Page 58

CHAPTER 58

THE CONVENIENCE-STORE ATTENDANT and I stood by the slushy stand, watching the night. Beyond the automatic doors, the world was carrying on. A trucker pulled an eighteen-wheeler into a spot by the highway, its brakes hissing loudly. The family with the sleeping kids loaded up and moved on. People queued for the fast-food drive-through. My Chevy sat by the pumps.

“Tell me exactly what you saw,” I said.

“Dude came round the pumps from that side.” The attendant pointed to the darkness beyond the reach of the overhead lights mounted on the store’s awning. “Crouched by your car, then snuck in the back door.”

I was convinced by the alertness of this young man. His name tag said RAYMOND .

“You ain’t got nobody traveling with you?” Raymond asked, his scalp sweating between his cornrows. I could see his pulse ticking in his neck. “Like, this ain’t a prank?”

“No,” I said. “I’m alone.” I felt a weird rush of emotions — terror, gratitude, rage. My skin crawled, my mind shuttling through a thousand terrible possibilities, all of them beginning with the young store clerk not noticing a man sneaking into the back seat of my car.

Raymond shook his head. “Fucking tweakers all up and down the highway pullin’ this shit. I’m calling the cops.”

I followed him to the counter, keeping my eyes on my car, watching for movement.

“You think he’s still in the back right now?” I asked.

“Hell yeah, I do.”

I stood quietly wanting to hug the kid as he dialed and explained the situation to the 911 operator.

“Fuck that.” Raymond slammed down the phone. He brought a baseball bat out from behind the counter. “There’s a crash up at the next interchange, about five miles from here, and every cop in the county is tied up with it. We gonna handle this ourselves.”

“No, no, no. Let’s just wait,” I said. I caught up with Raymond and grabbed his T-shirt as he headed out the automatic doors. “Wait.”

“I’m sick of these tweakers stealing my beers, pissin’ on my damn dumpsters, threatening my customers,” he muttered. He kept walking and raised his voice as he approached my car. “Hey! Shithead! Get your junkie ass out of that car right now before I open it up and drag you out!”

I stood by Raymond’s side, frozen by his sudden ferocity. A few yards away, the trucker paused mid-descent from the eighteen-wheeler, one boot still on the step, his head twisted around to us. Nothing in my car moved. It seemed impossibly dark inside, the overhead lights blocking my view into the windows with icy reflections.

“I’ve got a gun in a bag in the car,” I told Raymond.

“Oh, shit. We better move quick, then,” he said. He rushed up to the car and yanked open the back door with one hand, brandished the bat with the other.

A whump of dizziness hit me, a cold rush of adrenaline dumping into my system. Raymond and I stared at the empty back seat of the car. The baseball bat clunked to the ground loudly. Raymond leaned forward and examined the front seats, then reached for the foldout panel in the back seat that led to the trunk.

“What the — ” I started.

“What the fuck ?” he finished for me. Raymond went to the driver’s side, popped the trunk, walked around, and threw it open. He stared at my bags, then at me. My face must have told him something about the thoughts in my head.

“Nah, nah, nah.” He held a hand up. “Don’t do me like that. I’m not crazy, ma’am. Okay? There was a dude. He got in your car. I swear to Jesus, man.”

“Those cameras.” I pointed to the cameras over the automatic doors. “Do they work?”

“Yeah, but the system’s password-protected. Only the manager can use it.” He sighed, picked up the bat. “I can’t access it.”

“What about you?” I called to the trucker. He jumped down from the bottom step of the truck. “You see a guy get into or out of my car?”

“I weren’t lookin’.” The truck driver shrugged.

“I swear, lady,” Raymond said, “there was a dude in your car.”

“Okay.” I put a hand on his shoulder, which was warm and damp with sweat. “Well, he’s gone. We must have taken our eyes off the car long enough for him to slip away. But now I just want to get out of here. I’m creeped out enough.”

“I feel that. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Thanks for looking out for me, Raymond,” I said. He walked to the automatic doors, his shoulders slumped and the bat hanging by his side. He looked like a struck-out Little Leaguer. I slid into the car and turned the engine on.

I smelled cigarette smoke.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I looked in the rearview mirror at the darkness beyond the reach of the gas station’s lights, but there was nothing but blackness and stillness there. With nothing to tell me that the cigarette smoke hadn’t drifted in from outside the vehicle, I did what most people would do: I told myself not to be crazy.

Then I locked the doors and headed back to the highway.