Just After Sunset(36)
Dykstra thought of running back to his Jag-quietly!-and using the phone in the console to call the state police. *99 was all it took. The signs saying so were posted every ten miles or so: IN CASE OF ACCIDENT DIAL *99 ON CELLULAR. Except there was never a cop around when you needed one. The closest tonight would turn out to be in Bradenton or maybe Ybor City, and by the time the trooper got here, this little red rodeo would be over.
From the women's room there now came a series of thick hiccuping sounds, interspersed with low gagging noises. One of the stall doors banged. The woman knew that Lee meant it just as surely as Dykstra knew it. Just vomiting again would likely be enough to set him off. He would go crazy on her and finish the job. And if they caught him? Sec ond degree. No premeditation. He could be out in fifteen months and dating this one's kid sister.
Go back to your car, John. Go back to your car, get in behind the wheel, and drive away from here. Start working on the idea that this never happened. And make sure you don't read the paper or watch the TV news for the next couple of days. That'll help. Do it. Do it now. You're a writer, not a fighter. You stand five-nine, you weigh 162 pounds, you've got a bad shoulder, and the only thing you can do here is make things worse. So get back in your car and send up a little prayer to whatever God looks out for women like Ellen.
And he actually turned away before an idea occurred to him.
The Dog wasn't real, but Rick Hardin was.
Ellen Whitlow of Nokomis had fallen into one of the toilets and landed on the hopper with her legs spread and her skirt up, just like the hoor she was, and Lee started in there after her, meaning to grab her by the ears and start slamming her dumb head against the tiles. He'd had enough. He was going to teach her a lesson she'd never forget.
Not that these thoughts went through his mind in any coherent fashion. What was in his mind now was mostly red. Under it, over it, seeping through it was a chanting voice that sounded like Steven Tyler of Aerosmith: Ain't my baby anyway, ain't mine, ain't mine, you ain't pinning it on me, you f**kin' hoor.
He took three steps, and that was when a car horn began to blat rhythmically somewhere close by, spoiling his own rhythm, spoiling his concentration, taking him out of his head, making him look around: Bamp! Bamp! Bamp! Bamp!
Car alarm, he thought, and looked from the entrance to the women's room back to the woman sitting in the stall. From the door to the hoor. His fists began to clench in indecision. Suddenly he pointed at her with his right index finger, the nail long and dirty.
"Move and you're dead, bitch," he told her, and started for the door.
It was brightly lit in the shithouse and almost as brightly lit in the rest-area parking lot, but in the notch between the two wings it was dark. For a moment he was blind, and that was when something hit him high up on the back, driving him forward in a stumbling run that took him only two steps forward before he tripped over something else-a leg-and went sprawling on the concrete.
There was no pause, no hesitation. A boot kicked him in the thigh, freezing the big muscle there, and then high up on his blue-jeaned ass, almost to the small of his back. He started to scramble-
A voice above him said, "Don't roll over, Lee. I've got a tire iron in my hand. Stay on your stomach or I'll beat your head in."
Lee lay where he was with his hands out in front of him, almost touching.
"Come out of there, Ellen," said the man who had hit him. "We have no time to fool around. Come out right now."
There was a pause. Then the hoor's voice, trembling and thick: "Did you hurt him? Don't you hurt him!"
"He's okay, but if you don't come out right now, I'm going to hurt him bad. I'll have to." A pause, then: "And it'll be your fault."
Meanwhile, the car horn, beating monotonously into the night-Bamp! Bamp! Bamp! Bamp!
Lee started to turn his head on the pavement. It hurt. What had the f**ker hit him with? Had he said a tire iron? He couldn't remember.
The boot slammed into his ass again. Lee yelled and turned his face back to the pavement.
"Come out, lady, or I'm going to open up his head! I have no choice here!"
When she spoke again, she was closer. Her voice was unsteady, but now tending toward outrage: "Why did you do that? You didn't have to do that!"
"I called the police on my cell," the man standing above him said. "There was a trooper at mile 140. So we've got ten minutes, maybe a little less. Mr. Lee-Lee, do you have the car keys or does she?"
Lee had to think about it.
"She does," he said at last. "She said I was too drunk to drive."
"All right. Ellen, you go down there and get in that PT Cruiser, and you drive away. You keep going until you get to Lake City, and if you've got the brains God gave a duck, you won't turn around there, either."
"I ain't leaving him with you!" She sounded very angry now. "Not when you got that thing!"
"Yes, you are. You do it right now or I'll f**k him up royally."
"You bully!"
The man laughed, and the sound frightened Lee more than the fellow's speaking voice. "I'll count to thirty. If you're not driving southbound out of the rest area by then, I'll take his head right off his shoulders. I'll drive it like a golf ball."
"You can't-"