Cold Highway: Ellie Kline Series: Book Four

by Stone, Mary

  “He’ll be a cinch to track down.” Clay’s tone was dry, his lips tilted up in a half smile that smacked of sarcasm. “I’m sure there’s more than one guy who fancies himself Lucky.”

  “True, but this man had his name on the side of his truck with a four-leaf clover.”

  Clay lifted one shoulder. “Helpful, but not really the break in the case we need. Good luck finding that needle in a haystack. First, we’ll have to figure out who the mystery trucker is.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I think I’ve found our mystery trucker. Well, at least I found his truck.”

  That got a reaction out of Clay. His sleep-dulled eyes widened, and he drained the coffee in two long gulps, tossing the cup in the trash on the way out. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  Ellie rolled her eyes, striding down the sidewalk that led to the parking lot as Clay followed. The sun was just starting to wash the sky a gorgeous shade of orange, but Ellie had already been up for hours. Clay got comfortable in the passenger seat as Ellie started the engine and backed out of the parking space.

  As Ellie pulled out of the parking lot, Clay’s thoughtful gaze was on her. “Have you slept?”

  “Yes, I slept. But I woke up at three and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I came in early. It took me almost two hours, but I found a police report for an abandoned semi with ‘Lucky’ written under the driver’s side window. It was a longshot, but the officer who took the report thought to include it in his notes.”

  She turned on Rutledge, then merged onto US 17 toward Georgetown.

  “Do I have to guess where they found the truck or is it going to be a surprise?”

  Ellie glared at him, merging onto Highway 41 North through the early morning traffic, which was light heading out of the city. “Huger.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  She snorted, shooting him an incredulous look.

  He smirked, actually smirked as if she were one of the guys.

  “Funny,” she said, focusing on the road and trying not to let her mind go to the mental image he’d conjured. “Huger, not hunger, is a little town about forty-five minutes from here. The truck was found abandoned on Highway 41 North. The trailer was returned to the business that hired Lucky to haul the load, but the semi cab is in a wrecking yard.”

  “And no sign of the driver?”

  She tapped her thumbs on the steering wheel. “Nope.”

  “How long has it been there?”

  “Now you’re excited, huh?”

  “This is big. Well done, Detective.” He gave her a few congratulatory claps.

  Heat rose in her chest at his praise, spreading to her cheeks, and she was thankful it was still semi-dark outside. “Thanks, but Jillian played a big part in helping me wade through all that. And if Leanne Vanderbilt hadn’t told me about Sheila Walker, we might not have what we need to connect the cases.” Clay’s eyebrows shot up, but before he could ask, she nodded. “Yes, those Vanderbilts.”

  “Wow. What’s she doing now?”

  “Running a shelter of some sort, helping women find a way out of their circumstances.”

  Clay nodded. “I’m not surprised. A lot of trafficking victims use their experience to change lives once they get out.”

  Ellie guided the SUV through the early morning traffic, glancing at Clay long enough to meet his gaze. “Is she considered a trafficking victim?”

  “It really depends on how she ended up trading services for survival. But if Leanne was a minor when she became a sex worker, she couldn’t consent to that life. Whether one person victimized her or she was repeatedly exploited, she is still a victim.”

  “Right. If a minor can’t consent, then they are a victim. And if they met early on, she would have been underage.”

  “It’s not as if the men who pick up underage sex workers on the side of the road don’t know they’re teenagers. That’s the allure of it.” Clay shook his head, looking vaguely green. “They break the law, but a runaway’s family isn’t likely to press charges since they have no idea what their teen is up to. It’s nearly impossible to charge anyone with statutory rape in these cases, but they are, in fact, committing a crime.”

  “I wonder if Leanne will ever forgive herself for the choices she was forced to make when she was so young.” Ellie’s thoughts went to her own stolen innocence. Her stomach clenched, her heart aching for herself and for Leanne. Gripping the wheel a little tighter, she swallowed through the tightness in her throat and forced her attention back on the road.

  “Unlikely. Which is why she throws herself into serving others. It’s a way to make amends for what she’s done, and to leave the world a little safer for the next teen girl.”

  “I couldn’t imagine carrying that kind of shame around.”

  Clay leaned back in his seat, stretching his legs. “There isn’t much you can say to convince these women that they’re victims themselves. That’s how the cycle is able to continue. No one talks about it, so no one knows they can reach out for help without fear of judgement.”

  Their eyes met, and Ellie took a deep breath, wondering if she should say what she was about to. She decided to be honest, opening up to Clay like she hadn’t with any other partner except Jacob. Her chest was tight, her heart in her throat when she finally put her thoughts into words.

  “I know about that shame. When I was kidnapped at fifteen, I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I lied to my parents and told them I was at a friend’s house.” She shook her head in disgust at her fifteen-year-old self. “They didn’t even know I’d been kidnapped until the hospital called them about my accident. Can you imagine thinking your child is at a friend’s house for the weekend and getting that call?”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “When I escaped, I ran into the road trying to get away from Kingsley. It was raining, and so dark. I’d been running for a long time, and I saw him behind me more than once.” Her nerves sang, and she held her breath, hoping to retrieve the new memory that had appeared on the surface, but it was gone that quickly. “Dammit.”

  “What?”

  “I never remembered that before. I mean, about seeing him as I was running. But now that I know where the warehouse was, I had to have been running a couple miles before Chief Johnson hit me.”

  Clay recoiled, eyes narrowing as he turned to face her. “Hit you?”

  She nodded, glancing at him for an instant then back to the road in front of her. “With his patrol car. I was so focused on Kingsley behind me, I didn’t see the police cruiser coming.” She shuddered, suddenly cold as she recalled uncovering detail after detail in Dr. Powell’s office, every word of which had probably been fed to her kidnapper.

  Dr. E. Phillip Powell. Or Ernest, as Kingsley had called him.

  “Are you okay?”

  Ellie had a stranglehold on the steering wheel, but she managed a small nod. “It feels wrong, you know? I recovered most of what I know about that night in Powell’s office. I had no idea he was working for Kingsley. He had to be feeding Kingsley information that entire time, but I trusted him. It’s hard not to feel like they victimized me all over again.”

  “That’s understandable. Listen, Ellie. If you don’t want to do this right now, I understand.”

  “Thank you. This is the first time I’ve talked about it since Jillian was kidnapped and Powell tried to kill us both to save his own skin. The guys give me a lot of crap for not being able to trust anyone.”

  Clay took her hand, his skin warm against hers.

  When had she gotten so cold?

  “Don’t worry about what they think. They’ve seen a lot in their careers, but they deal with victims who aren’t forced to relive the worst experience of their lives over and over. Death is its own mercy, and you can’t expect people who look at photos of crime scenes without batting an eye to understand your trauma. This isn’t something you just get over. Trusting people after such a huge betrayal is next to impossible.”

  His words were
so touching and heartfelt that she was overwhelmed with a mix of emotions. She mourned the young teenager who’d watched another woman die, and she cheered on the survivor who had sprung from the ashes. The woman she’d become was a direct result of what she’d been through, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hate her past.

  Her throat was thick, her voice soft and trembling as she fought to control her emotions. “You’ve given me a lot to think about. I want to talk about this more, but not now. We’re almost to Huger.”

  “When you’re ready, I’m here to listen.”

  “I know.” She squeezed his hand, surprised that the warmth had returned to her own skin. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.”

  The wrecking yard Ellie parked at was crowded, a scattered mix of cars, tractors and other motorized hunks of metal that had probably been roadworthy at one point or another before being laid to rest in the two-acre plot of land just off the highway.

  A tall man wearing a worn baseball cap greeted them at the gate. “The name’s Jake. Can I help y’all?”

  Ellie took out her badge. “I’m Detective Kline from Charleston PD. I believe you have a semi with a four-leaf clover painted on the driver’s side door with the name ‘Lucky?’”

  “I wondered when someone would come looking for it. JM Steel already come got their trailer, but the truck’s been sitting here since then. I called the guy, but he hasn’t returned my voicemails.” Jake used a thin red rag to wipe his hands as he talked, the already filthy cloth doing nothing to remove the oil that had settled in the lines of his knuckles. “If y’all follow me, I’ll show it to you.”

  Lucky’s truck was in the back of the lot, inside the fence, but away from the rest of the salvaged vehicles. It was in pristine shape, save for its bare metal rims, which were bent and gouged from rolling on the asphalt without rubber to protect them.

  Clay used his tablet to photograph the truck and its surroundings, and when Jake got too close to the rig, he held up his hand. “Don’t touch anything.”

  Jake froze, frowning. “I done touched the door already. And all the insides. Had to turn the engine off. It was still running when I got the call.”

  “How long do you think it was sitting there?” Clay asked.

  “Hard to tell. The tank was near empty, but without knowing the last time it was filled, can’t really say how long it sat there.” Jake inhaled through his nose, turned away from them, and spit a loogie clear to the closest wreck. “This truck has dual tanks, so let’s say the tanks were half full. That’s around one hundred to one hundred fifty gallons, an idling truck using just under a gallon per hour. It could idle for about a hundred hours, give or take, but the engine would overheat at some point. I don’t think it was there long, though.”

  Ellie resisted the urge to pinch the base of her nose in frustration, but Clay remained unbothered by the man’s rambling.

  “Why do you think that?” Clay pressed.

  Ellie cringed when Jake sent another huge wad of spit sailing through the air toward the high weeds growing between two entangled cars. The waist-high stalk bent under the weight momentarily and finally snapped.

  “Well, I got the call right away. You see, the trucker didn’t bother to pull all the way off the road, so the rig was impeding traffic. I towed it within an hour of getting the call.”

  Clay flashed the man a grin and stuck his hand out to shake. Jake didn’t even hesitate, shaking after wiping his hand down his filthy jeans. “I appreciate all your help. I’ll send someone to transport the semi to our facility in Charleston. In the meantime, it’s important that no one go near the truck.”

  “What about my fees? Towing and storage ain’t free, you know.”

  “Of course.” Clay fished a business card out of his wallet. “There’s an email at the bottom, send me your invoice and I’ll make sure it gets paid.”

  Jake beamed. “Thank you.”

  Clay pulled out his phone and typed on the screen as he walked toward the gate. Ellie followed him out to the SUV. When he was done, he pointed at the driver’s side back door. “Was that a crime scene kit I saw in the back?”

  “Yep.”

  “Perfect. Do you have crime scene tape?”

  Ellie unzipped the bag, turning with a roll of red tape labeled “evidence” in wide black letters and a roll of yellow warning “do not cross.”

  “Which one?”

  “Both.” The phone buzzed in his hand. Reading the screen with a satisfied grin, he walked back into the wrecking yard, leaving Ellie to follow. “My guys are en route. Let’s get this sealed up.”

  Clay took the roll of yellow tape and tied one end to the chain-link fence. Setting up a wide perimeter, he carefully wove through the waist-high weeds to encircle the truck.

  Ellie pulled a long strip of red tape off the roll, placing the adhesive side over the keyhole on the driver’s door first. She was careful to avoid the handle, just in case there was a viable print left on the shiny surface after Jake had climbed in to turn off the engine. Next, she taped the windows up, and sealed the door on the top, side, and bottom. Using a black marker, she signed her name on each piece of tape.

  Anyone who was authorized to open the truck would cut the tape with a knife, then place a fresh piece over the first one, signing it like Ellie had. In addition to the tape, which provided a visual record of how many times the seal had been broken, everyone who cut the seal would log the date and time on the evidence log. Any discrepancy between the number of tape strips and the handwritten log would alert Ellie and Clay to a break in the chain of evidence. Although a bit tedious, it was one way to ensure any evidence tampering was caught immediately.

  After she sealed every possible entrance into the semi—including the back window that would only open if the glass was broken—she took pictures from every possible angle. When she was done, Clay used his tablet to take several pictures of his own, zooming in for closeups of the damage to the wheels.

  “What now?” Ellie checked her watch, surprised it was still before ten in the morning.

  “Once the crime scene team gets here, we’ll leave them to do their job and meet them at the ACTeam facilities. They’re on their way, but it’ll be later this afternoon before they’re done collecting prints and any blood or DNA evidence. Once that’s done, we’ll get to search the rig ourselves.”

  “Until then?”

  He leaned against the nearest car outside the crime scene area with a knowing grin. “We call in the vin number and get a head start on finding this guy. Then we watch the rig and make sure no one compromises our crime scene.”

  15

  Ellie waited as Clay used his access card to open the door to the ACTeam building. He stepped out of the way so she could pass through ahead of him, and she stopped halfway into the room, her lips parting. The office they’d entered was in an enclosed balcony, but it wasn’t the machines and computers filling the small space that had her in awe. It was the massive area below, which was bustling with activity.

  “This is not what I was expecting at all.” Enthralled by more than a dozen investigators in navy blue coveralls moving about the truck, Ellie went to the window to get a better view. “The building didn’t look this large from the outside.”

  The day was full of surprises, one being the ease of which they’d learned Lucky’s real name. Matt Loomis. It sounded too plain, too innocent. How could a man named Matt kill women and dump their bodies out like trash?

  “Most of this is underground.”

  “It reminds me of an airport hangar for private planes.”

  “That’s basically what this part of the building is, though the design has been modified to fit our needs. Without windows and completely contained, we can reduce the possibility of outside contaminants interfering with our crime scene. In this case, the tractor portion of Lucky’s semitruck. We also have top of the line equipment, including the Mobile Vehicle Scanner.”

  He pointed at one of the crime scene techs
, who was standing on the platform of a machine, eyes on a screen, using controls to move slowly around the parked semi.

  Ellie was having a surge of technology envy. “Wow.”

  He grinned. “The MVS uses noninvasive x-ray technology to scan the vehicle for explosives, money, drugs, or even humans. The machine can detect something as small as an individual cigarette.”

  “Humans?”

  He nodded, his face grim as he turned to her. “Ship ports use a machine like this to check metal containers for illegally trafficked humans before they are moved from the ship to flatbed trailers. Hundreds of people arrive here every year in containers shipped from places like China, and without adequate air, we often don’t find them until it’s too late. Now that ports of entry have the technology to check dozens of containers in a very short period of time, we’ve been able to save countless lives and prevent the people inside from being sold as indentured servants or worse.”

  Ellie closed her eyes at the horror of a scene she could only imagine. “The things people will do to each other for money.”

  “Exactly.” He cleared his throat, turning back to the scene below them. “In this instance, the machine will not only save us from tripping a booby trap, but as the tech passes around the truck, the MVS creates a 3D picture, which lets us look inside before we even open the door.”

  “Good. That will help us build a diagram for court when we nail this guy.” She watched the tech for a moment and wrinkled her nose. “The only problem is Jake, from the wrecking yard. I know he said he only turned off the key, but can we trust that? People tend to only tell part of the truth to protect their own interests. I wouldn’t be surprised if they find his fingerprints in more places than the driver’s seat.”

  “I have to agree with you there. We have his fingerprints to compare to the ones we find in the truck, and I have eyes on him, just in case he’s more than an innocent bystander in all this.”