Mounted

by E. H. Reinhard

  The two news anchors spoke to each other and gave an estimated height and weight, which was fairly accurate. They went on to say that the suspect might be posing as a police officer to acquire his victims—also accurate. They mentioned a retired patrol vehicle—somewhat accurate though the car sitting in the shed wouldn’t be the first, second, or probably tenth guess for an undercover vehicle. The coverage cut away to a FBI press conference labeled Recorded Earlier at the top right. A man stood at a podium, giving details of what William had been doing, but he didn’t include a word about the mounted heads.

  “Come on.” William rolled his eyes. “That’s the hook. They have to know about the mounts. They’re the sizzle to the whole thing.”

  The agent mentioned a package being mailed and the area from which it was sent. After another couple of minutes, the podium was turned over to the chief of police, who went on to state what measures were being taken at a local level.

  “Hmm,” William said.

  He muted the television, pulled out his cell phone, scrolled through the contact list, and dialed Glen, a retired construction worker that lived a mile or two away from him. William had seen the man’s name and number on a handyman sign stuck in the ground in his neighborhood and had hired him for a bit of work on his soffits when he moved in. The phone rang in his ear. A moment later, he heard the click of someone picking up.

  “Hello,” a man’s voice said.

  “Hey, Glen. It’s William, down the road from you there. You did my soffits a couple of weeks back.”

  “Yeah. Hey, William. Ready to do that roof?”

  “Not quite yet. Soon, though.”

  “Sure. Well, what can I do for you?”

  “I was actually calling to see if you had anyone stop over at your house asking a bunch of questions in the last hour or so.”

  “The pair of feds. Second time in a couple of days that they’ve been in the neighborhood,” Glen said.

  “Really? First time they’ve been over here. What the hell is going on? They wouldn’t really tell me anything.”

  “Well, from the looks of things, and what has been on the news this morning, I’d have to say it has something to do with this serial killer they’re after.”

  “Serial killer?” William asked. He tried to place as much question in his words as possible. “They damn sure didn’t mention that.”

  “It’s been all over every channel this morning. You can probably find something about it if you flip on the news. Someone in the city killing young women, I guess.”

  “No shit? What are they doing out here?” William asked.

  “They said something was mailed from our area and asked if Delores or I saw anything out of the ordinary around here lately. Basically, the same questions they asked the other day as well. This time, they mentioned the Emmersons’ specifically, and I saw a pile of people over at their place earlier when I went out. It looked like a bunch of detectives or something. Maybe that’s where whatever this was got mailed from.”

  “The Emmersons?” William asked. “I don’t think I’ve met them yet.”

  “They’re a few miles from you. Back on the main road heading east. Married couple with a pair of little ones. I’ve done some work for them in the past.”

  “Hmm,” William said. “Yeah, this was the first time they’ve stopped over here.”

  “Maybe they’re expanding their search a little. It seemed like they were just going door-to-door.”

  William heard the sound of a woman’s voice telling Glen that they had to go.

  “That’s about all I know,” Glen said. “Hey, the wife’s on my ass. We need to go and get some plants for the yard this second, apparently. Let me know when you’re ready to tackle that roof. Like I said when I was over there, better to get it done sooner rather than later.”

  “Will do,” William said. “Probably a couple of weeks or so, and I’ll be ready.”

  “Sounds good. Let me know.”

  “All right, take care,” William said.

  “You too.” The neighbor clicked off.

  William tossed his phone beside himself.

  He leaned back into the couch cushions and thought out loud. “So they found out where it was mailed from. I wonder if they found the second package.”

  William wondered how close they actually were. He had no way of knowing. The one thing that he did know for sure is that he wouldn’t be caught without finishing and sending off everything else. William pushed himself from the couch and went back to finish removing Erin’s head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I walked back into the forensics lab. Beth and Duffield stood with their backs toward me, watching through the glass as Witting worked inside. I stepped to Beth’s shoulder.

  “Time was nine thirty-three,” I said.

  Beth pointed into the lab.

  Inside, Witting was opening the side of the box and carefully removing the contents. He set a roll of film on the table and then removed a single sheet of paper from the box.

  “I thought we were waiting at least an hour?” I asked. “It’s been half of that.”

  “I asked him to find a way to get it open sooner,” Duffield said.

  Witting walked to the glass of the lab. In his hand, he held the piece of paper by a corner with forceps. “Box is clean—no prints, no nothing. Here’s your letter.” He held it up so we could read it.

  I pulled my phone from my pocket, focused on the page, and snapped a photo. Then I put my phone away and began to read. The letter was typed, like the previous one, though much shorter than the last. The letter began with a heading that read, “Step one complete”. Then my eyes moved to the content of the letter itself. He stated that he’d killed two more, had found a suitable method for his mounts, and had finished practicing. He said he’d leave the bodies of the women he’d killed somewhere they’d be found in the near future. He signed it The Sportsman.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “Appears so,” Beth said.

  “So two more? One of which we believe to be Katelyn Willard. Who’s the other?”

  My question didn’t receive a response.

  “We didn’t have another call of a missing woman come through?” I asked.

  Duffield shook his head. “Not a peep.”

  “And why the hell is this guy sending off packages with what he’s doing and to who?” I asked. “What the hell is the point? All the packages are doing is giving us a way to find him. He’s giving us the names, with which we investigate their disappearance. Sooner or later, it will lead us to him. I mean, if he never sent anything, this probably would have all gone unnoticed.”

  “Maybe he wants to be noticed,” Beth said. “Maybe that’s the point.”

  I looked up at Witting behind the glass. “What can we do with the film? How long will that take?”

  “I’ll have one of my guys get on it as soon as I’m done processing the film roll itself. We should have some images from it by five o’clock or so, I’d think. Maybe a bit sooner. If you guys are done reading the letter here, I’m going to start processing it.”

  “That’s fine,” Duffield said.

  Witting took the letter back to the table, and Beth, Duffield and I backed away from the glass.

  “More dead girls,” Duffield said.

  I glanced at my watch. “So we’re back to waiting?”

  “Appears so,” Duffield said. “I’m going to head up to my office and make some calls. I haven’t heard anything back from Collette and Tolman yet. I need to see how it’s going out there.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “One second.” Duffield banged on the glass of the lab’s door and entered, apparently to speak with Witting about something.

  “Did you want to take the drive and see if these times line up?” I asked.

  “It’s either that or sit here, I guess,” Beth said. “Hold on, let me check something.” She tossed her bag on the nearest table and pulled out our files on the inve
stigation.

  I rounded the table and took a seat. “What are you looking for?”

  She pulled out her phone and stared at it. “What do you know? Ten new messages from Scott.” Beth poked her fingertip at the phone’s screen, deleting the messages. “I want to look and see how long my navigation says it should take from point to point.” She clicked away at her phone’s buttons in between looking at papers in the investigation file, which I figured were the addresses of Katelyn Willard’s apartment and her mother’s place. “Nav says twenty-one minutes. What did you say the time-stamp from the video said, again?”

  “Nine thirty-three.”

  “How accurate do you think the time on the video was?” Beth asked.

  I thought back to the man’s ramblings about synchronizing the time with his super watch. “Pretty safe to say it’s accurate,” I said.

  “Well, if she left at fourteen after, we’re pretty much dead on. If she left at nine o’clock, we have a discrepancy of thirteen minutes. There’s kind of a lot of unknown variables there.”

  “So do you want to go and drive it or no?” I asked. “It looks like we’ll have enough time before we get any kind of photos to look at.”

  “Sure. Maybe something will stick out at us,” Beth said.

  The lab door opened, and Duffield looked back into the doorway. He told Witting to call him upstairs the second he got anything.

  Behind the lab’s glass window, Witting nodded in agreement and returned to what he was working on.

  “Are you guys going to stick around here?” Duffield asked.

  “I think we’re going to go and try to get this trip between Katelyn Willard’s mother’s place and her apartment checked off the list. It looks like we’ll probably have enough time before we get any kind of word back on these photos.”

  “Sure,” Duffield said. “I’ll call you as soon as I hear something if you’re not back.”

  “All right.”

  We left Duffield in the hallway outside the forensics center, where he went toward the elevators—Beth and I opted for the stairs back to ground level. We hopped in our rental car and headed for Katelyn Willard’s mother’s house. I dialed Ball back in Manassas, and he picked up right away.

  “Ball,” he answered.

  “It’s Hank.”

  “Have an update? How did the press conference go?” he asked.

  “The press conference went about as well as you’d imagine. I do have an update though it isn’t really one of the good variety. We found another package this morning. The letter inside states that he’s killed another two women and his—whatever you want to call it—perfecting his method is now complete.”

  Ball grumbled into the phone.

  “Was there a roll of film?” he asked.

  “There was. The local forensics unit is just getting going on it. The lead said they should have some images from the film before five o’clock. When we get them, I can make sure they’re sent back to you.”

  “Okay. So that was it? Another letter and roll of film?”

  “Correct. I snapped a photo of the letter. I’ll send it over as soon as we’re off the phone.”

  “Okay. That was the gist of the letter, though?”

  “It was. There was something a bit different, though. The top had a header that read, ‘Step one complete’.”

  “Step one complete?”

  “Correct.”

  “What the hell is step two?” Ball asked.

  “Good question.”

  “You guys haven’t got any call ins since the press conference?”

  “Not a word.”

  “What are you guys doing now? It sounds like you’re on the road.”

  “We are,” I said. “We wanted to see how long exactly it will take us to get from the mother of a missing person, who we believe to be one of this guy’s victims, to her apartment. The thinking is that he was following her. We have a pretty good idea when she left and know exactly when she pulled up to her apartment, so if the times don’t line up, there’s a chance she made a stop. It will give us a place to look if she did.”

  “Did you look into her bank records?” Ball asked. “It probably would be easier.”

  “No purchases the evening she went missing on her debit or credit cards. But she had just gotten done with work a few hours prior and probably had a pocket full of tips. She was a waitress. A cash purchase isn’t out of the question.”

  I felt a swat on my shoulder. I looked over at Beth and cupped the mic on my phone.

  “We’re pretty close here. The mother’s house is about a block up,” Beth said.

  I nodded and brought the phone to my mouth. “Hey, we’re about to start our little timed drive here. Let me check back in with you a little later.”

  “Sure,” Ball said. “If you guys need anything from us back here, just give us a ring.”

  “We will. I’ll talk to you in a bit.” I clicked off from the phone call and quickly sent Ball the image I’d taken of the letter.

  Beth turned around in the street and pulled to the curb.

  “That’s her house there.” Beth pointed at a brown single story outside my window. “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah.” I clicked the button to start the timer on my phone. “Go.” I tossed my phone onto the dash and crossed my arms over my chest.

  Beth pulled from the curb. “So if we end up having a discrepancy of ten minutes or so, we kind of have to assume that she made a stop. If that’s the thinking, what kind of stop takes about ten minutes?”

  “Gas station,” I said.

  “It fits.” Beth jerked her chin toward me. “Get out your notepad. Any place that we pass along the way that you could think of being a ten-minute stop, write down.”

  I nodded and pulled my notepad from my inner suit jacket. I pulled the pen from the binding and found a clean page. “What else?”

  “Traffic.”

  “I doubt there was any at nine something at night.”

  “Unless there was an accident, but we could probably find a record of that fairly easily. Um”—Beth scratched at her chin—“I guess the usuals. Cigarettes if she was a smoker, which I guess we don’t know. Beer or booze. Fuel. All of those could be at a gas station. Grocery store probably wouldn’t allow for enough time, but she could have run through a drive-through or something.”

  “So gas stations and drive-throughs. That should only give us about a thousand options,” I said.

  Beth clicked on her turn signal to make a right. I wrote down the name of a gas station on the corner, as well as a burger joint across the street.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  We made the trip in about the exact amount of time that Beth’s navigation had stated—a bit over twenty minutes. Beth called Katelyn’s mother back, trying again to get as accurate a time as possible for her departure. Her mother stated that she left mere minutes after nine o’clock, not more than a couple. She also said that Katelyn had not sat out front but had immediately pulled from the driveway and driven off. Beth asked her if she mentioned picking up anything on her drive home, or knew of a place that she would regularly frequent between the two points—the mother answered no to both questions. With all things considered, our only assumption was that she had in fact stopped off for something, somewhere.

  Beth and I sat in Katelyn’s apartment-complex parking lot. I stared at my notebook and then flipped to the next page, which was also covered in names of gas stations and restaurants. I’d counted each plausible stop.

  I turned to face Beth. “Sixty-three places.”

  “How do you want to handle it? We’d literally have to go into every place on the list and request to see video footage from a few minutes after nine until nine thirtyish.” Beth appeared to be pondering something. “Figure five or six probably won’t have video, which leaves us, well, let’s just call it sixty. So sixty stops at about a minimum of twenty minutes each. My mental math says that will take us, split up, two full days.”

  I
didn’t question her math but took it as pretty close, more than likely. A thought perked in my head. “We may have a quicker way,” I said. “At least to get part of this list checked off.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, just for the gas stations. And it’s kind of two part. First, I can call back to the chief deputy to see if the vehicle is still there and ask him how it’s looking on fuel. Completely full tank could point us to a gas station. A low-fuel light could maybe eliminate that as a stop. You’d have to think, if she’s almost out of gas, that she would get that as well if that was where she stopped.”

  “Okay, let’s say the car is topped off, which gas station?” Beth asked.

  “That’s part two. Everyone has a gas station that they like or chain that they prefer. I know around my place, there’s only one or two that I go to. I pass probably three or four to get there.”

  “So how are we going to know that?”

  “Her garbage-strewn car. There were receipts everywhere. If we have a number from a single gas station or chain of gas stations, maybe that can be where we start.”

  “It’s an idea,” Beth said. “What if she has a half of a tank?”

  “Then we’re shit out of luck and are going to have to do it the hard way.” I pulled out my phone and dialed the Oldham County Sheriff’s Office. I waited as the recording informing me to dial 9-1-1 if I had an emergency played in my ear. A moment later the phone rang, and a man picked up.

  “Oldham County Sheriff’s Office,” he said.

  “Is Chief Deputy King in?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Agent Hank Rawlings, FBI.”

  “One moment,” the man said.

  Hold music played in my ear before the phone rang again repeatedly. King’s voice mail picked up a moment later, stating he was out of the office for the rest of the day.

  “Shit.” I hung up and looked at Beth. “He’s gone for the day.” I scrolled through my call log to find his personal number. I found it and clicked the button to call.