by Leslie Wolfe
“You’re clear,” Fletcher announced. “He just used the GPS function in your phone.”
“Did you turn it off?” I asked.
“I could do that, but there’s no point. If he’s hacked into your phone enough to see your location data, he’d easily turn GPS back on and laugh about it. But there’s no spyware or bug that I could find. As far as I can tell, he’s not listening to our conversation.”
“How about the call?” Holt asked.
“It was a Skype call from overseas. Untraceable. I recorded all of it.”
“Excellent,” I said. “I made some notes about things I noticed during the call. The echo whenever he laughed or talked loudly. Some of his word choices; he might be former military.”
“Or a gamer,” Fletcher said. “Or a military movie buff. Those people would also use the phrase, ‘Stand down.’”
I groaned and started out the door to catch up with Holt.
“I’m on it,” Fletcher said reassuringly. “I’ll pore over every nanosecond of that recording and give you everything I can find.” He dragged his feet to where Holt and I stood by the elevator and grinned. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he asked, extending his hand in an inviting gesture.
I frowned, while Holt’s impatience manifested in another mumbled oath.
“The hell, Fletcher? Got something to say, say it already,” Holt mumbled.
“Your phones,” he replied, fishing two burner flip phones out of his track pants pocket. “Leave them here, unless you want to keep that dude posted with your whereabouts, so he can see you coming a mile out. I’ve already forwarded your numbers to these two.”
Ashamed, I handed him my phone. How could I not think of it? How could we? That was precisely how stupid mistakes were made, when cops stopped using their common sense in the heat of the moment. Holt’s eyes met mine, as the elevator doors opened. Then we rushed inside the cab and my heart sank, overwhelmed with a persistent sense of doom.
Soon we’d know if a parent’s worst fear had come true.
10
Crime Scene
Eleven hours missing
About a half mile section of Nevada State Route 160 was coned off and traffic was restricted to the left lane, pending the arrival of several backup units that were tasked with routing all the westbound commuters to the eastbound lanes. The coroner’s van had pulled onto the shoulder before our arrival, and two Crime Scene Units were already in place, unloading equipment and sample kits. Several all-terrain vehicles, bearing the insignia of the Sheriff’s Office, were leaving tracks up and down the dunes that blocked the crime scene from our view.
I’d expected Holt to pull over and grab an ATV. Instead, he found a place where the highway guardrail had been torn away and drove the Interceptor off-road, bouncing and tilting dangerously on the slopes covered in loose boulders and slippery sand.
Several Crime Scene technicians were already at the scene, marking the perimeter with yellow tape, working quickly and effectively without much interaction. Holt hit the brakes as close to the site as possible, sending swirls of pebbles and dust in the air, then rushed out of the SUV without even putting it in park.
I killed the engine and ran after him. As I was approaching, I watched him drop to his knees next to the body, and my heart stopped. Then he rose and turned sideways, facing away from the body, and buried his face in his hands.
Oh, no…
I touched his shoulder gently. “Holt,” I whispered, struggling to find the right words.
His hands found mine and squeezed. “It’s not her, Baxter,” he said. “It’s not my Meredith.”
I breathed a long sigh of relief.
“It’s a girl her age,” he added. “It could’ve been her. You have no idea how I’d like to get my hands on the sick bastard who did this.” He stared at the back of his hands as if he didn’t recognize them, clenching and unclenching his fists. Then he plunged his hands into his pockets, only the expression in his haunted eyes reflecting the turmoil of his thoughts.
“Listen,” I said quietly, seeing Anne approaching us. “I know you’re dying to raid that warehouse, but—”
“You do what you have to do, Baxter. I know why you took this case. But I can’t be here; I have to find her.”
“All I need is five minutes, all right?”
Anne and I exchanged a quick head nod and a hand wave.
“Hey,” she called, “you’re the lead on this?”
“Uh-huh,” I replied. “What do you have?”
“Just got here, Miss Fast and Furious, give me a few.”
She set her kit down near the victim’s feet, while I examined her face, careful not to touch anything before the coroner had given permission.
She was stunningly beautiful, with a youthful look that glowed like the rays of the sun. She’d been partially buried under dirt and rocks, and the desert winds had blown dust over her face, making her skin appear like parchment. Her eyes were clear, although the same dust had caught in her lashes. Her lips were pale and covered with the powder that coated everything, even us, if we were to spend more than a few minutes here.
Something was off about the girl; I couldn’t put my finger on what that was.
Anne approached the body, and I sought her eyes, about to ask why her lips weren’t the usual bluish pale I’d grown to expect to see on a corpse, when something caught my attention, a small movement barely visible in my peripheral vision. I focused my full attention on the girl’s face, studying every detail.
Then I gasped.
A fresh tear was rolling from the corner of her right eye, about to be obliterated in the dust layer settled on her face.
“Anne!” I called in a piercing, loud voice. “She’s still alive!”
The coroner grabbed her kit and rushed to the girl’s side. Her fingers searched for a pulse, while I watched with heartbreaking sorrow as another tear rolled down the girl’s cheek, following the path left by the first one.
Two technicians brought the gurney, while others started removing the stones and dirt that covered her body.
“Gently,” Anne called. “She could be bleeding under those rocks.”
She took a digital thermometer out of her kit and placed it between the girl’s lips. The device beeped immediately.
“She’s hypothermic,” Anne announced, and her assistant sprang into action. Riding the ATV like a valkyrie, she disappeared behind a dune.
“Where’s she going?” I asked, removing rocks as quickly as I could.
“This isn’t equipped with materials and supplies for living people,” Anne replied, pointing at her kit. “It’s meant for dead ones. But we have everything we need in the truck to keep her stable until the ambulance gets here.” Then she turned and looked inquisitively at Holt.
My partner was pale as a sheet. “I already called it in,” he said.
“Call a helo,” Anne ordered. “There’s no time to wait for a bus.”
I heard Holt make the call, then he knelt by my side, quickly removing rocks. A few inches deep, he uncovered the edge of a tarp.
“Doc?” he called, holding the corner of the tarp with two gloved fingers. “What do I do?”
“Keep removing stones, then we’ll lift the tarp without tilting it. Maybe there’s evidence on it, fingerprints, DNA if we’re lucky.”
It took us less than a minute of feverish work to finish exposing the entire surface of the tarp. The girl’s entire body had been covered with it.
“On my count,” Anne said, holding on to a corner of the tarp and getting ready to lift it up. “One, two, three. Then slide over, and fold, fold again,” she directed, then gestured toward one of the technicians. “Evidence bag.”
The technician held the bag open while Anne carefully placed the tarp inside, sealing it quickly.
“Oh, my God,” I heard her say quietly. “How much longer ’til that helo gets here?” she asked.
“Under five minutes,” Holt replied.
Reluctantly, dreading what I was about to see, I looked at the girl’s body, naked and crushed under the weight of the cold, desert rocks that had been her tomb, while she still drew breath. Her eyes, blue as the deep desert sky at dawn, stared into the distance, blurred with tears. Her lips remained immobile, although if I listened hard enough, I thought I heard her scream.
I couldn’t begin to imagine what that young girl had been through, how it must’ve felt to be buried alive, in the cold, dark, desert night, and then in the scorching sun, deadly even in winter.
I willed away the shudder that had taken over my body, hoping I could get her to speak with me, to tell me anything that could help me catch the animal who had done this to her.
“Why isn’t she moving?” I asked Anne. “Can she talk?”
“She’s in shock. Her heartbeat is irregular and faint, and she appears paralyzed,” Anne replied. “The desert gets cold this time of year, and she’s been exposed out here for a while. See how the sand has settled in the folds of her exposed skin, at the roots of her hair?”
“How long?”
“I can’t be sure, but at least a day and a half, maybe two. She’s severely dehydrated.”
“Can we move her?” I asked quietly, cringing when I realized what that meant. More pain, more blood, more silent unheard screams.
“It’s risky, her heart could stop, but we have to,” Anne replied. “We can’t waste any more time.” She pointed at the girl’s legs, covered in bloodstains. “She’s been bleeding for a while. Some of the dried blood is darker, almost black. That’s at least twenty-two hours old. And this one,” she pointed at a dark red smudge on her inner thigh, “this is fresh, under one hour. Red blood cells still hold active hemoglobin, giving them this red hue.”
She beckoned two of the technicians, and they took positions around the thwarted grave. With expert hands, they eased a sheet under the girl’s body, then, on Anne’s count, lifted her fragile physique onto the gurney.
“Warm blankets, stat,” Anne ordered, and a technician rushed to the coroner’s ATV, now loaded with emergency medical supplies. “Warm saline, large bore,” Anne demanded, then extended her hand without looking. Her assistant handed her a needle, waiting by her side with a bag of intravenous fluid.
In the distance, the sound of helicopter rotors spinning brought tears of relief to my eyes. The helo approached, circling low, looking for the best place to land.
“She’s crashing,” I heard Anne shouting. Then I watched as she straddled the gurney and started administering CPR. “Breathe,” I heard her say, counting in gasping breaths, “One, one thousand, two, one thousand. Come on, breathe for me.”
The technicians pushed the gurney toward the helicopter, and the noise of its blades shearing the evening air quickly covered the high pitch of Anne’s vehement voice. Choked and unable to stop shaking, I studied the emergency crew from a distance as they slowed their frantic efforts, shoulders slouched forward, heads lowered.
The girl who had been buried alive in the desert was never going to name her assailant.
She was gone.
11
News
Twelve hours missing
Holt watched the team load the girl’s body into the coroner’s van and felt like he couldn’t breathe. Against the grim visuals of the crime scene, flashbacks of his little girl growing up kept invading his mind, her crystalline voice loud as if she were there, calling him, laughing, playing in the sun.
“Daddy,” she’d screamed, a screeching, high-pitched call that he couldn’t ignore.
He got up from his lounge chair and abandoned his beer on the patio table, then dove into the pool to get to her.
With one quick move under the water, he got close to her, popping his head up from underneath, doing a decent imitation, at least in his opinion, of the Kraken sea monster. He snarled, mouth open wide, and made claws with both his hands, while Meredith laughed wholeheartedly, splashing him with water.
“The monster’s coming,” he said, but his threat didn’t scare his brave little girl.
She giggled some more. “Is the monster bringing ice cream?”
He mocked a thoughtful monster, making a funny face with his claws frozen in mid-air. He felt tempted to say there were real monsters out there, who never brought ice cream to little girls; only death. But his daughter’s innocence would last forever, untainted by the horrors he witnessed every day at his job. He’d make sure of that.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Meredith’s tearful voice snapped him back to reality.
He’d let his own past haunt him, and the playful face of the monster he was impersonating for his daughter’s amusement had turned into a scary grimace of horror and angst. It was as if he could see into the future, a not-so-distant future when monsters he fought so hard to keep at bay would seep into his world and touch the lives he cared about, despite his best efforts.
He’d die before he’d let that happen. It wasn’t a solemn oath he was taking; it was a fact he knew well.
He picked Meredith up and willed himself to laugh again. “The monster has no ice cream, Mer. What should we do?” Then he let her fall from two feet above the water, knowing her inflatable swim ring would break her fall, causing nothing but a splash.
She squealed with delight as her fall sent rainbow-colored droplets in the air.
“Let’s go buy some,” the girl demanded, splashing him with tiny fistfuls of water.
He picked her up again and climbed out of the pool. He dried her rebel curls and her tiny body, mixing in monster sounds and tickles, then pulled on a T-shirt and some shorts and grabbed his car keys.
“Let’s go,” he’d said, and Meredith had raced him to the car, squealing and laughing, feigning fear of the ice cream monster.
Holt remembered that drive to Baskin-Robbins and its 31 flavors as if it were yesterday, although ten years had since passed. He recalled how a strange chill had stayed with him that entire day and had haunted him for weeks after, as if a dark, ominous cloud was forming above his horizon. As if the real monster was watching, waiting, ready to pounce and take his little girl.
“Daddy!”
He heard the voice from his memories loud, real, as if she were there, close enough for him to touch. Frantic against all logic, he looked around and saw nothing but the usual scenery that came with his job. A new crime scene, tagged and marked, being photographed and sampled, loaded stone by stone into evidence containers, all in the hope that the killer had left a trace of himself behind.
His little girl’s voice still echoed in his mind, but his partner’s voice overlapped. She was standing nearby, supervising the collection of evidence from the gravesite. A man was approaching her quickly, his stride determined, uncompromising. He’d recognize that gait anywhere.
“Captain,” Baxter said, “what brings you out here?”
“Not now, Baxter,” Captain Morales replied, heading straight for Holt.
Oh, shit.
Holt met him halfway. “Captain,” he said, his voice betraying his surprise.
“Why the hell aren’t you home, waiting for that ransom call to come?”
Captain Morales was famously direct, to the point of being blunt, even offensive at times.
His words sent Holt into a tailspin of worry. How did he know? How many other people knew about Meredith’s kidnapping? Maybe he’d been a desperate, first-class idiot to expect it not to get out when so many people knew about it.
Baxter had approached the two men, standing behind Morales at a polite distance and looking straight at Holt. He saw the same angst he was feeling reflected in her eyes, although she didn’t know nearly as much as he did about the people who’d taken his daughter.
Holt stood quietly, at a loss for words.
“Why on God’s green earth didn’t you tell me your kid’s missing?” the captain continued, frustration driving his pitch higher and higher.
“How did you know?” Holt asked.
“How did
I know?” Morales reacted. “You’re asking me that, instead of telling me why my best detective doesn’t trust me enough to tell me his daughter’s been kidnapped?”
“Captain—” Holt started to say, but his boss was too angry to give him a chance to say anything in his defense.
“Jeez, Holt, you drive me nuts sometimes,” he replied. “You and Baxter are the best cops I’ve ever worked with, yet you both behave like reckless fools.”
That statement sent Baxter’s eyebrows up; she was just as surprised to hear Morales’s words as he was.
“Sir, I—”
“Not another word, Holt, when I have to find out shit like this from the news.”
“What news?” Holt asked.
“That nitwit teacher cried a river live on ABC News just now. As if we didn’t have procedures for this scenario. She was supposed to call Dispatch and verify the information those fake cops gave her,” Morales added, but then his earlier anger returned in full force. “Are you insane, Holt?”
“Sir,” Baxter intervened, “if I may—”
Holt looked at his partner, urging her to shut up, to let him handle it. For a change, the most obstinate woman he’d ever met obliged. She didn’t say another word.
“Captain, we’re working both cases at the same time,” Holt replied. “This is a new murder case, and you have no one else available. My partner and I are splitting the tasks.”
“Really? Walk me through it, tell me how you’re doing it.”
