Killer Trip

By Wilma Wuite

Diffuse light slid through the thin curtains into the room when I looked through my eyelashes.
"Good morning, beauty," I heard a voice next to me. I jumped up.
Wayne Turner.
He was in my bed. I was in a strange town, drank too much in a strange bar and had a strange guy escort me back to my hotel.
And that wasn't all. It was morning and that strange man was still there. I started to panic.

'Killer Trip' starts with a brave woman running away into the unknown. Soon her trip turns into a true challenge, with threats, kidnapping, and even murder.

Killer Trip, A bone-chilling journey into the unknown

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilma Wuite
• Release date: Oct 31, 2021

Wilma Wuite

Verhalen, ze hebben altijd in mijn hoofd gezeten. Elke gebeurtenis zette ik om in een flard van een verhaal. Een aantal jaren geleden ben ik begonnen het verhaal, dat al heel lang in mijn hoofd zit, op te schrijven. Daarbij kwam ik er steeds meer achter dat mijn fantasie behoorlijk met me op de loop kan gaan. Een heel bizarre ervaring, maar ik genoot er intens van. Het resultaat is 'Geschopt'. Mijn tweede boek Moordtocht is vertaald in het Engels onder de titel Killer Trip. IJskelder is mijn derde boek. Het is uitgekomen in april 2023. Houd mijn website www.wilmawuite.nl in de gaten en volg verdere ontwikkelingen. Ook ben ik te volgen op facebook en twitter.

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KILLER TRIP

www.wilmawuite.nl

Wilma Wuite

KILLER TRIP

ISBN 9781793357304

©2019 Wilma Wuite

Coverdesign: Jen Minkman

Author photo: Judith Lohuis

Edited by: Helen Bagott and Christina Kaye

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published April 2019

For Ken, Barb, Sandy, Mark and Allison

July 2012

The sun had set, but the heat of the day was still heavy in the air. The first signs of a welcome thunderstorm were there. Flashes of lightning lit the world, and far away, the thunder started to roll in. Matt hoped for a heavy shower, so it would finally cool down a bit.

With his eyes closed, he sat in the backseat of his brother’s car, thinking of the message he had gotten from his neighbor and friend, Ken, to invite him for a dip in his pool. He had responded quickly.

Will be there in fifteen minutes, if David hits the pedal.

Matt listened with half his attention on the discussion David and his father were having. Sometimes, his mother put in a bitter comment. They argued about Cruella, a nickname he’d given Rita, David’s girlfriend, as usual. His mother was having an especially hard time with her and she didn’t make a secret of it. Rita was always backing out of meeting up with her in-laws. David tried to defend her in every way, despite her the condescending way she treated him. Even though her family didn’t approve of her relationship with him. The family didn’t approve of the relationship between the daughter of a wealthy lawyer of Eastern European descent and a man whose ancestors were rooted on this piece of the earth, since time immemorial. But love is blind. In David’s case, it was stone-blind; lame and stone-deaf, according to Matt.

He dozed off. Tomorrow, around this time, he would be in South Dakota with his parents for a three-week vacation. On the one hand, he looked forward to it, but on the other, he didn’t at all. His life was so different from the lives of his relatives on the reservation. In the past years, he had found out he had little to complain about. His father had a steady job as a mechanic and his mother worked three days a week at his school. He did well in school and had a good chance at getting a scholarship for college.

I need to get gas, he suddenly heard David say.

Matt sat up a little and peeked over his father’s shoulder. On the left, the yellowish lights of Chin-Hae’s gas station appeared. His father grumbled, but Matt interrupted him.

Crap, David. I need to pee. Can’t you drop us off at home first?

Chin has a restroom. We won’t even make it home. I’m guessing we’re driving on fumes.

That dump smells like shit. I won’t go there.

Then look up a tree, David mocked. His father laughed at his sons’ bickering.

David drove up the bumpy and poorly-lit station and stopped at the pump. Matt jumped out of the car and ran to the back of the building.

Hurry! he heard his brother call. We’re leaving in five minutes and I won’t wait.

Is Cruella going to be mad when you come home late? he couldn’t resist replying.

David laughed.

Despite the age difference of thirteen years, they got along very well. David was twenty-nine, but treated Matt different from his oldest brother Adam, who was another three years older. Adam behaved like an old man. He and his wife Jenny had just bought a house, and Matt wouldn’t be surprised if they had a baby within a year.

Uncle Matt. He grinned. That sounds awkward.

He disappeared behind the building and walked about fifty feet into the woods, emptied his bladder and breathed with relief. It was pitch dark. A car drove up at high speed and stopped close by with squeaking brakes. Matt didn’t pay any attention to it. He thought back to the past afternoon and evening. Adam and Jenny had thrown a housewarming party. Matt had hardly seen or spoken to his brother and sister-in-law. They were too busy keeping up with their other guests. He had seen Adam talk to his parents for a short time, but Adam had left them on their own soon, too. Not that it mattered to Matt; he had had a good time by himself.

David was a totally different story. He didn’t want to go at all, but Matt had heard his father speak to David urgently. He didn’t know what it was about, but his father had sounded nervous.

After David had apparently promised to come, his father had started to relax a bit. Matt had not paid it any attention. David had come alone. Cruella was once again absent. Matt hadn’t minded about that either.

He zipped up and started to stroll back. Two loud bangs close to each other made him jump. His heart skipped a beat when he heard his father scream. Then he heard another three bangs. Matt started running, but at the corner of the building, he stood stiff. A man passed him, less than six feet away. He ripped the ski mask from his head. In a split-second, Matt caught a glimpse of a bald head and a tattoo on his neck. The man didn’t seem to notice him. He walked by in a hurry. Matt stared at him, unable to move.

About a hundred feet away, the man jumped into a small car that drove off at a high speed before he was able to close the door. Without lights on, it bumped off the terrain. It took over a minute before Matt could move. He breathed heavily when he walked slowly to the place where David’s car was parked. The closer he got, the stiffer he moved.

There, next to the car, was his father. His shirt was covered with blood and the dusty ground around him was turning dark. With empty eyes, he stared into nothing. Six feet away was his cellphone. Matt sobbed in agony. The moment he knelt next to the body, he heard a sound on the other side of the car. Matt started moving again and ran around the car. There, he found his mother, also covered in her own blood. She stared at him with big, scared eyes.

Mom, he whispered, as he fell to his knees next to her.

She tried to say something, but she made no sound. He took her hand into his and felt her squeeze. Then she breathed her last breath. Panic overwhelmed him.

David! he screamed. David, help!

But Matt knew David wouldn’t come. He got to his feet and walked to the shop. First slowly, but when he got closer, he ran. Far away, he heard sirens. Inside, he fell next to his brother and cried.

September 2014

1

Two bags in the backseat, containing all my possessions. Everything I had gathered in the two years that I had lived in this country. And the few things I had taken from the Netherlands, my home country. Except my poison green butterfly seat. That was still sitting in the living room of the house that had been my home for the past two years. Our home. Nick and me. Until this morning. In a burst of anger, I had packed all my clothes in a weekend bag and my books, CD’s and notebooks in a shopping bag. Together with my laptop I had thrown it all in the back of my car and had taken off..

Nick had watched me in astonishment. He had tried to talk to me, but we had passed that stage. I had passed that stage. This time he had crossed the line. I was done with him. The last I saw of him was his pale face in the rear mirror in a blue cloud of exhaust. He had watched me leave with hanging shoulders and arms.

I was too distracted with bitter thoughts to notice the temperature of my car going sky high. When I had left that morning from Los Angeles—it was before six—the only thing I wanted was to leave, but as soon as I had reached the coast a seed of a plan had settled in my head. A plan to find out what had been the reason that caused Nick and me to drift apart. Who was the woman who had come between us? Who may have always been between the two of us. I had found out that her name was Missy and she lived in Salley, a small town somewhere in the mountains east of Santa Barbara. My knowledge of this part of the universe’s topography wasn’t enough and I didn’t have a navigation system. I had taken the exit for the supermarket and bought some necessities, among them a jar of Nutella, half a loaf of bread, a knife, and a six-pack of water. Nick would have laughed his head off at the sight of the giant jar. I had also bought a map of Southern California. When I looked at it, I only saw some black dots, connected with some very thin grey lines, in an ocean of green. One of those dots was Salley, my final destination. The ocean was behind me. The temperature and the land rose equally. And the temperature of my car accompanied them.

Suddenly all the lights on my dashboard lit up. Not only a few, like I had experienced before. I had been naming my car the red-light district for some time already. It was an old car and I had bought it for three hundred dollars. My first salary of my first real job in Los Angeles. This red light thing had started about two months later. Nick—my soon to be ex—husband had looked at it a few times, had advised me to never leave without a bottle of engine oil and a bottle of water and keep filling it up. But now every other light had lit up. The bitch creeped up the mountain in agony.

Just before I had seen a sign that said the road rose ten percent. Before me was an enormous rock, where the road curled around. I sweated it out and not only because of the temperature—by that time it must have been at least a hundred degrees. I reached the rock and saw the temperature of my car moving to the red area. There was no place to stop. At the one side the rock rose up high, at the other side the world seemed to stop, to start again many feet lower. I was slowly starting to panic. The anger of that morning had totally gone. Despair and sadness fought for a top two place. And now panic accompanied them. The last piece of civilized world was more than an hour behind me. Somewhere before me should be Salley, but I had no idea how far away or close by it was.

The engine started making more and more awkward sounds. After the rock, after the curve I had to do something. I felt my heart beat in my throat, and I had a hard time breathing. In a hairpin-curve I suddenly had the most breathtaking, yet frightening sight on the abyss on my left. I could barely stop myself from closing my eyes. Right after the curve I saw a place to stop the car. An inlet, like I had seen many times before. A place where two cars could pass, without crashing in the deep. About a hundred feet, seventy, forty…as if the car had known, it stopped with a big bang when I pulled into the inlet. Smoke went up from under the hood. I jumped out of the car. The heat slapped me in the face. It was smoking hot, dusty, and especially desolate. In the past hour I had only seen about three cars. I wish I had prepared my trip better. I wish I had, I wish I was. But I hadn’t, and I wasn’t.

I didn’t know what to do anymore. I was empty, tired, mad, and sad. At this moment it was more over the fact that my car had deserted me than because of finding out about Nick cheating on me. I pulled out one of the water bottles and took a sip from the water that had gone hot. Then I realized I had to do something. Call someone. Fill the water reservoir. Fill the oil reservoir. Make the thing start again to move on. To Salley.

There was still smoke coming from under the hood that was so hot you could easily bake an egg on it. My shirt was soaking wet and I felt sweat dripping down my forehead from under my cap. I grabbed my cellphone from the passenger seat and found out I had no signal. The rock probably blocked everything that connected me to the outside world. I sighed and sobbed for a while. The sun was shining inexorably and there was only shadow on the other side of the rock. Here there were only low bushes. I crossed the road and stared down. The tops of the trees were a few feet below me. The trees were on a slope that went further down. I walked back to the rock but didn’t dare to walk around it. Afraid of being hit by a car that would just drive around it at the same time. On the passenger side of my car there was a small piece of shadow and I sat down there. Not that it was much cooler there, but at least the sun wouldn’t scorch the skin off my arms. I drank the last warm sips from the bottle and threw it away. And picked it back up and threw it in the back of the car. Then I sat down again and let my head hang down. When the engine had cooled down, I could fill the water reservoir. And the oil reservoir. And I could try to walk to Salley. Or Timbuctoo.

Suddenly there was the low sound of a heavy engine. Close by. I must have dozed off for a short period of time. I jumped up and almost went down because of the too sudden move in a too hot world. An old truck drove by. One that had been white but was now a greyish red with all the dust. On the door was a logo and a name, but it wasn’t clear enough to read anymore. A loud heavy-metal beat came from the cabin. I waved at the driver. He drove by, hit the brakes, and backed up, to stop a few feet before my car. The volume of the music was turned down a little and a young guy in jeans and a neon yellow T-shirt jumped out. He wore a faded purple LA Lakers cap with an almost white spot—about as big as a dime—by his right ear.

Break down? Not the best place here.

I nodded. He sounded friendly, but I had seen so many movies with naïve blonde white girls, that were kidnapped, raped, and murdered by nice guys at first sight. I hesitated and stepped back.

You want me to look at it? I know a bit about cars, the man offered. His brown eyes smiled at me.

Yes, please. All the lights went on. What choice did I have? Sit and wait here until I roasted? Besides that, I might be white and blonde, naïve was something I certainly wasn’t.

The man opened the hood and started checking the engine. I saw his hands pull and push here and there. When he looked up, he looked puzzled.

I’m afraid this is not going to work anymore. It’s blown up.

I didn’t understand much about cars but blowing up the engine was the end. That much I did understand.

Where were you going? I can give you a ride if you want to. I have to settle some things a little ahead. After that I’m heading for Salley.

He waved his hand to invite me to his dirty truck.

If you need a place to stay for now, there is a hotel that always has vacancies.

I hesitated but remembered that this might be my only chance to get to Salley. I took the bags from the car and followed the man. I threw the weekend bag in the back of the truck, where I saw three bumps under some old blankets, and got in. Hoping that he would just drop me off at the hotel in Salley. I put my laptop at my feet and held on to my shoulder bag.

Before he took off, he turned to me, ‘ ‘Wayne Turner, he introduced himself. And you are…

Chay Sci… Arnoldi.

Charlotte Arnoldi from Arnhem, the Netherlands. Until a year ago. Then Nick Scially walked into my life. Three months later, he had asked me to marry him and I had said yes, even though I knew very little about him. He called me Chay, a name that suited me better.

I still knew little about him and he hadn’t done much to change that. Wayne Turner didn’t seem to notice my slip of the tongue. He hit the pedal and turned up the music again. We drove through the brown landscape and my lungs seemed to get burned by every breath I took. We raced over the narrow road with a deep abyss on the one side. On the left I caught a glimpse of some buildings, and in a flash, I saw a sign by an exit. Salley was down in the valley, but Turner didn’t seem to pay any attention to it. I held on to the grip at the door and looked through my eyelashes. The buildings disappeared and not much later a mountain wall blocked the whole city from my sight. The road wound through the mountains. Suddenly he hit the brakes. In front of us was an open area. In the valley heavy smoke went up to the quivering sky.

Shit, was the only thing Wayne Turner whispered. He drove on very slowly until we could see a burning building.

Were you supposed to deliver something there? My voice sounded choked. He didn’t say anything, left the car roll, and stared at the flames leaping up, with glowing eyes. Suddenly he hit the pedal again, found a place to turn and drove back.

2

Ten minutes later Wayne Turner dropped me off at the only hotel in Salley. When I asked him if he didn’t have to call in the fire, he didn’t answer, just as he didn’t answer any of my attempts to start a conversation. The moment I got out of the car I heard and saw two fire trucks drive by at the end of the street. I still heard the sirens for quite some time after they were out of sight.

I’ll try to find the time to take a look at your car later. His brown eyes looked at me without really seeing me. I nodded and got out my stuff. The heat slapped me in the face and the hot concrete burned right through the thin soles of my sandals.

The hotel lobby was small and dull. The counter was no more than three feet long. At the window there were two small seats and a round table. A lanky guy with pimples on his chin give me the key to a room on the second floor.

Wayne Turner didn’t call before the end of the afternoon. I had taken a nap and was about to take a shower.

Nothing to be done about that car anymore. It is as dead as a doornail.

Of course, I’d had little hope that it would turn out okay, but the shock was worse than I had thought it would be. Actually, I was totally crushed. I had left in a hurry without any preparation. And now it looked like I was stuck in Salley.

So, what brings you to Salley? Wayne Turner asked. My mind was still somewhere far away, and the question shook me up.

He didn’t have anything to do with what brought me to Salley. A stupid plan. The idea that I would find answers to my questions. Answers to questions I didn’t really want to ask myself. Why would I stay here anyway? Because I didn’t have much choice. I didn’t have any money for another car, my car was declared dead and I didn’t have any friends I could call.

No, not could.

Wanted.

I ran off, away from Nick. I didn’t want to be found by him or anybody else. I needed time. Time to think about what I wanted. And I wanted to meet the woman who had come between us and had driven us apart. I told Wayne that I needed a break and that somebody had told me that it was worth paying a visit to this part of the state.

He responded by laughing sarcastically. In the background, something fell and he talked to someone covering the speaker of his phone. Suddenly he was back. I have to work in my brother’s bar. It’s called Lenny’s and it’s two blocks away from the hotel. If you feel like it.

I said I would think about it. To be honest I just wanted to be left alone. Crawl into bed and turn myself over to the oblivion of a freeing sleep. But when I was ready to do so a few hours later I couldn’t stop my thoughts. My head spun. After over half an hour of tossing and turning I gave up, got dressed, and walked out.

I found Lenny’s after a short walk. Like everything else in Salley Lenny’s was faded glory. A narrow place behind a brown door that could use some fresh paint. Inside the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke of many years hung heavy in the air, even after all these years smoking had been prohibited. On one side were U-shaped seats with burst red skai upholstery around tables that could also use a lick of paint. On the other side was a long bar with old barstools. In three of the seats young couples were sitting and on the stools were some loners staring at their glasses. In the back was a guitar player playing without any inspiration.

A man with brown curly hair to his shoulders stood behind the bar. His facial features were a lot sharper than Wayne’s, but I noticed some resemblance. This had to be Wayne’s brother. His dark brown eyes looked angry. He wore a navy blue shirt that was tight around his muscular shoulders. He looked at me in suspicion.

I sat down between a man in a plaid shirt and a cowboy hat, and a black girl with straightened hair. I ordered a glass of beer and when I was down to the second one, Wayne came in from somewhere out the back. In a dark blue shirt and clean jeans and without his cap on he looked different. Mature. His face lit up when he saw me. He pushed his brother out of the way and started rinsing glasses.

So, how do you like our great hotel? he asked, with his eyes sparkling of fun.

Fantastic. They gave me the best room. Second floor, great view. And there are some very interesting people living there.

When I had taken my stuff to my room a man had stared at me. He had just come down the stairs from the next floor and he had scared me to death.

The room was twelve by twelve feet, including the sanitary space. The walls had faded wallpaper. There was a narrow double bed with a poop-brown cover. Over the bed was a small painting of a landscape. Then there was a cabinet and a tiny space with a shower a sink and a toilet. The drain was under the sink and the mirror was scratched. The only window in the room couldn’t be opened and the courtyard I had a view over was about the same size as my room. The dumpster that was there was bulging and the tiles were broken and covered with cigarette butts. It was reasonably priced, though, and, despite the depressing sight of it, the room was clean.

I had unpacked my laptop and shoved it under the bed. In one of the compartments of the bag I kept my flash drives with my files. Maybe I could find inspiration to finally do some writing, right here in Salley. I had wanted to start writing a book about three years ago as some sort of therapy. The inspiration had dried up before I had written down one single letter. I had hoped that my new life, in a new environment would do me good, but nothing was less true. Maybe this change of surroundings and company would finally give me the inspiration to start.

Wayne put another beer in front of me. He said he had taken all my personal belongings from my car. I could pick them up whenever I felt like it. He would take care of salvaging the car. He didn’t tell me if I would get anything for it and I didn’t have the energy to ask. After that he chatted about life in Salley. His brother Vance took care of live music in the bar every Saturday evening, the only activity in the sleepy town, except for a cultural festival in October. The festival attracted a lot of people, but Wayne thought it was a lot of fuss and chitchat about paintings and sculptures he didn’t understand a bit about. He was more interested in cars and bikes. Of course, he did work at the only garage in town.

I had to pick up some stuff this afternoon. Happy accident, so to say, he grinned.

And you had to deliver stuff to that warehouse that was on fire?

A shadow flickered across his face, but he recovered quickly.

That’s sorted already.

Good. I took another sip from my beer and realized I hadn’t felt this relaxed for a long time. The argument of this morning disappeared to the background more and more. I got carried away by the music, the background noise and Wayne’s chatter, that I wasn’t really listening to. The man in the cowboy hat slid off his stool and left. The guitar player stopped playing and took his place. Wayne gave him a glass of some golden liquid. The girl had left a while ago.

We’re going to close, Wayne’s brother suddenly announced. I looked around me and to my surprise there were only a few people left. The clock behind the bar told me it was two a.m. Time had flown by. I got up and staggered. A hand under my elbow kept me on my feet.

It was still dark when I heard some annoying sound. It stopped and was followed by a compelling voice. I wanted the voice to stop talking. I wanted to sleep. My head spun, and my stomach protested. I could get to the bathroom just in time. Too much alcohol, too little to eat, exhaustion and stress. I dragged myself back to bed and crept under the duvet. As soon as I closed my eyes the world started to turn around. I breathed heavily a few times. I couldn’t get myself to get up again. The voice suddenly stopped, and I slid back to a restless sleep.

Diffuse light slid through the thin curtains into the room when I looked through my eyelashes.

Good morning, beauty, I heard a voice next to me. I jumped up.

Wayne Turner.

He was in my bed. I was in a strange town, drank too much in a strange bar and had a strange guy escort me back to my hotel.

And that wasn’t all. It was morning and that strange man was still there. I started to panic. Was it only a day ago that I had run away from my home in Los Angeles, after a bad fight? I tried to figure out what had happened the night before. My memories got stuck at the point where the bar closed. It had been two a.m. After that everything was hazy.

Are you all right? You look like you have seen a ghost.

What are you doing here?

You weren’t in any shape to get up the stairs. So I helped you to your room.

I couldn’t remember any of this.

I want you to leave.

Wayne grinned.

I’m going to take a shower, if you don’t mind. I did, but he had already disappeared into the tiny bathroom without waiting for an answer.

Shortly after that I heard water coming down. I got out of bed quickly and put on my jeans that were next to the bed. I was still wearing the same shirt I had on last night. It smelled sweaty, but I couldn’t care about that. After that I checked if my laptop was still under the bed.

Wayne was singing in the shower. I didn’t want him here. Suddenly I heard an unknown ringtone. At first, I ignored the sound and after a short time it stopped. I heard Wayne stumble around in the small space when the water stop running. At that time the annoying sound started again. This time Wayne heard it, but before he could reach it, the phone stopped. He threw it on the bed, put on his jeans and shirt, and stepped into his shoes. I slipped around him, locked the bathroom door, and stepped in the shower. I hoped my mind would get clear by the running water. Over the noise of the water I heard a muted voice. Wayne was arguing with someone. By the time I turned off the water it was quiet.

I wrapped a towel around me and stepped into the room. I had hoped he had gone, but he was still sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. He turned to me.

Then he got up. Call me if you need anything.

Just go!

3

My memories of the night before didn’t get any clearer. Did I really ask Wayne Turner to come to my room with me? My grandpa had taught me to distrust garage and bar owners. Of course, Wayne was neither, but he was close to the probe. Despite his cute brown eyes, he was not my type in any way. And even if I had just walked away from Nick, I wouldn’t take a guy like Wayne home just like that, would I? The most upsetting thing was that I couldn’t remember anything about it.

I was still trying to figure it out when after breakfast I went out for a walk. It was already hot again and I tried to stay in the shadow as much as possible. The hotel surprisingly had Wi-Fi and I had found the address I had been looking for when I was still in my room. Soon I found the street on the edge of the little town. On left side of the street was a big block of two-story buildings. There were small businesses on the first floor. Neither of them looked very prosperous. I found the address I was looking for. On the windows was a sign that said, Beans and Leafs. A coffee and tea parlor. I peered through the window and saw a plain room with a small bar in the back. It was filled with about five tables