Full Dark, No Stars(77)
Tess clicked the address book icon, scrolled down to the R’s, and found Red Hawk Trucking. The address was 7 Transport Plaza, Township Road, Colewich. She scrolled further, to the S’s, and found both her overgrown acquaintance from Friday night and her acquaintance’s brother, Lester. Big Driver and Little Driver. They both lived on Township Road, near the company they must have inherited from their father: Alvin at number 23, Lester at number 101.
If there was a third brother, she thought, they’d be The Three Little Truckers. One in a house of straw, one in a house of sticks, one in a house of bricks. Alas, there are only two.
Downstairs again, she plucked her earrings from the glass dish and put them in her coat pocket. She looked at the dead woman sitting against the wall as she did it. There was no pity in the glance, only the sort of parting acknowledgment anyone may give to a piece of hard work that has now been finished. There was no need to worry about trace evidence; Tess was confident she had left none, not so much as a single strand of hair. The oven-glove—now with a hole blown in it—was back in her pocket. The knife was a common item sold in department stores all over America. For all she knew (or cared), it matched Ramona’s own set. So far she was clean, but the hard part might still be ahead. She left the house, got in her car, and drove away. Fifteen minutes later she pulled into the lot of a deserted strip mall long enough to program 23 Township Road, Colewich, into her GPS.
- 36 -
With Tom’s guidance, Tess found herself near her destination not long after nine o’clock. The three-quarter moon was still low in the sky. The wind was blowing harder than ever.
Township Road branched off US 47, but at least seven miles from The Stagger Inn and even farther from Colewich’s downtown. Transport Plaza was at the intersection of the two roads. According to the signage, three trucking firms and a moving company were based here. The buildings that housed them had an ugly prefab look. The smallest belonged to Red Hawk Trucking. All were dark on this Sunday night. Beyond them were acres of parking lot surrounded by Cyclone fence and lit with high-intensity arc lights. The depot lot was full of parked cabs and freight haulers. At least one of the cab-overs had RED HAWK TRUCKING on the side, but Tess didn’t think it was the one pictured on the website, the one with the Proud Papa behind the wheel.
There was a truck stop adjacent to the depot area. The pumps—over a dozen—were lit by the same high-intensity arcs. Bright white fluorescents spilled out from the right side of the main building; the left side was dark. There was another building, this one U-shaped, to the rear. A scattering of cars and trucks was parked there. The sign out by the road was a huge digital job, loaded with bright red information.
RICHIE’S TOWNSHIP ROAD TRUCK STOP
“YOU DRIVE ’EM, WE FILL ’EM”
REG $2.99 GAL
DIESEL $2.69 GAL
NEWEST LOTTERY TIX ALWAYS AVAILABLE
RESTAURANT CLOSED SUN. NITE
SORRY NO SHOWERS SUN. NITE
STORE & MOTEL “ALWAYS OPEN”
RVS “ALWAYS WELCOME”
And at the bottom, badly spelled but fervent:
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS! WIN IN AFGANDISTAN!
With truckers coming and going, fueling up both their rigs and themselves (even with its lights off, Tess could tell that, when open, the restaurant was of the sort where chicken-fried steak, meatloaf, and Mom’s Bread Pudding would always be on the menu), the place would probably be a beehive of activity during the week, but on Sunday night it was a graveyard because there was nothing out here, not even a roadhouse like The Stagger.
There was only a single vehicle parked at the pumps, facing out toward the road with a pump nozzle stuck in its gas hatch. It was an old Ford F-150 pickup with Bondo around the headlights. It was impossible to read the color in the harsh lighting, but Tess didn’t have to. She had seen that truck close up, and knew the color. The cab was empty.
“You don’t seem surprised, Tess,” Tom said as she slowed to a stop on the shoulder of the road and squinted at the store. She could make out a couple of people in there in spite of the glare from the harsh outside lighting, and she could see that one of them was big. Was he big or real big? Betsy Neal had asked.
“I’m not surprised at all,” she said. “He lives out here. Where else would he go to gas up?”
“Maybe he’s getting ready to take a trip.”
“This late on Sunday night? I don’t think so. I think he was at home, watching The Sound of Music. I think he drank up all of his beer and came down here for more. He decided to top off his tank while he was at it.”
“You could be wrong, though. Hadn’t you better pull in behind the store and follow him when he leaves?”
But Tess didn’t want to do that. The front of the truck-stop store was all glass. He might look out and see her when she drove in. Even if the bright lighting above the pump islands made it hard for him to see her face, he might recognize the vehicle. There were lots of Ford SUVs on the road, but after Friday night, Al Strehlke had to be particularly sensitized to black Ford Expeditions. And there was her license plate—surely he would have noticed her Connecticut license plate on Friday, when he pulled up beside her in the gone-to-weeds parking lot of the deserted store.
There was something else. Something even more important. She got rolling again, putting Richie’s Township Road Truck Stop in the rearview.
“I don’t want to be behind him,” she said. “I want to be ahead of him. I want to be waiting for him.”