by N. M. Brown
Steering into the driveway of his sprawling bungalow, Mike switched off the engine, and stepped out of the jeep.
At the side of the house white, clean clothes were drying on the taunt washing line. This sight was always something which reminded Mike of his childhood, and he found inexpressible comfort in the fact Janey was so reliable in her quietly meticulous care of their home.
Opening the screen door, Mike found the inner door was ajar. This did not alarm Mike - on hot days, both the front and rear doors were kept open to allow a through breeze. What did alarm him, however, was the single item of footwear lying in the middle of the hallway.
‘Janey?’ he called, as he knelt down and picked up the tennis shoe.
There was no reply.
Mike felt an uncomfortable shift of energy inside him, confirming at some primal level something was very wrong. He took the shoe with him, as he hurried back outside into the bright morning light. Clambering back into the jeep, he revved the engine, and sped off in screeching cloud of dust.
When he got the place where he had seen the shoe, Mike pulled up the jeep, switched on the emergency warning lights, and climbed out. The internal part of him already knew what to expect, and was simply allowing his conscious mind to catch up.
As he reached out to the discarded training shoe, Mike picked it up, and held next to Janey’s shoe - making a perfect pair. On the recovered shoe, a smear of blood was vividly contrasted against the bright yellow material. He held the two shoes to his stomach, and let out a single sob.
Staring at the dusty roadside in disbelief, he noticed something that broke his paralysis. There were tyre tracks alongside the verge where his wife’s bloodied shoe had been lying. Given the fact Mike had spent thirty-one years working as a truck mechanic, he knew the tyre tracks belonged to a bus, and most likely the one that had near run him off the road, seventeen minutes earlier.
Climbing back into his jeep, Mike pulled the glove compartment open again, only this time, he threw the cigarettes aside and removed a 9 mm Cougar pistol. He took the safety off the handgun, started the engine, and slammed the jeep into gear.
34
Abigail Reiner walked through the front door of the beach house, carrying her two items of matching luggage, and closed the door with her foot.
‘Victoria – are you in?’ she called, and placed her bags neatly against the wall closest to the door.
Despite the fact she had been joint owner - along with her deceased ex-husband - of the house for over a decade, Abigail Reiner felt little emotional connection with the place. Her ex-husband had suggested she was incapable of such a response, but he was wrong. She simply had too many responsibilities to indulge in time wasting emotions. Without her efforts and lack of soul searching, she would not have a successful career, and luxuries such as the beach house could quite simply have never been achieved.
The house felt warmer than she liked it – possibly as a consequence of spending so much time in the fresher environment of the East Coast. Her heels clicked noisily on the tiled floor as she walked over to the wall mounted panel and turned on the air conditioning. She walked through to the living room, and surveyed the place with a critical eye.
Making her way along the hallway to the bedroom, Abigail fully expected to find her over-sensitive daughter to be curled on her bed, hiding from the world. This personality defect in her daughter, which must have been inherited from her father, was what had driven Mrs. Reiner to return to Oceanside for the week. If she allowed Vicki to spend any more time retreating from the world, her career prospects would plummet even further. She called her daughter’s name again. There was no response.
Eventually, Abigail walked into the stale air of what had once been her own, beige-coloured bedroom. She crossed the spacious room, and sat on the bed. Reaching down, she opened a small bedside cabinet, and removed a TV controller.
Abigail switched on the wall-mounted television. She then bit on her bottom lip as she selected the designated channel connected to her security camera, and the HD recorder located in her wardrobe.
As she reviewed the car park footage of the previous few hours, Abigail resisted the urge to scream in rage.
Instead, she snapped open her phone, and used a manicured nail to tap a staccato pattern on the screen. Holding the telephone to her ear, she chewed on inside one cheek.
‘Hello, police,’ a bright voice answered. ‘Can I help you?’
‘My name is Margaret Reiner. Who is the most senior person in your building right now?’
‘I can deal with any report you might wish to make.’
Abigail pulled a face, as if she had bitten into some bitter fruit ‘What’s your name?’
‘Officer Piper.’
‘Well Officer Piper, I’m sure you believe that,’ she said calmly, ‘but let me be blunt. I want to speak to someone more senior than a glorified answering machine about an urgent police matter. If you continue to be obstructive, I will hang up this phone, call my lawyer, and instruct them to start preparing a case for obstruction against you.’
There were a few moments of silence, then a new voice answered the phone.
‘Hello, Mrs. Reiner, this is Chief Gretsch. What can I do for you?’
‘I called last week regarding my daughter being harassed by a retired detective.’
‘Yes.’ Gretsch sighed audibly. ‘And I can assure you, Mrs. Reiner, I personally spoke to the man concerned. He won’t be bothering your daughter again.’
‘Well, that doesn’t inspire me with confidence.’
‘Why would that be, Mrs. Reiner?’
‘I believe my daughter has been abducted by Jones, and, Chief Gretsch, if this turns out to be the case, and if you do not bring the full weight of the law upon this bastard, I’ll see you in court to request your head on a fucking plate.’
35
The woman on the floor of the bus had finally been subdued. Two of the passengers were sitting on top of her, and a third was holding a halothane mask over her red face. All of the remaining passengers were staring serenely out of the bus windows.
The tall, scrawny man holding the mask in place was dripping with sweat. His appetite had put them all at risk. His name was Desmond Dyer, and up until that day, he had been responsible for the murder and sexual assault of no less than thirty-six women - all of them aged between thirty and forty-five, with long dark hair. Three of them had been killed on the bus, two others at the farm in Laughlin.
Forty-two minutes earlier, the bus had been rumbling to an agreed drop off point six kilometres outside Blythe, when it had passed by the garden of a house, where a slim woman with chestnut hair had been hanging washing on a line. Dyer, who was on driving duty, had slammed on the brakes. Some of the passengers had lurched forward.
‘What the fuck are you doing, Dyer?’ Wendell Stein, a large man in cargo pants and yellow Hawaiian shirt, called out, and waddled down the aisle to the driver.
‘Her,’ Dyer said softy, and pointed to the woman the garden.
‘No way!’ Stein narrowed his eyes. ‘You know the rules. Bookings only.’
Dyer wasn’t listening. His eyes were fully locked on to the woman, as she pegged the clothes on the washing line. Stein recognised the expression of obsessive desire on Dyer’s face.
‘Hey.’ Stein clicked his fingers at him. ‘Hey, get back in the room, you crazy bastard.
Without replying, Dyer had leapt out of the driver’s seat, and lurched off the bus.
‘Oh shit!’ Stein made a grab for him, but was not quick enough.
Janey Bernal was lost in thought about Mike when she was startled by the hissing brakes of the long silver bus stopping opposite her yard. She had been thinking about how maybe they could adopt a child. It seemed such a waste of life, otherwise.
However, when she glimpsed the driver, she felt no alarm - he was probably just lost, and looking for directions.
Dyer hurried excitedly into the yard of the house, and called out to the wom
an. ‘Excuse me, ma’am.’
Janey looked up, holding one hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, sure.’ Dyer grinned. ‘I need you to get on the fucking bus.’
‘What?’ Janey stifled a shocked laugh.
Dyer pulled a butterfly knife from his rear pocket. ‘I’ll not tell you twice, bitch,’ he said in a dry humourless voice.
Jane made a sudden lunge to the side, and before Dyer could respond, she jumped over the laundry basket, and ran across the yard. Stumbling to the door, she got inside the hallway of house. Gasping for breath, she locked the door behind her, hoping the other passengers on the bus had seen the psychopath’s behaviour, and were currently calling the cops. She didn’t see the large man in the Hawaiian shirt step out of the kitchen and into the hallway behind her. He grabbed her around the waist, picking her up. Jane kicked and screamed, knocking off one of her shoes in the process, but her efforts were wasted - he was simply too strong. Using his free arm, her attacker opened the front door to find the scrawny man still outside, stepping from side-to-side, like an excited child.
‘You need a hand there, Stein?’ he said, grinning at the large man.
‘I’ve got her,’ he replied angrily. ‘Just get back on the fucking bus before anyone sees us!’
The scrawny man did as he was told, but still appeared dangerously excited, as he hurried across the yard. Janey, who had allowed her body to go limp, was simply playing possum. As the man carried her across the yard, she remembered something from her high school self-defence class. She balled one hand into a solid fist, then slammed it backwards, as hard as she could, into the man’s groin. He groaned in agony, and momentarily released her. That was all Jane needed. She broke away from him, and burst into a sprint. No longer trusting the house, she ran sideways out of her yard, and into the scrub-land parallel with the road.
The large man yelled out in pain and rage, then began pursuing her through the dusty countryside. Janey stumbled over rocky terrain, with only one shoe on, cutting her bare foot on sharp rocks and cactus spines. She knew they didn’t want to be seen, so perhaps, if she made it to the road, she could flag down a car.
Despite his bulk, Stein was fast, and caught up with her, just as she reached the road. He threw his bulk against Janey’s back, knocking her to the ground. Standing up, her grabbed her by the hair, and yanked her towards the now approaching bus. She screamed in response to the burning pain ripping across her scalp.
As Stein clambered aboard, dragging the squealing woman behind him, he stopped on the final step, and looked straight at Dyer, who was grinning in the driving seat, then punched him fully in the face, bursting his lip like a squashed pink slug.
‘You put everything at risk, you selfish prick. You can take her to the house, but I have a booking in an hour. If you’re not finished with your cougar by then, I’ll gut and skin the both of you. Now, get the fuck out of that seat, and deal with her!’
He threw the woman on to the aisle of the bus. She was nothing more than an inconvenience to him. Unlike Dyer, he only liked natural blondes, and they had to be clear-skinned and aged between fourteen and twenty-five - give or take. Dyer pushed past Stein, and wiped the blood from his month.
‘Can somebody get the halothane, please?’
Stein put the bus in gear, and it lurched finally forward again.
36
At 2:33 p.m., Gretsch was finally getting some lunch. As he leaned over the paper bag on his desk and bit into the turkey and bacon sub, he tried to formulate a potential strategy. The shit-fest surrounding Leighton Jones and his delusion about an imaginary bus full of serial killers, was starting to impact on the real world.
For most of the previous hour, Gretsch had been locked in a heated conversation with Agent Andrew Donaldson, from the Bureau, who wanted to know why a recently retired Oceanside detective had contacted Quantico that morning to report a group of suspected serial killers active in California. He was particularly curious about the fact there had been no indication of such suspicion from any police station in any of the state’s major cities.
Donaldson had said, in a deliberately accusative manner, this generated two equally alarming possibilities. The first was there was a fantasist ex-cop, running around sharing all sorts of wild claims with national agencies; the second was three thousand police officers across two states had failed to notice a mobile nest of serial killers operating in their own back yards.
It had taken some time, but Gretsch had gone through Leighton’s history with Donaldson, explaining he was generally considered unstable and should be ignored. He, of course, made no reference to the incident at Black Mountain Ranch, in which Leighton had saved both his chief’s life and his career. Instead, Gretsch painted a picture of depressive cop, with an unhealthy fixation on a vulnerable young woman.
The bus story was, he suggested, probably just something Jones had invented to keep the girl scared, and therefore, interested. Donaldson listened in ambiguous silence then suggested Gretsch should formulate a strategy to deal with the situation a little more effectively.
As he hung up the phone, Gretsch leaned back in his chair and stretched. He had taken a single sip of now cold coffee and a second bite of his sandwich, when there was an abrupt rap on the office door, which opened, and Officer Lusk entered, holding a sheet of A4 paper in front of him like a thin shield.
‘Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt your lunch, but think you should know about this.’
‘Okay.’ Gretsch wiped at his mouth with a white handkerchief. ‘What is it?’
‘Well, it relates to this business with Leighton Jones.’
‘There’s a fucking surprise.’ Gretsch belched, and waved his hand dismissively. ‘Go on.’
‘Yesterday morning, we took a call from a guy called Coombs, whose elderly mother was due to arrive in San Francisco on Monday, only she never showed up.’
‘So what? Elderly folks regularly go walkabout every day.’
‘He called his mom’s neighbour and asked him to check. The neighbour confirmed the house was locked up, and said he saw Mrs. Coombs leave.’
‘Is that it? You interrupt my brief fucking lunch for that?’
‘Wait, there’s more. Mr. Coombs also said he booked his mother on to a new bus service. Got the ticket himself on-line. Anyway, he said when he tried to call the bus company to see if the lady got on the coach, the company doesn’t seem to exist.’
Gretsch narrowed his eyes, and pushed the remainder of his sandwich away. He then sat up, placed his shoulders on the desk, and pushed his fingers together.
‘Anything else?’ he asked, in a slightly more concerned tone than before.
Lusk nodded.
‘This morning, we got a call from Detective Steve Abornazine up in Laughlin. He’s following up a missing person report on one Joanne Palmer - a twenty-five-year-old female, who apparently boarded a bus to San Diego, and never showed up at her destination either.’
‘Any witnesses see her get on this bus?’
‘Yeah, her boyfriend, apparently. He was the one who called it in.’
The colour began to drain from Gretsch’s face.
‘That’s not all,’ Lusk continued nervously. ‘Dispatch received a call from a man over in Blyth, who believes his wife was abducted this afternoon. He reported seeing, I quote, “a large, silver bus” in the vicinity at the time, and he believes it may be involved.’
‘Shit!’ Gretsch took his head in his hands.
‘Then, a couple of minutes ago, we got this call from Leighton Jones.’
‘What did he say?’
‘That he’s staked out a bus-stop, where he believes the suspect vehicle will show up. He’s requesting back-up.’
‘Did he mention having anyone else with him?’
‘Yes.’ Lusk checked his notepaper. ‘Vicki Reiner. He said she had made a booking on the bus.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I haven�
��t answered. He’s still on the line out there.’ Lusk glanced back towards the reception area.
‘He’s on the line right now?’
‘Yeah, I didn’t want to respond without speaking to you.’
‘Okay, tell him that we are keen to help, and we’ll send assistance to support him. Then, dispatch a cruiser with the instructions to arrest Jones, and bring the old bastard in!’
‘What do we charge him with?’
‘Everything we can!’
After Lusk left the office, Gretsch groaned, picked up his coffee mug, and threw it at the wall, where it exploded into white porcelain shards.
37
Leighton sat sweating behind the wind-shield on the opposite side of the road, while Vicki stood nervously at the bus stop. His car was pulled back from the road, partly concealed between two empty shells of buildings, but still having a clear view of the bus stop.
The former detective was nervous as hell. Firstly, he was concerned for the safety of the girl standing at the bus stop, and occasionally waving a discreet hand at him. In many ways, he felt the plan was flimsy as hell, and yet, he cared enough for Vicki to go along with it. She was right, too - this was the closest they had come to seeing if the damned bus even existed. Secondly, he knew he had already broken a number of laws to even get this far, and his phone call to the station had done little to reassure him.
An unfamiliar officer had taken the call. They had sounded initially dismissive, and then alarmed, as Leighton explained what he and Vicki were planning to do.
Eventually, after some dead time on the line, when the officer went to check with a more senior officer, they had agreed to send some type of assistance. Now, alone in his car, without the comfort of a valid police badge, Leighton hoped to hell they hadn’t been lying.
After a smattering of cars and trucks passed them, the silver bus finally appeared on the horizon, shimmering in the heat-haze of the road. Leighton watched intently as Vicki held up one hand to shield her eyes from the scorching sun, and used the other to wave to the bus. While this happened, a reflected glint of sunlight from the bus bounced off something on the floor of Leighton’s car. The flash of light caught his eye, and he glanced down to see the revolver he had given to Vicki was half concealed. As he reached down to recover the weapon, the bus pulled up to the stop, blocking Leighton’s view.
