Bad Beat

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Suddenly Mike stopped and thought, then asked, “When was the last car sold to the dealer?”

  “About three weeks ago,” Lott said.

  Julia was starting to get excited from Mike’s reaction.

  As she watched, he took out his phone and called a number. “Annie,” he said, “I’m here with your father and Julia. Can you get your best computer person to check the registration on that last car sold. Trace back computer tracks on who altered it and do it without leaving a trace.”

  He nodded and hung up.

  “You think it might be possible to trace back the computer tracks of the person who did the changes to the registration of that last car?”

  “Very possible,” Mike said. “I would do it, but I’m not near my protected computers. But Doc and Annie and Fleet’s computer people are sometimes better than I am. Hate to admit that and don’t tell them I said that.”

  Lott and Julia both laughed.

  “Thank you,” Julia said. “How long will that take?”

  At that moment Mike’s phone beeped.

  “That long,” Mike said, smiling.

  He answered without saying a word. He nodded once, then he said, “You are kidding me?”

  He listened for another moment, which seemed like an eternity to Julia as she watched his face take on a look of surprise.

  “Go after him carefully,” Mike said. “This guy knows what he’s doing. I’ll tell your father and Julia and they can get researching the guy from other levels.”

  With that Mike hung up and tucked his phone back into his shirt pocket.

  “We’re dying up here,” Lott said, smiling at Mike.

  “Your idea was a great one,” Mike said to Julia. “Annie’s people tracked the computer trail back without leaving a trail of their own to who changed the title. The guy was good, but not as good as Annie and Doc’s people.”

  “Who?” Julia asked, feeling like a kid in an ice cream shop waiting for the first cone to be passed over the counter.

  “Maxwell changed the registration,” Mike said.

  “The car dealer in Reno?” Lott asked.

  Julia was stunned. For some reason Maxwell had never crossed her mind as anything but an honest man.

  “One and the same,” Mike said. “Your daughter is digging into the guy and finding out everything she can about him without him knowing he’s even been looked at. She will report to you tonight at dinner.”

  Julia just sat there, stunned. No wonder the killer had been ahead of them. They had walked right into his friend’s office and told the friend basically what they were doing.

  Julia looked back at Mike. “Might want to have Heather tip off the FBI to keep an eye on Maxwell discretely, since he might be a killer but at least he is trafficking in stolen cars.”

  “Really good idea,” Mike said, nodding. “I’ll get that working.”

  “Thank you,” Lott said.

  “Yes, thank you,” Julia said.

  “Keep me posted,” Mike said.

  A moment later he had slid out of the car and was headed back into the large building.

  “So where to next?” Lott asked, glancing at Julia with a smile.

  “I’ll call the Walters and see if they are still available to talk with us.”

  Lott nodded. “I’m betting they know Maxwell from back in the Vaughan family day.”

  “No bet,” Julia said.

  For the first time, it felt like they had just taken a step forward. Now the key was to not slide backwards. They had a suspect.

  But she had a hunch Maxwell wasn’t the killer. Finding the killer was going to be even harder, she had no doubt.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  September 19th, 2016

  Outside of Las Vegas, Nevada

  TURNED OUT LORRAINE and Ray were very happy to help over an early dinner at a nearby buffet. Lott wasn’t hungry yet and knew there was KFC in his future in a few hours, but he offered to buy and he and Julia both just sampled a few things off the buffet to be polite.

  The buffet and the entire building was decorated in wood and western décor, with saddles and spurs and chaps hanging from the walls and old-looking saloon doors leading into the kitchen area.

  The tables were large and made of heavy wood that was polished and covered in a layer of epoxy to stop any stains or glass marks. And everything had western made-up names. Like beef stew was called “Ranch Stew” and so on.

  Lott figured every place had to have a gimmick, but this place didn’t make him feel comfortable at all, it was so fake.

  This early in the afternoon, the restaurant only had about thirty people spread over what looked like ten rooms and an acre of tables. So finding a private corner hadn’t been a problem.

  “So how is the investigation going?” Ray asked after everyone got seated. “Whatever you are investigating.”

  Lorraine waved a hand at her husband and Lott laughed. He liked Ray.

  “Fine so far,” Julia said, taking the lead, something Lott was thankful for. “We are now looking at what might be a friend of the Vaughn family, maybe a friend of Paul.”

  Lorraine sampled her green Jell-O with some sort of fruit. “What’s the name?”

  “Maxwell,” Lott said.

  Lorraine laughed and Ray snorted at that.

  “So you knew them?” Lott asked. His heart was racing at the idea that there could be a real link between Maxwell and the Vaughan family.

  “Sure,” Lorraine said. “They were the neighbors on the other side of the Vaughan house from us. They often joined the Vaughan clan in the back yard.”

  “No clothes,” Ray said, shaking his head. “And the older Maxwell woman should have kept them on, let me tell you.”

  Lorraine waved her hand at Ray again to indicate Lott and Julia should just ignore his rude comment.

  “The son took turns with Paul on the sister right out there in public,” Ray said. “A couple times when both families were together, all nude around their pool. Nothing hidden. Just wasn’t right.”

  Lott sort of sat back with that statement.

  So the Maxwell that owned the car dealership in Reno had been close to the Vaughan family. He was looking better and better as the killer.

  Or least Maxwell was in this up to his eyebrows.

  “Do you know what Mr. Maxwell did for a living?” Julia asked.

  Lott was impressed. She was staying on topic while he was swirling around the excitement of having the connection between Paul Vaughan and Maxwell.

  “Parents owned car dealerships here and in Reno,” Lorraine said.

  “Parents were killed on the way to some nudist event,” Ray said. “Kid inherited the car lots and sold the one here and moved to Reno.”

  “Was this before or after the Vaughan car wreck?”

  Lorraine shrugged. “If I remember right, close to the same time. Within months of each other, actually. Tragic. Just tragic.”

  Ray nodded. “Yeah, both the houses were for sale at the same time and instead of naked people in the back yard, we ended up with yappy dogs. The dogs were easier on the eye.”

  Lorraine waved her hand again at Ray and both Julia and Lott laughed.

  They talked with Lorraine and Ray for another fifteen minutes and found out nothing more. So Julia and Lott thanked them and headed back out into the heat toward the car.

  Neither of them said a word until they were in the car and the air-conditioning was running.

  Then Lott looked at Julia, smiling.

  And she was smiling as well. They were finally making progress.

  “Think Maxwell killed the women?”

  Lott shook his head. “I don’t think so, but my bet is that he knows who did and exactly where that person is.”

  Julia nodded. “I agree. And Maxwell tipped off the killer that we were looking for him before we even got back to Vegas.”

  “Think the killer is Paul Vaughan, still alive?” Lott asked. “I do.”

  “I do as well,” s
he said. “No proof, but all arrows point to him. And he has Mary May somewhere, staying on his sick schedule.”

  “So we need to find where a dead man is living and under what name,” Lott said.

  “And get that poor woman out of there before it’s too late,” Julia said.

  Lott could only nod in agreement to that.

  Not a damn thing he could say.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  September 19th, 2016

  Outside of Las Vegas, Nevada

  BY THE TIME they got to Lott’s house with the KFC bucket between Julia and Lott on the drive there, Annie and her computer people had tracked the movement of Maxwell back two years, day-by-day.

  Julia had just finished setting the table and Lott had bottles of water for everyone when Annie pulled up. Julia left the lid on the chicken bucket until Andor got here to keep it all warm.

  Annie came into the house with a small file and took a bottle of water from the fridge and dropped into her normal place at the dining room table, downing most of the bottle in two long drinks.

  “So,” Julia said as she sat down next to Lott. “Maxwell?”

  “He’s not the killer,” Annie said. “He comes down to Vegas for car shows and car auctions and such about eight times a year. He drives himself and he always stays alone at the Golden Nugget downtown. His schedule doesn’t seem to alter at all on any trip.”

  Annie passed them both a sheet of paper from the file. “See if you can spot anything we’re missing.”

  The paper had three days marked on it and appeared to be the schedule for Maxwell while in Las Vegas.

  Julia studied it for a moment, trying to find any hole in the man’s schedule. Nothing. He did exactly the same thing every time he was here. Almost every hour of every day of his last visit three days after Mary May vanished could be traced by either his credit card or linked security videos.

  From the moment he left his room in the Golden Nugget hotel to the moment he got back, Annie and her people had traced him.

  “We have the same data on his last trip,” Annie said, “and the trip before that. Beyond that the security information has mostly been lost due to time.”

  “Do the dates correspond with the dates the women are taken and when we think they are killed?” Lott asked.

  Julia was surprised at that question and Annie seemed surprised as well.

  “They do,” Annie said, nodding. “He always comes to Vegas three or four days after the woman is kidnapped and again a week or so before the date of the accident.”

  “What are you thinking?” Julia asked Lott.

  “Lorraine and Ray told us they saw the two boys have sex with Paul’s sister together, sometimes in front of the parents.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Annie asked, shaking her head.

  “Not kidding I’m afraid,” Lott said. “And they didn’t seem to care, from what Lorraine and Ray said, who could see them.”

  Julia now understood exactly what Lott was driving at. “So you think Maxwell comes down twice for each woman and he and Paul pretend the woman is Paul’s sister?”

  “Exactly,” Lott said. He pointed to the schedule on the paper. “We just have to figure out how he gets out of this schedule and where he goes.”

  Julia and Annie both nodded. Julia had no desire to think about what those two men did and what the poor women had to go through before being killed.

  Lott then turned to Annie. “Any information about exactly what killed Paul’s sister?”

  Annie shrugged. “Head injuries from the car wreck. She was brain dead from the moment of arrival at the hospital and Paul had to pull life support a month after the wreck to let her die.”

  “So that’s how this all started,” Julia said. “Paul, messed up in the head anyway, thinks he killed his sister.”

  Then Julia had an idea she didn’t want to admit she had thought of, but she had to find out. “Any reports of how Paul treated his sister in the hospital that last month?”

  Annie shrugged and picked up her phone. A moment later she had instructed someone on the other end to find any reports or complaints or incidents around Paul Vaughan’s sister in the hospital.

  “We’ll find out,” Annie said. “It was along time ago, but hospital records tend not to ever get tossed away.”

  Lott just looked at Julia. She could tell his mind went to where hers had gone. But there was no point in discussing that until they had some proof.

  At that moment, Andor came in also carrying a small file.

  He went right to the sink and splashed water on his face and then got a bottle of water from the fridge just as Annie had done, even though there was a bottle for him already on the table.

  He sat down next to Annie at the kitchen table and as they all dug into the bucket of chicken, they caught him up on what they had discovered since lunch.

  “Also,” Annie said, glancing at Julia, “thanks to your suggestion, Heather has the FBI all over Maxwell, including tapping his phones and watching his every move without him knowing.”

  “Perfect,” Julia said. She felt better just hearing that.

  She turned to Andor who just finished his second piece of chicken and was wiping off his fingers. “Anything coming up from headquarters?”

  “Surprisingly,” Andor said, “quite a bit. The young guys are doing a pretty damn competent job on this and keeping me in the loop.”

  “Like what?” Lott asked just before Julia could.

  “The bodies are coming out of the ground from the most recent and working backwards,” Andor said, “since it’s easier to identify a recent body than a thirty-year-old skeleton. And better chance at DNA evidence.”

  “Smart thinking,” Julia said.

  “So far they have kept a lid on this, thanks to some favors from the newspapers and local television channels. But that lid will only last until tomorrow night’s news.”

  “Will the chief be ready by then?” Annie asked.

  “He has to be,” Andor said, laughing. “This will be a shit-storm and the governor has been informed and will be beside the chief as well pledging help.”

  Julia was very glad she wasn’t in their position.

  “The teams have ten bodies in the FBI morgue so far,” Andor said. “And the similarities of the cases are all coming very clear. All the women were killed by blunt force trauma to the head.”

  “Like Paul’s sister in that automobile accident.” Julia said. It was making sense now even more.

  “And worse yet,” Andor said, “some injuries to the head happened over a month before the fatal last blow.”

  “Shit,” Lott said.

  “I’m going to be sick,” Annie said.

  Julia just stared at her paper plate and the bones of the piece of chicken she had just finished.

  “Someone want to fill me in on what that is all about?” Andor asked.

  Lott told him how Paul’s sister had lasted after the car wreck for a month, completely brain dead, before Paul removed life support.

  “These women are filling in for Paul’s sister,” Annie said, “with Paul and Maxwell, right down to how the women are killed.”

  “Oh, shit,” Andor said.

  “That means we don’t have until the 27th of November,” Julia said, “to find Mary May, but the 27th of October before Paul starts beating on her.”

  “I don’t want this thing to last another day,” Lott said.

  Annie agreed with that as her phone rang.

  She picked it up and listened. Then she said, “Go ahead, I need all the details.”

  She listened and then thanked whoever she was talking to and clicked off her phone.

  Julia had not seen Annie shaken before, but whatever news she had just heard had really bothered her. Annie’s face was white and she was staring down at her plate.

  “Bad?” Lott asked.

  “Bad as we expected,” Annie said, taking a deep breath. “For two nights running near the end of Paul’s sister’s life, Paul
and another man were caught with her. They had undressed her and both of them were naked as well.”

  Julia didn’t want to hear any more, but Annie went on.

  “Paul told the hospital that it was part of their religious beliefs and promised it wouldn’t happen again. A week later, he pulled the life support on his sister.”

  Silence filled the kitchen and not even the wonderful smell of KFC could cut through the tension and disgust they were all feeling.

  TWENTY-SIX

  September 19th, 2016

  Outside of Las Vegas, Nevada

  “SO WHERE IS this killer and how do we run him to ground?” Annie asked.

  Lott had no one idea on that question. As far as any of them knew, Paul had killed Mary May and left the country. But Lott actually doubted he would do that. He had been getting away with this for thirty years. And the way he had taunted them up on the property, someone about to run didn’t do that.

  “I might be able to help a little on that,” Andor said.

  Andor opened the file he had brought with him. “I got all the information from the files of the last twenty missing women and went through it. Plus part of the gang has been interviewing some of the families of the victims and possible witnesses to the abductions.”

  “There were witnesses?” Annie asked.

  “Not so much up close, but distant, people who heard something, thought they saw something, that sort of thing,” Andor said.

  “So you found some patterns?” Lott asked. Patterns had helped them run down more cases in the past than clues. Criminals always worked in patterns and from the looks of this case, Paul and Maxwell were both creatures of schedules and patterns.

  “Always a dark blue sedan around the scene,” Andor said. “No make or model, but new and luxury. One witness thought BMW, two thought Jaguar, a number of others called it a Cadillac-like sedan.”