6
'Try not to use your bank cards.'
Ha. Ha-ha.
My checking account balance was just over two hundred dollars and had been for many months. I used the account only as a kind of exchange node, a convenience for transfer of funds. Cash deposited, cash transferred, cash withdrawn. When your income is as irregular (or, frequently, non-existent) as mine, the habit of using a debit card quickly falls off as the bank's punishment fees pile up. There's very little incentive to deposit any new cash that might come my way. I became, one way and another, a mattress-stuffer.
When I skedaddled from Wilmington a couple months earlier, I did so with a laptop bag stuffed with just over fifty thousand dollars in cash, mostly fifties, some twenties, plus a passel of hundreds trussed up with rubber bands. Not bad for walking-around money, but decidedly paltry when you consider that only one day earlier I'd been in possession of a sports duffel bursting at the zipper and containing roughly ten times that amount. I say 'in possession' because technically it wasn't my money, but in another technical sense it wasn't anybody else's money either, so I'd figured I would establish ownership by running off with it in the middle of the night and hiding out in my apartment for a few days.
Such is my criminal savvy, however, that I was tracked down in less than twenty-four hours and relieved of the lion's share of the cash. I suppose I was lucky to be alive. The fifty or so remaining was only left to me because it was the portion I'd so far finished counting and set aside in the laptop bag.
So now, after only six weeks in the new place, having packed light in order to make a hasty exit from Wilmington, there really wasn't a lot I had to do to clear out of town once again.
I'd rented the house fully furnished, paying six months up front to get the landlord to quit whining about my lack of paid employment and inadequate credit record (though he wasn't too concerned to know how I'd managed to conjure more than seven thousand dollars in cash to make the payment; huh).
At Kim's suggestion I soaked a rag in bleach and went around the house wiping down the smooth surfaces; I put the bed linens and towel into the washer and set it running, for what all that was worth. There were sure to be hairs and skin flakes embedded in the rugs, but that would be true also for multiple prior tenants. Maybe I'd buy a day or so, but for what? As I'd thought about the situation I was in, if what Kim had speculated about the Booths and Krapke was true, I had to admit they had a pretty airtight case. I'd be stuck with trying to prove a series of negatives, my arguments boiling down to, 'Sure, what they say is plausible, but I'm telling you it just didn't happen that way.' The only thing on my side was that I had no motive; but does that count for much these days? The only defense would be offense, as they say, which would mean Kim finding something on Krapke and Booth, something concrete and indisputable--something
admissible
--that a jury would find compelling enough to throw out my charges.
But that was getting way ahead of myself, should it even come to that. First things first: my second hasty exit in less than two months.
Into a large kitchen garbage bag I stuffed the bleach rag along with any other trash I could find. I packed my clothes, some personal items, and toilet-bag, distributed between a carry-on sized black nylon suitcase and a small leather grip. Then I collected and double-checked my two laptop shoulder bags, one containing an actual laptop, the other containing (by now) a little over forty thousand dollars in cash. I put the bags, including the trash, in the trunk of the Galant, noting as I did so the Delaware plate back there and wondering if that might be to my advantage in the days ahead. Or not.
Well, whatever. Time to get on the road.
It was a bad time to hit the highway, late Friday afternoon, but sticking around until rush hour was over wasn't worth the risk. For no particular reason, I picked up I-83 in York and headed south, crawling around the Baltimore beltway before slowing to a stroll down I-95 towards DC. It was only after I was a half-hour beyond the DC beltway that I remembered I had to ditch my phone and the trash. I gained a little more ground on I-95, relieved to be back to full highway speed again, before pulling off at one of those rest-area/welcome-center/lavatory-block facilities the Virginia highway department lays on for its travelling patrons. It was around eight in the evening, well on its way to darkness but with the lingering, color-sapped twilight that makes you question your eyesight.
Beyond the glare of the parking-lot floodlights and away from the one-story buildings was a kids' play area, deserted at this hour; a couple of swing-sets and a jungle gym with plastic chutes and tunnels, surrounded by fall-friendly rubber chips. To one side there was a shallow drainage ditch leading off into nearby woods. The ditch was lined with rocks about the size of my fist, just the thing to smash my phone to pieces, which I did.
This was a decision I'd come to while mulling it over behind the wheel. That whole business in Wilmington needed to be put firmly behind me. The phone number I'd used for years was the last traceable connection to any of the people involved there, and I had no intention to make any of those people a part of my life any longer. Phone calls and text messages would be on record somewhere, nothing I could do about that. But cutting my own connection with that number would mean the trail went stone cold, starting now.
And the contacts I'd built up over all those years chiseling away in Wilmington and Philly? Hell with them.
I dumped the remains into two trash cans, one at the edge of the playground and another by the main door of the welcome center. I found a dumpster round back where I tossed the kitchen trash bag, then got back on the road.
To the extent I'd figured out anything resembling a plan, my intention was to slip into North Carolina unremarked and untraced, then slip away somewhere quiet to hole up while I figured out what to do next. There was nothing special about getting to North Carolina, except perhaps the psychological hurdle of being one additional state line away from Pennsylvania.
Not long after the Va./NC border, I ramped off the interstate and picked up state route 48, following signs for a full-service truck stop.
It was close to midnight when I pulled up to the gas pumps, and I was hungry. The place wasn't jumping, but there was activity here and there. A steady mid-range hum from the cabin air-conditioners wafted across from the overnight truck parking area. Some truckers were checking their rigs under the floodlights, a couple others stood around smoking. There was one other car besides mine at the gasoline island--a separate facility and a miniature version of the mammoth truck-fueling area that ran the length of the right side of the main service building.
Up at the cashier's window, through the grille in the bullet-resistant panel, I asked for forty bucks on pump 4 and passed the first of my hundreds through the stainless-steel sliding drawer. I tried to be casual about it but I watched the guy closely to see if there might be any problem with the bill. He barely glanced at it as he opened his register, pinned it under a spring clip, and plucked out my change. I guess the novelty of handling hundred-dollar bills was one-sided.
After gassing up, I moved the car to the lot for non-commercial vehicles, which was located a good walk from all the other facilities, so us yahoos in passenger cars know our place. I took the small grip with a change of clothes (plus the laptop cash bag, from now on always immediately adjacent), and crossed the asphalt lake into the main building.
I planned to change clothes in a lavatory stall, but I discovered the place had shower facilities, and suddenly the idea of being clean surpassed even my hunger, calling to me like the last empty stool at a bar. I stood in the hot stream for a solid twenty minutes, half of that time with my arms propped against the tiled wall as the water pounded out the highway knots in my back and shoulders. The soap from the toiletry pack that came with the shower ticket had the over-sweet scent of commercial cleaners; not my fragrance, but it did the job of washing the grime of the drive from my body along with, figuratively at least, some of the dirt from my recent past. A whole new smell for a whole new round of bullshit.
The food court was deserted and only two outlets were operating, one pizza-and-subs, one Asian rice-and-noodles. I ordered an Italian hoagie, which I sat down to eat at the side-most table in the seating area, a habit of mine for purposes of observation. The place had a strange atmosphere, part airport terminal, part commissary. Several corridors radiated out from this communal area, and the signs overhead and on the walls indicated they led away to a barber's shop, laundromat, auto-parts store, showers, mobile phone store, electronics store, and so on.
A few bites into the sandwich, which was mediocre but surprisingly good for franchise road food, I saw a young woman enter the food court from one of the corridors. She clocked me immediately as the only other sentient being in the place who wasn't there to work a shift, and headed my way without breaking stride.
"This anyone's seat?" she said, pointing at the molded and bolted plastic bench opposite mine.
I craned my neck to exaggerate looking around the seating area to check for other empty tables she might have missed on the way over. I don't know if she got the joke.
"Help yourself," I said.
"Thanks." She was carrying a soft black backpack and a black leather purse with a long shoulder strap. She dumped both on the bench and slid in behind them. "I hate sitting by myself when there's someone I could talk to."
"Funny, I'm the opposite."
"I'll not take up too much of your time."
"It's no problem."
She rummaged in her backpack and brought out a small bar, one of those protein energy snacks.
"So," she said, finally making eye contact, "where you headed?"
There was an easy smile on her lips but her dark eyes were unreadable; it was like looking at tinted glass.
"To be decided," I said. "The goal today was to make it to North Carolina, so I guess mission accomplished."
"Just driving around, huh?"
"It looks that way."
She could have been anywhere from seventeen to twenty-five, but she was playing up the youthful angle in a short, sleeveless summer dress that looked all wrong at a truck stop. She was thin, her hair was long and dark. Her bare arms were tanned full length. I guessed there would be no more than one change of clothes in that bag of hers.
"How about you?" I said. "You're here kind of late. You headed somewhere yourself?"
She nibbled while she decided how to answer.
"I come by here a lot. I use the facilities." She shrugged.
"You live around here? Work nearby?"
"Yeah. Nearby."
