Ol’ Leaky.

That’s what people called the Hopewell Mobile Wash.

It was a startup business, appearing around Hopewell in 2005 or so, and catering to rich Southern Michigan University students who couldn’t be bothered to take the expensive cars their parents had bought for them through a car wash. For a fee, the Hopewell Mobile Wash would pull up to the Land Rover or pink Camaro in question. Using a variety of soaps and a reservoir of water built into the old, yellow GMC Safari panel van, a two or three person crew would do a rapid and thorough soft-touch wash.

As a consequence of the razor-thin profit margins and the jury-rigged nature of the water tank, the van was always leaking steadily when it was seen parked elsewhere in town. Sometimes it was at a busy intersection acting as a mobile billboard; other times the crew seemed to take it on joyrides, with the van appearing outside thrift stores, bars, and such.

One day, early in the spring semester when business was slow for fear of the water freezing into an icy rind on daddy’s sweet sixteen gift Audi, the Hopewell Mobile Wash truck parked in the cavernous parking lot in front of the Hopewell Women’s Shelter Thrift Store (which had once been a K-Mart). Ol’ Leaky, true to its name, began dripping all over the lot, which was ice-free thanks to an unseasonable warm snap in between. Onlookers paid it little mind until a certain fact became apparent:

This time, the substance dripping from the van was blood.

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