As she called, Pilate rolled Malin’s body, dug in his pants pocket and came up with the truck keys. Didn’t notice Malin’s wallet disappearing under his butt. When Raleigh came up on Kristen’s phone, Pilate took it and said, “We got a situation. You need to go to a gas station, tell them your buddy ran out of gas, get a five-gallon can if they got one, or a couple of two-gallon cans, get over here to the campground. Gotta be fast: we’re heading down to St. Paul.”
He rang off and Kristen, who was wrapping a towel around her arm and hand, asked, “What are we doing?”
Pilate looked around the RV. “No way we can keep this—no way we can clean it up enough. There’ll always be blood in it, and if we ever get seriously pushed by the cops, they’ll find it. And in a couple days, it’s gonna stink real bad. We’re gonna drive it out in the woods and burn it. In the meantime, you lay towels on the floor so we can walk on something clean, and get in the shower and hose yourself off. I’m going out, I’ll be back in a minute.”
“My arm is really hurting—”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll take care of it.”
• • •
PILATE WENT OUT in the cool night air, walked over to Malin’s pickup. Took a while, but in the end found a kilo of cocaine—the coke he was supposedly buying that night—and two pounds of weed.
He went back in the RV and said, “Lookee what I got.”
Kristen was just out of the shower. She still had the pillowcase wrapped around her arm, blood was showing through. She said, “Oh. My. God. I might be hurtin’, but I’m not gonna be hurtin’ long.”
Pilate laid out a few lines, and they snorted them up, then Pilate, high as a kite, went to shower and change clothes. When he was out, they piled all the bloodstained clothing on top of the body, then walked around to the cab, and rolled off into the dark. Raleigh called ten minutes later and asked, “Where you at?”
“Coming down to 77. We’re gonna go west on 77 until we find a good spot. You got the gas?”
“Four gallons. I’ll be up behind you in three minutes. The rest of them are coming along behind me. What are we burning?”
• • •
THEY GOT READY to burn the RV in the campground by the river. Skye was still taped up in the back. The tape wrapped round and round her body, pinning her arms to her sides, but left her hands free. They cut the ankle wraps so she could waddle out, but left the wraps around her knees and thighs, so she couldn’t run. As she was edging past Malin’s body, she saw his iPhone lying on the blood-soaked couch, almost slipping through the couch cushions. She faked a fall.
“What the fuck are you doin’? Get up, bitch.”
“I fell . . . Don’t hurt me.” Skye managed to get the phone between her hand and her thigh, and hold it there. She struggled to her feet and waddled outside.
They put her in the back of Bony’s station wagon, and threw a wool blanket over her. Bony said, “You move that blanket, I’ll get the tire iron out and beat the shit out of you.”
Skye never saw the RV burn, but she heard the whump when the fire started. The four remaining cars in Pilate’s convoy fled west on 77, crossed the river into Minnesota, hit I-35, and turned south toward the Twin Cities. Skye could move her hands, from her wrists to her fingertips, but not her arms; nor could she see what her fingers were touching. The back of the old station wagon smelled like dog shit and hay and oil, and the car’s shocks were so bad that lying under the blanket was like rolling down a hill in a garbage can.
She was afraid the phone would ring and give her away. The rattling car gave her the cover she needed to turn the phone in her hand, find the power button with her index finger, and hold it down until she thought it was turned off. She then twisted around enough to see that the phone’s screen had gone dark.
Then she folded her legs at the knees, and managed to shove the phone into her sock.
In St. Paul, the convoy rolled into Regions Hospital. Kristen went in alone, and told the duty nurse a story about a fight on the Capitol lawn between a bunch of drunk street people. The cops came and took a statement, and three hours later, she was sitting on a wall outside the hospital when Pilate came back.
“Didn’t cost me anything, but I had to promise to pay,” she said. She’d used Skye’s ID, and nobody had looked too closely at the photo.
• • •
WHILE KRISTEN WAS being sewn up, Bony took Skye around to two Wells Fargo ATMs, gave her the card and the number, and they pulled out six hundred dollars before midnight, and another six hundred after midnight, the single-day limit on the card. Then they taped her up again, threw her back into the station wagon, and covered her with the blanket. Skye heard Kristen talking outside the car before they were moving, and so knew the other woman had gotten out of the hospital. She felt the car take a couple of turns, then it accelerated: they were back on the freeway. Which one, she didn’t know, but she didn’t care.
She had one chance: the cell phone. She resolved to wait to use it, until she was sure it would pay off. She knew one cell number for sure: Letty’s. She mumbled it over and over as she lay under the blanket, hoping for a break.
She didn’t get it that night. They drove for no more than fifteen minutes, then pulled off and parked. Bony rolled down his window and Pilate said, “We’ll stay here for the night. We can get water and food, and they don’t give a shit how long we stay. And no cops. Give Skye some water, don’t have to waste any food on her.”
“I’m gonna go ahead and fuck her—”
“Not here, you asshole. Somebody would see the car bouncing up and down, and then we could have trouble. You can fuck her tomorrow.”
“You said we were all gonna party, we were all gonna fuck her tonight.”
“Well, you might’ve noticed we had a little problem,” Pilate said. “We don’t need to attract no cops.”
• • •
SKYE HAD NO IDEA what time it must have been, but it was late. People were getting in and out of the car, talking, paid no attention to her. At some point, Bony remembered that he was supposed to get her water, and so came back and ripped some tape off her mouth and let her drink a bottle of spring water. He said, “We’re gonna get you airtight, tomorrow, bitch. Think about that.”
She slept for a while, or passed out, or something.
• • •
SHE GOT HER BREAK the next morning. They were in Hudson, Wisconsin, where the convoy stopped for gas at a Kwik Trip convenience store, and breakfast at the McDonald’s next door. Before Bony got out of the car, he said, “You move and I’ll kill you. I’ll cut your fuckin’ throat.”
He got out of the car and Skye managed to pull the phone out of her sock and turn it on. When the screen lit up, she lay the phone on the floor and, using her thumb, managed to punch in Letty’s number.
Letty answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Letty. Pilate’s got me. They’re going to kill me. I think they killed Henry. They killed a man up by Hayward, they murdered him in the RV and set it on fire. They’ve got me in the back of Bony’s car, they’re getting gas, I stole this phone—”
“Skye! Hide the phone, but leave it on. I think they can track cell phones. You have to turn off the ringer. Do you know how to turn off the ringer?”
“No.”
“Do you know what kind of phone it is?”
“I think it’s an iPhone.”
“There should be a button on the side of it . . .” Letty talked her through it, and Skye found the button and pushed it until the ringer-tone indicator was down as far as it would go.
“Okay, I think it’s off,” Skye said.
“Look in the upper left corner of the screen. Does it say AT&T, or Verizon, or—”
“It says Verizon.”
“What kind of car are you in?”
“A station wagon, an old one, it’s black and it’s funny-looking and it stinks. But I don’t know where I am, I think we drove out of the city we were in.”