“What’s the closest big city?” Karen asked.
“Houston and Austin are east and west, albeit a little south. North, the way we thought he was heading, would be College Station and Bryan. Those two together make up a couple hundred thousand people. Further north of that would be Waco, and then you start getting into the Dallas-Forth Worth areas. The thing is, if he put the pedal to the floor and just wanted to get the hell out of the area, he could be anywhere from Los Angeles to Miami. Hell, he could be almost to the Canadian border or Mexico City by now.”
“Any family that could be hiding him?”
“We tried getting Burr’s father and his son on the phone last night, but we couldn’t get ahold of either. Ball said he was going to take over that aspect of the case. Try to get some local departments to contact them and keep eyes on them on the chance Burr shows up.”
“Are they in Texas?” Karen asked.
“Nah, I think Mississippi and Louisiana.”
“What about Scott and Bill? You said they were interviewing people today.”
“Yeah. I talked to Scott about fifteen minutes ago. They were just getting set to leave for the prison. Hopefully, they get something.”
I heard a rap on my hotel room door. “Hang on, babe. Beth is banging on the door.” I pushed myself up from the chair and opened the door for Beth.
“You ready to go?” she asked.
“Yeah, let me just throw on a tie and my jacket. Karen is on Speaker.”
“Hi, Karen,” Beth said.
“Morning,” Karen said. “I’ll let you guys go work. Babe, call me when you can.”
I walked back to my phone and scooped it up from the desk. “I will.”
“Love you. Be safe,” she said.
“Love you too. Call you later.” I clicked off from the call, put on a tie and jacket, and scooped up the remote from the nightstand to turn off the television.
“Did you see any of the coverage from the diner?” Beth asked.
“Some last night, some this morning.” I flicked the television off. “On a couple different channels.”
“Yeah, I watched a little too. It was hard to miss. They were splashing the minivan and the tag number all over. Saw the bureau’s tip-line number on the news. Maybe it’ll give us a hit.”
I gave Beth a nod, tossed the remote on the bed, and grabbed my coffee. We walked from my room to the elevator.
“Where did you get the coffee?” Beth asked.
“From the little coffee maker in the room.” I took a sip.
“Ew, Hank,” Beth said.
“What do you mean ew?”
“Those things never get cleaned. And I don’t know about you, but mine was on the counter in the bathroom.”
“It was fine. I gave it a little rinse in the bathroom sink, filled it with water, and made a cup.”
She pretended to gag.
“You’re being dramatic.” I reached forward and hit the button for the elevator. “Plus, it was free. It really isn’t too bad.”
She gagged again.
I rolled my eyes, finished the cup of coffee, and tossed it in the bin just as the elevator doors opened.
After Beth grabbed a drive-through breakfast from Danny’s, a Southern fast-food chain, and I got an admittedly better cup of coffee, we headed north to Bryan. When nothing on the breakfast menu struck me as fitting in with my Keto diet, I told Beth I wasn’t hungry yet. I would have to come clean about it and take my chops busting if I struck out with lunch as well. Either that or throw in the towel and submit to the carbs, which had almost happened at the drive-through when the triple French toast breakfast sandwich caught my attention.
I talked to Ball as we drove. He said he was working on touching base with the district attorney, prosecutor, and judge who had originally sent Burr away. His thinking was that maybe one of the group would have something for us that we didn’t know. Ball also said that he got some people out to the homes of both Burr’s father and son and was waiting to hear back. I asked about the tip line, and Ball said that while a lot of calls had come through and some local police departments and sheriff’s offices had responded, nothing looked like a legitimate lead.
Shortly after eight o’clock, Beth’s phone rang. “I think this is the lieutenant,” she said. “She probably just wants to confirm that we’re still meeting this morning.” Beth swiped the screen on her phone to answer and brought it to her ear. “Beth Harper.”
I glanced down at my phone, and the running navigation said we were still almost an hour away from the sheriff’s office.
“Good morning, Lieutenant. We’re—”
I glanced over at her.
“What?” she asked. “This morning?”
Whatever the topic was, it had me intrigued.
Beth took the phone from her mouth and looked at me. “They found the van.”
Beth went back to the call. She was silent for almost a minute. “Geez. Where at?”
She got a response that I couldn’t hear. Beth again took her phone from her mouth and glanced at me. “See how far we are from a town called Calvert.”
I clicked it into my running navigation. “Says an hour and a half. Basically, it’s a half hour farther north than the sheriff’s office.”
“Okay. We’re an hour and a half from there,” Beth said.
She apparently got a response.
“And he’s the lead?” Beth asked. “Okay. Appreciate it. Can you text me the vehicle and victim information? I want to get it pushed through our channels as soon as possible.”
Beth was silent.
“That would be great,” she said. “We may still pop in after, but I’ll touch base with you one way or another later today.” More silence. “Okay. Thank you, Lieutenant.” Beth hung up from the call and shook her head. “Add another.”
“Another?” I asked.
“Body,” Beth said. “The van was found in a little parking area behind some buildings on the main strip in this Calvert. Searching the area, they found a mom-and-pop appliance store that should have been open but wasn’t. Lights on inside. Front door locked, back door open. They went in and found an older gentleman, the store’s proprietor, beaten to death. They’re looking for his vehicle now.”
I let out a puff of air. “How old is the information?”
“They just found the man this morning. An hour or so ago. It looks like he’d been dead a bit, though. Guessing yesterday.”
“So, we’re still a day behind this guy,” I said.
“Sounds like it. He could have gone straight from the diner to this town, did what he did, and got back on the road. The lieutenant said that she was going to text the victim’s name and vehicle information to me. We should be able to get the word out on it and get some people looking.”
I nodded but said nothing. We’d gotten a lead, but it hadn’t led us any closer to Burr. He’d taken another life, and we were still two steps behind.
Beth glanced at her phone and passed it to me. “Here is the victim and vehicle information.”
I dialed the Houston office and got Agent Spear on the line. He said that he would get the information spread across the state as quickly as possible. My second call went to Ball to spread that information even further.
Chapter 11
“I’m guessing this is us.” Beth slowed for the upcoming stop sign.
On the next block past the four-way stop, patrol cars filled almost every available parking space on the side of the two-lane road. Barricades had been placed on the sidewalk in front of a business smack in the middle of all the action. People stood on the corners and gathered on the far side of the street to watch what was going down. Beth stopped for the sign then pulled through the intersection. A uniformed sheriff’s deputy was standing in the street and directing traffic past the scene.
“Ma’am,” the deputy said a few feet from her window, “we’re going to need you to continue on.”
“FBI. We’re looking for a Sergeant Delgado,
” Beth said.
I had eyes on the front of the appliance shop that was barricaded off just outside of my window—deputies funneled in and out. A few people were inside.
“All right,” he said. “Make a right at the end of the block here and then your first right will take you into the alley behind the buildings. Deputy Pitts is there. We’ve got the alley blocked off, but I’ll radio him that I’m sending you back.”
“Thanks.” Beth made the right, and after we had a few quick words with the deputy manning the barricaded alley, he sent us back. We drove the alley toward the small parking area behind the building where everyone seemed to be gathered. More marked cruisers sat in the lot. Directly ahead and to the left was the minivan that had belonged to Heather Serra.
Beth parked along the back of the building, and we stepped out. A few uniformed deputies walked about the parking area. A couple of them stood at the minivan to our left, and more were gathered at an open door on the back of the building ahead and to our right. Above the open door was a small, faded wooden sign that read Earl’s Appliance and Repair. A man in a suit, who’d been standing with the uniformed deputies at the open door, walked to Beth and me.
“You the agents?” he asked.
“Agent Hank Rawlings. Agent Beth Harper,” I said.
“Sergeant Mark Delgado.” He extended his hand. “Pitts radioed that he was sending you through. You’ve been tracking this guy?”
“Trying to catch up to him, yeah,” I said.
“That what the lieutenant from Brazos County said. Well, he’s in Robertson County now. Or at least was. We had Brazos and now Robertson. Sounds to me like he’s headed north. You may want to touch base with Limestone County. McLennan County too. Maybe they got something on this guy in or around Waco.”
I knew that Waco had a field office and made a mental note to touch base with someone there.
“Who found the van?” Beth asked. “And the victim?”
“The business owner from next door spotted the minivan this morning,” the sergeant said. “He’s the same guy who also saw the back door of the appliance shop here open. He went in to see what was going on and saw our victim.”
“He recognized the van how?” I asked. “From the television coverage?”
“Yeah,” the sergeant said. “He saw it on the news last night. He also mentioned that he was pretty sure he saw it in the parking lot yesterday before he left for the night. Our forensics guys say that our victim has been dead for somewhere between twelve and twenty-four hours, so that could fit.”
“Betting closer to twenty-four than twelve,” I said. “We had him heading in this direction yesterday morning from the Millican area.”
“From the diner,” the sergeant said.
“Yeah. That went down around eight in the morning,” I said. “If he drove straight, he could have been here around ten or so.”
“I don’t suppose there are any cameras in this place,” Beth said.
Delgado shook his head. “I’ve got a couple of my deputies talking with the other businesses up and down the street, both sides. Maybe someone has something that caught this guy.”
“We put the word out on the vehicle that we believe he took. A pickup truck,” Beth said.
Delgado continued, “It belonged to the victim, Earl Harrison. An ’81 Chevy. Two-tone, white and blue. It has bigger wheels and tires and a little bit of a lift on it. Nice truck.”
It was a rather detailed description of the vehicle.
“There’s a photo on the wall of it inside,” the sergeant added. “Do you guys want to head in?”
I pointed for him to show us the way.
The sergeant headed for the back door with Beth and me in tow. We entered through a storage room. Parts both new and used-looking filled shelving units bolted to the walls. On the far right wall were washers and dryers and stoves and refrigerators in various stages of disassembly. We passed a small bathroom and stepped up into a more organized room filled with more of the same—parts and some half-torn-apart appliances. I locked eyes on our deceased immediately. Behind what looked like a front counter, a body lay on the floor beneath a blue sheet.
“The coroner should be here within an hour. We just have one in the county, currently busy with another customer,” the sergeant said.
I walked over to have a look at the victim and crouched beside the body. Even before I pulled the tarp back, I caught the smell of death. I glanced up at Beth looking over my shoulder. She held a knuckle under her nose, obviously smelling the same thing. Through the years in the bureau, and working Tampa homicide prior, I’d tried just about every concoction known to man in efforts to keep the stomach-turning stench of death from my airways. The only thing that really worked was menthol rub, and spreading it under my nostrils didn’t exactly scream professionalism. On top of that, I sure as hell didn’t have any on me. Even with the inside of the building being warm, bodies generally didn’t start smelling until they got close to the twenty-four-hour mark—just one more thing confirming we were a full day behind Burr.
I lifted the corner of the tarp to reveal more stench of death and a heavyset man with a forehead covered in lacerations. The man’s nose was clearly broken and pushed to the side. Deep cuts ran along his brow line. His white hair and beard were stained brown from the dried blood. I dipped my head to get a better look at the marks around the man’s neck—it appeared he’d been strangled. My eyes lifted from the man and looked around his immediate surroundings. I didn’t spot a cast-off speck of blood anywhere.
“Do we know where the attack happened?” I asked.
“Over by the refrigerators there, it looks like.” Delgado pointed toward the front of the store.
“Seen enough?” I asked Beth.
She nodded. I let the tarp drape back over Earl Harrison and stood.
The sergeant showed us where he believed the attack took place out in the sales floor area. Spattered blood was on a couple of appliances that seemed a little pushed back from the others.
“See that.” Beth pointed at the floor, where it looked like someone had made a quick attempt to clean up.
“Yeah, we think a rag was run over some of the blood on the floor. Probably just wiping it up good enough so you couldn’t see the blood if you put your face to the front glass looking in,” Delgado said. “My forensics guy, or gal, I should say, has the rag bagged and tagged.”
“Wallet or phone?” Beth asked.
“His phone is also with forensics. It was on the counter back there. We didn’t find a wallet,” the sergeant said.
“All right. Is Forensics still here?” Beth asked.
“Outside processing the minivan,” Delgado said.
“Shall we?” she asked.
Delgado led us through the appliance store and out back into the parking lot. We walked up on a small-framed woman searching under the driver’s seat of the minivan with a flashlight.
“How are we coming, Rachel?” Delgado asked.
She pulled herself from the van, stood up straight, and stretched her back. The woman, looking somewhere around thirty, couldn’t have been any taller than five foot. “Clean as a whistle. I mean, the van itself is gross. We’ve got a full dinners’ worth of French fries and chicken nuggets underneath the two front seats. There’s a brown substance accompanying it—ketchup at one time, maybe. Trash everywhere. Fast-food bags and the like. As far as relating to Burr, I haven’t found anything other than what are probably some of his prints. The keys were left in it. Looks to me like he simply drove it here, parked it, and left it behind.”
“But why here?” Delgado asked.
She shrugged.
“Sorry. Rachel Slater, these are agents—” He squinted as if searching for our names.
“Agent Rawlings and Agent Harper.” I pointed at Beth.
“Pleasure,” she said.
We had her run through everything she collected on scene and asked if anything she found could point us in any direction. There was
n’t much unless Burr had made a phone call either from inside of the store or from the deceased’s cell phone, neither of which we would know until the cell phone was processed or call logs were retrieved from both mobile and land lines. Back inside the store, Beth and I found a business card that listed both numbers. I dialed the tech twins in Manassas to get them rolling on it. After talking to Marcus, I had him put me through to Ball’s office. After a quick update on the scene, I hung up and stuffed my phone back into my pocket.
Beth wrapped up her call with Bill.
“How are they doing?” I asked.
“They said they got some phone records that didn’t pan out to anything. Sounded like they were just running interview after interview today.”
“And?” I asked.
“Nothing. So now where?”
“Early lunch somewhere,” I said. “I’m starving.”
“It’s barely after breakfast time. And how can you be hungry after just seeing and smelling that inside?”
“Gotta eat, and I’ve seen and smelled worse before.”
Beth shrugged. “I guess. What do you want?”
I dug my phone from my pocket. “I’ll find something. I could go for a salad.”
“Salad?” Beth asked.
“Yeah.”
“You want a salad? Mr. ‘Loaded fries and extra cheese’ and ‘Can I get another one of these to go?’ wants a salad?” Beth’s face indicated she was thinking about something. “What’s been up with your eating lately? Did Karen put you on a fad diet or something?”
“No. I’ve just been taking a closer look at what I’ve been putting in my body.”
“See, that sounded like something Karen would say,” Beth said. “Like in my head, I actually heard her voice coming from your mouth.”
I smiled and shook my head. “You’re hilarious. Nah, I just figure I could lose a couple pounds. Tone up a little.”
Beth nodded. “Right. Totally Karen’s voice again.”
“Whatever,” I said.
“So, what kind of diet did she put you on?”
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