TWENTY-FIVE

 

 

September 19th, 2016

Outside of Las Vegas, Nevada

 

BY THE TIME they got to Lott’s house with the KFC bucket between Julia and Lott on the drive there, Annie and her computer people had tracked the movement of Maxwell back two years, day-by-day.

Julia had just finished setting the table and Lott had bottles of water for everyone when Annie pulled up. Julia left the lid on the chicken bucket until Andor got here to keep it all warm.

Annie came into the house with a small file and took a bottle of water from the fridge and dropped into her normal place at the dining room table, downing most of the bottle in two long drinks.

“So,” Julia said as she sat down next to Lott. “Maxwell?”

“He’s not the killer,” Annie said. “He comes down to Vegas for car shows and car auctions and such about eight times a year. He drives himself and he always stays alone at the Golden Nugget downtown. His schedule doesn’t seem to alter at all on any trip.”

Annie passed them both a sheet of paper from the file. “See if you can spot anything we’re missing.”

The paper had three days marked on it and appeared to be the schedule for Maxwell while in Las Vegas.

Julia studied it for a moment, trying to find any hole in the man’s schedule. Nothing. He did exactly the same thing every time he was here. Almost every hour of every day of his last visit three days after Mary May vanished could be traced by either his credit card or linked security videos.

From the moment he left his room in the Golden Nugget hotel to the moment he got back, Annie and her people had traced him.

“We have the same data on his last trip,” Annie said, “and the trip before that. Beyond that the security information has mostly been lost due to time.”

“Do the dates correspond with the dates the women are taken and when we think they are killed?” Lott asked.

Julia was surprised at that question and Annie seemed surprised as well.

“They do,” Annie said, nodding. “He always comes to Vegas three or four days after the woman is kidnapped and again a week or so before the date of the accident.”

“What are you thinking?” Julia asked Lott.

“Lorraine and Ray told us they saw the two boys have sex with Paul’s sister together, sometimes in front of the parents.”

“Are you kidding me?” Annie asked, shaking her head.

“Not kidding I’m afraid,” Lott said. “And they didn’t seem to care, from what Lorraine and Ray said, who could see them.”

Julia now understood exactly what Lott was driving at. “So you think Maxwell comes down twice for each woman and he and Paul pretend the woman is Paul’s sister?”

“Exactly,” Lott said. He pointed to the schedule on the paper. “We just have to figure out how he gets out of this schedule and where he goes.”

Julia and Annie both nodded. Julia had no desire to think about what those two men did and what the poor women had to go through before being killed.

Lott then turned to Annie. “Any information about exactly what killed Paul’s sister?”

Annie shrugged. “Head injuries from the car wreck. She was brain dead from the moment of arrival at the hospital and Paul had to pull life support a month after the wreck to let her die.”

“So that’s how this all started,” Julia said. “Paul, messed up in the head anyway, thinks he killed his sister.”

Then Julia had an idea she didn’t want to admit she had thought of, but she had to find out. “Any reports of how Paul treated his sister in the hospital that last month?”

Annie shrugged and picked up her phone. A moment later she had instructed someone on the other end to find any reports or complaints or incidents around Paul Vaughan’s sister in the hospital.

“We’ll find out,” Annie said. “It was along time ago, but hospital records tend not to ever get tossed away.”

Lott just looked at Julia. She could tell his mind went to where hers had gone. But there was no point in discussing that until they had some proof.

At that moment, Andor came in also carrying a small file.

He went right to the sink and splashed water on his face and then got a bottle of water from the fridge just as Annie had done, even though there was a bottle for him already on the table.

He sat down next to Annie at the kitchen table and as they all dug into the bucket of chicken, they caught him up on what they had discovered since lunch.

“Also,” Annie said, glancing at Julia, “thanks to your suggestion, Heather has the FBI all over Maxwell, including tapping his phones and watching his every move without him knowing.”

“Perfect,” Julia said. She felt better just hearing that.

She turned to Andor who just finished his second piece of chicken and was wiping off his fingers. “Anything coming up from headquarters?”

“Surprisingly,” Andor said, “quite a bit. The young guys are doing a pretty damn competent job on this and keeping me in the loop.”

“Like what?” Lott asked just before Julia could.

“The bodies are coming out of the ground from the most recent and working backwards,” Andor said, “since it’s easier to identify a recent body than a thirty-year-old skeleton. And better chance at DNA evidence.”

“Smart thinking,” Julia said.

“So far they have kept a lid on this, thanks to some favors from the newspapers and local television channels. But that lid will only last until tomorrow night’s news.”

“Will the chief be ready by then?” Annie asked.

“He has to be,” Andor said, laughing. “This will be a shit-storm and the governor has been informed and will be beside the chief as well pledging help.”

Julia was very glad she wasn’t in their position.

“The teams have ten bodies in the FBI morgue so far,” Andor said. “And the similarities of the cases are all coming very clear. All the women were killed by blunt force trauma to the head.”

“Like Paul’s sister in that automobile accident.” Julia said. It was making sense now even more.

“And worse yet,” Andor said, “some injuries to the head happened over a month before the fatal last blow.”

“Shit,” Lott said.

“I’m going to be sick,” Annie said.

Julia just stared at her paper plate and the bones of the piece of chicken she had just finished.

“Someone want to fill me in on what that is all about?” Andor asked.

Lott told him how Paul’s sister had lasted after the car wreck for a month, completely brain dead, before Paul removed life support.

“These women are filling in for Paul’s sister,” Annie said, “with Paul and Maxwell, right down to how the women are killed.”

“Oh, shit,” Andor said.

“That means we don’t have until the 27th of November,” Julia said, “to find Mary May, but the 27th of October before Paul starts beating on her.”

“I don’t want this thing to last another day,” Lott said.

Annie agreed with that as her phone rang.

She picked it up and listened. Then she said, “Go ahead, I need all the details.”

She listened and then thanked whoever she was talking to and clicked off her phone.

Julia had not seen Annie shaken before, but whatever news she had just heard had really bothered her. Annie’s face was white and she was staring down at her plate.

“Bad?” Lott asked.

“Bad as we expected,” Annie said, taking a deep breath. “For two nights running near the end of Paul’s sister’s life, Paul and another man were caught with her. They had undressed her and both of them were naked as well.”

Julia didn’t want to hear any more, but Annie went on.

“Paul told the hospital that it was part of their religious beliefs and promised it wouldn’t happen again. A week later, he pulled the life support on his sister.”

Silence filled the kitchen and not even the wonderful smell of KFC could cut through the tension and disgust they were all feeling.