The Hitchhiker Rule Book by J. M. Barber - HTML preview

Nine

"He was a good guy by all accounts. Why kill him?"

“As long as you’ve been a detective Bobby, you learn that people don’t need a good reason to do almost anything. It just makes us feel better if there is. It may have just been someone who gets off on that kind of thing. Sleeping with men and killing them.”

“It boggles the mind.”

“Yeah, we’ve searched the database of female sex offenders in that area and found no one that matches up to the girl’s height, complexion, assumed weight. We’ve checked every sex freak from Denver to New Mexico. There was one woman who had slit her husband’s throat during a sex act and spent twenty years in prison. If she didn’t look like she’d been born during Jim Crow she would’ve fit everything to a T. She became a hitchhiker, she had a chip on her shoulder about all men, she travelled with razor blades, and she happened to be seen ten blocks down from The Premiums around the time Dennis’s body was discovered. We’ve had leads on top of leads that led to nowhere. Now everything is as empty as a building in the eye of the wrecking ball. Nothing.”

Bobby patted Roscoe on the back just before he got into his Lincoln Town Car.

“You’ll get her man. As lost as it seems now, you’ll get her. Maybe go out with the family, take some time off. Something might come to you that’s been there all along. It’s worth a shot, right?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Roscoe said, his window half down. “You have a good night Bobby. Drive safe. Give the new girlfriend, or whatever you’re calling her these days, a kiss for me.”

Bobby chuckled, his hands shoved in his pockets, his leather jacket twitching in the cold wind.

“You got it Ross.”

Then Roscoe’s Lincoln drove away, its red taillights bright and dwindling in the distance. Bobby remained where he was, the diner that he had just eaten at behind him.

“In plain sight,” Bobby said quietly, and headed for his car.

Louisiana 2014 (Seven Years Ago)

Fiona stood in the bathroom of a truck stop dive way out in the Boonies. There was a mirror in front of her, the words Freddy For Some Heady scrawled with a permanent marker in the corner of the mirror. There were also scratches too, almost like someone had placed razor blades between their clenched fists and slid the pointed corners along its surface like fingernails on a blackboard.

She didn’t see the supposed twenty-two year old Fiona looking back at her. No, Fiona saw Dennis, and his peaceful expression as he slept after the first time they’d made love.

Did you know then?

Outside the bathroom she heard a couple of men screaming at each other, the words of one of them noticeably slurred.

“Bitch nigga! Fuck yo momma and yo sista bitch!”

“Ah, you men are such delinquents.” She saw herself then, looking back unblinkingly, the blue scarf wrapped firmly around her head. She was beautiful indeed, and aged like she’d discovered the fountain of youth. She suddenly laughed and pronounced, her voice barely low enough to remain unheard outside the bathroom,

“And we want a better future for our children and our children’s children!”

I want the best future for my children, Fiona thought. My husband though…he can rot.

Her husband wanted the best future for their children too, but he was out, despite her mild celebrity status, fucking every skeez from the West to East Coast, all the way down to the Bartholomew Bayou, the great extent of his exploits flying under the radar because of his job as a travelling sports agent. Her husband was an expert at remaining under the radar with these side bitches. Extra cell phones, extra email addresses, etcetera, etcetera. Motel rooms instead of the type of high end hotels that he could easily afford with his three hundred K a year salary. Yeah, her husband was the ultimate slickster when it came to remaining out of the spotlight.

Well, I can be sly as fuck too, she realized one day, after five years of him being unfaithful had become too much.

She had a feeling something was wrong, when all of a sudden the touch of anything sharp and metal, had a certain…appeal. Of course, she was a successful woman, it’s not like she could ever hurt her husband and get away with it. And when she announced that she was running for the Senate in her home state, even less so. But right now the world was full of possibilities, and when it came to flying under the radar, she could do it far better than her husband. And it could be like a game, to see how well she can act the part of a girl, let’s say, sixteen years younger than she actually was. Yeah, she could go all Poetic Justice and braid her hair, dab on just enough make-up to hide the very minimal signs of aging, and hit the interstate on foot.

Presently, she changed from her sweats into a pair of jeans and a very appropriate, fitting black T shirt. Over this she put on a business jacket. The sign on the bathroom read out of order, and she had locked the door. So now the critical part came into play, and with the assistance of the scratched up mirror, she spent the next three hours unbraiding and fixing up her hair. All the necessary tools to do so were in her backpack.

And why do people like me do what they do, she thought.

She worked on each braid carefully, her thin, strong fingers working tirelessly. When she was finished undoing her hair, she reached into her backpack, grabbed a straightener, a comb, a brush and spray, and continued to go to work. When she was finally finished, and her hair implements put away, she looked into the mirror, taking in the face of this late-thirties woman that aged like wine.

“Without an outlet for expression,” she said in a low voice, “expression will rip through you like a sledgehammer.”

Was that what happened to her? She bent down, went into her massive backpack, and grabbed her I-phone from the bottom of it. She turned it on—it’d been off for the last week—and saw that she had thirty missed calls.

Going on vacation for a week she had told her husband one evening as the children all slept. You won’t have a problem with that will you?

And of course he wouldn’t. Keep her happy, so he could stay happy.

She selected her home number and put the phone to her ear. It rang twice then picked up.

“Mommy?”

In her mind she could see the look that must’ve come over her daughter’s face when she saw her name on the caller ID.

“Hello, sweetie.”

“Oh, I missed you. Stephen put dirt from the plants aaalll over the place.” There was the sound of another voice in the background and seconds later her husband was on the phone.

“Versha,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Be home in a little bit,” she said, looking at her, dark-brown, ageless face in the mirror.

“Did you have a good time?” He seemed disgruntled, curious.

She wanted to tell him she had. Wanted to tell him that the man she made love to fucked like an Egyptian King. And in a way it would’ve been true. The love she had made with the man had been so good, so sweet. And as she thought about him a tear, just like the one she had seen trickle from the famous author’s eye on that fateful day, spilled down her cheek.

“It was lovely,” she said.

“Couldn’t get you on the phone or at your email. It was like you disappeared. I understand you needed your time, but with you not answering your phone it was like you had vanished.”

The reflection of her face was grave, the round, large eyes cold as icescapes. Then the smallest smirk curved her lips.

“Well,” Versha Mitchell said to her husband. “Someone did.”