Deserted

by E. H. Reinhard

  We went to the security room, and Beth and I allowed Gallo and his group to squeeze into the small room while we waited in the doorway. The four men stood shoulder to shoulder behind the manager, who worked the controls of the monitoring equipment.

  “What do we all need to see here?” the manager asked.

  “Let’s just run through everything for them.” I took a drink from my coffee.

  He confirmed. “I’ll just start chronologically.” Then he played the footage, starting with the first clip of the two girls walking past the diner on the outside of the building, entering, and walking into the diner to take their seats in the booth.

  “Pretty good view of them entering there,” Gallo said.

  “Better one leaving,” Beth said.

  The manager continued with the footage. Our group watched as the two females ordered and ate at the back booth. The view of them captured was fairly small, at the farthest reaches of the camera’s coverage. We watched as the blonde rose from the booth and disappeared off camera farther into the diner.

  “Do we know where she went there?” asked Steve, from the forensics unit.

  “I think that’s where the altercation occurred,” I said. “We watched some more of the footage not including these two girls and spotted the old couple enter the truck stop. When they went into the diner, they went in that direction. That’s probably where they were sitting.”

  We continued watching until the blond woman emerged and walked to the pay phones. She picked up the first in line nearest the diner and made a short phone call. A minute or so after she picked up the phone, the diner manager approached, and she hung up. She remained at the phone and leaned against the wall, speaking with the manager.

  “What’s this all about here?” Gallo asked.

  “The manager came over and asked what the problem with the other customers in the diner was all about. She flirted with him a little bit. I guess he gave her his phone number prior to her leaving,” Beth said.

  “Because that’s who you want to have your number,” I said.

  We continued to watch the two talk, the woman’s back to the camera.

  “It looks like she reached out and touched the guy,” said Agent Chris Rockwell, wedged in between Gallo and the man named Brian from the tech unit.

  “She touched his name tag,” Beth said. “We went and had another chat with our diner manager after we watched the footage for a few more details of his encounter with the girl. He claimed that she kind of hit on him. Said something about him being in a band and whatever. He returned her interest because, quote, ‘I’m a forty-four-year-old truck-stop-diner manager, and some twenty-something hot blond was hitting on me.’” Beth said the line he’d given us in the best deep-voiced male tone she could muster. “The name tag is in a plastic bag in our rental car,” she said.

  We continued to watch as the girl left the manager and returned to her booth.

  “So we can get just about all we need from that phone,” Steve said. “Try to print the outside, get at the change bin on the inside for additional prints. Get in touch with the phone company and see which number was dialed. The video has a time stamp. We should be able to get that fairly easily.”

  “We already have our home office on that part.” I took a sip from my coffee and continued, “As soon as we saw her make the call, I called back to our office and gave them the pay phone’s number and company. Nothing yet, though. Also had one of the cashiers from the gas station put a bag over it and tape an Out of Order sign to it. I didn’t contact the phone company in regards to getting inside, though.”

  “Okay,” Gallo said. “And good thinking on getting going on the call trace right away, as well as getting the phone covered up. Pretty good chance that it has been unused since yesterday, leaving only her prints. You have to think that this day and age, there isn’t much use for old pay phones. Which could also benefit us since there won’t be much change inside to look through.” Gallo turned and looked at Chris. “Chris, do you want to see what you can do about getting someone out here with a key to get at that change bin?”

  “Yup.” Chris began to squeeze past the people in the security room. He paused for a moment. “What are we thinking as far as if they want some kind of paperwork?”

  “Tell them you’ll get them whatever they need, and they should get someone out here,” Gallo said.

  “Got it.”

  “Try to not touch the phone,” Steve said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Chris said. “No touching.”

  Beth and I spread at the doorway to allow Chris to pass.

  We huddled back up and went back to watching the footage. The two girls remained in their booth for another couple minutes before standing and walking toward the camera, to the main entrance of the truck stop. Their faces were clearly in view as they passed the phones and walked out the front door.

  “That was our best view there,” I said.

  Gallo acknowledged.

  “Let me get that outside view that we watched pulled up,” the manager said. “One second.”

  We waited as he brought up the footage of the girls exiting. The two stopped maybe ten feet from the front door and spoke to each other for a few seconds, and the blond one continued toward the area of the parking lot designated for tractor trailers. The dark-haired one put her back to the wall just beside the diner’s windows and appeared to wait. She turned and looked through the windows into the diner a number of times. After another ten minutes of fast-forwarded footage of her standing there, the old couple came on-screen and walked toward what looked like an older Chrysler sedan parked in front of the diner.

  The dark-haired woman stepped from the wall and said a few words to the older couple. She took a few steps toward them and lifted the front of her shirt a bit. She then continued walking toward their car. She pointed at the woman and the passenger door before they all got inside, with her taking a seat in the back and the man driving.

  “You think she was showing them a gun in her waistline or something?” Gallo asked.

  “About the same thought that Beth and I came up with,” I said. “They went along with whatever was said and allowed her into their vehicle.”

  “I called Scott,” Beth said. “That car that they are in is the one that belongs to the older couple and was found along the side of the road.”

  Gallo nodded.

  We continued watching as the car drove off-screen.

  “Pull up our last view,” I said.

  The manager did as I asked.

  The final view was of a red tractor trailer pulling from the lot and the gold-colored sedan following it out.

  “That’s all we got,” I said. “The truck is just too far away to make out any kind of plate.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  With Gallo and Beth, I’d looked over the video Ball had sent me while we waited for Brian, from the tech department, and Steve, from forensics to do their things. The stills Ball had sent, along with the copy of the video, looked like they might have been of better quality than what we watched at the truck stop. I forwarded both the stills and the video to Chris, and Gallo sent him back to the Dallas office in his car to start getting it distributed to truck stops and fuel stations. Gallo also gave him the orders to get into contact with some local news channels and get the girls’ faces out to the public.

  Beth and Gallo stood beside me, watching Steve lift another print from the handle of the pay phone. He placed the completed print into a small envelope and then set that into his tote with the others he’d collected. I glanced at the time on my watch—a few minutes after six o’clock.

  “How much longer do you think you’ve got?” Gallo asked.

  “I think that was probably the last.” Steve turned and looked back toward us. “The change I’ll have to do back at the lab. It looked like there was only a dollar or two’s worth in there, so that shouldn’t take me all that long. I’ll get these and the prints that I lifted from inside of the diner where the
y sat into the system right away, and we’ll go from there.”

  Brian walked through the gas station toward us. He held up a memory stick. “Got it all.”

  “Good. We can probably head out.” Gallo looked at me. “Mind if I hitch a ride back with you guys?”

  “Not at all.” I turned toward Beth. “What was up with Bill and Scott? I thought they were meeting us out here.”

  “Hold on,” Beth said. “I felt my phone buzzing before. That may have been them.” She pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her blazer and swiped at the screen. “Yup. It was a text from Scott.”

  “What’s it say?” I asked.

  “He said that it sounded like we had our hands full here, so they went to check out the scene where the couple’s vehicle was found and the homicide occurred. Says they’ll head here after and to let them know if we finish before hearing from them. This was about twenty minutes ago. Let me just call him and see where they’re at.” Beth dialed, walked a few steps away, and held her phone to her ear.

  “Nothing back on the number the one girl called from that phone yet?” Gallo jerked his chin toward the pay phone.

  “No. I’m about to make a call to check in on it.”

  “Okay. Let me send these guys off.” Gallo rounded up Steve and Brian and told them he’d check in with them back at the office.

  I stood in front of the pay phones, staring at a map of the state, following the interstate from right to left and wondering where our girls were at that precise moment. I heard Beth saying something to Gallo behind me, so I turned.

  “Scott and Bill just got out there and are having a look around,” Beth said. “They said they’d meet us back at the office.”

  “All right. Let’s head out. I want to call Ball on the drive and see what’s going on with getting this number that the girl dialed. Give me one minute.” I left Gallo and Beth near the phones and informed the truck-stop manager that we were through. I thanked him for his cooperation and help, joined Beth and Gallo near the exit, and walked to our car in the lot.

  “It would have been nice to get a plate on that truck.” Beth pulled open the car’s driver’s door.

  I pointed at the front passenger-side door, but Gallo declined and took a seat in the back.

  I got in on the front passenger side, closed the door, and pulled the seatbelt over my shoulder. “The fact that they are twins, which is fairly easy to pick out, and the number she called, is what is going to make or break this investigation. Even if we got a plate, there’s nothing to say that it isn’t stolen. Possibility that the truck is also not registered to either of these two girls as well.” I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed Ball. The phone rang and rang at his desk before his voice mail picked up. I left a message that I just wanted to see if we had any news on the phone number and clicked off. I tried his cell, where I also reached his voice mail. “Ball isn’t answering.” I clicked off from the call.

  “Try him back in a couple minutes,” Beth said. “Maybe he hit the lunch room or is on the other line with another call.”

  “Yeah.”

  Beth hopped on the interstate and pointed the car back toward Dallas. A couple of silent minutes down the road, my phone buzzed and vibrated in my pocket. I slid it out, saw that Ball was returning my call, and clicked Talk.

  “Hey, any news?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he said. “I had to get all the paperwork set and signed for the phone company to give us what we wanted. I called them back three times since I e-mailed everything over to them. That’s what I was doing when you called a little bit ago, sitting on hold. I’m going to stay on them until someone gives me what I’m asking for.”

  “Okay, anything from Marcus or Lewis?”

  “The girls’ first names aren’t showing up on anything that we’re trying to cross-reference to. As soon as we get this phone number, I’m going to put them on digging into whoever it belongs to and see if we get any hits with the girls’ first names there.”

  “What about the CDL thing?” I asked.

  “Nothing found, Hank.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll call you the second I hear something,” Ball said. “You’re not still out at the truck stop are you?”

  “No. We’re headed back to the field office now. We got everything we needed from there. Pulled some prints and have the video with the local guy from the tech department. Scott and Bill went to go look at the scene where everything went down and the one girl escaped yesterday. They’re going to meet us back at the local office as soon as they’re through.”

  “Okay. Like I said, I’ll call the second I hear something.”

  “Appreciate it,” I said.

  Ball clicked off.

  “Nothing?” Beth asked.

  “Not yet. Hopefully soon.”

  “That was about the phone number?” Gallo asked from the backseat.

  “It was.” I looked over my seat back at Gallo. “Still waiting.”

  Beth, Gallo, and I tossed around ideas regarding the investigation for the rest of the drive back to the Dallas office. Gallo said he wanted to check in with Chris as soon as we arrived and see where he was at with getting the women’s photos distributed. Bill had called Beth to let us know they were leaving the scene and would be back at the field office around eight o’clock.

  We pulled into the parking lot of the Dallas office and got upstairs to serial crimes a couple minutes before seven thirty. Beth and I followed Gallo to a desk where Chris was seated and talking on the phone. We waited a moment before he clicked off.

  “Progress?” Gallo asked.

  “Some. As soon as I got back, I started to get what Hank here forwarded to me across the wire. I actually got a hold of a couple of television stations that are going to get this on the late-night news tonight. Um, I got a tip line opened as well and made sure the news outlets had the number.”

  “What information did you provide the media aside from the photos?” I asked.

  “I basically just gave them that we were looking for these two women in connection with the disappearance of an elderly couple. Mentioned they may be traveling via tractor trailer.”

  “Good,” Gallo said. “Do you need anything from me?”

  “Not really. I’m going to make a couple of more calls and do more of the same for probably another hour or so.”

  “All right, we’ll leave you to it.” Gallo started toward his office with Beth and me following.

  My phone buzzed against my leg. I hung back in the main room of serial crimes while Beth and Gallo entered his office. I slid out my phone and looked down at the screen. The call was coming from Ball. I looked back at the doorway of Gallo’s office to see Beth staring back at me.

  “It’s Ball. This might be our call we’re waiting on.” I clicked Talk. “Yeah, Ball, what’s up?”

  “I have your number, and I know who your girls are,” Ball said.

  “Hold on.” I walked into Gallo’s office, took a seat, and went back to the call. “Ball, I’m going to put you on speaker. I have Beth here and Supervisory Agent Gallo.”

  “Sure,” Ball said. “Bill and Scott?”

  “They should be here within a half hour or so,” I said.

  “Okay. Just relay what I give you to them.”

  “Will do.”

  I clicked the appropriate buttons on my phone and set it on the surface of Gallo’s desk.

  “Go ahead, Ball,” I said. “You’re on speaker.”

  “Okay. Well, the reason for the wait was Marcus and Lewis trying to connect the dots on a number of people. The number that was dialed belongs to an Esther Levy, who resides in Butterfield, Texas. It’s a tiny town of about a hundred people forty-five minutes or so east of El Paso. This place is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It’s not even really a town, just kind of a group of houses spread out in one area of desert.”

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

  “She’s in her eigh
ties. Aside from having a phone in her name and paying her taxes, she’s been off the grid as far as banking or any other bills for something like thirty years. No driver’s license or anything like that. But Marcus dug into the address. That’s where we found out a couple of things. We found a Harper and Ginny Levy, both in their fifties, who list the same home as their residence on their DLs. We ran the names, and both have extensive records. Well, on an old B and E, we found two more with the last name of Levy—brothers of Harper Levy, by the names of Silas and Roman. So we ran them both. Roman Levy is finishing up a ten-year sentence in Huntsville Prison—that’s in Texas—for attempted murder. He stabbed a public defender eleven times in the chest with a pen while he was sitting in an interview room after being questioned about a burglary. Silas, as it turns out, was just released a couple of days ago after doing a five-year stretch in Robertson Prison about a hundred miles west of Dallas. That was for aggravated assault. Looks like his fifth or sixth charge on that.”

  “Career criminals,” I said. “Still doesn’t tell us who the girls are, though.”

  “They’re this Silas Levy’s daughters,” Ball said. “I was getting to that part. His address on record is in Windsor, North Carolina. Lewis and Marcus ran the address with the last name and got two females that list the place as their residence. A Kerry and Kathleen Levy. Kerry spelled K-e-r-r-y. Kathleen also spelled with a K. We pulled their DLs. They’re the girls on our video.”

  “All right. What about priors?” I asked.

  “None,” Ball said.

  “So what are we thinking?” Beth asked. “Do we want to get somebody from the El Paso area out to this address? Where did you say it was?”

  “Butterfield. East of El Paso forty-five minutes,” Ball said. “I’m going to let you guys make the call on how you should proceed. We have a pile of stuff on everyone here: photos, records, and all of that. I’m going to start getting everything e-mailed over to you now. Why don’t you guys take a look at everything we have and give me a ring back with what you’ve decided.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN