The Girl on the Bus

by N. M. Brown

  Glancing down, Vicki found there were drawers on either side of the refrigerator. Rather than disturb Leighton’s eating again, she decided to make an educated guess. Opening the drawer on the right side of the icebox, she immediately regretted it. A deep pile of photographs lay in front of her. They provided multi-coloured snapshots of a lost life - the four year old girl standing on a faded lawn next to her kneeling father, he in uniform, and she wearing his hat; her first day of school, waving to the camera from the window of the yellow school bus; a blurry Christmas morning, with a girl standing in The Lion King pyjamas and clasping a stuffed lioness; a smiling ten year old holding a tin cup, with red ribbons attached to it. One of the most crumpled photographs was of a small girl gently cupping her hands to hold a small falcon. Her eyes were wide with wonder and concern. Beside the pile of photographs were two bottles of Zolpidem sleeping pills. One of them looked half empty. Closing the drawer, Vicki felt like an intruder.

  When Vicki came back into the room, and looked at Leighton sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor, eating a sliver of pizza, and peering intently at the screen of her iPad, Vicki felt a sudden of rush of emotion. This quiet, dignified man, who listened to blues and kept a tidy house, was helping her messed up mission, when he had enough hidden pain of his own to deal with. Part of her wanted to thank him somehow - to make it better.

  She crossed the room, and sat on the floor purposely next to Leighton, handing him one of the beers.

  ‘Look at this,’ he said, tilting the screen so Vicki could see it. ‘There are others missing here who were from all over the country but were last seen along the Route 66. The devil’s in the detail.’

  ‘How many more are there?’

  ‘Looks like another seven,’ Leighton said, as he dragged his hand over the scrub of grey stubble on his face.

  ‘You want me to lay the coins on the map?’ Vicki asked.

  ‘Sure, grab the jar, and I’ll call them out to you’

  By the time the pizza was finished, and the two bottles of beer drained, Vicki and Leighton sat on opposite sides of the table, looking at a scattering of silver coins peppering the map in a roughly rectangular pattern. The shape stretched like a fractured speech bubble from Riverside northwards, then east to Needles, then south through Lake Havasu City, then west to Blythe, and back along to Riverside again.

  It looked to Leighton as if the sites marked out a simple, circular route. Most serial killers would produce a map of victims more chaotic than this one. It therefore seemed the regularity of the pattern was down to the specific journey taken by the bus. This meant it was conceivable there were two or three killers out there. A private bus would provide access and opportunity to victims.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Vicki asked.

  ‘About the criminals.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They will most likely be organized, non-social…’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well, a disorganised killer leaves a trail of chaos from opportunistic attacks; an organised killer is careful. Their trail is neat and tidy, latex gloves, controlled violence, and the victims are preselected. This map doesn’t suggest chaos.’

  ‘Well, if you’re right, could they just stop what they’re doing, vanish back into the world?’

  ‘It’s unlikely - most of them only stop in one of three instances - they either get caught - which happens less than most people imagine - or, more often, they kill themselves. That allows them to retain their sense of control right till the end.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You said there were three instances. What’s the other one?’

  Leighton pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping to hell Gretsch was right, and this was just a dumb fantasy. ‘They sometimes burn themselves out in a final frenzy. This,’ he said, and nodded at the thirty-two coins on the table, ‘might only be the warm up act.’

  ‘We should inform someone.’

  ‘I already tried to call it in officially. They won’t listen.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I screwed up a few years back.’ Leighton sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose again. ‘That’s how I ended up working homicide.’

  ‘I thought you moved because of your daughter’s accident.’

  ‘It was partly the reason. The night Kenna died, I was first at the scene. Nice twist of fate, huh?’

  Vicki put her hand on his.

  ‘It’s stupid how the stuff you want to forget stays with you the most. The rain was battering down, and it was dark. Tony stayed in the cruiser, calling the accident in. I remember hurrying over the wet road to this small red Honda, and how I had to shield my eyes against the flames coming from the cracked engine …’

  ‘Leighton, you don’t need to tell me.’

  ‘It’s okay, you should know. At first, I didn’t realise it was her car, but as I got closer, I saw the license plate. I just remember screaming her name, and pulling in the door handle. Got this in the process.’ Leighton turned over his right hand, revealing shiny patches of white skin where the pads of his fingers had been fused to the hot metal.

  ‘The smoke was too thick to see inside, but I knew she was already gone. I pulled the door open, but I just made it worse - the rush of air sent the flames into an inferno. The blast knocked me off my feet. But, I saw her, in those seconds before the fire took her. It would have been better if I’d been the one who stayed in the cruiser. She was already dead, but still seated - her legs and hair already on fire. It was like seeing a cremation from the inside.

  ‘Oh, Leighton.’

  ‘Tony had to drag me away. I was hitting out at the poor guy, but he saved my life. The fuel tank blew, and the force of it slammed us both off the side of our cruiser. They wanted me to take the entire month off, but I had nothing else to do.’

  ‘You went back to work?’ Vicki struggled to hide the horror in her voice.

  ‘I did. And things were manageable for a couple of months, until that Sunday afternoon, when we came across a crushed SUV on the freeway. It had hit a patch of diesel and spun out. The driver was inside, banging on the glass. Tony was out of the cruiser in moments, but I couldn’t move. He was yelling to me for help, trying to pull the door open.’

  Leighton paused, as he became consumed by his own dark memories.

  ‘Did he die?’

  ‘No.’ Leighton shook his head. ‘Tony got around the passenger side, and pulled him out that way. He was a good cop. After that, I was a pariah in Highway Patrol. Nobody wanted to work with me, and I couldn’t blame them, either. Anyway, that’s how I got transferred to homicide, but the force occupies a small world, and my reputation reached Homicide before I did. Most of the guys thought I was some kind of white elephant to drag around murder scenes with them.’

  ‘That must’ve been tough.’

  ‘Yeah, for me, and them. But, I’m a decent worker, and I slowly got results earned some respect … I think that pissed Gretsch off even more.’

  ‘Gretsch?’

  ‘The chief at Oceanside, and my boss for seven long years. He’s a determined career cop, who resented my presence there from the start. That was the reason I got pushed to retire early.’

  ‘You mean, it wasn’t your choice?’ Vicki asked, her eyes widening.

  Leighton shook his head. ‘A few months back, Gretsch invited me into his office. He put his feet up on the desk and his hands behind his head. He smiled, and asked me how things were going. I remember noting it was the first time the man had ever smiled at me.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  Leighton shrugged. ‘I said while dealing with murder could never really be described as enjoyable, I liked my job, and felt I had helped solve a number of cases, including the Black Mountain Ranch fiasco that got him the promotion to chief.’

  ‘Reno?’ Vicki frowned. ‘Not that thing about the meatpacking guy that was all over the news.’

  ‘Yeah, my noble chief got
the credit for that one.’

  ‘What did he say, in the office, I mean?’

  ‘He said I had got lucky on that case, that I was over the hill, and my pyro-phobia made me liability.’

  ‘What an asshole.’

  ‘I asked what my options were. He told me I could choose to retire, or he could initiate a psych assessment and competency requirement. He already had the papers drawn up for either eventuality. He had them rubber-stamped and ready to go.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I signed the application for early retirement, and I left.’ Leighton sighed.

  ‘Why didn’t you fight it?’

  ‘The system’s bigger than one pain in the ass.’

  ‘But, surely, you could have done something!’

  ‘Maybe,’ Leighton said softly, but did not sound like he believed it. ‘I guess I just didn’t fancy having some stranger taking a walk through my head.’

  The beeping noise from Vicki’s tablet broke the tension with a shrill alert. She swept her finger across the screen, and tapped an icon to life.

  Frowning as she read the text, Vicki turned to Leighton. ‘It’s an email from a full-time hacker I know from my student days. I asked her to dig into any data linked to the phrase Route Kings – she’s scraped up the name and address of the person who set up Route Kings site - and it’s local.’

  ‘Looks like the train trip’s off,’ Leighton said, and got slowly to his feet.

  29

  At 7:45 a.m. the bright sun was already rising on the car that pulled to a gentle stop outside the two-storey apartment block in a residential area of Midway. The air being drawn through the car’s air conditioner carried the greasy stench of frying meat mixed with cigarette smoke.

  ‘Okay.’ Leighton turned to Vicki, as he switched off the engine. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Officer Sarah Anderson,’ she said resolutely.

  ‘Where’s your badge?’

  Vicki pulled the jacket of her dark trouser suit open to reveal a metal star in a leather wallet folded over her waistband. She had to wear it that way, because the other side of the badge, pressed against her stomach, revealed a dated photograph of Leighton in his Highway Patrol uniform.

  ‘Excellent.’ Leighton smiled. ‘Now, remember, this might be nothing, but he could be dangerous. Don’t say anything, unless you have to - impersonating an officer is a criminal offence, but can’t be proved if you don’t actually speak. Just take out the notepad, and write down anything you think important. Okay?’

  Vicki smoothed her hair back. For the first time in weeks, absurd as the situation was, she finally felt she was helping to find Laurie.

  ‘Right, then. Let’s speak to the man,’ Leighton said, and climbed out of the car.

  The scuffed door of the apartment was opened by a short scruffy man in his early twenties. His hair was sticking up, and he was wearing three quarter length pants and a faded Pacman t-shirt.

  ‘Billy West?’ Leighton asked, as he slid one foot into the doorway - ensuring it could not be closed.

  ‘Yeah,’ the young man yawned. This was something Leighton had come to associate with guilty people - attempting to appear so relaxed they were sleepy.

  ‘I’m Detective Jones.’ Leighton held up his badge. ‘This is Detective Anderson. May we come in?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We have some questions we’d like to ask you,’ Leighton spoke slowly. ‘To avoid your neighbours hearing, and perhaps drawing a false impression of you, I suggest we speak inside?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ the young man said. He tried, unsuccessfully, to remain sounding casual, as he ran a hand through his tangled hair.

  Leighton noticed before he turned to lead them inside their host had glanced momentarily at Leighton’s belt, where his Glock 17 was located. He made a mental note to keep his body out of the other man’s reach.

  Billy led his visitors through to a sparse living area consisting of bare orange walls, a black sofa, and a wooden table, on which sat a can of Sprite, a half-empty glass, and a tin ashtray with the remnants of a joint in it. West wandered over to the table, and picked up the glass.

  ‘So, what’s this about?’ he said, taking a small sip of juice.

  ‘You design websites?’

  ‘Yeah, I do a bit. Not a crime, is it?’ He raised his chin, as if to challenge Leighton.

  The older man was not intimidated and continued with his questions. ‘What do you know about a website for a company called Route Kings?’

  West frowned, and moved his eyes upwards in a deliberate thinking pose. ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘That name doesn’t ring any bells.’

  ‘That’s strange,’ Vicki said. ‘Because the Regional Internet Registry has verified that the named person who originally registered the domain name for Route Kings,’ she checked her black notepad, ‘is one Mitchell Webster, which we have discovered is the alias you have used to purchase thirty domains.’

  Leighton stared at West, hoping to hell Vicki knew her stuff.

  ‘So,’ Leighton said steadily, ‘I’ll ask you again. What you know about the Route Kings website?’

  In one frantic gesture, the young man threw the glass and its contents into Leighton’s face, and darted towards the open door. Whilst Leighton clutched his stinging eyes, Vicki grabbed out at West. He responded by thrusting a half made fist into her face, knocking her to the floor. As he broke away from her, he punched Leighton in the kidneys, then vanished out of the room. Leighton staggered against the sofa, gasping for air, then, somehow, righted himself.

  ‘You okay?’ Leighton blinked at Vicki, while rubbing his eyes.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she lied, and waved a hand at him, holding her bleeding nose with the other.

  ‘Okay, I’m going after him.’

  Leighton stumbled out of the door into the bright street, to see West roaring by on a dark green motorcycle. He got a note of the first part of the license plate, but it shrank away from him too quickly. In his younger years, he would have been faster, better. He cursed his naïveté.

  Back inside, he found Vicki standing in the small a bathroom, holding a bunched-up handful of toilet tissue against her nose. She looked smaller and more vulnerable here in the dark corners of the real world.

  ‘He’s gone.’ Leighton breathed out. ‘I’m sorry for bringing you here, getting you hurt. I should’ve come alone.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Vicki said. ‘You want to take a look around?’

  ‘Hell yes. Whatever his role is in all of this, he certainly wasn’t keen on sharing anything, was he? I’ll let you get cleaned up.’

  As he walked out of the bathroom, Leighton unclipped his Glock - just in case Billy decided to return. There were two doors outside the bathroom. Leighton pushed open the first on to reveal a cramped kitchen, where Domino’s pizza boxes were neatly stacked on the floor, in an angular column, next to a bin overflowing with soda cans.

  Proceeding to the second door, Leighton slowly opened it gun first and discovered a room that was both bedroom and workplace. The single bed was neatly made with a colourless bedding set. Opposite this were two computers and a range of neat black devices lined up on a wooden desk. The screen of the computer furthest away revealed a low budget sex movie, featuring a woman handcuffed to a bed. Leighton discretely moved over and switched off the machine, before Vicki came in. He turned his attention to the desk drawers, all of which were empty.

  ‘You found the set-up?’ Vicki asked from the doorway.

  ‘Yeah.’ Leighton smiled. ‘Seems a bit of a small operation. How’s the nose?’

  ‘Blood’s dried up. You want me to confiscate any of the technology?’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon we’re due it as compensation,’ Leighton said, ‘but let’s make it quick.’ He placed his gun in his shoulder holster, but left the strap off, just in case it was required. Behind him, Vicki quickly disconnected cables.

  ‘Will you be able to hack into them? Is that the term?’

/>   Vicki nodded. ‘I hope so. But, we need to take it back to my house.’ Vicki stacked the two remote drives and a notebook into a neat pile. ‘There,’ she said in a nasal tone. ‘All done.’

  ‘Okay.’ Leighton smiled crookedly. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

  30

  At 10:00 a.m., National Park Ranger Frank Mankato, who had been cruising the perimeter of the southern tip of the sprawling desert of the Joshua Tree Park, pulled into the dusty picnic area. Even at this time in the morning, the sand-coloured tables were starting to fill up with families having a snack, or preparing their backpacks before a day of hiking on the long, hot trails.

  Frank got out of the vehicle, put his wide brimmed hat on, and made his way through the area. He smiled congenially, and said good morning to the scattered patrons. He made small talk with most of them, mainly ensuring they had enough water, hats, and sunscreen. At this time of year, it was not unusual to get a couple of heatstroke fatalities in the park - during Frank’s first year on the job, they had had two in one day, when the temperature hit 105 Fahrenheit.

  Picking up some scattered food wrappers from beneath the large metal barbecue, he placed them in a bin, and purposely ignored the two female students who were obviously concealing a couple of joints beneath their wooden bench.

  Making his way to the edge of the area, Frank unclipped his binoculars from his belt, held them to his eyes, and surveyed the area for any sign of trouble. There were more dangers in the park than heatstroke. Some trails were a less than a meter wide, and featured sheer drops of hundreds of feet.

  Maps, and the ability to use them, were also essential - some people chose to mark their path with the endlessly replicated rock formations and cacti as points of reference, only to find they were walking in wide circles until their water run out, and somebody collapsed.

  The information points at the entrance and warnings throughout the park provided travellers with advice, both on potential dangers, and on how to signal for help by using mirrors or smoke signals. Despite the many warnings, most people still put dumb hope in their fancy cell phones, which had limited - if any - coverage in the park.