Free Joyride by Jack Ketchum Page A

working hard at keeping herself under control. She sat with her legs crossed tight and her arms folded. Her face had that pinched look again. She was not drinking.
    Well, fuck this. He was.
    He put down the briefcase and went to the bar. TheGlenfiddich was out. The guy was drinking Glenfiddich over ice. Which said something about the type of guy he was. Lee poured his neat. The shakes had reached into his hands all of a sudden, into his shoulders.
    “You want to explain that to me?” he said, not to Carole but to the man.
    “I saw it,” he said. “I watched you. The baseball bat. The rock. The clean-up. All of it. I was right over your heads, up on a ridge there. Then I went down to the stream. He’d already moved quite a ways, actually, by the time I got down there. I pushed him out into the middle of the stream. Figured I’d help out a little.”
    The whiskey burned only slightly. The man was enjoying this, leaning forward, smiling.
    “So what do you want? Money? How much?”
    The man just looked at him. He seemed amused.
    “Company, Lee” said the man. “All I want is company.”
    He was thinking about the gun in the drawer. He was thinking about ways to kill the man.
    “I don’t get it,” he said.
    “Carole says that it was her husband you killed and that he deserved it, that there was no other way. That you’d tried the police and that you’d tried to bribe him off with money. I believe her. I see no reason not to. I know plenty of people who deserve to die. Plenty, believe me. But I don’t really care about any of that now.”
    He leaned forward even farther, intent. The black snub-nose pistol gripped tightly in his lap.
    “What I want to know from you, Lee, what I want to know right now is what it was like. See, I want you to tell me. I’ve really… wondered, you know?” He smiled.
    Lee looked deep into the smile and something in therescared him. Money, blackmail he could understand. It was the way of the world. It was business. But this was crazy.
    What was it like? They were in the company of some weird sick freak here.
    “Who knows?” the man said. “Maybe I’ll want to try it.”
    Lee just looked at him. And the man must have thought that he didn’t understand.
    “Killing somebody,” he said.
    Lee’s whiskey glass was empty. He put it down on the sideboard. He glanced at Carole. From the look of her, he guessed they were thinking along the same lines.
    He took a breath. Go on, he thought. Say it. Better the demon you know than the one you don’t know.
    “Are you talking about us?” he said.
    Lock laughed. Like this was very funny to him.
    “God, no! Never! You’re missing the point entirely. I want to know you guys. I respect you guys. What you did took incredible balls, incredible balls! I’m in awe of you two guys. I mean, look how well you did it. Even forgetting the little assist from me. I mean, you’re probably the last two people I’d want to kill. Honest!”
    The man looked down.
    Beast was nuzzling his pants leg.
    “Hey, kitty!”
    He reached down and scratched her ear.
    He didn’t know shit about cats. Probably didn’t like them either. He scratched her much too hard and too vigorously. Beast shot him a look and trotted away.
    He relaxed into the sofa. Sipped his whiskey.
    “Look, let’s begin at the beginning. You tell me all about it, I mean all about yourselves, and I’ll tell you all about me. We’ll understand one another in no time.You’ll see. Only, let’s do it in my car, okay? We’ll go for a little ride the three of us. It’s going to be a really nice night tonight. We’ll have a little dinner, take a little ride. And you can drive, Lee. You see? I even trust you with my Volvo. Come on. It’ll be fun.”
    He stood up, the gun in a neutral position at his side. Lee found the word he’d been looking for to describe the man. The guy was cheerful. Relentlessly cheerful.
    “Come on,” he said. “I’ll buy you a drink. I bet you could use one.”