Svenson re-started the Berreta and pulled around out of sight behind a nearby line of semi-trailers. He reached under his seat, his hand unknowingly grazing the decomposing human nose purposely left behind by the hitchhiker. Finally his hand closed over the hidden cellular phone which he had earlier placed. He brought it up and dialed the agents in the Dodge van whom he knew were awaiting his call. Standard procedure.

"We can call this a day, huh?" he said into the mouthpiece.

"Yeah," came the quick reply. Then, "You know, Svenson—for a while there, the way that character was acting, we thought we had our man."

"That's funny you should say that. As friendly as he was, in the beginning there I thought it was the killer too. Shit, I almost drew on him. . ." He paused momentarily, reaffirming in his mind the innocence of the hitchhiker. Finally he said, "I'll see you guys back at the Bureau."

JAKE swallowed the last bites of the prime rib he'd ordered and then washed it down with ice water. He set his glass down. It was time to depart.

The ringing and buzzing of the restaurant's one-arm bandits called to him. Unable to ignore his passion for the slots, he paid his bill, grabbed his backpack from the stool beside him—inside, two nine-inch sheathed knives and a plastic bag of hardened human noses—and made his way to the gambling machines. A short while later he abandoned the slots and trudged purposely out into the night.

Hitchhiking. Could be considered a classic. A golden oldie among killers. Everyone knew the high perils and dangers of offering rides to strangers. Seen on the big screen the horrors that awaited. Heard on the news the horrors that occurred. But what amused—and ultimately thrilled—Jake Blaine was that people ignored these warnings and still did. Still picked up hitchhikers. He'd long ago decided that people who were stupid enough to pick up hitchhikers deserved to die.

He looked out over the over pass and onto the highway below. As he journeyed across, the sporadic flashing of automobile headlights—and an occasional semi—and the fading sounds of revving engines marked the eastbound ramp descending from the overpass.

He smiled.

This had been the same corner that he'd met his first victim after coming to California only a few months back. However, he regretted being out here now at night when motorists were apt to be more apprehensive of offering rides to strangers. It had been the late morning of a summer day when the old woman had made the fatal mistake of picking him up. After giving an overly dramatic act of having missed the exit to his town, convincing the woman to drop him off in the next town was easy. Clamping his hands around her neck was even easier. . .

Jake stood poised in the yellow light of an over head street lamp. His thumb was out. The stationary hunter—the jutting thumb his blind—received glances from wary motorists who passed, the headline news of the highway killer on their fearful minds. Jake wasn't bothered by this state of affairs, however. He knew that if he waited long enough someone would stop.

Someone always did.

"WE gotta go back!" Agent Svenson shouted excitedly into the cellular phone.

"What is it?" demanded Agent Bell from the Dodge van.

"It was him! The killer!"

"What—who?" Bell cried. He wasn't willing to accept the obvious. And by the spooked looks on the faces of the other agents who'd heard Svenson over the speaker, neither were they.

"Hitchhiker 31—the guy I just dropped off at the Flying J!"