Smith's Monthly #24

by Smith, Dean Wesley

As Heather and Julia came running toward the rock, Lott stood and said to everyone. “It’s another envelope addressed to the Cold Poker Gang telling us to enjoy the view.”

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Mike said. “Don’t move and don’t touch that letter!”

  At a run Mike headed for his equipment in his car.

  Lott took one step back from the letter and watched Mike run along the dirt road.

  Another letter taunting them.

  What the hell was going on?

  Lott turned to Julia, who was standing below the rock looking worried. “Call Andor and find out now what was in that first envelope. And tell them to get a tech out here.”

  Julia nodded and pulled out her phone. She didn’t go back to the car but instead moved into the shade on the side of the rock under him.

  Lott made himself take a deep breath of the hot afternoon desert air and really look at the area. He had seen everything in satellite photos and on the ground now for hours.

  He knew this area.

  But what was he missing?

  Mike slammed the door on his SUV and came back toward him, carrying a hand-held scanner. Lott knew it was to look for explosives and electronics and other things, including anything buried under the ground.

  The device looked like one of those coin-finder devices that beachcombers used. But this one was a lot more sophisticated. Mike had the strap back over his shoulder.

  He had worn that machine and Heather had worn another one searching this entire area. But no ground in this area around the turnaround looked disturbed and they had found nothing.

  Nothing.

  Their steps in the desert dirt were the only ones. Only the wide dirt road had been traveled on.

  Suddenly Lott realized what he was looking at.

  The road.

  “Mike, there’s nothing up here but an envelope,” Lott said. “So do me a favor and turn that thing on and point it at the road under your feet.”

  Mike stopped about twenty steps from the rock where the road split and went around the big rock. He looked puzzled, but did as Lott asked.

  After a moment he started forward slowly, shaking his head and watching the instruments on the box machine in his hand. Lott knew that those instruments could almost give Mike a visual image of what was below the surface.

  Mike started on the right edge of the road and slowly moved over to the left tire track and the left edge, the entire time shaking his head.

  Both Julia and Heather were watching him from the shade.

  Finally Mike looked around and finally up at Lott. Even from the distance of being on top of a ten-foot-tall rock, Lott could see the haunted look in Mike’s eyes.

  “He buried them under the road,” Mike said. “Four bodies side-by-side.”

  Lott looked at the road where it came over the ridge where the two cars were parked and then along and around the rock.

  Thirty years of bodies, four per year, were buried under the road.

  Lott glanced down at the white envelope and the words, “Enjoy the view.”

  Now all he could see were women’s bodies buried under the entire width of the dirt road for as much as he could see.

  This was a view that would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. Of that, he had no doubt.

  PART THREE

  Playing the Hand Dealt

  TWENTY-ONE

  September 19th, 2016

  Outside of Las Vegas, Nevada

  THEY MET FOR lunch the following day at the Bellagio Café. Last night Lott and Julia had just gone home after the techs from both the county and Las Vegas arrived up on the road, as well as about a dozen police cars from the county and the city.

  There had been nothing in the envelope with their name on it and mailed to the box and nothing in the envelope on the rock and no prints or DNA or anything on them.

  Julia had felt almost hollow last night after finding where so many women were buried. It was going to take a massive amount of work to match bodies with missing women over the last thirty years, even with having their car information.

  Mike had figured there was a pattern of burial on the road after he and Heather had surveyed the road with their equipment while waiting for the techs from headquarters to show up. So that pattern might help as well.

  And Annie and Doc and Fleet had called the chief and volunteered their state-of-the-art lab to help expedite DNA testing where needed.

  So after a quick dinner, Julia and Lott had gone to her apartment. Both of them had taken showers and just sat on the couch in her living room and watched mindless television. It felt hollow and a waste of time to Julia, but they both needed to do that. Both to rest and to cool down and to give their minds time to think.

  Then this morning, Lott had headed home, soon to be her home as well which made her smile, to change and shower again. She had headed to the gym to try to work some of yesterday out of her system.

  Now they were waiting for Annie and Andor to join them for lunch. She felt better, actually. Refreshed and ready to try to tackle all this one more time.

  Around them the comforting sounds of the café felt good. The green plants, the sounds of the casino, the wonderful drifting laughter of people not dealing with hundreds of deaths.

  That felt good to Julia.

  So sitting in silence was fine for the moment.

  After a few minutes, she broke the silence. “You think the chief is going to kick us off this case again?”

  She knew that Lott had to be worrying about the same thing and not said a thing about it.

  “More than likely,” Lott said. “He’s got a serial killer on his hands and this is going to explode nationally later today or latest tomorrow. He won’t want a bunch of old detectives around.”

  “Even after the cases we have solved for the department in the past?”

  Lott shrugged and didn’t say what she knew he was thinking. They were retired. They weren’t actually in the department.

  They sat in silence for the next minute until Andor arrived.

  He was sweating, since he had walked from his car in the parking lot through the noon heat.

  Julia did what she often did and slid a glass of water toward him and a few extra napkins. A moment later, as Andor was drinking, Annie joined them.

  “It’s a mess, isn’t it?” Lott asked, looking at Andor.

  “Headquarters is a beehive,” he said. “What you two found out there has buried the entire department under a ton of shit. The chief is working with the county, of course, but none of them have the resources to deal with that many bodies. It’s going to take them weeks just to dig the bodies out of the ground, let alone process each one.”

  “I figured as much,” Julia said. “What a mess.”

  “Heather and Mike met with the chief last night,” Annie said, “and Heather contacted some of her people in the FBI and they are coming in to help as well. They are setting up a morgue in a warehouse near headquarters. The chief was very grateful for that.”

  “I’ll bet,” Julia said, shaking her head. She couldn’t even imagine the scale of death they were dealing with.

  “So what are they doing about Mary May?” Lott asked. “Any really fresh bodies out there?”

  “Some from earlier in the year, but none since she was taken,” Andor said.

  Annie nodded. “Mike confirms that from his readings.”

  “So she might still be out there alive somewhere?” Julia said, feeling slightly relieved. “There is still a hope.”

  “So that brings me to the next question,” Lott said. “Are we off this case?”

  “Nope,” Andor said, smiling. “When I asked the chief that question, he only laughed and asked if I was kidding. He said he needs all the help he can get and wants us to just keep on going and stay out of the press.”

  Julia actually felt herself relax.

  “Oh, thank heavens,” Lott said.

  Annie laughed. “Ah, come on, dad. I can’t imagine you stopping o
n a case this size.”

  Lott and Julia both laughed at that.

  “We wouldn’t have stopped,” Lott said. “But doing it aboveboard helps a ton.”

  “Got that right,” Andor said. “I hate sneaking around that station.”

  They all laughed and ordered their breakfasts and then Julia gave the signal that they needed to get to work by pulling out her notebook and opening it.

  Lott smiled at her and she smiled back. Damn it felt great to be working with the man she loved, even on a case like this one.

  “So anyone have any theories on exactly who we are chasing?” Julia asked. “List the suspects.”

  “Paul Vaughan didn’t kill himself,” Lott said, “and is playing out a pattern with his long-dead sister.”

  “Suspect number one,” Julia said and wrote that down.

  “Suspect number two would be Duane Thorn,” Andor said. “Whoever he might be.”

  “He doesn’t exist under that name,” Annie said. “Except for the license to sell cars, a driver’s license, and the ownership of that land with the bodies.”

  Julia wrote him down, but put a note by the name that it was fake.

  “Maybe an unknown suspect,” Lott said. “A person who knows about Paul and his sister. A person who imitated Paul’s sister back when we first talked with her and again yesterday. A person using the Thorn alias to sell cars.”

  Julia wrote that down as number three suspect with a big question mark. To her that one didn’t feel right, but they couldn’t ignore anything on this.

  “Let’s talk about the unknown person for a moment,” Annie said, leaning forward. “What do we know about him or her if that person is the killer?”

  “The suspect knows we are investigating and is ahead of us,” Lott said. “And he knows what we and other detectives call our group.”

  Julia wrote that down, then added, “The suspect knows a lot about Paul Vaughan and his family history, enough to create the fiction of his sister still being alive.”

  Everyone nodded and she wrote that down as well.

  They sat in silence for a moment, the distant sounds of casino filling the air with the sounds of other customers in the café eating and laughing and talking.

  Finally Annie said, “I’m going to have our people dig deep into the Vaughan family. Every friend, relative, neighbor that they had. Somewhere back there in the past all this started. And started for a reason.”

  “And why that one car dealership in Reno?” Lott asked. “Seems like it would have been easier and safer to take the car into LA and sell it.”

  Julia wrote that down as well.

  “Any chance those bodies will give us any help?” Andor asked. “I doubt it, but thought I would see what everyone thought.”

  Julia shook her head.

  Beside her Lott did the same.

  “I think they were picked for age and approximate looks,” Annie said. “My people have run everything they know about the missing women who had their cars sold in Reno and that’s all the similarities that pop. Age and looks.”

  “Figured as much,” Andor said. “So while the youngster detectives deal with the mess we dumped on them, we keep going.”

  “Exactly,” Lott said.

  Julia looked at the list of suspects. They needed to keep going. But on what?

  And how?

  They really had nothing.

  TWENTY-TWO

  September 19th, 2016

  Outside of Las Vegas, Nevada

  LOTT HAD BEEN very relieved that they could move forward with this without hiding from the chief. That helped a lot. And he had every intention of staying out of the mess that was now police headquarters.

  After lunch, Annie was going back to her offices to work with her computer people around the country. They were going to dig into anything at all in the Vaughan family history. Neighbors, friends, anyone they could find who had an encounter with the Vaughan family.

  And Julia had suggested before she left that she have her people dig through the leads the police had marked down in each case to see if there were any repeating patterns in the abductions.

  And who was the suspect in each case. They knew in Becky Penn’s case, Paul Vaughan was the suspect. Had he been involved with others?

  Or had an unknown man been involved with a number of them.

  Patterns. With this many victims, patterns over the years might just be what broke the case.

  Andor took the task of going to headquarters and staying in the background and listening to anything anyone came up with there, as well as visiting the morgue where the bodies were being taken as they were dug up.

  Andor said he was going to need chicken for dinner after five hours of doing that this afternoon and Lott and Julia had promised him chicken.

  Lott was glad Andor was doing that. It needed to be done, but it would have driven Lott crazy. Andor had more of the patience to do that and take in pieces and put them together.

  Julia and Lott were headed back to talk with Lorraine and Ray Walter to try to dig into the Vaughan’s past even more while Annie dug from the computer side. Lott wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know more details about the Vaughan family. But they needed them.

  Julia said, “You know, there is something really bothering me about those cars of the women.”

  “What’s that?” Lott asked, glancing at her as they turned into the parking lot of the retirement complex. He parked in the same place they had parked yesterday and he left the car running to keep it cool. Around them no one was moving. Not even a breeze rustled the palm trees. It just looked hot outside the car.

  “How did whoever kidnapped the women change the title on the cars so that Maxwell wouldn’t notice and would buy them? And so the cars wouldn’t pop up on a computer search?”

  Lott looked at Julia and all he could do was blink.

  How could anyone change a title on a car?

  Who could do that? Who would have enough information as to how to even start to do that? And the clear computer skills to pull it off so it couldn’t be traced, ever, no matter how many owners the car went through after that.

  That question was a lot more important than more background on the Vaughans in his opinion.

  “Call the Walters,” Lott said, putting the car into reverse. “Apologize and ask them if we can reschedule.”

  Julia pulled out her phone and dialed, then before anyone could pick up, she asked, “Where are we headed?”

  “To talk with Mike,” Lott said. “I think you might have hit on something.”

  “I hope so,” Julia said, then focused on talking with Lorraine Walter.

  Lott hoped so as well. They needed to find out how a title on a car could be altered without a trace. The killer had done it for over a hundred cars, cars spotlighted in a missing person’s case each time.

  That was a crazy risk to take, yet the killer clearly thought it wasn’t a problem and it hadn’t been.

  But how could it be done and done well enough to sell it to a reputable car dealership?

  And one more question that was bothering the hell out of him since this started. Why even take the cars of the victims in the first place?

  Something was going to need to make sense pretty damned soon. This was driving him crazy.

  TWENTY-THREE

  September 19th, 2016

  Outside of Las Vegas, Nevada

  MIKE WAS WORKING on a security install when Julia called him and he said he would be glad to talk with them about titles of cars. He gave her directions to the job site, a new office building downtown off Fremont.

  “Pull up out front and I’ll come out and we can talk in your car.”

  Julia gave the directions to Lott and it didn’t take them long to get there.

  Mike must have just been inside the double glass front door of the five-story building and stepped out as they pulled up and climbed into the back seat.

  Lott and Julia both turned so they could see Mike as he slid h
is large bulk into the middle of the back seat.

  “Thanks for talking with us on short notice,” Lott said.

  “After yesterday,” he said, “I want to help any way I can to bring this bastard down. Any news?”

  Lott gave him a quick update, including the fact that the Cold Poker Gang was still on the case. Then Lott pointed to Julia for her to continue.

  “How hard would it be to change names on a car registration in this state without leaving a trail?” Julia asked.

  Mike stared at her for a moment. “The women’s cars?”

  Julia nodded. “The registration records show they were owned by other people before Duane Thorn supposedly bought them and then resold them to Maxwell. But the car vin numbers stayed the same.”

  “It would be doable,” Mike said, clearly thinking about the process, “but not simple. The person who did it would have to have computer access into the records in the state registration in Carson City. They would also have to be able to access the records and cover their computer tracks easily.”

  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?”