The signature at the bottom, following upon a hasty “Furever yur man,” is as incomprehensible as the jumble of letters on the page. That doesn’t matter. The driver isn’t interested in what it says. He’s just perplexed why the hitchhiker, a man of seemingly so few words, would take up two whole pages to address a dead woman; and why did he leave it here, now? The driver considers the hitchhiker’s open satchel, and how many times its contents threatened to spill out whenever he shifted his boots.

The light turned green a good while ago. Cars manage to navigate around the pickup, stalled at an intersection. The driver regains his bearings, but he cannot let go of the envelope. He had Paula’s killer next to him for two days and he did nothing but make small talk and lead him from one mishap to another; and eventually let him walk down the highway to escape unscathed. It makes Dearborn, Michigan seem hopelessly far.

The hitchhiker has just transferred buses in Chicago. The driver has at least four and a half hours left to ride, and the sun has almost completely sunk behind the walls of Joliet Prison. In an instant, the town loses the wonder of Giza on the Nile and regains the quiet composure of any Midwest settlement, hunkering down against what promises to be a long, winter’s night.