by Leslie Wolfe
“Tell me, Mr. Willie,” she said, reading his name tag, “what have you found? How did the unsub disable those vehicles?”
“Just Willie, ma’am,” he replied. “I’m a lowly service guy, not some fancy detective. I get to use my given name,” he quipped, and Elliot was quick to mock punch him in the shoulder. “Some people call me the car guy, the pad slapper, or the Interceptor Inspector. But no one’s ever called me the idiot in the garage or the clueless mechanic, not in thirty years of turning wrenches.” He took off his ballcap and scratched the roots of his gray mane, then put it back on.
Kay wondered what had caused his defensive statement.
“Let me show you what I found and what I haven’t.”
He went over to one of the workbenches with a pained, crooked gait, and came back carrying a handheld device. He showed it to Kay and Elliot, flipping through various screen settings. The small LCD screen of the device showed a series of alphanumeric codes that meant absolutely nothing to her.
“This gizmo here is called an OBD2 scanner. It connects to the cars’ internal computers and retrieves the error codes it finds, helping people like me figure out what happened. These vehicles,” Willie said, gesturing at the Jeep first, and then at the Nissan Altima and the Subaru parked outside, “returned code P-0-2-1-7.” He probably noticed her puzzled face, because he quickly added, “Overheated engine.”
“I see,” she replied, wishing she knew more about how car engines worked. “Any idea how that happened?”
A quick burst of laughter escaped Willie’s lips before he stifled it and said, “Of course, I know how it happened. I wouldn’t belong here if I didn’t.” He played with the OBD2 device for a moment, each key he pressed returning a subdued beep. “Most times, it’s because the coolant level is low. That happens when the radiator springs a leak, or the hoses are cut.”
“Were they cut, Willie?” Elliot asked, approaching the dismantled radiator on the tarp and crouching next to it.
“Nope,” he replied, the tension in his jaw showing how frustrated he was with not having a better answer. “The Subaru, which is the most advanced of these vehicles, also returned P two five six zero, which is the code for low coolant level. That means, at some point in time, the coolant level in the Subaru was low enough to overheat the engine.”
“At some point?” Elliot replied. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s fine as heck now,” Willie said, wiping his hands against the sides of his pants and walking toward the vehicle. He popped the hood and pointed at a white, semitransparent reservoir, tapping his finger on the fluid level line. “It’s up to spec.” He muttered an oath under his breath and lit a cigarette, his oil-stained fingers handling a Zippo lighter with the dexterity of a lifelong smoker. “That’s what I didn’t find. The reason why the engines overheated.”
“What happens when an engine overheats?” Kay asked. “Billowing smoke or something?”
“First, the check engine light will turn on, and if you care enough to know what the gauges on your dashboard mean, you’ll notice the engine temperature is climbing beyond the red line. If you still keep on driving, at some point these smart cars will stall and force you to stop, to protect the engine.”
“That’s how he forces them to stop,” Kay said. “And it’s relatively precise, right? Did all the cars stop in the same general area?”
“I checked all three navigation systems and yes, all three vehicles stopped in the same valley, just down from Katse, where there’s no cellular service,” Willie replied. “But then, later, when this killer of yours was done with them cars, they just miraculously functioned again.”
“Did you figure out what he did to erase the GPS return trip from the navigation history?” Elliot asked.
“That’s another thing I didn’t find,” Willie replied morosely. He seemed to be taking his lack of findings as a personal failure.
“Do you think it’s possible he somehow tampered with the cars’ computers, and made them think the engines were overheating?” Kay asked. “Maybe he has one of these devices, modified to—”
“Nah,” Willie replied after inhaling a lungful of smoke and holding it in for a second or two. “Do you know the level of skill you’d need to have to pull that off?” He flicked the cigarette butt, sending it into a small rain puddle. “No, it has to be this other thing.”
“What other thing?” Kay asked, a little irritated he’d left some information out.
“Something I found on the Jeep’s radiator, like a deposit of hard resin or something. I took a scraping and gave it to Deputy Hobbs. He said he’d send it over to the San Francisco lab, to tell us what it is.”
“What could it be?”
He scratched his chin, thinking, then walked inside and stopped by the blue tarp. “No one repairs radiators anymore; they just replace them altogether. But back in the old days, if you took a stone in your grille at high speed, and it chipped the radiator, causing a leak, the mechanic would solder that hole, patching it up.” He kneeled on the tarp and pointed at a certain spot on the radiator, where recent scrapes were visible in the thick layer of dust. “See here? Someone has done something to these fins.”
“And why aren’t you certain this is the unsub’s handiwork?” Kay asked, frowning slightly.
“Because it doesn’t seem new,” Willie replied. “It’s covered by a dust layer as if the car had been driven for a few months at least, after it was done. There’s no trace of recent leakage in the dust settled on the fins, like you’d see if coolant had leaked at high temperatures, washing some of the dirt away. And it’s not what’s typically used to patch up a radiator hole either. It’s not soldering material; it’s a resin of some kind.”
“So, you don’t know what happened to these vehicles,” Kay concluded, her voice sounding bitter, disappointed.
“I don’t,” Willie replied, looking at her straight. “That’s the god’s honest truth. But sure as hell I won’t stop looking until I have an answer for you. I’ll take apart the other two radiators, and if I see the same resin blob, I’ll know it’s his doing.”
She thanked him and walked out in the gloomy air, then, feeling the chill in her bones, climbed into Elliot’s SUV.
“He’s trying hard, you know,” Elliot said as soon as he joined her. He started the engine and let it idle for a moment.
“I don’t care if he’s trying hard,” Kay snapped. “I care those kids are still missing, and every day they spend with that monster is a day they’ll never forget, no matter how long they live. I care that by now he’s probably taken another woman, someone to keep his sick urges satisfied, and she won’t live long, but no matter how long she lives, she’ll wish she was dead already. Meanwhile, we have a lot of ifs and maybes, nothing certain, and we’re nowhere closer to catching this guy. That’s what I care about!” Her voice had climbed and climbed until it had turned into shouting. Feeling ashamed for her outburst of emotion, she lowered her head and said, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Elliot replied, touching her hand for a brief moment, then pulling away. “We’re all tired, disappointed, ticked off like a hungry, wild pig in spring.”
She breathed, exhaling long, easing the air out of her lungs slowly, while gathering her thoughts and remembering her basics. “Let’s go back to victimology,” she said. “There has to be something we missed.”
“Okay,” he replied. “We’ve been through it a couple of times already.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she replied. “We’ll keep going back to this until we understand how he hunts. That’s our only chance.” She breathed again, just as slowly, and started to correlate information in her mind. “There are now five victims we know about, different races. Three were mothers, two were not. Two of them drove to Mount Chester in their personal cars, three in rentals originating from San Francisco International Airport. By the way, are we getting Lan Xiu’s and Janelle’s vehicles brought over to our Mr. Willie?”
“That
’s happening today,” Elliot replied, after checking something on his phone.
“I’m willing to bet those two vehicles will show the same—what was it—code for overheated engine. He’s got a good method to get them to stop in the middle of nowhere; why change it?”
“Maybe it evolved over time,” Elliot replied. “Lan Xiu and Janelle died last year.”
“Maybe, but I believe this man’s been killing for more than a year. After this is over, we’ll have to consider expanding the cadaver dog search on the entire Silent Lake shore.”
Elliot shifted into gear but didn’t pull away, listening, waiting for her to continue.
She made an effort to focus, while her thoughts obsessed over the potential bodies they hadn’t unearthed yet. Were they real? Or just a result of her imagination, of her experience reading clues into the organized and precise manner in which he grabbed, killed and disposed of his victims? There was no hesitation in anything he did, nothing left to chance. Did it matter now? No… the only thing that mattered was finding and stopping him, finding those kids. Then they’d have all the time in the world to find the other bodies, if they existed.
“We know at least two of his victims stopped at Katse Coffee Shop, either before or after their vehicles were disabled,” she said, speaking slowly, piecing together the puzzle in her mind. “But, to me, it seems too close to the grab area,” she mumbled. What if what he did to those vehicles needed more time to kick in? “Let’s assume Willie is right and he messed with their radiators or something. What’s before Katse, when driving from San Francisco?”
“Winding mountain roads,” Elliot replied, looking at her with a raised eyebrow. Then he seemed to grasp the idea. “Seriously steep, curvy mountain roads, when cars overheat anyway. Some areas are at twelve percent.”
“Exactly,” she said excitedly. “Regardless of where these women came from, they all drove the same road, for at least one hundred miles or so before arriving at Mount Chester.” She frowned, staring into the distance, trying to recall the landmarks along the way. “At Katse, he would’ve drawn attention to himself; he’s too smart for that. So, then, where does he see them?” She paused for a beat, thinking of the best way to track down the movements of all the women. “We’ll need all the victims’ financials, credit card statements, everything. Somewhere along the way, all five women stopped somewhere, and chances are they spent a few dollars where they stopped.”
Elliot’s lips stretched into a smile. “Let’s figure it out.” Reversing out of the garage yard, he stopped again when his phone rang. Seeing Sheriff Logan’s name on the caller ID, he took it on the media center with a quick tap of the green button.
“Take me off speaker,” Logan said, and Elliot executed with a frown, putting the phone to his ear.
Kay wondered what that was about, but she wasn’t officially a member of Logan’s team. He had the right to keep some things closer to the vest.
When Elliot ended the call, he was tense, his brow deeply furrowed, and his jaw clenched. He turned onto the road and drove fast, heading across the mountain.
“I’m taking you home,” he said, a chill seeping in his voice she’d never sensed before.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing, I just have to take care of something, that’s all,” he replied just as coldly, obstinately keeping his eyes on the road.
“Elliot Young, you make a terrible liar,” she replied, trying to instill a little humor into the situation. Whatever was bothering him, they could work it out together. Had there been another victim taken? If yes, why would he keep that from her?
“Cut it out, Kay,” he reacted, gripping the wheel tighter and flooring it. “You’ll be home in five minutes.”
As if he couldn’t wait to drop her off. As if she’d done something to upset him.
“Please, tell me what happened,” she insisted, her voice calm, steeled, communicating without words that she was ready to listen to whatever he had to say.
His jaw stayed clenched for another long moment. She respected his choice and let the silence between them fill the space, become just as uncomfortable for him as it was for her.
When he eventually spoke, his voice was strangled, filled with pain. “Remember the rusted knife we found buried with Alison’s body? The one we found fingerprints on?”
“Uh-huh,” she replied. “What about it?”
“Those fingerprints came back. They’re your father’s.”
Thirty-Seven
Knife
Gutted.
That’s how she felt, fighting a sudden wave of nausea and dizziness that had her grabbing onto the armrest with white-knuckled fingers, breathing shallow and fast while blood drained from her face.
Could it be true?
She closed her eyes, recalling memories she’d tried so desperately to bury for the past sixteen years. The sound of the gunshots, piercing the panicked silence. Her father’s body, lying on the kitchen floor, the knife still clutched in his fingers, covered in her mother’s blood.
And his fingerprints, clearly on the handle.
The black plastic handle secured with three silver rivets, the typical cheap carving knife that came in kitchen knife sets of the kind that her mother could afford, that stores offered coupons with heavy discounts for, each year before Christmas.
That knife’s plastic handle would’ve survived in the ground, intact, undamaged by the passing of time, buried by her father’s decaying body yet coming back to haunt her sixteen years after she’d taken his life.
After someone had dug it up from his grave.
A fresh wave of nausea had her dry heaving, but she managed to feign a cough and go unnoticed by Elliot, as he was pulling into her driveway.
“This is where you get off,” he announced in an uncompromising voice, as if she were some hitchhiker he was eager to be rid of.
She opened the car door, but then turned to him and said, “That’s impossible. He’s been gone for sixteen years. No one’s seen him since he went to Arizona.”
He pressed his lips together, refusing to look at her. “It’s convenient as heck how you showed up here just when your father started getting busy raping and killing again, isn’t it? Doing who knows what to those kids?”
“Oh, God, no,” she reacted. “You obviously haven’t met my father.”
“I’d like that very much,” he said in a low, menacing voice, grinding his teeth. “Would you please introduce us?”
She sighed angrily, aching with the need to tell him he was dead, buried, rotting in the ground where her brother had put him all those years ago. Yet the liberating words died on her lips, and all she could say was, “He’s a drunk who’s barely had any schooling. The best day of my life was when he slammed that door and left, sixteen years ago. No one’s ever heard from him since.” She paused for a beat, then continued, in a calmer, more persuasive voice. “Remember what we said, when Dr. Whitmore told us about the knife. This unsub is way too smart to leave a weapon with fingerprints on it, and he’s leading us on to where he wants, playing us like puppets.”
“Yeah, Kay, that’s exactly what I’d have said if I’d returned here to cover for my father’s crimes,” he replied angrily, shooting her a fiery glance. The bitterness in his voice made her cringe. “You must believe the hillbilly cop from Austin, Texas, is some new level of idiot, don’t you? Wrapped around your little finger, unable to think for himself? Well, even a blind hog gets the occasional acorn. You tricked me, lied to me since the day we met.”
“What? I never lied to you,” Kay replied, her surprise genuine. She’d omitted to tell him about her father and the real reason why she’d returned home, but other than that, she hadn’t lied to him. She didn’t think so… her head was spinning, her nausea still strong.
Who was playing tricks with her mind? Who knew she’d killed her father?
He laughed, a quick, bitter laugh. “You conveniently forgot to mention you’d visited the body dump the day before we o
fficially met,” he said. “But I saw you that night. I saw you circle Kendra’s grave, looking for evidence that we might’ve missed, or maybe planting some, who the hell knows now?”
“Oh,” she replied quietly. She’d forgotten all about that night. “Well, you haven’t been exactly forthcoming either now, have you? Why didn’t you tell me you saw me?”
He whistled angrily. “Women! Leave it to them to turn any argument against you and make you look like a fool.”
She repressed a long slew of curses. The man was being obstinate as only men could be when an idea grows roots in their minds. “Listen, someone would’ve said something about my father, if they had seen him in all these years. Have you heard his name since you moved here? He wasn’t exactly a law-abiding citizen; that’s how you had his prints in the system. He’d been collared a couple of times for drunk and disorderly. Really, is this who our unsub is? Do you really see my father, the now sixty-year-old drunk, being able to alter cars’ navigation history or cause vehicles to stall and stop where he damn well pleases?”
Elliot stared ahead, at the garage door in front of him, not saying a word. Only yesterday morning he’d driven her lawn tractor out of that garage, smiling, waving at her. Caring.
She gave him the space to make up his mind, to find his bearings.
But he turned to her and said, “I’m sorry, Kay. The sheriff was clear about this. You’re off the case, and I have to get back to work.” The sadness in his voice was unmistakable, while his entire demeanor communicated a different feeling.
Shame. Guilt.
Without another word, she got out of his vehicle and closed the door. She watched him pull away from her driveway and drive off, and kept her eyes on his brake lights until they vanished behind the edge of the woods as the road curved left toward the mountain.
Then she shifted her attention to the willow trees in the backyard.
A wave of nausea grabbed her again, and this time she gave in, falling to her knees on the freshly mowed lawn and heaving, the memory of that night dancing in front of her eyes like a nightmare she couldn’t escape.