TWELVE
September 17th, 2016
Las Vegas, Nevada
JULIA RODE BESIDE Lott in his big white SUV Cadillac as they headed north out of city limits of Las Vegas. Andor had decided he would be better off taking the list of names and getting the files from headquarters.
Annie had gone back to the offices Doc and Fleet kept here in Vegas to keep working with the computer people on various searches. Annie said she would have computer satellite images of the property they were heading toward shortly. Maybe even before they made the thirty-minute trip to the place.
Lott and Julia had promised they wouldn’t stop, but just do a recon of the address this Duane Thorn kept. If it actually was a house, the two of them and Andor would present what they had to the chief and more than likely the chief could get a warrant with the information they had about the cars to go in fast and hard.
But Julia had no doubt this all wouldn’t end that easily. This killer had been getting away with murder in this town for over thirty years without getting caught or even noticed until the murderer told them where some bodies were.
And even after that nothing had happened for another year-and-a-half. So she had no real hopes this would end easily.
Or that they would find anything at all.
They left the main road about twenty-five minutes north of the last Las Vegas suburb on the two-lane highway headed toward Reno. The paved road they were now on was narrow and wound its way toward Death Valley and other older military sites out in the desert before finally turning back toward Vegas.
After about a mile of mostly desert with a few mailboxes along the pavement indicating dirt roads heading off toward distant houses, Julia said to Lott, “Slow down, should be right up here.”
She had been watching the GPS and it showed they were close to the address.
And as she expected, the address was nothing more than a mailbox with a dirt road leading up and through some rocks. The mailbox had the numbers printed clearly on it, but it had seen better days, tilting to one side on its wooden pole. Sand and wind had made the metal look almost gray.
“Call Annie,” he said. “See if she has images of that place yet?”
Lott drove on past and then over a slight rise before stopping.
Annie picked up almost instantly. “Nothing at the end of that driveway,” Annie said as Julia put her phone on speaker so Lott could hear.
“Nothing at all?”
“Road goes up and makes a small circle around a rock,” Annie said. “The road has had some regular traffic but no building. No mine entrance. Nothing.”
Julia could tell that Annie was as frustrated as she felt.
“How close in can you get on the ground around that turn-around?” Lott asked. “And can you do any other kind of imaging?”
Annie paused for a moment, then said, “Dad, are you thinking we might have found a burial ground?”
“Exactly what I’m thinking,” Lott said. “But damned if I want to go up there to look because, for all we know, it might be monitored or have explosives set.”
Julia was impressed. She hadn’t thought of any of that. But the moment Lott said it, she knew he might be right. They had dealt with that smart of a criminal in the past.
And if they were going to catch this guy, they couldn’t go stumbling into places. They had to assume this guy was really, really smart.
“I’ll see what I can have them do,” Annie said.
“We’re headed back,” Lott said.
“Good,” Annie said, and hung up.
Julia felt the same way as Lott turned the big Cadillac around and headed back past the target address and toward the main road.
“You really think that might be a burial ground?” she asked.
He shrugged. “If this guy really is killing women and selling their cars, and has been for thirty years, he has to have a safe place to put the bodies. And over that rise looks as private and safe as can be.”
Julia nodded. He was exactly right. No one out here would approach any of these houses or go up these driveways without an invitation. Too many survivalist types living out in these rocks.
“So we need to figure out exactly who this Duane Thorn really is,” Julia said after they rode in silence for a minute.
Lott nodded. “But what has me puzzled is why tell us about that other grave by planting that journal?”
Julia had no idea on that either.
“What’s different about those first four?”
“His first?” Julia said, knowing that was the answer. “Before he got this property?”
Lott glanced at her and smiled.
Julia knew at once she was on to something. She redialed Annie and before Annie could even say hello this time, she asked, “When did this Duane Thorn buy this property out here?”
“Hang on,” Annie said.
Lott had reached the main road and turned back toward Las Vegas. Julia felt a sense of relief just being off that road.
Annie came back. “Two months after Becky Penn went missing.”
“One explanation down,” Lott said, smiling.
“How much did he pay for it? Do you have those records?”
“Twenty acres for nine thousand,” Annie said. “He paid cash.”
Julia had another idea. “Can you tell me from the list we got in Reno how much Thorn made from selling Becky’s car and the three he sold before hers?”
Lott was nodding.
Annie took a moment, then said almost too low for them to hear, “Nine thousand dollars total for all the cars.”
“Damn, damn, damn,” Julia said softly. “I so wanted to be wrong on that.”
“I’ll keep working on the satellite images,” Annie said and hung up.
“So why did he plant the location in Paul Vaughan’s journal, assuming Duane Thorn wasn’t Paul Vaughan?”
Julia knew the answer. “To clean up what he considered a loose end,” she said. “He expected that journal to be found when Vaughan killed himself, or was murdered, as the case might be. Put all the blame on a dead man and he would be free to move forward.”
Lott nodded. “I think you are right.”
“I hope I’m not,” Julia said. “Because if I am a lot of women have died in all the years since.”
“Yeah,” Lott said.
They rode the rest of the way back to Las Vegas in silence.