Highways to Hell (11 page)

Shit. The guy seemed different now...stranger.

I cleared my throat. “Yeah...didn’t you have something to show me?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” He glanced again through the gap between the front seats. “The dude I got the van from, I got something else from him, too.”

He turned and reached between the seats. He lifted something off the passenger seat, then gingerly brought it through the gap between the seats.

It was a container of some kind. Mark set the container down on the bench, got up, and duck walked to my end of the van. He had a flashlight in his hand, though I couldn’t recall seeing him retrieve it.

“Let’s shed some light on the situation.”

He flicked on the flashlight, directed its beam at the container, and I felt a hot lump of fear rise into my throat. My chest felt tight. I thought I might be having a heart attack. Not that it mattered, since I was obviously in the presence of a psychopath. No way would he allow me to live after seeing this.

The container was a large glass jar with a metal lid. It was filled with formaldehyde. Floating inside was a severed human head.

Mark said, “That’s Jarhead.”

The head looked like it’d belonged to a middle-aged Caucasian male. Its eyes were wide and staring, and its longish silver hair floated in the solution like strands of seaweed.

“Jarhead, say hello to my friend Craig.”

I looked at him. “Why?”

Mark frowned. “Why what?”

“Why did you kill him?”

Mark smiled. “I didn’t kill the guy, Craig. You should listen better. I got Jarhead from the guy who used to have this van.”

“And what happened to that guy?”

“Oh, him I killed.”

“Oh.”

“The guy needed killing. He ripped me off. I don’t know if he killed our encapsulated friend.” He nodded at Jarhead. “But I don’t think so. Jarhead’s been around a long time. He told me once he was a research scientist in the 50’s.”

“Who told you that?”

“Jarhead.”

I nodded. Uh-huh. You’re a psycho, Mark. “You and Jarhead talk a lot?”

“I know you think I’m crazy, Craig. Sane people don’t tend to have an ongoing dialogue with severed heads. But it’s the truth. I hear his voice inside my head.” He tapped his skull. “He’s smart. You wanted to know how I’ve supported myself all these years. Well, dealing drugs is part of it, but I generate the bulk of my income by following Jarhead’s suggestions.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You could say he’s my guiding spirit. My sensei. My Jedi master.” He wasn’t smiling anymore. “He’s the reason I’m back here, Craig.”

“Jarhead said you should come home?”

Mark nodded. “He said I needed to see you.”

“Yeah?”

Mark sighed. “Don’t think this isn’t hard for me, Craig. But I have to do what I have to do.” He clamped a strong hand around my throat. “Jarhead says I need to exorcise the demons of my past. He says I’ll only be happy if I can stop thinking about what I left behind.”

His grip around my throat tightened.

I gurgled.

Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes. “I’ll go see my parents tonight. They’re more deserving of this than you, man, but I’ve got no choice. You’ve got to see that, buddy.”

I tried to pry his hand away, but he was too strong. I couldn’t breathe. I began to feel lightheaded. His eyes bulged from the strain of strangling me. The moment I stopped struggling was when I heard her voice.

“Craig? Mark?” It was Jenny; she was standing just outside the van. “What are you guys doing in there?”

Mark’s head whipped toward the door. “Fuck!”

“Craig?”

Mark’s hands came away from my throat. I sucked in a ragged gasp of air and tried to find my voice, but it was no use. I desperately wanted to warn her, but all I could manage was a helpless wheeze.

Then Mark was moving toward the door. I tumbled to the floor and extended a weak hand toward him—it brushed limply against his ankle before thumping on the floor. I saw him haul the door open, reach outside, and drag Jenny inside.

Mark killed her.

I don’t wish to describe her death in any detail. He didn’t do anything especially cruel. It was over in a heartbeat. But a part of me died in that moment, too. The most important part, I suspect.

It was while Mark was staring at her broken body that I recovered a measure of strength. Adrenaline likely played a role in what happened next. I picked up my discarded Corona bottle, surged to my feet, and broke the bottle over Mark’s head. He toppled backward, crashing through the gap between the front seats.

I loomed over him with a broken shard of bottle in my hand. He tried to push himself up. But I planted a knee on his chest, drove him back down, and sliced open his throat with the jagged wedge of glass. There was a lot of blood. But not enough. There could never be enough to avenge Jenny.

I dropped the shard of glass and got out of the van. I couldn’t look at Jenny’s corpse. I might’ve killed myself if I’d looked at her then. I collapsed against the van, slid down until I was sitting on the ground, where I stayed for a long time.

I stayed there until a park ranger came around.

The ranger had a look inside the van. A long look. Then he told me, “Stay there. I’m getting the cops.”

I nodded.

But I didn’t stay right there. I did something while the ranger was in his car. I removed something from the van. I was sure I was losing my mind—there could be no sane reason for what I was doing—but I felt compelled to do it.

The cops showed up. Lots of them. Turns out Mark had left a trail of bodies all over the country, as well as a substantial trail of circumstantial and physical evidence. The FBI would have taken him down eventually.

Which wasn’t exactly a comfort.

Several weeks have passed.

My world is in a shambles.

My hope for the future is gone. Too late, I’ve realized how completely that hope centered on Jenny. My guilt is beyond quantifying.

The guilt isn’t the worst thing, though.

Jarhead is the worst thing. Lately I’ve begun to hear his voice in my head.

I bought a gun with the last of my money. A Desert Eagle. The handgun equivalent of a cannon. I’m hoping I somehow become brave enough to put its barrel in my mouth.

Because, God help me, I think Jarhead has something else in mind.

This recording is for the benefit of anyone I might hurt at his behest.

Please know this.

Whatever I’ve done, Jarhead made me do it.

I love you, Jenny.

Forgive me.

Kent Hogan eased his Toyota Camry to a stop as the light turned red. The bright crimson orb glared at him like the eye of a demon, a luminescent puncture wound in the black flesh of night. He averted his gaze, but he could feel the heat of the eye upon him, probing his brains like a surgical laser.

Brian surgery, now there was an idea worth exploring.

Some extensive frontal lobe work, perhaps, to excise the malignant knot of melancholy that had taken root there and grown beyond his ability to combat.

The city street appeared deserted, which wasn’t surprising at this hour. The bars had closed an hour earlier, disgorging the usual array of DUI candidates. By now, the drunks were all either home, in jail, or splattered in a mess of managed metal on the highway.

The buildings to his left and right were all dark. No cars passed through the crossing street. Kent wondered why the traffic lights here didn’t flash that intermittent yellowpulse the way they did in other cities in the empty hours.

He sighed.

And thought,
because I’m in Bumfuck, Nowhere, the asshole of the universe.

Kent had been stricken with a terminal case of wanderlust in the waning days of his joyless marriage to Amy. One day, a bright, cloudless day in late August, he’d been washing the Camry in the driveway of their well-tended suburban home. He remembered twisting a sponge thick with soap and grit over a mop bucket, watching the stream of dirty water splash into the bucket. He remembered looking up and taking note of the way the sun glinted off the windshield of the Camry, making it sparkle in a way that caused his heart to ache with inchoate desire he couldn’t quite articulate.

He dropped the sponge in the bucket, sprayed the soap off the car with hose, and drove away from his home.

Away from Amy.

He hadn’t seen her since.

The notion of returning to Amy to be forgiveness for his flight occasionally flitted through his mind, but he knew he would never submit himself to that humiliation.

Anyway, what could he tell her about why he’d left?

He remained unsure of the actual reasons himself.

His gaze went back to the traffic light.

Still red.

And it had been red an awfully long time.

Why on earth would this light not change?

He sighed.

And thought,
so just go through it
.

Hell, there was no one around.

No pedestrians.

No patrol cars.

Nothing.

Still, he hesitated. He checked his rearview mirror, saw nothing there, and again scanned the road ahead of him.

He was utterly fucking alone in the dead of this cold night in this strange city.

He longed for home.

Tears stung his eyes.

Home?

What a fucking joke. He didn’t have one anymore.

Kent blew out a breath. “Jesus Christ…I’m having a nervous breakdown.”

Get yourself back to the hotel
, he thought.

It just wouldn’t do to suffer the long-delayed total mental meltdown he knew was coming while stuck at a malfunctioning traffic light. He was alone for the moment, yes, but that was subject to change as long as he remained here.

His foot began to ease off the brake pedal.

And that was when he saw her—long, skinny legs encased in ripped fishnets at the edge of his field of vision. His eyes tracked her as she crossed the intersection, taking note of her unsteady gait on those ridiculously high red stiletto heels. She glanced his way as she passed the car, and he shuddered at the sight of eyes so hollow they hinted at a soul emptier and more damaged than his own. Dark eyes that were a startling contrast to flesh so sickly pale Kent knew she was a drug addict. Her expression revealed nothing, a slack, flat mask of numb indifference.

She reached the other side of the street, stumbled once as a heel skidded over the curb, and looked both ways before continuing across the crossing street. She reached the other side and continued down the sidewalk.

Kent looked up.

The light was green.

He tapped the accelerator and the Camry rolled through the intersection. But his foot slid back to the brake pedal, and he exerted enough pressure to keep the car inching along behind the girl.

He kept expecting her to look back and notice him, but she just continued down the sidewalk, her head down, her long, permed blonde hair hanging in her face. She wore a microshirt that clung to her skinny ass like shrink wrap. A battered leather jacket covered the sheer, flesh-exposing top he’d glimpsed when she passed him.

Kent became aware of moisture at the corners of his mouth.

This was all very alarming.

What am I doing?
he wondered.

He supposed she was a strung-out prostitute. He thought about the wad of cash in his wallet, which had dipped below two-hundred dollars. It was all he had left, and he couldn’t afford to blow any of it on a hooker.

She looked weak, used-up, just another of society’s wasted cast-offs.