Blood Trail

by C. M. Sutter

  After an hour of waiting, Gary was getting nervous. He counted his own steps as he paced the living room.

  Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two steps. Come on, Hope. What’s taking you so long?

  Gary grabbed his phone and called Leon. “Where the hell are you?”

  “I’m driving to Buffalo just like I’m supposed to be, why?”

  “I’m getting nervous. Hope should have been here already. Have you passed Gillette yet?”

  “No, I’m five miles east of there.”

  “Then drive by Hope’s parents’ house and see if her car is parked outside.”

  Leon groaned into the phone. “Do you really think she’d do that?”

  “Didn’t you tell her not to go anywhere, but after you went to bed she sneaked out?”

  “Yeah, good point. I’ll call you back in ten minutes.”

  Gary pulled open the refrigerator door and looked inside. He needed a drink to calm his nerves. He didn’t want to be there, but he didn’t want to go back to prison either. One way or another, Hope would be a thing of the past at some point that night.

  The only thing in the refrigerator was a carton of milk. He opened it, sniffed, and gagged. He poured it down the drain and started going through the cabinets.

  “Bingo!”

  He found a bottle of whiskey, and that would do just fine. He poured two fingers into a glass, gulped it, and poured some more. Seconds later, his phone rang. It was Leon calling back, and Gary knew as soon as he answered, their life would change forever or remain the same. Apprehension took over, but he had to pick up.

  “What’s the word?”

  “Her car wasn’t there.”

  Gary let out a relieved breath. “Thank God. So where the hell is she?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m taking the same route that she would. Hope doesn’t drive back roads. She’s afraid to in case she ever broke down. I’ll watch for her car, but I still have an hour drive ahead of me. Keep your eyes peeled, bro. She could show up at any minute.”

  “Yeah, I intend to. Just get here as soon as you can, and park down the street, not in front of the duplex.”

  “You got it. See you soon.”

  Gary pulled a chair to the window, sat down, and turned the wand on the blinds just far enough to see out. With the lights off, Hope would have no idea he was inside, and that was the plan.

  His head bobbed several times. Gary rubbed his eyes, stretched, and checked the time. He’d only been staring out into the dark night for twenty minutes, and he was already dozing off. He stood and paced some more.

  Damn her, where is she? Maybe she stopped for food or gas. Maybe she got tired and pulled over at a wayside to sleep for an hour.

  Just then, Gary saw headlights coming down the street. At that time of night, it couldn’t be anyone else. It had to be Hope. He watched out the window until the car pulled up to the curb in front of the duplex. It was definitely her.

  Now you’re going to get what you deserve.

  Gary stood behind the door and waited. He heard her reach the porch and slide the key into the doorknob. She gave it a jiggle, then the door swung open. Gary pounced and slammed her to the floor. Hope tried to get her feet under her, but he knocked her down again. Her keys and cell phone slid across the tile.

  “You make one sound, and I’ll beat the crap out of you. Do you understand me?”

  “Gary?”

  In the dark, he knew she couldn’t see who he was. “Yeah. Did my voice give me away? I can be your worst nightmare if you force me to. Why did you come here when Leon told you not to?”

  She stammered out her response. “His car is a piece of shit, and so is his apartment. I’m not used to that type of filth.”

  Gary laughed. “Well, get used to it, because wherever you’re going probably won’t be much better.”

  Hope began to cry. “What does that mean?”

  Gary snickered. “You’ll find out soon enough. We don’t need troublemakers in our little organization.”

  Hope scrambled to her feet and bolted for the bathroom, but Gary was on her in a second. He slammed her head against the bathroom door, and she dropped to her knees, out cold.

  “That’ll teach you who runs the show.”

  Gary tore through her bedroom drawers and found what he needed. Several belts would do the trick. He bound Hope’s hands behind her back then belted her feet together. A roll of tape sat next to him in case it was needed, but after seeing how one of their girls choked on her own vomit and died because her mouth was taped closed, he decided to hold off unless it was absolutely necessary.

  With Hope secure, Gary took a seat on the hallway floor and called Leon. “Hey, dude, she showed up and won’t be a problem. Just get here as soon as you can.”

  “She won’t be a problem? What the hell did you do, Gary—kill her?”

  “No, I didn’t kill the bitch, but her fate is on you. You’re the one who couldn’t control her.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You’ll find out when you get here.”

  Chapter 14

  Eventually, Gary had to put tape over Hope’s mouth. Once she came around, the screaming began, and the last thing Gary needed was the upstairs neighbor calling the cops or pounding on the door to inquire about the noise.

  “I told you what would happen if you tried anything. Now your mouth is taped closed. Remember that image of the dead girl who choked on her own puke—granted, you and Claire probably overdosed her—but I’d suggest staying calm anyway.”

  It took another half hour before Leon showed up. He gave the door a light rap to announce his presence, and Gary let him in.

  “Where is that bitch?”

  Gary jerked his head toward the hallway. “Down there by the bathroom door.” He followed Leon back.

  Leon marched down the hall and knelt at Hope’s side. “What did I say when we got to Rapid City?” He ripped the tape from Hope’s mouth. “What did I say?”

  “That I couldn’t go home.”

  “Yet you decided to break away from our group consensus of sticking together and keeping our mouths shut to take a risk like that because the beater and my apartment weren’t up to your standards. What makes you better than the rest of us?” Leon’s face turned red, and his anger was almost palpable. He slapped her across the face for the second time in as many days. “Why did it take you so long to get here? Where did you go?”

  “I stopped for food.”

  “Is that the only place you went?” He squeezed her chin and forced her face up. “Look at me.”

  “Yes, I swear.”

  Gary motioned for Leon to go back to the living room with him. “You dropped the ball on her, so you have to choose.”

  “Choose what?”

  “Whether she lives or dies.” Gary pulled a quarter from his pocket. “Heads she dies. Tails she gets sold.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  Gary’s eyes remained fixed on Leon. “Don’t push your luck.” He handed the quarter to Leon. “Here, flip the coin.”

  Leon’s face went white, but he flipped the coin anyway. He looked down at the floor and heaved a sigh of relief. The quarter landed on tails.

  “Okay, her fate is set. It’s only a five-hour drive to Denver, so let’s go. We’re getting rid of her tonight.” Gary tossed the truck keys to Leon. “Go around the block to the Belmont Arms apartment complex. You’ll find the box truck parked in their lot. Back it up to the driveway, and I’ll get Hope ready.”

  Leon froze in place as if his feet were glued to the floor.

  “Move it, now!”

  Leon walked to the front door and looked back before stepping out. “You sure you want to do this? We’ll never see her again after we drop her off.”

  “You’d never see her again if we did the alternative either. Now go.”

  After Leon disappeared down the block, Gary returned his attention to Hope. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” He cocked his head and smil
ed. “Which do you prefer?”

  After stretching tape over Hope’s mouth again, Gary disappeared into the bedroom. Seconds later, he returned with a large suitcase. He placed it on the floor next to Hope. “You’ll only be in there for the time it takes to put you in the back of the truck. After that, we’ll let you out. Understand?”

  She nodded as tears ran down her cheeks. Gary pulled her to the suitcase and lifted her over the edge.

  “Get comfortable. I won’t zip it up until we’re ready to leave.” After returning to the window, Gary peered out and saw the truck approaching. “It’s go time.”

  He watched as Leon made several attempts to back the truck as close to the rear door as possible. Finally when the truck was in place, Leon climbed out and entered the duplex through the utility room.

  “Hope is ready. Help me carry her out.”

  “What?”

  Gary spun around. “Don’t question everything I say. Just do what you’re told.”

  Leon followed Gary down the hall and watched as Gary zipped the suitcase.

  “Don’t worry about her. I said we’d let her out once we’re on the road. Now, help me pick her up.”

  Between both men, they carried the suitcase to the back of the truck and slid it in.

  Gary slapped his hands together after locking the truck’s rear doors. “Okay, we’ve got to hurry and tidy up inside. I want to be on the road in fifteen minutes.”

  Gary washed, dried, and put away the glass he’d drank whiskey out of, then placed the chair back against the wall. He called out to Leon, who had disappeared into the bathroom. “Check the hallway, and make sure everything looks normal.” Gary did a final walk-through of the kitchen, put the milk carton in the trash, then made sure nothing was out of place in the entryway, where he’d knocked Hope to the ground. The duplex looked good. “Turn off the lights back there, and let’s go.”

  Leon followed him out, and Gary locked the door at their backs.

  “Here’s Hope’s car keys. We’ll leave the beater wherever it is you parked it, and you can follow me in Hope’s car. We’ll park that in the storage garage in Casper for now.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Leon began to walk away but stopped and looked back at Gary. “You’ll let her out of the suitcase, right?”

  Gary swatted the air. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll let her out of the suitcase.”

  Chapter 15

  After breakfast in the hotel’s dining room, I set up my computer in the business center and we updated Tommy and Fay via video chat. We ran through yesterday’s meeting we’d had with Hope’s and Claire’s parents with them.

  “It was quite the experience.” Renz rolled his eyes. “They’re clueless in parenting one-oh-one. Spoiling those girls right out of the womb led to twenty-one years of entitlement, where with a snap of their fingers, Hope and Claire got whatever they wanted. They ran the show, but they wanted to do it without any parental interference.”

  Fay sighed. “And now they could be mixed up in human trafficking. If we get the evidence we need, there’s a good chance all four of them are looking at several decades behind bars.”

  Tommy went over the plate-reader information with us that they’d received from the interstate locations around Cheyenne. Since we didn’t know the plate numbers of either truck, there was no possibility of getting a hit, and Tommy was told that dozens of white cube vans, box trucks, and semis had passed those readers. The police report said the disturbance call came in at two seventeen a.m., and a broken taillight would show up on plate-reader cameras at night as vehicles passed them, but none had.

  I groaned my disappointment. “They mustn’t have driven any farther that night, or at least not on the interstate, and which way they were going and how far, is an unknown.”

  None of that information helped, and without license plate numbers, we were dead in the water.

  Tommy said he had set up a meeting with the chief of police in Buffalo for one thirty that day. I watched as he thumbed through his paperwork.

  “Here we go. That’s right, the chief’s name is Roger Worth. He’s accumulated all the police reports from the other crime scenes and the statements from the parents and friends.”

  “We already have all that, and we’ve spoken with everyone who needs to be talked to,” Renz said.

  Tommy shrugged. “The man is doing what he can to help.”

  I let out a sigh. “What would help is an eyewitness. The closest thing we have is that bump and run in Cheyenne, yet the homeowner never actually saw anything.”

  “We need to have the guys followed—plain and simple. It’ll put an end to this cat-and-mouse game pretty quickly,” Fay said.

  I chuckled. “Taft already said no to that. We want the big fish so we can shut down the whole organization, at least this regional one, and the chances of two halfwit ex-cons being given information from the higher-ups is unlikely.”

  “Right, but they can be followed to the drop-off location. We’ve already discussed that.”

  “Push Taft on it, then,” Renz said. “Agents would have to be sitting on the duplex in Buffalo and both apartments twenty-four seven.”

  Tommy nodded. “I’ll see what she and the local FBI field officers want to do. If you don’t hear back from us before this afternoon, we’ll see you at one thirty.”

  I added one more thing before I ended the video chat. “Fay, I need that list of dates Gary had and will have with his parole officer. We have a few hours to kill, so I’m going to start comparing those dates with the dates every girl went missing.”

  “I must have gotten sidetracked. I’ll email it to you right away.”

  I ended the video chat, and Renz walked away to grab us coffee while I waited for the email to come in. My phone rang just as he returned and sat down.

  I did a doubletake when I saw the name on the screen. “That’s weird. It’s Hope’s mom.” I tapped the green phone icon and answered. “Agent Monroe speaking.”

  “Agent Monroe, it’s Mrs. Daniels.”

  “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

  “Something is wrong.”

  I gave Renz a concerned frown and made sure the business center was still empty. “I’m putting you on speakerphone, Mrs. Daniels, so my partner can listen in.”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Now go ahead. Tell us what’s wrong.”

  “I noticed an alert on my phone this morning from our home’s security system. Nobody tried to break in, but it recorded movement at the front of the house last night.”

  “Okay.”

  “It was Hope. She came up to the front door, paced back and forth outside for nearly a half hour, then disappeared. She has her own house key, Agent Monroe, but for some reason, she chose not to come in.”

  “That is odd,” Renz said. “Was the time recorded?”

  “Yes, it was around two a.m.”

  “And was anyone with her?”

  “Honestly, I couldn’t tell, but her body language told me she was upset.”

  I wrinkled my brow as I glanced at Renz. “She was upset enough to show up but not enough to come in?”

  Renz took over. “Or maybe she was afraid of the consequences if she did.”

  “I don’t know. Either way, I’m sure she’s in trouble.”

  I packed up my gear while Renz continued the conversation.

  “We’ll need to review that footage, Mrs. Daniels. Agent Monroe and I are on our way to your house right now.”

  “Thank you, Agent DeLeon.”

  Luckily, we hadn’t left for Buffalo yet, and from the hotel, the Danielses’ home was only a five-mile drive. We reached their house at ten o’clock, where we found Mrs. Daniels standing at the door, waiting for us.

  “Please, Agents, come in. My husband is in the office, and I’ve transferred the security footage to my computer. It’ll be easier to view everything on the larger screen.”

  “Great idea, thank you,” I said as we followed her to the second-floor office.

>   The room was as enormous as I’d envisioned, with two oversized desks. A computer sat on each one. Decorative chairs faced each desk, and the walls were lined with bookcases. Beautiful pottery sat among the hundreds of books on the shelves, and I didn’t see empty space anywhere.

  Mr. Daniels stood, shook our hands, and thanked us for coming by so quickly. “Please, over here at Diane’s desk. She has the footage set up and ready to go.”

  Diane turned the monitor toward us, then she and Mike stood at our backs. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, go ahead,” I said.

  She excused herself, pressed play, then moved aside so Renz and I had the full screen in front of us. She narrated what we were watching as the footage played.

  “Notice the glow off to the left? That must have been when she pulled into the driveway because, only seconds later, she appeared on the sidewalk and headed for the front door. It looked like she was going to come in—I mean the keys are in her hand.” Diane sniffled and continued. “She started to pace as if undecided about what to do.”

  I added my two cents. “If Hope wasn’t guilty of anything, she would have no reason to hesitate. She’s pacing because she’s weighing out the odds.”

  “Odds of what?” Mike asked.

  “Odds of giving up her friends, essentially becoming a snitch, odds of not giving them up, but giving up you two instead, and odds of what the charges would be against her when all of this is said and done.”

  “You mean she could go to jail even if she changes her mind, comes home, and tells the police what’s going on and where to find the others?” Diane asked.

  I had to wonder how long Diane and Mike had been living in their bubble. “Of course. If she’s been part of the abduction process, which the videos at the gas stations would support, then she is as guilty as the others. Getting a conscience or growing tired of life on the run doesn’t change what she’s already been a party to. The only way she’d get a reduced charge or sentence against her would be by giving up everything she knows.”