by Glenn Trust
“No. Go ahead,” he replied, nodding slightly.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Purcell. Are you saying that you are giving me permission to check the voice mail on your cellular phone? If you are, please speak clearly for me.”
The look of surprise faded. Clay realized he was being recorded. “Yes,” he said, raising his voice and speaking self-consciously in clear, separate syllables. “I give you my permission to check the voice mail.”
Price smiled and spoke more softly as she walked to the desk to retrieve the phone. “Thanks, Clay.” Flipping the phone open, she found the voice mail button quickly. “Password?”
Clay told her, and Price punched the keys with familiarity. She held the phone to her ear and then asked, “Who’s Cy?”
“That’s my brother,” Clay said with a sigh.
“He doesn’t sound happy.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Does he know about all this?”
“Yeah. Everything except getting stopped for speeding and…” Clay looked around the small state patrol office, “And being here.”
“So Cy was with you all day.”
“Yes, until I left to go back to the truck stop. He’s pretty pissed off right about now.”
Price smiled at him, “Yes he is. Where’s he at now?”
“Motel in Savannah. Where we stay during the week while we’re on the job.”
Price noted the name of the motel that Clay gave her. It was a budget place; the kind that tradesmen and truck drivers stay in on the road. Then she punched up the next voice mail.
Her eyebrows furrowed as she listened intently to the young girl’s voice. When it was done, she replayed it, turning the volume up, and putting the phone on speaker so that Clay could hear, along with the video recording device.
The sound of Lyn’s timid, frightened voice filled the room, and the look of anguished concern that came across Clay’s face was unmistakable. When the playback ended, Price saved the voice mails and ended the call. She looked up at the camera in the corner of the room by the ceiling. A moment later Trooper Collins came into the room.
As Price walked towards the small room where Bob Shaklee waited, she spoke over her shoulder to Clay.
“Be back in a few minutes, Mr. Purcell. Please wait here with Trooper Collins.”
Clay glanced at Collins who had retaken his seat behind the small desk. Collins nodded at him, and he nodded back. Yep, he would just wait here with Trooper Collins. It seemed like a good idea.
Collins picked up the radio microphone and repeated the BOLO that he had given earlier, adding a few details and directing that the information be passed to surrounding states and jurisdictions. Listening intently to the entire description broadcast by Trooper Collins, Clay made mental notes. In addition to what Clay had told them, he learned that the man with Lyn was wearing a Texas longhorn ring. He wondered how they had come upon that bit of information.
When Collins was done, Clay asked, “Can I go now? I really want to get out and see if I can find her. I won’t speed and I’ll be careful. I promise.”
Trooper Collins’ face had lost the hardness that had been there earlier, but it was still firm. “No son. You need to sit here for a while. There may be some more questions. We have units out looking all over the state. You can do more good helping us here.”
It was all Clay could do not to go through the door and to his truck. He had cooperated, and he didn’t think they could hold him legally. But where would he go? It seemed like they had a plan at least. He had nothing. He would sit and wait, for now.
67. Someplace, Away
An hour and a half after turning west on I-20, Lylee’s senses told him there was enough distance between him and Pickham County. It was time to get off the interstate system and onto roads where the old Chevy would blend in and where he could make a quick change of direction if necessary.
Taking U.S. 441 north from the interstate, the old Chevy proceeded quietly through the dark, empty streets of Madison, Georgia. The old antebellum mansions spared by Sherman on his march to the sea stood elegantly silent as the Chevy passed by. Lyn had never seen homes like that. They reminded her of the movie ‘Gone With the Wind’ she had seen on television once.
An hour later he had skirted the city of Athens, home of the University of Georgia, on side roads and then picked up 441 again as it headed to the north Georgia mountains.
As the distance from the busy interstate increased, Lylee’s senses relaxed. He knew that on the old country roads the old car would not draw attention. If someone had seen him abduct the girl at the truck stop, and had been interested enough to take the time to report the act, the local authorities would likely have only given the information to the state patrol.
He was familiar enough with the workings of law enforcement in its various forms to know that the likelihood of the description of the Chevy, the girl, and himself making it to some rural, north Georgia deputy this quickly was remote. He leaned back and stretched contentedly as he drove. It was time to start looking for some place to stay. Unlikely as it was that they would be identified, he wanted to be off the road come daylight with the car parked somewhere out of sight.
Then, as the daylight hours passed, he would see how thick the young girl’s shell was. He knew she was putting on a show of strength, preserving her identity, and exercising what little control she had in order to make it harder for him to kill her.
He smiled at that. She knew very little about her captor. Her resistance only made his hunger for her deeper. The end would be the same. He would feed and be satisfied, and she would pay the price for her attempts to resist.
But she was right about one thing. He needed to break her first, to crush the hope from her chest and to feel her trembling terror vibrate from her body electrifyingly into his. That would be the moment. The end would come for her then.
Looking over at the girl turned from him, and huddled as far away as possible, he marveled that she sensed how to prolong what little was left of her short life. He had thought, momentarily, to squeeze it from her when they had taken their pit stop earlier.
Normally, he would have and left the fragile shell of her body in the pinewoods for the loggers to find or the raccoons, or both. But her feeble effort at resistance had caused him to pause and think of the pleasure it would bring to break her shell away piece by piece and watch it fall as her fear rose. The girl the night before had been good, but this one would be extraordinary. He would savor her in every way.
Reaching out his hand, Lylee felt the muscles in her thigh tense. The grin plastered itself across his face.
Although she saw only her own dim reflection in the window glass of the passenger door, Lyn knew that the sick grin was there. She fought to control the quivering muscles in her leg.
The miles riding in the dark had been numbing. She was aware that they had left the interstate, although she had no idea in what direction they were traveling. The car had passed through some small towns and around one larger one, and then they had entered a world that was black on the other side of the window. The light from a farmhouse or country store would flicker by occasionally, and then the darkness would wrap itself around the car again.
She was relieved that he had not touched her or spoken to her since leaving the convenience store in Columbia. In the silence, she had drifted away. She did not know where she had drifted to, just somewhere away from here. Away from the car, away from her father, away from Pickham. Somewhere away, that was all.
It was dark there and quiet. There was no sensation and no awareness. Maybe she had slept. She didn’t know. But as she fought back the revulsion at his touch, she tried to force herself back to that someplace, away.
68. Taste of the Kill
The door clattered open again and Clay looked up from his chair to the newcomer entering the room. Thickly built but lean, he appeared to be in his early forties. He wore a short jacket, jeans, and boots. He looked like a tradesman or trucker. There was
a vague familiarity about him that Clay could not quite place.
Trooper Collins looked up curiously and the newcomer spoke.
“George Mackey, deputy from down in Pickham County. Supposed to meet Shaklee and Price here.”
“Oh. Right. First door to the right down that hall,” Collins said, motioning with his head towards the door that Sharon Price had entered a few minutes before.
George looked down and exchanged a mutually curious glance with Clay as he walked by. He noted that the look from the young man was not nervous or anxious.
As the door closed behind, Shaklee and Price looked up from the table.
“Glad you could make it, George,” Shaklee said with a slight smile.
“Got here as quick as I could.” He looked at Price, knowing that she would have been the one to do the initial interview. “So what do you think?”
“I think he’s telling the truth,” Price replied with a shrug. “Held out his hand and shook. Hand was dry and the grip was normal. Gentle like most men shake hands with a girl. But not nervous.”
“That it?”
“No. He is anxious about the girl. Met her earlier in the day and offered her a ride, but she was hitchhiking, so they dropped her at the AcrossAmerica Truck Stop outside Savannah. Not sure if they have a relationship, but there’s something there.”
For the next several minutes, Sharon Price recounted Clay’s story of the day, including the voice mail and the information Clay had obtained at the truck stop.
Playing the voice mail for them, she was stunned by a look that could only be described as pain that played across George Mackey’s face. After replaying the voice mail for them three times, she flipped the phone shut.
Shaklee and Price watched George closely as he struggled visibly to compose himself.
Finally, Sharon Price spoke. “You okay, George?”
“Yeah. I’m okay,” the deputy managed softly. “Just didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect to hear that voice. She sounded young. She could have been the girl…”
“She wasn’t, George,” Price interjected abruptly. “That was not the girl found in the weeds on Ridley Road. You understand that, right?”
“Yeah, I know. But maybe if I had done something last night she wouldn’t be…”
“There are no maybe’s, George. You know that.” Bob Shaklee leaned forward and looked in the deputy’s eyes. “No maybe’s. Understand. What matters is now, what happens now. We need you on this case with us and you need to get past whatever baggage you are carrying around. Push it down, George. You want to help her? Then focus!”
The sharpness of Shaklee’s words had a sobering effect. George visibly squared his shoulders.
“You’re right.” And the deep breath he took seemed to clear away the guilt, at least for the moment. “So what now? The boy isn’t involved, so where do we go from here?”
They sat quietly, each staring at the table thinking until Bob Shaklee spoke.
“All right. We have a bit more in the way of a description of the perp. And we know that he has another possible victim with him.”
Mackey and Price both started to speak, but Price was first.
“Not a possible victim, Bob. That girl will be the next victim, if she isn’t already. You know it as well as we do.”
“Okay, right, he has another definite victim.” He thought for a moment before continuing. “So what will he do? How long do we have before he kills the girl? Where will he go?”
There was silence again for several seconds as they considered those three important questions. This time George spoke first.
“I think she is probably still alive…for now.”
“Why is that, George?” Price asked.
“Well, I’m not sure he intended to kill the old man, Mr. Sims. He had the girl with him, and Sims just happened to come along. He enjoyed it, killing him. Took pleasure in making it as painful as possible, but it was a fluke, a chance thing. He was there in the dark at the church with the girl to do to her whatever it was he was going to do.”
“Right. So…?”
“Well, then he takes her to the StarLite and during the night, he does kill her.”
“We know all of this, George. What are you getting at?” Shaklee said trying to urge him on and hoping he would hurry.
George sensed the impatience and looked up. “Let me walk this through my head as we go here, Bob.” He looked towards the dark window, took a breath, and continued. “So he leaves the StarLite, and now he is leaving two bodies behind in Pickham County. That would concern him. Any animal will try to avoid danger, and that’s what he did. We know he headed north on the interstate, putting distance quickly between him and Pickham County. But then he got sidetracked…”
George paused to think through this part of the scenario. Price picked up the thread and spoke.
“So he stops at the truck stop, fuels up, gets into a fight with a trucker…”
“Over the girl,” George added. “He fought over the girl…his girl. He saw her there, and she became his. His prey.”
“Okay. He gets into a fight over the girl and then leaves with the girl,” Shaklee interjected. “Seems a little rash doesn’t it? Considering what he had done just a few hours earlier?”
“He’s arrogant. Confident and thinks he’s smarter than the rest of us,” Price contributed to the picture they were sketching.
George nodded slowly and then continued, speaking deliberately as if he were explaining the puzzle to himself. “Yes, and something else. He’s got the taste.” The others looked at him questioningly and he continued, “The taste of the kill. Like a cougar that leaves the swamp and kills one dog in the backyard, and then kills the others just because he has the taste and they are there, and he is pumped up on the rush of the kill. He can’t control himself. He needs it. Yes, he is arrogant and confident, but most of all he needs it. The taste of the kill.”
They sat contemplating this for a moment before Shaklee spoke.
“So, this other girl, Lyn, is probably dead. That what you are thinking, George?”
George shook his head. “No. Not yet. He has her. That keeps the rush and the hunt alive for him, but he knows he can’t expect to leave a third body this close and get away. I think he wants to put some distance between us and him,” George said with certainty, and then added a little less certainly, “And the girl is with him until he feels safe enough to dump another body.”
Price spoke up with urgency. “Okay, so the girl is alive with this asshole. How do we find her? We do not have a lot of time.”
“Well, he’s trying to put distance between himself and Pickham County. That means north or west, and the fastest way is on the interstate.”
“Right, north or west,” George agreed. “And I think he will get off of the interstate when he can.”
“Why?” Price asked.
“I don’t know really.” George shrugged. “It’s what I would do. More options if I have to run. Small towns, country roads, dirt trails. Not as confined as the lanes of the interstate heading in one direction. Just seems like what I would do if I had to get away.”
“Okay,” Shaklee spoke, summing up. “The asshole is trying to put some distance between himself and us. He is probably heading north or west. We don’t know which direction, however. And he probably still has his latest victim, the girl named Lyn, with him, but there is no telling how long she will be alive. That about it?”
Price and Mackey nodded their agreement with Shaklee’s summation.
“Okay. I propose that we split up and position ourselves in the general direction of his probable routes of escape. We may not be close, but we’ll be closer than we are now. And if we catch a break, we can be on him a lot quicker than just sitting here.”
The others nodded agreement.
“All right. I’ll go west along I-20 and hold up at the Alabama line. Sharon, you and George head north.” He turned towards George. “Any particular route you want to take since y
ou think he might be off of the interstate system?”
George stood up and crossed the room to a map of Georgia and surrounding states covering one wall. He traced his finger along the map for a minute and poked it.
“Right about here, I’d say.”
Price walked over to the map peering at the highway and area where George’s finger lay. He had traced a route north along U.S. 80 and the adjoining state highways leading from Statesboro and then into the network of interstates and country roads spread across northeast Georgia and the South Carolina state line. His finger came to rest at Toccoa, not too far west of I-85 before it crossed from Georgia into South Carolina.
“Looks about right to me,” Price agreed.
“Good,” Shaklee said. “We have a plan…sort of.”
“We have a plan,” Price said. “What we need now is a break. We need some trooper or deputy to get lucky and spot the car.”
“A break is definitely what we need and what the girl needs.” Bob looked at the others before continuing. “We can only stay on the hunt for another day or so unless we catch that break and someone spots him. After that, the trail will be too cold, and the girl…” He stopped in midsentence, not wanting to say what they all knew. “Well after that, we will have to assume that we will probably not be able to save the girl and will have to get back to following up on all of the leads we have. Go to Texas. Check sex offender files. Cases in adjacent states. All the usual paths of investigation. It won’t be a hunt and rescue anymore, just plain plodding investigative work.”
He stopped speaking and looked at the others to make sure they understood his meaning. They had another day to save the girl, no more.
Sharon Price nodded solemnly in understanding as she offered a silent prayer for that break.
George was quiet. The hunter in him knew that patience was far more important than luck in bringing down big game, and this was the biggest game there was. A beast in the form of a man.