Deserted

by E. H. Reinhard

  I wrote down what the ME said.

  “So we have some evidence to go along with the two-suspect theory,” Beth said.

  “Any defensive wounds?” I asked. “Flesh under the nails, anything like that?”

  “None. But this is probably your reason for that.” Graves pulled one of the man’s hands from beneath the sheet and rested it across his chest, and marks around the wrist were immediately visible. “The other is the same.”

  “He was cuffed,” Beth said.

  “Appears so,” Graves said. “You can see those other fingernail marks here.” He pointed to the marks on the man’s right forearm. “And we had some pink fibers that appeared synthetic in the handcuff wounds on his wrists.”

  “Fuzzy pink handcuffs?” Beth asked.

  The ME shrugged. “Could have been.”

  “I don’t know if we had signs of that on previous vics,” Bill said.

  “It’s not ringing a bell, but that is.” Scott pointed at the black smudges around the man’s mouth. “We had another male vic that had the same thing on him. The forensics department that dealt with that body said it was lipstick.”

  “Remember where that one was found?” Gallo asked.

  “I’d have to get into the file,” Scott said.

  “Well, we collected a sample. Forensics started with everything as soon as he came in. I’ll walk you guys over there after we’re done here.”

  “Black lipstick lines up with our eyewitness account,” I said.

  “The guy you talked to this morning?” Bill asked.

  I nodded my head. “Yet that would mean that this woman hasn’t changed her look since she was a teenager.”

  “There has to be a possibility of DNA from saliva there if it’s from our suspect,” Scott said. “Perhaps in this guy’s mouth, as well.”

  “I took a cheek swab,” Graves said. “We’ll see what we get.”

  “Did you hear anything from forensics finding any hair on the guy, black or blond?” I asked.

  “I haven’t spoken with them,” Graves said. “But, like I said, I’ll walk you guys over there as soon as we’re through.”

  Agent Rockwell—or Chris, as he asked to be called—piped up. “Anything else with the body? What about these other bruises and scrapes?” He pointed at a couple various cuts.

  “The bruise on his side, I’d have to say is probably from being kicked or kneed,” Graves said. “He received that while he was still alive. The scrape on the shoulder and face were postmortem—no bruising.” He pointed at the corpse’s facial wound. “The man’s cheekbone is fractured, and like the shoulder, we had some dirt and gravel in it. Basically, like he fell to the ground on his right side, causing the wounds. Again, both of those injuries were postmortem.”

  “Would they line up with being dumped out of a vehicle and hitting the ground? Say, a semi?” I asked.

  “There’s not enough injury and abrasions present for it to be a moving vehicle. But the drop from a stopped truck to the ground is in the realm of possibility to create what we see here.”

  I wrote that down.

  “That’s about all that I have for you here. If you want to give me some kind of contact info, I’ll make sure the Bureau gets my full report as soon as I have everything compiled,” Graves said.

  Gallo pulled a card from his suit jacket and passed it to the ME.

  “Any other questions?” Graves looked at me then Beth, and his eyes continued to Bill and Scott.

  None of our group responded.

  “I think we’re good,” I said.

  “Okay, follow me next door,” Graves said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Kerry

  Kerry traveled ten minutes from the truck stop and found the most rural stretch of gravel road she could. A waist-high cornfield stretched as far as the eye could see on Kerry’s right—to her left lay another field, empty aside from some cattle far off in the distance. Kerry hadn’t seen a building, house, or another vehicle since she’d made the turn onto the road a mile or two back. She veered toward the shoulder, stopped the rig, and glanced in the side mirror to see the fifteen-year-old Chrysler pulling up behind her through the dust in the air. Kerry grabbed a brown paper bag from the passenger seat, popped open the driver’s door, and stepped down. She walked along the trailer to the back and stood at the front of the car. She stared in at the old couple from the diner, seated in the front, the old man behind the wheel.

  Kitty opened the rear door of the car on the driver’s side, keeping the barrel of the drifter’s gun pointed in at the old couple.

  “Turn it off,” Kitty instructed. “Get out. If either of you try to run, I put a bullet in your back.”

  The motor clicked off, and the pair stepped from the car’s front doors.

  Kitty shoved the man in the back, toward Kerry. “Move.”

  The three walked toward Kerry.

  “Please don’t do this,” the woman said.

  “Shut the hell up, granny,” Kerry said. “You wouldn’t be in this situation if your husband hadn’t opened his big mouth.”

  “Miss, I apologize,” the man said. “Just let my wife and me go.”

  “No,” Kerry said. “Get on your knees. Hands behind your backs.”

  The couple didn’t obey.

  “She said knees!” Kitty jammed a foot into the back of the old man’s left knee and dropped him.

  The old woman screamed for help.

  Kitty swung the barrel of her gun toward the woman’s forehead. “You make another noise and this gun is going to make a noise,” she said through gritted teeth.

  The woman went silent, and Kitty shoved her to the ground.

  Kerry looked up and down the road, not spotting any vehicles. “Let’s get these two bound and in the back. I don’t like doing this shit in broad daylight.” She knelt and pulled a stack of large black zip-ties from the paper bag.

  The old woman started mumbling something.

  “Shut her up.” Kerry handed Kitty a handful of the ties.

  Kitty tapped the lady on the head with the barrel of her gun.

  The old woman winced but continued muttering whatever she was muttering.

  “What the hell is she saying?” Kerry asked.

  “I think she’s praying.” Kitty dug her hands into the bag and removed a couple of pillow cases. Kitty jammed one into the woman’s mouth, silencing her. Then she tied the gag behind the woman’s head. Kitty took another pillow case and placed it over the woman’s head like a hood. She looped one of the zip-ties around the woman’s neck and secured the hood to her head.

  Kerry secured the man’s hands behind his back and then cinched a tie down around the woman’s wrists. Another pair of zip-ties bound the pair around the ankles—a third set connected the old couple’s wrists to their ankles, essentially hog-tying them.

  “Ple—” the old man’s words were cut short when Kitty jammed a gag into the man’s mouth, tied it, and draped a pillowcase over his head. Then she pulled a tie tight around the hood.

  Kerry went to the back door of the trailer, undid the lock, and pulled the door open. A screaming woman leapt from the back, arms flailing and feet kicking. The woman landed on the gravel road and immediately began swatting at Kitty, knocking her gun to the ground. She clawed at Kitty’s face.

  “Get over here.” Kerry grabbed the woman by the back of her long brown hair.

  The woman threw an elbow backward, connecting with Kerry’s eyebrow and dropping her to a knee, dazed. Kerry shook her head and looked up to see the woman screaming and running down the middle of the road. She glanced over at Kitty, who was holding her face.

  “Bitch scratched my eyes,” Kitty said. “I can’t see shit.”

  Kerry touched her eyebrow and looked at her hand for blood—none. “I got her.”

  She snatched the gun from the gravel and brought the barrel up on the running woman, a hundred feet away. She took her aim and fired. The woman’s hand went to her upper right leg. The fl
eeing woman stumbled a few steps forward and fell, face-first, to the road.

  “This thing shoots pretty damn well.” Kerry turned the gun in her hand and gave it a look. “Get these two in the trailer. I’ll go take care of our runner.”

  Kitty grumbled and moaned.

  She grabbed the old man by the back of the shirt as Kerry started toward the woman lying in the road. As Kerry closed in on the woman, she could see her moving. Kerry put the gun sights on the back of the woman’s head, set to finish her off.

  “Car!” Kitty shouted behind her.

  Kerry looked up past the woman, lying just ten feet away, and saw nothing. Then, she snapped her head around to look back toward Kitty just as a pickup truck was passing the rear of the semitrailer. A man was driving the pickup—the only person in the vehicle. Kerry turned back toward the oncoming vehicle, running, and put sights on the driver. She fired—two shots directly into the windshield above the steering wheel—and entry holes appeared in perfect placement. Kerry put another two through the open driver’s side window as the pickup passed. The driver slouched over. The truck left the surface of the gravel road, bounced across the shoulder, and planted its front bumper into a post for the cattle fence. Kerry walked directly toward the truck, keeping the barrel of the gun pointed inside, and grabbed the driver’s door handle with her left hand. She yanked the door open. The man was hunched over across the pickup truck’s bench seat, covered in blood. Kerry saw an obvious entry wound in the man’s neck—another two in his upper chest.

  “Adios.” Kerry pulled herself up into the cab of the pickup, placed the barrel of the gun directly against the skin of the man’s temple, and pulled the trigger. The man’s head bounced off the seat, and blood sprayed the passenger-side door and foot well. With the passerby no longer a problem, she hopped out of the truck and turned back for the woman, only to see her gone from the road.

  Kerry spotted the woman who’d escaped from the back of the trailer fifty yards into the cornfield, running at almost a full clip. She brought the gun up, squinted while she took aim, and squeezed the trigger—click.

  “Shit!” Kerry said.

  She glanced over at Kitty, who was slamming the back of the trailer closed.

  “Shoot her!” Kitty shouted.

  Kerry waved the pistol in the air. “Out of bullets.” She walked back toward the semi.

  “Well, go get her!” Kitty held her hands in the air.

  “I have on flip-flops. I’m not running through a damn field after her in these.” Kerry continued to walk toward the semi.

  “Fine, I’ll get her.” Kitty picked up a jog toward the edge of the road.

  “Just leave her,” Kerry said. “She’s got a bullet through her leg. She’s just going to bleed out and die in that field, anyway. The more she runs, the faster she’ll bleed.”

  Kitty stood along the side of the road, staring at Kerry.

  “Come on,” Kerry said. “We need to get out of here before anyone else comes along.”

  Kitty walked to the old couple’s car, to wipe it down.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  We spent an hour at the forensics lab and made our way back to our hotel. There, Scott got us access to a small conference room tucked in near the larger ballrooms. The plan was to go over everything we had on the investigation to that point so we could establish a plan of action moving forward.

  I had my notepad open before me, sitting on top of my copy of the investigation file.

  Scott kicked the meeting off as he scratched at the side of his short graying hair. “So what is the consensus? Have we come to the conclusion that we’re looking for two women? More than likely these mystery twins?”

  I’d been noticing that Scott’s New England accent hadn’t been as prominent in recent months—though there was the chance that I’d just gotten used to it.

  “Things are pointing in that direction,” I said. “The eyewitness stated twins. The hairs we found match with the color he reported, same with the lipstick. The DNA profile would line up.” I glanced down at my notes. “Speaking of the hair and the new ones that the forensics department found, if the lab is able to get DNA from these latest hairs they picked up, it can obviously tie this to the other victims, but it’s still not going to get us further ahead at getting identities on our suspect or suspects. They’re not in the system. What is going to, or can, get us a solid ID?”

  “Well, if we are in fact dealing with two females, from what our eyewitness was saying, they’d have to be what? Early twenties?” Beth asked.

  I nodded. “He said sixteen or seventeen, and that was six years ago. I’d say by that, we’d be looking at an age range of say twenty-one to twenty-four.”

  “So twin female serial killers in their early twenties,” Bill said. “Can’t say I’ve heard of that before, so digging into our database of files would probably be moot.”

  I looked over at Bill. “Ball said you were on this six years ago.”

  “If you can call it a this,” Bill said. “Another agent and I shipped down here, had a look at a couple of bodies and scenes, and then kind of followed whoever was doing this back up the freeway a couple of states. Basically, just looking at what was left behind. We never had any kind of a lead that turned into anything.”

  “Do you remember hearing anything about this witness that we went out and met with today?” Beth asked.

  “I vaguely remembered it when Ball brought it up, just from looking over all the paperwork on the investigation. I wasn’t the one who did the phone interview with the guy, though. Basically, it was a call that came into the tip line. With not having a license plate or anything concrete to go on, it just didn’t give the investigators anything to look into. Keep in mind that, like usual, there are hundreds of calls coming in when the tip lines go open. You know, the ‘I think it was this guy because of this’ and ‘I think I saw some guy who looked weird at a truck stop.’ I mean, they get looked into if they have merit, but you know how it goes.” He crossed his arms over his chest and went silent.

  Bill seemed almost defensive with his explanation—I thought Beth caught a whiff of that as well, for she quickly changed the subject.

  “So what do we have on our latest victim? Do you have his sheet there?” Beth asked.

  Scott pulled it from his file. “Anthony Armenti. Thirty-six, five-foot-ten, one hundred and eighty-eight pounds. Had a warrant for his arrest for skipping out on his parole. It looks like that is about six months old.”

  “What was he in for?” I asked.

  “Aggravated assault. Vic was a female. He has a laundry list of priors, though: theft, drugs, you name it. Off the radar since about the time that this warrant was issued, though.”

  “Probably living on the road,” Beth said. “To take into account what they said and we saw of his clothing.”

  “And the crime lab there, where we just came from, they did give us exactly where his body was found, correct?” I rummaged through the paperwork before me, looking for my copies of the information.

  “I have it right here, Hank,” Bill said. “Yeah, here’s the location and the write-up from the first responding officer. Looks like the guy’s name was Orman. Pickup spot was Sunnyvale, Texas.

  “Do we have the map of our drop points?” I asked. “Maybe we can look into where the previous ones were as well and kind of get a better idea of the route our suspect—or suspects—travel.”

  “I have some copies that I made of the locations here.” Scott moved his investigation file and pulled out a folder he had tucked underneath it. After flipping the folder open, he pulled out a couple sets of paper-clipped pages and passed a set to me, Beth, and Bill. Scott turned around the copy he had for himself and stared at it.

  I took the pages in hand and looked through them. The first page was a map of the US expanded along Interstates 30 and 40. Black and red circles marked areas that I assumed represented drop points. I flipped another page in to see larger sections of the maps for the individua
l states where the bodies were found.

  “The red ones are the latest dump spots,” Scott said. “Just this one we looked at today was found in Texas. Though you can clearly see the path from the prior victims’ drop spots marked in black, which go from one side of the state to the other. Once they get through Dallas, they follow Interstate 20 toward El Paso.”

  I took a minute to look over the sheets as did Beth and Bill.

  I looked at where the latest man had been found, in relation to the other drop points—they all followed the freeway within a handful of miles in each direction, and the latest was no different. My mind went to what Scott had just gone over on our latest victim’s prior arrests. I dug back into the file on the sheets we had for the rest of the victims. The one woman, for whom we’d found the car on the side of the road, was clean. The man and other two female victims all had priors—both of the women had arrests for prostitution and drugs, and the man had multiple assault-and-battery charges. I tried putting together how a pair of early-twenties females, if that’s what we were looking for, would get the better of what looked like career criminals. The latest man seemed to have had no problem roughing up women. The prostitutes couldn’t have made easy marks—something told me they were pretty much always on guard. I thought back to what our eyewitness said about them trying to persuade him with their feminine wiles. The pink handcuffs registered in my head.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Beth staring at me.

  “Think of something?” she asked.

  “I’m just kicking around how these two women, if that is in fact what we’re dealing with, have been getting the better of career criminals, prostitutes, and the like. Sex is about the only thing I can come up with. And it goes along with what our possible eyewitness said—luring the men with the suggestion of sex. Maybe they’re telling the women they’ll pay for their time or whatever.”