Eyes of the Predator: The Pickham County Murders (The Hunters)

by Glenn Trust

  17. A Search

  Turning off the pavement, George followed the dirt drive up to the house and pulled beside Sandy Davies’ county issued Ford Explorer parked in front of the old frame house.

  He waited for the dust to settle and then opened the door and walked to the front porch. Sandy looked up from the small notebook he was writing in.

  “Hey, Mackey, glad you could make it.”

  “What’s up, Sandy?” George asked, nodding politely to the elderly woman on the porch.

  “Mrs. Sims here says her husband went through the woods to check out sounds at the A.M.E. Church on the other side. Never came back.”

  “Anything else on the description?” George asked.

  “Nope. Nothing,” Sandy said, and then added, as an afterthought, “Oh, Mr. Sims had a gun with him.”

  “What kind?”

  “She’s not sure. Just a small handgun. Revolver she thinks.”

  The old black woman stood, hands clenched nervously in front. The veins in her thin arms pulsed with each squeeze of one hand on the other. The look on her face was one of embarrassment almost, to have troubled the sheriff with her missing husband.

  George smiled up at her from the bottom of the porch steps. “Don’t worry, ma’am. We’ll find your husband. What’s his name, by the way?”

  “Harry…his name is Harold Sims. We all just call him Harry. Told him to just call the sheriff and let ya’ll check it out. The old fool, he just had to go his self.”

  Deputy Davies reached out and patted her arm. “Well, don’t worry. We’ll go see if we can find him. He couldn’t have gone far. It’s a dark night and in the woods, it’s even darker. He probably got lost or confused a little. We’ll bring him home.”

  “He’s awful scared of snakes and gators. Not like him to stay out in the woods in the dark like this,” Mrs. Sims, said, more to herself than to the deputies.

  Sandy turned and walked down the steps, realizing that he wasn’t all that fond of snakes and gators himself. Before he could say anything, George spoke, “Guess, I’ll head back out to the main road and come around the front of the church. Why don’t you go through the woods and check it out from that direction. I’ll pick you up at the church.”

  George climbed into the F-150, grinning at the look from Deputy Davies that simply said, ‘gee thanks, asshole.’

  Pulling down the drive, he could see in the mirror of the truck that Mrs. Sims was pointing across the yard to a dark patch of woods where, presumably, there was a path leading to the church. Sandy nodded and plodded across the yard towards the woods. It was clear he didn’t relish traipsing through the underbrush in the dark.

  As George turned onto Power Line Road, unimaginatively named for the high voltage power transmission lines that ran alongside the road, Sandy stood at the entrance to the path as if he were trying to negotiate his entrance into the dark, closed world of the woods.

  While Sandy took his first tentative step into the black woods, George raced down Power Line Road to the main highway about half a mile away. It was called the Jax Highway, short for Jacksonville Highway. It was a two lane country road here, but as it crossed the state line and neared the Florida urban areas, it increased to four lanes.

  Turning right onto the Jax Highway, it was about another half mile to the A.M.E. Church. George slowed rapidly as he approached the entrance to the graveled parking lot. Pulling slowly off the highway, he stopped the vehicle for a moment in the entrance and scanned the church and parking lot. There was no movement and no other vehicle was visible.

  After getting the lay of the land, he turned on the spotlight mounted to the truck, pointed it at the church, and slowly made a pass from front to back, tires crunching softly in the gravel. The bright light glared harshly off the white painted wooden clapboard siding of the church.

  Nothing. No old man. No sign of any disturbance at the church. All was quiet.

  George turned the truck and pointed it at the woods directly behind the church, guessing where the path through the woods might come out. The bright illumination made the green canopy appear almost white.

  A few minutes later, Sandy Davies stumbled into view, the light from his flashlight canceled out by the bright lights of the truck. He brushed something off his shoulder and waved his arm around his head as if trying to clear a clinging spider web.

  Looking into the lights of George’s truck, he shaded his eyes and walked towards it.

  “How’s that workin’ out for you there, Sandy?” he called from his seat in the truck.

  Deputy Davies bent over, brushed at something on his pant leg, and then squinted into the bright light and flipped George the bird. He walked around to the passenger side of the truck and got in.

  “Anything?” he asked George.

  “Nope. All quiet here, and I didn’t see anyone walking on the highway.”

  “Yeah, I was wondering about that about half way through the woods. He might have decided to go back along the road instead of fighting his way through the woods.” Sandy added as a theory, “Maybe someone picked him up.”

  “Yeah,” George replied, “or ran him over and knocked him into the ditch. I couldn’t see that on the way over, but I wasn’t looking too close.”

  “Well, I guess you better take me back to my car, and we can spotlight both sides of the road. Look for any signs of an impact…or a body.”

  “Yeah. Just tell Mrs. Sims we are going to look around some, and we will get back to her. Don’t want to frighten her for no reason if old Harry turns up after being lost in the woods.”

  Sandy nodded. “Right,” he said in agreement, “Let’s get to it I reckon.”

  The two deputies clearly did not relish the task before them. The possibility of finding old Harry Sims lying in a mangled, bloody heap in the roadside ditch was a distinctly unpleasant one.

  George turned the truck to the right so that it was parallel to the tree line along the edge of the woods. The bright lights picked up a small dark hump in the gravel about a hundred feet away.

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t know,” Sandy replied squinting through the windshield. “Get closer.”

  The truck rolled slowly forward with no additional pressure on the accelerator. The dark hump on the gravel slowly grew in size. Its shape shifted in the glaring light and moving shadows cast by the truck’s lights on the surrounding trees until it finally changed from a shadowy mound and took on an identifiable form.

  “Shit,” the two deputies muttered, almost in unison.

  18. Roydon

  Roydon was considered a small town. Actually, it was no town at all and not much more than an interstate crossroad. It was a settlement, a clustering of people for convenience. There was no elected mayor or town council, but it did have a hierarchy, its own system of governing. It was the unofficial center of criminal activity for fifty miles in every direction, and the leaders of this activity were the unelected leaders of the community. The only discernible reason for its current existence was the interstate and the community’s various criminal enterprises.

  In addition to a very busy bar, frequented predominantly by people seeking goods and services unobtainable elsewhere in rural Georgia, there were two run down gas stations pretending to be truck stops, a couple of dirty motels and a few scattered trailers and shacks where the locals resided. These made up the entire settlement.

  At one time, it had been a center of commerce for the surrounding farming community, as many of these rural, small towns were at inception. But the farmers had long since moved away or found other markets and means of transport. Pickham County was generally considered a moderately low crime area. Except for Roydon. In Roydon, big-time, major felony type criminal activity was the standard, and the settlement continued to exist mostly for the sake of the illegal activities that took place at and around the bar, ‘Pete’s Place’.

  The new Sheriff of Pickham County had said he was going to clean the place up and had even briefl
y involved the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). But finding witnesses in Roydon was problematic. Talking in Roydon about Roydon or its business enterprises was a dangerous proposition. The occasional small-time dope case that law enforcement was able to make had no effect on the extensive illegal trafficking that took place. And the locals knew it was better to do time quietly than to speak to sheriff’s deputies or the state patrol. Besides, they didn’t want to speak. People who lived in Roydon, or who profited from Pete’s Place, liked things the way they were.

  Like the reason for the town, ‘Pete’ had long since disappeared. In fact, no one even knew who he had been or where he had gone. But his bar remained and thrived.

  Roydon, and Pete’s Place in particular, were known along the I-95 corridor as being the gathering point and base of operations for various distributors who fulfilled the specialized needs of their clientele. These entrepreneurs provided the select inventory items and services not readily available elsewhere. Fifty years earlier, it had mostly been moonshine liquor. That was still available, but the inventory of goods and services had grown. Drugs of every description and type were available. Homemade meth to prescription painkillers, amphetamines, marijuana, crack cocaine, heroin and every narcotic derivation known to man could be obtained from the several suppliers who called Roydon home.

  Then there were the girls. Georgia was not Nevada. Prostitution was illegal, but in a place like Roydon, it was just another item on the menu of goods and services. Girls were available for the use of the truck drivers and bikers who frequented the area. You had to know who to ask, and especially, how to ask, but they were available.

  Some were there by choice because they could find no other way to survive, if you could call their existence in Roydon survival. Abusive men, fathers, brothers, husbands, or boyfriends had forced others into the trade. The stories were all a little different. The result was the same. They lived a life underground. They were invisible. The oldest profession, and their only means of survival was illegal. They were hidden and forgotten, and being forgotten, they were in even more peril and subject to more abuse. To the families on their way to Florida vacations, truckers, business people, and military convoys passing by Roydon on the interstate, they were nonexistent. The world preferred it that way, not wanting to know them or the dark emptiness of their lives or Roydon’s other secrets.

  The faded, old car pulled from I-95 onto the exit ramp to Roydon. The brake lights flashed as the car stopped at the stop sign at the top of the ramp. He looked both ways and then turned left, crossing over the interstate.

  On the other side, he pulled the car into the parking lot of one of the filthy motels. The lighted sign said StarLite Motel, but only the ‘S’ and ‘r’ were lit. The other letters sizzled electrically, but their neon, phosphor glow had long since dissipated. It occurred to the driver that he had probably seen a StarLite motel in every town he had ever visited, and he had visited quite a few on his runarounds. It must have been a popular name in the fifties and sixties, dawn of the space age and all.

  He had been in places like Roydon before. He had a knack for finding them. Similar communities dotted the American countryside. They were always filled with anonymous people and shady visitors. In places like Roydon, questions were not asked, and names were not recorded.

  The StarLite and Pete’s Place were comfortable to him. He could move through the underworld of Roydon without fear of prying questions or watching eyes. Averted gazes and deaf ears were the norm in a place like Roydon.

  Reaching down, he checked the tie wraps holding the girl’s wrists together and binding her to the frame under the seat. Her position was awkward and uncomfortable. She was forced to lean over on her side so that her head was not visible to passersby. The pleading eyes peering at him above the duct taped mouth made him smile.

  “Just checking us in to the honeymoon suite, dear.”

  The grin on his face made her tremble uncontrollably.

  The lot of the motel was nearly deserted. Grass and weeds crowded the gravel at the edges and grew up the rear and sides of the old cinder block exterior. Two other cars were parked in front of rooms. One near the small office, and the other midway down the length of the motel. A fast food bag and several beer cans sat on the ground beside the nearest car’s passenger door.

  Pushing a plastic button on the metal frame of the office door, he heard an out of place doorbell chime. Through the glass, he could see someone stirring in the small room behind the desk. After a minute, a bleary-eyed man with bedhead stumbled out to the desk pulling an overall strap over his shoulder. He bent slightly and peered through the dirty glass. After several seconds of examination, he decided that it was safe enough and reached down to press a button under the desk. A loud buzz sounded and the office door unlocked.

  There was no greeting from either.

  “Need a room,” the thin man said.

  “How long?”

  “For the night.”

  “All night?”

  He nodded, and motel man clerk said, “Thirty-five.”

  He took cash from his front pocket and counted out the bills. Motel man reached behind him for a key on an old peg board.

  “At the other end of the building.”

  The man shrugged and replaced the key he had started to retrieve and handed over a different one.

  Taking the key, he turned and walked through the door into the night. Motel man watched him through the glass. Sitting behind the wheel, he waited. After a minute, the man dimmed the lights and went back to the room behind the desk. It was not unusual for the StarLite’s customers to want their privacy. Best to give the customers what they wanted.

  When the motel desk clerk was out of sight, he cranked the engine and drove slowly through the lot to the other end of the building. He backed into the space in front of the room so that the car’s license plate was not visible and so that the passenger door was away from the office and the possibly prying eyes of the night clerk. Parked in this position, he could easily and quickly move the girl from the car to the room.

  Walking to the room door, he pulled the large plastic fob with the single key attached from his pocket. The door opened and he did a brief visual check. Taking the small trash can from beside the bed, he propped the door open. He did not turn on the light.

  He walked outside to the car and glanced back at the office. The motel clerk was not visible.

  With a quick motion, the passenger door was swung open, and he was leaning over the girl. She cringed and trembled but could make no sound. The knife was out and the tie wraps cut with a quick flick of his wrist, hands then feet. Another flick and the duct tape was cut and pulled roughly from her face, strands of her hair clinging to the tape where it had circled her head. He could probably have carried her bound and gagged into the room and no one in Roydon would have noticed, or cared if they had noticed, but years of careful practice had taught him not to take chances. No need to arouse the curiosity of anyone who might have accidentally noticed them.

  With strength deceptive for his size, he jerked her up and out of the car. The movements were so quick and the girl in such a state of shock, that there was no time or thought to escape. It would not have mattered anyway. She would not get away.

  This was the moment of danger, moving his prey to the killing ground. If she cried out or struggled, the game might take a drastic turn for the worse, for him at least. But he had mastered the art of control, physical and psychological. Instinct, cunning, or skill. Whatever the mechanism, he was in control and he knew it. More importantly, she knew it.

  The girl stepped quietly as directed from the car. He was close, whispering in her ear. They might have been lovers, except for the knifepoint pressing deeply under her breast. The parking lot was dark, just the light from the neon sign casting a glow at the other end of the lot.

  “Just get through this with me, honey. Help me. Then I will let you go.”

  Somehow, she was convinced. She wanted t
o be convinced. Deep inside, she needed to be convinced, to believe. He just had needs. She could get through it. Despite what she had witnessed earlier, the old man was an accident. She would survive and hide this deep away somewhere and never think about it again. Right now, just survive.

  She nodded quietly. He saw the hope in her eyes and couldn’t help a small smile. She smiled back a little. It thrilled and aroused him. Hopeful but helpless.

  The whole process had taken less than thirty seconds.

  A final glance around the lot and at the office to see if anyone had observed, and he closed the door. This was just an habitual overabundance of caution. In places like Roydon, it was unlikely that anyone would deliberately notice anything that anyone else was doing. Noticing could be unhealthy.

  Bolting the door, he turned and gazed with a thrill into the pleading, terrified eyes. A long, deep sigh escaped his chest and hissed through his teeth.

  19. Driving Miss Lyn

  There, snug between the two brothers in the pick-up, Lyn felt the fatigue set in. Not just the fatigue of the day, it was the bone weary numbness of a life of empty horizons and desperation.

  Accepting the moment, and feeling warm and somewhat safe between the two young men, strangers though they were, she felt about as secure as she ever had. Her knees were close together, and she sat as upright as she could to avoid physical contact, but that was impossible in the closeness of the truck cab.