Desert Places (Andrew Z. Thomas/Luther Kite Series 1)

As Orson walked back toward the truck, I heard the boys begin to sob. Then they screamed, pounding and kicking the inside of the trunk. As Orson climbed into the truck and turned off the headlights and KC lights, I noticed the laboriously slow ballad still pouring from the black Ford, the steel guitar solo twanging into the desert. As my eyes readjusted to the darkness, the music stopped. The driver’s door of the Buick opened, and Orson reached into the backseat and picked up a two-by-four and a length of rope.

He shut the door and said, “If they keep carrying on, tell them you’re gonna kill them.”

“Look.” I pointed down the road at a pair of headlights just coming into view.

Orson untied the handkerchief from the antenna and ran back to the truck. He climbed into the cab again, put the truck in gear, and let it roll forward several feet until it pointed east into the desert. For several minutes, Orson worked on something inside the cab. The men continued to moan, their intoxication intensifying their fear, making their pleadings more desperate. I didn’t say a word to them, and still the headlights approached.

The Ford sped off into the desert. I watched it through the windshield and then through the windows on the driver’s side. In ten seconds, it had disappeared into the night. Orson came running up to the car, breathless. He gave me a thumbs-up and dragged the driver to the back of the car. Then he was at my window.

“I need your help,” he said, opening the door. He unlocked the handcuffs and handed me the car keys. As we walked to the back of the Buick, I could hear the approaching car in the distance and see the taillights of the minivan, which had yet to fully disappear—a glowing red eye dwindling into darkness. I clung to that happy family. We let them go. We let them go. I looked down, but there was still no license plate on the Buick.

Orson pointed at the driver on the ground and said, “When I tell you, unlock the trunk and throw him in there. Can you do it?” I nodded.

“Gentlemen!” Orson yelled: “The trunk is being opened, and I’ll be pointing a three-fifty-seven at you. Breathe and I start squeezing.”

Orson looked at me and nodded. I opened the trunk without looking inside at the men or the body I had to lift. Heaving the driver from the ground, I shoved his limp, heavy frame on top of the two men. Then I slammed the trunk, and we got back into the car.

Orson started the Buick after the oncoming car passed us. The interior lights came on, and I gasped when I looked down at my brown suit, doused in blood, which had pooled and run down the coarse cloth into my boots. I screamed at Orson to stop the car. Stumbling outside, I fell to my knees and rolled around, scrubbing my hands with dirt until the blood turned granular.

From inside the car, Orson’s voice reached me. He was slapping the steering wheel, his great bellows of laughter erupting into the night air.

12

HEADING back to the cabin, the men continued to pound against the inside of the trunk. Orson relished their noisy fear. Whenever they screamed, he mocked and mimicked their voices, often surpassing their pleas.

Watching the dirt road illuminated by the headlights, I asked Orson what he’d done to the truck. He grinned. “I secured the steering wheel with that rope so the truck would stay straight, and I shoved that two-by-four between the front seat and the gas pedal.” Orson glanced at his luminescent watch. “For the next half hour, it’ll roll through twenty-five miles of empty desert. Then it’ll run into the mountains, and that’s where it’ll stop, unless it hits a mule deer along the way. But it’d have to be a big buck to stop that monster truck.

“Eventually, someone will find it. Maybe in a few days, maybe in several weeks. But by then it won’t matter, ’cause these boys’ll be pushing up sagebrush. Local law enforcement will probably find out where they were coming from and where they were headed. They’ll realize something happened on that road back there, but so what? It’s gonna rain tomorrow for the first time in weeks and rinse all the blood from the ground. Only two cars saw us, and they both had out-of-state tags, so they were just passing through. This’ll be an unsolved disappearance, and judging from the rude dispositions of these young men, I have a hard time believing anyone will give much of a shit.”

Upon reaching the cabin, Orson pulled up to the shed. When we got out, he called to me from the front of the Buick, popped the hood, and motioned for me to look inside. Floodlights mounted to the shed illuminated the metallic cavity as I peered in.

“What?” I asked, staring at the corroded engine.

“You’d have fallen for it, too. Look.” A few inches in, a piece of metal three feet long had been welded to the underside of the hood. “It’s an old lawn mower blade,” Orson said. “Razor-sharp. Especially in the middle. If his head had been a little farther to the right, it would’ve come clean off the first slam.” Gingerly, I touched the blade with my index finger. It was scratchy sharp, and there was blood on it, sprayed all over the engine, too.

“Have you done this hood trick before?” I asked.

“On occasion.”

One of the men yelled from inside the trunk, “Let me out, motherfucker!”

Orson laughed. “Since he asked politely. Come open it up.” He tossed me the keys. “You hear that, boys?” he yelled, moving toward the trunk. “I’m opening it up. No movement.”

I raised the trunk while Orson stood with the gun pointed at the men. As I backed away, he whispered, “Go get the handcuffs.”

I glanced into the plastic-lined trunk, a gruesome spectacle. The driver had been shoved to the back of the roomy compartment, but not before his blood had soaked his friends. They looked at me as I walked by, their eyes pleading for mercy that wasn’t mine to give. I grabbed the handcuffs from the floorboard on the passenger’s side and returned to Orson.

“Throw them the handcuffs,” he said. “Boys, lock yourselves together.”

“Go f**k yourself,” said the heavy man. Orson cocked the hammer and shot a hole in his leg. As the man howled and screamed obscenities, Orson turned the gun on the other man.

“Your name, please,” he said.

“Jeff.” The man trembled, his hands in front of his face, as if they could stop bullets. His friend grunted and squealed through his teeth as he grasped his thigh.

“Jeff,” Orson said. “I suggest you take the initiative and handcuff yourself to your pal.”

“Yes sir,” Jeff said, and as he cuffed his own hand, Orson spoke to the wounded man, who was now grinding his teeth together, trying not to scream.