by Leslie Wolfe
She chuckled, and that was her only reply, her long fingers gripping the steering wheel tightly as the tires of the Ford squealed, turning into the Enterprise customer parking lot. Moments later, she’d worked her magic with the folks at the car rental office, and they were eager to help, all without warrants or flashing the badge she no longer had.
“Hey, guys,” she’d said, as if she’d known them her entire life. “This is Detective Elliot Young, and I’m Dr. Kay Sharp. We need your help with an investigation. Who can assist us?” Then she smiled widely, making eye contact with all three attendants, even those busy with customers willing to drop everything to help her.
“I can do it,” a young man said, leaving his station and approaching the desk quickly. He wore a white shirt and a black ballcap, and his name tag read, RODERICK—MANAGER.
“Thank you, Roderick,” Kay replied, her beaming smile still turned on. “You could save us a ton of time, and we appreciate it. Where can we talk a little more privately?” she asked, lowering her voice just a little.
“Please, follow me,” he replied, inviting them to step behind the counter and into his small office in the back. They took seats on black canvas chairs, while Roderick sat behind his melamine-coated desk and unlocked his computer, then took his ballcap off. He had buzzcut hair and looked young, maybe not even twenty years old, somewhat nerdy after he’d put on black-rimmed glasses. “Now, what can I do for you?”
“A Ms. Kendra Marshall leased a Jeep Grand Cherokee on September twenty-ninth,” Kay said, and as she talked, Roderick’s fingers started to dance on the keyboard.
“Yes, I have her here,” he replied. “The rental is still active.”
“Isn’t this vehicle supposed to be back?” Elliot asked, seeing where Kay was going.
“No, it’s not,” he replied calmly. “The car isn’t due back until later today. It was taken out for three weeks.”
“That’s strange,” Kay reacted. “Ms. Marshall’s flight back was on the sixteenth.”
“Oh,” he reacted, a frown promptly furrowing his brow. “It should’ve been back in that case.”
“Isn’t it unusual to book the car for longer than the total stay?” Elliot asked.
“Not with corporate VIP accounts on weekly rates,” he explained. “You see, if you book the vehicle for two weeks and four days, it would cost more than the full three weeks. Did something happen to the vehicle?”
His fingers found the keyboard again and clacked loudly.
“We don’t know—” Elliot started to say, but Roderick cut him off.
“The vehicle’s GPS pings here, in the SFO parking lot.”
Elliot looked at Kay briefly. Her eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Was the car picked up?” she asked.
“Yes, it was signed off our lot on the twenty-ninth, at twelve forty-three p.m., and now it shows in the long-term parking lot.” Roderick stood and locked his computer. “Can I ask what this is about?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned and accessed a large vault, searching for something. He came back with a car key labeled with a long serial number, and the color, make and model. “Do you want to see it?”
Kay stopped him with a gentle touch on his arm before he could leave the privacy of his small office. “We’re investigating the death of Kendra Marshall,” she disclosed in a low voice, making Elliot shake his head in disbelief. She shouldn’t’ve shared that information with a civilian, not without clearing it with him first. Soon it would be all over the San Francisco tabloids. “We need this matter handled with the utmost confidentiality,” she continued, and a wide-eyed Roderick nodded his approval. “You cannot disclose anything to anyone, you understand? It would be a criminal offense.”
“Mum’s the word, I swear,” he replied quickly, then rushed out the door with the two investigators in tow.
He invited them to climb into an SUV bearing the company insignia, and drove them straight to the long-term parking lot, starting the search for the red Jeep. It wasn’t difficult to spot; Roderick had brought along a handheld device that showed the car’s position with unexpected accuracy, the only element missing being the altitude. It was on the third floor, right where the device had indicated it would be, and Roderick was quick to unlock its doors with the spare remote.
“Let me check if—” he started, but Elliot put a reassuring hand on the young man’s shoulder. “This Jeep is now part of an active investigation. Could you please wait here, in your vehicle? We won’t be long.”
Roderick nodded, and Elliot joined Kay as she circled the vehicle, studying it carefully. She’d put on gloves already and held a compact flashlight in her hand. Nothing in her demeanor said that she was no longer active law enforcement; maybe when she’d turned in her badge, she’d held on to what used to be her routine as an FBI agent. Elliot knew he would, if he were in her shoes.
“Do you think he’ll keep his word and not spill the beans?” Elliot asked quietly.
“I believe he will,” Kay replied. “I know you’ve already released Kendra’s death to the media, but that was locally, in Mount Chester. I’m hoping the San Francisco media won’t learn about it for another few days, just in case I’m wrong and the killer is here, somewhere.”
“I was surprised you shared anything with him,” Elliot said. “And a bit pissed, to be honest.”
She looked at him briefly, taking her eyes off the driver’s door handle for a quick moment. “Oh?” Kneeling by the side of the vehicle, she examined the undercarriage carefully, shining her flashlight over every nook and cranny.
Her reaction made him take a step back. “I’m not used to having a partner. Haven’t had one for a while.”
“Is that what we are?” she laughed. “All right, partner, let’s look inside. I don’t see any wires or anything to indicate the risk of explosives.”
“Explosives? Why think that?” His voice had climbed up a notch or two. Kay’s mind went places he just couldn’t follow.
“No reason, just being cautious. I’ve seen a lot, and this car, dumped here, right back where it originated, rings a loud bell for me.”
“Why is that? Because she didn’t drive it outside of the San Francisco airport?”
“We don’t actually know that she didn’t,” Kay replied. “No… it reminds me of an old riddle I knew as a kid. Where do you hide a green-eyed elephant?”
“I don’t know, where?”
“In a herd of green-eyed elephants,” she replied, gesturing at the vast parking-lot floor, filled to the brim with cars.
She opened the driver’s side door gently and listened intently, while Elliot held his breath. Roderick was watching every move they made from his car; he hadn’t budged since he’d been told to stay put, but seemed intrigued by their activities.
“The question is,” Kay said, “if Kendra was killed in Mount Chester, how on earth did her vehicle make it back? Or did she hitch a ride with someone else, leaving the car in the SFO long-term garage? Maybe with the killer?”
Inspecting the car, Kay noticed that a cell phone was in one of the cup holders. She picked it up. As expected, it was dark; it probably had run out of battery a long time ago. She took it and dropped it inside a small evidence pouch, then sealed it and put it in her pocket.
Elliot opened the trunk and said, “Her luggage is still here.”
“Maybe he abducted her from the parking lot? But why stop here, if she’d just taken possession of the rental car, she should’ve driven off the airport, right? Did you notice how you have to leave the airport completely when you leave the car rental terminal, and then re-enter to get here? It makes no sense.”
Elliot circled to the front of the Jeep and looked inside, then said, “She didn’t hitch a ride with the killer. She made it to Mount Chester.”
“How do you know?”
Elliot picked up a paper coffee cup from the second cup holder and held it up with two gloved fingers. He removed the lid and sniffed the dried, moldy content. “
Iced tea,” he said, “from our own Katse Coffee Shop. See this awful daisy pattern? I don’t believe Starbucks sells their iced tea in these.”
“You’re right,” she replied, “I’ve never seen this anywhere else either. That means she was there, and she drove back? Or did the killer drive back the rental, to hide it where no one would look for it?” She grinned, removing her gloves with a snap of the nitrile. “That means we have some leads, partner. Katse is one, and that is the other,” she replied, pointing at the video surveillance camera installed on the ceiling of the parking garage.
She’s like a dog with two bones, Elliot thought, entertained by her excitement. “Katse, what an interesting name for the coffee shop,” he said, searching the storage compartments in the vehicle. Rental agreement, mints, a small bag of Oreos.
“Katse is Pomoan for black,” Kay replied. “The name translates as Black Coffee Shop. Just like Cuwar Lake is, in fact, Silent Lake. Cuwar means moon in the language of the Shastan people. Well, it also means sun; I know that’s difficult to comprehend, but I guess it means a well-lit object in the sky,” she added with a wide smile. “From there, the jump to silent isn’t that farfetched, if you start from moon, and the moon is visible at night, when everything is silent, including the lake.”
He’d been living in Mount Chester for five years, enough to know the nearly four-thousand-resident town inside and out, but didn’t interrupt her. He liked to hear her talk, and that had nothing to do with the case or his knowledge of the Native roots of the community he now called home. No; it had everything to do with her.
“What do you think?” she asked, catching him lost in thought.
“About?”
“Can you see why they call it Silent Lake?”
“Absolutely,” he replied, a little too quickly.
He noticed she held back a chuckle, then she turned all serious and said, “Let’s have this baby impounded. Roderick?” she called, and the young man lowered his window.
“Yes?”
“We need to have this towed to the sheriff’s office in Mount Chester,” she said. “We’ll sign the documents right now, if you’d like, and we’ll be on our way. Thank you for all your help, you’ve been amazing.”
“Sure, I’ll arrange it,” Roderick offered. “Oh, by the way, we have another rental unit gone AWOL, in case you’re wondering. It was on this morning’s report. Someone else takes care of unreturned recoveries, but I thought I’d locate it and guess what? It’s pinging here, in the same garage.”
Fourteen
Return
Roderick had arranged towing for Kendra’s rental Jeep, and while they waited for the tow truck to show up, he went ahead with Elliot and located the other vehicle on level five. Then Elliot texted her that he had to run back to Roderick’s office to get the spare key for the Nissan Altima.
Kay could barely control her anxiety. Since Roderick had mentioned the other vehicle, she’d had this unusually strong sense of apprehension, as if she was about to discover something terrible that went far beyond what they already knew. What could be more terrible than finding out that the unsub had taken another woman?
But other questions whirled in her mind, driving her to pace the stained, concrete floor of the garage impatiently. Could this unsub have taken two different women who had rented cars from the same car rental company, at the same airport, both going to Mount Chester? What were the odds of that?
Infinitesimal. So close to zero they didn’t even matter.
Nine different rental companies operated on premises at the San Francisco International Airport. An average of over twelve hundred flights landed or took off from that airport every day, servicing over one hundred and fifty thousand passengers daily, or fifty-seven million passengers each year. How did he conveniently pick the women headed to Mount Chester, out of those vast numbers? Was he someone who worked for the airport, one of the airlines, or maybe even the car rental company? At which point on her route would a traveler like Kendra disclose her final destination as being Mount Chester? Quick answer: she wouldn’t. Travelers landed, picked up their rental cars, then disappeared. But maybe car rental companies kept an eye on the locations of their vehicles, and could tell when a car was headed to or had arrived in Mount Chester. A car rental employee could be the killer they’d been hunting for.
Just as that thought passed through her mind, Roderick returned and stopped his SUV at some distance from the tow truck.
She gave the young manager a long look, wondering, but then dismissed the thought. The young, freckled man didn’t fit the profile one iota. If the unsub was a car rental employee, it had to have been someone else. Someone older, stronger, who could lift a body up a tree. The fact that she was pacing restlessly in the SFO long-term garage didn’t mean any man who crossed her path was who they were looking for.
She could barely wait to see what was going on with the vehicle on level five, and as soon as the tow truck driver finished loading the Jeep onto the platform, she told him to follow them to the fifth floor and wait until she finished with the other vehicle. She wasn’t going to let that Jeep out of her sight until it was safely locked inside the sheriff’s office impound in Mount Chester.
Roderick led the way and drove to the fifth level of the parking garage, where she found Elliot studying the undercarriage of a white Nissan Altima.
“Bingo,” he said, when she jumped out of Roderick’s SUV before it even came to a complete stop. “I believe that’s a Katse daisy cup in there.”
Roderick pressed the remote and the Nissan unlocked with a chirp and a four-way flash.
Slipping on a fresh pair of gloves, Kay opened the driver side door and looked inside. The cup was there; when she removed the lid the smell of stale, moldy coffee filled the vehicle.
The driver of the white Nissan had visited Mount Chester.
Then she noticed something else and felt her heart sink.
The passenger side seat and floor mat were littered with crumbs, as if someone had eaten crackers without the tiniest shred of consideration for the cleanliness of the car. A kid.
“Her suitcase’s here,” Elliot said. “Same as the other one.”
“Elliot,” she called, feeling her stomach sink and a wave of dizziness grab hold of her. “Look,” she pointed at the open glove compartment with a strangled voice. “Gummy bears.”
Rushing to the back of the vehicle, she shone her flashlight on the back seat, then on the floor. Oh, no, she thought, reaching out and grabbing the plush teddy bear from the floor. Please, don’t let it be true.
“The bastard’s got a child,” she said, a wave of rage strangling her to the point where her words struggled to come out. “He’s got a child this time, Elliot. I didn’t profile that. I didn’t see it coming.”
“Maybe he—” Elliot started, but she cut him off, turning her attention to Roderick.
“Who leased this vehicle?” she asked, her words coming out with intensity, causing Roderick to fluster.
“Um, Alison Nolan, from Atlanta,” he replied. “I have the scan of her driver’s license, if you—”
“Yes, of course I need it. How old was—um, is she?”
“Twenty-seven,” Roderick replied, then cleared his throat.
“When did she arrive?”
He checked his device and typed on the small keyboard, each key giving a quiet beep when pressed.
“On October fifteenth,” he replied. “She was supposed to drop the car last night.”
The fifteenth was only a few days after Kendra had been killed. Dr. Whitmore had estimated she’d been dead since as early as October 8 or as late as October 12. And after only a few days, he’d taken someone else. He’d taken Alison Nolan from Atlanta and her child.
“Who processed Alison’s rental?”
“I did,” Roderick replied, a slight tremble in his voice. He looked paler in the dimming light, and sweat popped on his forehead despite the evening chill. “I remembered her when I saw her driver’
s license photo.”
“How many children did she have with her?” Kay asked.
He hesitated for a brief moment, closing his eyes for a moment. “Only one, a little girl with long brown hair, about seven or eight,” he replied. “I’m sure of it.”
“How come you remember?” Elliot asked, a frown visible above his inquisitive eyes. “You must see thousands of people every week.”
“I remember her because, um, she looked like my girlfriend,” he said. The words came out quickly, while his cheeks lit on fire. “While I was processing her, I was thinking this is what Abby would look like with a kid, and I liked that.”
While Elliot was on the phone with his boss to bring him up to speed, Kay asked Roderick for the key and returned to the vehicle. She turned on the engine and studied the media center, ignoring all the chimes and the lights that came on across the dashboard. The vehicle had GPS, and if they were in luck, the system had memorized the places where Alison had traveled and stopped.
“We need to impound this one too,” she announced, beckoning the tow truck driver.
“I figured,” Roderick replied. “Are they, um, will they be okay?” he asked quietly.
Kay touched his forearm. “Not sure, but we’ll do everything we can to get them back safely.”
He seemed scared, as if being a part of the investigation had put him in danger. It was what she called the doom contagion effect, the foreboding that people sense when death drew near, even if someone else’s, even if at arm’s length.
Kay’s focus shifted back to the Jeep, loaded and secured on the tow truck’s platform, visualizing Kendra’s arrival in San Francisco, her trip to Mount Chester, her disappearance. Where? Where did her journey end, and her captivity begin?
“Does the Jeep have GPS?” Kay asked.
“All our vehicles do,” Roderick replied, his words sounding rehearsed. He must’ve spoken the same phrase at least a few times each day.
