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Rest Stop

The Canadian province of Ontario contains about half of the country's population and a relative portion of its infrastructure, but most of that is concentrated in the south near the Great Lakes. Except for Ottawa and a few population centres along the Saint Lawrence River most of the eastern end of the province is agricultural. And the North, well the North is a string of small towns and a half dozen larger ones that are mostly connected by highway 17, part of the Trans-Canada Highway, a road that stretches 2,140 kilometres, or 1,337.5 miles, from one end of the province to the other.

There is only one alternate route through the northern part of the province, and that is to take highway 11 where it crosses 17 at North Bay and loops north for 1,000 kilometres to rejoin 17 again at Nipigon. Highway 11 was built to accommodate the logging and mining industries and there are only a dozen real towns along its route. Past Hearst, there are stretches over 200 kilometres long with nothing to slow one down except the occasional moose on the highway, but even hitchhikers like that were scarce. There is not a lot to attract tourists to the region, but back before highway 17 was redone to take out the worst of the curves and hills one could save several hours by taking this less-travelled alternative, and many folk did.

Of course back when these roads were built crossing the province by automobile was not an easy feat. Cars were not as reliable as they are today nor were they as easy or comfortable to drive. Automatic transmissions, power steering, and air conditioning were rare luxuries back then. In order to reduce driver fatigue the Government built dozens of rest stops along the popular routes at about eighty kilometre intervals. They were mostly built at scenic spots and they were equipped with outhouses, barbeque pits and picnic tables where weary travelers could relieve themselves and grab a bite before continuing their journey. They were maintained by the province until the turn of the millennium, until the government tried to balance the budget by downloading everything from roads to emergency services onto the counties and municipalities.

Some of the sites were taken over by civic groups or municipalities, but fast food joints and "Service Centres" in the bigger towns eventually became the preference much to the chagrin of regular travelers who, despite the rudimentary toilet facilities, had come to appreciate their peaceful beauty. The rest stop outside the town of Sunshine, located on a long, lonely stretch of highway 11 between Cochrane and Hearst, was one of those. It was a quiet peaceful spot beside a deep pool in the local stream that was just off the highway when the highway ran through the centre of town. When the province re-routed the road around the town they dutifully built a service road leading to the rest stop and put up signs directing travellers to it. The town elected to take responsibility for the site when the province ceased funding it, as so the signs stayed up.

When the cost of maintaining the park became too much for the town they put a chain with a sign that read "closed" across the entrance. They did not, however, remove the brown and yellow signs with their picnic table icons and arrows from the highway, believing that doing so was the province's responsibility. But if anyone from the town office bothered to inform the province that the rest stop was closed it must have gotten lost in the bureaucracy of Queen's Park, because the signs never did come down.

A number of unsuspecting tourists followed those signs and turned down the dirt lane that led to the former rest stop only to be disappointed when they saw the rusty chain across the entrance. They were further perturbed when they discovered that the lane ended a little further ahead in front of a decrepit old farmhouse that looked like it was about to fall in on itself. They had to back up along the trail to get back to the side road and, eventually, the highway. One or two even got stuck and had to walk back to town to get help because this part of the province is still well outside of cell phone coverage. They were the lucky ones.

Most of the citizens of Sunshine considered these occasional incursions a bother, but Billy and Willy Cavanaugh saw them as an opportunity.

Billy and Willy were not twins, but they looked like they were. Lumbering black bears, they had been born ten months apart and had gone through school in the same class, until they dropped out after failing eight grade three times. They grew up close and came to depend on one another to come to the other's defence when bullied, or join in when the other was doing the bullying. They were not the smartest cubs in town but they did have an innate slyness about them that passed for some form of malevolent intelligence.

This malicious craftiness led them into a life of petty crime, preying on the tourist properties when they were closed in the winter, on the logging camps when they were closed in the summer, and on their neighbours whenever they weren't home. They targeted easily disposable goods like snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, lawn tractors, satellite TV receivers, flat screen televisions and snow blowers; anything that would fit in the back of their rusted old pickup. These they sold off in North Bay, where they were as like as not to blow their illicit earnings on drugs and whores before driving back to Sunshine the next day. And if they got a little too shitfaced and roughed the girls up a little, so what? They were all runaways or addicts or both that no one cared about, except their pimps. But it seemed that they resented anyone else laying a beating on their females. Billy and Willy soon found that they had to pay extra for whores in North Bay, and the list of establishments they were banned from drinking at was getting longer with each visit.

The old Cavanaugh homestead, a rambling three-story farmhouse and barn combination that had seen better days, was the nearest property to the rest stop. When they were little Willy and Billy liked to sneak through the woods and spy on the families and couples that stopped there. At first, if they found a couple getting amorous, they would interrupt their love-making with whoops and screams and a few well-thrown stones. Later on, when they were old enough to appreciate the erotic nature of the act, they would get as close as they could and watch eagerly as they masturbated in their hiding places. Then, after they had reached their climax and preferably before the couple had, they would interrupt them in the same manner as when they were younger, but with larger stones thrown more forcefully.

The rest stop was closed and that form of amusement ended just as they took on a life of petty crime full-time. During their short stints in jail they remembered those days fondly and wished that they had some girls of their own to take out their frustrations on so they wouldn't have to spend all their profits on the whores of North Bay. But none of the females they grew up with would go anywhere near them, not after what they did to Marie Lachance at the Junior High school dance that year. Thank God and the leniency of the Young Offender's Act was all that they had to say on the matter.

The boys had inherited the house that overlooked the rest stop when their parents died in their sleep due to carbon monoxide poisoning while Billy and Willy were guests of the province for a 90-day stint. It was Willy, the younger but smarter of the two, who first recognized the potential of the abandoned rest stop as a source of both income and sexual relief. Billy was quick to see the subtle beauty of Willy's plan, and as the handier of the two, immediately set to making the alterations that would make it possible.

A load of gravel, stolen from the county road department, spread on the approach lane made it look more promising than before. They modified the chain across the entrance with a hack saw and the addition of a link with a hinged gate. The site itself only needed the grass to be cut and a fresh coat of paint on the old out house to make it look presentable. The hardest part was keeping it a secret from the rest of the town, but by extending the new gravel right to their house and by putting a few dead bushes in front of the site's entrance the illusion was complete. All they had to do was remove the dead brush, take down the chain and hide it during the warm sunny days when tourists were more likely o come along and then they just had to be patient and wait, like spiders, for their prey to come into the trap.

Their first victims had been a newlywed beagle couple with a rental trailer on their way west to start a new life. Willy and Billy waited until they were eating before they rolled up in a big black cargo van they had stolen the year before. Billy parked the van so as to block the exit. Pretending to be municipal maintenance workers there to service the site, Willy, the more charismatic of the two, engaged the couple in conversation while Billy worked his way behind the boy. On his signal they struck, Billy knocking the lad unconscious with a leather tube full of bird shot and Willy jumping the girl and subduing her with his bare paws.

It was tempting to take her right there but one thing that the brothers had learned in their several stints in jail was business first, fun later. So they gagged and tied then both and threw them in the back of the van along with the remnants of their lunch. Then Willy drove their car and trailer into the old barn while Billy replaced the chain and the camouflage.

Their trailer had been full of small, portable, expensive items. Mostly wedding presents, heirlooms and the best of their individual possessions. Along with what they could get for the trailer and the car it represented a season's worth of break-and-enters for the brothers. As a bonus, Billy found a half a kilo of weed under the spare tire.

Then there was the fun they had with the two of them. Neither Billy nor Willy would admit it, but they both got off as much by torturing the male as they did by raping the female. He expired rather quickly though, a sign of their inexperience no doubt. She lasted a couple of days longer. Both bodies went down the old dried-out well behind the main house, to be followed by several bags of agricultural lime, purchased from a garden centre. The car and trailer, after removing the serial numbers and being repainted, were sold to separate fences in North Bay. The other items they took to a different contact in Sudbury. Having sated their darker desires on the couple they did not linger or waste their profits on the dealers and whores as was their habit in the past.

They hunted from late May until early October, when the roads were clear of snow and tourists were more likely. They targeted those that looked weak, drove expensive cars and were likely to be carrying a number of electronic gadgets. Since that initial encounter they were averaging four attacks a year, mostly couples, sometimes single women, and on one memorable occasion four university students, three of which were female. They raped all four anyway before torturing them to death because by then they had few limitations and nothing to hide from one another. As the fifth year of operations drew to a close they had murdered a total of 32 creatures.

How can 32 creatures of various species disappear on one stretch of highway and not be noticed, you ask? How could Robert Picton grind 49 prostitutes from Vancouver into sausage, continuing his murderous spree for four years after one victim managed to escape and report him to the police? The fact is that most people do not leave a detailed itinerary with friends or relatives, and the authorities are always reluctant to admit that a serial killer, or killers, has been operating in their jurisdiction.

Some of the brothers' victims did not have regular communications with anyone, and were not reported missing for weeks. Some of their victims took the northern route at the last minute, or by mistake, when they had told friends that they intended to go the other way. The police, understaffed to a critical degree in the sparsely populated North, were never quite sure where any of them disappeared, or on which highway, and a 2,000 kilometre loop is a lot of territory to cover.

Even so, by that autumn the indicators were starting to pile up. But even the few police officers that believed the disappearances to be related did not suspect the brothers.

Their needs were small and the robberies proved to be lucrative enough to drop their old thieving ways. They also discovered that cheap alcohol could fuel their fantasies just as well as expensive and illegal drugs. Visits from the local police tapered off and their old fences hardly saw them anymore as they had found new ones further afield that were better suited to the type of material they were moving now. And since they were getting a greater degree of satisfaction from their victims then they ever had from the females they rented the brothers did not feel the need to bother with prostitutes anymore. So they slipped from the minds of the cops, the robbers and the whores, and no one missed them, especially the whores.

As it was, they had managed to operate for five years without once being questioned about any of the disappearances and on a warm, pleasant August afternoon they found another couple of victims in their trap.

Willy saw them first from the window of the second story bathroom where he was taking a piss. Zipping up he called "Billy, we got guests." Then he went to the spare room on the third floor where they kept a couple of pairs of cheap binoculars. He grabbed the better of the two as Billy thudded slowly up the stairs and focused on the rest stop.

"What we got?" Billy asked as he shuffled into the room.

"One of those big Mercedes SUVs, worth about a hundred grand. Back end full of luggage. An older fox in a suit and tall young red haired vixen. A pretty one, too. Probably his mistress."

"A redhead, eh? I like redheads." Billy licked his lips as he brought the other pair of binoculars to his eyes. "You think she trims her fur, down there I mean?"

Willy shook his head, but he was also wondering what she looked like under the yellow sun dress she was wearing. She was exceptionally tall, he noted, even accounting for her high-heeled shoes, much taller than her stocky, silver haired companion. He was dressed in loafers, slacks, a blazer and an open-necked shirt. The younger companion, the expensive car and the fine clothes painted him as a successful business fox, maybe in construction from the look of his shoulders. They would have to take him out first if they decided to take these two.

Willy looked over at his brother. Billy was already rubbing an erection his paw through the dirty material of his jeans as he followed the vixen around the clearing with the binoculars. He assumed that Billy was in favour of going after them. He studied the couple again. He could not make out the quality of their jewelry with the cheap binoculars but he was sure that it would be in line with the rest of the picture, maybe even a Rolex.

"We doin' this?" Billy asked, without taking his eyes off the female.

"Yeah." Willy replied. A Rolex would get them a new furnace for the house, or stock the beer fridge for a year.

Pulling on uniform work shirts that had "True North Maintenance" embroidered over the right breast and the names "Fred" and "Ted" on the left they went down to the garage and got into the van. Willy did a quick inventory to make sure that the rope, zap straps and duct tape they would need were in the back before giving Billy the signal to go. "We take the guy first." He told Billy as they pulled out.

"You don't gotta tell me that. Wattaya think I am, stupid?" Willy did not bother to reply.

They drove a bit past the park's entrance, out of sight from the visitors, turned around and quickly erected a barrier that they pulled out of the van. It read: "Closed for Maintenance". Then they drove back to the rest stop and parked so as to block the view through the entrance. It also prevented anyone from running off, closing the trap. Billy slid the lead filled leather sap up his right sleeve as Willy made sure that his shirt tails covered the knife hung at his hip.

Billy got out of the driver's side, grabbing a bottle of disinfectant spray and a roll of toilet paper as he did. He transferred both to his left paw to free his right for the sap and set a course for the outhouse on the far side of the picnic table. The rout would take him directly behind the fox. It was Billy's job to take him out. Willy cut behind him, carrying a small shovel and a bucket as if to empty the ashes from the barbeque pit, although there were none. He would subdue the vixen.

The old fox was seated facing him, his eyes half closed but Billy could see its eyes flicking back and forth between him and his brother. The vixen was standing with her back to him, her long, vibrant, red tail up and swaying in the breeze. The wind had glued her yellow dress to her backside, outlining her strong thighs and, in his opinion, a perfect ass. There was an open cooler on the ground and a couple of half eaten sandwiches on the table. "Mornin' folks." He called as he approached. "Sorry to bother ya but it will only take us a couple of minutes and then we'll leave you to your lunch."

The Fox's cold blue-grey eyes locked on his. "No problem." He replied, making an elaborate gesture with his paw as if to emphasise that it was no bother to them. From this close Billy could see that he had a scar running down through his left eyebrow, like one of those duelling scars the German shepherds in the old cartoons always seem to have, he thought. He must be European. He also looked to be carrying a lot more muscle than fat, but he was still sitting and Billy would be behind him in another few steps. He decided to put a little extra weight behind the sap just to be sure; it did not matter so much if they killed him outright, not with the vixen to play with.

Just then the vixen turned to face him and Billy almost fell over as his feet momentarily tangled. The sap slipped halfway out of his sleeve. She was gorgeous, tall and slim but with curves like a Victoria's Secret model and her emerald green eyes pierced him to his soul. But that was not what startled him, it was something that he had not noticed while studying her from the house above; her left arm was missing from just below the elbow on down. All that was left was a shiny rounded stump.

He could feel the eyes of her companion on him. Billy recovered his step and tore his eyes off of the female's arm. _ What did it matter,_ he shrugged mentally. We don't want a paw job.

He smiled down at the male, but the guy was staring into space now, his paws flat on the table in front of him. Three more steps Billy calculated, glancing at his brother to confirm that he was an equal distance from the vixen. He let the sap slide the rest of the way out as his arm came back, and raised it high above his head as he passed behind the fox.

And now .....

* * * * * * * *

The vixen emerged from the pool fifteen minutes later shaking her head to rid her fur of the excess moisture as she climbed the gentle sandy slope toward the shore. As she rose from the water it became evident that she was naked and that her body was as good if not better than any of Billy's fantasies. First her breasts appeared, full and round and with nipples made erect by the cool water she had immersed herself in to wash the blood from her fur. Then her solid abdomen rose out of the water, protruding just a bit above a narrow waist. Her strong hips cane next, and Billy would have been excited to find out that she did indeed trim her fur 'down there', partially anyway. But Billy the bear was no longer there to appreciate the view. He was lying on the grass between the picnic table and the outhouse with a large hole where the embroidered name tag on his shirt had been. The fox had put that hole there after she had signaled him with her eyes as to the nature and direction of the attack. After alerting her partner she had shown the second assailant that one did not need two paws to throw an unsuspecting opponent a fair distance. He had come back brandishing a knife and she had turned it on him by using her stunted arm as a lever.

It was over in seconds, but the encounter left her feeling sad; the bastard had bled out all over her favourite sun dress. Now that dress was in the deepest part of the pond, held down by a large rock, never to emerge again as anything recognizable.

Her partner was ignoring her in nakedness, busying himself by checking out the attackers' vehicle. She saw that he had kindly gotten out her suitcase and left it open on the picnic table. They did not have any towels with them, having planned to stay in hotels for this trip, but he had put his big fuzzy bathrobe, something he always traveled with, on the bench for her to dry off with. She picked it up thankfully, vowing never to kid him about dragging the old thing around ever again.

"Did you call the Headquarters, Silver?" She called to him as she folded the damp bathrobe. They would likely not have time to dry it in the sun before leaving the scene.

"Yes." The fox replied from somewhere behind her. "But I had to use the satellite phone. No cellular reception around here I'm afraid."

She picked through her things, looking for something that would be comfortable in the car. "What were their instructions?"

"Carry on with the mission. They can't get a cleanup crew out here for at least a day so I suggested that we make it look like these two had a falling out. I've already put the knife in the paw of the one I shot and fired a round into the woods with my gun in the other's. I still have to move them closer together but I was waiting for you to get dressed first"

She looked down and saw his Glock, minus the silencer, in the grass near the gutted one's paw. "What a shame, that was your favourite." It was good that all the weapons the Academy issued were untraceable.

"I've asked them to send a new one ahead to Winnipeg. Meanwhile we have yours and we're not likely to be attacked again."

She had donned a bra and panties and slipped into a dress with a full back while they talked. "Could you zip me up please, Dear?" He was behind her in an instant, as if he had anticipated the request. She thought about the assessment about the likelihood of another such incident while he fastened the dress. "They don't think that it was a targeted attack?"

"No. I gave them the names from the ID I found in their wallets and HQ ran a search. They are ... were ... petty thieves whose records have been clean for the last five years. The analyst did note that a number of tourists have disappeared in this region over the same period of time and speculated that they may have something to do with it; they live in that house over there and this could have been their hunting ground. Two hours after we report clear they will send an anonymous tip to the detectives working the case. If they did have anything to do with the disappearances I'm sure the police will find evidence of it in their house."

She turned to face him. In heels she was almost a head taller than him, so she had to lean a bit to give him a peek on the cheek. "You are very thorough, Mister Silver. I'm glad that you could join me on this mission."

He blushed slightly, and his broad chest got a bit broader. "I needed to get out of the office anyway." He gestured at the two bodies. "Shall we?"

She reached into the suitcase, pulled out a prosthetic forearm with an articulated paw and began to strap it on. "Yes, let's."