by A P Morgan
“Yes. I live up the road about two hours, but I work in L.A. during the week. It’s easier to stay there without fighting the traffic. I stay with three other nurses who all share an apartment during our days on. I go back on at seven am and it’s quicker to come back when there isn’t any traffic.”
“We’re just glad that you showed up when you did.” Ryan sat in the back watching the road intently.
No one followed us and our phones started working when we got to the outskirts of L.A.
Our saving angel pulled up to a twenty-four hour clinic. “I’m going to drop you off here. They can patch you up just as easily and you won’t have to wait nearly as long. Do you need me to get you somewhere once they stitch you up?”
“Oh, no. You’ve done enough as it is. We can get a taxi or call the rental company and have them bring us a new car. We are just thankful we didn’t have to walk to the next town.”
“All right if you’re sure.” She looked at Ryan, “Make sure they look you both over in case you missed something.”
“Yes, ma’am. We will.”
With a last worried glance, she drove off.
“It’s nice to know that not everyone in the world are jerks. There are still people who do the right thing.” I perked up as I walked toward the clinic doors.
“She could have been hurt herself if we weren’t cops. It’s dangerous to pick people up.” Ryan grumbled.
“True it is dangerous, but I’m glad that she took a chance on us. Sometimes doing the right thing wins out even if it puts you in harm’s way.”
“So does that mean you’re going to tell Jerome what happened? Do the right thing, I think you said.” He chuckled shaking his head at me.
“Nope, we had car trouble and that is all he needs to know about the situation. It’s take care of now, but we didn’t have phone service for longer than I thought because of it.”
“Uh, huh. One day he’s going to find out and then you’ll be in a lot of trouble.”
“Whatever. I’m going to get some stitches and then call a cab. I need to sleep the past few hours away.”
“They’re going to tell you that you have a concussion and can’t sleep.”
“Way to be encouraging.”
“Just doing my part.”
--------
The next morning after a fitful sleep, Agent Watson was sitting downstairs waiting on us to arrive.
“I’m so sorry that we’re late.” I apologized.
He took in the bruises on my and the circles under both our eyes.
“Looks like you’re lucky to be alive.”
“That is the truth. Did you find the car where we left it?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah, it looks like that person driving the other car didn’t want you to come out of it alive. The trunk is about halfway crushed in and the left side, well it’s just a good thing that they didn’t hit it any harder or Detective Boxe would still be in the hospital.” He frowned, “Agent Perez has requested that I drive both of you to San Francisco to check out Tasha Logan’s home.”
“See I knew that I shouldn’t trust your driving Ryan.” I playfully punched his shoulder.
“Ow, that’s not fair because I can’t hit you back.” Ryan swatted at my hand.
“Children, shall we?” Agent Watson grinned at us.
“Yes, justice must be had, but can we get some coffee to go with it?”
“I think that’s doable.” He continued to smile as we drove off.
When we pulled up at a small airport, I was confused. “I must have hit my head harder on the airbags than I thought. Why are we at the airport?”
“It’s a seven hour drive to San Francisco if we don’t run into traffic. This way we can be there in an hour, check things out and be back before lunch.”
“Oh, are you flying the plane?” I asked feeling better that I wasn’t going crazy.
“No, the pilot is FBI and carries people around to places that are harder to get to. We lucked out that he was available so we didn’t have to do all that driving.”
“After hours in the car, we wouldn’t be able to move tomorrow.” Ryan didn’t hesitate to climb in the small six passenger plane.
“Boxe you scare to fly?” He peeked his head back out the door at me.
“Nope, just getting my last breath of air before getting in that thing.” I squared my shoulders, I wasn’t about to let Ryan call me a scaredy cat.
It was a really quick flight and so different compared to commercial. Small planes weren’t known for their flight records of safety.
The area was so pretty and we could see it because we were low enough to stay out of the commercial planes flight zone.
Agent Watson had a car waiting for us when we arrived and drove to Tasha’s house.
I snapped on a pair of gloves feeling much better now that we were in my comfort zone.
The house was a mess, evidently Tasha wasn’t a person who valued organization. Just walking through the path of clothes to the back rooms took some work.
“At least she wasn’t murdered here. They’d have to throw out the whole house.” I joked hoping that there weren’t any small furry creatures waiting to pop out at me.
“She was using her bedroom as the catch all for everything.” Ryan called down the hall to me in the kitchen.
“I’ve got mail in here.” I called back.
We did a thorough toss of the place. I finally found a pile sitting on the floor looked like a recycle pile. How did she even knew what to keep or throw out? It was doubtful that the floor in this place had ever seen daylight while she was the tenant.
A glossy envelope caught my attention and I pulled it out from under a pile of magazines.
“You’ve been invited to a special event. Your surprise birthday bash weekend getaway. If you mention it to your friends it will spoil the surprise so plan to be at the Traveler’s Inn in Salinas two days before your birthday. You’ll find a package in front of room number five with a blind fold. Put it on and no peeking. We’ll make sure to get you to your destination for the big moment.”
“I have it.” I waved and then almost tripped over another pile of books hidden by clothes.
“What did you find?” Agent Watson appeared from the living room first.
“Her invitation to a getaway. He even tells her to put on a blindfold.” I shake my head, “Didn’t any of these girls mothers ever tell them that there are dangerous people out there? You don’t go out and trust a letter that you get without checking it out.”
“These women probably only saw the birthday party and excitement won over common sense. I have no idea how he got them to do it, but this makes the most sense. He can led them to another vehicle and they’ll get in willingly. I’m sure that he make them very compliable after they are out of sight of prying eyes.” Agent Watson offered.
“A guy would never walk into something like this so what makes a woman do it?” Ryan asked disgusted.
“Women are generally more trusting unless something has happened to them and even then they talk themselves out of listening to their gut telling them to run away.” I glanced around the room for anything else that might be useful.
“I’m going to say that we could search for hours here and only come up with letter. It’s a good connection that we should act on. If he’s done it at one motel, then the chances are he’s done it at others. Most motels don’t take down the license plates of their patrons and wouldn’t report an abandoned vehicle for several days.”
Ryan snickered, “I don’t think that you can call the people that frequent motels patrons. That suggests a much higher class of people than you would find in a motel.”
“We should call the towing companies around Salinas and see if they’ve picked up any cars from motels lately. You know he has to use the same method for most of his victims.” I could feel that we were on the right track.
“I’ll let Agent Perez know. She may want us to drive down there and check it out. In fact we m
ight need to drive the old highway and see if we can spot other motels that would work. If he’s doing this, he’ll have to drive them back to wherever his headquarters are stashed.”
“I’m going to go wait out on her porch where I don’t feel like something’s going to crawl on me.” I gave a fake shiver, but I really didn’t want to meet any furry friends this time.
Agent Watson began to pace up and down the sidewalk as he held an animated conversation with Agent Perez.
He hung up and kicked at the tire of the car before composing himself. If we hadn’t just watched him a tantrum, we wouldn’t have known that anything was wrong.
“So she wants us to drive back down to them today. They’re calling some of the towing companies and if we get any hits then we’ll detour to check it out as they find it.”
“What’s the bad news?” Ryan asked.
“Caught that did you?” Agent Watson asked sheepishly.
“Yeah, so spill.” I prodded.
“Agent Perez wants me to keep the two of you busy. She’d rather you weren’t around for the next few days and since someone has to do the leg work, she’s tasked us with it.”
“What changed from yesterday?” Frustration didn’t cover my feelings, but it wasn’t Agent Watson’s fault.
“Obviously our killer doesn’t want you around. Since we flew you out today, he’s not going to know what direction you’re in and that will give them time to focus on him and not protecting you.”
“But wouldn’t we be able to draw him out as bait if we were in Seaside?” I frowned.
“Absolutely, but she wants him thrown off balance so that he’ll make a mistake. If something’s urgent they’ll call us.”
“All right,” I sighed, “I mean finding a hotel and taking a nap sounds really good right now. I’m still sore and if I go for a run, it’s going to loosen things up, but I’m going to pass out afterward.”
“Okay, then, let’s start back and see where we end up after lunch.” Agent Watson locked up the house to secure it until her family could do something with it.
Salinas was only about an hour from San Francisco and we made good time to the Travelers Motel.
We split up, Ryan and I went to go talk to the check in person while Agent Watson started running plates on the cars in the parking lot.
A college kid was sitting behind the counter playing games on his phone.
I flashed my badge when he looked up, “We’re needing some information. A woman came through here last week and now she’s missing. Have you seen her or anyone that made you nervous?” I pushed the phone closer to him on the counter.
He got up from his chair and took a look, “Nah, I haven’t seen her. If one of the guys checked in, they normally just tell the chick they’re meeting what room to go to.”
Ryan raised an eyebrow, this kid had just admitted that hookups happened a lot and I was willing to bet that most of them weren’t legal.
“What happens if a car isn’t moved after the next morning? Do you leave it out there or have it towed somewhere?”
“I’m not in trouble am I?” He was a little more cautious now that we were still hanging out.
“No, but we’re trying to find this woman and her car might have some clues for us.”
“Oh, uh. The long term parking is in that empty lot. A lot of people will park there and then car pool to their destination. I mean nobody rents it out or anything. It’s just kind of a unspoken agreement. If we had a vehicle left here and all the rooms weren’t rented then we’d check it out. A week later, yeah we’d tow it because we only have so many spots for true customers.”
“Thank you. So if you weren’t a local you would park in the regular lot because you wouldn’t know about the back one correct?” I gave him an encouraging smile.
“That’s what I said lady. Locals are the ones that use it or to hide their cars while they sleep at someone else’s house.” I glanced down at his phone, “Can I go back to playing?”
“Yeah, ah, sure. You were a big help.” Ryan nodded toward the door.
“We’ve got to check out that long term parking. If he got them to his truck and then knocked them out. He could move their car into long term parking and not have to worry about disposing of the car.”
“Let’s see if Agent Watson found anything.” Ryan walked back over to get in the car.
“It sounds like this guy might have local connections and might be parking cars in other places as well. I think he does a lot of travelling and so no one notices him moving back and forth. Like a local person that you’re used to, but not someone you’d invited to dinner?” I had started thinking out loud when Ryan and I had teamed up.
“So you think he’s a trucker or more of a delivery guy?” Agent Watson had caught up a little bit.
“I’d say delivery guy with a route up and down the highway. A trucker wouldn’t be as well-known and they are generally gone for days at a time.”
“He has to have a home base or maybe more than one where he moves the girls once he has them.”
“Bingo.” Agent Watson fist pumped the air.
“We’ve got three vehicles that fit the description of women drivers under thirty. They all have Aries birthday’s listed on their driver’s licenses. I’m going to send this over to Agent Perez and have her add these to the board. They’ll send someone to check on their home addresses and see if they’re home.”
“If we can get a list of missing women, then maybe we’ll get a hit on them before he kills them. The last one listed doesn’t have a birthday until tomorrow.”
“We’re seeing things in sets of three or five. I don’t think he’s using a place more than a couple of times to keep down the problem of discovery.”
“You think because we found three cars and Tasha’s that means he’s done using it? That’s only four.” Agent Watson scratched his head puzzled.
“No, I think one of those other cars that’s from out of town is one of his victims. It just isn’t registered to her. We should run any plates that are from out of town and call to see if they have a daughter in the right age ranges.” My gut was saying that he’d moved on because Tasha was last week and these others were probably dead or would be before we could find him.
“Can we do this somewhere that has food? We can ask a few of the waitresses of other places that people park here in town or on the highway. Nothing like a local to know all the good spots.” Ryan rubbed his stomach as it growled.
“Sounds good to me and then we can follow the highway to the next larger town. I don’t see him doing this in a smaller town because there would too many questions. Even at the local motel, people generally knew what was going on in a smaller town.” I agreed and now that he’d brought up food I was suddenly starving.
“It has to be a place with wifi so we can do some searches while we eat.” Agent Watson added.
“Perfect. Lead on Watson.”
Chapter 7
Leslie
Our theory turned out to be a good one and the last car was registered to a brother of a missing woman.
“I hate having to do phone calls like that because he’s never going to see her again.” I bemoaned being made the bearer of bad news.
“You don’t have any hope of her turning up?”
“No, these killers are completely focused and don’t have any extra room for error. If it’s your birthday then there’s a ninety-nine percent chance you’re going to die.”
“That’s very pessimistic. I know things happen, but you’re saying that we can’t catch this killer. You’re way too young for that.”
“Not really,” I glanced at Ryan and knew that he felt the same way, “We’re not going to stop trying to save lives. There isn’t even a suspect at the moment. How can we save them if we don’t even have a direction to look in?”
“If you think we’re pessimistic now, then come back in a few months if this continues, we’re going to be downright depressed. I already feel like we can’t
win, but I’m going to keep trying because if I don’t then my friend died for no reason.”
“Um, ma’am could you answer a question for us?” I stopped the waitress when she brought the check. “We were wondering what’s the next city that caters to tourist further down toward L.A.?”
“That would be Paso Robles. It’s one of the larger towns, but there are several that are much smaller as well. They all have a few places for tourist, but the bigger ones have a few more choices.” She collected the card from Agent Watson, “Were you looking to stay somewhere tonight?”
“We were thinking of somewhere that had overnight or long term parking in case we wanted to stay on the beach for a few days. I’d hate to have the car towed just because we were out enjoying the sunshine.” Ryan slid an arm around the back of the booth behind me.
“King City and Paso Robles both have an airport with longer term parking there, if you need to park one car for a few days. I’ll be right back with this.”
“Guess we can check out whichever comes first and stay in the larger one for the night. That was a good idea to ask the waitress. I don’t know why my boss is trying to keep you guys from helping. You’re both smart and have a unique perspective.” Agent Watson complemented us.
“Unique perspective and we’re smart.” I winked at Ryan, “I think he just described the strange cousin that you barely acknowledge.”
“In Texas, we call it thinking outside of the box. I hate to think like the killer, but you do have to think of every possible scenario.” Ryan grinned at Agent Watson’s discomfort.
“Look can you forget I said that. It’s refreshing to have someone that isn’t trying to play be the rule book. Criminals don’t follow the FBI guidelines and we’ll never catch them if we don’t at least consider other possibilities.” He blushed.
“So what did you to get you put on babysitting duty?” I asked as we put up the computers and got ready to leave.
“I suggested that we let you both onto the team. Agent Perez disagreed, but I went over her head. Since I was so strongly in your corner, she said I was responsible for you and would have to prove myself to her again.” He ducked his head sheepishly.
