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Hitchhiker psycho
thriller
($0.99)
When
a serial killer hitches a ride one sunny day in a beautiful California
valley, he does not suspect that he may have met his match, who is dead
set to take another life. The battle of wits begins and only the most
devious mind will survive.
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Tim
Kizer
Free
preview
Hitchhiker
As
the Darkness Falls series
Not so cocky now, are you, pretty boy?
He
was staring at the body of a young tanned man lying in front of him in
the thick grass. He had stabbed this guy twice in the chest three
minutes ago and now was making certain that the good-looking stranger
was actually dead. So far he had not noticed any signs of life, which
pleased him very much. Squatting, he searched the dead man’s pants
pockets and spent a while studying his findings. According to the
driver license, his twenty-six-year-old victim’s name was Devon Hill.
Well, you picked the wrong day to hike alone in the woods, Mister Hill.
Besides
the license, the wallet contained a few plastic cards and about a dozen
dollar bills; he put the cash in his jeans pocket. He decided he would
burn Devon’s cards and ID when he got out of the forest. With all these
CSI wizards around, you could not be too careful and mere shredding was
not enough. Then he pocketed the coins he had dug out along with the
wallet. It was eight state quarters: Minnesota, Virginia,
Massachusetts, Oregon, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Arkansas, and Delaware.
As he wiped the bloody knife blade on Devon’s T-shirt, he looked
around, cautiously, as if the danger of being spotted was real. Well,
there was no human being as far as the eye could see. Before rising to
his feet, he tossed his knife, Devon’s wallet and keys in the bag. He
could neither keep these three items, nor leave them near the corpse
since they were evidence now. He would throw the potential prosecution
exhibits in a pond or a river on his way out.
One hour later
he was standing on the side of the freeway, waiting for a
tender-hearted driver to give him a lift. It was not too long that he
saw an oncoming car, a graphite metallic Chevrolet Malibu, and started
waving. He was a bit surprised when the vehicle pulled over and the
driver asked him where he was heading.
Well, let’s hope it is going to be a fun ride.
#
“You can put your bag in the back of the car,” instructed the driver.
“Okay.” He carefully placed his bag on the rear seat and shut the door.
“So
you are going to Redding?” the driver said, pressing the gas pedal. He
appeared to be around thirty and wore blue washed jeans and a grey
short-sleeved shirt.
“Yeah, Redding,” he answered.
“My name’s David.” The driver offered his right hand for a handshake.
“Ron,” he replied and shook David’s hand.
“Pleasure
to meet you, Ron.” The driver flashed a sincere smile, which gave Ron a
tingling warm feeling in his stomach and chest. Ron thought it would be
difficult to make himself murder this guy without some sort of
penitence.
He could kill him when they made a stop at an
uninhabited spot down the freeway. He could arrange that stop easily:
he would say he badly needed to pee or throw up. What was he going to
do with the car? This Malibu was nice, and he could use it for a couple
of thrilling chores. He wondered how soon the driver would be missed
after he vanished.
“I’m heading to Salem, the Beaver State
capital, so it’s your lucky day.” David giggled quietly. “I’ve had my
share of hitchhiking, and I remember very well how hard it was to flag
down a car. People don’t trust hitchhikers, and I understand them.
There are quite nutty individuals out there. Besides, you can rarely
get wherever you need to go just in one car. It’s never happened to me.”
“Yeah, I got lucky,” agreed Ron.
Anyway,
he didn’t have to kill David. He could play with him instead. What
would Zack say? Damn, he wished he could tell David that dazzling
story. He was no blabbermouth, nevertheless lately he’d been dying to
share this amazing secret with every stranger he’d met. But if he told
the story to David he would have to kill him afterwards.
“It’s hot today,” said the driver.
“Yeah,
you’re right.” Ron wiped sweat off his forehead with his left palm.
“Hot like in hell. I should have put on sandals.” He tapped on the
floor with his dusty sneakers.
“It’s May, what else can you
expect?” David adjusted the right air vent so that his passenger could
cool down faster. “The guy who invented the car air conditioning is a
saint.”
#
Okay, now it is time for the dazzling story.
Once there was a guy in his early thirties, let’s call him George, who
sold auto parts in Southern California. His pregnant wife, let’s call
her Janet, liked to walk every morning in a park not far away from
their home. One fine winter day two friends saw that woman in the park
and decided to have fun with her. They were quite peculiar people, you
know. For a number of reasons they loved hurting young women, and Janet
was a great specimen. They approached her, asked how she was doing,
with a smile of course, and then one of them hit her really hard in the
temple with a fist, thus rendering the poor woman unconscious.
The
two friends brought Janet to their cabin in a forest in the Sierra
Mountains and locked her in the basement. The fact that she was
pregnant added delightful zest to the whole affair. The intensity of
pleasure quadrupled when the story of the missing woman went national.
For some reason every major TV channel and newspaper decided that the
Americans needed to know just about every little detail of that
particular case, which quickly became a murder investigation. Main
suspect? Of course Janet’s husband.
#
“You have a cool car,” said Ron. “These Malibu are neat.”
“I am a fan of Chevy. They make classy and reliable cars. And
affordable, too. Do you like the color?”
“Yeah, I do. What year is it?”
“I bought it three years ago and never regretted.”
“What are you going to do in Salem?” asked Ron.
“I’ve
got to pick up my wife and son. My mother-in-law lives in Salem, so
they went there to see her. They are very beautiful. Want to take a
look?” Without waiting for Ron’s answer, David pulled out his wallet
and unfolded it, letting out the photo holder. “My wife’s name is
Laura.” His eyes on the road, he handed the wallet to Ron, who,
probably out of politeness, started examining the pictures. “My son’s
name is Tony. He is four. He has my nose and mouth. Do you see that?”
“I guess he does.” Ron returned the wallet.
“My mother-in-law is an all-right lady. Have you ever been to Salem?”
Ron shook his head.
“I’m going to stay there overnight, and tomorrow all three of us will
get back home, to Oceanside. Ever been to Oceanside?”
“No. I’m sure it’s a gorgeous place.”
“It is a great place. But I’ve always dreamed of spending a few years
in Las Vegas. All those neon lights, casinos, seething nightlife.
Fascinating.”
#
Okay, back to the story. George was
arrested and charged with the murder of his wife. To make things even
worse for him, it turned out that he had been cheating on his wife for
many years. And his latest paramour was so treacherous as to tape her
phone conversations with George at the request of the local police.
George
claimed he had an alibi: on the day Janet had gone missing he had been
fishing in a bay several miles south of Arroyo Grande, one hundred and
fifty miles away from his home. That was his biggest mistake after
trusting his perfidious mistress. That critical information about the
alibi was immediately made public by the media. The two friends, who
were still holding Janet captive in the basement of their cabin,
decided it was a great opportunity to safely get rid of the woman that
had no appeal to them any more. They killed her and dumped the body in
the bay where George had been fishing on the day of his wife’s
disappearance.
Result: George got convicted and sentenced to
death. Who knows what the outcome of the trial would have been if there
hadn’t been so much hype about the case. After all, the prosecution had
no material evidence of George’s guilt; they even failed to determine
the cause of Janet’s death. Moral of the story: never think you can’t
be framed.
End
of the free sample. Please click
here to visit Amazon Kindle store to purchase
a full copy of “Hitchhiker” for $0.99, which also includes a full copy
of “Intoxication.”
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