The Bodies Of Missing Girls Have Been Showing Up In Our Small Town, And The Locals Are Starting To Fear A ‘Time Traveling Serial Killer’

The tears finally came. They eventually turned to sobs and fists pounding on my steering wheel. They turned to primitive screams until Tray rapping on the steel mesh which separated us paused my heartbreak.

“Green. Green,” Tray blubbered.

I turned around and saw tears in Tray’s eyes as well. He may not have been Stephen Hawking, but the man had a good heart, and would give you the shirt off his back. Enough for me.

“I’m sorry man. Life’s fucked up,” Tray consoled me with his face right up against the mesh.

I didn’t see it coming, but I started to laugh. It picked up until I couldn’t even control myself and I doubled over in my seat.

“What? What? What?” Tray asked insecurely, probably thinking he had a huge booger hanging out of his nose or something.

I fought back and eventually started to get my grip back.

“Why are you sitting back there?” I finally got words out up from my still-laughing gut.

I saw Tray scan his surroundings in the back seat, looking like an arrested drunk. He slowly started to chuckle.

“I don’t know. I guess I thought you wanted your space.”

Tray went for the door handle to get out of the backseat, but it wouldn’t budge. He was locked in. I laughed harder until for the fleetingest of moments, I forgot about the pain of my past and the ugliness and darkness of what was unfolding in Riverbend County.

The coffee at The Hot Corner was awful. You had to wonder if they intentionally tried to make it that way it was so bad. To me, it tasted like chew spit mixed with milk that was just starting to go rotten. Come to think about it, maybe that’s exactly what it was.

Still, I choked down a mid-afternoon coffee at The Hot Corner and read baseball scores from the night before on my phone in hopes of seeing Bruce walk into the little dusty cafe. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t there already. I had been there during the day without seeing him. It was one of those things in life, I guess. The first time you are actually looking for someone you usually try to avoid, but see all the time, you can’t find them.

I was about to give up halfway into my coffee when I heard that familiar jangle ring out through the station. I looked to the door and saw a probably drunk Bruce walk in wearing a leather jacket covered in biker pins and leather chaps over a pair of faded blue jeans.

“Didn’t hear a Harley out in the parking lot Bruce,” I greeted him with a snide remark.

Bruce took a seat at the bar next to me and smiled with his big, brown push broom mustache and squinted at me through his thick glasses.

“Ah hell, just dropped the thing off at the shop and headed here. Things always breaking down. Had to take the truck.”

Bruce shot a look up at the waitress who had been texting on her phone for every moment since I had been there other than when she took my order and poured my coffee.

“Coffee,” Bruce said and then winked at the waitress before he turned to me. “Coffee’s great here, isn’t it?”

I laughed a little bit, but nodded my head in false agreement.

“But what the hell brings you in here on the middle of a work day? ‘Specially considering I heard they just pulled another old gal out of the river.”

I bit my tongue, literally and figuratively. Cooled it off with a drink of cold coffee.