Chapter 8
Lieutenant Samuels of the Dallas Police Department threw down the dregs of his coffee and dropped a stack of mug shots the size of the Dallas telephone directory in front of Jose Perez who sat nervously twirling in his calloused hands the brim of his dusty felt hat.
"Lieutenant...." he said meekly, looking first at the forboding stack of photos and then back up at the lieutenant's weary face. "I remember now what he looks like. A beeg man weeth a fat belly ... like he eat too many enchiladas. He came to my warehouse and wanted to buy my truck and I say, 'no, no!'" He shook his head emphatically. " 'That truck,' I say, 'eet is my life!' I deleever vegetables ... I am a ceetizen." Jose beamed proudly, his Mexican eyes dancing, then quickly clouding with sadness. "I let heem see the truck and he say he wants very much to buy eet ... with American dollars he have right there een hees hand! But I say, 'how can I run my business with no truck?' " He threw up his hands.
Lieutenant Samuels' eyebrows knitted impatiently; he held up a silencing hand. "We'll get your truck back, Mr. Perez, now could you describe him? Anything unusual...?"
"O, si, si ... he was a fighter, I could tell by hees muscles ... and dark skin. Not Mexican ... and he smelled of." Jose wrinkled up his nose and scratched his head. "Eets like pralines...."
"Butterscotch?"
"Si, butterscotch!"
The Lieutenant's eyes lit up. "That's Speedy, all right." He motioned for Sargent Riley. "Put an APB out for Speedy ... and get that garbage collector back in here ... I think we're about to crack the bastards this time!"
The intercom buzzed and Samuels held the button with one pudgy finger. "Lieutenant, there's a Mr. Carlson out front who wants to talk to somebody in homicide. It's about his missing wife."
Somewhere between Clovis and Melrose, Jill Carlson twisted and moaned in her sleep, her red lacquered toenails digging into the plush upholstery of her white sofa that now, in the mustiness of the filthy truck bore the ravages of abuse. In her drug induced slumbers she dreamed of being locked in an attic, surrounded by broken furniture and outgrown toys. It was insufferable up there and in her sleep, her curls kinked tighter as rivulets of sweat trickled down between her creamy cleavage to leave her abdomen clammy. One weary eye popped open and closed instantly, her eyelids, heavy with slumber and heat exhaustion, finding the effort too great.
An arm's stretch away, Pete Parker popped open a tepid can of Coors and lifted it to his lips, keeping one wary eye on his cargo that lay with one leg recklessly draped over the side, giving him a healthy peek at the nest of honey curls beneath the shimmer of red. Her wet-look nightie was just that now, sticking to her luscious bumps and curves with the tenacity of wet gauze, the single flashlight beam mingling with dusty streaks of air peeping in through the air vents Pete's groin ached, just from looking at her.
Indecision gnawed at him. He hated like hell to dump something this delicate alongside the road, but this final run to Tucson was no joking matter. It was either she or him, and he knew that Charlie would make that decision with one pull of the trigger. Christ, he wanted to fuck her, slam his hard cock up between those white thighs. Tonight ... he must wait until tonight ... and then he would rape her and leave her behind like yesterday's garbage. It was no way to treat a lady, but he had to take care of number one.
Outside of the truck the desert was painted with orange streaks of setting sun, and the rattlesnakes and lizards broke their afternoon siesta in search of desert rodents to satisfy their gnawing hunger....
As the rumbling truck ground on, hot asphalt spitting under the wheels toward Tucson, Jill stirred, her stomach rumbling with hunger. Feebly, she rose to one elbow and blinked, rubbed her eyes and blinked again. Suddenly, her head spun around. This was no attic, no dream! She licked her lips, her parched tongue gritting over the salty lingering taste of ... oh God, she remembered it then! Every lurid, lustful detail! A shriek erupted from, dying as a hand clamped over her mouth..
"I told you to keep your mouth shut, bitch!" growled Pete, his profile illuminated in the flashlight's glow.
Jill's crystal eyes paled as they lingered over the profile of ... Pete's Trusty TV Repairman! "You ... you're ... mffff...." The hand clamped tighter this time, painfully so.
Pete snickered lewdly. "That's right, baby, your friendly repairman and if you don't keep that pretty mouth shut, I'm gonna stuff it full of cock!"
Jill's slender legs tingled with a white hot fear that raced up over her rippling stomach to her quivering breasts. She fought against his suffocating grip, arching her back, her hands clawing at his fists. Oh, dear God, he was going to kill her! Leave her out on the desert to die! Bob....
Up front in the cab Speedy rubbed his blubbery stomach and crumpled up a butterscotch lifesaver's pack, cramming it into the paper stuffed ashtray along with the other six. Beside him, Charlie, taciturn as usual, sat puffing on a cigarette, the brim of his hat shadowing his face as he studied the map.
"Turn off on the next exit and keep drivin' until we find a motel. We'll be in Tucson late tomorrow."
"Yeah," groused Speedy, "my back is killin' me. I don' know how the hell Pete can stand it. Christ, she must be over a hundred back there."
Charlie snorted smoke from his nostril's dragon-like. "I got a pretty good idea." He gnashed his teeth menacingly and folded up the map. "I got a damned good idea."
Jill shivered when the truck brakes ground to a hissing halt and the omenous slam of the cab door reverberated in her ears. She felt cold and hot at the same time, and breathing was shallow with the sweaty palm clamped over her lips. She heard two men's voices, one languid and slurred, the other clipped and forceful.
"We'll get some beer and a bottle. Ask the man if he knows of any motels down the road ... and if the sonofabitch seems at all suspicious, you know what to do...."
Jill's blood froze! Three ... dear God, three men! Trapped in the back of a truck in the middle of no where with three men! It seemed like a theme from a B rated movie!
"Good girl ... keep it down," hushed a voice next to her, his closeness filling her nostrils with the scent of stale beer and man weat. When the truck started up again, he removed his hand and said in an amiable tone: "You must be hungry ... how 'bout a ham sandwich?"
A ham sandwich? Her response came out a half-laugh, half-cry of hysteria, and she tremblingly held the sheet up to cover her nearly naked body, wadding it up in one tortured fist, despite the shadeless black within. "Don't ... don't touch me...!" Her body was a powerhouse of electricity, the feel of arm brushing against her naked flesh and his hot breathe bathing her neck sending sparks along her goosebumped spine.
"We'll be stoppin' for the night and I'm gonna have to leave you alone back here."
Jill's jaw fell slack. "A ... alone? Oh, no please!" She grasped onto his arm pleadingly. "Let me out, please?"
In answer, he lifted up a bag and plunked it down in her lap, the two of them sitting rubbing shoulders on the sofa, like an old married couple watching television on a Tuesday night. "Here's a ham sandwich and there's a coupla beers over there."
What did he expect from her-gratitude? "I swear I won't call the cops ... just let me out of here! I hate staying alone ... please let me go!"
"What kind of dumb ass do you take me for?" What kind of a kook was she, begging him to keep her company-him, her kidnapper, her rapist? He looked at her askance, feeling his gonads rumble hungrily.
Suddenly the cab door slammed open, then shut and Pete jumped to his feet, thrust the lightless flashlight into her trembling hands and opening the sliding door, jumped out. Charlie's gaunt-cheeked smile of contempt caught him off guard.
"You playin' house back there?"
"Hey, man, don't get hot ... I was just cleanin' things up."
Charlie stomped off toward Room 389, dangling the key from a finger. "I'll bet, you sonofabitch ... I'll just bet."
Bob Carlson was ambivalent about going up in the police helicopter to scourge the skies in search of Jose Perez's vegetable delivery truck, now painted black and housing half of his household goods. He stood there at the police airstrip, a gulp of guilt-ridden, hate-filled flesh, gnashing his teeth and pumping his white-knuckled fists. He wondered idly f, what kind of low-life scum of the earth would snatch Jill from her own home, after stealing them blind, and take her away in the back of a truck.
Had they raped her? Humiliated her? Tortured her? Jesus, he'd kill the bastards! For the second time that day his overactive mind envisioned Jill with her succulent lips wrapped around a strange man's cock, and for a moment he feared he might wretch his guts out. No ... Jill would never submit to such degradation. She would die before letting another man touch her! They could rip her fingernails to the quick-her toenails, too-and Jill would refuse to open her mouth for his filthy maledom ... just as she had refused him.
An emotion Bob Carlson had never felt shuddered through his body, and he braced himself against the helicopter blade's holocaust, feeling the rain whip through him, soaking him to the bone. Because his wife had refused him certain intimacies, she had created a chism between them, a void Jill cunningly filled with his guilt. He loved her, of course, but in that infinitesimal moment, he hated her, too, for denying him carnal pleasure which as her husband, he bore patent to. Now she was kidnapped because he wasn't home to protect her ... again he was the culprit.
"Ready, Mr. Carlson?" Lieutenant Samuels nodded toward the helicopter.
In a dumpy nine-dollar-a-night motel, Speedy sat munching candy bars and staring into space. Across the room sat Charlie glumly pouring over maps and chain-smoking cigarettes, a half-empty pint of Jack Daniels at his elbow. The room was funerally void of conversation.
Speedy broke into a chuckle, a little dribble of chocolate oozing down the corner of his mouth. He pulled down the wrapper and sunk his teeth into a Milky Way, talking around the mouthful. "You know what I'm gonna do with this bread? I'm goin' back to Honolulu to see this chick I used to know in high school ... now that I got me some bucks the bitch'll be nicer. Could sure use a classy piece of tail...."
"Knock it off," guffed Charlie. "We ain't seen the money yet." no
"One more day, man ... one more day and then we call it quits, huh?" The islander's dark eyes danced from one accomplice to the other, neither of whom felt like talking.
At length, Pete slammed down his Penthouse magazine and took a hefty swig from his bottle, then resumed flipping through pages of naked women until he came to the centerfold spread. "Hey, man, you talk about tail ... get an eyeful of this pussy!" He held it up for Speedy to squint at.
The islander grunted, scratched his crotch and took a big bite of candy. "Maybe I won' wait till I gets to Hawaii ... maybe I'll buy me a woman in Tucson ... one of them nymphos that loves the taste of cock ... yeah...."
"Shuddup, man, you're gettin' me horny." Pete stared hungrily at a voluptuously naked bob-curled blonde winking shamelessly back at him from the glossy centerfold. It struck him as incongruous that he sit licking his lips over a photograph when the real flesh and blood woman sporting the hottest body this side of purgatory was no more than a hundred yards away.
He glanced over at the bovine islander sitting chewing his cud, then at Charlie, wordlessly engrossed in maps. A farewell fuck, he grinned to himself. After the others had passed out from exhaustion and drink, he would sneak out to the truck, slam his prick into that sweet pussy, tie her up with a rag stuffed in her mouth and leave her in the ditch a quarter of a mile down the road. Somebody would find her before the vultures did ... he didn't want to, but there was no other way.