CHAPTER THREE

 

 

August 7th, 2015

12:30 A.M.

Las Vegas

 

THE FOOD CAME at that moment, the waitress carrying a large round tray on her shoulder and putting it down on a stand beside the table. Lott was glad that they had all decided to not talk about the cold case while eating. That case was just not good dinner conversation.

The possibility of cannibalism just put most sane people right off their food.

By the time they mostly finished eating, Annie walked up. She was frowning and had what Lott recognized as a “bad beat” cloud over her head.

She had on a dark blue blouse and jeans and had her brown hair pulled back off her face. Like her mother, Carol, Annie was tall and thin and always walked with a purpose.

She slid in beside Andor, shaking her head.

“Thought you had a large stack,” Lott said. “What happened?”

“Pair of nines cracked my aces,” Annie said, “and then I couldn’t get ace-king to hold up.”

“Ouch,” Lott said.

“Yeah, double ouch,” Julia said. “Doc still in?”

“He is and it’s a thing of beauty to watch at times,” Annie said, shaking her head. “But after those two beats, I needed to get something to eat.”

“Well,” Lott said, smiling at his beautiful daughter, “we’re happy to have you.”

A moment later the waitress came to take some of their dirty dishes and Annie’s order.

“So what’s the new case tonight?” Annie asked. “A fun one?”

“Not so fun tonight,” Andor said.

“Gross, actually,” Julia said.

“The School Girl Murders,” Lott said. “We’re giving that case another run.”

Annie looked at him surprised. “The cannibal case? Really?”

“We don’t know the guy was a cannibal,” Lott said.

“We don’t even know it was a guy for sure,” Andor said. “In fact, we flat know nothing.”

“Fifteen years and not a clue has surfaced,” Lott said. “Cold as a dark day in the winter in Antarctica.”

“Wow,” Annie said. “So refresh me on the case and let’s set a plan of attack.”

Lott laughed. “You want to help on this one?”

“I was still a patrol officer when this one came in,” Annie said. “Always sort of held a fascination for me.”

“Gave me nightmares,” Andor said. “But glad to have any help on this monster.”

So for the next few minutes they went over again what was in the file and the knowledge that wasn’t common, such as the slow baking of the bodies to kill the women, and then the removal of some of the body’s meat.

Lott was feeling a little more settled about taking on the case again. He was putting it back into perspective. This all was done by a sick serial killer who needed to be caught and punished if he was still alive after all this time.

“So let’s list the clear points we have to go on,” Julia said, pulling out a notebook from her purse and opening it to a blank page.

“School girl obsession,” Andor said. “Those uniforms were mostly used for grades seven through twelve. Usually in Catholic and some private schools.”

Julia nodded and wrote that down. Then she looked at Lott. “You said the women were abducted at a pace of about one per month?”

“They were,” Lott said. “Two years before we found the bodies.”

“Nothing at all similar with the women. Some were rich, some single, some married. All had black hair.”

“So black hair a certain length is an obsession as well,” Julia said, writing that down.

“I wonder why the killer stopped at eleven,” Annie said. “Is there something about the number eleven that might be a lead?”

Lott nodded as Julia wrote that down as well. He remembered that he and Andor had thought of that, but could find no connection at all. But never hurt to look again.

“So how could a human body be baked?” Julia asked. “Was one side or the other burned?”

“No burns,” Lott said. “Just really slow baked and the fluids drained off.

“We tried to figure that out as well,” Andor said. “The bodies must have been put on something that wouldn’t transmit heat, some sort of pad or something, then put in a very large oven.”

“Actually they were still alive when put in the oven,” Lott said. “But drugged. Since all the blood was gone when we found them, basically either drained out or evaporated from the heat. Add onto that the two years that had passed in the cave and we never did determine what that drug might have been.”

That stopped the four retired detectives cold. Standard for this case. No real leads at all.

Julia wrote in her notebook, but Lott didn’t try to follow what she was writing. She was good at sometimes putting pieces together that others didn’t see. This case was going to take a miracle of pieces and some real luck to solve.

After a few moments, the waitress brought Annie her Denver omelet with white toast and coffee. Even though Lott had just eaten a Chef’s Salad, the omelet smelled good.

Lott wasn’t convinced he could eat and talk about this topic, even though it had been years and he was working to get some distance on the topic.

“So after they were baked,” Julia said, looking at the paper in front of her, “the killer cut off slices of meat from each woman?”

Lott nodded.

“So the assumption was that the killer was a cannibal,” Julia said.

“That’s where all the jokes around the force went,” Andor said. “But we have no evidence of what the killer did with the cuts of meat from the bodies. He could have fed them to zoo animals for all we know.”

“I can’t remember,” Annie said, working at the omelet. “How did you find the bodies in that old mine? Wasn’t it boarded up?”

Lott laughed. “A psychic called it in, saying she was having nightmares, seeing a class of girls sitting in the heat in an old mine.”

Julia looked at him. “You’re serious?”

“Betty?” Annie asked.

“Betty,” Lott said, smiling at Julia. “We used her all the time, off the books, of course.”

“She was damned good,” Andor said. “But never quote me on that.”

Julia just shook her head. “Can this case get any stranger?”

“We just started investigating it again,” Lott said. “So who knows?”

“Oh, great, just great,” Andor said. “I may never sleep again.”