Mounted

by E. H. Reinhard

  “King,” he answered.

  “It’s Agent Hank Rawlings.”

  “What can I do for you, Agent?”

  “I tried you at the station but got your voicemail saying you were gone for the day.”

  “I left about a half hour ago to take care of a personal matter. What do you need?”

  “We’d actually like to stop back out at your station and have another look at Katelyn Willard’s vehicle.”

  “Something new you need to see?”

  “We wanted to see how the car was doing on fuel. We think she may have stopped on her way home that night and also wanted to see if we could find anything inside her vehicle to correspond with that theory—maybe in some of the trash in there. It should just take us a couple of minutes.”

  “Do you need me there for this?” he asked.

  “I don’t believe so, as long as we can get access to the vehicle.”

  “Can you hold on for me for just a second?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I heard him thanking someone on his end of the call and saying the words “come on” to someone.

  “When can you be over there?” he asked.

  I cupped the mouthpiece on my phone. “How long do you think it will take us to get back to the sheriff’s department?”

  “Katelyn’s mother’s place is probably only about five minutes from there,” Beth said. “I’d have to say twenty-five minutes, plus or minus a couple.”

  I took my palm from my phone and brought it back to my mouth. “Half hour or so,” I said.

  “I’ll meet you there,” King said and hung up.

  I slid my phone back into my pocket. “Back to the Oldham County Sheriff’s Office. The chief deputy is going to meet us.”

  Beth pointed at the clock on our rental car’s dash. “We should probably have photos pretty soon. Are you sure you want to go now?”

  I nodded. “Photos aren’t going to get us any closer to finding this guy. Unless there’s a photo of his DL mixed in, which I doubt. Start heading for the sheriff’s office, and I’ll make a call to Duffield to check in.”

  “Okay.” Beth wove around Katelyn Willard’s apartment building and took us from the main entrance back out onto the street.

  I clicked through the call log on my cell and clicked Duffield’s name to call him. He picked up after a couple of rings.

  “Well, what was the verdict?” he asked.

  “We’re thinking she made a stop. We’re actually going to head back out to her vehicle for another look.”

  “Is it at the sheriff’s office still?”

  “It is. The chief deputy is meeting us there in about a half hour. What about you there? Photos yet?”

  “Not yet,” Duffield said. “We have a bit of a development on the roll of film, though. Witting found a partial on it, which he got into the system right away. That was what the delay was with getting the images. Nothing through IAFIS on the print yet, though—still searching. One of Witting’s guys is getting the film set now with the film scanner. We should have everything contained on the film shortly.”

  “Okay. Give me a ring when you get the photos or get a hit on that print.”

  “Yup.”

  I clicked off from the call.

  “Print?” Beth asked.

  “I guess Witting found a partial on the roll of film.”

  Beth furrowed her brows. “No prints or trace on anything—ever—and there’s a partial on the film inside of the box?”

  “Could have been overlooked,” I said.

  “I guess we’ll find out. No hits on it yet, though?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  We headed back in the same direction we’d come from. I glanced at every gas station and restaurant on our way. My eyes went back and forth, looking at my notes and out the windows. When we pulled up in front of the red brick Oldham’s County Sheriff’s Office, King was stepping from the sedan I’d seen him driving when I’d met him at Katelyn Willard’s. He pointed at the parking spot at the curb directly in front of the building’s entrance. A sign posted between the curb and sidewalk marked the spot for official vehicles only. Beth turned in the street and nosed the car into the spot. We stepped out and went to greet Chief Deputy King.

  “Afternoon,” he said.

  “Thanks for meeting us, again.” I shook his hand.

  While Beth greeted him, I glanced over at his car to see a teenage boy sitting in the passenger seat. King nodded his head toward his vehicle.

  “I had to go and pick Junior there up from school. Seems he got wind of some of the guys from the football team picking on his little brother and took it to some of them.”

  I thought back to my youth and my older brother. While he’d regularly poke, prod, and rough me up, he was always the first person to have my back, which I appreciated until I was old enough to handle myself. I figured that I should call my brother and shoot the breeze for a bit when the investigation was over—we hadn’t spoken in a couple months.

  “Standing up for his brother, I guess,” I said. “Mine did the same for me, growing up.”

  “Yeah, I said the requisite things about fighting and put on my best disappointed face while we were dealing with the principal, but I think he knows that I’m not going to go too hard on him for sticking up for his little brother. Come on, let’s go check out your car again. You said you wanted to check on fuel and for some receipts?” King started toward the garages attached to the end of the building.

  Beth and I followed.

  “So anything further since the press conference?” he asked.

  “We found another package,” I said. “Our team is still working on sorting through the contents.”

  King stopped at the garage door leading into the building. “So from what I gathered from the press conference, this guy mailed a package that showed photos of the deceased as well as their driver’s licenses.”

  “Correct,” I said.

  “And now we have another?”

  “Correct,” I said.

  “And we believe that Katelyn Willard was taken by the man that you guys are out looking for?” he asked. King was leading me down the path to his eventual question, which I figured to be whether he was going to have to notify Katelyn’s mother that her daughter was deceased.

  “We don’t have the identities of the latest victims yet,” I said. “The letter that came with the package stated that he’d killed two more.”

  “But there’s a good chance that this girl is one of them?” he asked.

  “We don’t know for certain right now, but yes,” I said. “She very well could be one of the victims.”

  King let out a hard breath and waved us into the garage without responding.

  Beth and I approached the car with King following behind. I went to the passenger side and Beth to the driver’s, as we’d done the last time. I pulled open the door and had a seat.

  Beth opened the driver’s door and crouched in the doorway. She took the keys hanging on a metal wire around the steering column and placed them in the ignition. She clicked the key forward to power up the dash.

  I looked over to see the fuel gauge bounce from empty to full before settling on a click below three quarters of a tank.

  “Well,” Beth said. “Swing and a miss.”

  “On to the garbage,” I said. “Let’s see if any of this crap has our time and date that we need.”

  “Do you just want to hand me a pile of garbage, and we can start sorting it?” she asked.

  “Sure.” I scooped two handfuls of receipts and miscellaneous paper up onto the driver’s seat.

  “How do we start?” she asked.

  “Just organize the receipts as to what they’re from. Make a pile of gas stations. It looks like there is a good chunk of ATM receipts as well. Make a stack of those.” I reached down and picked up receipts and scraps of paper. My fingertips got covered in an unknown brown gooey substance on about the fifth or sixth receipt that my hand
touched.

  “Gross,” I said.

  “Huh?” Beth glanced over at me from her pile of papers.

  I held up my hand and spread my fingers. The slime on them made a bridge from one finger to the next.

  “I don’t even want to know what that is.” Beth tossed me a napkin from her pile and continued sorting.

  I wiped my hand and let the napkin drop to the floor of the car—which was fitting. I pushed on and used the top of the dash for organizing. Five minutes later, I had neat stacks of gas-station receipts, ATM receipts, fast-food receipts, and miscellaneous papers. Then I checked each paper on the dash for time and date, but none matched up with the night she’d been taken.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “A couple to go, but no,” Beth said.

  I rummaged around through what garbage remained on the floor—some cellophane wrappers from packs of cigarettes, a couple of gum wrappers and packages, and two bags from fast-food restaurants. One of the bags appeared to be leaking something, which was probably where the mystery goo on my fingers had come from. I reached down for the unslimy bag and pulled it up onto my lap for a look inside.

  “I’m through. Nothing,” Beth said.

  I stared into the white paper bag to see a couple of french fries at the bottom, along with a few napkins and a crumpled hamburger wrapper. I reached in to move the napkins and found a three-quarters-eaten hamburger with what looked like a receipt below it. The burger looked as though it could have been made that day. I shook the chunk of burger to the other side of the bag so I could get a look at the receipt. I stared in and read the date from the top corner of the bill—two months old. I took my hand from the bag and turned it to see where it was from—a famous burger chain. I set it back down on the floor and picked up the other bag with the questionable substance. I carefully uncrumpled the bag and pulled it open between my legs so I didn’t get a lapful of whatever was leaking. I stared inside at a couple of open containers of sweet-and-sour sauce and an empty box that said Chicken Nuggets on the side.

  Beth reached out and tugged at the edge of the bag, tearing something from its side.

  “Receipt,” she said, taking a quick look at it. Then she held it out at my eye level. “We have our spot. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  William had dug out Erin’s eyes and brains prior to dropping her skull into a pot of boiling water. After the skull had boiled for his pre-selected amount of time, he scraped away the bits of meat that remained, let it cool, and began his process of getting it affixed to the mount. William had just finished molding the clay to the bone of Erin’s skull.

  “Getting there,” William said as he leaned forward in his chair and stretched his back. He brushed the back of one hand against his bushy mustache, satisfying an itch.

  William picked up a can of spray adhesive and sprayed down the clay-covered skull. He set the can back on the table. The adhesive would need a minute to tack, so William reached over, flipped open the lid on a large jar, and selected two green glass eyes. He took them in one hand and stared down at them.

  William recalled how he’d come upon them and how the idea of what he would do to Erin had hatched. By chance, William had stumbled upon the dolls the eyes had come from. He was wandering around a local superstore, half drunk, the day after he was let go from his new position in Louisville. While walking toward the liquor department in the store, he saw racks and racks of the dolls on clearance—each one in its own box standing three feet tall. The dolls all had human-sized heads attached to infant-sized bodies. The dolls’ eyes all stared at him as he passed. Something about the color and the little flecks of brown mixed in with the green in the doll’s eyes stopped William in his tracks. It took him a moment to think through his drunken haze and recognize the familiarity—the dolls’ eyes were almost identical to Erin’s. William panned left to right, looking at all of Erin’s green eyes staring back at him. He remembered what his last words to Erin were, and the decision was made. He loaded a cart with dolls and made for the checkout line. The next day, he’d packed a bag and booked a plane ticket to California.

  William held one of the glass eyes between his thumb and forefinger. He pressed it into the clay in her eye socket. He did the same with the next eye. Then he looked at the table to his right, leaned over, and picked up the skin from her face. After a quick spray of adhesive to the backside of the flesh, he was ready to bond it to the clay. William draped the skin over the skull and carefully arranged it just perfectly. He smoothed the creases and made sure the skin adhered properly around her eyes. From there, he ran his hands along the neck, making sure it bonded with the framework attached to the mount.

  With the hands having already been set on the mount, he was nearing the point of submerging the whole mount in the melted wax, which according to William’s internal clock, should have been about ready in the kitchen. He lifted the mount and walked from the room to check. William entered the kitchen and saw steam rising from the large pot on the burner—the wax inside neared the pot’s rim. The coat hangers mounted to the bottom of his upper kitchen cabinets, where he would hang the mount to dry, awaited his wax-coated piece. William set the mount down on the kitchen table and walked to the stove. He scooped up a long aluminum spoon and plunged it into the wax. He carefully stirred and poked, searching to see that it had all melted. His eyes went to the timer on the stove, which showed fifty-some seconds remaining.

  “I think we’re just about ready.”

  William picked up Erin’s mount from the table and walked her back to the pot—large enough to accommodate dunking the entire mount at once. He flipped the mount so her head was facing the floor, and he gripped the edge of the wooden baseplate. He crouched as he lowered the entire mount into the wax. William submerged her, allowing the mount’s base to rest on the pot’s rim. Then, he lifted her straight back up and hooked the coat hangers to the metal wall hangers attached to the wooden base. The head dangled there, wax dripping to the pan on the kitchen counter below. He’d allow her to dry and cool for a half hour.

  William turned off the burner on the stove and moved the pot of wax to a cool burner. He walked from the kitchen back into the spare bedroom, where he planned to prepare his supplies for when the mount was ready. He took a seat at the table where he would apply her hair and makeup. His eyes went right to Erin’s scalp and hair, draped over a mannequin head. He reached over and ran his fingertips through the blond hair, from which all the blood had been washed. William refocused his attention on the makeup before him.

  “Blush, lipstick, eyeshadow, eyelin—” William cut his verbal checklist short. “Damn, out of eyeliner.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Beth and I drove toward the fast-food restaurant the bag had come from. The restaurant was a nationwide chain, large enough to all but ensure that they’d have video.

  “Nothing back from Duffield yet?” Beth asked.

  I pulled out my cell phone and took a look at the screen. “Nothing, but we need to call this in with him anyway.” I pulled up the number for his desk and dialed. After eight or nine rings, I got his voice mail in his office. I scrolled my call log and dialed his cell phone, and within two rings, he picked up.

  “Agent Duffield,” he said.

  “It’s Hank. We may have something here.”

  “Okay. Hold on. Give me two seconds.”

  “Sure.”

  I heard muffled talking from Duffield’s end of the phone—it sounded as if he was giving someone orders to “get everything.”

  He came back on, “Sorry. Complete whirlwind around here. I’ve been running back and forth, upstairs, downstairs, phone calls, the works.”

  “Something going on?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but I don’t know what the hell to make of it.”

  I caught Beth’s gaze from the driver’s seat. “Duffield, I’m going to put you on speaker so Beth can hear.”

  “All right.”

  I clicked the button
on my phone and placed it in the cup holder between Beth and me. “Go ahead,” I said.

  “Well, we have copies of the photos that were on the film.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “Same as before. Photos of their identifications, them alive, decapitated, and mounted,” Duffield said.

  I dug my index finger and thumb into my eyes. “The identities?”

  “Katelyn Willard and another by the name of Courtney Mouser.”

  “Courtney Mouser, you said?”

  “Correct.”

  I pulled my notepad from my suit pocket. “Spelling on this Courtney’s last name?”

  Duffield gave it to me.

  “What do we know about the second victim?” Beth asked.

  “A little older than the others—thirty-one. She was never reported missing, but we looked up registered vehicles and got a hit on her plate. Her car was found parked in a neighborhood about three miles from her residence. We’re just getting going on getting everything we can now—finding the officer that found the vehicle, the tow company that picked it up, where it is now, everything. After that, we need to get contacts, employment, friends and family, and see what we can do about trying to piece together when and how she was taken.”

  “Have Katelyn Willard’s mother and roommate been notified?” Beth asked.

  “Calling the Oldham County Sheriff’s Office is my next call,” Duffield said. “Right now, I’m knee-deep in something else.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “We got a hit on that partial print, which is the part that we can’t really figure out what to make of.”

  “Who did it come back to?” Beth asked.

  “A woman by the name of Erin Cooper-Connelly.”

  “Who the hell is that?” I asked.

  “That is a missing woman from California who was presumed dead. She was reported missing about a month and a half ago.”

  “That is a bit before this all started,” Beth said. “So what is she? A victim? Or accomplice?”

  “Well, it gets stranger. So we get a hit from this woman on the print, and I call the number that I’m supposed to contact—a missing-persons department out there in California. It seems that this woman was a local television sports anchor. Well, her husband, also employed by the same television channel, committed suicide and left a note that he’d killed her and disposed of her body in the ocean—thus the reason for the suicide, he couldn’t live with himself.”