Smith's Monthly #18

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  They didn’t have a lot of time. But they had some.

  And Lott had a hunch that the woman from Montana didn’t have much time left at all.

  PART FIVE

  Calling Dead

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  August 15th, 2015

  1:15 P.M.

  Las Vegas

  JULIA HAD BEEN stunned for a moment when she saw Lynch dressed as Wampler come out of that home and get into the sedan. Luckily she reacted as fast as she did. Lott’s Cadillac was certainly not a car normally seen in this neighborhood, so they would have stuck out and been spotted.

  Andor leaned forward between the two front bucket seats as Lott managed to get them headed back toward the school.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Andor asked. “Missy Andrews from Montana is being baked as we speak?”

  “I am,” Lott said.

  “Shit,” Fleet said over the phone that Julia held up between the three of them.

  Julia just shook her head. If that was the case, the woman might already be dead. Or nearly dead.

  “I’ll get us an emergency search warrant,” Andor said. “We play this by the book if we can.”

  “Agreed,” Lott said. “But we go in warrant or not.”

  Andor nodded and was on the phone a moment later. He simply said his name, then asked for the chief, and less than ten seconds later was connected with the chief. Julia was impressed, considering the firestorm that must be going on at headquarters.

  “Chief,” Andor said, “We have Lynch and West under surveillance and we think the Montana woman is in immediate danger. We need an emergency warrant. Fast as you can get it.”

  Julia watched as Lott got parked in front of the old school and Andor gave the address to the chief.

  “Fleet,” Lott said, “we need to know the instant Lynch and West are blocked from any reception of an alarm.”

  “A moment,” Fleet said.

  Julia forced herself to take a deep breath and try to stay calm as each second ticked away in silence.

  The old brick school clearly had been special in its day, but now, with two layers of ten-foot tall wire fence around it and construction half done on a bunch of stuff, the school looked just tired. More like an old prison building than anything else. The tall windows had long since been boarded up and the front door was also boarded over.

  Julia was surprised that it wasn’t bigger. It didn’t look much larger than the size of a regular church. But it was two stories tall and the brick bell tower was a bell tower, not a steeple. From what she could tell, the bell was long gone.

  “My people just found that Lynch and West,” Fleet said on speaker on her phone, “under the Wampler name, own the old school as well, under another shell company that was buried damn deep. And they own three of the homes around the old school.”

  “Where are they now?” Julia asked. “We’re about to go into the school and we don’t want to alert them.”

  “You are clear,” Fleet said. “They are just pulling into the valet parking at the Rush Tower side of the Golden Nugget. They are shut down for any incoming messages. Annie and Doc have me linked into all the casino’s security cameras and they are standing by in security as well.”

  “Completely?” Julia asked.

  “Completely,” Fleet said. “No one in the casino area is going to get a phone call on a cell phone while those two are in there.”

  Julia glanced at Lott who nodded. “Let’s go.”

  She nodded. They now could go into the school without setting off alarms that would send Lynch and West fleeing.

  “We’ll let you know what we find in just a few minutes, Chief,” Andor said from behind her. “Stay tuned and stall that press conference just a few more minutes.”

  He clicked off his phone. “Got the warrant.”

  All three of them climbed out into the baking heat.

  Julia kept her connection to Fleet on and held her phone out in front of her as Lott and Andor opened the back of the SUV and dug out a couple large pair of wire and bolt cutters and two large crowbars.

  Then they started right at the front gate on the fence.

  Two minutes of work in the heat and with the hot wire fence and they had the first gate open enough for the three of them to get inside the area between the two fences. It took less than a minute to get the second fence gate open.

  Both Lott and Andor were sweating. But Julia knew that if Missy Andrews was inside, time was of the essence.

  “Lynch and West just reached the lobby of the buffet,” Fleet said.

  “Got a floor plan of this old school?” Lott asked.

  “I will pull one up and walk you through it,” Fleet said. “Door on the east side might be your best bet to get in.”

  Julia glanced around as both Fleet and Lott shook their heads. “We’re going through the front.”

  Julia watched, holding the phone out in front of her, wishing there was something she could do as the two of them started ripping boards down. It took them less time to expose the old front door than it had to get through the fence.

  “Doors rotted,” Lott said, staring up at the casing.

  Julia could see that as well.

  “Let’s hope there’s nothing solid behind this,” Andor said.

  Then with a solid kick, the door smashed inward and came away from the frame, twisting into a wall and sending a cloud of dust swirling through the air.

  “Watch for nails,” Lott said as they three of them went over the debris and inside.

  The place smelled musty and old and unused. A wide main hallway led away in front of them, covered in dust and broken trim and doors, illuminated by the bright light from the broken front door only. On the inside, the place looked much bigger than it did from the outside.

  Both Andor and Lott had grabbed flashlights and both started carefully down the hallway.

  “Fleet,” Julia asked, flipping an old light switch without any success. “Is this place pulling any power?”

  “Hold on,” Fleet said.

  They had taken another five steps down the old high-ceilinged hallway before Fleet came back. “It is. Massive amounts, actually. That started ten minutes ago.”

  “Oven,” Julia said. “Damn it!”

  “Basement,” Lott said.

  “Fleet, is there a basement?” Julia asked.

  “There is,” Fleet said. “Staircase on the right as you come in from the main door. There is an old gym and locker rooms down there.”

  Andor cut the lock on the old door with his bolt cutters and they went down the old stairs quickly, plunging into darkness that even the two flashlights didn’t seem to push back much.

  “Still with us, Fleet?” Julia asked.

  “Loud and clear,” Fleet said.

  At the bottom of the stairs there were two doors, both of which looked like they had been used a great deal. Both had high-level security locks on them. Keypad electronic types.

  “That door looks like it goes off underground toward the home next door,” Lott said.

  Julia agreed. “A logical way to get unseen into the old school.”

  “Let’s hope they didn’t set any kind of explosive trap on this door,” Lott said.

  “Too damn late now if they did,” Andor said.

  Julia agreed as both Lott and Andor started banging at the door, smashing anything that would smash.

  “That’s some noise,” Fleet said.

  “Breaking into the old gym area, from the looks of it,” Annie shouted over the destruction.

  Finally, the door frame started to move where it had rotted out along one side. And then a moment later, it fell inward with a smash, sending dust swirling into the big room.

  Cool air swept over them as they stepped forward.

  A switch on the wall beside the ruined door worked this time as Julia tried it and lights in the old gym came up full and bright.

  At first she didn’t understand what she was seeing exactly.
r />   Then the details came clear and she covered her mouth and turned away and for the first time in all her years as a detective, she threw up.

  And right beside her, Lott did the same thing.

  On the phone in Julia’s hand, Fleet said softly, “That doesn’t sound good.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  August 15th, 2015

  1:40 P.M.

  Las Vegas

  LOTT HAD NEVER, not once, lost his lunch over a crime scene. But what faced them in this room was so much more than a crime scene. This was a sick trophy room.

  And just the vastness of the death had overwhelmed him.

  He managed to clear his mouth by spitting a few times, then eased Julia up from where she was bent over and together they both turned around again.

  The scene in front of them was a nightmare that he had no doubt he would ever forget.

  On what looked like very narrow twin beds, with sheets, women’s butts, partially covered with underwear, and the backs of their legs were posed, two per bed. It looked like the rest of the woman’s body was simply covered up under the sheet, so it looked very much like women were laying there, face down, side-by-side on the narrow beds.

  That would have been bad enough, but it didn’t stop there.

  Between each bed were two child mannequins dressed in the black and white schoolgirl uniforms, standing posed as if watching the two partial bodies on the beds. One watched one bed, another watched another bed.

  Only each child mannequin had a real woman’s head with long blonde hair.

  The bus graveyard was going to be full of headless women’s bodies. Lynch took their heads as a trophy.

  The scene was repeated like a giant dormitory all the way around the outside of the large gym and also had started another row down the middle.

  Sick trophies from over three hundred dead women.

  “We need to find that oven,” Andor said, his breathing heavy, his voice raspy.

  “Damn,” Julia said, shaking her head.

  Lott also snapped back into focusing on what was important. It was as if his mind had just gone from him for a moment and now it was suddenly back. He forced himself to not look into the faces of all the women whose heads were posed on the child mannequin bodies.

  A door stood partially open on the other side of the gym and Andor pointed to it.

  Lott, with Julia at his side, followed Andor toward the door as fast as they could go, not looking at anything on or beside any of the beds.

  “You still with us?” Julia said into the phone she carried.

  “Right with you,” Fleet said. “All three of us are here on the phone if you need anything at all.”

  Lott was glad to hear that, but his strongest hope at the moment was that his daughter would never see anything like this.

  Once through the door, Julia again flicked on the light and there, in front of them, was what looked like a massive pizza oven.

  And it was radiating heat.

  Andor moved to the control panel to the right of the big door and shut everything down quickly. Then with a glance at Lott and Julia, he opened the door.

  Heat, as if they had stepped back outside into the hot August sun, flooded the small room.

  Inside the oven, stretched out nude, was a black-haired woman lying on what looked to be a very think pad of some sort.

  Lott had not seen a picture of Missy Andrews, but he was betting that was her.

  He grabbed an oven mitt and tossed a second one to Andor, then the two of them rolled the large tray the woman was on out of the oven. Lott wasn’t surprised that it came easily.

  Julia quickly touched the woman’s hot skin searching for a pulse.

  “She’s still alive. And her heartbeat is strong.”

  Lott couldn’t believe the relief he felt at that instant.

  “Fleet,” Julia said into her phone. “Get an ambulance headed here at once.”

  “On the way,” Fleet said.

  Andor had his phone to his ear as well. “Chief, I need just you, the head of the FBI, and the State Police person in charge to come here at once. Don’t let reporters follow you.”

  Andor listened for a moment. “Postpone it for an hour and then you can announce you have wrapped this all up.”

  A pause.

  “Not kidding,” Andor said.

  Another pause as Andor listened. Then he said simply, “We found their trophy room and the Montana woman is alive.”

  “Make it fast,” Andor said. Then hung up.

  Lott just shook his head, then pointed to the woman on the big oven tray. “We have to get her upstairs and out of here.”

  Julia nodded. “We can’t have some poor ambulance drivers seeing that room out there.”

  “Agreed,” Andor said. “No one deserves to live with that image.”

  Lott looked around and spotted the ambulance-like gurney tucked to one side of the oven. More than likely Lynch and West had used it to bring their victims in. It was set at the same height as the oven tray.

  Lott grabbed the gurney and pulled it so that it was in front of the oven. With Julia keeping the gurney from moving, Lott and Andor lifted the woman, pad and all, onto the gurney.

  Then Julia used a light sheet from a table nearby to cover her up a little.

  “Back through the nightmare,” Andor said.

  Lott nodded.

  He knew he was going to be living this nightmare for a very long time.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  August 15th, 2015

  1:55 P.M.

  Las Vegas

  JULIA LED THE way back through the gym, focusing on making sure the gurney they were pushing didn’t hit anything. The last thing she wanted to do was stop and look at the heads of murder victims and all the parts of bodies from other women.

  At the ruined door, Lott and Andor managed to get the gurney over the wood on the floor and to the bottom of the old staircase. It was markedly warmer out in the foyer area, and Julia didn’t much like taking a woman clearly overheated out into the Vegas sun and heat, but they had no choice.

  Lott lifted one end of the gurney and then put it back down. “We should be able to get this up the stairs if we are careful.”

  “I’ll pull from the top,” Julia said.

  Andor nodded and he and Lott got around behind the gurney as Julia got up a few stairs.

  “Fleet,” she said into her phone, “I’m keeping the connection, but putting the phone in my pocket while we try to get this poor woman up these stairs.”

  “Understood,” Fleet said. “Lynch and West just got their first salad course.”

  Julia put the phone in her front pocket as Andor and Lott nudged the gurney up against the bottom of the old staircase.

  “Count of three,” Lott said.

  “Three,” Andor said.

  Andor and Lott lifted while Julia pulled up and lifted. Surprisingly the gurney went up the step easily.

  “Three,” Andor said again.

  Another step.

  They repeated that as fast as they dared, with Andor and Lott almost holding one end of the gurney up at chest level.

  Finally, they had the poor woman and the hospital gurney in the main hallway. They wheeled it quickly toward the front door just as sirens were sounding outside.

  They stopped just inside the front door. Lott and Andor were both sweating and breathing hard, but looked as if they would be all right if they got into some cool air and a bottle of water or two.

  Julia again checked to see how the woman was doing. Her heart rate was still strong.

  “Still doing fine,” Julia said.

  Lott, breathing hard, and sweating, looked at Julia and nodded and smiled.

  Julia was breathing as hard as he was, and she had no doubt her light blouse was stained through sweat and dirty from all the dust. But at this moment, she didn’t care. They had managed to rescue this poor woman from two of the worst serial killers in modern times.

  And stopping any
more killing.

  And that was all that mattered.

  She pulled the phone from her pocket as Andor went out through the smashed front door and waved as the ambulance pulled up.

  “Fleet,” Julia asked, taking the phone from her pocket. “You still there?”

  “I am,” Fleet said. “Are you three all right?”

  “We needed a workout today,” Lott said.

  “And the woman?”

  “Still alive,” Julia said.

  “Great job,” Annie said.

  “Oh, thank heavens,” Fleet said.

  Julia could not have agreed more. They had gotten very lucky to be here in time.

  Barely in time.

  From just outside the front door, Andor turned back to Lott and Julia. “Chief just pulled up as well.”

  “We give him a ten minute explanation of the bus graveyard and everything Fleet and his people have found,” Lott said. “Fleet, you all right with that?”

  “I’ll put it in a presentable package as supposition and suggestions,” Fleet said, “they can research it themselves then so it can go in as evidence.”

  “Perfect,” Lott said.

  “So after we tell them everything, what next?” Julia asked.

  “We let the chief and his friends go downstairs and lose their lunches,” Lott said. “We have a couple at the Golden Nugget I want to join for a late lunch.”

  “Oh, I’m going to look forward to watching that,” Fleet said.

  Julia was as well.

  At that moment, two men dressed in medical uniforms came in and immediately started working on Missy Andrews.

  “She was exposed to high heat and is drugged,” Julia said. “So extreme heat stroke measures are in order.”

  Julia then gave the ambulance men Missy’s name and that the police would be contacting her and her family shortly. That she needed to stay away from any press until the police talked with her when she recovered.

  Both men nodded.

  The chief and two other men in suits picked their way through the rubble as the two from the ambulance changed the woman over to their gurney and headed out into the heat, covering her with a light sheet held up and off her body.