Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
At Winnemucca I pulled off for gas and coffee and called my mother to let her know that I
hadn't been killed yet and was doing all right for underwear-a matter of perennial concern
to my mother. I was able to reassure her on this score and she reassured me that she hadn't
willed her money to the International Guppy Institute or anything similarly rash (I just like
to check!), so we were able to continue our respective days with light hearts.
In the phone booth was a poster with a photograph of a young woman on it under the cap-
tion, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? She was attractive and looked youthful and happy.
The poster said she was nineteen years old and had been driving from Boston to San Fran-
cisco on her way home for Christmas when she disappeared. She had called her parents
from Winnemucca to tell them to expect her the next afternoon and that was the last any-
one had heard of her. Now, she was almost certainly dead, somewhere out there in that big
empty desert. Murder is terrifyingly easy in America. You can kill a stranger, dump the
body in a place where it will never be found and be 2,000 miles away before the murdered
personisevenmissed.Atanygiventimethereareanestimatedtwelvetofifteenserialmur-
derersatlargeinthecountry,justdriftingaround,snatchingrandomvictimsandthenmov-
ing on, leaving behind few clues and no motives. A couple of years earlier in Des Moines,
some teenaged boys were cleaning out an office downtown for one of their fathers on a
Sunday afternoon when a stranger came in, took them into a back room and shot each of
them once in the back of the head. For no reason. That guy was caught, as it happens, but
he could as easily have gone offto another state and done the same thing again. Every year
in America S,000 murders go unsolved. That is an incredible number.
I spent the night in Wells, Nevada, the sorriest, seediest, most raggedy-assed town I've
ever seen. Most of the streets were unpaved and lined with battered-looking trailer homes.
Everyone in town seemed to collect old cars. They sat rusting and windowless in every
yard.Almosteverythingintownappearedtoexistontheedgeofdereliction.Sucheconom-
iclifeasWellscouldmustercamefromthepassingtrafficofI-80.Anumberoftruckstops
and motels were scattered around, though many of these were closed down and those that
remained were evidently struggling. Most of the motel signs had letters missing or burnt
out, so that they said, LONE ST R MOT L-V CAN Y. I had a walk around the business
districtbeforedinner.Thisconsistedmostlyofclosed-downstores,thoughafewplacesap-
pearedstilltobeinbusiness:adrugstore,agasstation,aTrailwaysbusdepot,theOverland
Hotel-sorry,Htel-andamoviehousecalledtheNevada,thoughthisproveduponcloserin-
spectionalsotobedeceased.Thereweredogseverywhere,sniffingindoorwaysandpeeing
on pretty much everything. It was cold, too. The sun was setting behind the rough, distant
peaks of the Jackson Mountains and there was a decided chill in the air. I turned up my
collar andtrudgedthehalf-mile fromthetownpropertotheinterstate junction withUS93,
