I. King of Trails
A semi rolls on by. No brake lights.
Not this time, anyway.
Megan
Dust is not worried about finding a ride.
Even up here in northwestern Minnesota, sooner or later someone will
stop. They always do. More than likely, it’ll be a guy, noticing her
long tan legs and denim mini-skirt. In
the meantime, she strolls right along the grassy border edging the shoulder,
peering south along Highway 75—AKA the King of Trails. The road is a two-laner that starts out at
the Canadian border and cuts along the western edge of Minnesota, straight down
to the Iowa border.
Megan
grew up about seventy miles south of our neighbor to the north, on a farm near Warren,
Minnesota. They had no animals, yet her
father planted whatever crop seemed to be the in-thing. For the past five or so years, due to a spiked
demand for canola, corn had been his crop of choice.
Another
semi speeds on by, followed by a line of three cars.
The
rear one brakes.
Shit.
It’s
a cop.
This
is the risk she runs hitchhiking. Not
that she’s doing anything wrong. She’s
eighteen and free to do what she wants.
And
right now all she wants to go down to the Twin Cities.
It’s
one of the white county deputy cruisers.
It turns around and roars its engine, accelerating back towards her. Then, just when she thinks the car is going
to pass on by, it eases over onto the shoulder and whips around behind her.
Megan
steps off into the grass.
The
cruiser eases forward and passenger’s side window rolls down.
“Hey,
Megan, I thought that was you,” Deputy Phil Cross says. “What the hell you doing? Don’t you know that hitching is dangerous, especially
dressed the way you are? Who knows what
kind of creep will wanna pick you up.”
She
smiles, for she has the type of body that’s been known to palpitate the heart
rate of most men she encounters, be it the grocery store clerk or her math
teacher or even the local clergy.
She
knows hitchhiking is dangerous. Six
months ago there was a concert down in Fargo.
The guy who picked her up was a chatty little shit, talking about how
he’d just left his wife who’d been cheating on him for close to twenty years. Then, he pulled off onto a gravel road.
At
first, she thought he was taking a detour, but, as the doors locked and the level
of inhabitance dropped dramatically, she knew this wasn’t going to turn out
good. Lucky for her, the passenger’s
door didn’t lock properly. The guy was
also extremely overweight and had a heart attack right when she scrambled out
and started running away.
“Yeah,
I know,” Megan says. “But then again so
is just plain living. We could all get
cancer or be in a car wreck or . . . whatever, we could just die.”
Phil
cracks open his door, and waits for a semi to whiz on by before exiting.
He
walks around and leans back against the hood.
He crosses his arms. “I’m sorry
about your folks,” he says.
She
glances up and down the highway—north, then south. “I know.”
“I
just wish there was something else that could’ve been done. Anything I can do to help now? Need any money?”
She
shakes her head. “The auction was this
morning. I’ll be okay.”
Phil’s
mouth twists a little, then he unfolds his arms. “A good turnout, I heard. I couldn’t make it, on account that I’m
working. I think there was a trailer he
owned that I wouldn’t have minded buying.”
He
drums his fingers against the hood.
“Everything
go?” he asks.
She
nods.
The house and farmland still need to be sold though. I guess I’ll have to make one last trip back
up here when the realtor calls me and I need to sign the papers.
“Figured
as much. Where you heading?”
“The
Cities.”
“Know
what you’re gonna do when you get there?”
Megan
likes most cops—especially the ones who’ll let you suck them off to get out of
a traffic citation or a minor consumption charge—but there is something about
all of them that’s downright annoying: their constant questioning.
Where
are you going?
Why
are you doing it?
Who
are you meeting?
When
did you leave?
How
are you getting here?
Questions,
questions, questions, and more motherfucking questions.
She
shrugs. “Not sure yet. Just need to get out of here . . .”
She
almost says for a while but knows that would just lead to even more
questions.
“Wanna
ride?” he asks. “I can take you all the
way down to the county line, south of Crookston. That should save you a bunch of miles.”
A
pair of semis roars on by, each heading in opposite directions right on this
stretch of highway. The sudden blast of
wind twists her hair in front of her face.
She takes out a band from her pocket, and ties her hair back into a
ponytail. She notes Phil’s roving eyes,
imagining the vicious lust cascading in his mind.
He
opens the passenger’s door. “Let me
clean the seat off for you,” he says.
On
the front seat, there is a briefcase, left open with various citation booklets
and forms and other gadgets strewn about inside, as well as an organizer
attached to the back of the seat which holds even more gear.
“You
really need all that stuff?” she asks.
Phil
chuckles. “Most days all I need is a
notebook, my citation book, and maybe an accident form,” he says, shaking his
head. “All the other stuff are for those
few times when I need something quick and don’t have the extra forty-five minutes
to run back to the office. I’ve done that
once or twice and it sucks.”
He
pops the trunk, and places the gear in amongst the already stuffed interior,
rearranging things here and there. He
stands back when he’s certain the trunk will close.
“Is
that a shotgun?” she asks, pointing at a long rifle case.
“Nope. We don’t carry shotguns anymore. That’s an AR-15.”
“Why
don’t you carry it up front?”
“Because
we don’t need it that often, unless there was a school shooting or some
dickhead is holed up in a house with some hostages.”
A
semi speeds on by, causing the car to rock a little.
He
shuts the lid.
“Hop
on in.”
Phil
punches the cruiser up to seventy-five.
“Ever
shoot anyone?” she asks, thinking back to the rifle in the trunk.
If I can get him talking, the less he’ll ask about me.
He
shakes his head. “Only pulled my gun on
someone once. Which is typical. Most cops go their entire careers without
ever pulling their guns out with the intent to use it.”
“When
was that?”
“Honestly,
it was about a month ago. Heard about
this guy who’s been killing prostitutes down in the Cities?”
Megan
turns, her hands on her lap. She sees
his eyes darting back and forth from the road to her legs—he seems to spend a
bit more time on the latter and ends up rolling onto the shoulder, a cloud of
dust puffing up behind them.
“Kind
of.”
She
heard something about
it a while back, but no details. She’s
been preoccupied lately with more urgent matters.
“Over
the past two years,” he says, “four prostitutes have had their throats slashed. The first one was in a hotel room, I believe,
but the rest were all in alleys and such.
The last one was about a month ago and someone apparently called 9-1-1
with the description of the vehicle. It
was either a black Cadillac or a Lincoln.
Minneapolis PD sent a teletype to all of the law enforcement agencies
across the state, and what do you know I see this big black Lincoln ahead of me. The eyewitness also said there was a bumper
sticker on it too, something about if you can read this blah-blah-blah. Well, this Lincoln also had a bumper sticker:
Honk If You Love Jesus. Or something
like that. He was driving north right on
this road here, going exactly fifty-five.
“I
radioed in to the dispatcher and gave her the twenty-eight—that’s a license
plate, if you didn’t know. Know what she
said? The car was from Minneapolis. Holy shit, was my heart beating. I told her what I thought I had. She didn’t believe me. Not at first, anyway. What were the chances that this guy would be
all the way up north here?”
The
police band radio squawks, something about a twenty.
Phil
releases the mike from the side of the radio receiver and says, “Fifty-two
twelve, I’m ten-six with a ten-twelve. I’m
southbound on 75, north of Crookston.”
The
radio squawks again.
I don’t see how cops can even understand what they’re saying. Sounds like gibberish to me.
“No,
everything’s ten-two. Just giving a
civilian a ride to the county line. Got
something?”
The
radio squawks again, and this time she can hear a ten-this and a ten-that.
“Ten-four,”
Phil says, sighing. “I’ll be there out
at the Miller’s in about twenty minutes.”
He
eases off of the accelerator.
“Where
was I? Oh, yeah. I was trying to get someone else to help me
in case it all turned to shit, but the closest officer was at least thirty minutes
away. Then, I noticed the license
tabs. I almost didn’t catch it at first
because I was so in shock about where the car was from. His tabs expired just a few days prior. Holy shit, was I nervous. I turned on my lights and siren, and it took a
good mile or so for him to pull over. I then
got out and drew my gun. I kept it
behind my back.”
“Let
me guess. It wasn’t him.”
“Nope. It was a preacher, heading on his way to a
funeral. It was the guy’s uncle or
something and he was the guest preacher.
I told the guy to get his license tabs renewed when he was back at home. He was kind of a jerk about it. I probably should’ve written the guy up, but
in all my years of doing this, I’ve never given a preacher a ticket. I always figured God would probably send me
straight to hell if I did. But, man oh
man, he was a jerk.”
Megan
crosses her legs. Once again, his eyes
slip on down and he veers over onto the shoulder.
Instead
of correcting it, this time he slows down to a stop. “Sorry about this. I can’t take you to the county line. I have a few murders to look into.”
She
clutches the seat.
He
smiles. “Sorry. Mailbox murders. It’s only property damage, but I still have
to write a report on each one. Seems
like there’s about seven or eight that’s been reported in so far. Will probably have a lot more by the time my
shift is done though. One is a county
commissioner’s, so I gotta do that one first.”
“That’s
okay,” she says, opening the door.
A
semi speeds on around them, rocking the car slightly.
She
shuts the door, then eases off into the grass.
She starts walking away, southward, knowing he’s probably looking right at
her ass and mentally jerking himself off.
Then,
the sudden whine of the power steering and the crunch of gravel indicate that
he has gone back to investigate his murders.
