TWENTY-NINE

 

 

September 26th, 2016

Las Vegas, Nevada

 

LOTT ACTUALLY MANAGED to eat a little lunch. All of them did. But not a great deal. Not even the comforting sounds of the casino and other diners in the café helped him.

They were all just waiting for Annie’s phone to ring.

The conversation over food was on how Doc was doing in a major tournament in Atlanta. Annie had originally planned on going with him, but decided this case was far, far more important. She had managed to talk Doc into going because Fleet would be helping her and all the detectives.

But Lott had no doubt that if this horrid idea that Julia had come up with actually turned out to be true, Doc would be headed back to help as fast as he could get here and nothing Annie could say would stop him. That was just who he was.

Finally, as they had all just finished what little bit of lunch they could get down, Annie’s phone rang.

Julia slid Annie a notebook and pen and Annie started writing as fast as she could as someone on the other side just started talking.

Then Annie said simply, “Search all this down and don’t miss a name. I’m likely going to need to give this to the FBI and State Police at some point.”

She clicked off her phone and stared at her notes for a moment. Then she took a deep breath and Lott could tell his daughter was haunted by the information she had.

“Men have vanished in the same way here and in Reno for the last thirty years on the same dates,” Annie said, blurting it out. “And women in Reno as well.”

Lott really wished he had not eaten even the little bit of French Dip sandwich he had managed to get down.

“We’re talking almost five hundred deaths between the two cities over thirty years,” Andor said about as soft as Lott had ever heard him speak.

Annie nodded and said nothing.

“That also means that if we have their pattern figured out correctly,” Julia said. “We have not just Mary May still alive out there, but another woman in Reno and two men.”

“And the clock is ticking on all four of them,” Annie said.

“So what the hell do we do now?” Andor asked, clearly frustrated, more so than Lott had seen his partner in a very long time.

Lott knew exactly what they needed to do. The same thing they had always done when they hit a dead end in a case over the years.

“We start at the beginning,” Lott said. “We have missed something. Something that’s going to tell us exactly under what rock these sick bastards are hiding.”

“And exactly where is the beginning of this mess?” Julia asked.

“Great-Grandfather Thorn,” Lott said. “And the compound down in Florida. Everything Paul and Maxwell have been doing now is coming out of that compound in Florida all those years ago. And since Paul used the Duane Thorn name, I’m betting others used names from that period as well.”

Everyone around the table nodded and Annie slid back the notebook to Julia to write notes in.

“One sick family tree,” Annie said.

“So we first dig back there,” Andor said. “Looking for what kind of clues besides names?”

“We need to find three more body dumps,” Lott said at the same time as he was thinking about what Annie had said. “Where were the men buried around here? And where were both the women and men buried around Reno?”

Andor nodded.

Silence around the table.

Annie had said family tree. Lott knew instantly that was the key to all of this and the key to who they could trust and not trust.

If Maxwell’s wife was a descendant of that sick way of life way back, then others might still be around and practicing.

Damn it.

All along they had been looking at this as a lone-wolf serial killer. They had made a natural assumption, but a wrong one.

This was far from a lone wolf.

These were all cult killings.