Chapter 5-2
1189 Words
They looked at the damaged tire on the ground, glanced at the closed trunk.
“Behind the driver’s seat?”
“Good idea.” Tire and jack went into the car. Julie closed the passenger door.
They looked at each other. Julie was waiting for Hunter to tell her what to do next. That was good.
“Remember the plan. Follow my truck. Three miles. A pullout under some trees. Dump the body.”
“What then?”
“We’ll talk about it there.” He turned and walked towards his truck.
“Wait.”
He stopped and turned around.
“I…I don’t even know your name. You probably don’t want me to know it. I understand that. I understand why. But I can’t just keep thinking of you as the stranger who helped me. So…even a made-up name?”
Hunter looked at her for a long moment before he spoke. “Hobbes.”
“Just Hobbes? No first name?”
“Hobbes is enough.”
“All right. Well, I’m very glad you stopped to help me. Mr. Hobbes.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“But I—”
“No, don’t mention it once we’ve gone separate ways. You gave your word, remember?”
“Oh. Right. Of course. Just for now, then.”
“Right. Let’s finish this.”
Hunter’s truck led as the two vehicles drove down the road, dust rising in their wakes. He monitored his rearview mirror; the white sedan followed several hundred feet behind, avoiding the worst of the dust rising behind Hunter’s truck.
As Hunter drove, he thought about the next steps, endless scenarios of what might go wrong, about what to do if that happened. That had been his talent during a long career in the business. He planned jobs thoroughly but left room to change those plans or improvise if things went south. Sometimes that meant just walking away. Sometimes it hadn’t been that simple; old scars and bullet fragments still ached during some of his long nights trying to sleep.
The pullout was ahead. He pulled in, stopped, got out, walked toward the sedan as it pulled up a few lengths behind the truck, holding Julie’s purse in one hand. Julie swung her driver’s door open, but Hunter stepped in close before she could get out. He crouched to speak face to face, setting the open purse on the ground beside him.
“Julie, after we’re done here, I want you to go to Los Angeles. I’m going to give you a phone number to call. Ask to speak to a man named Harold. He knows me by the name of Fairweather. Remind him who dragged his bleeding a*s out of the Farmington mess and got him patched up. He can get you a new driver’s license, birth certificate, and other ID. If he balks, tell him I’ll be in touch to make sure he repaid the favor.”
“You’d do that for me? After all”—She waved a hand.—“this? This is my lucky day.” She stared at him for a moment. “You said you stopped to help me because I reminded you of someone you cared about.” She paused again. “You must have cared for her very much.”
is“I—” He hesitated and began again. “I cared for her more than I thought possible for someone like me to care for another person.” Then he twisted his head left, alert, looking through the windshield towards where the road was visible beyond the pickup. “Is that a car coming?”
Julie turned her own head towards the windshield. “Wh—?” she began, but by then Hunter had reached into the purse, brought the pistol up under her chin, and pulled the trigger.
Hunter retrieved a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped his prints from the g*n. He used the cloth to cover his own hand while he placed the pistol in Julie’s and arranged her to make it look right. He wiped down every place he had touched, then got back in his pickup and drove away.
A cut-and-dried story would be in the papers for a day. A woman had killed her boyfriend or husband or whatever the man in the trunk had been to her. She’d tried to dispose of the body but realized she couldn’t escape the consequences and killed herself on a lonely road.
The woman had been a walking disaster. Everything she had done had been the wrong thing to do, from hooking up with the guy in her trunk in the first place to asking Hunter to give her his name. An amateur who’d seen too many movies and television shows.
She wouldn’t have lasted more than a few days on the lam. Her wallet had held less than a hundred in cash. There had been a credit card, but with a man’s name on it, probably the trunk guy’s. If she was able to use it at all, it would have provided police a map of her movements once someone reported the dead guy as missing.
And she would have talked, once police caught up with her. Of course, she would have talked. She’d been weak, and impulsive, and foolish. Eventually, she’d have told them about the old man with the faded blue pickup who’d helped her, and the police would have looked for him. Might even have found him.
That would have been bad. There was a cold case in another state with a dead cop involved, and a suspect description matching a younger version of Hunter. So Hunter avoided cops.
Still, he’d fed Julie the bullshit about “Harold in LA” and seen the hope in her eyes at his words. Julie had died with hope in her heart.
Blair would have approved of that part at least.
But Blair had been one of a kind, a woman good for Hunter. She’d taken him fishing for the first time, and he’d found a surprising peace in the hours spent with rod and reel at quiet streams and lakes, hours when the churning in his head would calm, when he didn’t have to plan, when he didn’t have to be ready for anyone and anything to go wrong. And the fishing had helped after Blair’s death.
Hunter pressed harder on the pickup’s gas pedal. It was another hour’s drive, and a hike down a rough forest trail at the end, to reach the little creek with the big trout. He had time to make up, and the warm day might make the fish sluggish. But he had a feeling today would be a lucky day.
Bruce Arthurs has been writing occasional stories since 1975, with over two dozen published over the years. In the 1990s, he also edited two anthologies and wrote an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (“Clues,” Season 4, 1991). He lives in Arizona with his wife Hilde, several housemates, and a small mob of cats.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Writer
