Still, if there
Three weekends in a row had yielded squat, and Bickham was the last holdout of the group. He didn’t want to drive the extra forty miles across the county line to troll unfamiliar bars where he didn’t know the layout. There were too many variables. One mistake and they’d be in jail with no back up. “Yeah,” said Robbie, “but at least there’d be some action!”
Bickham got the boys together and sat them down. “Look,” he said. “Maybe we don’t always score, but you gotta admit, it’s a great plan. Bickham gave it all he had, told them to put their faith in the plan. In the end he persuaded them to meet at the local dive, and once again they showed up, hoping for gorgeous.
After an hour of drinking, the main room was crowded, the band was rocking, the dance floor working, and the boys were getting so rowdy they almost missed Beauty (Callie) and the Beast, the tough-looking older guy (me, in disguise) working their way through the crowd to occupy the last vacant seats at the bar.
Bickham worked his way through the maze of good ol’ boys sucking in their beer guts and jockeying their seats to get a better look at Callie. When he found a spot where he could check her out, he couldn’t believe his eyes. There at the bar, their bar, sat the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.
Bickham couldn’t stop blinking as he checked out the whole package, top to bottom, slowly. Then back up. Thinking hot! Blond!
Bickham looked over his shoulder, saw Charlie checking her out, salivating. Robbie and George were back at the table highfiving and punching each other’s arms. Bickham must have felt vindicated. They always came hoping for gorgeous, so why could they not, just once in their lives, hit the jackpot?
And speaking of jackpots, Callie had just slapped my face. When I pretended to protest, the bartender, Teddy Boy, pulled out a baseball bat and pretended to send me packing. I made my way to the rental car and watched the action on my video monitor.
Bickham made eye contact with Charlie, who signaled the others. Game on!
The boys had every reason to believe it was a good plan. The way it works, Bickham checks out the girl, finds out what she’s drinking, and orders himself one. He drinks most of it, then pours the drug into the remainder. Bickham walks up to the girl, tries to pick her up. Of course, even ugly girls don’t like Bickham, so she’s thrilled when the handsome Charlie shows up from the opposite direction to protect her from the local loser.
While Charlie engages her in smooth conversation, Bickham pours the rest of his drink into hers. If anyone notices, it just looks like he’s sharing his drink before ordering another. Though no one ever notices, Bickham knows it’s these small details that make a plan come together.
When the girl becomes groggy, Bickham circulates loudly through the bar, diverting attention from her while Charlie escorts her out the door.
Later, no one will remember seeing Charlie and the girl leave.
The other two, George and Robbie, run interference on Teddy Boy, the bartender, and stand ready to take over in case the girl doesn’t want to leave with Charlie. In that situation, George will stand up to Charlie, t
Once they get her in the van, George and Robbie stand guard. Bickham does her first because it’s his plan and he supplies the drug. Charlie goes second, because he’s the one who does the hard work. George and Robbie work out who gets third and fourth spot. After that, the boys rotate turns doing her until their stamina runs out. If the bar starts closing down before they’re done, they drive her out to the woods and hit it all night.
So the plan was foolproof and the boys are local, so there are plenty of witnesses to cover for them if a complaint surfaces later on. Plus, Charlie’s dad is the top lawyer in the county, in the pocket of every judge, and no father dared face him in court, fearing for his daughter’s reputation.
Bickham patted his pocket, making sure the drug was there.
GHB, gamma hydroxybutyric acid, is one of three so-called date rape drugs. Legal with a prescription, GHB is used to treat narcolepsy. Although widely available as a powder or pill, those forms can leave residue and give off a salty taste. The liquid form is Bickham’s delivery system of choice. It’s odorless, colorless and mixes in alcohol, which intensifies the effect dramatically.
Bickham’s cousin Ned, a local pharmacist, makes the drug in his store after hours. Ned has a high- maintenance trophy wife—a fine looking young thing named Anita, whose expensive tastes would normally be hard to support on a small town druggist’s income. But cousin Bickham has lots of money, so theirs is a partnership made in heaven.
Bickham has a large stash of GHB in his closet, a good thing since Ned went missing a couple of days ago. Bickham probably wondered if Ned was in some sort of trouble with drug dealers or the law, and this thought surely prompted daydreams about making it with his cousin’s wife. According to Ned, Bickham still loved conjuring the visual of Ned testing the GHB on Anita before selling it to Bickham the first time.
On their “dates,” when Bickham and Charlie feel the party needs to be moved to the woods due to drunks in the parking lot or because the bar is closing down, George and Robbie take a second car, since they’re younger and can’t stay out past two a.m.
The younger pair are unaware Bickham and Charlie had to kill and bury one of their “dates” a few months ago. The killers aren’t worried about Erica’s body turning up. They’ve hunted these woods their whole lives and know the high ground that will never be explored.
Usually, the girls were fat or worse. Tonight, if they could pull it off , they’d hit the Pussy Power Ball!
