The Girl on the Bus

by N. M. Brown

  ‘So, you came over here to apologise, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, I over-reacted. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you.’

  ‘Thanks. Consider yourself forgiven. Tofu works every time.’

  ‘Listen, Vicki, I also found out some stuff that paints a different light on the case.’

  ‘What, about Laurie?’

  ‘I can fill you in later. You have enough to deal with now.’

  ‘Leighton,’ Vicki said firmly, ‘God knows I need a distraction now more than ever.’

  He looked at her for a long moment. ‘Well, I asked a friend to get me the CCTV camera footage of the bus you saw arrive at the depot. Did you see the front of the bus that afternoon?’

  ‘Yeah, I mean, I think so.’

  ‘Can you remember what it said?’

  ‘Not really,’ Vicki said, as she rubbed her temple. ‘San Diego, San Francisco, maybe.’

  Leighton picked up the envelope from the floor beside him, took out a photograph, and handed to Vicki. ‘Was this the bus you saw?

  Vicki peered at the black and white image for a moment, and nodded.

  ‘Well, the thing is that this bus has “San Diego” displayed on the front, but it never went there, or to any of the places en route there.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Traffic Control cameras cover the entire city. My friend obtained images from thirty-two cameras covering the routes north and south for the hour following the departure of that bus from the depot. Only those cameras covering the bus depot captured that bus.’

  ‘So, maybe, it’s still here, in the city?’

  ‘Maybe, but I believe your bus showed up at Oceanside, then turned right around again.’

  ‘But, why would it do that?’

  ‘Well, the section of road up to Vegas isn’t covered by any cameras.’

  ‘No, I mean, why would it do that?’

  ‘If something bad had happened…’

  ‘Like what?’ Vicki locked her unblinking eyes on to Leighton’s. ‘I want you to say it.’

  Leighton looked to the open patio window, where the rhythmic waves continued their infinite motion. When he looked back, he found Vicki’s eyes still fixed on his, demanding honesty.

  ‘Like something bad happening on the bus,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What might that bad thing be?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Leighton said.

  ‘A murder, possibly?’

  ‘Yes.’ He eventually nodded. ‘It is possible.’

  Leighton cleared the plates, cartons, and empty bottles to the kitchen area. Vicki brought her laptop and a pad of lined paper to the low coffee table. She sat on the floor and booted up the system.

  ‘Okay, where do we start?’ she said purposefully.

  Leighton returned from the kitchen and sat beside her.

  ‘I’m not sure. What do you think?’ Leighton frowned, as he locked his fingers together beneath his chin.

  ‘You’re the cop!’

  ‘I used to be,’ he corrected.

  ‘Okay, retired cop, whatever. Where would you start, if this was your “official case,” given what you know already?’

  Leighton looked intently at the photographs. They were stacked in a neat pile, with the uppermost image being that of the front of the bus. Given the quality of the image, it was impossible to make out the licence plate, which, in any case, would probably be false.

  ‘We need to connect the bus to a person or persons. What about the web page you called up, advertising the service? Would a commercial company create that – someone on record?’

  ‘Not likely, it was just a page. However, I might be able to trace who the domain is registered to.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘You know, how every website has an address - the “www” bit?’

  Leighton rolled his eyes. ‘I’m not that far behind the times.’

  ‘Good,’ Vicki said, as she began typing into her laptop. ‘In order to use that address a site creator has to register his or her site. If I can reveal how the site was created, I might be able to find a name.’

  ‘Okay, what should I do, while you’re working your technological voodoo?’

  ‘Make some coffee. Then, figure out why someone would use an entire bus to abduct one young woman.’

  Leighton nodded, then quietly did as he was told. He knew there was an expanding virtual universe which one day would engulf him, but, for the moment, he intended to stay away from that place as long as possible. Despite his urge to take a lead role in the hunt for Laurie Taylor, he was content to take a step back, and allow Vicki to perform her alchemy – turning digital bytes into information he could use in the real world.

  He returned, cups in hand, to find Vicki had used a short cable to connect a small flat metal box to her computer.

  ‘What’s that do?’ he asked as he sat beside her.

  ‘It’s the memory from Laurie’s laptop. The original website has been taken down, but I can access a snapshot of it still held in the temporary files.’

  ‘Like our memories?’

  ‘Yeah, pretty much. Only this one doesn’t fade with time.’

  For a moment, Leighton and Vicki glanced at each other and felt the shared connection of unspoken loss.

  The spell was broken, as Vicki looked back at the laptop, clicked on a couple of buttons, and launched a program called “Sniffer.” Within a few seconds, rows of numbers began racing across the screen. Moments later, a list of web pages opened in a new window. Vicki ran her cursor down them, and clicked on the bottom one, causing the Route King checkout page to open.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘This is the bus company page, so let’s see if we can link to it a person.’

  She clicked on the window and the picture vanished, only to be replaced by rows of numbers and words.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Leighton leaned suddenly forward. ‘Have you lost it?’

  ‘No.’ Vicki smirked. ‘It’s meant to do that. I’m viewing it as code.’

  ‘Ah.’ Leighton pretended to understand.

  Peering at the screen, Vicki began to tap furiously on the keyboard. She slowly shook her head. ‘Damn! There’s nothing here to indicate who authored the site. But, it does provide some data.’

  ‘What about the “www” address part, does that help?’

  ‘Not really, it’s usually bogus.’

  ‘That list you were looking at first, does that show the pages in the order Laurie viewed them?’

  ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘Well, in previous cases where the situation was unclear, I would walk the path of the victim. Find out what they did on that final day. Retrace the route. Maybe we could take a virtual walk through?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Viewing the pages revealed Laurie had initially visited the website of her alma mater, possibly reliving her student days in a bout of nostalgia. The next set of pages related to weather and facilities in Oceanside. This made Vicki smile sadly. Finally, she had performed a Google search for buses, and located the Greyhound Coach homepage.

  ‘I don’t understand this,’ Vicki said as she bit her bottom lip.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t see where the Route King’s page came from. I mean she was on the Greyhound page for seven seconds, and then, out of nowhere, this window opened. She didn’t go back to Google – it must have been an automatic pop-up.’

  ‘So, could this page…’ Leighton looked uncertainly to Vicki who nodded at him to continue. ‘Could it have been activated or triggered by her search - is that even possible?’

  ‘Sure.’ Vicki yawned. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Leighton grinned. ‘I have that effect on most people.’

  ‘Don’t be silly; I’m just tired. Anyway, most searches are recorded somewhere, and are used to predict future results, so I guess you could program a page to load in response to that. Hang on, there’s something weird here …’ Vicki clicked between windows.

>   ‘What is it?’

  ‘It looks like the Greyhound site window opened twice simultaneously.’

  ‘Maybe she clicked on it twice?’ Leighton queried hopefully.

  ‘Yeah - maybe. But, it’s more likely that one of the pages was false - a dummy page designed to sit on top of the real one.’

  ‘Like a mask?’

  ‘Exactly. Like a mask.’

  ‘But, why?’

  ‘False pages are often used to collect bank details or scam users into giving up cash or personal information. However, they can also be used to show artificially inflated prices so guiding customers away from them and on to less reliable sites.’

  ‘Ah.’ Leighton shifted in his seat. ‘Vicki, can your excuse me to use the bathroom.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, without looking up, ‘it’s at the end of the long hallway on the right. The light’s on the left wall as you enter.’

  The brightly lit corridor was lined with framed sepia photographs of old New York. The first two doors in the hallway were open, and Leighton glanced in as he passed them. Two clinical looking bedrooms featured matching beige and chocolate bedding. Both were lit by identical bedside lamps. In one of the rooms, the bed was covered in a mixture of photographs that looked to have been taken from an overturned shoe box sitting amongst them. Leighton imagined Vicki had been looking through her past, when his arrival interrupted her. He sighed guiltily, and continued on to pass a neat office, a thankfully messier bedroom, and then the bathroom.

  When Leighton returned, Vicki was curled up like a child, asleep on the sofa. Some process was happening on her computer, as rows of numbers filled the screen, and a small bar along the bottom recorded progress. Tiptoeing around her, Leighton returned the coffee cups to the kitchen, then returned, and knelt in front of the sleeping girl.

  ‘Vicki,’ he said softly. There was no response, just the quiet rise and fall of her breathing.

  He figured the white vest and grey sweatpants wouldn’t be enough to keep her warm so, he found a linen closet and returned with a fleece blanket.

  Tucking it around her shoulders, he had to check himself from brushing her hair away from her face, as he had done to a smaller sleeping girl decades earlier. He lifted up the stack of photographs and the writing pad, and moved to the dining table, where he sat down and began making some basic notes.

  Leighton had only managed a page or so when his own eyes began to close. He had planned to rest his head on his arms for a moment, but the combination food and beer and the company had left him drowsy, and within moments, he too, was lost to sleep.

  When he opened his eyes again, six hours had passed, and a stranger was standing over him, pointing a 9 mm gun at his head.

  21

  As the bus approached, Martha Coombs was nervous as hell. At the age of sixty-seven, she had never left the town of Blythe, but ever since her Nigel, her son, had moved down to San Diego, she had been determined to visit him for a few days. Nigel, thankfully, had taken care of organising the whole thing for her. Going down to the city hadn’t been her first choice. Once or twice, she had called him up, and suggested he might come up to visit the old house - she could make his favourite meatloaf, but he had explained he had been too busy with work for that. Martha had lived a long time, and she wasn’t entirely convinced this was the only reason behind her son’s reluctance to visit.

  From the age of five, Nigel Coombs had been such a sensitive and fey young man, who she had secretly believed was most likely gay. While his classmates would play whooping war games in the playground, Nigel would collect pretty flowers from the perimeter of the school grounds, and bring them home crushed in his satchel. She had never raised the issue of his sexuality with him, mainly because he was so sensitive such a conversation would prove more difficult for him than it would for her. So, she had waited patiently all through his teenage years for her growing son to confide in her. Even in his early twenties, when he had started working as a hairdresser in Blythe’s only salon, and would come home to share the day’s dramas with his momma, he never mentioned romance of any sort. Then, in the last few years, he had taken to spending entire evenings on his computer. Sometimes, late at night, when he thought she was asleep, she would hear the murmurs of other voices and giggles from his bedroom, as he spoke to that tiny camera.

  Still, she couldn’t criticise him – especially after he had taken the time to buy her a bus ticket. And he had explained it wasn’t just an ordinary one, either - this one was for a new bus company, with real nice accommodation. He had sent her a paper ticket through the mail, and told her to put it in safely in her purse straight away.

  As the bus rumbled to a stop, Martha checked for the sixth time that the ticket was still in her white leather purse - which it was - then, adjusted the back of her permed hair. When the noisy doors hissed open, Martha was both surprised and relieved to see the bus driver - who was not much younger than herself - was a friendly looking man with a neat little white moustache. However, when she stepped on to the stairs and into the gloom of the bus, she saw almost all of the other passengers were men in their twenties or thirties. She smiled at the driver and held out the ticket.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘my son bought this for me so if it’s not right, you can take it up with him.’

  ‘Not a problem, ma’am,’ replied the grinning driver, who took her ticket, without even looking at it. ‘You just find yourself a seat, and once you’re comfy, we’ll get moving.’

  22

  The hands of the woman holding the automatic handgun did not tremble. This, thought Leighton, is someone who had spent sufficient time at a gun club, time to be comfortable gripping that heavy lump of power.

  ‘Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my house?’ Abigail Reiner asked.

  ‘It’s okay, ma’am,’ Leighton said groggily.

  ‘Yes, I know it is now; I’ve called the police,’ she said, as if to confirm his defeat. The woman was dressed in a navy suit finished off with some expensive looking jewellery.

  ‘Mrs. Reiner,’ Leighton held up a hand, ‘I’m a friend of your daughter.’

  ‘Ha,’ she snorted. ‘Somehow, I doubt that.’ Glancing around, she looked distastefully at the beer bottles and food cartons. She returned her attention to the him.

  ‘Mrs. Reiner, my name is Leighton Jones, I’m a retired police officer, I was here speaking to Vicki about the disappearance of her friend - Laurie Taylor.’

  Something shifted in the woman’s cold expression.

  ‘Let me see some identification.’

  Leighton reached slowly into his jacket pocket and produced a worn leather wallet, which he held out to her.

  Abigail Reiner took the wallet, as if it were infected, peered inside for longer than was necessary, then finally lowered the weapon. Her expression did not soften.

  ‘As an ex-police officer, you should know better than to ply a naïve young woman with booze. If I discover you’ve touched her, I’ll have you charged with sexual assault. Stay the hell away from my home, and my daughter!’

  ‘She came to me - asked for her my help,’ Leighton said, as he slipped on his jacket.

  ‘My daughter is psychologically vulnerable at the best of times but especially so right now.’

  ‘I heard about your husband and -’

  ‘Ex-husband,’ Abigail corrected.

  ‘In either case, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes, clearly. Men like you disgust me. Now, please, leave my house.’

  As he rose from the chair, Leighton tried momentarily to glance at the girl sleeping on the sofa, but the woman folded her slender arms, and shifted her body to ensure she blocked his view.

  ‘I’m sorry I gave you a fright, ma’am,’ Leighton said sincerely and walked the door.

  ‘You didn’t,’ Abigail called victoriously after him.

  Leighton stepped out of the Reiner apartment into the bright morning sunlight and the steady sound of the waves against the shore. All around
him was an explosion of colour and fragrance from the pink and orange flowers fringing the white apartment.

  As he walked to his car, Leighton reflected upon Vicki’s relationship with her mother. It couldn’t have been easy for her growing up beneath the crushing weight of such a formidable personality.

  Driving out of the parking area, he was passed by a rookie in a black and white cruiser - no doubt responding to the false alarm. Thankfully, he had escaped just in time.

  Leighton drove home, where, after the therapeutic benefit of a long hot shower, he dressed in a pair of charcoal chinos and a white shirt and sat, barefoot, at the metal table on his tiled patio. Before him, was a breakfast of black tea and a toasted cinnamon bagel spread with apricot preserve. Lying next to this was the envelope containing the bus photographs. After taking a bite of food, Leighton slipped open the envelope, and removed a pencil and the sheet of notepaper he had scribbled on. He had drawn a number of squares around the sides of the page. Within these boxes, he had noted certain relevant details. He had also drawn joined lines connecting several of the facts to each other.

  Website bookingVictim boarded bus

  Phone unused Website dead

  Victim’s home emptyHome undisturbed

  No show for work

  Bus missing

  Victim still on bus?

  Picking up the pencil, he tapped it on the table for a moment, then began writing. Beneath the list of facts, Leighton now wrote a list of words followed question marks:

  Hostage?

  Intentional entrapment?

  Complicit passengers?

  It was these final two words that concerned Leighton most. To break the tension, he sipped his tea, and tried to put the pieces together. It had been easy to accept Laurie may have been abducted from a truck stop restroom by some psycho, but the question of the bus remained. Why would it pretend to be bound for San Diego, but never travel beyond the Oceanside Bus Terminal? Even if there had been some problem at Oceanside that meant the bus couldn’t continue, the disgruntled passengers would all have disembarked at the depot.