by C. M. Sutter
Jack agreed. “Okay, you’ve got a deal. I’ll be the grill master, and all you have to do is make sure there’s plenty of beer.”
I grinned.
“See you in the morning,” Jack said as I pulled into his driveway.
I watched him walk up the sidewalk with his backpack slung over his shoulder. He turned back and waved when he reached the front door. I waved back then drove home.
The overhead garage door lifted and creaked as I waited in the driveway to pull in. The condo was dark. Amber was closing Joey’s tonight. Spaz lay on the couch and lifted his head when I walked in. He wasn’t quite interested enough to get up and greet me properly, but I gave him a head scratch anyway. He purred.
Polly and Porky were sleeping soundly on their perch, so I left them alone. I didn’t need to hear birds chirping anyway when I was dead tired and going to bed.
We’d start the brainstorming, hopefully rested and refreshed, first thing in the morning.
Chapter 15
Jeremy got an early start. He’d have to take Melanie to the designated location later where the buyer’s representative would pick her up. He wrote down the address and programmed it into his GPS. Neither of the brothers was familiar with the area. From what Jeremy had been told, the rep would be flying into O’Hare on a private plane and would meet him near the state line. Jeremy calculated the distance was about ninety miles from the farm.
The sun had been up for only an hour, but he was already hard at work. His body glistened with sweat, even in the shade cast by the overhead tree limbs. Jeremy had to finish digging the hole for Beth. He left a note on the table for Matt to feed the girls and to make sure Melanie showered. She needed to look nice for her new owner. If the buyer was pleased with her, the chances of future sales would be good.
He had two more feet to go. Jeremy wiped his brow with his forearm and rubbed his watch against his cargo shorts. The crystal was coated with dirt. Eight o’clock—there was still plenty of time. He speared the ground with the shovel head and cracked open the water bottle that was in his oversized side pocket. He sat down against a tree and took a deep swallow. A mosquito buzzed on the back of his hand. He watched as it filled its belly with his blood. He smashed it with his other hand then smeared the blood across his shorts. He took another swallow of water, got up, and began digging again.
An hour later, the hole was finally deep enough for a body. Jeremy headed inside to see if Matt had gotten up yet. Matt’s sleeping habits annoyed him. His younger brother needed to be a bit more ambitious. Jeremy didn’t like carrying the brunt of the responsibility all the time.
The kitchen screen door slammed behind him when he entered but not before a few pesky flies managed to get through. He slapped at them as he walked toward the living room. Jeremy peeked around the doorway—nobody there. He heard voices coming from the basement—at least Matt was up.
He opened the door and descended the creaking stairs. What sounded like distant voices from upstairs were now clearly panicked cries for help. Jeremy rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs and entered the large room with the caged women.
“What the hell is with all the noise?”
He saw Matt sitting on a chair five feet from the cages. Lying next to him on the floor were the stun gun and cattle prod. Five bottles of water and ten breakfast bars sat on a small table to his right.
“Did you just come down?” Jeremy asked.
“Yeah, sorry, bro, I got up late. Their food is ready, but these two? Apparently they don’t know the drill yet. They can sure yell.”
Jeremy approached the cages that held Gina and Carley and crouched down in front of Carley’s gate. “Haven’t your roommates gone over the rules with you yet?” He stared at both newcomers. “I bet you weren’t expecting this yesterday, were you?” He grinned at his brother. “Your throats must be parched from all the yelling you’re doing. Water would taste good right now, wouldn’t it?”
Carley spat through her pen, just missing Jeremy’s face.
Jeremy turned to Matt and laughed. “That was close. I guess Carley needs to be taught some manners.”
He stood and winced at the pop that came from his knee. Memories of his own childhood abuse entered his mind for a second. He dismissed them and walked toward his brother, his hand outstretched. Matt picked up the stun gun and cattle prod and handed them to Jeremy, then he sat back in his chair and rubbed his hands together with anticipation.
“Pay attention, ladies, and watch how this is done. You see these bottles of water? I want to give each of you water to drink, but you have to do as you’re told. Watch Beth over here. She’ll be the guinea pig for this demonstration.”
Jeremy approached Beth’s cage. She cowered toward the back and whimpered.
“Okay, I’m going to open her pen and place the water bottle inside. If she makes a move toward the gate, she’s going to get zapped. Let’s show them how this works, Beth.”
Jeremy motioned for Matt to bring the keys over. Matt unlocked the padlock and opened the gate. He stood back and watched—excitement was written across his face.
“Okay, come on, Beth. Come forward like you want to escape. Pay close attention, girls. You seriously don’t want this happening to you. It really hurts, right, Beth?”
In a flash, Jeremy reached in and hit Beth with the cattle prod. She grunted, fell back, and twitched for a few seconds.
He jerked his head to the sound of Gina screaming. She wrapped her fingers through the wire links and shook the cage. Jeremy slammed Beth’s gate and walked over to Gina’s pen.
“Let us out of here! I want to go home,” she screamed.
“That’s a big no-no, Gina. I thought I just made it clear to you what the consequences were for misbehaving. Besides, you’re never going home. Now everyone is going to be punished for your behavior.” Jeremy pulled the stun gun out of his back pocket.
“You’re going first, Carley. Brace yourself, it’s going to hurt.”
Jeremy grabbed Carley’s hair through the wires and pulled her head back. He zapped her neck with the gun and gave it a few extra seconds. She screamed, grunted, and jerked as her body hit the floor of the pen.
“Who’s next?”
Jeremy approached the cage with Liz inside and zapped her, then he nodded for Matt to help out. “Hit Gina with the cattle prod. You want to keep your distance from her. She looks like a fighter. I’ll let you slide, Mel, only because you’re leaving us. I’m sure your new owner doesn’t want to see burns on your body when he gets you. Consider yourself lucky. Your roommates got your share instead. Now eat your damn breakfast. None of you are getting water, so you can thank Gina for that. We’ll be back in an hour, and I don’t want to hear a peep from any of you before then.”
Jeremy dropped two breakfast bars through the wires of each cage. He and Matt turned the corner, clicked up the volume on the baby monitor, and left. They slammed the door behind them at the top of the stairs.
“Let’s see if these new girls have any bright ideas,” Jeremy said as they entered the kitchen.
“Does it matter? Mel and Beth will both be gone.”
“Nah—it doesn’t matter, but it is amusing.” Jeremy turned the volume up to high on the baby monitor that sat on the kitchen table, poured two coffees, and waited. The monitor came to life with conversations from downstairs. Laughter filled the kitchen as the brothers leaned in closer to listen.
“I have to get out of here. I’m going to make a run for it when they let me out to shower. It’s the only chance I’ll have before I’m gone for good.”
“Mel, you can’t leave me. I’m afraid.”
Matt said, “That sounds like Liz.”
“I’m leaving no matter what. They’ve already sold me.”
The sound of a cage shaking made the brothers laugh.
Jeremy grinned at Matt. “That has to be Gina. The others know better.”
“Stop doing that, Gina. There’s no way out. You’re just going to get
us zapped again. You’re better off complying. Don’t give them a reason to get mad at you. You won’t win.”
Matt took a gulp of coffee and said to Jeremy, “Good advice.”
The voices continued.
“There has to be a way out.”
“There isn’t, and I want to live. They killed one of us a few nights ago. She screamed a lot too, and now she’s gone.”
“That sounds like Beth and Gina talking,” Jeremy said with a smirk. “Sorry, Beth, you may want to live, but that just isn’t in the cards anymore. We didn’t dig that hole for nothing.”
Chapter 16
We had already been brainstorming for over two hours. Three pots of coffee into it, we’d concluded that Reanne was snatched randomly from a popular swimming lake in Grand Forks. Now, she was found dead over six hundred miles away in our county. According to Jason, she hadn’t been sexually assaulted, only zapped numerous times with a stun gun and cattle prod. We all agreed that Reanne had been caged. We just had to figure out if it was during her transport or if the killer had a place where he was staying.
The motive could come from one of two directions. We were dealing with somebody who was moving across the country and snatching women as the opportunity came up. This method would be difficult to track since he could be a serial killer who would capture women in one location, then torture and kill them somewhere else. The other scenario would be that he actually was collecting women as he traveled. Once he had enough, he’d have to hunker down somewhere, keep them caged in a stationary location, and then sell them on the darknet.
Lieutenant Clark leaned back, causing his chair to squeak. “Okay, if our guy is selling women, why kill one? Isn’t that like getting rid of the goose that laid the golden egg?”
I nodded. “But maybe she did something that enraged him. Killing her might not have been his original intention. We need to find out if any other dead women have been discovered between Grand Forks and here with burns from a stun gun and cattle prod. At least that would tell us if he was killing them for fun or if Reanne’s death was the exception to his sick intentions. We’ll have to come up with the most likely route between the two areas and see if anything pops.”
“That’s easy,” Jack said. “The most direct route is Interstate 94. I think we should check less obvious alternate routes too. If he just kills and dumps them, he may not want to be on such a public stretch of highway.”
The lieutenant agreed. “Okay, Clayton and Billings, you guys get started on that. If he is stationary, we’ll need to establish a perimeter to stay within, meaning our own county. We’ll focus initially on the eastern section of the county. Wausaukee County could also be a possibility. I’ll talk to the sheriff’s department over there and give them a heads-up. If he’s transporting women, we’re likely looking at somebody with a van or something larger.”
“Boss?”
“Yes, Jade.”
“We could check into moving-truck rentals that came from Grand Forks, but we have no idea if that was his starting location.”
“True, but Reanne went missing several months ago. Would anybody keep a moving van for that long? He still needed a means to dump her body. I’m thinking this guy has his own vehicle. Okay, let’s narrow down what we do know.”
Jack began. “He may be familiar with the area just because of the dump spot. To me that means he’s found a place to stay even if it’s temporary. He’s likely driving his own vehicle, so it has to be at least the size of a van, and he somehow has access to Xylazine.”
“Did we get anything on that?” the lieutenant asked, looking between Todd and Billy.
Todd spoke up. “There was a report two years back about a break-in at a veterinarian’s office in LA. Nobody was ever caught on that one. Also, a pharmacy in Miami reported Xylazine and a few other drugs stolen last August, but the thief has already been apprehended. The database goes back three years in the US, and those were the only two reports where Xylazine was mentioned.”
Clark groaned. “What ever happened to good old-fashioned murders committed by jealous husbands in their homes? At least we’d have a location and a name.”
I poured more coffee for everyone. “This isn’t going to be an easy case, especially if we have no idea if the perp dumped Reanne and continued on or not. He could be in Ohio by now for all we know. What we do know is she’s dead, and somebody has to be held accountable for her murder.”
Lieutenant Clark’s phone rang on his desk. He turned and headed for his office. “Clayton and Billings, get started on those routes. Todd and Billy, thanks for the help tracking down the Xylazine.” He looked at Jack and me. “Excuse me for a minute, guys. I’ll be right back.”
We watched through the glass wall as he sat at his desk and talked on his phone.
“This can’t be good,” I said.
The expression the lieutenant wore told us something bad had happened. He hung up and came back out to the bull pen.
“That was Lieutenant Colgate calling to give us a heads-up. After seeing the news broadcast from the other night about Reanne, he thought we ought to know that two young women vanished without a trace from Bradenton Beach yesterday. Their car was left behind with a punctured back passenger tire.”
I hit the desk with my open hand. “Son of a bitch, it’s the same MO as Reanne’s. What about tracking their cell phones?”
“Not happening—they were left inside the trunk along with their purses. It looks like one of them had anti-seizure medication in her purse.”
I groaned. “Shit—she’s probably epileptic.”
Clark squeezed his temples. “Jade, check the fax machine, please. Colgate sent over the photos and vitals on the missing girls. Our guy is obviously still in the area. Get Todd and Billy back up here. I want them sitting in on this.”
“You got it, boss.”
I grabbed the sheets on the girls from the fax machine then ran down to the lower level of the building. The tech department was down the hall. I stuck my nose in the door and saw maps on the computer screens.
“What are you guys doing?” I asked.
Clayton walked in. “They’re giving me a hand with the routes. We’re looking for a few secondary roads leading from Grand Forks to our area. The interstate doesn’t make sense. I was going to print them out and bring them up to the bull pen.”
“Well, Clark wants everyone upstairs again. I think he has some questions for you guys.”
Billy pushed back his chair. “Sure, let’s go.”
“Have a seat, guys,” Clark said when Todd and Billy entered the bull pen. Clayton and Billings came in behind them. I handed the lieutenant the photos of the two girls that went missing yesterday in Milwaukee.
“Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue for us, but because Jack and Jade went to Grand Forks and found out more, I’m thinking it’s related. Apparently, Reanne’s car was found with the back passenger tire punctured.” Clark pointed at the photos he had pinned to the corkboard beside him. “These two ladies went missing at Bradenton Beach yesterday, according to the Milwaukee PD. The car was left behind, and the back passenger tire was punctured. Lieutenant Colgate told me that the car was probably wiped down. There weren’t any fingerprints on the vehicle other than the owner’s”—he looked at the sheet with the girl’s information on it—“Carley Donovan, twenty years old, and her friend, Gina Sansone, twenty-one. The fourth district PD has already interviewed the families and friends. So far they have nothing. Billy, Todd, how do we access the darknet without our IP address coming up as the location of the Washburn County Sheriff’s Department? If our guy is actually selling girls, wouldn’t he post photos of them?”
“Yeah, he sure would,” Billy said.
“Well, we know what these latest missing girls look like. We also know that Reanne had scrapes on her elbows and knees that had traces of metal in them. Right, Jason?”
“That’s correct, Lieutenant.”
“Okay, for now, we’re going with that theor
y. We need to get to the darknet so we can gain access to these auction sites. Is that possible?”
“We can definitely hide our IP address, Lieutenant, but finding their site, if it’s actually out there, is tricky. Something as vile as human trafficking is likely found in the dark web which we’d have to access first. The darknet auction sites move around a lot to avoid detection. You have to be one of them to get in and bid on women.”
“Is there a way to see what’s going on without being detected or without logging in?”
Todd looked at Billy and scratched his head. “Maybe, but it depends on if they show teasers on their home pages. The administrator can add photos to it, but the viewer can’t go beyond that page, meaning we couldn’t get in, but we could see whatever is posted on the home page. That also depends on if they actually update that page with real photos of girls they have held captive and who’re for sale or if they’re just posting random pictures from the Internet. If these people are smart, they’d never show real photos to anyone other than registered bidders.”
“Can you guys at least try? Would their IP address be blocked?”
“Yeah, they’d hide their IP address, but we can give it a shot.”
Chapter 17
Jeremy checked the clock above the stove. Beth had to be dealt with first. He’d get that out of the way and still have plenty of time to shower and clean up. Mel had to get ready too. A freshly washed outfit draped across a hanger was for her to put on later, after her shower.
“It’s time.” Jeremy pushed back the kitchen chair and opened the basement door. “I’ll get her. You fill the syringe with a double dose.”
“Yep, got it,” Matt said.