PORT NORRIS, NEW JERSEY
Algren had arranged for a Crown Victoria to be waiting for Mason and Layne at the airport in Wilmington, Delaware. It had taken just over an hour for them to drive to the New Jersey State Police impound lot in Port Norris, where a trooper named Barrie, who wore a blue flat cap, a light blue uniform shirt, and navy slacks with yellow stripes down the sides, had been waiting for them at the gate. He led them past the guard shack and into a dirt lot filled with beat-up vehicles from every era.
“The cars out here on the main lot are your standard impounds,” Barrie said. “Maybe a dozen belong to lowlifes in county lockup or the pen up in Bridgeton. We keep all the cool stuff in the warehouse. You know, high-ticket seizures and vehicles used in the commission of crimes. I figured those trucks of yours were probably used for hauling drugs, so I had them moved straight in there myself.”
He led them down a row of SUVs toward a massive aluminum warehouse with closed-circuit cameras mounted on the roof.
“What makes you think those trucks were carrying drugs?” Layne asked.
“If there’s one thing I know, it’s cars. Those Sterling flatbeds are worth good money. Even older models like these will still easily bring in fifty grand apiece. There aren’t many people willing to just abandon a hundred grand out there in the Barrens besides drug runners.”
Barrie used the key chain clipped to his utility belt to unlock the door and gestured for them to precede him into the darkness. The overhead lights came on with a resounding thud and cast a flickering pale glare over the vast space. Half was lined with shelves overflowing with a seemingly random assortment of parts, while the other half was like a garage from MTV Cribs. There were sports and luxury cars, seized vehicles of all kinds. Layne traced the contours of a Rolls-Royce with her fingertips as she passed.
“Sound reasoning,” Mason said.
The trooper swelled with the compliment.
“And the dead guy, of course. Definitely fits the MO of the major cartels.”
Both Mason and Layne stopped in their tracks. Barrie was five paces ahead before he noticed they’d fallen behind and glanced back.
“They’re just over here,” he said.
“What dead guy?” Mason asked.
“You mean you didn’t know?”
“Enlighten us,” Layne said.
“We found him inside that truck right there,” Barrie said as he led them out from behind the racks. The flatbeds they’d traveled all this way to find were in the back left corner. At least what was left of them. “You ever see someone after they’re cremated? That’s what it was like. Nothing but ashes and chunks of bone on the floorboards.”
The trucks were totally black, from bumper to fender. The paint had been burned to the bare metal and all that remained of the seats in the cab was the wire framework. The windows were gone and glass had fused to the remnants of the dashboard. The tires had melted to the bare rims.
“Were you able to identify him?” Mason asked.
“There wasn’t enough of him to ID. Or at least that’s what I heard. Had the Forest Fire Service not responded as quickly as they did, there wouldn’t have been anything left of him at all.”
“Was the fire response unusually fast?”
“I wouldn’t say so. At least not by our standards anyway. They have one of those Helitack units ready to go at all times. Had that fire out before it even burned through five acres. The handcrew found the trucks and called the sheriff’s department. They pawned it off on us when they saw what was left of the driver.”
“How long ago was this?” Layne asked.
Mason was happy to let her take the lead. She’d slept nearly the entire time they were on the plane, while he’d struggled to find a comfortable position in a seat designed for a person half his size, and undoubtedly one whose rear end wasn’t riddled with puncture wounds.
“November twenty-eighth. So that’s what? A month ago today?”
“How long had they been out there?”
“There’s no way of knowing. Had it not been for the fire, we might never have found them.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know if you’ve ever been out to the Pine Barrens, but that area’s like Jersey’s version of the Everglades. The forest is so dense that those trucks could well have been lost out there for fifty years before anyone ever found them.”
“Awfully fortunate that fire happened when it did,” Mason said.
“You’d be surprised how many fires we have out there. More than fourteen hundred a year. That’s the whole reason we have a dedicated fire-response unit ready and waiting.”
“So you didn’t suspect arson?”
“Should we have?”
Layne climbed up onto the warped runner of the truck and leaned through the window, into the cab.
“No VIN?” she said.
“No license plates or U.S. DOT numbers, either,” Barrie said. “Everything was either removed or burned off in the fire.”
“So there was no way of tracking down the owner.”
“We kind of figured that’s who the dead guy was. No one reported any missing trucks matching the description of these two. You guys are the first to even ask about them.”
“Why go to the trouble of burning them when you’ve already stripped all identifying markings?” Layne asked. She’d been thinking out loud, but Barrie answered.
“Those trucks could have been out there for more than a decade before the fire. I mean, they’re like fifteen years old. If someone didn’t want them to be found, the easiest thing to do would have been to leave them where they were and let the forest grow over them.”
“What about shipping containers?” Mason asked.
“You mean those big bulk numbers?” Barrie said. “We didn’t find anything like that. There was no sign of what they might have been hauling.”
Something wasn’t right. Mason could feel it, but he couldn’t pin down what. His instincts were crying out for him to recognize something that was staring him right in the face.
“Did you test for traces of chemical accelerants?” he asked.
“Each of those gas tanks holds eighty gallons,” Barrie said. “Those trucks were essentially giant bombs. Everything within a hundred-foot radius had to be drenched with a flaming layer of gasoline when they blew.”
“What my partner’s asking in the most roundabout way possible is where the fire started,” Layne said.
“You’d have to check with the Forest Fire Service. The way we saw it, we had two abandoned vehicles, with no means of establishing ownership, and an unidentifiable body, with no evidence of a crime. You’re lucky we even bothered to have what’s left of these things brought here. Lord knows the state would have been happy to have them hauled to the junkyard, if only to wash its hands of them.”
“What makes you say that?” Mason asked.
“My CO said the state didn’t want to incur the expense, but once I explained my reasoning, he said he figured what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.”
“Who does he take his orders from?”
“Who doesn’t he take orders from? Shoot, there are twenty-six deputies and commanders under the superintendent. Any one of them could have passed it down the chain of command.”
“Is taking them to the junkyard standard operating procedure?” Layne asked.
“How many torched vehicles do you think we find?”
Layne met Mason’s stare. Something obviously wasn’t adding up for her, either.
“He’s right,” she said. “For all we know, these trucks could have been out there since 2006. We don’t have any way of identifying them outside of the fact that the time line fits and they’re the same model as the trucks missing from the Cavanaugh crime scene.”
Mason nodded. That was precisely what was bothering him, although for entirely different reasons. Every conceivable effort had been invested in making sure these vehicles were impossible to ID—from killing the driver to stripping them of every registration and serial number and then burning them to the point that they were little more than skeletal black frames. The only way anyone would have known to look for them in the first place was if that person had discovered the bodies in the cornfield, in which case the investigation would have required that agents be dispatched for every potential match, even as far away as New Jersey. There was something here that the UNSUB didn’t want them to find, but setting five acres ablaze seemed like the surest way to make sure the flatbeds were identified, when they might have otherwise remained hidden for years.
“He wanted us to find the trucks,” Mason said.
“Why?” Layne asked. “What’s the point when a month ago we weren’t even looking for them and they’d been stripped of any identifying markings?”
“He didn’t want us to find them until after we discovered his work in Wray. If he didn’t strip the VIN, someone would have traced the trucks back to Cavanaugh. When the police couldn’t get ahold of him, they would have gone to his house and likely either discovered what was in the cornfield or set off the IED on the door. Either way, his plans would have been interrupted.”
“Then why’d he go back to Colorado at all?”
“That’s a good question. It’s like he finished one job and started another.”
“One professional and the other personal?”
Mason walked around to the front of the trucks, which took up nearly a quarter of the warehouse all by themselves.
And then it hit him.
He turned to Barrie.
“I need a favor. Two of them, actually.”
“From me?” Barrie said.
“I want to talk to the medical examiner about the remains. Can you call ahead and make arrangements for him to meet us in his office?”
“He’s actually a she, but I’d be happy to.”
“And I need you to see if you can find out who issued the order to dispose of these vehicles.”
“That might take a little more doing. My CO already stuck his neck out for me on this one.”
“Tell him he has my word it won’t come back on him.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Layne took Mason by his arm and guided him out of earshot.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“The UNSUB displayed his victims in the cornfield. Incinerating the guy who theoretically drove the other truck reeks of pragmatism. It’s not his style.”
“Right. He wanted us to find his ‘scarecrows.’”
“More than that, he wanted us to be able to identify them.”
Layne recognized where he was leading her.
“But he didn’t want us to be able to identify the dead man in the truck.”