Page 19 of Safe in Shadow (Pine Ridge Universe #22)

T he man always made this trip in the late spring. Took the turnpike, so there was a record of his EZ Pass flowing along the highways with clear timestamps, predictable and unmistakable. It was his assigned route, too. No one could ask him why he was there without looking like an ass.

Because it’s my job, idiot. That’s what he’d say if anyone ever asked.

But you weren’t a sales and service rep for twenty-three soul-sucking years on the same hick-town route through the mountains without learning a few of the back roads.

The road from Antonia, Pennsylvania, to Pine Ridge, New York, was his favorite. Two tiny towns that somehow held onto college campuses.

College campuses meant pretty scenery in the spring, right before the summer emptied the campuses.

His kind of scenery. The girls in their bikinis, white as ghosts, trying to get a tan lying on beach towels stretched on the grass, bodies shiny with oil, trying to bake in the sun while the barely warm air turned their nipples to teasing tents.

All of them. Teases.

And the turnpike meant rest stops. And rest stops meant trucker cast-offs, the lot lizards who charged for sex or bartered their time for a ride to somewhere with new, desperate customers.

The rest stops were kept clean and neat in the daylight, but were littered with human waste after dark.

Everywhere he looked, he could see drug-addled bitches with two-tone hair, black roots near the scalp, and frosted blonde mats beyond them.

He didn’t pass over so much as he didn’t see the young African American women in braids or with their lace fronts, or the Latina women with tight jeans and crop tops.

The thin, tattooed brunettes with hard mouths and too much eyeliner.

The plump, healthy redheads calling everyone “Sugar” in a southern twang.

The smiling blondes with shining hair and cowgirl boots, who still looked like they were enjoying themselves.

No. His eyes only saw those thin women who were in their twenties or thirties, but looked a decade older, maybe missing a tooth or two, too much makeup, too little conditioner on dry, overtreated hair.

They all smelled of cheap booze, menthols, and something sour.

Desperation. If they didn’t smell like that, he didn’t speak to them. They didn’t even register.

He liked to imagine them as those young, pretty things getting tans. He liked to imagine them, all white flesh and hard nipples, on a towel in the grass. Liked to imagine them the way he’d last seen her before she changed. The way she should have stayed.

Only, every time he tried to remember her, the way she was supposed to be, tried to separate these sickening substitutes from her—something happened. His thick glasses, which were forever sliding down his short, snubbed nose, did something funny.

He was only imagining them there, young and lovely, like they could have been.

Like she could have been, if she’d married him. If she hadn’t stayed at that college getting her tan, her toy boys, her drugs, her drinks, and her party girl reputation.

If she’d come home that summer, like she promised... he wouldn’t have had to go and find her.

He blamed it on his glasses. Fine one second, playing tricks on him the next, no matter what his eye doctor said at each annual exam.

When he was finished showing them how they should spread the towel on the grass—they stopped being substitutes. Started being her.

But they kept ending up the same—well, all but the first one.

The first one was an accident. He only wanted to make her come home—especially when he saw what she’d become. Only twenty-three, and she looked about forty. Meth and alcohol, and speed, and cigs, and sleeping with every fucking frat boy...

That’s when his glasses would unfog, and there would be another pale, washed-up beauty queen. Naked on a towel. In the grass. Unmoving, eyes staring at nothing, mouth silenced.

As a service rep for industrial furnaces, it was easy to make sure the parts burned along the route.

No one at the big industrial plants followed him to basements or outdoor buildings attached to huge smokestacks, especially not in blue-collar towns in the heart of coal country.

They were all too busy with their own grueling labors, or busy avoiding them.

No one looked in the bags he carried. They all nodded and shrugged when he told them he’d be running a test, twenty-four hours at the highest setting.

He always did that, even when he had nothing to burn.

Just like the EZ Pass. The established route, the predictable routine. If someone asked why? Because it’s my job, idiot. That’s what he’d say.

But no one ever asked him.

One time, a man saw him throwing one of the bags, a black shining mass, full of gore, but beautifully contained.

(He always triple-bagged. Never leaked. If it weren’t for the fact that it would be potentially problematic, he would write a nice testimonial to the company about the efficacy of their bags.) When the man saw him, he said, “Wait. Can we put our trash in there? I’ve got a load, too.

” The factory employee had gestured to the big plastic bin he was wheeling along.

“They usually make us trudge all the way over to the dumpster. Won’t let us use the furnace. ”

Funny how he’d been able to keep his voice so calm and conversational, not hesitating at all as he threw his second bag deep into the heart of the glowing red inferno.

“Well, it seems silly, but I understand it. On the normal setting, that would be impractical, and maybe cause some unwanted fumes from any plastic bags, bottles, and whatnot. But, since I’m running it on max for twenty-four hours, it won’t matter.

Waste not, want not. Here, I’ll take it for you.

” The worker had passed him a couple of flimsy bags, clear and stained with streaks of sauces and sodas, full of food scraps and work rags.

With a wide smile, he’d thrown them in on top of his latest unorthodox “rescue” and watched the man walk off whistling while he pushed the now-empty bin.

There was always a smaller bag. One that would fit in the bottom of the big black tool bag.

It always stayed in the car.

Each time, he thought about burning that bag and all it held. The towels. The clothes. Their bags and wallets, their scuffed high heels, their lipstick-stained last cigarettes...

But they were so... Satisfying. Proof that he’d saved another one.

Saved them from that hard life of cheap sex and life-draining drugs.

Just like he’d saved Pamela. That first save was accidental, and he’d panicked.

Felt so guilty. He hadn’t had the job as a furnace sales and service rep then.

He’d only had miles of secluded mountains between the college and their hometown, three days of midnight spots on the sides of twisty mountain roads, throwing slivers of his mistake away.

Pamela used to love driving in the mountains.

He brought her there in the fall. Drove her to college at the end of every summer.

Kissed her goodbye. She promised to come home at Christmas.

Promised to write. He couldn’t come with her, after all.

No money to go. No one to take care of his mom, now that his dad was gone.

His eyes darted to the ashtray in the 1994 Ford Escort. He’d kept the car. He’d have to keep it, even after it would no longer run. Too many memories.

Too many risks. Pamela’s gold barrettes were still in the ashtray, along with the silver pen and pencil set he’d given her to write to him each week.

She hadn’t. She’d sent the set back to him when she told him not to pick her up that May.

His eyes traveled to the rearview mirror.

Last night, there was a Pamela who called herself Sandy sitting there.

Sandy wasn’t her real name. He found that out when he looked at her wallet after she’d gone sunbathing and he’d woken up, wondering why they always looked so peaceful, naked on the towels in the grass.

Now Sandy’s bag was there in the back. Black, sixty-five-gallon, industrial.

And of course, one bag was actually three, double and triple-bagged for cleanliness.

His work supplied them, as well as all the tools he needed, the gloves, and even the gas mileage.

Funny how industrial furnaces and women were so similar.

Both needed a firm touch to keep them running right and on the right path.

Oh, Sandy was gone now, left that afternoon at the old Superior Tungsten Plant near Towanda, but this bag of towels, clothes, and whatever else she’d had with her remained.

All of the bags that didn’t get dropped off during working hours at various plants and factories remained in the car until he made his final detour on the route home.

He always got off the turnpike for the night and got a cheap hotel room, but he rarely used it.

He took backroads to I-80, and then more backroads to cut across several little towns until he found the deserted, winding road that led towards Pine Ridge.

Then, late at night, he stopped at Hilltop House.

In 1992, there had been talk about a fancy hotel chain buying it and turning it into a private wedding venue.

They were going to clear the patch of birch trees and leave just a ring around the outer edge of the hill.

There were plans to erect an outdoor gazebo with dozens of seats.

Pamela had said it was the only place in the world she’d get married.

His hands tightened on the wheel. She’d laughed when he’d told her that the project had fallen through. It was still a wreck, and the bank had backed out. She’d laughed and said it was okay, they just wouldn’t get married then.

They’d just be friends.

Neighbors.

That was the year she’d spent Christmas vacation in the Poconos with some frat brothers or some sports team, and her mother had cried, because her daughter was some drunken snowbunny slut who didn’t even call on Christmas Day.

He grabbed the silver pen with one vicious swipe and stabbed it into the upholstery of the empty passenger seat.

His mechanic, about seventy-eight and sporting the start of a cataract, never asked why he got new slipcovers each year.

The old fella at Jiffy Service never took the seat covers off, or if he had, he’d never felt the need to ask about the dozens of punctures that gouged neat, perfect cylinders into the seat.

He’d tried to get Pamela to come home. To finish school instead of dropping out during her last semester.

Her poor mom. Never even knew where Pamela was.

Just another drug-addicted runaway, that’s what the local news said, before coverage stopped completely.

Her mother didn’t press them to keep searching after the nasty, vicious letters Pamela had sent when she dropped out of college.

Noreen died a couple of years later, anyway, never knowing where Pamela was, believing Pamela had simply chosen not to come home.

But of course, he knew where Pamela was. All over these mountains.

She had loved these mountains. She was probably happy in her final resting place. Well, places.

And her promise ring—tarnished and covered in blood— it was safely in the ground at Hilltop House. He liked to think it was where they would have built the gazebo. Where they would have kept their promises, if he could have saved her from herself.

“Don’t worry, Pam. Another year, another gift.” He whistled tunelessly and took a hairpin turn after a yellow warning sign announced the imminent danger of falling rocks. “Sandy’s” bag fell to the floor mats in the back, but he didn’t mind.

The bag was tightly sealed. Triple-bagged.

All these years, and there had never been any blood in the backseat. Just the trunk.

The guy at Jiffy Service never opened the trunk. He told him that he’d lost the key a long, long time ago and there was no reason to look inside, now was there?

He got off the Pine Ridge exit, and the tuneless whistling died away, excitement breaking his ability to produce the desired sound. “Almost home,” he whispered.