The Lonely Mile(41)

Bill nodded and wondered for a moment about what a relationship with this driven young woman would be like, reaching the obvious conclusion in seconds: that he would never find out. Once Carli was located and returned safely to her family—Bill refused to acknowledge any other possibility—Special Agent Angela Canfield would disappear, either continuing her search for the I-90 Killer, or onto another case if they were fortunate enough to catch the crazy sociopath.

One way or the other, she would soon be gone, and Bill would go back to his old life, managing his two hardware stores alone and in anonymity. He smiled at her and she locked eyes with him for a moment, her expression giving away nothing. Then she slipped through the door and was gone.

Bill stood in his kitchen for a long time, thinking about lonely FBI agents and lonely, desperate fathers and especially about lonely, frightened, lost young girls. Then he padded down the hallway and into his bedroom, alone this time, and slid into bed under a light blanket. He was convinced sleep would remain elusive for hours, if not for the remainder of the evening.

But he did fall back to sleep. It took a long time and plenty of tossing and turning, but eventually, sheer exhaustion overtook him, dragging him into an uneasy slumber, where his body was technically asleep but he teetered just below the level of wakeful consciousness. And the dreams returned again, in all their strange, colorful, jangling glory, torturing Bill with near-remembrances and tantalizing flashes of hinted significance.

The vivid sequences, with their too-bright colors and knife-sharp edges, all right angles and disturbing images, were similar to the ones he had endured a couple of nights ago—long, nonspecific nightmares in which he was torn apart, suffering and anguished. The enemy in these remained the same faceless, shadowy nemesis as before.

Interspersed among these dreams were once again shorter visions, the ones he had thought of as “dream-commercials” before. Slow-motion replays of his actual confrontation with the I-90 Killer, snippets of memories from those fateful two or three minutes that he could not get out of his mind.

It was these shorter dreams that caused Bill to bolt awake in bed, sweating and shaking, straining to remember all of the details and yet unable to manage it. There was something of significance hidden among all the distorted images his brain was showing him; something that would make a difference in some way; something that would matter. He had no idea how it would matter, only that it would.

The dreams kept coming, slowly, tortuously. They were like Grade B horror movie zombies, shambling along, stiff-legged, toward some seemingly random destination. Bill would suffer unconsciously as long as he could stand it, until finally his mind would force his body awake. He would sit up in bed, desperately trying to recover the rapidly receding memories of his nightmares, ignoring the pounding headache attacking his temples, trying to glean the nugget of significance he knew was there in the dreams, but unable to do so.

With Carli missing, Bill had expected the night terrors to return, but it was frustrating suffering through them repeatedly without gaining any insight into their significance. Bill felt certain they contained the secret to rescuing Carli, if only he could read the clues his subconscious mind was trying to feed him.

There he was, watching himself aim in slow motion at the back of the I-90 Killer as the man attempted to spirit away the young girl, knowing he should just shoot the kidnapper but instead issuing the shouted warning to stop, the warning he now regretted with his entire being.

There he was, reaching for the girl’s shoulder to pull her to safety behind his own body, knowing the I-90 Killer was going to shove the girl at him and make his escape, but unable to change the sequence of events.

There he was, in stifling heat more appropriate to August than May, leaping down the four steps to the rest area parking lot, desperate to catch up to the I-90 Killer, knowing he would not, but trying anyway.

There he was, watching helplessly as the man motored past him toward the safety of the interstate in his shabby box truck, at least a decade old, carelessly repainted, and belching blue smoke, and—there!

Bill sat up in bed, ramrod stiff, not sweating and frightened this time but sweating and excited. Hopeful. Insanely, unreasonably hopeful. He forced every detail of this latest snippet of the encounter with the I-90 Killer into his memory banks, knowing he was hanging halfway between wakefulness and sleep, determined not to lose what he had just seen in his dream to the fading half-light of burgeoning consciousness.

Electricity coursed through his now wide-awake body. What he had just seen might hold the key to saving Carli.





CHAPTER 38


CARLI KNEW HER FATHER would come for her, so she did what she had to do. She smiled and pretended to accept her captor’s advances. She tried to convince him that the thought of his disgusting hands all over her body was anything other than repulsive. She tried to convince herself that the thought of having sex with a stranger—and a sociopathic serial kidnapper/killer at that—who was at least twice her age was anything other than sick.

So she smiled at him and told him she wanted to clean up first.

And that much, at least, was true. She really, really wanted to wash up. She had sweated rivers, first from the unseasonable May heat, and then from terror. Her clothes felt damp and filthy, and although there wasn’t much she could do about that, the idea of running a washcloth over her face and maybe under her arms felt like heaven. Plus, if he agreed to allow her to freshen up first, it would delay the inevitable moment when he would place his nasty, disgusting rapist hands on her and do the things to her that she could not bear to think about.