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

by Glenn Trust

  Tom just looked at the ground. Margaret stepped forward and took him by the arm, turning him back towards the house. The look she gave George over her shoulder said it all. Catch him!

  George nodded his acknowledgement, accepting his orders quietly.

  Pulling the pickup out of the Ridley’s yard and onto the gravel road, he drove the quarter mile down to the crime scene and stayed far off the right side across the road from where the girl still lay in the weeds. He drove through the grass and weeds until he was well clear of the crime scene and then pulled back onto the dirt road.

  Sheriff Klineman and Ronnie Kupman stood behind the line of emergency vehicles talking. The sheriff looked hard at George as he drove by. George looked away and picked up speed leaving the scene. Fuck the sheriff.

  Mrs. Sims and Margaret Ridley had given him his orders. There was nothing Klineman could add to that. For his conscience, and Tom Ridley’s conscience, and the little girl still lying in the weeds, he hoped it would be enough.

  Yeah, George, you just get right out there and catch him.

  42. The Brothers

  The whine of the circular saw drowned everything else out, echoing in the bare interior of the shopping center he and his brother were finishing out. Clay threw the freshly cut two by four onto a pile beside the saw table. Oblivious to the sound and sawdust around him and in his hair, Clay’s mind was back at the truck stop with the young girl that he had met only hours before.

  “Clay!” It was his brother Cy shouting over the noise.

  He released the saw trigger and the screeching noise wound down as the blade slowed. The ensuing, sudden silence was heavy in the empty concrete space.

  “What, Cy?” He spoke quietly but his voice seemed loud in the silence after the saw noise.

  “That’s enough,” his brother replied.

  “What? What’s enough?”

  “We don’t need any more. That’s enough. Let’s start framing them up.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. Yeah.”

  The brothers worked together in a quiet rhythm. Well practiced, the work went swiftly without talking. They made it look much easier than it was, the way a professional athlete makes hitting a fastball or catching a pass look like something we should all be able to do, although we all know that we cannot.

  In a short time, they squared up the interior wall they were framing and started hanging plywood panels. The panels would be finished and covered with shelving to hold athletic shoes of the type and price they would never consider buying.

  Dusting sawdust off, they walked over to an ice chest and each pulled out a drink can. Leaning against a nearby wall, they slid down until they were sitting side by side on the concrete.

  “Pretty quiet today. What’s up? Still thinking about the girl?” Cy asked after they sat for a minute sipping their drinks.

  “Lyn,” Clay said looking at his can of soda.

  “Sorry,” Cy said. “I mean Lyn. Still thinking about her?

  “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  “So what are you going to do? Might sound crazy, but she seemed pretty serious about the Canada thing.”

  “I don’t know.” They were silent for a minute and then Clay continued, “It feels like I should do something. Go talk to her again. Something.”

  Cy just sat leaning against the wall, knees up resting the drink can on them saying nothing. This was not like his younger brother. Cy was the ladies man, the one always with a love affair going. Clay was the disinterested one, not worrying too much about the opposite sex.

  Not this time though. Clay was taken with the girl. She was pretty enough, for sure, but this was something different. He was distracted by her in a way Cy had not seen before.

  “All right, brother,” Cy said, breaking the silence, “Let’s go back and see if we can find her when we get done.”

  “What then?” Clay said almost glumly. “She already said she was going on.”

  “Why, then you turn on the charm little brother. Make her smile, make her laugh, make her feel safe. Just be you, man. It’ll work out if it’s supposed to. Gotta give it a try though, so let’s give it a try.”

  Clay studied the toes of his work boots. “Okay, you’re right.” He jumped up off the floor to get back to work. Reaching back down to give his brother a hand up, he said, “Thanks.”

  “No problem. Now let’s us get our asses back to work.”

  Five minutes later, they were working on another wall. Things he might say when they went back to the truck stop rolled around in Clay’s head as they worked. He took his cell phone out and checked for calls. There were none. He didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  43. Clever Tommy

  The images flowing by on the small TV monitor blurred. George shook his head to focus more clearly.

  Leaving the Ridley’s, George had gone to the interstate to check out places where the killer might have stopped. His gut told George that he would not want to stay in Pickham County and would move on quickly. He picked the northbound side of I-95, mostly because there was more territory ahead for an escape. The southbound side went directly into Florida. Between Ridley’s Road and the county line there were only a couple of exits on I-95 with gas stations. One was in Roydon. The other was several miles north, almost at the county line. He decided to check the one furthest north first and then come back through Roydon. It didn’t seem likely that the killer would stop for gas so close to the site of body. Hell, he may not have needed gas at all, but it was worth a try.

  The Minit Mart on I-95 had an antiquated video recording system. It didn’t provide much. The one camera was pointed at the cashier and was probably meant more to prevent pilferage by employees than to prevent robberies. Installed long before the advent of digital video recorders, the system had an old VCR that still recorded on VHS tape. George wondered where you could even find VHS tapes anymore. Hell, even he had a DVR.

  If the Minit Mart had had a digital system, he could have focused on a specific time frame and brought up only those images. With this old piece of junk, George was forced to rewind the tape from last night and watch it through to find any possible evidence. It was a long shot. George shook his head again and pushed the fast forward button on the VCR.

  He had bypassed for the time being the couple of country stores between Tom Ridley’s road and the interstate as they were closed at night. But the Minit Mart was open twenty-four hours. The go-to-work crowd stopped there for coffee in the morning, and the after work crowd got their six-pack and lottery tickets on the way home. The rest of the day, late at night, and during the early morning hours it was mostly cars and truckers off the interstate.

  George had parked the pickup and gone in to have a talk with the manager. The overnight girl, Beth, was gone, off at seven.

  Now, George was seated in a dusty old office chair at the manager’s desk in the tiny room behind the cashier’s counter. The tiny monitor and VCR sat on one side of the desk. George held the fast forward button as the images flowed past. He had rewound the tape to about two in the morning to try to limit the search a little. Still, there was nothing to do but watch the tape grind by, minute by minute. Even on fast forward, the minutes seemed to take forever. On top of that, there was nothing to see, just the cash register and small area behind the counter. Occasionally, the clerk, Beth, would enter the area, but she spent most of the time out of view of the camera. The manager said she stocked shelves and the coolers at night when there were no customers.

  George looked around the cramped, dusty office and through a small, dirty, tinted window out into the store. This would be a lonely place to work at night. Too lonely, as the empty images on the tape attested. Too much could happen.

  Then he saw Beth walk back into the frame. She was talking. She smiled. George thought it was the look of a girl who was flirting or being flirted with. George leaned forward, intent on the image. The person she was talking to was careful to stay away from the counter, just out of view of the camera.
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br />   The girl, Beth, smiled some more, tilting her head slightly and looking up at the person just out of view. It was definitely a flirtatious smile, pretending to be shy or flattered, but the unspoken message was, ‘Yes, I am the cutest thing you’ve seen today. Keep talking. You might get lucky’.

  George almost smiled himself at the young girl on the tape. Suddenly an arm was thrust into the picture from the spot just out of view. A bill dropped from the outstretched hand onto the counter. George stopped breathing and hit the pause button. The arm was a man’s arm, covered by a long sleeve shirt. Nothing remarkable about it. Not too big, not too small. Just an average sized arm belonging, no doubt, to an average sized man. But the outstretched hand bore a ring. He squinted hard at the screen. There was no zoom function on the system, but the more he looked the more he was sure that the ring was in the shape of a steer’s head…a Texas Longhorn, or at least it could be. George looked around for a minute and then called.

  “Tommy!”

  “Yeah, George?” The manager poked his head through the door.

  “Do you have something to make the picture bigger?”

  Tommy thought for a second, wrinkling his brow in concentration. “Well nothing technical or anything like that, but…” he stepped into the cramped office behind George and rummaged around on a dusty shelf. Lifting a stack of yellowed papers, he pulled out an old magnifying glass. “Here try this. It might work.”

  “What the hell are you doing with that? Burning the wings off of flies?”

  Looking slightly offended, Tommy replied, “No, we keep it to check out suspicious bills. You know, counterfeits.”

  “You know how to recognize counterfeits?” George was amazed.

  “Well, not really,” Tommy confessed, “but if we get a suspicious bill and bring out this big old glass, sometimes they get intimidated and leave. Actually works…sometimes.”

  George shook his head, even more amazed. He had no idea that Tommy was that clever. Probably no one else did either.

  He took the glass from Tommy’s pudgy hand and stared at the screen, adjusting the distance to magnify the image. It wasn’t great. The GBI would have to clean it up, but it was unmistakable. A shiny, almost triangular shape with two curving prongs coming out of the top. There it was.

  George knew he was looking at the hand that had struck the poor girl in the weeds. The hand that had inflicted all of those painful cuts. The hand that had slowly killed her, taking her life in the slowest most painful way he could. That hand was attached to a body and to a bad man. A very bad man who, except for his hand, could not be seen in the video.

  George let the tape run forward and saw two men walk into the frame. Truck drivers. They must have startled the man with the ring.

  He rewound the tape and went through it one more time looking for anything he had missed. Cute little Beth did not know how fortunate she was. Probably lots of customers flirted with her, and she flirted back. Flirting with this one, the man with the ring, might have been her last if the two truck drivers hadn’t showed up.

  Well, now he had a witness. Beth had talked to the man with the ring. She might have noticed his vehicle, the vehicle George had seen the night before while he tried to doze in his county truck. He winced once more at the thought.

  George felt the adrenalin surge. The hunt was on, but time was short. The word had to get out before there was another young girl in the weeds somewhere.

  “Tommy!”

  “Don’t have to shout, George. I’m right here.” Intrigued, Tommy was staring over George’s shoulder at the screen. “What’s up?”

  “I’m taking this tape and get me Beth’s address.”

  “Uh, okay, George. Something wrong?”

  “Get the address, Tommy.”

  George ejected the tape from the old VHS machine, and leaving the cramped office, moved quickly outside to his pickup and the radio. Sitting behind the wheel, he reached for the microphone. For a moment, he closed his eyes, and the image of the old car from last night floated in his mind. He imagined an average sized man’s arm and a hand holding the steering wheel. On the hand was a ring, a ring that matched the mark on the forehead of a young girl. The average man with the ring had dumped the girl like garbage in the weeds alongside a dirt road…a dirt road that he had been responsible for patrolling.

  George’s eyes snapped open; soon there would be more than just an arm and ring in that picture. Beth would help with that.

  Lifting the mike, he spoke.

  “301 to car 2.”

  Ronnie Kupman’s voice answered, “Go ahead, 301.”

  “We have a witness with a possible ID on the perp. Need you to meet me.” George didn’t elaborate on which perp. There was only one right now. He read out the address Tommy had given him.

  “On my way, 301,” Ronnie responded and then added, “Good work, George.”

  Sheriff Klineman, listening on the radio in his car, winced. Great. George again. The hits just kept on coming.

  44. “Don’t do it son.”

  He watched the big red Freightliner leave the fuel pumps and pull through the parking lot of the truck stop. As it passed his car, he could just see the top of the girl’s head in the passenger seat. He was prepared to follow, waiting for his opportunity. He did not have to wait long.

  The truck did not pull onto the highway and head towards the interstate. Instead, the heavyset trucker steered around to the back of the truck stop where there was a large gravel lot full of parked rigs. Some of the drivers were there to catch up on sleep; others were inside the truck stop relaxing for a while. Henry had his own plans.

  The old Chevy followed carefully, the driver watching as the trucker pulled to the farthest end of the lot where he parked along the edge where no other truck would be next to him. The big diesel engine clattered and shut off as the air brakes hissed. It was quiet.

  Lyn looked at Henry questioningly.

  “What are we doing?” Her voice quivered slightly.

  Henry turned and stood up, bent over in the space between the two seats.

  “Oh, I reckon you know, girl,” he said grinning.

  “But you were going to give me a ride north. You said as far as Richmond, then you go west.”

  “Yep. I did say that, and I will. But first you gotta pay the fare.”

  “Fare? What fare? You said…”

  “Listen girl, don’t play dumb. I know young girls like you have done it lots of times. This one more time ain’t gonna hurt nothing. You might even like it. I know I will.” Henry smiled.

  “Now climb back there,” Henry said jerking his head towards the sleeper behind the truck cab.

  Lyn had tears in her eyes, “No…I just want to go away. You said Richmond. Just…”

  Her words were broken off, and she let out a small shriek of pain at Henry’s rough jerk on her arm. Lyn grabbed the seat armrests as the big man pulled.

  Pulling his car alongside Henry’s trailer, Lylee walked quietly in the hard packed gravel to the driver’s side and stood outside the truck cab. He could hear the exchange inside. His hand rested on the door handle. At Lyn’s shriek, he jerked the door open.

  Inside the truck, Henry whirled at the sound of the door opening. He was still standing bent over between the seats with a large hand around Lyn’s upper left arm. As he whirled, he nearly jerked Lyn out of her seat. Looking down from the cab, he saw a slight man holding the door open.

  “What the fuck do you want?” He said in as threatening a manner as he could muster through his surprise.

  Not even a jackal, Lylee thought, just a horny yard dog.

  “Let her go,” Lylee said simply and firmly.

  “What?” Henry was rattled. He wasn’t used to being challenged.

  “Let the girl go, now,” Lylee said, each word distinct and separate from the others for emphasis.

  Letting go of Lyn’s arm, Henry slid into the driver’s seat and then put his feet on the access step outside the open truck door.
He looked closer at the man holding the door. He was not a large man, but there was a hardness in him. There was something else too. The look on his face wasn’t angry or determined. It was something else. Dangerous. The eyes were completely focused, entirely on Henry, examining him in an uncomfortable way. The mouth seemed to have a barely perceptible grin. Henry sensed that the grin was a warning, telling him that he had already lost. Something in the look also said that he hoped Henry wouldn’t take the warning.

  He was dangerous and in control, and Henry knew better as he stood up on the truck step. He knew better, but pride required him to do something. Looking down at the smaller man, there seemed to be no other choice. Twice now in a day, he was being challenged, first by that bitch, Kathy, at the diner and now by this jerk off. Henry wasn’t used to that. He didn’t particularly want to, but he knew he had to do something or leave and never come back. The look on the smaller man’s face made him hesitate, but eventually he moved.

  Stepping tentatively down to the next step, it was instantly apparent that he had made a mistake. The smaller man’s eyes glinted, and the smile flickered and grew broader for just a fleeting moment, like a spark in the breeze. His arm struck out with the quickness of a striking snake. Henry felt an iron grip take hold of his belt and then jerk with great force. There was nowhere for Henry to go but down.

  The big man thudded heavily onto the hard gravel as Lylee stepped deftly to the side. Releasing the door, he took a step to where Henry lay. He was on his side, cradling his left arm. His face was scraped raw from the impact with the gravel and a cut on his forehead dripped blood onto the ground. Bits of sand and gravel clung to the raw scrapes on his face. He was a mess.

  Lylee placed a heavy, work booted foot on the side of Henry’s face and pressed. Henry let out a moan. Lylee knew that with a little more pressure, he could snap the bones in Henry’s cheek and jaw.