White Knuckle Read online

  There’s a killer on the road…

  He’s a big rig truck driver who goes by the CB handle White Knuckle, and he’s Jack the Ripper on eighteen wheels. For thirty years he has murdered hundreds of women in unimaginable ways, imprisoning them in a secret compartment in his truck, abducting them in one state and dumping their dead bodies across the country.

  Dedicated FBI agent Sharon Ormsby is on a mission to hunt down and stop White Knuckle. She goes undercover as a truck driver with a helpful long hauler named Rudy in a cross-country pursuit that will ultimately bring her face-to-face with White Knuckle in a pedal-to-the-metal, high-octane climax on a highway to Hell.

  White Knuckle

  Eric Red

  Dedication

  To my father, Cornelius Gerard Durdaller. I love you, Dad.

  Chapter One

  Thwap, thwap, thwap.

  Gusts of rain swept her windshield and the slashing wipers did nothing to stave off the deluge as Carrie Brown drove home on the lonely night Midwestern Interstate. The water came on in gusting waves. Tired as she was, Carrie had to struggle to see through the blurry glass but was used to these road conditions this time of year. The weather wasn’t the problem.

  The commute would be a breeze if it weren’t for those damn big rigs.

  At this hour, there was nobody but her and the endless succession of late night truckers on the road. The eighteen-wheelers surged past in galaxies of crimson taillights and Christmas-tree configurations of colored lights webbing the trailers and cabs. The rolling dinosaurs hurtled by her, one after the other.

  They drove like Carrie didn’t belong there—like it was their road and she was in their way, an inconvenience.

  With each truck that overtook her, a huge whoosh splat of wind and rain bombed her car. She winced from the ache in her tired eyes as yet another explosion of blinding headlights assaulted her in the rearview mirror. A rumble like thunder as a gigantic tractor-trailer overtook her little car in a wall of spray and afterblow that shook her dwarfed vehicle and sent it hydroplaning across the white lines. She felt the warning rattle of the plastic bumps on the divider—roadway braille. Then the truck was gone up ahead, red taillights receding in a curtain of wet. Those bastard truckers had no respect or caution for regular drivers.

  It was 3:01 AM according to her watch. Carrie was alone in the vehicle. Her shift had just ended at County General Hospital. The RN was exhausted, struggling to stay awake behind the wheel of her drenched Prius. In another forty miles, she would be home under the covers. But she had to get there first. The commute was bad enough when it was dry, but intolerable when it rained. She rubbed her eyes and squinted through the drenched glass at the three-lane gloom ahead, a watery blur of blacktop and broken white lines. The relentless metronome beat of the wipers made her drowsier. Rubies and diamonds of refracting taillights and headlights kaleidoscoped in distortion through the soaked glass. The effect was hypnotic and lulling. She blinked to stop seeing double.

  Her hands were gripped, rigor-mortis tight around the steering wheel, and Carrie noticed how tense she was. The confines of her car closed in on her. Always skittish of the trucks on the highway, she routinely clenched in fear when they barreled past, the huge wheels and transoms seemingly close enough to scrape her door. She forced herself to picture the mangled bodies from the auto wrecks she saw weekly in the ER to scare herself into wakefulness, but drowsiness descended moments later like a druggy fog. She knew the statistics that driving tired was the largest cause of car crashes next to DUIs.

  She had to resort to emergency measures to stay alert.

  She opened her purse and pulled out the Jalapeno chili she had in the little plastic baggie. A friend once told her taking a bite out of the raw hot pepper was the one sure way to stay awake when you were driving tired. Popping it in her mouth, she bit down, and felt the searing acid heat a white-hot agony against her tongue and palate. Her jaw swam with pain, but it did the trick.

  Carrie was wide-awake all right.

  The rearview mirror burned blinding white as four headlamps of two big rigs fast approached, one in the left passing lane and one in the right truck lane. The eighteen-wheelers surged forward and bellowed past her, rocking her vehicle back and forth in the wet hurricane of their afterblows. The nurse whimpered and gritted her teeth against the terrible noise of the rampaging diesels rushing by, sandwiching her car between a hundred and forty tons of wheeled steel. She decelerated to aid in their departure ahead, shaking like a leaf as she did so. Assholes! Within moments they were red-jeweled pinpricks of taillights twinkling out in the watery darkness up the road.

  Blacktop and broken white lines unfurled.

  Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

  Her mouth seriously smarted.

  A greenish blob floated out of the inky murk ahead in the windshield. Reflective words became discernable. “Johnstown. Next exit.” She passed the sign.

  Fifteen minutes would bring her to her exit.

  Twenty minutes and she’d be pulling into her driveway.

  A few minutes later, she’d be safe in bed.

  Please God, just get me home.

  Mouth hurts.

  The radio. Turn it on. Static. Flip up the dial. Static. Static. More static. Ugh. Turn the fucking thing off.

  Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

  The blackness ahead was melting like oil in the smear of the windshield wipers. A glance into her mirrors showed only darkness behind.

  Twinkle.

  Headlights.

  Coming on fast.

  Two big saucer eye headlamps inflated in her back windshield, filling her car with stark illumination that violated her safe confines like a kind of rape. The front grill was vaguely outlined and resembled a grinning demon. Oh c’mon, just get past me, she thought. The rig must have had its high beams on because her rear and side view mirrors were a white-out of blinding triangular reflection that made it impossible for her to see or move her eyes anywhere. Just get past me! The trembling thunder and low register vibration of the tractor-trailer shuddered her vehicle as it hauled itself up alongside on the right. Carrie held on to the steering wheel for dear life, waiting for the truck to pass.

  But it didn’t.

  The monster eighteen-wheeler, a towering shadow silhouette on the passenger side, just hung there—as if it sensed her anxiety on some animal predatory level and was toying with her. It had slowed to her speed as she was nose to nose with the cab. Asshole, she thought, and decelerated to get behind the speeding big rig.

  Its taillights flared and hellish red light inflamed the inside of her car.

  The truck had slowed, too.

  Neck and neck again.

  OK, fine fucktard! The nurse stepped on the gas and her Prius shot ahead up the unfurling blacktop and broken white lines of the highway that was now empty except for she and her seventy-ton unwelcome companion. Carrie felt her car hydroplane on the unsafe wet tarmac and she struggled to wrest the vehicle back under control.

  A throaty diesel engine roared behind her and the cough of smokestacks, jutting up like twin chromium steer horns on the cab in the sopping back windshield, belched smoke that sinisterly wreathed the truck. It heaved forward, easily pulling up alongside her again and now she was scared shitless.

  Carrie threw an anxious glance at the cab and driver door window of the big rig keeping pace beside her. Through her rain speckled passenger’s window an empty seat away, she could see nothing but the lower edge of the driver’s window. There was a shadowy silhouette of a head with a cap on the trucker inside. A light went on inside the cockpit of the flanking truck, and now she could make out that the blurry oval of h
is face was Caucasian and male. The rain on the window glass made his distorted features look like melted candle wax. Fear jolted her body like sparking jumper cables and she decelerated down to 30 mph, but without missing a beat, in a hydraulic hiss of brakes, the truck slowed too, so that his window and the face beyond hovered over hers. The driver was looking at her, staring at her—she could feel it, if not see it, beyond the walls of glass and rain.

  Suddenly a bright light exploded in her car, lighting her up and she heard herself scream. It was coming from an industrial flashlight the stalking trucker shone out his window, aiming it right in her face. Terror flared as she realized he was trying to make her out. Then, just as quick, the flashlight switched off.

  And the tractor-trailer edged inwards to impact the side of her car!

  CRANNN-NNNG!

  Now Carrie screamed and screamed, releasing the steering wheel. The truck veered like a gigantic rattlesnake and hit her passenger side again. Metal buckled and glass cracked as she skidded out of control, sideways. She was going to die. He was going to kill her. But why? Seizing control of the rotating steering wheel, she wrestled it into alignment with both white-knuckled fists and somehow kept her wits enough to steer into the skid, regaining traction as she pumped the brakes and slowed as fast as she dared, coming to a near standstill on the shoulder of the fast lane.

  The eighteen-wheeler could not stop as fast and didn’t try, just plunged on ahead. As her little vehicle came to rest on the bad side of the road, Carrie watched the red taillights recede up the highway. The maniac was picking up speed and getting the hell out of there, his lethal prank over. No question, he was speeding off and that must mean she was safe. The truck was gone, thank God and blessed Jesus.

  Sitting, sobbing and shaking behind the wheel, the nurse found her jeans were soaking and at first thought it was rain but then realized she’d pissed herself. Was still emptying her bladder all over the vinyl car seat. Her breath and heart were sledgehammering in her chest as she sat paralyzed and alone. The inside of her car stank of urine.

  The front and back windshields were black as melting onyx in the muddy rain. The highway was otherwise deserted, and it was just her. Carrie couldn’t move, frozen in place with indecision. No way she was going to get back on the road after that close shave, even though the exit was a mile away. The mad trucker might be waiting for her. But she couldn’t stay here, could she? What to do. Gotta do something, her mind raced. What?

  Fumbling her cell phone out of her purse, the nurse punched in “911.”

  The phone rang. “Police emergency.” A man’s voice.

  “H-H-H—”

  “Ma’am, this is police emergency. I can’t understand you.”

  Shit, her mouth wasn’t working. Use your words, like her mother always told her as a child.

  “Ma’am, this is an emergency line. Are you hurt?”

  Once Carrie spat out the first syllable, she couldn’t stop talking. “Help me, please! A big truck just ran me off the road! He smashed into my car on purpose! Tried to kill me! Help! Please! Send the cops!”

  “Where are you now?’

  “I’m in my car. I’m on the 80 about a mile north of the Johnstown exit.” Good, her RN training was coming back to her and she was lucid and articulate. It was going to be all right. Give the 911 dispatcher the information. Be calm. “My name is Carrie Brown. I’m a nurse at County General and I was driving home from my shift and this big rig just came up on me and knocked me off the road.” She heard the sound of a keyboard tapping on the other end of the line as the 911 dispatcher took down her information.

  “Are you injured?”

  “No, just shaken up.”

  “Stay in your car, Ms. Brown. Lock your doors. Do not leave your vehicle. We have a Highway Patrol unit in Johnstown and he is on his way.”

  A flare of headlights in her windshield came from the oncoming lanes on the other side of the road and her brief rush of expectant relief that it was the authorities turned into a chill as she saw it was yet another truck, hurtling in the opposite direction. Then there was red glow in her car as the big rig disappeared behind her and all was dark again.

  “Can you hear me, ma’am?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, yes. Stay in the car. Lock the doors.” She pressed the master plunger lock button and heard the locks on all four doors all drop with a soft thunk. “Don’t worry, I’m not getting out.”

  “We have a unit on his way. Should be there in ten minutes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Sit tight.”

  The call disconnected. Carrie put the phone in her pants pocket. She lay in her own water on the driver’s seat, gasping for breath. The body heat of her wild fear was fogging up the windows. Outside, the night highway was desolate and empty, barely visible in the thrashing sheets of torrential rain. Blackness embraced her. The nurse waited, counting the seconds, then switched on her blinkers. A yellow pulsing glimmer broke the black void outside that was broken only by her headlights, which seemed so weak. Wiping snot from her face with her shirtsleeve, she smelt the acrid tang of her pee filling the car and permitted herself the luxury of embarrassment worrying about the state trooper discovering her in this condition. That was the least of her problems, she decided. As the moments passed, listening to the thwap thwap thwap of the wipers and the click click click of her blinkers, she grew restless and felt her skin crawl, trapped in her car like she was out on the great big scary empty Interstate. Fear spread.

  Then stygian darkness brightened.

  Two white pinpricks to her rear.

  Somehow, Carrie knew two things right away.

  It was not a police car.

  And the trucker was back.

  Now she knew why the big rig had picked up speed after it had run her off the road. It had been in a hurry all right.

  The exit was a mile ahead.

  The trucker wanted to take that exit so he could cross the overpass, turn around and come back the other way, then take the next exit and come back for her—it was the truck she’d seen speed past in the opposite direction a moment before.

  The two humongous headlights of the gargantuan tractor-trailer grew and slowed in her back windshield as the twin saucer eyes of the truck eased to a stop on the side of the road directly behind her, the high beams blasting into her car and spotlighting her. A twisted shadow fell over the nurse as the silhouette of the driver stepped out of his cab and partially blocked his lamps.

  In those few desperate seconds, Carrie Brown put up a fight. Managing to turn over the ignition and step on the gas, she knew as her car didn’t budge—tires squealing in protest despite her revving the engine to ninety—that the wheels were stuck in the slippery mud of the road shoulder and she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Then her window exploded.

  The wipers stopped.

  Chapter Two

  FBI Special Agent Sharon Ormsby looked out at the faces of the police officers sitting in the chairs of the Ramada Inn conference room. Most were in uniform except for a group of detectives in suits and what appeared to be undercover agents who were dressed casually. Sharon made a mental head count of thirty-seven. Glancing at her watch, the SA saw it was time for her to take the podium and begin conducting the session.

  As the cops chattered and took out their notepads, the agent glanced out the window. The long stretch of Denver, Colorado I-76 Interstate passed a mile away and that’s why she was here.

  Today was a regional training session she conducted with police forces around the country that operated near freeways.

  Sharon began with a warm smile. “Thank you all for coming. I’m here today to brief you about the FBI Highway Serial Killings Initiative, acronym HSK, in order that our departments might better interface. In 2004, an analyst from the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation detected a crime pattern: the bodies of murdered women were
being dumped along the Interstate 40 corridor in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi,” she continued. “The analyst and a police colleague from the Grapevine, Texas Police Department referred these cases to VICAP, our Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, where our analysts looked at other records in our database to see if there were similar patterns of highway killings elsewhere. Turns out there were. So we launched an extensive effort to support our state and local partners with open investigations into highway murders.”

  A hand went up. She nodded and pointed.

  “Did you catch the killer?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  Sharon was thirty-two. The fresh-faced agent had graduated from the FBI Academy in Quantico eight months earlier, still in her regulation two-year probationary period until final review before becoming a full-fledged SA. She had not anticipated when she was assigned to HSK that she’d find herself ending up lecturing other officers like a Mary Kay cosmetics salesperson, which was the way she felt right now. While Sharon knew she’d be assigned to some small to medium-sized field office, she’d hoped for more challenging first assignments than her current analyst position at HSK. Other agents she graduated the academy with were already posted to FBI white-collar crimes or counterterrorism units. At least she hadn’t been assigned to FBI applicant or White House employee background checks with the endless neighbor interviews and poring over banal financial records. The SA yearned to be in the field, weapon drawn, busting suspects, and that would come soon. But for now, this was her assignment and she was under constant scrutiny and evaluation during her probationary period. It was her job and she did it.

  She went on with her lecture before the attentive faces of the various law enforcement personnel. “First, some background. The victims in these cases are primarily women who are living high-risk, transient lifestyles, often involving substance abuse and prostitution. They’re frequently picked up at truck stops or service stations and sexually assaulted, murdered, and dumped along a highway.”