CHAPTER FIFTEEN
August 14th, 2015
11:30 A.M.
Outside of Las Vegas
LOTT HAD MOVED the SUV off to a wide area in the dirt road and just down from the mine entrance by the time the three other cars arrived.
All four of them got out of the car, and moving slowly in the intense heat, went back up the road as Chief of Police Dan Beason, a thin man with bright eyes and a disarming smile, climbed out of one of the unmarked cars.
Lott liked the chief more than he wanted to admit.
Chief Beason stood a good six-three and just towered over everyone around him. He had thick, dark-brown hair and had taken off his jacket coat to show he was wearing suspenders with bright red stripes over his blue dress shirt.
Lott had never seen him without a jacket, so the look was startling and seemed to give the chief even more power.
“Detectives,” the chief said, nodding to all of them as they walked up along the dirt road. “What’s the discovery?”
Andor pointed at the mine. “Fifteen years ago we found eleven women all dressed like school girls in that mine.”
The chief nodded and said nothing.
“Our theory,” Andor said, “is that the perp has been taking women at eleven per year for the last fifteen years from around the country, baking them, cutting meat off them, and staging them like a class of school girls in mines.”
“Shit,” the chief said and two other detectives who had come up beside him went pale.
Lott didn’t know them other than by reputation. Jones and Schmidt. The top team working at the moment. Lott and Andor used to hold that spot before they had decided to retire to take care of their dying wives.
Andor pointed at the mine. “We came back here today wondering if we could find some clues or see something we had missed the first time around and smelled that same damn sick smell of musty death, so we opened up the mine.”
The chief glanced at the open mine only about fifty paces away. “Are you serious?”
“Don’t go in there if you want to sleep for the next month,” Lott said.
At that, the chief and the two detectives and three others all turned for the mine.
“No point in standing in the sun,” Andor said.
They all turned and headed back to the SUV and Lott got it going and the air-conditioning on full.
They all watched in silence as the two detectives went in first, somehow convincing the chief to stay in the sun from the animation of the conversation.
After about two minutes, both came out, shaking their heads and not looking happy.
Two of the other cops went in and less than fifteen seconds later one of them came out, stepped off to the side of the mine entrance, and lost what must have been a pretty good lunch.
Lott remembered doing that himself on his first real death scene with a body that had been rotting in the sun for a few days. Nothing at all compares to that sickly odor of human death.
At that moment the chief just turned and started back toward the road.
“Better move the cooler out of the way and scoot over, Annie,” Lott said.
Andor put the cooler over the seat and into the back and, as the chief approached their car, Annie opened the back door and moved over closer to Andor.
The chief crawled in, slammed the door and then let out a huge sigh. “Oh, thank you.”
Annie handed him a bottle of cold water and he drank half of it. Then he said, “So you think we can catch this bastard if we hold this information for a day or so?”
Lott had turned around to face where the chief was sitting and Julia had done the same from her seat.
“I do,” Lott said. “Doc Hill and his partner, Fleet, have been using all their resources to track missing women with black hair from around the western states. They have found just under two hundred and Doc has all the law enforcement offices in those areas combing the files for clues that we can put together into a large picture.”
“Two hundred missing women?” the chief asked, his eyes large.
Lott remembered that feeling as well. A stunning number.
“The guy seems to take them at eleven per year,” Andor said. “He was somehow involved in the old bus tragedy near another mine where eleven school girls died when their bus broke down.”
“We don’t know how, yet,” Annie said, “Since the only survivor was killed, a fake suicide we think, about a year after the initial tragedy.”
“Shit, just shit,” the chief said, shaking his head.
Lott could not have agreed more.
“We think our perp,” Andor said, “was the one who carried all the girls from the school bus up to the mine. We think one of the two with black hair in those girls might have been his girlfriend or something like that. We’re digging on that now.”
The chief nodded. “Glad you have Doc and Fleet with you on all this.”
“So are we,” Lott said.
“There might even have been more than one who carried those girls out of that bus tragedy,” Annie said. “But that’s the key to all this, we are convinced.”
Lott couldn’t imagine how it felt to suddenly have all this information being tossed at the chief, but the guy was smart and was known for making solving crime more important than politics.
“Also a key,” Julia said, “is the baking of the women. That takes a pretty large oven and we’re searching those, trying to cross-reference anyone from those girl’s age who owns an oven large enough to roast a woman without really burning the flesh.”
“And what is our perp doing with the large amounts of flesh he cuts from every woman?” Andor asked. “Major question.”
“He bakes them and cuts them up?” the chief said, looking startled. “Sorry, I haven’t read this old cold case.”
Andor nodded. “The perp harvests the meat from the women’s butts and legs after he bakes them into what looks like a mummy. He drugs them, but the baking is what kills them.”
The chief looked like he might be sick and Lott didn’t blame him in the slightest.
Andor went on. “Then he dresses them in school girl costumes, trims their hair all the same exact length, and stages them in a mine just as the eleven girls were in the first bus tragedy, all without underwear.”
“When we caught this case back fifteen years ago,” Andor said, “we didn’t know about that original bus tragedy back in 1988.”
“Never put it together until now,” Andor said.
The chief just sat there, shaking his head.
At that moment, Annie’s cell phone chirped like a lost bird. She glanced at it, then she said, “The mine information is in from Fleet.”
She looked at it and then glanced up at Lott. “There are two dozen closed up old mines this close to a road. All are owned by the same company that owns this mine. Fleet and his people are digging at the company, trying to find out who is behind it.”
“Where is the closest?” Lott asked, not really wanting the answer, but needing it.
Annie glanced at her phone. “Just over a mile from here.”
“Hang on,” the chief said, “I’m coming with you.”
He opened the door and went back to the detectives cooling off in the cars behind him. Then he returned to their car and got in.
“I got three of them staying here until we decide what to do,” the chief said. “Jones and Schmidt are coming with us.”
Lott nodded and with a quick motion buckled up his belt and headed the car down the road.
“Give me directions,” he said to Annie.
And less than five minutes later they pulled up across from another old, boarded up mine. The mine was similar to the last one, just off the road, with a cliff face on one side of the dirt road and the mine cut into an area between two rock faces.
Lott flat didn’t want to know what they would find as all five climbed out into the intense heat. But he had no choice.
They had to look.