Prom Night in Purgatory(64)

“Now I’m gonna get out and walk around the car, all easy like, and you are gonna lay here until that car passes. Then you’re gonna sit up, and you and I are gonna take a little drive. I’ve got a few things to say to you, and I’m not done saying them. If you run or try to get away, you’ll make a scene, and you and little Billy will pay. Now you don’t want that do, you?” He smiled as he mocked her with her own words. No, Dolly Kinross didn’t want that. Roger slid off of her and pushed at her legs so he could close the passenger door behind him. Then he walked around the car, waving at the car as it passed, and slid in behind the wheel like he hadn’t a care in the world.

He started the car and pulled gently away from the curb. “That was my friend Darrell. He smiled and waved to me. Guess he won’t be coming to your rescue, now will he?” Roger giggled, and Dolly Kinross realized that she was in serious trouble.

Roger picked up speed as he headed out of town, both hands on the wheel, a slight smile around his lips. He was a handsome boy, but there was something wrong with his eyes. They were a strange color -- a flat green -- and Dolly knew it was probably her terror that was playing tricks on her, but they seemed to glow a little in the dim light of the car’s interior.

“Where are we goin’?” Dolly kept her voice relaxed and calm, her hands folded primly in her lap, but her mind was scrambling.

“Far enough away that no one can hear you scream and beg,” he said jubilantly, as if he’d just revealed the A+ he got on his report card.

“What is it you need to tell me? I think this is far enough. My boys will be wonderin’ where I am.” Dolly wondered if Roger would believe her. He probably knew she’d kept some late hours with his father.

“They’ll just think you’re with my daddy,” he answered, immediately confirming her fears.

“I’m not seeing your daddy anymore. Did he tell you that?” Dolly prayed he had. “I told him last week it wasn’t gonna work out. He’s got you and your mother to take care of, and I’ve got my boys. We decided to go our separate ways.”

Dolly was telling Roger the truth. And they’d never slept together. Dolly had been holding out in hopes of making the bigger score. If the mayor would leave his wife and marry her, her life would be so much easier. But that had been before Roger had started sniffing around her, before she’d become afraid of him. Then last week, Johnny had told her Roger was bothering Billy. That had been the last straw, and Dolly gave up her dream of becoming a mayor’s wife, just like she’d given up on being a preacher’s wife, and then an actor’s wife when Johnny’s father’s big dreams of movie-stardom hadn’t included a wife and a baby.

“Ahhh, really?” Roger cooed sarcastically. “Boy, that is just swell! Well then, you and I are free to be together now, aren’t we?” He swung his right hand off the wheel and pawed at the opening of her dress, popping a button as he shoved his hand downward. Dolly gasped and pushed his hand away, lashing out with her feet and arms. She caught the wheel with her left foot, and the car swerved wildly.

Roger cried out, cursing and yelling, but quickly regained control of the wobbling car. He turned on her, viciously backhanding her across the face. Dolly’s head spun, and she lashed out again, yanking on the steering wheel and pressing both of her feet into the gas. The car swung in a wide circle, and Roger instinctively bore down on the brakes as the car continued to spin, its back fender on the passenger side colliding with a fencepost that managed to slow them down just enough to abbreviate the spinning. The car came to a dramatic rest facing exactly the same direction they had been heading.

Roger sat half-dazed from the turbulent and terrifying ride, and Dolly Kinross threw herself out the passenger door. Roger reacted a smidgeon too late, and Dolly Kinross was free and running, veering erratically as if the adrenaline coursing through her had messed with her equilibrium.

“You whore! You filthy tease!” Roger staggered out of the car, shouting and cursing, giving chase immediately.

A pair of lights turned off of the reservoir road and sliced through the field of the waist high weeds and prairie grass through which Dolly Kinross ran for her life. The lights continued toward Mayor Carlton’s abandoned car, and Roger halted abruptly, caught between his desire to hunt down his prey or return to the car. The driver’s side door hung wide open, and the lights were blazing. In fact, the car was still running. The dent on the rear passenger side was telling, though it wouldn’t be immediately visible to the oncoming car. Whoever was approaching would almost certainly stop to investigate. He had to go back.

He sprinted to the car and then waited casually by the open driver’s side door as an ancient truck approached the damaged Lincoln. The driver of the truck slowed and stopped, and the rusty heap shuddered for a full ten seconds after the driver turned it off. Roger’s blood turned to ice. He recognized the old truck. Clark Bailey rarely drove it; it usually sat in front of his little bungalow and collected bird droppings, but a fishing pole was leaning over the tailgate and the police chief wore a floppy hat with various homemade flies and lures stuck in the brim. He had apparently spent the day out at the reservoir, though everyone knew there wasn’t much to catch worth eating.

“What’s the problem, son? You havin’ car trouble?” Chief Bailey stepped out of the truck and had to slam the rickety door twice to get it to stay shut.