“Sure, we have a few left. Why don’t you pull to the side over there and come in to take care of everything.” The man reached through his open window and pointed to where he wanted her to park.
“Okay,” Molly said.
He lifted the barrier, and she pulled the car through. Molly parked and shut the car off.
“Hang tight, babe,” she said and stepped from the car.
Molly had her hair pulled up and tucked underneath a ball cap. Her plaid shirt was wrapped around her waist. She hoped the skin-tight white undershirt with its plunging neckline would keep the eyes of the man at the counter off her face. She walked to the shack and pulled the door open. The small room consisted of a rack of brochures and maps and the front counter where the man waited.
“Just you?” he asked.
Molly walked to the counter and stood before him. She kept her head down, looking at the sheet on the clipboard sitting on his counter. Molly glanced up at him. The man looked to be in his sixties and was short and round. The skin under his chin hung and wiggled with each movement of his head. Molly looked back down.
“My husband is meeting me later,” she said. “He wanted me to take care of the site before the office here closes.”
“Sure,” he said. “Well, like I said, we have a couple of sites available. You can pick whichever you’d like from the ones here that aren’t highlighted. The ones at the back here have concrete slabs for motor homes, so if you’re putting up a tent, you’ll probably want to be in this area.” The man made a circle on the sheet with his fingertip.
Molly bobbed her head and continued to look at the sheet. She put her finger down on the one she wanted. The campsite had two vacant spots at each side and was close to all the highlighted areas, which Molly assumed to be filled with RVs.
“Um, I guess I’ll just take this one.” She briefly looked up at the man, who was staring at her chest.
“Okay. Site fifty-four. And how many days?” he asked. He brought his line of sight up to meet hers.
Molly looked down. “Just tonight,” she said.
“All right. One night at campsite fifty-four, and that’s twenty-six dollars a night. How will you be paying?”
“Cash.”
“Sure. Fill that out for me.” He slid a sheet toward her. “Include your make, model, and license plate number there”—he pointed to the box—“and that will be twenty-six dollars even.”
Molly fished through her purse for her wallet and paused. “Do you guys sell firewood?”
“We have some just on the other side of the building here. Six bucks a bundle.”
“Sure, let me get two.”
“Okay.”
The man gave Molly her total, and she paid. Molly filled out the form with a bunch of made-up information and took a second to glance at the car for a tag number, which she wrote down wrong purposefully.
The man handed her a red tag to hang from the vehicle’s mirror.
“Do you need help loading that wood up?” he asked.
“Nope. I can handle it. Thanks, though.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Um, all right. Enjoy your stay,” he said.
Molly walked from the shack and around the side. She lifted two bundles of wood by the straps binding them, one with each hand, and walked to the car. She opened the rear passenger door, tossed both bundles into the backseat, and then got behind the wheel.
“Everything good?” Nick asked.
“Yeah, he was staring at my chest the entire time. We’re fine. I got us a campsite near the RVs with empty sites on each side.” Molly started the car and headed down the road.
“Good,” Nick said. “Tell me when we’re clear.”
“We’re coming up on a corner. Hold on.”
Molly looked at a sign planted in the ground at the T intersection. Sites one to thirty were to the left, thirty-one to seventy to the right. Molly turned right toward their campsite and looked back over her shoulder toward the back of the car.
“We’re good,” she said.
Nick popped up from under the blanket in the hatch area of the car and climbed over the wood to the passenger seat. “How did it look? A lot of people or no?”
“We’ll have some options.”
“Okay.”
Molly followed the signs and winding roads toward their site. The roads they looked down all held campsites with various brightly colored tents and people rummaging about. They spotted a few RVs and pull-behind campers scattered about.
“There we go, a bunch of RVs,” Nick said. He pointed out the windshield. Large RVs could be seen off to the right in the distance.
“Yeah, our site should be in there somewhere,” Molly said.
She made a right at the sign that listed campsites fifty to sixty. The sections on the left were reserved for tents, and directly across were the concrete-slabbed sites, all containing people, RVs, picnic tables and the like. Molly continued forward at an idle. She looked at each RV and noted the number of people at each site. The smell of campfire smoke filled the car.
Molly backed into the matted-down grass and dirt of their campsite and shut the car off. The site was half the size of a basketball court and sparsely wooded on the sides, to separate it from the connecting sites. A beat-up red picnic table sat next to a half-burned metal ring for a campfire.
“Let’s get our stuff out and get the tent set up,” Nick said. “We need to keep up appearances. Just keep an eye out for something promising. We’ll take a walk after we’re set up and it gets dark, to look around further.”
They stepped out of the car and unloaded everything from the back onto the picnic table.
They did their best to look like a pair of campers getting set up—they searched for a level spot to put up the tent, loaded sleeping bags inside, and set out the rest of their gear. Nick tossed a blanket over the hood of the car—anyone walking past wouldn’t be able to identify it or see the license plate on the front bumper.
CHAPTER EIGHT
We’d searched the entire rest stop and surrounding area and found no signs of the couple. The security office was unmanned though Beth managed to get a hold of someone who was en route and could help us view the footage from the parking-lot cameras.
Scott and I had banged on the doors of two of the three semis that had been in the rest area’s parking lot since we’d arrived. We needed to see if any of the drivers had witnessed anything or gotten a glimpse of the couple that arrived in the RV. We came up empty with the first two men—neither had seen anything, and the RV had already been there when they arrived.
Scott and I stopped at the door of the third semi. I reached up and banged on the red driver’s-side door of the rig. The truck was a car hauler with a trailer full of new Toyotas. A moment later, I spotted a man climbing into the driver’s seat. The door opened.
I reached into my suit jacket and pulled out my credentials. “Afternoon. Agents Rawlings and Matthews with the FBI. We’d like to ask you a couple of questions if you have a moment.”
“Um, sure?” he said. His weathered face indicated he was unsure why two FBI agents were standing outside his truck. The man stepped down from the rig and stood before us. He wore a red flannel long-sleeve shirt and a pair of blue jeans with a big belt buckle shaped like the state of Texas, which I thought was a bit stereotypical. He rubbed his eyes and then pulled a cigarette pack from the breast pocket of his shirt. He popped a cigarette from the pack with two quick upward flicks of his hand and lit it up. “What can I do for you?”
“What’s your name, sir?” Scott asked.
“Terry Wick.”
“Okay, Mr. Wick. We just want to see how long you’ve been here and”—I motioned him toward the front of the rig—“what you can tell us about that RV there.” I pointed toward the RV with our cars surrounding it and deputies mulling about.
“Tell you about it?” he asked. He took a long drag off his cigarette.
“Did
you happen to see the occupants?” Scott asked.
“Yeah, actually,” he said. He moved a bit of his finger-length brown hair from around his ear and scratched at it. “Two guys and a girl.”
“What?” I asked.
“An older guy and a guy and girl maybe in their twenties or so.”
“Tell us what you saw,” Scott said.
“Well, I was pulling in the rest stop here, and I saw the group at the side of the RV as I passed. It looked like they were transferring things from the RV there to the car. That was about it. I parked here and went in the back for a nap.”
“What kind of car?”
“Prius. Just like a couple on the trailer back there.” He motioned toward the back of his semi using his thumb over his shoulder. “White, a year or two old, maybe.”
“Is that a two door, four door, hatchback?” Scott asked.
“I think it was the station-wagon-looking model. Five door, I think they call it,” Mr. Wick said.
“Did you see where they went?” I asked.
“I imagine back on the freeway. Only place you can go.”
“How long ago?” I asked.
He got the time from his watch. “Hell, had to be an hour and a half or so now.”
“I don’t suppose you caught a tag number for the vehicle?” Scott asked.
The man shook his head. “I can’t say that I did. What is, um, what is going on here? Are you guys after these people or something?”
“We are,” I said.
Scott motioned for me to follow him away from the man and the semi.
“We’ll be back with you in a second, sir,” Scott said.
I followed Scott out of earshot from the man.
“We might be looking at some kind of abduction situation here,” Scott said. “We need to find that vehicle and see who the hell it belongs to.”
“Agreed. Let me find Beth and see what is going on with getting a look at this security footage that the cameras caught.”
“Okay. The last I saw her and Bill, they were up by the building. Let me make a call to get everyone alerted that they might be traveling in a white Prius and then wrap up with this guy. I’ll meet you up there in a bit.”
I nodded and headed to the building. Scott went back to the man at the semi.
I entered the covered center section of the building—a breezeway that allowed access to the facilities and vending machines from both lots. To my left were the women’s restrooms, the men’s to my right. Beyond them, closer to the side for those traveling in cars, were vending machines on the left and an open dark-gray metal door on the right. I spotted a security vehicle, a white sedan with a checkered strip down the side and a light bar on its roof parked at the curb. I didn’t see Beth or Bill anywhere. Then I popped my head into the open door and found them with a man dressed as a security guard, seated in front of a monitor. The three had their backs to me—Bill and Beth stood at the seated man’s sides. I rapped my knuckles on the open door and entered. The three looked back at me.
“He’s getting the footage pulled up now,” Beth said.
“I should have it up for you in just a moment,” the man said.
“It sounds like we’re going to be looking for a white Toyota Prius. I’d roll the footage from about two hours back,” I said.
“Prius?” Bill asked.
“A trucker in the lot saw them. It sounds like they might have commandeered someone’s vehicle.” I paused and rubbed my knuckle under my nose. “And the someone who it belongs to as well. The truck driver said there was an older man with them.”
“Shit,” Beth said.
Bill let out a breath and shook his head. He rubbed one eye with his hand. “It keeps getting better,” he said.
“Okay. This is about two hours back,” the security guy said. “We have camera angles at both parking-lot entry points, an overview of both lots themselves, and again facing the exits.”
“Sure.” I said.
“We’ll start on the entry angles.”
The man clicked a few buttons on the keyboard, and the footage began to roll, split down the center of the screen. He moved the pointer on the computer monitor over the icon to fast forward and held his finger down on the mouse. A few minutes in, we saw the RV pull into the parking lot and past that camera’s angle. The security guard pulled up the camera angle that was an overview of the lot at the same time. We watched the RV park in the same spot it currently resided and the couple step out.
“Definitely them,” Bill said. “No third person.”
The couple walked toward the building but veered right before the restrooms and vending area. They went off view from the camera.
“Let me get a view of the other lot,” the security guard said. He pulled it up.
“There’s our Prius,” I said, pointing at the right edge of the screen, where the car was parked. The car being so far from the camera prevented us from getting a good look at the tag number.
“Can you zoom in on that at all?” Bill asked.
“Sorry. What you see is what you get, unfortunately. We just had these cameras put in about a year or so ago—a program that the state put together, called Safe Stops. Aside from the cameras, we rotate manned security as well. It just so happens that no one was on duty here until this evening. Anyway, the cameras are pretty good quality, but we don’t have zoom and can’t really do anything fancy with the recorded footage.”
“Well, let’s just see what we got,” Beth said. “We can search and see if we can get a better angle on it later.”
“Yeah, we might be able to get a look at the tag when it leaves. If not, we can look back to when this vehicle arrived.”
We watched a man step from the car and remove a dog from inside—still no signs of Nick Frane or Molly McCoy. The man walked his dog back and forth at the edge of the screen. He stopped for a moment and then headed back toward his vehicle.
“There she is,” Beth said.
Molly approached the man and handed him something. A moment later, we realized it was a map when the guy spread it out on his car’s hood. Nick entered the frame next, first at Molly’s side, and then he went to the man. It appeared that some words were exchanged, and then Nick was holding a gun. The couple entered the man’s car and pulled away. We watched the car pass by the front of the rest-area building and go off screen toward the exit.
“Let’s see if we can get them leaving on the exit cam and get you a tag number,” the security guard said.
“They’re not leaving yet,” I said. “The truck driver saw the vehicle at the RV.”
He clicked a few keys on the keyboard and brought up the final camera angle for the side dedicated to passenger cars. We watched as the Toyota made a hard left back into the lot dedicated to buses, semis, and larger vehicles.
“Get the exit camera angle on that side,” Bill said.
The guard pulled it up. We had a crystal-clear shot of the front of the car entering the exit, as well as an equally clear tag number on the screen.
“Pause that,” I said. I pulled my notepad from my pocket and jotted down the tag number. “You guys finish watching that and see if there is anything else useful and then find out who that vehicle is registered to. I’m going to go get the tag number to Scott so he can get it out across the wire. He was just calling everyone with the vehicle description. We need this tag number added to that right away.”
“I’ll call back to Manassas,” Bill said. “Marcus and Lewis should be able to get everything and hopefully get us a location from the guy’s cell phone.”
I turned and left the security office and found Scott still with the truck driver.
“We got a tag,” I said from twenty feet away as I tapped the front of my open notepad.
He left the man at the side of the semi and walked to me. “You have them on video?”
“Yeah, I just watched it. Let’s get this tag number distributed.”
Scott held out his hand for my notepad, and I handed
it off.
CHAPTER NINE
We’d had the BOLO out on the car for the better part of three hours, and we’d expanded it to neighboring states. The helicopters covering the grid spotted four vehicles matching the description from the air. Local sheriff’s deputies had pulled over each vehicle even though none of the tags were a match. We weren’t taking any chances since they could have swapped plates. As it turned out, none of the stopped vehicles had our couple. Agents Makara and Gents waited at the rest stop—they were going to get the RV towed back to Omaha and have their forensics unit go over the vehicle with a fine-toothed comb.
Scott had gotten word that the helicopters had to suspend the search due to darkness. The tech twins back in Manassas got nothing on the man’s phone. The last cell-tower ping would have put him somewhere in the area, but the phone was off, and they couldn’t get a GPS signal for it. As far as finding the vehicle or its occupants, we didn’t get anywhere. We did, however, get all the information on the man, who we hoped wouldn’t become Nick Frane and Molly McCoy’s next victim. The man’s name was Lindsay Dunbar. He was sixty-four years old, listed as single, from Lexington, Kentucky. What he was doing around Omaha, we didn’t know. Ball was trying to get a hold of some of the man’s family to get more information.
Beth waited to make a left into the hotel’s parking structure. Bill and Scott were directly ahead of us, waiting to do the same. We figured we’d need a point as a home base until the case took us elsewhere. Jim, back in Manassas, had booked us a handful of rooms at The Residence Inn, located in downtown Omaha. He said the hotel was centrally located, allowing us easy access to just about any major interstate out of the area, and the Omaha branch of the Bureau was just a ten-minute drive away. Bill and Scott turned left into the parking structure, and we followed. We found two spots together a few levels up, grabbed our things, and headed down. The four of us hit the sidewalk out front, wheeling our suitcases toward our hotel on the corner of the block.
I glanced at my watch as we walked. The time was a bit after six thirty, and from the color of the sky, I could tell the sun would be down within minutes.
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