CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 

 

August 15th, 2015

9:45 A.M.

Las Vegas

 

JULIA JUST LOOKED at Lott, the odd question not making any sense at all.

“Took turns?” she asked.

He nodded, clearly not happy. “We know that West took a leave of absence every month for a week.”

Julia nodded.

“What if Lynch did the same thing on a different week?”

Julia felt she might just be sick. In all her years of working as a detective, she had never imagined anything like this even being possible, let alone for this many years in a row.

“If Andor and I spooked Lynch and West fifteen years ago,” Lott said, “what happens if they set up their cover identities then and a parallel operation under one of those cover identities? So Lynch could have some fun as well.”

“I hope you are wrong,” Julia said, grabbing her phone from the coffee table.

“I hope like hell I am as well,” Lott said, sitting back to stare at the poor reporter on the screen doing the best she could with no information.

Julia dialed Annie and quickly put the phone on speaker.

Annie picked up the phone and said simply, “The woman from Montana has not yet been found.”

Julia glanced at Lott, who was nodding that he had heard.

“You father has come up with a horrid theory,” Julia said. “And I need you and Doc and Fleet to disprove it.”

“Go ahead,” Annie said, clearly hesitant.

“Your father thinks that when he and Andor found the mine fifteen years ago, they spooked Lynch and West into setting up a parallel system under fake names. Fake everything. And Lynch went out every two weeks to get a victim just as West did.”

“Oh, shit,” Annie said.

“Search the region for missing women with different hair color,” Lott said. “Maybe Lynch had a crush on another girl on that bus. Clearly West was into black hair and had a crush on one of the two girls with black hair who died on the bus. Lynch might have been into a blonde or redhead or brunette.”

“Got it,” Annie said.

“Prove me wrong,” Lott said. “Please?”

“We’re going to do our best,” Annie said and clicked off the phone.

Julia put the phone down between them on the couch.

“You don’t think you are wrong, do you?” Julia asked, looking at Lott, a man she had grown to love and admire over the last year. He was one of the smartest people she knew when it came to putting together crime pieces.

“I hope I am wrong,” Lott said. “But if I am right, where would they hide even more bodies?”

“Everything comes back to old mines,” Julia said.

“Or old school busses,” Lott said, holding up a second finger. “What happens if Lynch is putting her victims, if there are any, in old school busses?”

“Oh, no,” Julia said, her heart racing. She knew instantly Lott might be right. And all she could do was sit there and be silent and hope like hell he was wrong.

After what seemed like an eternity of silence, the phone rang, jarring her from horrid and sick thoughts of women being baked alive in school busses. She nodded to Lott and reached down and hit the speaker button.

“Got us both here,” Julia said.

“A fourth friend that ran with Lynch and West and the black-haired girl when they were in school was named Cynthia Peters,” Annie said. “She had blonde hair, kept her hair long, and she also died on the bus.”

Julia didn’t like at all where this was going.

Beside her on the couch, Lott was just shaking his head.

Annie went on. “Fleet dropped everything and did a preliminary search of the western states through all the missing person databases, same as he did before, and again he and his people found almost three hundred missing women that matched that very general description of long blonde hair and age range that have gone missing in the last fifteen years. There were almost none before that.”

“Shit,” Lott said softly. “Just shit, shit, shit.”

Annie ignored him. “We are pulling up records of when Lynch was in town now from her business,” Annie said. “And Fleet is going to start a search of more mines in the area.”

“Tell him not to bother,” Lott said.

“Why?” Annie asked. Then she said, “Hang on, let me put Fleet on speaker.”

“No need for more mine searches because I’m betting we need to look for a bus graveyard,” Lott said when it was clear that Fleet could hear him as well.

“I agree,” Julia said. “It would need to be very isolated, yet not a huge distance from Las Vegas. In the desert and the heat, yet well protected.”

She didn’t like at all what she was thinking, but now that she knew it was possible, and that many women had gone missing, they had to keep working to disprove it.

“I’ll get some satellite images coming to you at once,” Fleet said. “And we’ll work over them here as well.”

“Thanks,” Julia said as Annie hung up.

“Can this get any worse?” Lott asked, shaking his head.

Julia didn’t know what to say.

Then Lott laughed, but without humor. “You know, I remember Andor and me asking ourselves that very same question fifteen years ago.”