Bike Mechanic: 18. Discarding Inez #TuesdaySerial

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18. Discarding Inez

Seward replaced the small gun under his seat. Before moving, he watched traffic on 35 slide by his van. He took a couple of deep breaths and steadied himself. He asked the silence, “How many people have I killed over the years? How many people have I had to become?”

No answer.

He got out of the van. He needed to work quickly. No telling how long before someone would pull over to help or worse. Highway Patrol would be by soon, and he didn’t want to be on the side of the road.

Opening the passenger door, the pool of blood that had accumulated dripped on to the asphalt. Seward pulled Inez out and dumped her body over the Highway embankment. Inez’s body rolled slowly and came to a halt at the bottom.

Seward pulled cleaning equipment out of the back and started to scrub the passenger’s seat. The blood wasn’t easy to sop up, but he made short work of the seat and floor mat. What a waste, he thought. Inez was a pretty girl. He’d hopped that she was legit. The reservations he’d made for exiting the US were real, and now he’d exit alone.

Back in the driver’s seat, he started the van. He pulled out from the shoulder and made his way to the next major Highway. He could have taken 35 most of the way, but that wouldn’t have been smart. Instead, he chose to take 90 West, knowing that he’d have to double back eventually.

While he drove, he pulled an envelope from under the dash near the searing column. Opening it, he dumped a pile of passports onto his lap. “I’m not going back to prison. I’m not going back.” He picked one: Rupert Earlson, Henderson, MN. He thought about Rupert for a while. What types of things did Rupert like? What did Mr. Earlson do for a living?

One thing was for sure, Rupert Earlson wasn’t a bike mechanic. He needed to unload the bikes and trade in his van for something sportier. Rupert was a poor teacher of English that wanted to see the world before he died of cancer. In order to make his dreams of seeing the world come true, he’d signed-on to teach in foreign countries. His first stop was Peru, but he planned to hit Korea, China, and Japan.

Before Seward could become Rupert Earlson, he’d need to clean up a few loose ends that Daniel Emmett Seward had created. As much as he cared about his bike shop and the community that he’d lived in for the last several years, it was his connections with Al that gave him the most reason to pause. The only way that the Feds could have found him was to go through Al. Before he could become the traveling English teacher, he’d have to take care of him.

Seward new that if what Inez had told him about Al was true, and he believed her, he’d find him in a hospital. Al was a sickly fellow and if anyone was going to die of cancer at an early age, it was going to be him. Seward pounded his hands on the stealing wheel. Al was the only one who knew all of Seward’s aliases. Seward would just have to hope that on his deathbed, Al had forgotten a couple of them.

“Ah! The life of an Eco-Terrorist,” Seward said a loud over the hum of his van. “You blow a couple of buildings up and kill a few people, and the government won’t reset until you’re behind bars or dead. However, if you’re a multi-billion dollar industry that pollutes the air and the water killing thousands, the government gives you a tax break for creating jobs.” He honked his horn three times, punching it with his open hand. What made him truly angry wasn’t having to kill Inez, but was that he’d changed persona’s so many times since leaving prison that he didn’t remember his real name. To him, at this moment, he was Daniel Emmett Seward and had been his entire life.