The Girl from Silent Lake

by Leslie Wolfe

  In a few days, he’d figured out where to sleep and how to get his aching belly full every day, and which dumpsters were worth diving into. The days were long, and he ventured outside the Tenderloin, looking for wealthier people willing to put some more change in his hat. He’d quickly learned how to avoid cops, after narrowly escaping a patrol that caught him loitering in front of the wrong building. And three days after he’d arrived, he’d snatched the sleeping bag from underneath an elderly hobo, realizing he felt absolutely no remorse. Three nights in the cold San Francisco fog had made his priorities crystal clear.

  He was two months shy of his eighteenth birthday when he was raped for the first time.

  He’d found himself a quiet corner behind a restaurant, and had been sleeping there for the past few weeks. After closing time, the restaurant staff took the garbage out in the back, then locked the doors and went home. Behind that building was the back of a three-story manufacturing building turned warehouse, secured by tall fences. Tucked in that dark, dead-end alley, he’d felt safe.

  Until that night.

  The fog had dropped thick, engulfing the city and all its sounds in a milk-like substance that put cold moisture into his bones. When the SUV pulled over, he just pulled back a little farther, hoping he wouldn’t be seen.

  But the three men came looking for him. He recognized them; they’d put some spare change in his hat earlier that day while making all sorts of comments about his body, his mouth, his tight ass and the things they wanted to do to him, laughing loudly with raspy voices loaded with lust. He didn’t think much of it at the time; since he’d been a Tenderloin resident, abuse had been no stranger, especially that of a verbal kind.

  He didn’t stand a chance, a young and malnourished boy against three strong men in their mid-twenties. When the three assailants finished with him and peeled off in their blue Cadillac Escalade, he just lay there on the cold asphalt, swallowing tears mixed with blood.

  He moved that day, hurting with every step and hauling his worldly possessions tied in a bundle, found another dead-end alley where he hoped he’d be safe for a while. He started eating more, denying the revolt he felt for the food he retrieved from the trash. He made it a priority to find decent dumpsters that serviced better restaurants, then drove other homeless people away from that area, using them as punching bags whenever he could, knowing he would one day need to be able to fight better than the last time.

  Later that month, when the three men returned, he thought he was ready for them. He was surprised they’d found him again, but they must’ve been stalking him because they didn’t seem to hesitate when they pulled into the dark alley, laughing loudly.

  He fought them as best as he could, landing a few scrawny punches that only got the men more excited, hollering their lustful frenzy in the all-engulfing fog. Then they took turns until they were spent and lost all interest in the boy who lay inert at their feet in a pool of his own blood.

  He knew they’d come back. They’d always come back, because he was there, an easy victim, someone who couldn’t file a police report, someone who no one missed, and no one cared about.

  This time, he didn’t move, he didn’t search for a better corner of the Tenderloin to hunker down in. This time, he had a plan, and when they returned, he was ready for them.

  He shanked the first two men quickly, with a lightning-fast series of stabs into their abdomens, using a carving knife he’d found discarded in the dumpster behind the restaurant. He had to chase the third down the street for a few hundred feet, but he was fast and caught up with him eventually. When he did, he sliced the man’s throat from behind, grabbing a fistful of his hair and holding him in place, without a moment’s hesitation. Then he let his body fall on the sidewalk with a thump that mimicked the beats of his racing heart. He dragged him back into the alley and threw him into the dumpster, then checked on the other two, who were still alive, agonizing in a growing pool of blood. Just like they’d left him a few weeks before.

  A sense of exhilaration, of superlative power coursed through his veins, injecting liquid euphoria in every drop of his heated blood. He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with the salty fog and feeling reborn, as if the lives he held in his hand synergized with his own.

  He stood tall, wondering if he should finish them off or let them die on their own, to get a taste of their own medicine. They weren’t going to last long, anyway, but they deserved to suffer. Then he wondered why the third man hadn’t taken off in their luxury car. The answer was right there at his feet, in a puddle of rainwater that was stained red. A fancy keychain and a key bearing the stylized mark of the coveted brand, that he must’ve dropped as he ran down the alley.

  He bent over and grabbed the key, holding it in the palm of his hand for a long moment, seizing the continuing feeling of freedom, of complete and exhilarating power he felt for the first time in his life. Now he knew what he wanted.

  Power.

  At all costs. Without limits. The power to survive, to thrive.

  To kill.

  Twenty-One

  Ranch

  Kay waited outside, while Elliot and the deputies thoroughly searched the Eggers property, an old, rundown ranch sitting on a couple of acres of land, and a large shed on the other side of the potholed driveway.

  Alison and Hazel had been missing for a week, and they’d just learned of Shannon’s little boy, Matthew, who was also missing since last November. The thought of Matthew made her wonder how many other missing children she might find if she ran a database search. But the sad reality was that only the year before, over seventy-six thousand children had been reported missing in the state of California alone. Needles in a very large haystack, and no way to correlate any such report with the unsub. She was better off following the evidence where it led her.

  But what were the odds of finding them there, at that desolate ranch, and still alive? She looked at her watch impatiently. It was almost noon, and they still had nothing, no hope of finding Alison and the kids.

  Oliver Eggers stood a few feet away, flanked by his attorney, a young woman who couldn’t’ve been more than twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight years old, but who had proven to be articulate and astute, getting Eggers released without delay.

  Coming out of the house, Elliot beckoned Kay. She approached him quickly, already knowing what he was about to say, visible clearly in his hung head, tight lips and the hand he clenched in a fist and buried in his pocket.

  “They’re not here,” he said. “We should’ve listened, and not wasted any more time. They were never here,” he added, pointing at the K9 team. Niner was sitting calmly in the shade of a large oak, a sign that Hazel’s scent wasn’t there to be picked up and traced.

  “Detective,” one of the deputies called. He’d been searching Eggers’s truck in minute detail, and he’d just opened the cargo space in the back, covered with a black plastic cover bearing the Dodge Ram logo. He pulled out a large, dirty towing strap with D-rings attached at both ends and showed it to them.

  “Could he have towed the vehicles to San Francisco with this?” Elliot asked.

  “Hardly,” she replied. “The cops would’ve pulled him over fifteen times on the interstate. He would’ve never made it to the city.”

  Two deputies had cut the padlock and were opening the shed’s corrugated metal double doors. She didn’t pay attention to what they were doing; instead, she kept looking at the towing strap. There were lots of innocent reasons why people living in rural areas owned such a strap. To secure farm or garden equipment on a trailer. To tie up large loads to the bed of the truck. But towing another vehicle for large distances wasn’t one of them.

  Unless…

  “Detective,” a man called from inside the shed, “you need to see this.”

  They rushed inside, and after her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw a large utility trailer, the kind that has a ramp built in at the back that lifts and locks into place. The wooden surface of the trailer showed sig
ns of repeated use over the years. It wasn’t new; far from it. The wood was partly rotted, and pieces of it were missing, exposing the metallic structure underneath.

  “Do you think that Nissan could fit onto this?” she asked, but Elliot pulled out his phone instead of answering.

  After a brief moment, he lifted his eyes from his device and said, “That Nissan Altima model is one hundred and ninety-one, point nine inches long. Let’s see. Anyone have a measuring tape?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard outside the shed.

  Someone rushed in with a tape, and Elliot grabbed the end of it and pulled, attaching it to the far end of the trailer. “Sixteen feet,” he announced. “That is, I’ll be damned, one hundred and ninety-two inches on the mark.”

  Kay approached, studying the dirty flatbed. Multiple tire marks were showing, staining the old wood with black, ragged lines in various patterns. Maybe one of the most recent ones was a match to the Nissan’s tires.

  “How about the Jeep? Does that fit?”

  Elliot checked, then said, “With room to spare. The Jeep is one hundred and eighty-nine inches long. It’s also taller, exceeding the height of the front bulkhead. You could easily haul that Jeep with this trailer. All you need is a—”

  “A strap, to secure it in place,” Kay said, pointing toward the truck. “Can you call the office and ask the technicians to see if there were scratches on the Nissan’s fenders? It would’ve fit very tightly, with no room to spare. Maybe it got scratched in the process.”

  Hearing a commotion, she rushed to the house, followed closely by Elliot, who was on the phone. Two deputies were booking Eggers formally, reading him his rights, while his attorney shouted, “What is my client being charged with?”

  One of the deputies held a small packet of white powder with two gloved fingers. “Cocaine. I guess it’s small enough to be simple possession, without intent to distribute, but we’ll let the lab weigh in on that.” He laughed curtly, showing two rows of yellow, crooked teeth, probably entertained by his own pun. He sounded like he’d made that joke at least a few times before. “With his priors, it will be a while until your client can see daylight again.”

  “This is bullshit,” Eggers screamed, wrestling the two deputies who held his arms while a third clinched the handcuffs on his wrists. “You put that in there, motherfucker, I saw you!” He spat at one of the deputies, then charged toward him. “You framed me, and I’ll kill you for it.”

  “Mr. Eggers, I must advise you to remain silent,” his lawyer intervened. “Not another word, and stop resisting.”

  Eggers spat again and cursed while the deputies loaded him in the back of their Interceptor, but at least he seemed to take some of his lawyer’s advice to heart.

  His arrest opened some possibilities, and Kay was quick to jump in and seize them. She approached the lawyer and said, “We might work a way around this issue, if your client is willing to cooperate.”

  “What do you have in mind?” the lawyer asked.

  “Let’s discuss it later,” she replied, quick to end the conversation before Elliot approached.

  “There aren’t any scratches on the Nissan,” he announced. “The Jeep shows the same check engine light when powered on, and both vehicles return the same codes, depleted coolant and overheated engine. But both have their coolant up to the mark. Now they have to take the cars apart and figure out how they broke down.”

  Great, she thought. Can’t we get a bloody break?

  This unsub had the knowledge how to sabotage vehicles quickly, in a manner that caused them to fail, yet befuddled the technician. That rounded up his skillset nicely, right there with the ability to grab victims quickly and unseen, and make vehicles disappear without a trace, only to appear three hundred miles away, parked neatly where no one could think of looking.

  “We’ll sweat him, don’t worry,” Hobbs said, pointing at Eggers. “I bet he’ll be willing to spill his guts by the time we get back to the house.”

  “The house?” Kay asked, intrigued.

  “We call the sheriff’s office the house, short for the White House. It’s white, you know, and our president lives there,” he added with a quick wink.

  “Do your best,” she said, looking at Eggers. “Find out if he hauled any vehicles for someone, or if he loaned the trailer to someone recently. Offer him a deal if he talks.” Eggers seemed to have had the ability to tow the vehicles back to San Francisco, but everything else about him was wrong. She wasn’t holding her breath; the killer was still out there, holding Alison Nolan and two children captive, torturing them.

  If they were still alive.

  Elliot’s phone buzzed, and he looked at the screen. “They’re stopping the search,” he said, his voice tinged with sadness. “It’s almost dark, and they need to start again tomorrow. They’re bringing bloodhounds from Sacramento.”

  She kept her gaze on the horizon the entire time, as if not hearing him. What was she going to do? Go home and watch TV in that sad living room, while Alison endured the unsub’s torture, hour after endless hour? Eat, shower, sleep, like a normal person would at the end of a workday, because there was always tomorrow?

  What if Alison and those kids didn’t have a tomorrow?

  Elliot touched her arm gently. “Come on, let’s go. I’ll buy you dinner.”

  “Listen, if you’re tired, you can go home,” she said, squeezing his forearm, “and I know what I’m asking is against regulations, but I need to borrow your SUV. I need lights and sirens where I’m going.”

  “And where exactly is that?”

  “San Francisco,” she replied. “I want to visit Shannon Hendricks’s family. If I step on it, I could be there by ten.”

  “Why?” he asked, already rushing toward the vehicle. He tossed her the keys and took the passenger seat.

  “I don’t know what to expect, but there aren’t any other leads we could follow tonight.” She started the engine and peeled off, throwing pebbles and dust up in the air.

  Maybe this time she could catch a break.

  Twenty-Two

  Found

  Kay drove as fast as she dared on the interstate, taking advantage of the lighter traffic, while Elliot had dozed off on the passenger seat, leaning back. His cowboy hat covered his face almost completely, shielding his eyes from the red-and-blue flicker of the flasher bar she hadn’t turned off since they’d left Mount Chester.

  She hadn’t slowed down, nor stopped the entire time. She wanted to ring the doorbell at Shannon’s house as early as possible, on the most difficult day that family had gone through. After having already skipped on one night of rest, tiredness had taken over, forcing her to drive with her window down, counting on the cold air to whip her senses back into high gear.

  Shannon had been gone since November, and so had her five-year-old son Matthew. Almost a year had passed since they’d been taken. She vaguely recalled seeing TV coverage of their disappearance, back when she was still in San Francisco, working at the FBI regional office, but she didn’t recall all the details. There had been numerous theories at that point, just thoughts and ideas passed around between investigators, no more. But none of them came close to explaining why Shannon, a stunningly beautiful divorcee, had vanished without a trace.

  Kay recalled Shannon’s driver’s license photo. She was a blonde with long hair, at least in that picture and the ones her mother had shared with the media to use in the ads and appeals for her safe return. Digging into the system, Kay had found the AMBER Alert, still active, but showing a couple of modification records, which meant the content of the alert had been changed since it had originally been issued, probably as more information had become available.

  And still, recalling Shannon’s physiognomy only posed more questions. Kendra had been Caucasian with long, sleek hair in a dark, reddish shade of brown, and brown eyes. Alison’s raven-black hair was a mane of long, unruly curls, her skin was pale, and her eyes also dark brown, almost black. But Shannon was a natural blonde wit
h blue eyes. If these women were surrogates for the object of the perpetrator’s rage, there was no pattern she could readily notice.

  However, she held on to the hope that maybe Shannon had been the unsub’s first kill. That could potentially yield valuable information, because most serial killers start close to home, by choosing a target who crosses their path. Someone they see on a daily basis, or someone they have some sort of a relationship with. Maybe if she understood Shannon’s background in detail, she could find some clue to the unsub’s identity.

  With Shannon’s identity only discovered early that same morning, victimology was far from being complete, but Kay knew not to expect much. Kendra was from New York City, Alison from Atlanta, and Shannon from San Francisco. It was a safe bet to assume the women had little, if anything, in common, and it seemed that they didn’t even share a physiognomy type. Other than age and race, Kay couldn’t think of any common trait the three shared. Alison and Shannon were mothers and had been taken with their children, but Kendra was not a mother. The only commonality was that all of them were between twenty-five and thirty-two years of age, with Shannon being the oldest. That, and the fact that all three women had traveled to Mount Chester.

  Victims of opportunity, maybe, Kay wondered as she pulled in front of Shannon Hendricks’s residence. Did the killer think travelers in the area would be more difficult to trace back to Mount Chester?

  She cut the engine and nudged Elliot in the shoulder.

  “We’re here,” she said. “Wake up, cowboy.”