I by Jack Olsen Page B

her name was Claudia. She looked clean, but she had no luggage—a bad sign. It meant she could be a female hobo mooching off drivers. She could be a doper looking for a fix.
    She sat back and lit a cigarette while I went into the restaurant to get a couple of ice teas to go. We drove east past the Banning scales to the Burns Brothers truck stop at Coachella. After a brief lunch we walked through the store, and I could see that she expected me to buy her some clothes. When I promised to buy her a new outfit at the mall in Phoenix, we went back to the truck and climbed into the air-conditioned sleeper.
    I leaned over and kissed her, but she didn’t kiss back. She said, “If you want sex, just ask for it and I’ll tell you how much.”
    I said, “I don’t pay for it.”
    I tried to kiss her again and she pressed her lips together. I readjusted her position on the bed and started yanking off her clothes. When she was naked, I stripped and began to grope her body. I had to force her legs apart to enter her and that made the sex even better. I orgasmed fast.
    Not wanting this to end too quick, I waited for my hardness to return. I was thinking, This bitch is mine. I’ll do what I want to her.
    We had more sex and she pretended to get into it. I knew what she was thinking. If she convinced me we were friends, I wouldn’t hurt her. I was on to her act.
    We stopped at the next truck stop, ate and showered. I wondered why she didn’t just take off, but after I bought her some cigarettes I found out what she was really looking for. She asked me for some “crank,” and when I told her I didn’t fool with drugs, she got agitated. She grabbed my CB microphone and asked the whole damn world if anybody had crank.
    I pulled the mike away and told her I didn’t allow drugs of any kind in my truck and to stay the hell off my radio. I said, “Calm down! Look, you won’t starve if you ride with me. I’ll take care of your needs, but—no dope. Forget about it.”
    She said, “Well, how about some spending money then?”
    She took my twenty-dollar bill and whined, “That’s all?” She said she’d allowed me to have sex with her and she was worth a lot more than twenty dollars. I reminded her that I didn’t pay for pussy.
    She said, “Gimme the money I saw in your wallet or I’ll blow the whistle on you.”
    I said, “For what?”
    She said, “Gimme the money and I’ll walk away. No questions asked. Otherwise I’ll tell that security guard how you assaulted me.”
    My mind was going wild with the possibilities. I said, “Are you crazy?”
    She said, “What’s it gonna be? Your money or jail?”
    I reached over and locked the doors. I said, “Neither one, bitch.”
    I grabbed the roll of duct tape under my pillow and taped her arms in front of her. Then I taped her ankles together.
    I looked out over the parking lot and saw it was empty. I pushed my fist into her neck like I did to Taunja and she went to sleep. Just like that.
    I was trying to decide what to do with her body when she opened her mouth and said, “This is bullshit! You can’t kill me!”
    I taped her arms to the side vent so that she wouldn’t fall off the bed. I got dressed and told her to shut up. Now that I was heading toward my second murder I knew I’d be facing the devil someday, and to please him I had to do a better job of killing. That made this murder easier morally because God had nothing to do with it. Neither did right and wrong. It was me and the devil doing our thing. Now I could concentrate on killing.
    I’m raping her in the sleeper again when I hear two cars pull up in the shadow of my truck. Cops! One was a K-9 unit with a dog. They were using my shade to cool the dog while they went inside and ate.
    I eased away nice and easy and got back on I-10. By the time we reached Indio,