TWENTY-ONE

 

 

September 19th, 2016

Outside of Las Vegas, Nevada

 

THEY MET FOR lunch the following day at the Bellagio Café. Last night Lott and Julia had just gone home after the techs from both the county and Las Vegas arrived up on the road, as well as about a dozen police cars from the county and the city.

There had been nothing in the envelope with their name on it and mailed to the box and nothing in the envelope on the rock and no prints or DNA or anything on them.

Julia had felt almost hollow last night after finding where so many women were buried. It was going to take a massive amount of work to match bodies with missing women over the last thirty years, even with having their car information.

Mike had figured there was a pattern of burial on the road after he and Heather had surveyed the road with their equipment while waiting for the techs from headquarters to show up. So that pattern might help as well.

And Annie and Doc and Fleet had called the chief and volunteered their state-of-the-art lab to help expedite DNA testing where needed.

So after a quick dinner, Julia and Lott had gone to her apartment. Both of them had taken showers and just sat on the couch in her living room and watched mindless television. It felt hollow and a waste of time to Julia, but they both needed to do that. Both to rest and to cool down and to give their minds time to think.

Then this morning, Lott had headed home, soon to be her home as well which made her smile, to change and shower again. She had headed to the gym to try to work some of yesterday out of her system.

Now they were waiting for Annie and Andor to join them for lunch. She felt better, actually. Refreshed and ready to try to tackle all this one more time.

Around them the comforting sounds of the café felt good. The green plants, the sounds of the casino, the wonderful drifting laughter of people not dealing with hundreds of deaths.

That felt good to Julia.

So sitting in silence was fine for the moment.

After a few minutes, she broke the silence. “You think the chief is going to kick us off this case again?”

She knew that Lott had to be worrying about the same thing and not said a thing about it.

“More than likely,” Lott said. “He’s got a serial killer on his hands and this is going to explode nationally later today or latest tomorrow. He won’t want a bunch of old detectives around.”

“Even after the cases we have solved for the department in the past?”

Lott shrugged and didn’t say what she knew he was thinking. They were retired. They weren’t actually in the department.

They sat in silence for the next minute until Andor arrived.

He was sweating, since he had walked from his car in the parking lot through the noon heat.

Julia did what she often did and slid a glass of water toward him and a few extra napkins. A moment later, as Andor was drinking, Annie joined them.

“It’s a mess, isn’t it?” Lott asked, looking at Andor.

“Headquarters is a beehive,” he said. “What you two found out there has buried the entire department under a ton of shit. The chief is working with the county, of course, but none of them have the resources to deal with that many bodies. It’s going to take them weeks just to dig the bodies out of the ground, let alone process each one.”

“I figured as much,” Julia said. “What a mess.”

“Heather and Mike met with the chief last night,” Annie said, “and Heather contacted some of her people in the FBI and they are coming in to help as well. They are setting up a morgue in a warehouse near headquarters. The chief was very grateful for that.”

“I’ll bet,” Julia said, shaking her head. She couldn’t even imagine the scale of death they were dealing with.

“So what are they doing about Mary May?” Lott asked. “Any really fresh bodies out there?”

“Some from earlier in the year, but none since she was taken,” Andor said.

Annie nodded. “Mike confirms that from his readings.”

“So she might still be out there alive somewhere?” Julia said, feeling slightly relieved. “There is still a hope.”

“So that brings me to the next question,” Lott said. “Are we off this case?”

“Nope,” Andor said, smiling. “When I asked the chief that question, he only laughed and asked if I was kidding. He said he needs all the help he can get and wants us to just keep on going and stay out of the press.”

Julia actually felt herself relax.

“Oh, thank heavens,” Lott said.

Annie laughed. “Ah, come on, dad. I can’t imagine you stopping on a case this size.”

Lott and Julia both laughed at that.

“We wouldn’t have stopped,” Lott said. “But doing it aboveboard helps a ton.”

“Got that right,” Andor said. “I hate sneaking around that station.”

They all laughed and ordered their breakfasts and then Julia gave the signal that they needed to get to work by pulling out her notebook and opening it.

Lott smiled at her and she smiled back. Damn it felt great to be working with the man she loved, even on a case like this one.

“So anyone have any theories on exactly who we are chasing?” Julia asked. “List the suspects.”

“Paul Vaughan didn’t kill himself,” Lott said, “and is playing out a pattern with his long-dead sister.”

“Suspect number one,” Julia said and wrote that down.

“Suspect number two would be Duane Thorn,” Andor said. “Whoever he might be.”

“He doesn’t exist under that name,” Annie said. “Except for the license to sell cars, a driver’s license, and the ownership of that land with the bodies.”

Julia wrote him down, but put a note by the name that it was fake.

“Maybe an unknown suspect,” Lott said. “A person who knows about Paul and his sister. A person who imitated Paul’s sister back when we first talked with her and again yesterday. A person using the Thorn alias to sell cars.”

Julia wrote that down as number three suspect with a big question mark. To her that one didn’t feel right, but they couldn’t ignore anything on this.

“Let’s talk about the unknown person for a moment,” Annie said, leaning forward. “What do we know about him or her if that person is the killer?”

“The suspect knows we are investigating and is ahead of us,” Lott said. “And he knows what we and other detectives call our group.”

Julia wrote that down, then added, “The suspect knows a lot about Paul Vaughan and his family history, enough to create the fiction of his sister still being alive.”

Everyone nodded and she wrote that down as well.

They sat in silence for a moment, the distant sounds of casino filling the air with the sounds of other customers in the café eating and laughing and talking.

Finally Annie said, “I’m going to have our people dig deep into the Vaughan family. Every friend, relative, neighbor that they had. Somewhere back there in the past all this started. And started for a reason.”

“And why that one car dealership in Reno?” Lott asked. “Seems like it would have been easier and safer to take the car into LA and sell it.”

Julia wrote that down as well.

“Any chance those bodies will give us any help?” Andor asked. “I doubt it, but thought I would see what everyone thought.”

Julia shook her head.

Beside her Lott did the same.

“I think they were picked for age and approximate looks,” Annie said. “My people have run everything they know about the missing women who had their cars sold in Reno and that’s all the similarities that pop. Age and looks.”

“Figured as much,” Andor said. “So while the youngster detectives deal with the mess we dumped on them, we keep going.”

“Exactly,” Lott said.

Julia looked at the list of suspects. They needed to keep going. But on what?

And how?

They really had nothing.