Eyes of the Predator (31 page)

“I see…”

This time, Ronnie Kupman
interrupted. “Good. It’s a deal then.” Standing up from the conference table,
he looked at the GBI investigators. “We better get you checked into a hotel
here in Everett. Pretty sure you’re gonna have an early start tomorrow. Gotta
let George know too. Want him bright eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning.”

Kupman strode to the door
followed by the GBI agents. Sheriff Richard Klineman sat looking at his hands
still clasped on the table. The pinhole camera and microphone in the center of
the plaque behind his desk whirred softly, recording nothing more than the
sheriff’s profile for several minutes.

The old pickup came to a rocking
halt in the gravel outside the truck stop store. Clay let the door bang shut
loudly behind as he walked quickly into the building. They had left Lyn in the
cafe. He went there first.

It was a quick walk around,
waving the waitress off when she wanted to seat him. Checking all the tables
and counter with no results, he went back through the store and crossed to the
driver’s lounge. The sign on the door said ‘Professional Drivers Only’. Clay
ignored it and walked in. It wasn’t much of a lounge. There were doors to the
restrooms on one wall, a large television with some padded chairs scattered
around it and an old sofa directly in front. Tables and more chairs were
scattered along the other walls and throughout the room. A few drivers were at
the tables, playing cards or eating snack foods from the store. There wasn’t
much of a crowd there this time of day. Mostly truckers waiting for a load
somewhere or letting some hours go by so that their driver’s log wouldn’t show
too many road hours without down time if they were stopped by the police.

Clay recognized one of the room’s
occupants, sitting alone at a table in the corner. Henry had his left arm
wrapped in a makeshift sling and a bandage covered his left temple. His face
looked swollen. It was a mass of scratches and scrapes with dried blood. A
large knot on his cheekbone was plainly visible even through the heavy flesh of
Henry’s face.

Clay walked over to the table.
Pulling a chair back with his booted foot, he sat down across from Henry.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Henry just sat there and looked
at Clay. He cradled his left arm with his right.

“None of your goddam business, I
reckon. Who the hell are you?” he said after a few seconds of trying to stare
Clay down. The attempt at intimidation was not successful. Clay knew Henry for
what he was, a bully.

Clay smiled slightly, “Fair
enough,” he said. “None of my business. I seen you at the diner this morning
out on I-95. Remember? My brother and me were having breakfast. Seen you there
a few times before too.”

“Oh?” Henry said in mock
surprise, and then added sharply, “So the fuck what? You can get your ass up
and move on.”

Clay looked calmly back at the
big blowhard.

“For a fella that seems to have
gotten the shit kicked out of him, you have an awful surly attitude,” he said
with a smile, making it clear that he had no intention of moving.

“I didn’t get no shit kicked out
of me. I fell,” Henry said.

“You fell? What the hell did you
fall off of?”

“Slipped getting out of my truck
and hit the ground. Now get the hell outta here.”

“Slipped my ass!” a big woman at
the next table laughed loudly. Her hair was pulled back in a long gray
ponytail. She looked like she could have been an aging member of some seventies
rock band who had lived a very hard life. She was playing cards with another
woman. Both wore blue jeans, men’s work shirts and heavy boots. They were
drivers.

Clay turned towards the woman as
she continued.

“Old Henry here got his ass
whipped by some guy, about your size.”

“Shut up!” Henry managed to hiss
through clenched teeth and swollen lips. He would have gotten up to walk away,
if he could have.

“Shut up, yourself,” the woman
said. “If I was you, I’d rather say I got beat in a fight than say I fell outta
my truck like some dumbass rookie.”

Clay smiled and nodded. “Yep, that
does sound more…manly.” He turned towards the two women and continued, “What I
was going to ask was if Henry or you have seen a girl. She’s about eighteen or
so, thin with dark brown hair. I come to pick her up. She called me,” he added,
as the women’s faces hardened and their eyes narrowed with looks of suspicion.
“Have ya’ll seen her around. Left her here this morning and said I’d come back
for her if she wanted. Can’t seem to find her.”

They regarded him sternly for a
few seconds more, the suspicion clearly lingering. They may have been drivers,
but they were also women, and they knew what could happen to vulnerable young
girls alone in the rough environment of over-the-road trucking.

The one that had been quiet to
this point spoke. “You left her here, huh?” She had bright red hair and a
cigarette hanging from her lower lip. Laying her cards on the table, she stared
at Clay.

“Yeah. Told her we’d come back
for her later.”

“Well why would you do a thing
like that? She working the truck stop for you?”

Clay realized suddenly that the
women thought he might have been pimping Lyn and answered quickly. “No, no.
Nothing like that. We gave her a ride here. She was leaving home and going
north. We didn’t like leaving her…”

“We? Who is we?” Red asked, her
suspicions not dispelled by his explanation.

“My brother and me. We dropped
her off cause that’s what she wanted, but we were worried about her and told
her we would come back and get her. Hell, we tried to get her to go with us and
stay with our mama.” He finished his explanation with a look of embarrassment.

The two women looked steadily at
him for a moment, studying him and weighing his words. Finally, Red said, still
looking him hard in the face. “I guess you might be all right.” Old Gray nodded
at her companion. “Yeah, we’ve seen her wandering around some today. At least
there was a little girl that looked like the one you describe. Saw her a while
ago sitting at the counter in the cafe with another fella. They talked for a
while, then he got up and she followed him out.”

Clay felt his stomach sink.

Red saw the look on his face and
added, “I don’t know what they were doing. She didn’t look threatened or
anything.”

Old Gray added, with a tinge of
guilt, “She just kind of walked out behind him. Couldn’t even tell if they were
still together. Didn’t see where they went.”

“No, couldn’t tell where they
were headed,” Red added.

It was clear that they had put
away their initial suspicions about Clay’s motives and were now feeling
embarrassed about not having intervened for the girl.

Red gave a hard look in Henry’s
direction and leaned towards Clay. “But there is something you ought to know.”

“You sure?” Old Gray leaned
closer to her companion, speaking in low tones. “We don’t need any trouble
here.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” She looked at
Clay, “Henry’s had his hands on my ass too many times for me not to know that
if I were a little thing like that girl, he would have tried to have his way
with me too.”

Clay’s face turned dark and
threatening as his head swiveled towards Henry. The injured man just sat
looking at the table wishing this would all just go away. It was clear he did
not want his ass kicked a second time that day.

Clay turned back to Red, thunder
on his face. “What happened?” His voice was almost inaudible as he tried to
control the rage he felt building inside.

Red went on, “Well it seems he
got the little girl to go out to his truck with him. Got her up in the cab, but
then this other fella came along and dragged him out and whipped his ass.” She
paused, watching Clay’s fist clench and unclench on the table. After a few
seconds, she continued, “Might have been the guy she sat at the counter with. I
don’t know that. I never saw the guy who beat up Henry, but it might have been
him at the counter. Bunch of us was sitting there talking just a couple of
seats away, and we had the idea that he was the guy.”

Clay looked at her, unclenched
his fist and asked, “How’d you know all this? About Henry and the fight and all
if you didn’t see? Henry didn’t tell you did he?”

She laughed, “No, no not Henry.
It was Bob and Big Leon. That’s a couple of truckers. They kind of took the
girl under their wing. Leon told us what happened before he left .” With a
pained look on her face she added, “We should have looked out for her when they
left. Just didn’t think to. There’s always a lot of girls hanging around truck
stops. After a while, you don’t even think about it and why they might be here.
It’s a tough place. Anyway, sorry we didn’t do something for her.”

Clay looked at her, “No need. You
didn’t know. I appreciate the information.” He took a deep breath then asked,
“So you don’t know if she left or not?”

“No,” Gray said. “Couldn’t tell
you. She kind of wandered around here all morning. Haven’t seen her in a while
though.” She looked down at her cards. The two women clearly felt badly about
the situation.

“It’s okay, I’ll find her.”

He stood up suddenly, pushing the
table forward as he did so that it sank into Henry’s fat belly. Leaning across
the table, he moved in close to the fat man’s face. “If you weren’t already
crippled, you and me would step outside you piece of shit.”

Clay turned and walked through
the door that connected the driver’s lounge to the store. Henry pushed the
table away out of his stomach but did not look up. He definitely wanted this
day to be over.

Entering the store, Clay looked
around. There was no one at the counter, so he walked to the clerk. He noted
the name tag that said ‘Todd’ pinned to a dirty white shirt covering Todd’s
huge gut. Well, maybe Todd had seen something.

Clay started talking without any
preliminaries. “I’m looking for someone.”

Todd started to give him his
annoyed ‘why the fuck are you bothering me’ look, but saw the look on Clay’s
face and thought better of it.

“Yeah, who would that be?” Todd
asked.

“A girl, about eighteen, thin,
dark brown hair, pretty.”

Who isn’t looking for that, Todd
thought, but only said, “Yeah, I saw a girl like that around here today. She
was hanging around, going back and forth all day.”

“Where is she now?”

“Don’t know,” Todd said simply
and without interest.

Clay took a deep breath, “Look,
did you see her leave?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“When and who with?” Clay was
losing patience. “Tell me everything you saw.”

Todd realized he should just say
it and get this guy away from him. “I went out front to take a smoke break. I
saw her in a car. It was like an old Chevy or something, kind of beat up
looking, but seemed to run pretty good.

“Who was driving.”

I don’t know. Some guy that had
been in here earlier.”

“Tell me. What did he look like?”

  “Guy about your size.
Thin. Light brown hair. I could see through the car pretty good. It looked like
the girl on the passenger side.”

“Was she all right?” Clay asked,
desperate for some real information about her.

“Yea, I guess. She didn’t look
happy, but she didn’t look hurt. Had her head down. Maybe she was crying or
something.”

“Crying?” Clay’s voice rose.
“Didn’t look hurt, but she was crying? You didn’t do anything?”

“I said crying, maybe…I don’t
know…seemed that way. What was I supposed to do?”

 “Yeah,” Clay said walking
away in disgust. Pushing through the door, he jogged across the lot to his
pickup.

Cranking the engine, he sat for a
minute pondering the situation before spinning the pickup’s tires in the gravel
as he turned through the lot to the exit. He would have to call Cy and let him
know he probably wouldn’t make it back for work tomorrow.

The pickup accelerated quickly
down the ramp to the interstate. Seventy-five and then eighty miles an hour.
Clay wasn’t sure what to do, or where he was going. Things seemed to be
spinning and not clear the way they had been before today. He was going to go
try to find a girl he didn’t even know, and he didn’t even know why. Not the
smartest decision he had ever made, he knew that much.

Cy would be pissed. Hell,
he
would be pissed if the shoe was on the other foot. Trying to understand what he
was doing and why, the best he could come up with was that there were days when
things changed. This was just his day.

The whining of tires on asphalt
raised George Mackey’s eyes from the cold beer can slowly dripping condensed
water onto his knee. A cone of light from the approaching car’s headlights lit
up the pine trees along the side of the road. A few seconds later, the lights
turned into Fel Tobin’s driveway and the tire whine was replaced by the crunch
of gravel. George squinted into the glare as the car approached the front porch
where he was firmly seated in one of Fel’s old kitchen chairs.

From the other side of the cooler
between them Fel asked, “Who you reckon that is?”

“Don’t know.” George took a pull
from the can and studied the car making its way up the drive.

It rocked to a halt in front of
the porch and the headlights blinked off. It was Ronnie Kupman’s county car.

“Hey, George.” Ronnie called
exiting the vehicle.

“Ronnie. What’s up?” George noted
Bob Shaklee and Sharon Price coming out of the car’s passenger side and nodded
at them. “Everybody. What’s up?”

“Evenin’, Mr. Tobin,” Ronnie said
walking up to the porch and nodding to Fel.

“Evenin’ Deputy,” Fell nodded
back. “Come on up and have a beer.”