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

by Glenn Trust

  She stayed in that empty, distant place until, after a time, she became aware that she was no longer in the bathroom. Raising her head, she saw that she was seated on a chair in the main room of the cabin. The curtains over the window fluttered in the breeze.

  It was cold. She wanted to move to fold her arms together to warm up and realized that she was bound again, this time to a steel tubular chair with a hard plastic seat. Metal rivets and brackets holding the chair together cut into the bare flesh of her thighs and back. Slowly, she became aware that she was nude. An uncontrollable shiver overtook her thin frame, partly from the cold and partly from the fear of what would happen next.

  She stared hypnotically at the swaying curtains in the window. Her eyes, fixed on the curtains moving in the breeze from the air conditioner, saw nothing else. She had no idea how long she had been sitting on the cold, hard chair. Tie wraps, like the ones that had bound her in the car, now held her wrists securely to the steel tubular frame. A piece of duct tape covered her mouth.

  Someone was with her, but she stared past the form standing in front of her to the fluttering curtains. She let them take her mind to a different place. The curtains became tall pine trees swaying in a Canadian breeze. There were mountains in the distance. Not like the Georgia mountains, these were tall and snow covered. She shivered in the cool air blowing from the mountains. It was cold but refreshing. It was as she had dreamt—cool, crisp and clean.

  She had finally made her escape. It was a quick trip, faster than the jets she had seen flying high overhead on clear days in south Georgia. One moment she was in the small cabin room staring at the swaying curtains, hearing the loud hum of the air conditioner fan; the next, she was in the midst of the swaying pines and cool, Canadian breezes.

  Tatters of memories, far past and recent, flashed by in a confusing blur. The misery of her life at home in Judges Creek, the pain and abuse inflicted by her father, the poverty, the hopelessness, the emptiness at the loss of her brother, and more recent events; the betrayal by Henry at the truck stop, and finally the man in the room with her had all chased her mind to the faraway place.

  Somewhere deep inside she knew she was safe there, in the swaying pines. It was dangerous and frightening in the cabin. She did not want to be there, could not be there. In the pines, surrounded by the cool breezes, there was no pain, no betrayal, and no fear. It was her running away dream. It had come true.

  The faces of the brothers, the ones who had dropped her at the truck stop, flashed by in the whirlwind of scattered thoughts. The face of the young one came into focus for a moment. Clay. That was his name. He looked concerned. She thought from the midst of the pines that it was a good face. She wondered why he had not come to get her, why he was not with her in the pines. But then she pushed the thought of the young man away, because thinking of him threatened to bring her back to the cabin room, a terrible place. No, she would stay away in the cool pines. No one would find her, not the young man, or her father, or the other man. She was safe in the pines.

  A hand reached out to her, and one of the horns of the man’s ring circled the nipple of Lyn’s right breast, scraping it lightly. When there was no response, Lylee dragged the back of his hand and the sharp horn of the ring across the breast leaving a red, bleeding scratch.

  Lyn’s head moved from side to side, as if trying to escape from something. Lylee pushed the sharp ring hard into her breast, and her head came up. Her eyes opened and focused on him for just a second, and then she tried to flee to that far away place, but Lylee would have none of it now. He grabbed her by the hair at the back of her head and pulled her head back so that she was looking into his eyes.

  “Time to wake up, hon,” he said gently.

  The softness of his voice and the mock tenderness were more frightening than if he had screamed at her. The incongruity of his tone now, with the harsh grasping pull on her hair and the sting on her breast from the ring, was confusing. Bringing her eyes up to meet his, they widened with fear. And this was, of course, what the man had intended.

  The man’s glistening, nude body stood in front of the girl. Despite the chill in the room, he was covered from head to foot in a sheen of sweat and excitement. The dim light from the bathroom behind the girl cast a yellowish glow across the room.

  In his right hand, Lylee held a large hunting knife. The blade rested on the top of the girl’s shoulder. Without putting any pressure on the knife, he slowly dragged the heavy knife across the shoulder and the flesh separated into a small cut, dripping blood. The girl’s eyes widened and focused on him through the stinging pain.

  Good, he thought. Good.

  The man moved his left hand down to his groin and held himself. In a brief swirling moment of lucidity, Lyn realized that her struggle for life now depended on her ability to maintain her distance from what was happening in the room, and from what was happening to her.

  Giving in to the terror and pain would give him what he wanted and take her to a place she would not survive. Desperately, her wide, frightened eyes focused on the fluttering curtains. She searched frantically in her mind for the pines swaying in the cool breeze. They were lost. She was lost.

  Her eyes clamped shut so that she would not see what was happening in the room. Somewhere a cricket chirped distantly. She followed the chirping hum until she dared peek out through half closed lids. Her eyes opened wider, and she was there again in the cool pines where the breezes blew. She was safe in the pines, and she would stay there as long as she could.

  75. The Plan Worked

  “Pickham 301, out at state patrol post, Toccoa.”

  Clay’s head jerked violently at the words from the portable radio beside him on the seat.

  “Ten - four, Pickham 301, out at Toccoa.”

  Amazed that his plan had worked, at least a little bit, Clay pulled over to the shoulder of the two lane highway to scan the map he had been driving with in his lap. Since leaving Augusta, he had meandered his way through the northeast Georgia countryside to the area of I-85 and the South Carolina line. Finding the highway he was on, he placed a large finger on the dot that said Toccoa on the map. Maybe an hour he thought, maybe less.

  Then what? Good question. Somewhere in his brain, Clay knew that this whole excursion was now more obsession than anything else. He had to know that the girl was safe. Had it not been for the traffic stop by the state patrol last night and the subsequent information he was able to gain from his time at the patrol post, he probably would have turned back by now. He would be listening silently to Cy’s justifiable anger at Clay’s desertion from their job and business.

  But knowing that the girl, that Lyn, was in a car with a killer had changed all that. He would go on. He had stopped wondering why. The question no longer troubled Clay. He was committed to seeing this through to the end. That was that. Figuring it all out could wait until later. For now, he would follow the trail and see where it took him.

  Pulling back onto the road, he steered the truck to the northwest. Somewhere up there ahead was an old Chevy with a young girl in it and a man who had left two bodies behind in Pickham County and was capable of who knew what. The thought caused Clay’s foot to press slightly harder on the truck’s accelerator.

  76. Lunch Break

  Rye County Deputy, Grover Parsons, had been on the sheriff’s department for just a little over two years. It had been his dream as a young boy to go into law enforcement. The local department was just his starting point. He had bigger plans. He was building his skills and gaining experience so that his application to the State Patrol would be well received. In the mean time, he enjoyed patrolling the woods and farmlands of north Georgia. He was young and single, and like most of the young men in the area, he had grown up hunting in the mountains and fishing the cold streams. These had remained his primary off-duty activities and had developed in him a self-confidence and independence that served him well as a deputy.

  His dad liked to brag about the time his boy, Grover, had been
fishing a creek alone up on Taylor Mountain when a black bear had come out of the woods not fifteen feet from where Grover stood knee-deep in the cold water. Telling the story, his dad made it sound like his boy, Grover, was a modern day Davy Crockett, wrestling the bear and subduing him with a pocketknife.

  The truth was that the bear and the young man had stared at each other for several seconds, both equally startled by the other’s presence. Eventually, Grover turned, pointed his fishing rod at the bear, and waving the rod tip in the bear’s face shouted, “Go!” The bear did, and Grover went back to his search for trout in the mountain stream. Still, Grover was known around the county as a calm, independent, and robust young man who would not easily back down and who was very resourceful.

  Wheeling his county car into the parking lot of the small country store and cafe that sat at the crossroads in Crichton, he advised the radio dispatcher that he would be out having lunch. Walking through the front door, he nodded at the old man behind the register who was reading the Atlanta paper spread on the counter in front of him. The old man gave him a quick lift of his head in return and went back to studying the paper.

  Seating himself at one of the four small tables on the cafe side of the building, he greeted the man at the next table.

  “Hey, Gannet. How’s it goin’?”

  The man smiled back over his cheeseburger and gave a muffled reply through a mouthful. “Good, Grover. Pretty good.”

  “Afternoon, Fran,” Deputy Parsons said to the heavy woman who walked up, wiping her hands on a white apron.

  “Afternoon, Grover,” she said with a smile and then looked quickly over at the counter where the old man, her husband, still had his head bent over the newspaper. The smile turned to an exasperated scowl for a moment before she looked back at Grover and asked, “Usual?”

  “Yep. Cheeseburger, fries and a coke.”

  “Right,” she nodded, and waddled to the small kitchen in the back.

  The deputy looked over at the man at the next table and spoke to pass the time until his food arrived.

  “Wonder what she would do if I ordered a tuna sandwich?” he said grinning.

  Gannet stifled a low laugh through a mouthful of fries. Everyone knew that you could get two meals at Fran’s cafe. Fried eggs and bacon for breakfast, and cheeseburger and fries for lunch. That was it. No reason to order anything else, but she always came out to ask.

  “So anything goin’ on at your place, Gannet?”

  “No, not really,” the owner of the Creek Side Cabins replied. He munched a bite of burger and added as an afterthought. “Had a young couple check in this morning. Early, just after five.”

  “Really? That’s a little strange, isn’t it?” Grover looked towards the kitchen where the sounds of metallic scraping on the old griddle signaled that lunch would be ready soon. He was hungry and his stomach growled.

  “Yeah, but they’d been traveling all night. Needed a place to rest for a couple of days, they said. Told them we had a full house this weekend, but they could stay until then.”

  The kitchen noises were now accompanied by the aroma of the sizzling burger wafting through the area. Grover’s stomach gurgled in anticipation.

  “Kind of unusual, isn’t it? Someone checking in so early and in the middle of the week this time of year?”

  “Yeah. Bit out of the ordinary. They seem like nice folks though. Man’s from Texas.”

  Deputy Parsons’ eyes squinted slightly. “From Texas?” he asked reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt.

  “That’s what he said. Had Texas plates on the car.”

  Parsons opened the small notebook he retrieved from his pocket and scanned down the page. “Gannet, you remember what kind of car?”

  “Chevrolet, I think. Older one, but seemed in pretty good shape.”

  “And the man? What did he look like?”

  “Not real big. Kind of average. Thin, brown hair. Not much else.” Gannet looked at the deputy with concern. The cheeseburger was forgotten. “What’s wrong, Grover? My wife is still there. Is she in some kind of danger?”

  “No, probably not, Gannet. Tell me about the girl. What did she look like?”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why? You said it was a couple.”

  “Well, that’s what the fella said. He and his wife. He called her Sarah. But she stayed in the car and never came in.”

  Deputy Parsons stood up quickly, stuffing the notebook back in his pocket. He called to the kitchen. “Gotta go, Fran. Box it up, and I’ll come back later.”

  “It’ll be cold, Grover!” she shouted after him. “And that’s no fault of mine.” Fran poked her head out from the kitchen to see Grover Parsons move quickly through the door followed by Gannet trying to keep up with the deputy. She gave another scowl at the old man at the counter, who never looked up from his paper, and then disappeared back into the kitchen where agitated banging and clanging could be heard for some time.

  Outside, Parsons turned to Gannet. “Follow me. When we get there, you go in the office and stay there with your wife. Don’t come out.”

  “What is it, Grover? What’s going on?”

  “Probably nothing, and then we can go back and finish our burgers. Just need to check it out. That’s all.” With that, the deputy cranked the car and pulled onto the two lane road that would lead back to the Creek Side Cabins and an old Chevrolet.

  Deputy Grover Parsons picked up the mike as he increased speed. All of north Georgia law enforcement heard the transmission or had it relayed to them within seconds.

  77. The Break

  The break came in the early afternoon. George Mackey and Sharon Price had only spent a brief time at the state patrol post outside Toccoa. Nervous energy and knowing that there was only a limited amount of time before a third murder, in as many days, would be committed by the man in the Chevrolet, made the anxious waiting unbearable.

  They had checked in with Bob Shaklee, who was doing the same in west Georgia near the Alabama line. Waiting. It was all they could do. They were all in position as best they could be without knowing where the Chevy had been headed. They all knew that the clock was ticking for the young girl. They hoped the break would come before time expired. They were also aware that the break might never come.

  Investigative success usually involves a combination of detailed, professional retrieval and analysis of evidence, deductive skill, and artful intuition that leads investigators on the right path. The two GBI agents and the deputy from Pickham County knew that many investigations took wrong turns and headed down false paths only to be later recognized as such.

  Successful investigations often turned on the slightest of chances; a single misspoken word, a chance witness, an escape vehicle breaking down, or some other random, fortuitous act. These and a thousand other items might lead an investigation to a successful conclusion. Unfortunately, there were a million things that could steer it wrong.

  The fact that the description of the vehicle, perpetrator, and possible next victim had been broadcast across Georgia and the southeastern States might bring them the break they needed. Or, it might not. Scores of BOLO’s are broadcast across the law enforcement frequencies daily in Georgia in addition to the thousands across the entire country. The sad reality is that most never turn up a lead, at least not a timely one. In a nation of three hundred and fifty million and twice as many vehicles, the odds were against them. One older model Chevy with a white male and white female occupants riding in plain view on the public road system were more hidden than the proverbial needle in a haystack. They were all but invisible. If the driver was a bit more cautious and made efforts to conceal his movements, spotting them would be highly improbable, if not virtually impossible. Unless the gods smiled soon and they got their break, the clock would expire for the young girl in the Chevy.

  It was Price who finally spoke in the midst of her nervous pacing.

  “Let’s go, George.”

  He looked up from a metal chair i
n the break room.

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know. Anywhere. We can do our own search grid for the car.”

  “There’s troopers and deputies all over Georgia looking, Sharon. Not likely we’re going to be much help. We need to stay in the north Georgia area and Bob in the west so we can respond if the car or the man and girl turn up.”

  “I know, but that doesn’t mean we have to sit here.” She paused, thinking. “Let’s start our own grid and start checking every little road.”

  “That’s a lot of roads.”

  “Yeah, but not as many as down in the flat lands. The hills and mountains up here limit the number of roads.” She paused again, conscious of how ridiculous she must sound, and then shrugged and said, “It’s a shot, George. That’s all, just a shot. Besides, I can’t stand just sitting here waiting, doing nothing.”

  Listening, George thought of the young girl’s voice on the cell phone message. Like Sharon, he knew that her time was limited, if she still lived at all. He shook his head to shake that thought away. He could not be late again. And with that thought burning in his brain, he looked up.

  “All right. Let’s do it. I can’t stand the waiting either.”

  After grabbing some triangularly cut sandwiches and drinks from the break room machines, they loaded into George’s pickup and headed out from Toccoa. Sharon outlined a fifty square mile grid to the north and west, crisscrossed by small winding county roads and state highways. She navigated and George followed her directions as they munched the cardboard sandwiches and gulped their drinks. Both knew that their small search was almost certainly futile, but they didn’t speak about it. Sharon studied the map and George drove and both scrutinized every vehicle they saw. George would slow whenever they came to some small store or gas station or crossroads so that they could examine the vehicles and any people they might see. After the brief inspection, he would pick up speed again, eyes scanning alertly for an older Chevy with Texas tags. It felt better to be moving, doing something, doing anything, futility be damned.