Every Serial Killer Has a First

Most of the time you know why somebody's trying to kill you. You might not want to sit down with the sheriff for a chitchat about the reasons why, but you know. Somebody doesn't like you, and they think this lovely blue planet would look prettier without you. Or somebody wants what you got-- money probably, but sometimes something they can sell for money.

I got no reason to expect excitement from Minnesota in February. I'm thinking it's going to be a nice quiet trip. Stomp around in the snow. Marvel at some owls. They style themselves the land of 10,000 lakes, and right now all 10,000 are iced over. Très scenic.

They can't all be lakes, I think. Some of them must be what we, down here in Louisiana, call ponds.

But nobody asked me.

People always say, well, a woman traveling alone. What do you expect? I'll tell you what I expect. Everything's going to be fine, that's what I expect. Nobody in the state of Minnesota even knows my name. No way they feel strongly enough about me to want to off me.

Seriously, forget door number one. My haters don't care enough to chase me up to rural Minnesota. In February.

So maybe it's door number two. Money. I used to work in a cash business, so I know all about door number two. When I used to drive with bundles of cash taped under my clothes, I knew every trick in the book for throwing off a tail. Sometimes, when I really couldn't shake him, I'd get off the interstate at this speed trap where there's always a cop car waiting. One time, this guy's already pulling in right behind me before he sees the black-and-white. Swoosh! He blasts out of there like he's got rockets in his tailpipe.

But any bad guy worthy of the name stopped chasing me years ago. That money's been spent. Time's a one-way arrow.

So where's this new BS coming from? Out of nowhere, that's where.

Back to the trip planning. Living where I do, I know beans about driving on the ice, so I hire a driver up there who went to school down here. Kid's there to pick me up at the airport in Duluth, but his truck's in the shop. I expect nothing different from vehicles in winter weather, so I tell him to pick out a rental, and I sign some papers, and we're off.

You may say that shoulda been my first clue. Somebody's after the kid, so he wants to switch up vehicles to something the bad boys don't know.

I don't think so. It's my considered opinion the kid's just broke. Bird guides are often broke in my experience.

Anyhoo, it's the old minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit, and there's suitably scenic snow everywhere, and we're driving around to see the sights. At one stop, he and some other guide get into a big debate about whether Hoary Redpoll and Common Redpoll are two separate species or if they're going to be lumped into one, and then everybody in Minnesota's going to lose a number off the old bird list. It's nothing anybody would get exercised enough about to do any felonies.

So. Rural Minnesota. It's a big state, and there's a lot of snow, and we're out there somewhere beyond cell service. In those days, every time your phone lost or found service, it sang out. Maybe it still does. Since service is everywhere I go these days, I wouldn't know.

Anyway, now we're on our way to some town where Guide knows about the food. Oddly, there's a lot of traffic. Maybe everybody else knows about the food too. It's a bottleneck road, two undivided lanes.

The bottleneck comes because there's this frozen bayou that runs right along the road on our side. I guess in Minnesota, it's no bayou, it's gotta be a lake. Picture an elongated pond. In summer, it's a wetland, but right now it's a skating rink. Point is, we got no shoulder. There's a little metal barrier that serves as a tactful hint you maybe don't want to take your vehicle ice skating, and that's it.

No shoulder on the other side either. Those guys have a granite slice of roadcut.

In other words, it's a highway where you remain in your lane, or you die. Just in case you still don't get it, this yellow line in the center tells people not to pass.

So we're tooling along, and a black Hyundai Santa Fe's coming from the other direction. So what, there's a million of them. All of a sudden, though, it gets weird. Guy whips around without a second's hesitation, and now he's not in the oncoming lane, he's in our lane right on our tail.

Oh-kay. There's still a chance he remembered he left the stove on back at the house. The tailgating's pretty obnoxious, though. We speed up some, we don't want the dude's house to burn down, but there are cars ahead of us, you know.

So Hyundai finds a gap in ongoing traffic to jump back into the other lane to pass. Illegal but we're cool. Gotta love a tailgater who gets off your tail, passes, gets gone.

Guide must feel the same way. He lets up the gas so Hyundai can jump ahead.

Only Hyundai doesn't jump ahead. Hyundai hits his brake.

We slow a little more, and he slows a little more.

Dude's pacing us.

We look at him, and he looks at us, and we still don't know what he looks like. He's wearing mirrorshades and a hat with plenty of brim pulled down low. Standard protection against the glare off the ice and snow. We're dressed the same way.

Yet I start to feel a certain unease.

The honks are beginning, but he acts like he doesn't see or hear oncoming traffic. Until he does. Then he makes this quick side jerk like he's got to pull over fast to get out of the way, which means he's jamming right at us unless we go sideways only--

There's no sideways to go.

If I'm the driver in that situation, I'm dead every time. Automatic reflexes kick in, and I'm crashed through that metal barrier before I know it.

Guide's free of nerves, though. You'll find it's true of most bird guides, the good ones anyway. Otherwise, they're not going half the crazy places they go.

So Guide hits the gas. He'll get out of the way by moving forward. But he's gonna have to decline the engraved invitation to go skating.

Oncoming traffic keeps oncoming. We're not sinking under the ice like the Titanic. Hyundai has no choice but to drop back behind us.

He wasn't trying to kill us. He's just a bad driver.

I'm still telling myself that. Until it happens four more times.

Also until we see the gun. A flash, and it's out of sight again, but we see it all right.

“Get down,” Guide says.

Way ahead of you, kid.

Out of the seatbelt harness, hunched down in the footwell, now I can't see what's going on, but maybe it's just as well since I can't do anything about it. Besides, if we do crash through the ice, I probably don't want to be strapped in.

Guide's standing on the gas and leaning on the horn, and now the car in front of us must have caught a clue and sped up too, and now Guide speeds up more, and--

Our phones sing. Cell service is here.

Hyundai's phone must have done the same. Just like that, he takes off, he's gone.

Guide finally eases off on the gas. “That guy was trying to kill us,” he says.

Well, there's a classic no-shit-Sherlock if I ever heard one. I sit up to find we've arrived at civilization. Instead of the ice, there's a little red-brick town on my right.

Guide pulls over in the first slot he sees. Gets out his phone.

“Who you calling?” I ask. You better believe I've got questions.

“Um, 911? The sheriff's department? Because, you know, someone just tried to kill us?”

Well, that's the difference between Minnesota and Louisiana all day long. “What the hell you expect them to do about it?”

“Maybe find the guy?”

I see then Guide really doesn't know who tried to kill us. Hence the mystery.

Dude wasn't looking to kill me because I'm easier to find a million other places. Dude wasn't looking to kill Guide, because Guide would know if he had that kind of problem. He sure wouldn't be calling any sheriff once the danger's past.

Judging from my end, the conversation goes about the way Louisiana would expect. “We couldn't get a license number because he didn't have a license plate,” and, “Yeah, I know there's a lot of black Hyundais,” and, “We're a little shaken up, that's all.”

Guide drops the phone with a look of disgust.

“Nobody was hurt,” I say.

“My feelings were hurt,” he says.

“Good driving, though. You should be in the movies.”

He perks up. Lunch helps too. There's pie. Of course, we talk about it on and off for the rest of the trip, but we can't figure it out.

We didn't cut the Hyundai off or otherwise mess him around with our driving because he came at us from the other direction.

He couldn't have targeted us in advance because nobody knew where we'd be.

So maybe he saw the rental sticker and wanted to rob some tourists. Does that make sense? Really? In all that traffic? When the most likely result is we go through the ice, and he gets nothing but a court date for vehicular homicide?

I've gotta vote nah.

“Maybe he's one of those serial killers,” Guide says. “Maybe he runs people off the road for kicks all the time.”

“Can't be, or the sheriff would want to know about it.”

“Every serial killer has a first victim.”

“Think he was going to shoot?” I know what I think, but I'd like to hear Guide's opinion.

“Nah. He was trying too hard to force me off the road. He wanted it to look like an accident.”

Last day of the tour, the mechanic called and said Guide's truck was fixed. Icy roads or not, I drove the rental far enough to help him pick it up.

A year or so later, I heard the kid moved away to guide birds in the Sierras. I've forgotten the name of that red-brick town-- assuming I ever knew it. Don't know the name of the long pond either.

I think about it sometimes. Can't help but wonder how many “accidents” they've had out there since then. Don't know how I'd Google it. Guess I'll keep on wondering.

***

If you enjoyed this story, please gently tap the <3 button. Tips gratefully accepted. You might also like this one: The Barn Caper: A New Orleans story.