The Hunters Series Box Set

by Glenn Trust

  “Pickham County 301, this is State 115.”

  George reached for his radio. “Go ahead, 115.”

  “George, you need to come over here. The StarLite Motel, across the street.”

  “On my way.” George walked out without another word to the large, manager woman.

  For her part, manager woman just shrugged and flipped the channel on the old nineteen inch television in the office to ‘Judge Judy’. She was glad to see the law go. Wasn’t good for business.

  48. Coming of Age

  Leon Tills stood quietly by the young girl. His large hands roamed restlessly in and out of his pockets while his partner, Bob Sully, talked to the Savannah PD officer. Lyn, standing next to Leon, was dwarfed by the huge man. She appeared even smaller and frailer, while Leon looked even larger.

  Since encountering the young girl, they had been trying to decide what to do with her. Leon, for his part, was given the task of looking out for her, which meant standing watch over her. His hulking presence was sure to discourage any other potential problems like Henry from approaching Lyn. He accepted this task willingly.

  Although he and Bob were partners, Bob was the thinker and talker, Leon was the doer. Leon was okay with that. He was a damned good truck driver, but Bob was the planner, always thinking ahead. He was better at talking to people, so Leon was comfortable letting him take care of that sort of thing.

  Right now that meant that Bob talked to the police officer while Leon hovered protectively over Lyn. They stood alone about ten feet away from Bob and the officer.

  The thin, hard looking man that had kicked Henry’s ass hadn’t come in with them, although he had said that he would. Nobody missed him though, and no one was going to talk about the little incident in the truck lot, especially Henry.

  Leon thought about the man who had beaten old Henry. No doubt, Henry had deserved it. If he hadn’t stepped in, there was no telling what Henry might have done to the young girl.

  But there was something strange about him, Leon thought. Even though Henry was after the girl, they had felt that they needed to protect Henry from the man trying to save her. Leon didn’t have words to explain it.

  The man had a meanness about him. You could see it in the way he had attacked Henry. Leon was glad the man had been there to make sure the girl wasn’t abused by Henry, but he figured that if he and Bob hadn’t come along, he might have killed Henry.

  Leon shrugged to himself. Maybe that was what Henry deserved. Leon had a daughter of his own, and he didn’t know what he would do if someone tried to abuse her the way Henry would have done the young girl. Still, he knew that he and Bob would have had their hands full stopping Henry’s assailant if he had turned on them while he was kicking the dog shit out of Henry.

  Leon looked over at Bob and the officer as Bob raised his voice.

  “What!” Bob said, incredulously.

  “Sorry, sir. That’s how it is.”

  “But look at her,” Bob said. “She’s a child.”

  “Nope. She’s eighteen. She’s of age.” the officer replied. “Not a thing I can do. She can go where she wants and do what she wants, ‘long as it’s legal. Hanging out in the truck stop isn’t against the law.”

  “But she almost got raped.”

  “You know that for a fact?” the officer asked, eyes narrowing.

  “Well no, not for a fact, but if this other fella hadn’t come along and stopped it, there was this trucker that was gonna put her in his truck and I know it wasn’t gonna be good for her.”

  “Look, I’m on your side. Where’s this other fella? Where’s the trucker that was going to rape her?”

  “Well they’re gone now, at least I haven’t seen them around here for a while,” Bob replied, knowing that it was over and done as far as Henry and his attacker were concerned.

  “Well,” the officer continued, “No suspects and no complaint from the girl equals no crime. Really, nothing I can do buddy.”

  Bob took a deep breath and looked down at the floor.

  “Miss,” the officer said to Lyn making his point “is there anything I can do for you? Get some help, call someone, get you a ride somewhere? Contact your parents? Family? Anything?”

  Lyn looked up. She hadn’t spoken since the officer had arrived and asked her name and what had happened. She had said that nothing was wrong anymore and that the two truckers were just trying to help her, but she was fine now.

  “I’m fine, sir,” she said. “Really, I’ll be okay. I’m just waiting for a friend to pick me up. These men helped me, but I’m okay now.”

  The Savannah PD officer looked at Bob and Leon and shrugged. “Sorry guys. Wish there was something I could do. I know it’s hard. There’s hundreds like her out on the roads. Just not much we can do about it.”

  The officer turned and walked away. Bob looked at Leon and then looked at the floor. Leon, the stalwart, just looked back and stood protectively near Lyn.

  “You know, we are going to have to leave in an hour or so. Have to get our loads down the road,” Bob said to Lyn.

  “I know. Thank you for helping me.”

  Bob shook his head fighting down his frustration.

  “You don’t understand. You’ll be alone here again. Something could happen. There might not be anyone here to help.” Bob looked around to demonstrate to Lyn that she really would be alone. “This is a big place,” he said motioning with his hands, “and bad things can happen. I mean you saw that, right?”

  Lyn looked down and shrugged.

  “I have a friend. He is going to come pick me up. I’ll be fine until then.”

  The two truck drivers looked at each other. Leon’s face bore a look of supreme sadness; Bob’s showed frustration.

  Finally, Bob shrugged and said, “All right then. We’ll be here for a little while anyway. If you need anything, come get us. We’ll be getting our rigs weighed and serviced.”

  He turned and walked away, but then stopped and looked back at Lyn and said firmly, “You take care. Okay? Call that friend and have him come get you.”

  Lyn smiled slightly and nodded before looking back down at the floor.

  Leon watched Bob’s back retreat across the truck stop. He put a large, heavy hand on Lyn’s shoulder for a moment, and they both stared at the floor. Then he withdrew his hand and walked slowly away following Bob. He didn’t want to look back at her. Not knowing what to say or what to do, he could only walk away.

  49. Evidence and Guilt

  Gunning the pickup across the road, George spotted Shaklee’s car and roared to a stop behind it, kicking up a cloud of dust. The car was parked at the end of the row of rooms away from the office. The door was open, and a man in overalls was standing outside. The door to the room next door was open also. Bob came out of that room as George walked up.

  “Take a look, George. See anything familiar?”

  Standing in the doorway of the room, George looked around briefly. It only took a second.

  “The bedspread. It’s the same.”

  “Yep,” Shaklee affirmed. “The very same as the one the girl was wrapped in. Come next door.”

  Walking into the next room, the one at the end of the building, George saw what else had Bob Shaklee so excited.

  “The bedspread is gone.”

  “Yes, it is George.”

  “That means that this could be the scene of the murder.”

  “I’d say that’s exactly what it means. I have the crime scene techs on the way. Let’s look around and keep everyone away until they get here. Then we’re going to have a conversation with our friend here.” He motioned to the man in overalls. “He says he doesn’t remember anything from last night. Busy you know.”

  “Really?” George turned to the man. “Well, come have a seat in the back of my truck. Maybe you can think for a while and come up with something we might want to hear.” George took him by the arm and led him to the pickup’s rear, crew cab door behind the prisoner screen. Giving him a quick
pat down, he opened the door, and the man climbed in. George slammed the door and turned away.

  Let him stew for a while. There wouldn’t be much business at the office as long as the lot was full of state and county vehicles, and there were more on the way.

  George began looking around the parking lot in front of the room door. Bob worked inside, carefully noting every item in the room, peering closely at objects, furnishings, and flooring, searching for any small bits of evidence. Unless the killer was a magician, chances are they would find something. Despite his precautions, there would be something he had missed in his efforts to leave no evidence behind.

  It took George only a minute to spot the duct tape. It lay in the dusty gravel where a car would have been parked if someone were staying in the room.

  Kneeling down, he turned it over with his pen. There were three layers, about the length to go around the mouth and head of a girl. It had been cut, not pulled off or unwrapped.

  What appeared to be a small amount of dried blood stained the edge of the tape by the cut mark. The killer had probably cut the tape quickly and roughly without worrying about nicking the girl in the process. George had no doubt that the knife used was the same one that had plunged deep into Mr. Sims and had then inflicted the small tissue cuts on the girl’s body.

  Near the tape were two white plastic tie wraps of the type used by electricians to wrap wires and cables. They had also been cut.

  Squatting in the dust, staring at the tie wraps and tape, George closed his eyes and saw the scene as it would have looked the night before. The girl bound, mouth taped, still alive, and not hurt much. She would have been forced to walk into the room.

  Did she know she would never walk out? The thought must have been burning in her mind, desperately trying to find a way to stay alive. Hate for the animal that had done this boiled up inside. Every piece of evidence pointed to a person who caused pain willingly and with purpose. The pain was as much a reason for the murders as anything else.

  He looked up and called to the room. “Bob, you have an evidence bag?’

  “Yeah, George. What do you have?” Shaklee stopped in the doorway, looking at the spot where George knelt. “Good. Should be able to get the victim’s DNA from the tape, probably the perp’s too, or a print.”

  George didn’t move. Shaklee walked to his car to retrieve the evidence bags and a camera to photograph the items in place before placing them in the bags.

  “We’ve made some progress, George. We’re a lot closer than we were this morning.”

  George looked up. “Lot of progress, but we still don’t have a suspect. And even with his DNA, we won’t know who it is unless he’s got a record and it’s in the data base. And the DNA test could take weeks. We don’t have weeks, Bob.”

  “Yeah, but we also have a description of him, the ring, and the car. That’s a lot. We’ll find the bastard.” He tried to sound more confident than he actually was.

  At the mention of the car, Bob could see George’s head drop slightly. “Want to tell me about the car, George?”

  George stood up. “You talk to Ronnie?”

  “No. I was there when he gave that bullshit story to the sheriff about you checking your notes to confirm the description. Haven’t known you long, but information like that…well, I don’t think you would have had to check any notepad about that.”

  “Well, you are correct, Agent Shaklee.” George looked up at the sky and took a deep breath. “I was asleep.”

  “Okay. So how does that tie in?”

  “The car woke me up as it passed, not too far from the Ridley’s place. I saw it, but I didn’t do anything. Didn’t stop it, didn’t get a tag number, nothing. Just pulled my jacket around me and dozed off again.”

  “Well, George, you wouldn’t have known.”

  “Stop. Now you sound like Ronnie Kupman. We had a murder in the county. That doesn’t happen often in Pickham. The car was on a road that really doesn’t get traveled much at night. It was a car that I didn’t recognize as a local. It had an out of state tag. I couldn’t tell which state, but it wasn’t a Georgia tag. You would think I would have at least followed the car to see where they went or how they were driving. I didn’t. What I did do was nothing. I slept. Ronnie said I was checking the notes to cover me. He knows the sheriff would love to get rid of me on charges like that.”

  “I see. So now you’re going to spend the rest of your career beating yourself up.”

  “What career? I’m working this case and then hanging it up. Turn myself in to the sheriff when we get this done.”

  “Really?” Shaklee said questioningly. “And give up Ronnie Kupman who covered for you. Seems a little unfair to him.”

  George had already thought about that. “I’m going to tell the sheriff that the story about checking my notes was my idea. Ronnie didn’t know any better. He just stays quiet. It will work out.”

  Shaklee shook his head slowly. “George, I get it. Any of us would feel terrible about it. I also think your contribution to the case outweighs any error in judgment you might have made. We wouldn’t be anywhere near as far along without you. Do what you want, there’s nothing I can say to talk you out of it, I know, but it seems to me that it would be a pretty big shame to lose what you bring to the table. The way I see it, if your guilt stays with you, so be it. Maybe you should feel guilty every day the rest of your life. Maybe that’s the price you pay to keep doing what you do best. I guess you could confess and cleanse your soul and be drummed out of the county. You might feel better, and the citizens of Pickham County might lose one of their best, maybe the best. Or, you could hold it in, take the pain and guilt, and keep doing what you are supposed to do. Maybe that’s your penance. It’s harder, that’s for sure.”

  Gravel crunched and dust swirled as the crime scene SUV pulled into the lot. Shaklee turned towards the room.

  “Let’s get to work.”

  George followed him into the room that the girl never walked from.

  50. Alone

  On the front wall outside the truck stop cafe, there were a couple of old, beat up pay phones. Lyn stood in front of one. It was dirty. In the age of cell phones, they bore the signs of neglect. A brownish substance was hardened to the mouthpiece.

  Only the poorest people used them anymore, Lyn knew. She knew that most people nowadays had cell phones, although she had never had one. She had seen many drivers walking around the truck stop with cell phones to their ears.

  She wondered what that would be like. Just take a little thing out of your pocket and call someone on your own phone. She wondered who she would call. Clay Purcell, she thought. Today she would call Clay on one of those cell phones, if she had one. Clay had one. That was the number he had written on the napkin for her.

  Lyn was accustomed to the frustration of seeing the modern world around her, a world filled with convenience and wonders, but never knowing what it was like to participate in that world. She saw it at a distance from the cage of her small life.

  Lyn studied the folded napkin with Clay’s number on it and took a deep breath. Reaching for the dirty pay phone, she shoved her hand in the pocket of her jeans searching for coins.

  “Here, you might want to use this.”

  Lyn was startled by a deep voice behind her. It was Leon, the big truck driver. He held a cell phone in his hand and raised his arm, offering it to her.

  “Oh…uh no, I couldn’t,” Lyn stammered, “I don’t even know…”

  “Here,” the big man insisted, then showing her, he opened the phone, “Just press these buttons for the numbers, and then press this green one. That makes the call go through. Hold this up to your ear to talk and hear. Just close it up when you’re done. I’ll be in the store. You can bring it in to me.”

  Leon pushed the phone into her small hand and turned abruptly heading back into the store.

  Lyn stood there with the thing in her hand. She was surprised at how light it was. Not like a regular phone, but then it
was a lot smaller.

  Tentatively, she opened the phone and then opened the napkin with Clay’s number on it. It was awkward, but she managed to read the numbers and then press each one on the phone. She was surprised to see the numbers come up on a little screen.

  She fumbled with holding the napkin and then pressing the numbers, but once they were all entered, she compared what was on the screen with the numbers that Clay had scrawled for her. They matched.

  Taking a deep breath, she pressed the green button. It had a picture of a regular telephone receiver on it, which was not anything at all like the little device she held in her hand. Holding it up to her ear as Leon had instructed, Lyn heard ringing, just like on a regular phone.

  The ringing went on for several seconds. Lyn thought no one was going to answer, but then she heard Clay’s voice.

  “Hi, this is Clay…”

  “Hello, uh Clay, this is Lyn…,” Lyn was cut off because Clay kept talking.

  “…can’t take your call right now, but leave a message and I’ll call you back,” Clay said and then there was a loud beep.

  Lyn stood there with the phone at her ear not knowing what to do. After a few seconds, she closed it up the way Leon had said. Voice mail was something she had never encountered in the backcountry of south Georgia.

  The phone hung loosely from the end of her arm as she looked at the ground. She was frustrated. She was alone. She fought back the tears that welled up in her eyes.

  Opening the phone again, she carefully pressed the numbers and then the green button. Again, the phone rang. She counted six rings, then Clay’s voice. This time she said nothing but waited a moment. Clay continued talking as he had before, telling her to leave a message. When he finished talking, Lyn spoke.

  “Uh, hello, Clay. This is Lyn, the girl you gave a ride to. If you still want to come pick me up here, I’ll be at the truck stop. I, uh…” she didn’t know what else to say, and for a few seconds, there was just silence until she realized she should just close the phone up.