Deserted

by E. H. Reinhard

Silas

  Silas took the first of a group of fuel cans and began pouring a steady stream from the edge of the fire pit back toward the house. The fuel coated the small rocks and hard-packed desert floor. The process had been done before. He knew if he kept the line of fluid fairly straight through the clearing and up the cleared walking path through the brush, he’d be able to get by with just five cans of fuel. He poured until the can went empty, set it down where the stream stopped to mark his place, and walked back to grab another fuel can near the fire pit. After picking it up, Silas looked over at Harper stacking pallets and dead branches for burning around the large telephone pole standing up from the center of the fire pit. The pole had two metal crossbars attached to it, one in the center and one at the top, which was a good twenty feet in the sky. A pulley and chains dangled from the top bar. To Silas’s left, his nephew Bobby was setting up camping chairs fifty feet back from the pit.

  “A little further back, Bobby!” Silas yelled over to him. “Remember how much of a shock wave and heat there is when this thing catches.”

  His nephew acknowledged and moved the chairs back a bit further.

  Silas walked his gas can back to where he’d left the last one and started with the pouring again. The repeated sound of thumping caught his ear near one of the rusted-out cars ten yards farther up the path. Silas focused on the area as he approached it with his stream of fuel and saw his daughter and nephew. He paused for a moment to watch his nephew Ben holding a man down on the ground while Kerry repeatedly brought a grapefruit-sized rock down into the man’s head with both hands. From the looks of things, the guy, who’d been pulled from the shed, had been dead for a while.

  Kerry stopped her striking and pushed herself up from her knees. She let the bloody rock drop from her hand and looked at Silas. “Aunt Ginny says Grandma is ready up at the house.”

  Silas glanced up at the old house and saw his sister-in-law wheeling his mother out onto the porch. “Okay. This will only take me another couple minutes. If you two are done with him, why don’t you run back down by the fire pit and grab me the other cans of gas so we can speed this up.”

  “Okay, Daddy,” Kerry said.

  “Where’s your sister?” Silas asked.

  Kerry said nothing but pointed a bloody finger off into the distance behind Silas. He turned to see Kitty standing in the desert a hundred yards away. Kitty wielded an ax over her head as she stood above a kneeling woman. Silas remained still and watched his daughter bring the ax blade down directly to the woman’s forehead. Kitty let go of the ax handle, and the ax remained lodged in the woman’s skull. The woman dropped to her side and disappeared into the grass.

  “Baby!” Silas yelled.

  Kitty looked back toward him.

  “Go down by the fire. We’re almost ready!” he shouted.

  She waved her hand and skipped around the wild shrubbery in that direction.

  “That girl loves that damn ax.” Silas turned back toward Kerry, who was holding hands with her cousin. “All right. Grab me that gas and then go take your seats.” Silas turned back to his task of pouring the stream of fuel as Kerry and Ben walked hand in hand toward the cans.

  Silas poured until the can went empty, stood up straight, and stretched his back. He looked back down toward the fire pit and saw Kerry and Ben returning up the path with the remaining fuel. Silas wiped the sweat away from his bald head.

  The two set the cans down before him.

  “Is this going to be enough?” Ben asked.

  “It is.” Silas crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the pair. “What’s with you two?”

  Ben said nothing.

  “What do you mean, Daddy?” Kerry asked.

  “Holding hands. Something I should know about?”

  “We just missed each other is all.”

  “Right,” Silas said sarcastically. “You know better than to lie to me, Kerry.”

  “But I wasn’t lying. We did miss each other.”

  Silas snapped his fingers to silence her. His eyes went to his nephew. “Anything to add to this?”

  “No, sir,” Ben said.

  Silas peered at his nephew. Ten seconds passed, then twenty.

  “Keep it in your pants,” Silas said.

  “Daddy!” Kerry said.

  “The same goes for you,” Silas said. “I’m not dealing with any inbred spawn.”

  Silas turned and continued pouring fuel until he’d neared the side porch of the house with the stream. Silas poured the remaining fuel in the one can into a puddle a couple feet from the step of the porch. He looked at his sister-in-law, who was standing behind his mother’s wheelchair.

  “Push me to the rail,” Silas’s mother said.

  Ginny did as she asked and wheeled her to the porch railing.

  Silas looked at his mother. Her thin gray hair hung down past her shoulders, her right eye a cloudy white from a cataract. Her face showed deep wrinkles, and her lips puckered in from a lack of teeth. “Did you use enough gas?” she asked. “It evaporated last time, remember?”

  “I used enough, Mom,” Silas said. “I still have a full can here. I’ll run another stream over what I poured back down toward the fire.”

  “How much longer?” Ginny asked. “The sun is about to set.”

  “Just a couple minutes. We’re right on time.”

  “Okay,” Ginny said.

  Silas focused on his mother. “How are you feeling?”

  “How the hell do you think I’m feeling? I’m falling apart.”

  Silas smirked, set down the fuel cans, and climbed the single step onto the covered porch on the front of the ranch. He leaned over the back of his mother and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You still look great to me, Mom.”

  She reached her twisted, arthritis-riddled hand up and touched the side of his sweaty face. “My boy is so sweet. Is someone strung up? I can’t see.”

  Silas looked off the porch down toward the fire pit. His nephew Bobby was winching a man up the pole.

  “It looks like we’re almost set,” Silas said. “Let me go get everyone in their seats, and we’ll yell up to you when we’re ready.”

  Silas gave his mother another kiss on the side of her wrinkled face and left the porch. He poured the remaining can of fuel down the path as he walked toward the fire pit. Harper walked toward him, meeting him where the path opened up to the fire area.

  “I was just coming up to the house to let you know we’re ready,” Harper said. “Is Mom ready?”

  “She’s out on the porch. I told them that we’d yell up to them to let them know when to light it up. Where are the girls?”

  “Everyone is in their chairs. Come on.”

  Silas poured the remaining fuel to the edge of the fire pit, tossed the empty can, and rejoined his brother.

  Harper threw an arm over Silas’s shoulder as the two walked back to the chairs around the fire. “I’m glad you’re out. This was getting dull without you around. The girls seem to be enjoying themselves, too.”

  Silas scowled. “I think Kerry might have eyes for Ben.”

  “Those two have always had eyes for each other,” Harper said. “Hell, both sets of those kids. I wouldn’t worry yourself about it.”

  “I’m not worried. I just gave Kerry and Ben a little talking to about it. The next warning won’t be as gentle.”

  “And I hope you realize that it went in one ear and right out the other,” Harper said. “There ain’t a damn thing you or I can say to them that’s going to stop whatever’s happening from happening. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

  “You say that until there are a couple little cross-eyed mutant grandkids running around here. Damn well bet they’re getting left here if that happens.”

  Harper chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. I see your point. I’ll give the boys a talking to.”

  Silas and Harper took their chairs in the center of their children. Bobby and Ben sat to Harper’s left while Kitty and Kerry sat to Silas’s right
.

  Silas looked back toward the house and cupped his hands around his mouth. “We’re ready! Light it up!”

  Everyone around the fire turned in their chairs and looked back toward the house. A flame sprouted up from what Silas could see of the area where he’d made the puddle in front of the porch. A moment later, he could begin to see the fire chasing down the walking path.

  “Here it comes,” Kerry said.

  The flames inched closer, foot by foot, until they reached the end of the path and approached the fuel-soaked fire pit.

  Silas focused on the flame trail—thirty feet from the pit became twenty and then ten. Silas gripped the cloth armrests on his chair. At five feet away, the flames jumped to the pit, followed by a whoosh that Silas felt against his chest and face as the whole pit caught flame. Silas stared up into the sky at the thirty-foot burst of flames, which receded to half that height almost immediately. He focused at the man on the pole, screaming and thrashing as he was being burned alive.

  Silas glanced over at his daughters. Kitty seemed to be searching around her feet.

  “Lose something, baby?” Silas asked.

  “I don’t know what the hell I did with that bag of the marshmallows,” Kitty said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  We gathered in the conference room as soon as Bill and Scott arrived back at the Dallas office. Gallo had printed up everything Ball had sent over. By the time he’d e-mailed everything off to us, Ball had found two more people related to the Levy family residing in the small-town Texas area—Robert and Benjamin Levy. Robert was twenty-five while Benjamin was twenty-three. Apparently, in their short adult lives, they’d also taken up the family business and become violent career criminals. The latest offense by Robert involved smashing a woman’s head through a car windshield. In my brief time reading the files on everyone in the family, the only thing I kept thinking was how the girls had never been arrested for anything—neither Kerry nor Kathleen Levy had ever received as much as a traffic citation.

  Our group, besides me, consisted of Beth, Bill, Scott, Gallo, Steve from forensics, and Brian from the tech department. We waited on Chris to return to the room.

  “Steve, what’s new from forensics?” Gallo asked. “Anything we can work with?”

  Steve shook his head, causing his round cheeks to wiggle. “I got with the guys that went and processed the vehicles as soon as I got back. The prints on the change in the phone match the prints that were pulled from the truck that the man had been shot in. And the prints I took from a syrup container in the truck stop at the booth the girls reportedly sat at matched up with prints that were pulled from the rear of the vehicle that was owned by our missing older couple, Henry and Mary Baisemoore. Matching the prints to each other was the first thing we dug into. Again, they aren’t on record, but we have the prints to attribute the crimes. We have their prints now and their identities, so I added it into the system. About it. I can’t say that anything we collected can lead us in a direction of their whereabouts.”

  “Okay,” Gallo said. “Brian, what about you? Anything on any of that video that we can work with?”

  “Not that’s going to do much for us at this point,” he said. “It’s all just evidence, but like Steve said, nothing that’s going to point us in a direction. We have a pretty good idea of the make and model of the truck. Kenworth T800. The year on it we can’t really say. The video isn’t the best, and they’ve been building the truck without many changes forever.”

  “What’s forever?” I asked.

  “Over twenty-five years,” Brian said.

  I nodded but said nothing. I took my notepad from my pocket and jotted down the make and model of the truck.

  Chris walked into the conference room and closed the door at his back.

  “The IDs of the two women are with every news agency I spoke with. I also forwarded everyone their driver’s license photos.” Chris rolled out a chair next to Brian, seated at the far end of the conference table, sat down, and scratched at the right side of his graying goatee with a fingertip. “News outlets say they’ll make sure they give out the latest information and scroll the tip-line phone number on the screen. If these places start running this on the ten o’clock news, I’d say we will start getting calls to the tip line shortly thereafter.”

  “Who is the information from the tip line going to be funneled to?” I asked.

  “The office here,” Chris said, “with Gallo and myself listed as the immediate contact in the system. Personal numbers as well, in case something comes in when we’re not in the office.”

  “All right,” I said. “What about just getting their photos and truck description out to the truck stops?”

  “I had another two agents get on it as soon as I got back. I gave them the stills that you’d forwarded to me and had them put together a flier—basically, the photos of the girls, that they were sought for questioning by the Bureau, and the number for our office. The agents started making calls and sending e-mails. Their instructions were to notify the truck stops and ask them to post the fliers in a public area where they’d be seen. The contact number is my desk phone, which bounces to my cell phone if I’m not at my desk.”

  “Was the model of truck we believe them to be in added to any of that?” I asked.

  “If we have that now, I’ll get it added,” Chris said.

  Brian gave him the truck’s information, which Chris wrote down.

  “And I can assume that anything that gets put through to you will be immediately sent on to us?” Scott asked. “I just mean that if one of you gets a call at three in the morning, we’d rather hear about it then as opposed to the next morning.”

  “Of course,” Gallo said. “That’s a given.”

  Chris nodded in agreement. “Without a doubt.”

  Gallo put his elbows on the conference table and clasped his hands together. “The main thing we need to address is the house where these other Levys live and where the girls called. Are we thinking about getting someone from the El Paso office out to this place?”

  I couldn’t help but think of the agents who’d lost their lives in Kentucky when they were putting in footwork for one of our previous investigations. “If we need to check this place out, I’d prefer to do it myself.” I made a circle in the air with my finger. “Or at least have our team here be in charge of it.”

  “Fly there just to check it out?” Bill asked. “We don’t even know if that’s where they went. Our latest vics are all where we are now. Sending someone out locally is a hell of a lot more efficient.”

  “I damn well agree with you there,” I said. “Though I don’t like the idea of sending someone unfamiliar with the investigation into someplace where we literally know nothing. Yet, whoever is in that house that the call went to spoke with one of our suspects. That person needs to be questioned.”

  “What about a drive-by or flyover from someone local just to see what we’re dealing with there?” Scott asked. “We could get a satellite view of this location and make the decision on which method would be best.”

  “What’s that going to get us, exactly?” I asked.

  “Well, we’ll damn well be able to see if there’s a semi in the driveway,” Scott said.

  “Point taken,” I said. “We still need to question whoever was on the other end of that call, though. And sooner rather than later. How far is the drive?”

  “From here to El Paso?” Gallo asked.

  “To wherever this house is, yes,” I said.

  “Nine hours,” Chris said. “It’s a hike.”

  “You’re thinking about getting in a car and driving there?” Beth asked.

  “Unless I can get a flight that puts me—or us or whoever—there sooner. Get there early in the morning, grab a few hours of sleep, and have a few guys from the local office join me in taking a ride to this house for some questioning.”

  “Well, let’s see what we can do about getting some eyes on this place now,” Scott said. “I mean,
if you’re set on going, you’ll probably want to know what exactly you’re dealing with there. And if there’s a semi parked at the house, we’re all going.”

  “Brian,” Gallo said. “Think you could grab us a view of the property?”

  He rolled his chair back from the desk. “I’ll head downstairs and see what I can come up with.”

  “Thank you.”

  Brian left the conference room.

  I stared at the rap sheet we had for Silas Levy. “The girls could have come down here due to their father being released,” I said. “Can we get any kind of phone records to see who he spoke with prior to being kicked free?”

  “We should be able to get that,” Scott said. “It might have to wait until morning, but I’d have to think that it wouldn’t be too hard to acquire. Which also brings up another point. The phone calls from the prison system are monitored. We could have him talking with whoever picked him up. Where he was going to go. If his daughters were going to be there.”

  I glanced over to see Chris pulling his cell phone from his pocket and staring at the screen. He excused himself and answered as he walked from the conference room.

  “Okay, so these prison records, phone-call recordings, probably visitor records and all of that—getting these all need to be added to our list,” Gallo said. “What else can we come up with?”

  “I’d like to see if we can get some cars stationed on the interstate overpasses,” Beth said. “Troopers maybe. Keep eyes open for this truck they are in.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said.

  “I can get going on who we need to contact for that,” Gallo said.

  Our group sat for roughly another ten minutes rehashing what we had and what possible courses of action we could take. At that moment, I was pretty much set on traveling to the El Paso area and doing some questioning. As far as I was concerned, it was the only thing that had a legitimate chance of putting us closer to the two women.

  The door opened, and Chris walked back into the conference room. He held a single piece of paper in his hand. “We may have something here.” He retook his chair and set the paper on the table before him. “I just got a call from a truck stop in Allamoore, Texas. We have three separate employees that state they saw these two in there this morning.”