Cherie found solace from all the stress by following a strict routine. When the snow melted she began jogging the three miles to work and back every day. Running was the national craze, so no one thought anything of it. Cherie's reason for running was the desire to feel safe. If it was her fate to be chased by a serial killer, she damn sure would have the stamina to out run the bastard.
On her days off, after her morning run, she drove down to the big city and spent the day doing research at the main library. There was only one way to prove Lewis was not the killer and that was to prove who the killer was.
Once a week she attended a course at the community college. She told Skipper she was taking creative writing courses but he and Craig found out by accident that she was actually taking advance martial arts classes. They stopped by the college to surprise her one night and no one in the creative writing department ever heard of her. Her car was in the parking lot so they waited for break time. She got a coffee, had a smoke and they followed her back to her next class.
She bowed and the proceeded to beat the crap out of some poor guy. No one wanted to be her partner after that. No one wanted it as bad as she did. She even copied the way Bruce Lee quaked at times and made terrifying sounds. Craig swore that the noises she made were cracking his ribs.
"She must be afraid of getting mugged or something," Craig guessed.
"A lot of girls take self-defense classes because of that serial killer never being caught," Skipper shrugged.
"They don't go for black belts. She's a black belt. There aren't any other girls in that class. She's the only girl," Craig's jaw dropped. "Let's get out of here before she sees us and kicks our asses for spying on her."
The next day when Craig and Skipper returned from their routes they found Tina massaging Cherie's shoulders.
"Your shoulders are like steel! Man, you are tense!" Tina exclaimed and then explained to Craig and Skipper that Cherie had come back from her route early, looking like she'd seen a ghost.
"I don't like that rest stop. I think somebody lives there!" Cherie frowned.
"Then make a report at the Ranger's Station when you make your delivery tomorrow. They'll check it out." Tina assured her.
"I think we should stop delivering to the rest stop," Cherie said.
"The box is always empty. Somebody is taking the paper every day," Craig said.
"Yeah, but we don't know what they are doing with it. I don't think we have a bunch of avid readers out there," Cherie said ominously. The Apple Press was a free paper. The paper stand was never locked. The money came from ads. For all they knew somebody was using it for toilet paper or kindling.
"They say that area is haunted!" Skipper laughed.
"Very funny, Skipper. There's one more detail. Whoever it was stole the sourdough bread the monks asked me to bring down to Ray Moon's Market. I was shaking so bad I could hardly start the truck. I didn't finish the route. I came straight back here." Cherie wasn't laughing.
"O.K." Tina picked up the phone, "I'm calling the sheriff."
It turned out that someone was piling up the papers and making a nest in the men's room. The sheriff also found pieces of sourdough bread in the newspaper nest. They padlocked the rest stop and The Apple Press canceled the paper delivery there until further notice.
The next morning on her route she drove slowly past the padlocked rest stop and noticed something odd about the Apple Press paper box. She was squinting to try to make out what it was and by the time she noticed someone was standing in the middle of the road it was almost too late. She almost hit him but swerved off the road just in time. She almost maneuvered her way back onto the road but hit a patch that was too narrow and went over the edge down into the ravine. She was alright but the truck was going to have to be towed.
Horror shook her as it sank in what the man had been wearing. He was naked except for the woman's burgundy coat with the fur trimmed hood. The coat was much too small for him and it was badly stained and torn but unmistakable. It was definitely the coat she had seen in the Polaroid prints she'd found in the roll-top desk.
The moment had been surreal. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion and yet at the same time happening very fast.
She could hear the water of Fat Rock Creek gurgling at the bottom of the ravine. The truck was pinned from falling further by two very large pine trees. She crawled out of the truck window with her purse of coins for the pay phone. She was sore but apparently nothing was broken. Her plan was to get to the phone booth at the rest stop and call the sheriff. So far the man was not in sight.
When she reached the road she was shocked to find he was still standing in the same place. The young man just stood there in the middle of Apple Road like a lawn flamingo. She staggered across the road, never breaking eye contact with the him. She made it to the phone booth and he was still just standing there in the middle of the road. She didn't dare yell at him to get out of the road before he got hit by a car because that would probably break his trance and make him attack her. She was relieved when the man began to inch towards where the truck had vanished. He was interested in the truck, not her. Cherie lost sight of him as he scooted down to the truck.
Ehbo rummaged around until he found Cherie's brown bag lunch. He sat on top of the sideways truck and enjoyed her egg salad sandwich. There was nothing else to eat, so he climbed back up to Apple Road.
The Sheriff was on the way. The half-naked man in the dead girl's coat started walking towards Cherie. She bolted without looking where she was going and ran right into the Apple Press paper box. She hit it hard enough to bruise her hip and jar the door open and out fell a woman's head that had been nestled in newspaper. The young man rushed across the road to pick it up and placed it back in the paper stand.
"Ehbo eee! Ehbo eee!" the young man in the dead woman's coat tried very hard to tell Cherie something.
Four sheriff cars, four ambulances and two fire trucks arrived. The young man was handcuffed and put in the first ambulance and started on an IV. He wasn't combative. He just kept saying, "Ehbo eee!"
"The suspect is incoherent, suffering from hypothermia, dehydration, multiple cuts, contusions, possible concussion," a paramedic began reel off the laundry list of things that were wrong with this man.
Cherie couldn't talk anymore. She suddenly lost her hearing and felt very sleepy. She pointed towards the paper stand.
"Christ!" the officer who opened the box exclaimed.
"What did he hit you with? Young lady, can you tell me what he hit you with?" a paramedic was suddenly hovering and working to revive her. She had no memory of being put on the stretcher.
"He didn't hit me," Cherie came to for a moment and managed to say.
"What's your name?" the paramedic asked.
"Cherie."
"Cherie, you need to tell us what he hit you with. We need to know what you were hit with," the paramedic kept at her.
"Skipper rabbit," she said. She didn't know her head was bleeding. It felt very warm and wet.
"He hit you with a rabbit?" The paramedic repeated her words and looked up at his partner. They couldn't see the truck across the road in the ravine from where they were standing. They would eventually get the story straight, but not from Cherie.
"Skipper rabbit. That head does not go with that coat," Cherie said and blacked out again.
"Deep scalp laceration. She's got a concussion. She's incoherent," the paramedic rattled off her statistics while loading her into the ambulance.
"What the fuck happened out here? 'Ehbo eee.' 'Skipper Rabbit.' Nobody is making any sense," the officer in charge threw up his hands and started talking to himself, "A lot of damn good it did to padlock this rest stop!"
"There's a truck down here!" a distant voice announced.
Within hours rumors were flying that the serial killer had been captured and that Cherie Solange had kicked his ass like Bruce Lee and knocked him back to the stone age.
Sam Masterson, Craig, Tina and Skipper sat in the waiting room until they were allowed to visit Cherie in her hospital room.
"What did the FBI ask you?" Craig ask her.
"They wanted to know what 'Skipper Rabbit' meant so I explained to them that it is a code word from my driving instructor for 'drive safely and don't run off the road'," Cherie tried to sit up but couldn't.
"Let me help you," Sam Masterson cranked the handle on her bed so she was sitting up right.
"You ran the truck off the road, Cherie. You totaled it." Skipper reminded her.
"I know that, Skipper. That was a human being in the middle of the road, not one of your 'Skipper Squirrels'. I remembered everything you taught me and did the opposite of what you said," she managed a smile.
Cherie didn't tell the FBI what she meant about the burgundy coat that the paramedics reported she had been babbling about. They would make the connection without her help. She didn't want to get in any deeper than she was. She claimed she didn't remember rambling on about the coat, that she must have been dreaming about the terrifying ordeal and just talking out of her head about how the coat didn't fit him and certainly didn't cover the essentials.
"Who's Lewis?" the FBI agent threw in.
"A guy I dated once. We broke up," Cherie was completely caught off guard. Apparently she had been asking for Lewis in her sleep. Truth be told, she did wish Lewis was around. No one knew where he was.
~ To Be Continued ~
