Stranded

by Alex Kava

  Gwen had not, however, met Antonio Alonzo before. The handsome, young black man wore frameless rectangular glasses and a purple button-down shirt with the sleeves neatly rolled up. Kunze called Agent Alonzo a computer wizard, on loan from ViCAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program). The young man seemed unfazed by the praise, which made Gwen instantly like him.

  For all the talk of technology, however, when Kunze finally settled in and started the session he directed their attention to the front of the room where an old-fashioned paper map of the United States—three feet tall by five feet wide—had been spread out and hung up on a poster board. Bright-colored stick pins marked prominent areas across the country, some clustered together, others alone.

  “Each of these pins represents a suspected murder victim. If they’re here it’s because they were found along our country’s interstate systems in the last ten years. Or at least part of them was found. They’ve been entered into a separate database under the Highway Serial Killings Initiative.

  “Many of these victims are transients who lived high-risk lives—prostitutes, drug users and dealers, hitchhikers, runaway teenagers. But there are about two hundred who were ordinary folks, traveling from one place to another like Gloria Dobson and Zach Lester.

  “The idea behind the initiative was to organize a way to assist local law enforcement, to help them connect some of the dots. Until now it’s been tough for them to track since many of these victims disappeared from one state and their bodies showed up in another. The highway systems, by nature, create some unique challenges.

  “Think of it this way—the crime scenes are also transient. The interstate system provides immediate and easy escape routes. A killer can simply get back on the road and be three hundred to four hundred miles away before the body is even discovered.

  “Just since the database was created, two serial killers have been apprehended and convicted. Both long-haul truck drivers. We believe there are possibly several serial killers out on the roads using the rest areas and truck stops to supply them with easy targets.”

  “When you say ‘several,’ how many do you really suspect?” asked Gwen.

  Kunze didn’t hesitate. “Possibly a dozen.”

  Gwen glanced around the table. None of the others flinched at this number.

  “You can’t be serious,” Gwen said. “You’re saying there could be a dozen different killers—serial killers? Today? Driving the highways, undetected. Stopping at rest areas and truck stops to find their victims? And essentially getting away with murder?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. We believe Agents O’Dell and Tully are close on the trail of one of them right now. The guy who killed Gloria Dobson and Zach Lester. We think he’s killed more. This particular task force is assigned to catch this guy.”

  Kunze rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. That’s when Gwen noticed the man’s fatigue and his attempt to downplay his frustration.

  He looked around the table at them and there was a hint of anger in his voice when he said, “He’s dared us to find him, to catch him. We probably have a window of a week or two before this bastard simply changes his route. Chooses another part of the country. Revises his killing pattern. And when he does, he’ll be gone again. But one thing is certain—he won’t stop killing.”

  CHAPTER 14

  IOWA

  Maggie had already guessed what was inside the white plastic bag.

  She and Tully let the CSU techs take charge. They stood back with the others at the bottom of the dirt pile and watched as Ryan, the taller of the two male techs, carried the small bag. Janet had handed it down to him, both as careful as though they were handling fine china.

  After helping to free the bag from the dirt, Maggie had lifted and felt the contents. She could tell it was double bagged. There was a large solid mass inside and she noted the squishy mess that had pooled at the bottom. She estimated its weight at about ten to eleven pounds, and she had a good idea what it was.

  With the bag free of the chunks of mud, it was easy to see the Walmart logo.

  “The contents of this one might not even be related to the bigger one.” It was Matt, the other tech, but even as he said it, he was spreading out and preparing a body bag, anticipating that it was human remains.

  Maggie glanced around at the men. Of course no one believed it held someone’s discarded impulse buy at the twenty-four-hour retail store. All of them were eager but there was a nervous quiet. The air had started to cool with dusk settling in around them. Maggie could feel their contradictory emotions—they wanted to see, but maybe they didn’t want to see.

  At first she had considered whether she and Tully should push back the men, not allow them access. In fact, she was surprised that Tully—who usually played by the rules—hadn’t suggested it. But they had all spent an afternoon digging in the mud, sharing the significance of what might be buried here and exposing themselves to the rancid smells. Maggie wasn’t going to be the one to tell these men thanks for all your help, but no, you don’t get to see what you worked so hard to uncover.

  In the middle of the black body bag the small white plastic one looked less sinister. Matt and Ryan waited for Janet. She kneeled down after putting on a fresh pair of purple latex gloves. The plastic bags’ handles had been tied in a loose knot. It would have been simple enough to untie it. Instead, Janet snipped off the knot entirely and placed it into an evidence bag that Matt held out for her.

  As soon as she cut it open, a much stronger odor emerged.

  Maggie stole a glimpse of the young deputy who had vomited earlier. What a difference an afternoon of smelling death made. He continued to watch without expression or a single gag.

  Janet spread the top opening just enough to be able to look inside. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t wince. The only look on the woman’s face appeared to be one of disappointment. She eased back into a squat and let her colleagues take a peek. Then she looked to Maggie and Tully.

  “I’m guessing it belongs to the victim inside the black garbage bag,” Maggie said without leaning in or coming any closer to see.

  She had already felt the heft of the item and had recognized the smell of decomposing human flesh. A month ago in the woods behind a rest area in Virginia she and Tully had found another of this killer’s victims. Not always, but often, a killer repeated certain things, developed a pattern. The body of Zach Lester had been lying at the base of a tree, the intestines strung up through the lower branches. He had been decapitated.

  She heard Tully release a sigh. Out of the corner of her eye she could see his jaw tighten. He didn’t, however, make a move forward either.

  Janet dipped her right hand into the bag and gently, slowly brought up … a piece of paper. Almost in unison, several of the men expelled the breaths they had been holding. Janet handed it off to Matt, who had another evidence bag ready, but before placing it inside he took a good look at it.

  He showed his colleague Ryan, and then his eyes found Maggie and Tully. “You two might want to take a look at this.”

  Rather than expose the paper any further, Matt slipped it into a clear plastic ziplock bag. He pulled a marker out of his jacket pocket and popped the cap off in his mouth so he didn’t need to use the hand still holding the bag. He scrawled a date and number on the side of the bag, recapped the marker, then held the bag up for Maggie and Tully.

  Maggie immediately understood why Matt didn’t want to tell them out loud what they had found. Despite not telling the construction crew and Sheriff Uniss’s men to back off or leave, this was information that would need to be kept quiet.

  Maggie took the plastic-encased paper while Tully pushed up his glasses. It was a sales receipt, in rather good condition despite a rust-colored stain at the corner. It had been carefully placed on top of the bag’s contents to be easily found. The retail store matched the logo on the white plastic bag. The first thing Maggie noticed was the bold type in the middle of the receipt that read: # ITEMS
SOLD 1. Above, it clearly listed that item: SOCKS, $8.98.

  She took no comfort in being right. The orange socks were obviously not the victim’s. They had been added later, most likely postmortem.

  Maggie searched for the store’s address. There wasn’t one, but the store’s number (#1965) would tell them where it was. The manager and a phone number were also included. What surprised her was the date at the bottom of the receipt. The socks had been purchased just two weeks ago. Which meant the body had not been here as long as they had initially suspected. It also meant that it had been buried after she had received the hand-drawn map, the one that had started their scavenger hunt.

  She gave Tully the receipt for his own closer inspection. She waited, watching him. In seconds he came to the same conclusion and when his eyes met hers she could see he was thinking the same thing she was.

  There were definitely more bodies here.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ryder Creed sipped coffee from one of the three thermoses Hannah had prepared for the trip. He didn’t bother to pour it into the thermos’s cup. He had been on the road for almost eight hours now. Drinking directly out of the thermos was easier.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror. Behind him, Grace sprawled on her dog bed, which took up half the back of the Jeep. Her empty kennel and their gear took up the other half. The dog lifted her head every once in a while as if to ask, “Are we there yet?” Then she’d drop it back down. But Creed hadn’t heard the heavy breathing of a deep sleep, so he knew she was simply resting, still on alert. Even one of her ears stayed constantly pitched. Most of the dogs understood that a long car ride meant a job at the end of the trip. And somehow they instinctively knew to conserve their excitement and energy.

  Creed wished he could tap into his dogs’ instincts. He’d spent the last seven years of his life training and working with dogs, but what they had taught him made his lessons insignificant by comparison.

  Grace was one of his smallest dogs, a scrappy brown-and-white Jack Russell terrier. Creed had discovered her curled up under one of the double-wide trailers he kept on the property for hired help. When he found her she was literally skin and bones but sagging where she had recently been nursing puppies. What fur hadn’t fallen out from lack of nourishment was thick with an army of fleas. At the time it made him so angry he had wanted to punch something … or someone. It wasn’t the first time he had seen a female dog dumped and punished when the owner was simply too cheap to get her spayed.

  Locals had gotten into the habit of leaving their unwanted dogs at the end of Creed’s driveway. They knew he’d take them in or find homes for them. In some twisted way it was their attempt at compassion. It was either leave them at Creed’s back door or take them to the nearest animal shelter, where they would most certainly be put to death.

  Hannah used to roll her eyes at him every time he’d bring in a half-starved or hobbling, abandoned dog. Then she’d tell him that people were just taking advantage of his soft heart.

  “Good lord,” she’d told him. “We could hire a vet on staff for the money we pay out in canine health services.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” he had agreed, to her surprise. And before Hannah could enjoy her victory, what she believed would be an end to his annoying habit of taking in abandoned dogs, he’d hired a full-time veterinarian.

  The fact was—and this was something he could never get Hannah to appreciate the way he appreciated it—the abandoned dogs that he had rescued made some of his best air-scent dogs. Skill was only a part of the training. Bonding with the trainer was another. His rescued dogs trusted him unconditionally and were loyal beyond measure. They were eager to learn and anxious to please.

  Though Grace had been dumped, she adapted quickly to her new surroundings. She didn’t cower or startle easily. Once she caught up nutrition-wise, Creed recognized she possessed a drive and an investigative curiosity. She was independent but followed and looked to Creed not only for praise but also for guidance. And most important, she passed his number one test—she was ball crazy.

  It was a trick Creed used to test all his potential work dogs. Did a simple tennis ball get their attention? Did their eyes follow its every movement? Did they dive for it? And last, when they caught it, did they have a good grip on it? For air-scent work, it was all about drive and Grace had passed his ball-crazy test with flying colors.

  Despite all the training and harnessing the independence, Creed was always surprised by how a dog’s mood and behavior could be influenced by the handler. As he started getting fidgety and looking for someplace to stop, he noticed Grace’s head coming up more often.

  “It’s okay, girl,” he told her.

  Even in the dark, Creed knew this stretch of Interstate 55 and knew that in a couple more miles he’d be leaving the state of Mississippi behind and entering Tennessee. He tried to avoid stopping at Mississippi’s rest areas. The state was one of the few that had security guards at their interstate rest areas 24/7. That should have been a plus, but Creed considered them a nuisance and the term “security guard” a joke. The only thing they guarded was where a dog could or couldn’t pee. He liked to have his dogs stretch their legs, walk around, and sniff without a security guard following in his motorized cart telling him to stay in the designated “pet area.” The area that amounted to a fifteen-by-twenty-foot patch of dead grass. So he waited until he passed the blue-and-white sign that read:

  TENNESSEE

  THE VOLUNTEER STATE

  WELCOMES YOU

  Then he started to look for the rest area he’d use before he reached Memphis.

  He’d rather drive straight through the night. Grace wouldn’t mind. His dogs always needed fewer bathroom stops than he did. The coffee made that difficult. But stopping wasn’t about losing travel time. The truth was, he didn’t like rest areas or truck stops.

  Actually, they called them truck plazas now. They’d become miniature towns with cafés, small grocery stores, and what was called “convenience retail.” Some even had a twenty-four-hour, full-service barber shop. There were places for truckers to shower, watch TV, use the Internet, and rent a bed by the hour to catch some sleep outside of their trucks. There were also places to buy drugs, if you knew where to look. And late at night there were women who went from truck to truck, knocking on the cabs.

  Unlike the rest areas, the truck plazas were busy night and day, big rigs pulling in and out, motors constantly humming, brakes screeching.

  Creed avoided the truck plazas.

  Rest areas, however, were no less a challenge. No matter how many years had passed since his sister had gone missing from one, he couldn’t stop—especially in the middle of the night—without memories of that night. All it took was the smell of diesel and the sound of hydraulic brakes.

  Creed knew subsequent panic attacks could be triggered by a slight reminder of the original one. Something as simple as a smell or a sound. He hadn’t experienced a full-blown attack in years but lately he felt one simmering close to the surface. Exhaustion, stress, anxiety—all were contributing factors. He had worked three homicide scenes just this month. All young women. And each time the assignment came in, Creed had insisted on taking it himself rather than sending one of his crew.

  Maybe he needed to avoid these cases for a while. Take only search-and-rescue requests. Focus on some drug cases. Devote his time to training. He had a way with dogs. He could train them to sniff out just about anything from lost children to cocaine to bombs. Dogs, he understood. People, not so much.

  What had started as a desperate search for his missing eleven-year-old sister’s body had turned into a successful business, success beyond his expectations. He had a waiting list of law enforcement agencies across the country that wanted his dogs or his services. He could afford to hire more handlers and scale back or redirect his time and energies. Most important, he knew he needed to take a break, rest, and rejuvenate, and do it soon, for his own peace of mind. The panic attacks weren’t the only
feelings he kept at bay. There was a hollowness inside of him that threatened to suffocate him if it continued to grow.

  As soon as Creed left the interstate, Grace sat up. The exit ramp to the rest area curved down and around, taking them into a wooded area that immediately shielded them from the interstate’s traffic. The road forked: right for cars, left for trucks.

  Creed was familiar with this one. He’d stopped here on several other trips. But he’d barely pulled into a parking lot when he saw something that made his skin prickle. Beyond the one-story brick building Creed could see a big man holding hands with a little girl, leading her to the truck parking lot, where big rigs filled every slot.

  Creed sat back, tried to control his breathing. His palms were sweaty and his hands fisted around the steering wheel. If he could just breathe, he could ward off the panic. But he didn’t stop watching.

  Was the man leading her? Or dragging her?

  How could he tell in the dark?

  The pair walked from shadow to shadow, illuminated only now and again by a shot of light from the pole lamps. And those got fewer and fewer as they headed toward a rig at the back of the lot.

  Creed told himself that he needed to settle down. He couldn’t afford to interfere every time he saw something that he didn’t think looked right. And yet, his heart wouldn’t stop racing.

  That’s when he noticed the little girl wore only socks—bright white against the black asphalt. No shoes.

  CHAPTER 16

  Maggie and Tully had offered to buy dinner and drinks for everyone. Even Lily.