, Griffin saw, was now gaining on him. The woman had been—what, a witness to another crime, the owner of the carjacked SUV, a kidnapping and ransom victim, a random rape victim? It didn’t matter. Griffin was now just an object, a problem to be solved.

The Escalade was now a couple of car lengths behind the Aspire, and Paul gave it a little more gas, wincing as the tires skidded ever so slightly on the snow. The speedometer stood at 55, The Limit back in Nixon’s day, but not nearly enough now. Christ, if this had been a clear day, and he’d had the Mustang, this wouldn’t be a problem.

A green sign hove into view. EXIT 275 ABILENE 1 MILE. A sign for the Eisenhower Library flashed by. Forty thousand souls just a mile away, surely someone would help him—

Right. If the Escalade didn’t catch him first, ram him into a phone pole or street light, and Christ only knew what else was in the SUV behind him. 9mm on the passenger seat? Shotgun in the back seat? Mac 10 on the floorboard? Any of which would dispatch him quite nicely. The police and sheriff were located at the other end of town, meaning a couple of miles down the main drag, endangering anyone else on the road. Any cop coming upon the Escalade, pulling it over, was facing certain death, and Griffin wasn’t going to have that on his conscience, letting another die to save his own skin.

As he watched Abilene pass by on his right, the main street visible and empty from the overpass, Griffin wondered how this could be happening, in the twenty-first century, on a major interstate highway. So where were the goddamned cops, anyway?

What was up ahead? Two small towns, Chapman and Enterprise, both sleepy little burgs that would be buttoned down tight this evening, patrolled only by a small police forces equipped to deal with drunk drivers and speeding tickets. After that, Junction City, a good-size town, but the same problem with Abilene, police station off the highway by a good few miles. After that—Fort Riley, home of the Big Red One, that was it, there was a main gate off the interstate and another on K-18 which turned off I-70, leading right to a major military installation filled with men who were trained to deal with wackos like this, there would be armed guards posted at the gates, just get there a few seconds earlier than the Escalade, jump out shout a warning—and hope he didn’t get shot first. A calculated risk he had to take. The Fort it was, for now, a half-baked plan to be sure, but better than anything else he could come up with.

A few miles more, and the cars held their positions as the weather turned worse, a few places the snow so heavy that visibility extended a few yards past the hood of his car. He looked back, the Escalade was holding, driving safely in the conditions. Makes sense—if he goes off into a ditch, I get away, tell the cops and they’re here in a minute while he’s spinning his wheels trying to get out. It was the old joke—guy gets a flat tire in front of a mental hospital, gets the tire off and loses the bolts, voice comes from the hospital, says try taking one bolt from the other wheels, that should get you to a service station, guy says thanks, how did you figure that out, the voice says, I’m in here for being crazy, not stupid. Mr. Psycho Killer back there might be suffering from a real doozy of a personality disorder, but he wasn’t dumb.

Griffin passed EXIT 281 ENTERPRISE K-43. His heart was hammering, breath coming shallow. I can’t keep this up for another twenty miles, he thought. He’d been through college, law school, a bar exam, and God knew how many jury trials, but the past half hour was by far the most excruciating of his life. He prayed it wouldn’t be the last half hour.

The snow lightened up a couple of miles past the exit. The Escalade began closing, now moving into the center of the two lanes, and holding there. Uh-oh, Griffin thought, remembering a move he’d seen on one of those reality shows, World’s Wildest Police Chases? Or had it been Cops? He couldn’t remember, but it was used to stop chases. The police cruiser would hit the suspect’s vehicle from behind, on a corner, and send it skidding out of control, send it crashing into another car, a curb, a lamppost, or fence, and the shirtless perp would immediately burst from the car and sprint for freedom, but always get surrounded by six large pissed-off cops, tasered and handcuffed, all caught from overhead by an ActionNews helicopter. Easy on sunny dry Southern California streets, almost too easy on a snowy Kansas interstate.

Griffin looked in the rear view mirror as the Escalade dropped back a few car lengths—to pick up ramming speed, he knew—and then began closing again. Just before it hit, Griffin pulled the wheel to the right, closed his eyes and prayed, stifling a shout or scream as he felt the Aspire hit the unplowed snow on the shoulder, pull to the right and slow. He let off the gas and heard a whoosh as the Escalade sped past. The brake lights came on as it passed the Aspire’s nose, and it moved over into the right lane, and over onto the shoulder.

Gonna try and bulldog me, Griffin thought. Slow down, not let me by, bring us to a stop, and then out comes the Rambo knife, or Louisville Slugger, or tire iron. The Escalade braked harder; Griffin also braked, but not enough. The front of the small Ford hit the rear bumper with a sickening crunch, and bounced back.

Fuck fuck fuck, Griffin swore, hitting the brakes and feeling the Aspire disengage from the Escalade with another shriek of protesting, torn metal. The exit ramp EXIT 286 CHAPMAN K-220 (a 220 centered in a yellow sunflower) appeared out from behind the Escalade, and without even thinking, Griffin turned the wheel and the Aspire whizzed down the ramp, stifling a scream as he felt it slide to towards the ditch and his certain death bleeding his veins dry in a snowy ditch, daintily turning the wheel and bringing it out of the slide. He began braking, not too hard—no anti-lock brakes on a subcompact that had cost all of $8995 brand new back in ’94—downshifting as the RPMs lowered. At the foot of the ramp he was doing 10 MPH. His head darted from one side to the other—no traffic on the highway, thank God. He slid to a stop in the middle of the intersection.

Now what? Run to town? No good, he’d already thought that one out. He didn’t need small-town cops, he needed the Marines. Or the Army, twenty miles up ahead. There was a Kansas Highway Patrol barracks thirty miles back in Salina; the next one was up ahead in Junction City, if he lived that long. No, for now he needed to get back on the road, ahead of the Escalade.

He got out quickly, shivering at the cold cutting through his flimsy oxford, the wind freezing his ears almost instantly. The damage to the Ford was considerable—one headlight smashed and gone, the other at a cockeyed angle, plastic bits of bumper and grille hanging at awkward angles, the hood caved in. He looked under the front of the car—amazingly, the radiator had held.

He heard a roaring sound coming down the on-ramp. The Escalade was making a U-turn and heading towards him. Crazy. Definitely crazy. He doesn’t want to run me off the road, disable me. He means to kill me, and all because I was too stupid to take a piss at the goddamned truck stop ten miles earlier. Griffin hurried back into the Aspire. He wasn’t going to be able to get back on by taking the on-ramp. Well, take the west-bound off-ramp up? And get into the right lane how? No good choices, the Escalade at the top of the on-ramp, coming down at him, he put the Aspire in gear, turned the wheel hard left, and fishtailed onto the two-lane highway. At the on/off ramp interchange for the westbound lane, he turned left, which meant he was headed up the on-ramp for the westbound lane of I-70. He wants to follow me, fine, I can use that, I’m gonna get in the right lane, it’s just gonna take longer. The 4-cylinder engine revved, as he ascended the on-ramp. He craned his neck as he reached the top, hit the brakes. No traffic coming his way, sure, no one would be crazy enough to be out in this weather, would they? He cut the wheel sharply to the left, now heading the wrong way. He glimpsed the Escalade at the foot of the ramp, all four wheels throwing up snow as it chased him. He crossed the overpass, braked, cut the wheel again hard left, just as the Escalade hit I-70. Down the west-bound off-ramp, brake again, another hard left, onto the two-lane blacktop, sprint to the eastbound on-ramp, left, and then upward , hoping that it was going to work—

Not quite. Crazy, but not stupid, the Escalade hadn’t completely fallen for his trick, and it was in the bound lane of the interstate, a gully dug in the snow in the median, and just past the eastbound off-ramp, coming up on him quick.

Griffin gunned the accelerator, the front tires spinning and then catching, shifting up, keeping an eye on the SUV as it picked up speed and bore down on him. Griffin gave the Ford more gas, and it crested the on-ramp and got into the merge lane just ahead of the Escalade. He shifted into fifth gear, and gained a few precious yards on his pursuer.

“Ha Ha!” Griffin shouted triumphantly. “Take that, motherfucker!” The elation, though, was cut short by a realization. I can’t outrun this guy. The thought came was sudden, with a clarity that matched the icy weather. He’s clearly crazy, won’t give up—shit, he pulled a knife on me. I can’t run him off the road, into the ditch, ‘cause he’s got my tag number memorized by now, for sure, and knows that I’m from Riley County, no trick to go to the courthouse and get the information. And then it’s looking over my shoulder forever, waiting for this maniac to jump out at me—or at Sandy.

No—Griffin shook his head. Keep to the task at hand.

The thought crystallized in his mind. This fucker absolutely has to die. And I have to do it.

He was shocked at himself. Saying “I’ll kill you” to kids, spouse, or co-workers, was a figure of speech. It wasn’t a plan, something sketched out in the mind for use at the appropriate time. Hell, he wasn’t even violent. The last fight he’d been in was thirty years ago, in high school, where he’d finally gotten fed up with the taunts from Derek Bonner, an upperclassman who kept dumping his books, making lewd remarks about his mother, and following him home shouting insults. Paul had finally turned around in the hallway, dropped his books on the linoleum floor, and threw a haymaker in Bonner’s face, and then brought a booted foot up into his balls. Bonner grabbed his nose, which was spurting blood, and drew in a deep breath as his balls erupted in agony, went down like a poleaxed steer, and puked on the floor. It had been satisfying, but also carried a price, two months in a plaster cast. Bonner’s face wasn’t Silly Putty, it was bone. And it hurt like hell. Lesson learned, and for the next three decades, Paul Griffin did what all middle and upper class respectable people do, he buried his anger inside to vent in socially approved fashion. Not like the white trash who constantly got hauled in on drunk and disorderly or wife-beating and provided him a steady income. Paul’s sort of people Just Didn’t Do That.

Okay, okay, think think think. How to off a homicidal maniac, not stupid, in a larger and faster vehicle on a road that is absolutely straight and flat. He remembered that old Spielberg movie with Dennis Weaver, Duel. Salesman gets chased by an unseen psycho in a Peterbilt along a desert highway. Dennis Weaver drove an old Plymouth that kept overheating. The movie ended after two hours with Weaver finally tricking the trucker into going over a cliff.

No such luck here. The Aspire wasn’t going to boil over. He wasn’t going to get anywhere near the speed limit. No steep cliffs to push the Escalade over. There were the occasional creeks and streams, but that wasn’t going to do it. And God Bless the good old Kansas Department of Transportation and the National Highway Safety Administration for adopting regulations on placement of guardrails on all bridges and overpasses, built to take a semi collision and survive. An Escalade would bounce off with a few dents and paint scrapes, and come right back at him.

Overpasses. There was something there; Paul spied one a mile up ahead, as the big SUV surged ahead to give the Ford another jolt from the rear, but Griffin hit the gas just in time. The speedometer hovered at 60, way too fast for the weather, he’s waiting for me to slide off the road first, then move in for the kill—that’s it, scumbag, you are dead dead DEAD as soon as I figure out how to pull it off. No trial, no one’s gonna tearfully plead your case to a jury, weep over a bad childhood and give you ten years instead of the noose. He eyed the overpass, and the guardrails. Four lanes, two each split by big round concrete supports, maybe six, eight feet in diameter. The guardrails began ahead of the pillars, about a hundred feet or so, the end point near the middle of the median, the end point brushing up against the pillar and extending for another fifty feet beyond. From this direction, it would, at worst, scrape the paint job on the Escalade. But from the other direction—

From the other direction, it would be like running a pinball right up the groove, under the little gate, into the big tunnel and TILT the machine. Push the Escalade right into the slot—

Which would require him getting over in the other lane, through maybe a foot of snow, most likely more. He’d high-center the damned Ford, and then Mr.Psycho Killer—qu’est que c’est fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better run run run run away David Byrne sang in his head—would hop out and gleefully gut him.

At intervals along the interstate, there were upraised dirt trails cutting across the medians from one lane to another, favored by Highway Patrol vehicles for surveillance. Then there were long concrete strips between the lanes, left over from road construction. Hit one of those just right, gun it, and he’d be right across, heading straight into oncoming traffic. The crossroads were usually a short distance before the overpasses, so he’d have to keep his eyes out.

EXIT 290 MILFORD LAKE 2 MILES, the big green rectangle read. Two miles to go, two miles to off this bastard or get offed trying. Griffin remembered some road work a couple years ago, one entire lane torn up, and he was certain that there was a good long length of pavement between the lanes at this exit. Paul Griffin realized the enormity of what he was going to do, the sheer danger of it, and he began hyperventilating, fogging the windshield. He hit the AC, pushed the heater lever over to hit the windshield, and the fog cleared up.

Okay, this is it, he told himself. He slowed down, letting the big black beast grow in his rear view mirror. He found the cross-road, braked and downshifted, held his breath, heart hammering in his chest, and shouted as the Aspire glided across with amazingly little effort. Griffin rolled down the window, stuck his arm out, extended the middle finger—gotta make this guy mad, crazier than he already is, make him fixate on the finger and not what I’m about to do. He put his head out and shouted “Catch me, you dumb-ass piece of shit!” before guiding the Aspire onto the eastbound lane, staying on the shoulder to let a surprised pickup truck and a Chrysler Sebring pass him by. He stabilized the car in the right lane and frantically rolled up the window, shivering from the Artic blast he’d let in, and saw the Escalade closing rapidly in his lane. Fifty yards, thirty, twenty . . . Griffin cut the wheel to the left and braked. The Aspire swerved sickeningly, and Griffin fought to repress a scream and then hysterical giggling born of terror, but then the tires caught and held. The Escalade came aside rapidly, just as the overpass approached.

With one big pull, he cranked the steering wheel to the right, the small car ramming the big SUV, and for a moment he thought it wouldn’t work—a mouse pushing an elephant, how could I have thought it would work?—he gave the car more gas, jerked on the wheel harder, and suddenly, the Escalade began dropping towards the median, brake lights flashing, but the tires kicking up snow as they sought purchase on the slick, snow-covered pavement and then grass, the last look he had at the driver was frantically trying to steer it away from the onrushing disaster, mouth open in a scream or shout, arms flying up to cover his face. Griffin began braking, and looked over his shoulder just in time to see the Escalade shoot down between the guardrails, not even touching them, straight towards the huge concrete pillar, and out of the corner of his eye saw it go from sixty to zero in nothing flat in a shower of broken glass and flying plastic and twisting metal.

Griffin downshifted, bringing the Aspire to a halt on the shoulder. He put the gearshift in neutral, pulled the emergency brake, and sat there for a moment, heart thudding, breath shallow, sweat pouring down his face, and began laughing again in release. It was humorless laughter, a statement that he was alive, had survived and had managed to keep from pissing in his pants in the bargain.

He got out, grabbed his heavy coat from the rear seat, and threw it on. He gave the Aspire a walk-around. It was totaled, or near enough so. The front end was a mess, the sides were dented and paint scraped off, two hubcaps missing, half of the rear bumper gone, the hatchback sitting at an odd angle. Smoke puffed out of the bent tailpipe.

He walked over to the wreck of the Escalade, pulling his collar up to guard against the cold. The SUV had hit at almost full speed, the tires not finding any traction on the snow. The front end was pushed halfway to the passenger compartment in at a V-angle. Shards of plastic and glass littered the snow in front of the Escalade. Fluids leaked from the engine compartment, the sickly green of antifreeze and the darkness of a spreading oil stain merging into a toxic mess. He stopped about twenty feet from the vehicle, looking through a shattered driver’s window. The windshield directly in front of the steering wheel spiderwebbed, the inside of the glass coated in red and—dear God—pinkish-gray. He walked closer, transfixed, his feet moving independent of his brain. A body sat in the driver’s seat, erect, but the face was unrecognizable as human, resembled raw hamburger more than anything else. The head lolled, and through the torn, stringy redness two white orbs opened, a mouth filled with broken teeth yawned, a strangled sound escaping before the eyes went blank.

“I win,” was all Griffin could say, and the words choked off as he said them, as he caught sight of something in the snow that had fallen from or been ejected from the Escalade in the collision, something lying half-covered by the snow.

It was a teddy bear.

There was no sound from the Escalade, save for the hissing of the radiator.

As the state trooper who showed up fifteen minutes later (allowing Griffin time to vomit against the concrete bridge support) explained it, the driver was a three-time loser, an ex-con who was facing around thirty years in prison on drug charges—Griffin had been right about that much. The dead woman in the rest stop was his ex-girlfriend, whose SUV he had taken. The three-year old girl in the back seat of the Escalade was their daughter. DeWayne Ross had decided to jump bond and take his daughter with him. The touching display of paternal feeling was ruined by the mother, whom Ross then abducted at knifepoint from her home in Hays. She had apparently fought him the entire way, and Griffin imagined that he had finally reached his breaking point at the rest stop on Mile 262, taken her into the women’s room and murdered her.

Ross died on impact, suddenly and messily. His daughter was also DOA. Car seat unbuckled, neck broken.

Rationalize it. That’s all he could do, to face the horror of it all. Blame the damned judge who’d set the bond ridiculously low—not once, but three damned times on three separate cases—for such a violent offender, allowing to waltz out of the county jail and into his ex’s home. It was Ross’ own fault, doing something that stupid with a child in the back seat. Or the ex’s fault, getting hooked up with a bum like Ross in the first place, and then fighting him and getting herself killed at a fucking rest stop at the same time he needed to relieve himself. That helped a little. He tried to lessen the loss. The kid would have died anyway, certainly someone like Ross would have killed her or beaten her severely in no time flat. He would have been caught, the child taken and placed in foster care to grow up angry and alienated and turning to drugs and alcohol and prostitution to support a habit, finally ending her life at age thirty in a dirty room on a urine-soaked mattress with a needle in her arm. Or she would have turned to crime, genes being what they are, and ended her life in and out of prison, talent and beauty and a life all wasted. Griffin tried it all, and it got close, but self-absolution was always just a finger’s length out of reach, ever elusive. Acceptance, a poor substitute, finally came, permitting him some measure of peace in the early hours of the morning when the soul is laid bare and the monsters of the id come out.

And he always detoured around that stretch of road, the better to ignore the small marker he’d placed there a month later.