"No, he'd throw it in the trash can. We interviewed him in the death house captain's office. There was a trash can. When we were done each day, Bundy was led out. There were many points when Bob was alone in that office. He could have just taken the gum out of the can."
"So you're saying Bob more or less went Dumpster diving for Ted Bundy's gum and then held on to it so he could put it in a grave all these years later?"
"I'm saying he took the gum out of that prison, knowing it had Bundy's teeth marks in it. Maybe it was just a souvenir then. But it became something else later. Something maybe to taunt us with."
"And where'd he.been keeping it, in the fridge?"
"Maybe. That's where I'd keep it."
Dei turned back around in her seat.
"What do you think, Brass?" she asked.
"I think I should've thought of it myself. I think Rachel is onto something. I think Bob and Ted actually got along. He went down there several times to talk to him. Sometimes alone. He could have gotten the gum any one of those times."
Rachel watched Dei nod her head in agreement.
Zigo cleared his throat and spoke.
"So this was just another way of him coming out and telling us he did this and how smart he was about it. To taunt us. First the GPS with the prints and now the gum."
"That's what I would say," Doran agreed.
It wasn't that simple, Rachel knew. She unconsciously shook her head and Zigo, sitting next to her, picked up on it.
"You disagree, Agent Walling?"
She noted that Zigo must have attended the Randal Alpert school of building relations among fellow colleagues.
"I just don't think it is as simple as that. You are looking at it from the wrong angle. Remember, the GPS and his prints came to us first but that gum was in that grave first. He might have intended for the gum to be found first. Before there was any direct connection to him."
"If that was the case, what was he doing?" Dei asked.
"I don't know. I don't have the answer. I'm just saying, don't assume at this point we know what the plan or even the sequence was supposed to be."
"Rachel, you know we always keep an open mind on things. We take things as they come and never stop looking from all angles."
That sounded like a line taped to the wall in the public information office in Quantico, where agents always had pithy policy and procedure statements to deliver over the phone to reporters. Rachel decided to step back from tangling with Dei on this. She had to be careful not to outstay her welcome and she sensed she was nearing that point with her former student.
"Yes, I know," she said. "Okay, Brass, anything else new?" Dei asked.
"That was it. That was enough."
"Okay. Then we'll talk to you at the next one."
Meaning the next conference room case session. Doran said good-bye and broke off and then the onboard communication link remained silent as the helicopter crossed the dividing line between the harsh undeveloped landscape and the beginning of the sprawl of Las Vegas. As Rachel looked down she knew it was merely a trading of one form of a desert for another. Down there, beneath all the barrel tile and gravel roofs, predators still waited to come out at night. To find their victims.
CHAPTER 21
The Executive Extended Stay motel was off the south end of the strip. It had no neon lights flashing in front of it. It had no casino and no floor show. In fact, no executives stayed there. It was a place populated by the fringe dwellers of Vegas society. The addicted gamblers, the take-off men, the sex trade workers, the kind of people who can't leave the place but at the same time can't put down permanent roots either.
People like me. Often when you meet a fellow tenant at the Double X, as the longtimers call the place, they'll ask you how long you've been there and how long you're staying, as if you're working off jail time. I believe that many of the tenants of the motel have had the real experience of jail time and I chose such a place for two reasons. One was that I still carried a mortgage in Los Angeles and could not afford to stay over time at a place like the Bellagio or the Mandalay Bay or even the Riviera. And two was that I didn't want to get comfort- able in Las Vegas. I didn't want things to feel right there. Because I knew when it was time for me to go, I just wanted to turn in the key and leave.
I got to Vegas by three and knew my daughter would be home from day care and I could go to my ex-wife's home to see her. I wanted to but I also wanted to wait. I had Buddy Lockridge coming in and I had things to do. The FBI had let me out of the RV with my notebook still in my pocket and Terry McCaleb's map book still in my car. I wanted to put them to good use before Agent Dei maybe realized her mistake and came back to me. I wanted to see if I could make the next step in the case before she did.
I pulled into the Double X and parked in my usual spot near the fence that separated the motel from the private jet stalls on the McCarran tarmac. I noticed that a Gulfstream 9 that was parked there when I left Vegas three mornings earlier was still in place. There was also a smaller but sleeker-looking black jet parked next to it. I didn't know what kind of jet it was, only that it looked like money. I got out and walked up the steps to my one-bedroom efficiency on the second floor. It was neat and functional and I tried to spend as little time there as I had to. The best thing about it was the small balcony off the living room. In the brochures they offered in the rental office it was called a smoking balcony. It was too small a space to actually fit a chair. But I could stand out there and lean on the extra-high railing and watch the billionaires' jets come in. And I found myself doing that often. I found myself standing there and even wishing that I still smoked. Oftentimes one of the tenants from the apartment on either side of my unit would be standing on their balcony smoking when I was out there. On one side was a card counter-or an "advantage player," as he called it-and on the other a woman of indeterminate means of income. My conversations with them were perfunctory. Nobody wanted to ask or answer too many questions at this place.
The last two days' editions of the Sun were on the worn rubber mat outside my door. I hadn't canceled it because I knew the woman who lived next door liked to sneak over and read the paper, after which she would refold it and put it back in its plastic bag. She didn't know that I knew this.
Inside I dropped the newspapers on the floor and put McCaleb's map book down on the dinette table. I took the notebook out of my pocket and put that down, too. I went over to the sliding door and opened it to let some of the stuffiness out. Whoever had the place before me didn't use the smoking balcony and the place seemed to have a permanent nicotine funk.
After plugging my phone's charger into the wall below the dinette I called Buddy Lockridge's number but the call rang through to voice mail. I disconnected before leaving a message. I next called Graciela McCaleb's number and asked if the FBI had shown up yet.
"They just left," she said. "They went through a lot of stuff here and they just went down to the boat. You were right, they're going to take the boat with them. I don't know when I'll get it back."
"Have you seen Buddy around today?"
"Buddy? No, was he supposed to come by?"
"No, I was just wondering."
"Are you still with the FBI?" "No, they let me go a couple hours ago. I'm at my place in Vegas. I'm going to keep working on the case, Graciela."
"Why? It seems-the agents told me it was a priority investigation now. They think that agent changed his meds. Backus."
What she was asking was what it was I could do that the august powers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation couldn't do. The answer of course was nothing. But I remembered what Terry had said to Graciela about me. That he would want me on the case if anything ever happened to him. It left me unable to walk away.
"Because it's what Terry wanted," I said. "But don't worry, if I come up with anything the bureau doesn't have, I'll give it to them. Just like today. I'm not trying to compete with them. I'm just working the case, Graciela."
"Okay."
"I know."
"Thank you, Graciela. I'll call if anything comes up."
'Thank you, Harry. Good luck."
"I'll probably need it."
After disconnecting I tried Buddy Lockridge once more but got voice mail again. I guessed that maybe he was on a plane with his phone turned off. I hoped, anyway. I hoped he had gotten onto the boat and then off before the bureau agents saw him. I put the phone down and went to the refrigerator. I made a quick sandwich of processed cheese and white bread. I had both in the box in case my daughter should want a grilled cheese sandwich when she visited. It was one of her staples. I skipped the grilling and just stood at the counter and quickly ate the tasteless sandwich to fill the void in my stomach. I then sat at the table and opened my notebook to a new page. I used a couple of self-relaxation exercises I had learned years ago in hypnosis class. In my mind I saw a blank chalkboard. Pretty soon I picked up the chalk and started writing in white across the black surface of the board. As best as I could I re-created Terry McCaleb's notes from the missing men file-the notes the FBI had taken away. When I had as much as I could remember on the board, I started rewriting it all in my notebook. I thought that I got most of it, except for the phone numbers and I didn't care so much about them because I could recover them by simply dialing information.
Through the open balcony door I heard the high-pitched whine of jet engines. Another plane was parking out there. I heard the engines quit and it got peaceful again.
I opened McCaleb's map book. I checked every page and found no handwritten notations other than those on the page illustrating southern Nevada and the contiguous sections of California and Arizona. Again, I looked at what McCaleb had done. He had circled the Mojave Preservation Area, which I knew included the Zzyzx Road
exit and the location of the FBI's body excavation scene. On the outside margin of the map, he had written a column of numbers and added them up to 86. Beneath this he had drawn a line and written "Actual-92."
My guess was that these numbers corresponded to miles. I looked at the map and found that it noted mile counts between distances on all significant roadways. In a matter of seconds I found numbers that matched the column McCaleb had written on the side of the page. He had added up the mileage counts between Las Vegas and a point on I-15 in the middle of the Mojave. Zzyzx Road
was too small and inconsequential to be listed on the map by name. But my guess was that it was the unnamed point on the 15 from which McCaleb had started to add up the mileage.
In my notebook I wrote and added the numbers myself. McCaleb got it right-86 miles, according to the map. But then he had disagreed or charted a different route, coming up with 92 miles. My guess was that he had driven the route himself and gotten a different count from the map on his car's odometer. This conflict would have occurred because in Las Vegas he would have had a specific destination. The map's mileage counts would have used a different end point in the city.
McCaleb's destination was unknown to me. I had no idea when the markings on the map page had been made or whether they were in any way connected to the case. But I thought they were because he began his count at Zzyzx Road
. That could not be a coincidence. There are no coincidences.
From the balcony I heard a cough. I knew it was the woman next door smoking on her balcony. I found her very curious and kept somewhat of a watch on her whenever I was staying at the Double X. She wasn't much of a smoker and she seemed to go out on the balcony only when a private jet was coming into a parking stall. Sure, some people like to watch planes. But I thought she was up to something and that made me all the more curious. I thought maybe she was spotting marks for the casinos or maybe other gamblers.
I got up and walked out through the door. As I stepped out I looked to my right and saw my neighbor throw something backward into her apartment. Something she didn't want me to see.
"Jane, how you doing?"
"Fine, Harry. Haven't seen you around lately."
"I've been gone a couple days. What do we have out here?"
I looked across the parking lot to the tarmac. Another sleek black jet had parked next to its twin. A matching black limo was waiting near the jet's stairs. A man wearing a suit, sunglasses and a maroon turban was coming out of the plane. I realized I was ruining Jane's surveillance if that was a camera or set of binoculars she tossed back into her place when she saw me.
"The sultan of swing," I said, just to be saying something.
"Probably," she said.
She took a drag on her cigarette and coughed again. I knew she wasn't a smoker. She smoked so it would look plausible for her to be on the balcony watching rich men and their airplanes. She also didn't have brown eyes-I had seen her on the balcony one day when she'd forgotten to put in the tinted contacts-and her hennaed black hair was probably not the real color either.
I wanted to ask her what she was up to, what the game or the con or the scheme was. But I also liked our balcony-to-balcony conversations and I wasn't a cop anymore. And the truth was that if Jane-I didn't know her last name-was in the business of separating those rich men from some of their riches, then down deep I couldn't work up a good deal of outrage over it. The whole city was built on the same principle. You roll the dice in the city of desire and you get what you deserve.
I sensed something intrinsically good about her. Damaged but good. One time when I brought my daughter to the apartment we ran into Jane on the steps and she stopped to talk to Maddie. The next morning I found a little stuffed panther on the doormat next to my paper.
"How's your daughter?" she asked, as if she knew my thoughts.
"She's good. The other night she asked me if the Burger King and the Dairy Queen were married."
Jane smiled and I saw that sadness in her eyes again. I knew it had something to do with kids. I asked her something I had been thinking about for a long time.
"You got kids?"
"One. She's a little older than yours. I'm not with her anymore. She lives in France."
That was all she said and I left it at that, feeling guilty because of what I had in my life and because I knew before I asked the question that I was tempting the grief in her. But my question prompted her to ask one she had probably been holding on to for a while, too.
"Are you a cop, Harry?"
I shook my head.
"Was. In L.A. How'd you know that?"
"Just a guess. I think it was the way I saw you walking with your daughter out to your car. Like you were ready to jump on anything that moved. Anything bad."
I shrugged. She had pegged me. "I thought that was kind of nice," she added. "What do you do now?"
"Nothing really. I'm thinking about it, you know."
"Yes."
We were suddenly becoming more than neighbors exchanging superficial conversation.
"What about you?" I asked.
"Me? I'm just waiting on something."
So much for that. I knew that was the end of the line in that direction. I turned from her and watched another sultan or sheik start his way down the jet's steps. The limo driver was waiting with the door open. It looked to me like the driver had something under his jacket, something he could pull out if the going got tough. I looked back at Jane.
"I'll see you, Jane."
"Okay, Harry. Say hi to her for me."
"I will. You be careful."
"You, too."
Back at the dinette I tried Buddy Lockridge once more and got the same result. Nothing. I picked up the pen and drummed it impatiently on my notepad. He should've answered by now. I wasn't getting concerned. I was getting annoyed. The reports on Buddy were that he was unreliable. That was not something I had time for.
I got up and went to the kitchenette and took a beer out of the under-the-counter refrigerator. There was a bottle opener on the doorjamb. I cranked the bottle open and took a long draw. The
beer cut through the desert dust and tasted good going down. I figured I deserved it.
I went back to the balcony door but didn't step out. I didn't want to spook Jane again. Staying inside, I glanced out and saw that the limousine was gone and the new jet was buttoned up tight. I leaned out and checked Jane's balcony. She was gone. I noticed that in the ashtray perched on top of the railing she had butted out her smoke after only a quarter burn. Somebody ought to tell her that was a giveaway.
A few minutes later the beer was gone and I was back at the dinette looking at my notes and McCaleb's map book. I knew I was missing something, I just couldn't touch it. It was there, it was close. But I just couldn't reach out to it yet.
My cell phone rang. Finally, it was Buddy Lockridge.
"Did you just call me?"
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