by N. M. Brown
‘Not in terms of a name, but I did find out that the Route King website essentially has no address – it’s a stealth parasite page.’
‘Oh, that’s good.’ Leighton nodded sagely. ‘But how about you tell me that in English.’
‘It basically sat on the genuine site, then opened a pop-up window in response to a certain stimulus.’
‘Stimulus?’
‘Yeah, you know, like rolling the cursor over parts of the page, or typing in certain details.’
Leighton thought about this for a moment. A dark thought was forming in his mind. He had already concluded that the bus involved complicit passengers in some way, but he felt that such an unlikely situation couldn’t be controlled. There were just too many variables until he factored in the role of technology.
‘Would something like that be able to screen responses to actually target an individual?’ he asked.
‘In theory, yes,’ Vicki said, and took a sip from her glass. ‘You think Laurie might have been targeted on purpose?’
‘I don’t know, maybe.’
‘It would be really difficult for a site to target someone on purpose. How would you even know they intended to travel by bus?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Leighton looked down at his notes for a moment. ‘Would it be possible to watch all the people entering their information, and then choose when to open the window and offer a better deal?’
A shadow fell over Vicki’s face. ‘Yeah, it would.’
‘Well, that means that – by screening the bookings – a theoretical killer or killers wouldn’t just have to wait for a random victim to pass by in a dark alleyway; instead they would know exactly where the victim would be and when. That way the website would basically serve as a baited trap, setting up the time and place for the killer.’
‘Do you know something? It’s just that you seem more focused.’
‘I have a friend who works dispatch in the station. I called her this morning to follow up on a missing police biker.’
‘What happened to him?’ Vicki asked.
‘He vanished whilst working and hasn’t shown up for several days. They found his abandoned bike just off Route 15. He’s not the only one either. Wendy says they have reports of more disappearances coming in every day. She says people have vanished from the roadside or have taken a bus trip.’
Leighton sipped his drink while Vicki looked intently around at the butterflies dancing from flower to flower in the Californian sunlight.
‘That wouldn’t happen, though. I mean, snaring strangers to murder them? It couldn’t… probably, not really,’ Vicki said, trying to restore her sense of order.
‘And yet you firmly believe Laurie has been murdered?’
‘Well yes, but not… you know. It was probably random.’
‘When I was a kid, my father was a maintenance man in the Kaiser Steel Mill over in Fontana – have you heard of it?’
Vicki shook her head.
Leighton gazed into the past and smiled.
‘It was one of the biggest in the world, and to a seven-year-old boy, it was a crazy and exciting old place. Anyway, what I liked best were the nights when my old man would get called out to fix some temperamental motor. He would take me with him – despite my mother’s protests – and sometimes I’d get to see the bright spray of sparks as steel was cut, or the low molten steel being poured like lava.’
‘Must’ve been a dangerous place.’
‘A few men died there, crushed between rollers or splattered by a bubble of molten metal. But, that’s not why I bring it up.’
‘Okay,’ Vicki shrugged. ‘Then why do you?’
‘Because one night my old man got a call from work saying there was some kind of crap coming down the cooler wash. This was like a slow waterfall of cold water which cooled the freshly pressed rolls of metal. The operator had called because whatever was in the water was making streaks on the metal. Anyway, the wash was fed by a big tank of water high up in the roof of the mill. I climbed up two sets of ladders with my old man and we stood on the gantry. He pressed this grimy switch and a big old motor slowly rolled back the cover from a square vat of water. I remember it looked like a long black swimming pool. Anyway, he was kneeling down, holding a jam jar in his hand to take a sample, with me holding the torch, when I noticed something bulky and alive moving in the water. I told my pop and he just pulled a face and told me to hold the light steady.’
‘What was it?’ Vicki’s eyes widened.
‘Well, he dipped his hand back in the water, then he screamed and fell back on the gantry. His hand was pouring out blood like a faucet.’ Leighton blew out a breath, remembering the scene. ‘We got down to the medical room and found his index fingertip had been torn off. The medical officer drove him to the hospital where he sat through half an hour of surgery, but still ended up looking like he’d put it through a mincer.’
‘And where were you when he was being stitched up?’
‘Sitting in the reception on a wooden bench, watching the hands ticking by on a big Westfield clock.’
‘You must’ve been terrified, were you?’
‘Yeah, well not as much I was the following morning. My father insisted on returning to the mill and we went back up that ladder in the daylight. His hand was bandaged and he had iodine streaks along his forearm. Up on top, the cover was still rolled back, almost to the edge, and I could see into most of the tank, except this one dark strip down at the end. For one crazy moment, I believed he was going to pick up the jar and go dipping again. Only this time, he walked past the bloody jam jar and down to the far end of the tank. I hurried after him and watched as he gripped a huge drainage tap fixed to the end of the tank and, despite the pain, he turned it. The water sprayed down on the steel rolls below, not so much like a stream as water cannon.
‘My father sat back on the gantry and ruffled my hair. He pulled out a cigarette and smoked as we sat and waited. I couldn’t take my eyes off the dark section of the tank. Eventually, the water was low enough that the creature began to panic and thrashed around before it came out of hiding.’
‘What was it?’
‘A huge white Pike – fat and blind. And as long as I was tall.’
‘Jeez.’ Vicki’s eyes widened in horror. ‘Did he kill it?’
Leighton chuckled. ‘No, my father wasn’t the killing type. He probably saw enough of that in Korea. He let me get a good look at it. Then he explained how it must have been brought up through the water intake from the river, and grew for years in the darkness – feeding on anything else that came in through the pipe. He turned off the drain tap and the filler valve, topped it back up, then he hit the switch and let the cover clatter back into place.’
‘He just left it?’
‘Yep, said it was part of nature. It might still be there – they tore down most of the mill, but some of the buildings are intact. But, Vicki, the reason I mention this is because that creature grew there in the darkness because no-one was looking for it. If anyone had suggested to the hundreds of steel men in the Kaiser Plant that a giant white fish swam above their heads year after year, they would have called them crazy. So, I guess what I’m saying is, if you truly hope to find monsters, you first have to be ready to accept that monsters exist. Then you won’t be paralysed with terror when you actually do find them.’
Vicki stared into Leighton’s dark brown eyes for a long moment. It was the first time she realised how far she had travelled from the initial shock of thinking Laurie had been murdered to this strange world of darker possibilities.
‘Okay,’ she said finally. ‘What do you really believe is going on?’
‘I suspect we could have more than one killer.’
‘What, like a couple?’
‘Yeah, maybe… it’s happened in California before,’ Leighton said unconvincingly, and looked away.
‘But clearly you don’t think so. What are you not telling me?’
‘It could be more than just one or two,
’ Leighton said and drained his glass.
‘Okay, enough with the vagueness already. How many are we talking about?’ Vicki demanded.
‘Well,’ Leighton sighed. ‘How many seats are there on a coach?’
‘I’m not sure – twenty-eight plus the driver?’
‘Then we’re possibly looking at twenty-seven killers on a mobile crime scene.’
Vicki’s face paled and she felt much as she had done on the day her parents had shared their secret divorce.
‘How is that even possible? I mean, could there even be that many in the entire country?’
Leighton nodded slowly. ‘It varies year to year, but the FBI estimate at any given time there are roughly fifty serial killers active in North America.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Back in 2009, a bunch of us from Homicide were given a presentation by two agents at Oceanside Precinct. They revealed something called the Highway Serial Killer Initiative.’
‘What was that?’
‘Something dreamt up by the Bureau. It involves a small office in Washington where a bunch of analysts gather info on victims and suspects, hoping to locate some of those fifty. They hold details on hundreds of murder victims.’
‘And you didn’t connect this to Laurie’s disappearance?’ Vicki’s voice raised to a crescendo.
‘No, most of the victims were either prostitutes or addicts. People with what the Feds call a “high-risk lifestyle”. I don’t think your friend falls into that category. She had a steady job, her own home, and no history of substance abuse.’
‘And yet, she became a victim. So what’s different now?’
‘Perhaps the potential killers are no longer interested in “high-risk lifestyle” victims who will be less likely to be missed. Many serial killers were thought to be possibly truck drivers because the remains of so many victims were found near major routes. The people reported missing in Oceanside seem to match the location profile.’
‘My god, why don’t the public know about this?’
‘At the time, it was never publicised outside of official circles. But now the information is out there for anyone who’s interested, the thing is, no-one really wants to know. Believing in monsters makes it kind of hard to sleep at night. I should know. You start to listen to every noise, wondering if that creak outside the bedroom door was the cat or some guy with a long blade and roll of tape.’
‘We have to stop them,’ Vicki said with a sense of dawning horror. ‘Or at least try.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It had taken less than three hours for Leighton’s small dining room to be transformed into a crude investigation headquarters. A creased old California road map weighed down in each corner by a bottle of Gold Peak Iced Tea had replaced the table cloth. Leighton had used silver dollars to mark Barstow and Oceanside.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘our next step is what?’
‘We should look at a missing persons’ website.’
‘I don’t have a computer,’ Leighton said in an apologetic voice. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s okay. I have my iPad on the back seat of my car.’
Vicki vanished out of the door, letting a breath of warm night air sweep through the apartment.
She returned a moment later with a glowing tablet gripped securely in her hand. Vicki then perched on the edge of the sofa and began tapping her fingers purposely on the small screen.
‘Type in NAMus,’ Leighton suggested. ‘There are others, but that one should provide the most detail.’
Vicki looked up at him accusatively. ‘I thought you were technophobic?’
‘Yeah, but I’m not an idiot. We had to use basic websites to do our job.’ Whilst Vicki followed his instructions, Leighton wandered into the kitchen.
‘Okay.’ Vicki glanced back at the screen. ‘I have the site opened here. How should we search them?’
‘Geographically, then by date, descending from the day Laurie vanished,’ Leighton said as he returned with a glass jar of silver coins taken from a cupboard in the kitchen.
‘I thought we could use a coin to mark each case.’
‘Sure,’ Vicki said with a small shrug.
As Leighton unscrewed the lid of the jar, Vicki tapped on the device again and then her eyes widened. ‘God, I never realised there were so many.’
‘Welcome to America,’ Leighton said in wry tone.
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘get to the map.’
‘What have you got?’
‘Female, aged twenty-four?’
‘Last known location?’
‘Needles.’
Leighton placed a silver coin on the map. ‘Okay, next?’
‘Male, thirty-one.’
‘Location?’
‘Laughlin.’
As Leighton placed the third coin on the map, the doorbell rang and he instinctively turned his head in alarm. No-one ever came calling on him after business hours. He glanced at his jacket draped over one of the dining chairs. His holster was concealed beneath it like a sleeping pet.
‘It’s okay. I’ll get it.’ Vicki grinned.
‘What?’ Leighton made to stand up, but she hurried in front of him, patting him reassuringly on the way.
There was a murmur from the hallway, then Vicki returned carrying two flat cardboard pizza boxes.
‘What’s this?’ Leighton asked.
‘I reckoned it was my turn to buy you dinner.’
‘Nice thinking. When did you phone?’
‘I didn’t. I ordered them on my iPad, old timer. Now, we have one Margherita and one Veg Deluxe. You happy to share?’
‘Definitely. I suppose advancing technology has some benefits. Like sending Frankenstein to the drive-thru?’ Leighton laughed at his own silliness and fetched some plates from the galley kitchen. Then, because the table was taken, they sat on the floor of the dining room and shared the warm food.
‘So,’ Leighton said as he pulled a triangle of pizza out of the box, ‘we have three missing persons within a thirty-mile radius, over, what, a four-week period?’
Vicki nodded. ‘Is that unusual, I mean, from a cop perspective?’
‘Well, from a cop perspective,’ Leighton narrowed his eyes to convey mock meanness, ‘I think it’s pretty unusual. Unless that thirty-mile radius happens to cover somewhere with a high population density, like New York.’
‘If it’s significant, what’s our next move? Should we go report it now?’
Leighton thought of his ex-boss and how receptive he would be with him showing up at the precinct with the same woman he was accused of harassing.
‘No, I doubt they’d care. Firstly, we need to find out if any of these other missing persons took a trip on a silver bus.’
‘But the site’s dead. How do we find out?’
‘Ah, that will require good old-fashioned police methods.’
Vicki frowned. ‘You mean we need to eat doughnuts and ignore abductions?’
‘I mean, we could go to the last place they were seen and speak to friends and family.’
‘We?’
‘Yeah – people respond better to questioning from a male-female team.’
‘Ah, so I’m a prop?’ Vicki said as she separated a couple of slices fused together by melted mozzarella.
‘An entertaining prop, but I’ll cover your lunch. Only this time, we take the train.’
‘Like I did on the last trip?’ Vicki couldn’t help reminding him, but smiled when she saw Leighton’s expression shift to guilt.
‘Hey,’ he said, moving to get up, ‘you want a beer to wash down that pizza?’
‘Sure, that would be great,’ Vicki said, but then realised he had only eaten one slice of pizza to her five. ‘It’s okay, Leighton – I’ll get it. You stay there and catch up.’
Vicki wandered through to the neat kitchen and was intimidated by the range of copper pans and utensils neatly suspended around the place. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of Coors.
>
‘Where’s your bottle opener?’ she called.
‘In the drawer, next to the icebox,’ Leighton replied, sounding like he was chewing.
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 a drawer on the right side of the icebox, she immediately regretted it. A selection of overlapping 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 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 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.