Blacktop Wasteland(28)
When he had been a kid, Beauregard had loved the Tastee Freez double chocolate milkshake. It was a rare treat on a hot summer day like today. The kind of dessert that made you throw caution to the wind. His Daddy used to joke that if a van pulled up with no windows, Beauregard would jump in the back if they promised him they were taking him to the Tastee Freez. As they had ridden around on what would be the last day he would see his father, the Tastee Freez had been one of their stops. Years later, a legend spread through Red Hill that there were bloodstains on the pavement that no amount of water could wash away.
Beauregard turned the music up and merged onto the interstate. The sounds of Rev. Green did little to drown out the memories of that long-ago day.
* * *
Cutter County was seventy miles away from Red Hill County on the other side of the state. Through a combination of chance and design it had begrudgingly become a suburb of the city of Newport News. Most of the residents worked in the city at one of three large employers. The naval shipyard, the Canon manufacturing plant or Patrick Henry Mall. Beauregard could see the effect of those industries on Cutter County. It was like Red Hill’s wealthier twin. He had only seen three mobile homes as he drove through town. There were more brick houses on one road than in all of Red Hill. He turned onto Main Street and passed two cleaners, a liquor store, three consignment shops and two medical offices. The traffic was light, but it was all BMWs and Mercedeses with a stray Lexus here and there. For a moment, he was afraid there would be five jewelry stores and he would have to call Ronnie from his personal cell and not a burner. Before he had to suffer that indignity, he spotted a sign for a shopping center that listed VALENTI JEWELERS as one of the tenants. Apparently, the residents of Cutter County needed a wide variety of choices for their dry cleaning, but when it came to jewelry, Valenti’s had cornered the market.
Beauregard drove past the shopping center. He turned left at the next cross street and saw a blue sign that indicated the sheriff’s office was 3.5 miles away. He followed the road until he passed a small brick building with the Cutter County seal emblazoned on its front door. Beauregard counted two cruisers parked in front of the building. They would have to move quick. The sheriff’s office was much closer than he would have liked. He turned around at the end of the street and headed back to the shopping center.
Beauregard pulled in and drove through the empty parking lot. The shopping center was composed of one long L-shaped building divided into individual units. The jewelry store was the last unit at the bottom of the L. It was also closest to the entrance/exit. Beauregard rolled through the parking lot and out of the shopping center. He didn’t need to go in the store. That was on Ronnie. His job was to drive. He committed the layout of the shopping center, Main Street and the road to the interstate exit to memory. He noted the one stoplight at the corner of Main and Lafayette. The speed bump at the exit of the parking lot. The coffee shop across the street with the big picture window, which would give any potential witnesses a bird’s-eye view to the job. All these and dozens of other details filled his mind. It was like his brain was a sponge absorbing water. The counselor in juvie had told him he had an eidetic memory. Mr. Skorzeny had tried his best to get him to consider going back to school when he got out. Maybe college. Beauregard knew Mr. Skorzeny had meant well. Unlike a lot of the staff at Jefferson Davis Reformatory, he didn’t view boys like him as lost causes. What Mr. Skorzeny didn’t understand, what he couldn’t understand, was that boys like Beauregard didn’t have the luxury of options. No father. A mother who was one flat tire and a bad day away from a nervous breakdown, and grandparents who had lived and died in a constant state of abject poverty. For boys like Beauregard, college was the stuff of dreams. Mr. Skorzeny might as well have told him to go to Mars.
Beauregard turned onto Route 60 West and headed back to the interstate. He checked his watch. It was exactly thirteen minutes from the jewelry store to the exit with minimal traffic traveling at 55 mph. He would be going a lot faster than 55 when they left the parking lot. On his way into town, he had noticed the interstate was undergoing some extensive renovations. The road crested just before the exit to Cutter County and became an overpass for nearly a mile. Under that overpass was a single-lane highway that led to Cutter County through the back roads. The concrete median between the northbound and southbound lanes had been demolished. It seemed the state had finally decided to address the god-awful clusterfuck that was Interstate 64 and widen the road to six lanes. A silt fence encircled the gaping maw. Beauregard noticed that the distances between the overpass and the road couldn’t have been over twenty feet.
Interesting.
Up ahead Beauregard saw brake lights flash like Christmas decorations. Traffic on Route 60 moved to the left lane then back to the right. Once the box truck in front of him had changed lanes, Beauregard could see what had caused everyone in front of him to hit the brakes. A small boxy car was sitting in the middle of the road with its hazard flashers on. A slim black man with a youngish face was next to the vehicle, frantically waving his arms. A diaphanous plume of steam was billowing from under the hood of the small car.
Vehicles zipped by the man like he was one of those tube men flapping in the air near the entrance to a car dealership. Beauregard started to pass by the man too. As he drove by, he noticed a woman was sitting in the passenger seat. A young white girl with blond hair too bright not to have come from a bottle. The blond hair was plastered to her head. She was panting like a hound dog and her eyes were closed tight.