Chapter 4

"Writer, why don't you park on the end there, while we talk about the Maggie Evans murder. I might be able to offer some new insight into your information. I am a local you know."

"Sure, but do you really want to do it here. People will talk about us."

"Writer, do I have to hit you over the head?" She asked it with what could only be described as a catlike grin.

The writer pulled into the next vacant piece of dirt. He noticed just in passing that there seemed to be drives. The residents of Taylor County seemed to have use the reservoir often enough to have killed the grasses around the lake.

To his great surprise Doris came to his arms without any coaxing. The hand brake, and gear shift made kissing her uncomfortable. He would have pressed his body hard against her, if he could have. He could though find her breast with his hand.

Under her breast he found a kind of platform built into the black dress. The straps, which tied behind her head, held her breasts supported. It was pure genius in design. He didn't appreciate it though, he just felt her marvelous soft breast in his hand. It had the effect Doris wanted. His breathing became hard as well as a certain appendage. There was nothing he could do about it in the tiny convertible. That also pleased Doris. It meant that the desired effect on him would last a while longer.

The writer kissed and fondled Doris for several minutes before he pulled back. She took a deep breath then said, "Writer, I want you, but not like this. Can we just hold it at this level for a while?"

"In this car I don't see how we can do otherwise." His smile was there, but there was no humor in it.

"We could go to my house but Writer, I would really like for this to last awhile. I am sure you know this is my first sexual experience. I would prefer it be more than a quick roll in the hay.

"Well Doris, to be honest there is no future between us. You do know I have a family back home. Once this book is finished, I will be headed back." Doris had made the writer nervous. The family wasn't much of an excuse. He might never be free of them, but they could not, and would not try to keep him from the road. Hell, they probably enjoyed seeing him gone as much as he enjoyed being gone.

"Writer, I did not mean, forever after. I meant simply I would like to build up to sex, not just make it the beginning and end."

"Well it has been a long time since I courted anyone." The writer smiled even though it was mostly inward.

"It is okay writer, I will help you along." She paused to make sure he was still interested. Since he had pulled away, Doris bent over the shift leaver to kiss him again. With a free hand she untied the top of her dress. Her soft and only slightly sagging breasts fell free. The writer could feel her movements, while her tongue darted into his mouth. He was gasping for air by the time the kiss broke.

"There is no way to move in this clown car that doesn't hurt," she said with a giggle. Lets get out and sit on the trunk or something,"

"Are you kidding? The trunk will collapse. We can lean against the damn thing so that I can hold you." It was a plan they both could live with.

The writer went to her side of the car. He helped her out and into the view of anyone passing. It was her plan. Doris was setting her plan into motion. If nothing else she was a master strategist.

She hadn't bothered to retie her dress. That surprised the writer. He expected her breasts to be visible to any passerby. On the one lane road there would be many, as they all had to go around the lake to leave. It was not possible to pass another car on the road. The writer didn't mention it. He had long before learned, that women knew full well what they were doing at any given minute. They knew the right thing, but did what they wanted anyway.

She turned her back to him so that he could wrap his arms around her ending with a breast in each hand. She moaned her pleasure, as she leaned her head back against him. When the first car passed, she turned her head to the side, put her hand in his hair, then pulled him to her lips. The kiss was passionate all right but more than that, it was visible to Martin and his date. Doris didn't know that it was Martin, but then it didn't really matter who the first one was. There would be others. Her plan would begin to run its course. When the pickup had passed, Doris broke the kiss.

"So Writer," she said leaning back against him. "What can I do to help you with the book?"

"At the moment nothing I can think of. I have all these possibilities but can't get any conformation on any of them." It was true the local Sheriff and his men avoided telling anyone anything. They had seen too many cases get into the media before they were ready. Hell, cops were never ready to be looked at by the public. Their desire was to be more like the Army. But alas, they had to deal with the people who paid their salaries. It was the one fact caused them to be 'looked at' a bit.

"Is that all?" Doris asked breaking into an unladylike laugh. "Honey, the chief investigator on this is Wilson Short."

"Don't tell me you and Wilson have a thing?" The writer knew better.

"No dear, but Wilson, like all men, talks to his wife. Laurel Short has two preteen kids. She brings them to the library a couple of times a week during the summer. She and I talk some, while the kids read, or do whatever kids do in a library. They probably look at boobs in the National Geographic."

"So, you can probe her so to speak?" The writer asked. He knew it sounded a little suggestive, but then he was also a little curious.

"Writer, I am going to let that pass. If you have anything you want to know about me ask, don't hint." The writer nodded. "Now, what is it you want to know."

"Okay, what I want to know is what the sheriff's people know., but that is more than the detective's wife would know. I don't care how much he talks to her. I expect it would just be in broad strokes. The first thing is why Maggie Evans came down from the highway and what time it was."

"So Writer, what do you think it was?"

"I expect it was something to do with the car. Either she needed gas, or something of the sort. It could have just died. Either way, I need to know what got her down to Small Town X."

"Would the cops know?" Doris asked.

"Yes, they would have looked to see if the car had gas. Either an empty or full tank would help. She probably used a credit card. The sheriff's deputies have access to those records. They also have access to the cell phone records. They should know, if she called anyone for help. The deputies should have a pretty good idea, who it was that she spoke to last.

"So, that is my first assignment, to figure out what the cops know?" She smiled at the writer.

"Yes dear, see if you can weasel it out of the wife." Doris turned to him then pressed her lips hard against his. He could feel the heat between them.

"Anything for you lover," she whispered. With those words she dropped her hand to his pants. In front of anyone who happened by she unzipped his pants. She then removed him from the folds of cloth. She kissed him hard on the lips with her tongue in his mouth, while her hand stroked him. He was sure that she would give up, since he knew it would take a while. For one thing he was no kid, for another he had spent a lot of time with Ranger Jane.

To his surprise, within a few minutes he felt the pressure in him rise. He tried to move away but Doris held him tight. He felt the release and knew that her black dress would join the infamous blue dress in the cleaners.

"I am sorry Doris. I tried to stop you." Rather than answer, she reached town to her belly, coated a finger with the thick white liquid. She slipped the finger into her mouth. She made a face, one the writer couldn't figure out, until she repeated the action again. He still wasn't quite sure what it all meant. He also wasn't the kind of man to look a gift horse in the mouth, so to speak.

Doris was satisfied with how the date had gone. She was absolutely sure he would call her. At the very least, he wanted the information she could supply. She expected that he also wanted something else, which she could also supply. Since he had walked her to the door, then kissed her goodnight, the sponge had been wasted. Too bad, since they had to come from Canada.

The writer wasn't sure why he had chosen not to press Doris when he took her home. Something about the woman just plain bothered him. It didn't bother him so much that he couldn't make love to her, but he would be sure to clear the room of weapons before he did. He supposed that it might be a foolish concern, one fostered by the knowledge that she was an old maid librarian. An old maid who had suddenly decided that he was the one for her. That in itself made her suspect. That kind of thing just didn't happen to the writer.

The writer knew that even though the tent was miserably hot in the daytime, it was very cool in the evening. Once the sun went down the air moving about was quite pleasant. The writer was tempted to do some work on the novel but decided against it. His power supplies were limited. It just didn't seem like the right time to put a dent in his batteries.

Instead of writing, he slipped into his cutoffs, then onto the eight-inch air mattress. He tried to sleep but it just wouldn't happen. The question kept running around in his mind. "Why in hell had Maggie come down from the highway? What had possessed her to interrupt her travels? What would make me leave the highway?" he asked himself. It had to be car trouble or gas. Nothing else was likely to have brought her down.

Right or wrong, the writer believed that he could figure it out, if only he knew why Maggie came down from the highway. He felt strongly that she was a target of opportunity for her killer. He bolted from his bed, suddenly wide awake. The half sleep fog failed to hide his thoughts. If Maggie was a target of opportunity, then the killer had done it before. Louise Soloman was not just likely to have been another victim, but one of many other victims.

"Jesus," he said aloud. "How could a serial killer go unnoticed?" He knew damned well how. Cops didn't like open cases, so they often closed them out the easiest possible way. Linking open cases together was definitely not the easiest way. Add to that the multiple jurisdiction problems, and you had the nightmarish possibility for a serial killer to go undetected."

He was going to need a lot of evidence to convince the cops to hunt a serial killer. For one thing, they had at least one innocent man doing time for a probable victim of the serial killer. They were not going to be easily convinced that they had convicted the wrong man. Most of the victims would not be listed as homicides. Most would be missing persons, cops didn't look very hard for missing adults.

The writer's mind raced, sleep was going to be impossible. The writer didn't spend a lot of time on the decision, he simply got into the convertible. The drive to the town's only all night market wasn't short, but it was necessary. The writer was about to break a very long fast.

He was more than a little surprised to see a droopy eyed Martin behind the register. "This your place?" he asked.

"Not likely, it belongs to my brother. I just work here most nights."

The writer nodded. That was going to prove interesting. Martin, one of the suspects in the Louise Soloman homicide, worked in an all night gas station. The writer shook his head, way too easy he thought. Then again he had learned long ago, that most of the time it really was the most obvious suspect. Only in movies did they come out of nowhere. The real whodunits were few and far between. Even with those, the most heard comment after you busted the mooch was, "Oh yeah him."

"So what you want Writer?" Martin asked.

"Give me a carton of the cheapest generic light cigarettes you have." He looked around a bit before he had another thought. "Yeah, and a lighter of some kind."

"That will be eighteen bucks and forty cents," Martin said shortly. It didn't look as though he wanted to talk.

The writer handed him the card. While Martin processed the card, the writer opened the plain white carton of Dallas cigarettes. He had the pack open before Martin got the card squared away. He lit the infernal thing, then sucked his next heart attack deep into his lungs. He instantly became so light headed that he had to hold to the counter.

Martin had seen him stagger a little but didn't say a word. It was none of his business even if the fucking writer died in front of him. He noticed the writer weave a couple of second then get control of it.

"Been a long time between cigarettes," the writer said. Neither he not Martin smiled. The writer almost asked Martin about Maggie Evans, and Louise Soloman but he held off. He wanted to have his facts straight before he did. Cops like to know the answers before they ask the questions.

Since the head rush was gone, he waved goodbye to Martin, then headed out the door. He put the top on the convertible down, mostly because Martin was watching. He felt about as good as he had in years. He was smoking a cigarette, driving a convertible and working on a homicide. One that might prove to be a big time case. The kind of case that had eluded him his whole career.

As he drove to the campground, he knew in his heart, that the case would prove to be routine, the convertible would explode, and he would have the third heart attack before he finished the carton of cigarettes. It didn't matter for that little space of time he was happy. He was doing the jazz with a slightly younger woman, had an even younger and prettier one wanting him, and God only knew what adventure lay ahead.

"Shit, if I am not careful, I am going to burst into song." He said it as he pulled into the campground. He wanted nothing more than to sit up all night, smoking, while trying to figure it all out by himself. Instead the bed called to him lovingly. He surrendered to its charms.

"I am going to kick that writer's ass one day," Martin said after the writer had gone. "I never did think much of cops, hell he ain't even a cop no more, but he still acts like he owns the place. Cocksucker comes here from some red neck trailer park town, then he acts like he is somebody." Martin turned off the lights, then went into the bathroom with the latest Hustler magazine.

Doris was asleep in her bed dreaming dreams of marrying some good man, then leaving Small Town X for good. She tried to see his face for what seemed like hours. She desperately wanted to know who the stranger was. He seemed familiar, but even in her unconscious state, she knew no man would leave Small Town X unless forced to do so. She knew she would have to find a stranger to take her away.

"Since Ranger Jane made her last round at two, she too was fast asleep. She was dreaming of, Hit Me Hurt Me. She hated when Hit Me's husband came home in the middle of the week. It meant, that she could not see Hit Me for at least a whole week. Ranger Jane tossed fitfully in the heat of the trailer. Unlike the writer's tent, the ranger's trailer was like an oven. Jane woke with a tightness in her belly. She slipped her fingers between her legs. She manipulated her most sensitive spot while her mind replayed her recent sexual encounters. The memories were of both Hit Me, and the writer. Her muscles constricted hard a few times before she could return to sleep.

Eddie was doing her, after the bar closed, cleaning. She was thinking about the writer. One of her customers had seen him out with Doris. Eddie felt a twinge of jealousy. She was trying to figure out who she was jealous about. She didn't think she wanted the writer. It had been a long time since she had sex with a man. She told anyone who would listen that she didn't miss it one damned bit either. Well, if wasn't the writer, it had to be Doris. Eddie had heard the stories, but had never given the librarian much thought. After all she was totally different from Eddie, she was polished and ladylike. Eddie was rough as hell and certainly no lady.

Still Eddie smiled thinking she might just check out a book at the library, or maybe the librarian. With that thought she tossed the bar towel into the sink, moved to the switch by the door, killed the lights before leaving for home. Home for Eddie was the very old, poorly maintained apartment over the bar. Eddie opened the door to the hot empty place. She thought to herself, God I need a woman." Then she smiled as she did most nights.

The writer did a smart thing. He did it from experience, he made no plans until the sun was up. Every time he made night plans, they were later proved to have been the wrong move. Something about the dark clouded a man's judgement.

The five-hours sleep did him more good than even he imagined. The thoughts were easier to organize the next morning. Over his morning coffee, made with boiling water poured over coffee ground in a paper towel lined funnel, the writer made his plans for the day. One thing he would have done differently had he used his night plan, was higher on the agenda than any other. A visit the Taylortown Gazette was his first planned stop of the day.

The night before, he had decided to have Doris do his research. When the sun came up, he trusted no one. Doris was statistically unlikely to be a serial killer, but in the small town, she might unknowingly let some slip to him or her. It was best if the writer switched to doing his own research. Well, certainly he would allow her to do some of it. He just wouldn't let her know exactly what she was doing. His new daylight plan was for her to work on the death of Maggie Evans. It would seem reasonable to her, and anyone she talked to. He would personally look into the serial thing. He wasn't convinced that there was a serial killer loose in Small Town X. It was more a feeling than a fact. Then again, it was fiction that he was writing.

The writer looked around the campground. He did a quick appraisal, since he was likely to be in the spot for a while. He had gone from gathering a little background for a mostly fictional account of a murder, to looking for a killer. When that had happened, he had no idea. It might well have been when he saw his van in flames.

It was possible that he had it in mind all along. Maggie Evans was the first murder he had written about, in which he had not been personally involved. The other books were written about cases he had worked. They were heavily fictionalized, but those who worked with him could pick out the case files, had they so desired.

Oh well, he thought, I guess I had better start planning for the winter. It was a joke in his mind. He, sure as hell had no intention to be in Small Town X when the cold winds blew. A tent was not his idea of how to spend a winter. The summer was only bearable because he spent his days in air conditioned buildings doing his thing. The convertible made it more fun to get around, but the van had been air conditioned. Life was a constant trade off, he thought.

With the boiling water the writer made instant oatmeal. The stuff was terrible but he was trying to get into the camping experience. After lacing the oatmeal with honey, he trashed it after one bite.

Twenty minutes later found him getting into the Biscuitville experience instead. He read the Taylortown Gazette as he ate. The gazette was a weekly paper, something the writer hadn't seen in years. All the local news could barely fill the front page. The ten pages were filled mostly with local advertisements and gossip pieces. The writer was beginning to second guess his decision to search the back copies of the Gazette.

He changed his mind yet again, but only when he read the ad for a local computer supply house. 'Now available on CD from Amos Computers, county maps, county meeting notes, Taylortown Gazette copies and more.' The ad listed the address and phone number for Amos Computers. It seemed as though Amos spent his spare time scanning local interest documents into his computer system. He must have cut a cd while waiting for customers. It might not be best-selling software, but then again he wasn't doing anything else either. It was probably only a slightly better use of his time, than watching Lucy reruns on TV would have been. However, for the writer it was a truly lucky break. He no longer had a computer with him, but he knew where he could find one.

"Hi," the young salesman said as he greeted the writer at the door.

"Hello," The writer took the old building in at a glance. The new chrome and glass storefront was definitely out of place on the 1940 brick and plaster building. It looked as though it were an old finance company conversion. The writer had no idea if they had those in Ohio, but there had been one on every corner of the mill town where he grew up.

"So what are you looking for?" the kid asked.

"I saw in the Taylortown Gazette that you had their back copies on cd?" The writer made it a question with his voice.

"We surely do, not a big seller but every little bit helps," he replied with a smile. He had turned his back on the writer as he walked to a wall filled with metal hangers. On the hangers were plastic bags with one or more cds in each. "Here you go, ten years of the Gazette on one cd." He seemed proud of his accomplishment.

"Are you Amos?" The writer had the sudden flash as the kid put the cd on the counter.

"I am James Amos, my dad owns the place, but he don't come in much."

"I expect he is like me, born before the computer became commonplace."

"You seem to at least have made peace with them, daddy just wants to know how much money we are making."

"So do you sell many computers?" The writer couldn't believe that in Taylortown there would be a great demand for computers from a small vender.

"I order a few for the customers, but I mostly do service, and restoration work. Everybody gets a virus or they just plain fuck it up," he said.

"Lady buys a digital camera to make nude shots, then can't work it," the writer suggested.

"Don't I wish, it is more like some drugstore employee gets bored, goes up on the Internet, where he picks up a virus. The whole damn system is infected. If they backed up the system like they should, I could format the disk and be out of there in a couple of hours, but no they have to have the virus eradicated without cleaning the disk. I spend days sometimes tracking down every little bit of the bitch."

"Sounds frustrating," the writer admitted.

"It is," the kid smiled. "But it pays well. When you got no choice, you pay what you have to pay. Then I can usually sell them a tape drive to do full backups. Those they use about six months then get tired of wasting their time. A couple of years from now I expect to do it all again."

"So how much is the cd?"

"Nine-ninety-five," he said without any expression.

The writer didn't know if he expected some reaction or not. He was happy to pay the money to avoid sitting in the newspaper's cramped office for days, while reading the hard copies. He figured he could run all the news pages from the paper in a few hours. If he was going to complain, it would have been about the sales tax. He never did like paying taxes, even if those taxes had paid his salary for years.

The ten minute drive to Small Town X was pleasant enough in the convertible. The writer enjoyed the looks he got from men and women his own age. It was one of those lost youth kind of things almost everyone felt when inside middle-age. He returned all their smiles as he zipped along at a blistering 60 miles and hour. The little three cylinder automobile would have been hard pressed to do the 70 that the larger cars were doing as they flew past him.

Even on his first visit the writer had been surprised to find a public library in Small Town X. It just didn't seem like the place for it. He would have been only slightly less surprised to find one in Taylortown. Taylortown lost out on the library because it wasn't the junction of two state roads. Access from the interstate was not an issue in the placement of the library. Access by the citizens of Taylor County had been the issue. With both the north-south, and the east-west state roads running through Small Town X, it had been the most likely choice. Since Taylortown was the county seat, the county fathers didn't feel the need to add even more services there. They did feel it was time to give Small Town X something. Since it had been an election year when the vote came up, the satellite library went to Small Town X.

The writer didn't know or care about all that. His concern was that the library had a computer which he could use to preview the disk.

Doris looked up from her reception desk at the small frame library. The library was located in a converted 18th century house. The house had been bequeathed to the county. When the county took possession of the house, an auction was foreseen. Instead the county's governing board had decided to build a library in Small Town X. Since the decision was made to build the library within six months of the county's coming into possession of the Reece house, the decision was made to restore the Reece house's once glamourous exterior. The interior was gutted to make room for the book cases.

"Well Writer, what brings you here? I haven't seen Laurel." She hoped he had come to visit her.

"I came to borrow a computer to read this." He said it showing her his CD.

"Now, what in the world do you have there? We don't allow porno on the computers." She laughed out loud. She was sure that the warning was not necessary.

"Unless the Taylortown gazette prints porn, I am safe from the Librarian's wrath."

"You didn't buy a copy of the Gazette's back issues did you?" Doris laughed. "Didn't you think I would have one of those? That one does not cover the last six months since it was scanned. Those are on paper. I have copies in the file room. I can get them, if you would like?"

"I have no idea why it did not occur to me that you might have a copy of this thing. Well hell, now you have two. Just in case somebody swipes your copy." The writer said it as he turned his attention to the computer.

Doris put the disk into the computer, then closed the drawer. As she did, she rested her breasts on the writer's shoulder. He would have been flustered, if he hadn't had his hands on them the night before.

After Doris started the CD, she smiled then returned to her desk. She glanced up at the writer often as he worked. He did not look at all like a writer she decided. He looked more like a football player gone ever so slightly to seed. He had to be something over six feet tall, with a frame that made him look blocky. If the body-type hid his bent, his clothes did even more to camouflage him. His dress was far from the hound's tooth jacket, with leather elbow patches, she might have expected. He dressed simply in cotton shirts and pants. Doris sighed at his distance from matching her dream lover's image.

Doris watched the writer make notes, as he scrolled through the ten years of small town newspapers. Under her watchful eye he finished one page after another of notes. Doris was fascinated but when she approached his desk the writer covered the notes. He did it casually but she quickly understood he was working on something she could not be a party to. She was a bit jealous, but not so much that she couldn't appreciate that his was a solitary hobby. She couldn't find it in her heart to call what he did a profession since he was an unpaid writer.

Doris's scrutiny did not go unnoticed by the writer. He wasn't at all sure exactly what her interest might be, but he expected it to prove harmless. She might want a little romance in her life. He had filled that spot in a lot of lives. Yes, the most recent was Ranger Jane.

His search revealed a couple of interesting things. Small Town X had more than its share of whodunit homicides. Hell, it had more than its share of violent murders. The reservoir was the resting place of only two, but there were more murders. Some went unsolved, but a couple had ended in prosecution. Knowing what the writer knew about Louise Soloman, it was possible that other convictions might have been as shaky. After all Perry had been the public defender a lot of years

He had a list of twenty homicides in the last ten years, homicides that had not been simple, a husband kills his wife because she burned the hamburger, type killings. The writer planned to get the case files on all of them. Then there were the cases not in the paper. The cases not called homicides. Every police department has a stack of missing person reports. They seldom make the newspapers. While most are not, a few of them are really homicides. Without bodies to work with they stay missing persons. The reason is simple an open missing persons report is acceptable or even a hundred of them. A hundred open homicide cases makes a police department look bad.

The writer stood, then stretched. He bent slightly to retrieve his pad from the library type table. The table was where the computer he had used shared a space with its twin. The writer had that itch up and down his spine. It wasn't the kind of itch you could scratch with a pencil. It was the kind he needed answers to scratch. He felt a need to speak to Doris on his way out of the library.