Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Redemption for Avery (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Ryker Townsend FBI Profiler Book 2)

by Jordan Dane

  “It’s my fervent belief that your daughter knows, Mrs. Hubbard. She was born into your love and it took root in her.”

  Lily’s mother folded into my arms. I suspected she knew we both needed a hug.

  ***

  Minutes later

  Ryker Townsend

  “I need another shower after being in the same room as that demented Barney Fife and Daddy Dearest.” Lucinda faked a shiver as she drove along the shoreline of Big Bear Lake and I smiled.

  I had made a choice not to demonize the serial offenders I hunted. It’d been my way of remaining objective, but Crowley had no such predilection. She spoke her mind about people and wore her heart on her sleeve when we were alone and had our privacy. Her penchant for name calling had become endearing.

  As I gazed down the list of names and contact information Mrs. Hubbard had given me for Lily’s friends, I noticed one name and address that couldn’t wait.

  “Let’s find Grayson Barbour. Maybe he’ll be home this time of morning.” I gave Lucinda his address to plug into our GPS. “He’s first up. We have to establish a timeline of what Lily did after her father kicked her out. Surely one of her friends would know. A teenage girl without a roof over her head, she would’ve reached out to someone.”

  “I’ll make some calls to the kids on your list and talk to their parents,” Lucinda said. “If anyone deserves face time, I’ll set something up.”

  “Good.”

  I placed a call to Sinead in DC. When she answered, I summed up my visit to Lily’s room and told her want I needed.

  “See if Lily Hubbard kept an online diary. If her father smothered her with rules and she lived a stifled life in her home, she may have found a way to express her feelings online.”

  “I’m on it. I’ll hit you back when I have something,” Sinead said before she ended the call.

  “I can’t imagine living under the thumb of Mark Hubbard.” Lucinda made a turn off the highway into a residential area, following GPS commands. “Sandra Hubbard looked like a prisoner of war, only with nicer clothes.”

  “Lily could’ve had a low self-esteem or been submissive to a strong man,” I said. “Hubbard would have set the stage for anyone wanting to dominate her. A jealous, obsessive boyfriend would’ve been more of the same.”

  “It’s hard enough for kids to handle zits, boobs, and prom dresses. What Lily had to deal with, it makes me ache for her.”

  On the surface, Lily had a life of privilege. Her family had money and she probably didn’t want for much—except for things other less-fortunate kids took for granted, like privacy, a mother and father’s unconditional love, acceptance and tolerance.

  “This is it.”

  Grayson Barbour lived with his family off North Shore Drive on prime real estate, not far from Lily’s home. Lucinda parked the Chevy Tahoe on the front curb and, as we walked up the driveway of the beautifully landscaped grounds, I noticed someone in the open garage. He looked young enough to be Barbour.

  He had the hood up on a sweet 1967 vintage Mustang, fully restored with a cherry-red paint job. It looked as if he was giving the car an oil change.

  “FBI. Are you Grayson Barbour?” Crowley called out and showed him her credentials.

  The guy came out from under the hood and wiped his hands on a red rag, glancing at her badge.

  He wore his dark hair long and had on a pair of red sweat pants and a navy tank. I could see where he would entice young girls with his muscular body and handsome face, but his pale eyes were cold. I would sooner believe he carried a mean streak than empathy, but maybe Lucinda would have a different take.

  “Yeah, I’m Grayson,” Barbour said. After Crowley made the introductions, he asked, “Why would someone from the FBI be looking for me? Is this about Lily being missing? I had nothing to do with that. Her dad kicked her out, the tight-assed bastard, but she never came to me. She wouldn’t even return my phone calls. Is she okay?”

  “No, she’s not. Her body was found on a trail in the park. She was murdered.” Crowley broke the news.

  Barbour didn’t ask the usual questions. His eyes darted left and right as if he were thinking and it took effort.

  “We’re contacting people who knew Lily, to see if anyone heard from her after she left home,” I said. “Did you hear from her? You have any idea where she might’ve gone?”

  “No. She should’ve come to me, but she didn’t.” He leaned against his vehicle. “I can’t believe this.”

  “We heard you two dated. For how long?” Crowley asked.

  “Off and on for the last year. Lately, it’s been off.”

  “We heard you were more than a little obsessed with her,” Lucinda said. “You called her all the time and texted her. Did you have reason to be jealous of other guys?”

  Barbour glared at Crowley. I wasn’t sure he would answer.

  “She gave me reason to be jealous. Plenty of reason. She drove me crazy.” Barbour returned to working on his car. “She acted like she wanted it. You know, letting me do stuff to her, but then she’d push me off.”

  “So you never—?”

  “No, but that was gonna change. I told her to put out or I was done.”

  “With that kind of charm, how could she resist?” I said.

  “Exactly.” Barbour wiped his hands again. “But I found out the hard way, literally, that I never had a chance to get into those panties. That girl had critical mass daddy issues, man.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “She had it bad for one of her teachers and it wasn’t about letting some old dude cop a feel to get a better grade. Lily had a real thing for older guys.”

  “Did she ever mention this teacher’s name?” Crowley asked.

  “She didn’t have to mention it, lady. I have eyes and ears. His name is Dennis Whitehall. She had him for English and he coached her volleyball team.”

  “But you don’t know for sure if she had a relationship with her teacher, since she didn’t admit to it or give you a name, right?” Lucinda pressed.

  “She never said his name, but Whitehall has a reputation with the girls at school. Math isn’t my thing, but even I can add two and two. Maybe Lily went to him after her father kicked her out.”

  Crowley gave me the side eye and I didn’t need a translation.

  Grayson Barbour could’ve name dropped to deflect attention from any part he might’ve played in Lily’s disappearance and murder, but I couldn’t dismiss what he said about Lily’s teacher. Although our list of suspects with motive had grown in Lily’s case, the overkill brutality of her death made the MO specific. I wasn’t sure it fit anyone yet, and in Avery Reed’s case, I had a profile for a serial killer that spanned decades with the potential for a larger conspiracy.

  As Crowley and I left Barbour to his red vintage Mustang, we headed toward the crime scene in the San Bernardino National Forest. Cadaver dogs and search crews with ground penetrating radar equipment were staging for an all-out blitz of the terrain—the grim task of hunting for decayed bodies. It would be a long day.

  Even though our stop had been fruitful, the side trip to interview Barbour had made us late. While I still had cell service, I called Sinead.

  “Get me anything you have on Dennis Whitehall.” I told her what I knew of Lily’s teacher.

  “You got it, Ryker.”

  As I ended it with Sinead, my cell pinged with an incoming call from my evidence recovery techs.

  “It’s Hutch.” I put Devon Hutchison on speaker.

  “Meet us at the crime scene, boss,” he said with urgency. “You have to see this.”

  Chapter 9

  San Bernardino National Forest

  Afternoon

  Ryker Townsend

  The trail system and the marshlands that surrounded where Lily’s body had been discovered were a hive of activity by the time Crowley and I arrived. Six cadaver dogs and their handlers had been deployed to search for human remains—three German Shepherds, a Golden Retrieve
r, a border collie, and a Malinois.

  The dogs were trekking over the terrain, running back and forth with their noses to the ground. If they found a high concentration of target odors, they would slow down and focus on a spot. Handlers called this behavior ‘in scent.’ When the dogs found a body, they would give their signal, usually by lying down at the location until their handler released them. Wherever dogs identified a possible site, a neon-orange flag on a metal stake marked the spot before the team would move on.

  As I stood alongside Crowley on a ridge overlooking the body dump site, countless flags waved in the breeze. The sight chilled me.

  “Oh my, God.” Lucinda’s voice broke with emotion. “I see more than thirty flags and the dogs are still working.”

  Hutch and Cam joined us.

  “Did you know it would be this bad?” Hutch directed his question to me.

  My evidence recovery techs talked about my gut instincts and often questioned how I knew certain things. My stock answer of intuition or a gut feeling had worn thin, but no matter how much I trusted them, I couldn’t risk my career over a slip of the tongue.

  “No. With all the missing girls, I thought we could get lucky and give closure to a few parents, but nothing like this.”

  Along the periphery, forensic archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar to identify anomalies on flagged sites before they directed crews to excavate. Potential sites were marked for crews to dig and some bodies were in various stages of exhumation. Local and county sheriff’s personnel, state troopers, volunteers from the LAPD and other agents from the FBI field office had come to render assistance.

  Body recovery of this magnitude and the painstaking identification process would take weeks. National and local news media would soon have a presence and turn our investigation into a living hell. My team and I had to brace for the long haul, but I didn’t want to lose sight of Avery’s and Lily’s cases. If they were killed by other UNSUBS, I didn’t want their cases to be shoved under an avalanche of forensics.

  I wouldn’t forget them. I couldn’t.

  I filled my lungs with mountain air and stared across the clearing until my eyes settled on something familiar in a stand of trees in the distance. One large pine had a distinctive broken branch I recognized. I wasn’t sure if I followed my instincts into those trees that I would find my way once I got under the thick canopy, but I had to try.

  “I’ll be back,” I said to Crowley in a hushed tone. “Give me some time alone.”

  “You got it.”

  By late afternoon, I’d traversed a ridge that encircled the crime scene and followed a thin trail into a dense copse of pines. The shadows of elongated trunks stretched like tentacles into the growing murkiness of the forest.

  Something drew me into this particular stand of trees. I did not falter and I couldn’t stop.

  I came straight to a single tree and when my eyes searched the ground at the base, I knew I had found what I came for. I didn’t need confirmation from an investigation file to know I had discovered where Avery Reed’s broken body had been discovered by hikers, left to scavengers. Like Lily, there had been no attempt to hide the remains.

  As sure as I was that I’d found the spot, I sensed she’d led me here.

  “Hello, Avery,” I whispered. “We’re finding them, because of you. Is that why you came to me, to show where the others were?”

  I knelt on the ground and grabbed a handful of soil. As the dirt slid through my grasp, I closed my eyes to draw her to me. When I heard the snap of a twig behind me, I reached for my Glock and spun to my feet, aiming my weapon into the gloom.

  “Who’s there? Lucinda?”

  “How did you know where the bastard dumped her body? He tossed her here like garbage.”

  A man’s voice made my stomach lurch. I searched the shadows for anything that moved and aimed my Glock. It took me a moment to recognize the voice of Navy SEAL Sam ‘Mozart’ Reed. When he stepped from behind a tree with a broken twig in his hands, I lowered my weapon and let out the breath I’d been holding.

  “What are you doing here?” I narrowed my eyes. “Are you following me?”

  It unnerved me that he’d come too close without me realizing he was there, or maybe he’d been there before me. Either way, if he hadn’t deliberately snapped the twig, I never would’ve heard him.

  “I had to make my own mark, to remember where they found her body.” He pointed to a tree, to a set of old gouges in its shredded bark, made by a knife long ago. “But you came straight here. Why is that, Agent Townsend?”

  “I’ve taken an interest in your sister’s case. That’s why we came back. We found dozens of bodies.” I pointed back toward the clearing. “Avery’s case led my team to all those missing girls and young women. Families will have closure. Avery did that.”

  He stared at me in silence with his lie-detector eyes.

  “You’re not telling me the truth. Not the full truth, anyway. Why is that?” He wouldn’t let it go.

  I holstered my weapon as I stared through the trees into the clearing where the bodies were being unearthed.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Mozart.”

  When I looked around, Mozart was gone. I didn’t see him go and never heard another sound.

  ***

  Dusk

  By the time I returned to the crime scene, the dogs had stopped working and body recovery teams were setting up electric generators. They needed light to work into the night until they recovered every last body. I found Crowley and before I asked, she gave me the count.

  “Thirty-four. We won’t be able to keep this from the media. They’re already camped out at the trailhead.”

  “A glorious way to cap off the day.”

  “There’s more,” she said.

  “Yes, of course there is. What is it?”

  “Sinead called. It seems the real Dennis Whitehall died at five years old. Lily’s teacher paid good money for his fake credentials, but he didn’t cover his tracks well enough to hide from our pit bull in glasses.”

  “Didn’t the high school run a background check?” I felt a headache coming on and grabbed for the pills I kept in my uniform windbreaker.

  “Sinead called the school and asked. They used his resume and references to make their decision and Dennis Whitehall doesn’t have a criminal record. Sinead dug deeper and found an anomaly with his fingerprints being in two databases.”

  “So who is this guy? Why is he using an assumed name?”

  “His real name is Wade Thomas Altamonte. He’s a registered sex offender, Ryker. Our teacher is a violent pedophile who likes teenage girls. Deputy Lovell is bringing him in for questioning. They’ll isolate him in an interview room until we get there.”

  It took balls for a sex offender—flying under the radar of law enforcement with an assumed identity—to seek gainful employment in a high school. His credentials had to be good enough to work for the average background check. Had Lily gone to him after her father threw her out? If the girl threatened his safe haven in any way, Altamonte had a lot to lose, and that meant he had motive.

  “I want everything we have on him.”

  Chapter 10

  Big Bear Sheriff’s Station

  Evening

  Ryker Townsend

  “The leeches are gathering. You ready for this?” Crowley asked.

  I heaved a deep sigh when I saw the news media standing outside the building as we turned into the parking lot of the Big Bear Sheriff’s Station on Summit Boulevard.

  “Make sure no one speaks to the press until we give the word,” I said. “Deputy Lovell strikes me as someone who likes the sound of his own voice.”

  “He’d be the only one.” Crowley winced. “Let’s get this over with.”

  She parked the Chevy Tahoe away from the milling crowd of talking heads and the bustle of cameramen staging from their news vans. All were vying for a juicy sound bite. Deputy Zander Lovell had detained Wade Thomas Altamonte in an interview
room and he waited for our arrival.

  Altamonte had a disturbing record of escalating crimes towards young, teenage girls, but instead of going into hiding after his last arrest, he brazenly changed his name to Dennis Whitehall and conjured the background of a high school teacher to insert his life into a target-rich environment.

  Had he found a safe haven in Big Bear by accident or had he deliberately come to the resort town with reason?

  “Hutch and Cam will report in tonight, no matter what time they get to the motel,” Crowley said as she turned off the engine.

  “Good. No one will sleep anyway.”

  My ERTs, Hutch and Cam, had stayed with our team’s medical examiner, Dr. Martinez, to handle the body recovery from the San Bernardino National Forest. They had thirty-four souls to identify. It would take a team of cross-jurisdiction law enforcement personnel to get the job done. The local FBI field office had established a call center to handle inquiries. Families of the missing were already calling in to beg for information and offer dental records.

  Crowley kept her head down as she shoved through the news crews and I followed in her wake.

  “Are you with the FBI?” A voice called out.

  Once the questions started, it turned into a feeding frenzy.

  “How many bodies were found today?”

  “Is this the work of a serial killer?”

  I waved my hand, didn’t make eye contact, and said, “No comment,” until I made it inside the building. Deputy Lovell stood by the lobby reception desk with a toothpick in his mouth and a grin on his face that made me nervous.

  “Where do you have him?” I asked.

  “Interrogation room three. Upstairs.” He hooked a thumb into the air, telling me where the second floor could be found in a two-story building.

  “Has anyone spoken to him since he’s been in the box?”

  “No. Well—” When the deputy scrunched his face, I braced for what he’d say. “I asked if he had dinner yet. After he said ‘no,’ I ordered pizzas. They should be here soon. You want in on that, it’ll cost you ten bucks, each.”