by Glenn Trust
Poverty and hard times were the life they had lived with their widowed mother. He and Cy were working on their dream now, building their business. There had been those who thought they were crazy for striking out on their own.
Canada was Lyn’s dream of escape. In her way, she was trying to achieve that dream, without any help or guidance from anyone. He and Cy had the guidance of a mother and an uncle. She had none. That thought gave him a deeper respect for her and her Canada dream.
Respect. That was something. Was there anything else there? Some deeper feeling? Sure he felt sorry for her. Pity, but that seemed insulting and the thought made him feel guilty again.
The cell phone on the truck seat rang.
“Hello,” Clay said, knowing who was on the other end.
“What are you doing?” Cy’s voice was calm, without inflection and clearly annoyed that Clay had not called.
“Wish I knew.” Clay had been expecting this call as the distance between himself and Savannah and his brother grew. Taking a deep breath he continued, “She wasn’t there, at the truck stop.”
“Oh. Sorry. I know you were counting on seeing her.”
“No, it’s not that, Cy…something’s not right.”
“Not right? What does that mean?”
“She got in a car with a stranger…”
“Clay, we were strangers this morning. She got in the truck with us. Might be a pattern here, you think?”
“Maybe, but it doesn’t seem right. The voice mail she left was, well, she seemed scared, frightened like something had happened.”
“Something did happen,” Cy was trying to be patient with his brother, but it was a struggle. “She had a bad fight with her father, bad enough that she had to leave for her safety. Then two strangers…you and me…take her to a truck stop in a strange city and leave her.”
“That was because…”
“I know, because she was going to Canada. I know. Sounds silly but I felt for her too, Clay. It was silly but kind of innocent. Couldn’t laugh at something like that. I get it.
But now she is gone. Probably found her ride to Canada, or at least to some place closer than Savannah, Georgia. That’s the way it is.”
Clay was silent, allowing Cy’s words to sink in. They made sense to a point.
“The voice mail, Cy. She was scared, and she trusted us and called. Can’t let that go. She was counting on us because we offered her a place to stay.”
“Clay,” Cy’s voice sounded tired. “We are strangers, and she is a stranger to us. I think you are carrying this too far.”
“I know, Cy. One more thing though. At the truck stop, I talked to some people who said she got into some trouble with a trucker and another fella had to save her. She left with that guy, but no one knew if she left voluntarily.”
“Sooo…?” Cy said, asking for the point his brother was making too slowly.
“So, she was scared. She got into trouble with a trucker who tried to force her into his rig. Another guy comes along and saves her from the trucker. She leaves with him later. But in between, she called us, Cy. She was counting on us being there. She trusted us. I don’t think she has too many people to trust.”
“No, I don’t reckon she does.” Clay could not see the look of complete resignation on his brother’s face, but he heard it in his voice. “Well, I guess you need to do what you’re doing brother. Seems right, I guess. I’ll keep things going here. You keep in touch.” As an afterthought, Cy added, “Be careful, Clay. We don’t know what this is all about.”
“I will. You too.” The brothers disconnected simultaneously and the road noise filled the pickup’s cab.
Despite the passion of his argument in explaining things to his brother, Clay’s thoughts were a turmoil of emotion. The only thing he knew for sure was that he had to make sure Lyn was not in danger. For now, there were questions about that.
If she had made up her mind to take the brothers up on their offer, why had she left with the man in the Chevy?
She had had the trouble with Henry. Why would she get into a car with another stranger?
If he was the man that had saved her from Henry, maybe she trusted him, but why would she have called Clay to pick her up?
There were too many questions. The memory of her recorded voice, confused and frightened, settled it.
At the very least, he would have to make sure she was safe. Clay’s head pounded at trying to sort it out any further than that.
An older model Chevrolet Impala got onto an exit ramp up ahead. It was only about ten years old, but Clay didn’t have much to go on. He followed the car up the ramp and into a gas station. Pulling through the station, he watched the car.
The Chevrolet pulled up to the gas pumps and an older couple got out. The man went to the rear of the car to pump gas. The woman went inside the convenience store.
Clay pulled through the lot and back onto the road. Driving down the entrance ramp to the interstate, he accelerated quickly. No telling how many cars had gone by while he had gone up the exit. He had to move quickly to catch up, looking for old Chevys as he headed west on I-16 towards Atlanta. The largest city in the state seemed as good a direction as any.
Tools rattled in the bed of the truck. Cy was going to be really pissed if he didn’t wrap this up soon. There was a limit to a brother’s patience.
61. Day’s End
Bob Shaklee kicked his shoes off and stretched out on a hard bed in the Colonial Hotel in the center of Everett. It was a hell of a lot nicer than the StarLite motel in Roydon, but a long ways from the Ritz in Atlanta.
He had worked a case involving threats to the governor once that had taken him to Atlanta. The governor’s office had put him up at the Ritz Carlton in the upscale Buckhead neighborhood, instead of the usual mid-market, garden variety hotel the state generally provided. But today the hard bed and austere room provided by the Colonial were fine with him.
Pulling his cell phone from the case on his belt, he leaned back on the pillow and punched ‘Home’ on the speed dial. A smile that erased the weariness and unpleasant memories of the day spread across his face when his sixteen year old daughter answered.
“Whatcha doin’, Punkin’?”
“Daddy! Hey, mom. Dad’s on the phone.” The background noises coming from his home melted the memories of the day.
****
In a room on the fourth floor of the Colonial, Sharon Price stood leaning on the window frame and staring out onto the quiet court square of Everett. The fourth floor was the highest floor in the hotel. That made it the smoking floor, which suited Price completely.
She inhaled deeply from the cigarette in her hand and let the smoke wisp away into the night air through the open window. Slowly the thoughts of the day faded. The images of the bodies of the old man and young girl receded from the front of her brain where they had been seared in place all day.
There was no phone call for her to make. She was alone. Sharon Price had grown up in a backwater part of Georgia, not much different from Pickham County. Change the names of the towns; you would hardly be able to distinguish one from the other.
Her mother had died of breast cancer at an early age. Her father had been there when she went away to the University of Georgia in Athens. He was a good father who had done his best to raise a daughter on his own. She had come home for Christmas during her sophomore year and then never saw her father again.
Just after the New Year, he had been working late in the convenience store he owned on the outskirts of the small town where they lived. It was a town much like Everett.
Someone had come in while he was closing and shot her father in the chest. Robbing the till, the killer managed to make off with a grand total of three hundred seventy-four dollars. He was never caught.
Her father lay bleeding out on the floor. They said it probably took over an hour for him to die. He wasn’t found until the next morning when a local farmer came in for coffee.
After the funeral
, Sharon Price changed her major at the university from accounting to criminal justice. She landed a job with the GBI after graduation and worked her way into investigations.
The cigarette smoke drifted through the window into the night air letting the day’s memories drift out with it until the room began to chill. Stubbing the butt in the small plastic ashtray that had not been cleaned after the previous tenant, she tugged the window shut and pulled the musty drapes. Time for bed. There was another long day ahead tomorrow.
****
Anxious frustration pushed Clay on his quest, and his foot pushed the accelerator of the pickup. Scanning side to side and ahead, he looked for any vehicle that might resemble an older Chevrolet sedan.
Having no idea where to go, he had been driving around east Georgia, searching the major highways and interstates for the old Chevy. Eventually he had decided to just head west from Savannah towards Atlanta, two hundred and fifty miles away.
It wasn’t north, but it was a central hub for interstates and highways. Anyone traveling very far in any direction through the state might well pass through Atlanta. And there were several truck stops. He would search them all if necessary. Besides, it was still in Georgia, still home, or close to it.
Like Lyn, his backcountry Pickham County roots might make him seem naïve, but he was not stupid. He knew that trying to find the old Chevy…trying to find Lyn…was useless…the search for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Hours earlier, he had stopped trying to understand what compelled him to search and just accepted it.
The odds of finding the girl were…well, finding her wasn’t very likely. He would give it another day, no more. Then, having fulfilled whatever sense of obligation it was that urged him on and, hopefully, shed of the guilt and sense of responsibility that had preyed on his mind all day, he would have to turn back to his brother and the job in Savannah.
A light rain had begun to fall, and the drops of rain on the sides of the windshield reflected the lights from the cars around him. Some of the drops reflected red and blue light, as if from a prism.
Clay glanced at the mirror while traffic around him slowed. The police car, emergency strobe lights flashing, roared up to his bumper.
Great. The perfect end to the day.
He guided the car through the slowing traffic and moved onto the shoulder of the interstate. The Georgia State Patrol cruiser followed. As they pulled off the road, the rest of the traffic picked up speed, resuming their trips. Clay waited impatiently in the truck, both hands on the wheel, as the Trooper approached carefully, flashlight shining into and around the truck’s interior.
****
Spray from the semi rig he was passing covered the windshield, temporarily blinding Leyland Torkman. He turned the wipers on with a jerk and continued moving around the truck. Easing back into the right lane, he signaled carefully and put some distance between the Chevy and the big rig.
The bright pinkish lights of the I-95 and I-26 intersection glowed garishly ahead in the rainy mist. Knowing that police communications between states were notoriously unreliable, and that in the unlikely event anyone had reported his abduction of the girl, it would take hours for that information to make its way to local police, even in an adjacent state, Lylee had decided to leave Georgia.
He proceeded up the coast of South Carolina. The old car whirred steadily along on the wet pavement. Contentment flowed in a loop from him into the car, to the wheels splashing on the pavement, back through the chassis and frame into the seat, and into him. It was a pleasant sensation.
Turning his head, he reached out and placed his hand on the thigh of the pretty brunette. After several hours in the car with him, she had overcome the initial shock and fear. She stiffened and looked at him with defiance.
A smile spread across his face at that. He moved his hand up and down her thigh as she straightened as much as she could in a symbolic effort to resist him.
Defiance. That would change, he thought, smiling more broadly at her. Before he was done, she would be whimpering at the realization that defiance was pointless.
There was to be no salvation. He would take his time. She was special. The end would be special. He would see to that.
Blue and red emergency lights ahead signaled an accident on I-95 that had traffic slowed at the giant interchange of the two major traffic corridors. There was no thought, just reaction as his planned direction changed in an instant.
Smoothly, Lylee guided the car onto the ramp from I-95 to I-26 towards Columbia. He would not be slowed, or possibly stopped, while the law muddled around him at a traffic accident. Merging into traffic, he settled again in the seat and the contentment returned.
****
Swallowing the scream down and pushing the fear deep inside, Lyn glared at the man touching her. She had been staring through the rain speckled glass, head resting against the window when his touch had startled her.
As she had earlier during their ‘pit stop’, she sensed that it was important for her immediate survival to show some resistance, to challenge him just enough to show that she was different, but not enough to anger him. It was a fine line to walk, and a mental effort that heightened the fatigue she felt, but she had no choice.
Hours ago she had forced out of her mind all of the ‘what ifs’. What if she hadn’t had a fight with her father? What if she hadn’t taken the ride to the truck stop? What if she hadn’t gotten into the truck with Henry, or into this car with…with whoever this was?
For now, she had to live with what was happening and survive. Most of all survive.
The thought of Clay and the call she had made to him on Big Leon’s phone was a guilty memory to be pushed down inside for now. She was where she was. There had never been any dramatic rescues or heroes in her life. She expected none now.
****
Sitting on the edge of his bed, stripped to his underwear, George Mackey cradled a dirty tumbler holding three full fingers of bourbon in his hand. The thought of calling his ex-wife and asking to speak to the girls crossed his mind. He considered it for a moment and then pushed it aside. He had no desire to fight tonight, and a call to Darlene would inevitably lead to an argument. Besides, it was late and the girls were probably in bed.
Turning the glass of bourbon slowly in his hand, he wondered if the parents of the girl murdered and left on Ridley Road had been notified. He had made a few death notifications in his time with the sheriff’s department.
Traffic accidents mostly. It was always unpleasant, but traffic accidents were something people knew about. They had some connection to everyday life. Not everyone died in traffic accidents, but it wasn’t unheard of. It was something a parent could hate but understand.
How did you tell parents that their daughter had been brutally and sadistically murdered, for no apparent reason, other than some animal had picked her out of the crowd? What understanding could they have? What sense could they make of that? It was something he had not had to do, and he was glad of it.
Closing his eyes, George saw the old Chevy glide by in the dark, except this time, he followed in his sheriff’s department pickup and stopped the car. He pictured himself walking up. The slender brown-haired man would be behind the wheel. The girl would be in the passenger seat, and he would stop anything from happening to her.
But that couldn’t be. It would never be. The girl was already tortured, dead and in the weeds on Ridley Road.
She was dead. George was too late. Darlene was right. He was always too late.
But at least he could have looked the animal in the eye. And then what? Yes, then what? Arrest him? Kill him? Be killed by him? All possibilities. George was too tired to figure it out.
In one gulp, he downed the bourbon and laid back on the bed waiting for the alcohol to dim the day and allow him to drift into sleep.
****
Angel Sims…Mrs. Harold Sims…sat on the front porch of the house she and her husband had shared for sixty years. They had raised their family there
. The chair he had been sitting in the night before rocked gently in the breeze blowing in with the rain.
Unconsciously, she reached out to touch the arm of the chair where his arm would have been resting. The wood was damp and cold, and her fingers recoiled quickly, settling in her lap.
A lone tear marked its way down her brown, weathered face. She watched the woods where the trail entered on the other side of the yard, where he had disappeared into the dark just about this time last night. Mist swirled across the yard, brought up by the rain and the cool night air. It was as if Harold had disappeared into the mist.
It was a melancholy fantasy. She knew he wasn’t coming back, but her gaze was expectant, hopeful, as if he might appear from the mist at any moment. In her heart, she knew he never would.
62. Traffic Stop
“Driver’s license and proof of insurance, please.” The trooper’s flashlight shone directly into Clay’s eyes causing him to squint.
Clay took his hands from the steering wheel and reached into his back pocket to retrieve his wallet. Flipping it open, he handed the license and insurance card to the trooper who kept the light partially in his eyes and partially on the license so that he could read them in the dark.
“Guess I was speeding, officer,” Clay said, uncomfortable with the trooper’s scrutiny and light in his eyes.
“Yes. Yes, you were, Mr. Purcell.” The trooper raised the light so that it was full in Clay’s face again. “Is there some reason for that?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Looking for someone? Who?”
“A girl. Her name is Lyn,” Clay said impatiently. “Look, sorry I was speeding officer. I know I got a ticket coming, and I’m not trying to be smart, but I need to get moving again. Could you check me out and write the ticket, and I promise to hold the speed down from now on.”
“A girl named Lyn,” the trooper continued calmly and without acknowledging Clay’s request. “Who is she? Girlfriend? Wife? Some sort of domestic problems between you?”
Clay’s head dropped in exasperated resignation. “No. Nothing like that. She’s a girl my brother and I met last night…this morning…at a diner on the interstate. She needed a ride so we took her to a truck stop outside Savannah.”