Blood Alley

The coffee at Buckeye Travel Plaza tastes like burnt motor oil mixed with three and a half years of grief, but Marley Crenshaw drinks it anyway—black, no sugar, the same way her mother took it before they found her wrapped in truck stop atlas pages along I-40.

The Desert Sun Shuttle van needs ten minutes to warm up. February shouldn't be this hot in Texas, but the humidity crawls under Marley's uniform like a second skin. She does the pre-trip inspection while the diesel engine coughs awake—tires, lights, fluid levels. The clipboard logs everything. She's good at paperwork. Good at being invisible.

"You're early again, honey." Betty Kowalski's voice crackles through the dispatch radio, maternal and tired. The woman's been running Desert Sun for fifteen years, ever since a jackknifed trailer broke her back and ended her driving days.

"Traffic's lighter at five-thirty," Marley says into the handset. Her voice comes out soft, Tennessee drawl smoothed to something inoffensive. The voice that makes passengers comfortable. The voice that makes people forget.

"You work too hard. When's the last time you had a day off?"

"I'm fine, Ms. Betty."

The radio hisses static. Then: "You take care of yourself. I don't like those dark circles under your eyes."

Marley signs off and clips the manifest to her visor. Three passengers this morning—businessmen heading to San Antonio, the kind who read newspapers and don't make small talk with drivers. Perfect.

The first pickup is a lawyer with a leather briefcase who climbs in without looking at her face. The second is an accountant who checks his watch twice. The third hands her exact change and falls asleep before they hit the highway. They see the uniform, not the woman inside it. Marley learned years ago that being forgettable is a survival skill.

I-10 stretches west through the darkness, asphalt still warm from yesterday's heat. Marley keeps the CB on Channel 19, volume low enough the passengers won't notice. Trucker chatter fills the cab like white noise—warnings about speed traps, complaints about dispatchers, crude jokes about lot lizards working the truck stops.

"Dogman heading westbound, anybody got eyes on scales?"

Her hands tighten on the wheel.

"Negative, Dogman. You're clear to Katy."

Dale Hutchins. CB handle Dogman. Drives a red Peterbilt with a refrigerated trailer, license plate Texas 4421. Tuesday morning pattern, same route every three weeks. She knows his schedule better than he does.

The sun rises behind them, turning the rearview mirror into a blaze of orange and diesel haze. The lawyer snores. The accountant types on a calculator that makes tiny clicking sounds. Nobody looks out the window at the highway, at the trucks running the same routes as yesterday and the day before, at the predators hiding in plain sight.

Buckeye Travel Plaza appears at Mile Marker 745, a cathedral of neon and diesel. Two hundred trucks in the lot, maybe fifty cars, and the always-running lights that turn night into perpetual dusk. Marley parks the shuttle in the designated spot—perfect view of the truck lanes, perfect angle on the reefer units lined up like mechanical beasts.

The passengers stumble out, collecting bags and coffee money. The accountant mutters something that might be thanks. The lawyer is already on his phone. The third man never woke up, shuffles toward the terminal in a stupor.

Marley logs the arrival time. 7:47 AM. Mileage, fuel consumption, passenger count. Betty will review the paperwork tonight, looking for irregularities that never appear. Marley's the most reliable driver in the fleet. Never late, never sick, never a complaint.

The red Peterbilt sits in Row C, refrigeration unit humming its constant mechanical dirge. Even in February, even with the morning cool settling over the asphalt, Hutchins runs the reefer. Diesel costs money. Running refrigeration when you don't have to costs more. But noise covers sounds. Cold preserves things.

Marley counts the trucks between his rig and the coffee shop. Fourteen. Same number of driver's licenses hidden behind the false panel in his sleeper cab. She hasn't seen them yet—that comes later—but she knows. The way lot lizards cross to the other side when his truck pulls in. The way younger girls disappear after talking to him. The way Cherokee Bill's voice cracks on the CB when he mentions finding bodies wrapped in maps.

The coffee shop never closes. Marley pushes through the door into air thick with cigarette smoke and bacon grease. Country music plays from a jukebox that hasn't been updated since 1972. Waitresses move like ghosts in orthopedic shoes, pouring coffee that tastes the same at every truck stop from coast to coast—burnt, bitter, necessary.

"Morning, honey." Dottie's been working the counter since Carter took office. She pours coffee without asking, knows Marley's order by heart. "Usual?"

"Yes ma'am."

"You look tired."

Everyone says that. Marley smiles the way she's supposed to. "Just the heat."

She takes the counter stool with the view. Booth three is occupied—Hutchins and two other drivers she doesn't recognize. He's telling a story, hands gesturing, the missing fingers on his left hand making the movements strange and incomplete. Lost them to machinery, the story goes. A meat packing accident in Amarillo, before he started driving refrigerated trucks.

Marley opens her shuttle maintenance log, pen ready. To anyone watching, she's reviewing yesterday's fuel consumption. But the margins hold different information. Dates, times, locations. Tuesday patterns and Thursday deviations. The trucks he parks next to, the women he approaches, the routes that line up with bodies found along I-10.

"—don't know to check the reefer units." Hutchins' voice carries over the jukebox. "Noise covers everything."

The other truckers laugh. One slaps the table. Marley writes "Feb 14, 0748, Buckeye, same joke about noise" in letters small enough to be illegible from five feet away.

Her eggs arrive, over easy like her mother used to make them. The coffee steams in her cup, surface reflecting the fluorescent lights above, fracturing her face into pieces. She drinks it anyway. Tastes like burnt patience. Tastes like the three and a half years since they found Rebecca Crenshaw's body and called it just another lot lizard, case closed, file forgotten.

Hutchins pays his check with cash—always cash, never credit cards that leave trails—and heads for the door. He walks with the confidence of a man who thinks the world belongs to him. The cook watches him leave. Dottie watches too, face carefully blank.

"That one," Dottie says quietly, refilling Marley's cup, "gives me the creeps."

"Which one?"

"Dogman. The big guy with the beard." She glances at the door. "Girls know to stay away from his truck. Word gets around."

"Does it reach the police?"

Dottie's laugh is dry as desert wind. "Honey, police don't care about lot lizards. They think it's an occupational hazard. Natural wastage, one cop told me. Like missing girls are just the cost of doing business."

Natural wastage. Marley writes that down too. Evidence for later, when later comes.

She finishes breakfast. The eggs sit heavy in her stomach. The coffee leaves residue on her teeth. She pays exact change plus a dollar tip, same as always, and walks back to the shuttle. The lot lizards are starting their morning circuit—older women in daylight, girls who can pass for waitresses or hitchhikers. The night shift has gone to sleep in cheap motel rooms or the backs of trucks that smell like industrial cleaner and defeat.

Hutchins' reefer runs and runs and runs.

Marley sits in the shuttle, engine off, making notes in the maintenance log. Third Tuesday of February. Hutchins present. Standard pattern. The other information lives in a notebook hidden in the spare tire well—two years of documentation, names and dates and patterns that law enforcement won't investigate because the victims don't matter enough.

Angela Romero, last seen January 15 at this truck stop. Nineteen years old, from Fort Worth, disappeared after talking to a trucker with missing fingers. Body found February 2 near Columbus, wrapped in Texas highway maps, strangled with wire.

Sarah Chen from Houston. Maria Santos from San Antonio. Jessica Reyes, Carmen Diaz, Yolanda Greene. Fourteen women Marley's tracked to Hutchins through CB chatter and police reports filed but never investigated. Fourteen women who look like her mother looked—young enough to hope, desperate enough to trust.

She closes the maintenance log. Through the windshield, Buckeye looks like every truck stop in America. Neon signs advertising diesel prices and hot showers. The constant rumble of idling engines. Men and metal and the invisible women who service both, forgotten as soon as they step out of the light.

Marley starts the shuttle. The businessmen need pickup for the return trip at four-thirty. She'll be back then, same as always, reliable as sunrise. The mousy driver nobody notices, logging patterns nobody investigates, watching a killer operate with impunity because the system that should stop him decided his victims don't deserve protection.

She pulls onto I-10 eastbound, back toward Houston. The CB crackles with morning traffic. Someone warns about a smokey at Mile Marker 760. Someone else jokes about the weather. Nobody mentions the girls who disappear, the bodies wrapped like garbage, the predators who wear anonymity like armor.

Marley logs the mileage. Notes the time. In the margins: "Dogman. Tuesday pattern confirmed. Fourteen and counting."

The coffee in her thermos has gone cold, but she drinks it anyway. It tastes like patience. It tastes like purpose. It tastes like the distance between watching and acting, and that distance grows smaller every day.

The highway stretches ahead, empty and full of ghosts, and Marley Crenshaw drives toward the moment when watching will no longer be enough.