CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

 

May 15, 2015

8 A.M.

High Mountain Valley

Near the Central Idaho Primitive Area

 

Lott stood behind the couch that faced the fireplace, his arm around Julia, behind the FBI tech at the laptop computer on the wood coffee table.

Outside the large picture window that looked out over the lake, the sun still was a long ways from hitting the valley floor, but the mountains were bright. From what was on the screen, the light was enough to see clearly in the lake water.

The screen showed one diver’s camera and a second laptop set up beside the first showed the second diver’s camera.

“Bottom is sloping away sharply,” one diver said.

“Visibility about forty feet,” the other diver said.

On the screens beside the images, Lott could see each diver’s vital signs, their air supply, their temperature, heartbeat, and so on. All were in normal levels.

“Bottom is leveling off some at sixty feet,” the lead diver said. “Nothing so far but logs and mud bottom.”

Lott was surprised he didn’t see any fish. More than likely the divers breathing sounds would have scared them out of camera range.

The bottom of the lake looked more like a desolate alien landscape than anything that could be nearby. The light coming down through the water was dim, but each diver had bright lights on both sides of the cameras on their helmets that seemed to make the bottom of the lake seem even stranger and covered with shifting shadows.

It looked more alien if that was possible.

Another voice came over the link.

“You are still a football field’s distance from where the car tracks are leaving the road above the lake. Stay on your heading and you should come to the area below the car tracks.”

“Copy that,” the first diver said.

Silence filled the living room as everyone watched the two screens except for Fleet. He stood in the kitchen staring out over the lake and watching the scene on the shore of the support divers.

Lott glanced out the front window. The extra crew out there had inflated a large raft with a small motor on one end and another diver was standing by near the raft in full dry suit, clearly in case of any emergencies.

On the screen the alien-looking landscape continued flowing smoothly past the cameras.

The vital signs of the divers showed no variations at all.

Lott had stood on the shore while divers had looked for bodies in golf course ponds and twice on the shore of Lake Mead. He never understood how anyone could be a recovery diver. They couldn’t pay him enough to do that job, especially considering the conditions the divers often found the bodies.

“We’re approaching something,” one of the divers said.

“You are almost to the area where the car tracks go over the edge,” a third voice came in.

Agent Munn leaned forward and Lott held Julia even tighter. He could feel her tensing up.

On both screens, shadows started to appear out of the gloom ahead.

At first it seemed like large rocks sticking up out of the mud at various angles, but as the divers moved closer, it became clear the shapes were that of cars covered in layers of sediment.

Some cars were piled on top of others.

“Oh, shit,” one of the divers said. “We have an entire junkyard down here.”

The intense silence in the living room felt to Lott like it could be cut. He wasn’t sure he was even breathing.

Beside him Julia just stood like a stone pillar.

“Let’s go left around the pile,” the lead diver said. “Get an idea how big it is.”

“Copy,” the second diver said.

As far as Lott was concerned, they seemed to swim for a very long time before finally passing the huge mound of wrecked cars.

“There’s Trish’s car,” Julia whispered, her voice breathless.

It was clear which car she meant. It was upside down and the driver’s door was open. From what Lott could tell, it was a BMW. And it had very, very little lake silt on it.

Trish’s car was clearly the newest addition to the pile.

“I’m going to go see if I can see inside one of the cars,” the lead diver said.

The camera got closer and closer to a driver’s side window on what looked like an old Ford hatchback of some sort.

Lott and Julia both sort of leaned back. Lott wanted to look away, not see what the diver found, but he couldn’t make himself.

He had to see.

The driver took a brush from his belt and carefully and slowly brushed back the silt on the window, sending it swirling into the water around him.

Then, as the diver moved up closer to the cleared window, the bright lights of his camera filled the inside of the car as if it was daylight.

A young woman’s white, peaceful face stared back at them.

Lott had no doubt that face would haunt his nightmares for years to come.

“Jesus,” the guy behind the computer said, leaning back away from the screen.

Lott and Julia both eased back as well, as if getting away from the computer would help what the diver was seeing.

The girl was nude, strapped into the driver’s seat, and didn’t seem to be more than thirty.

Her long hair floated around her head.

She seemed almost peaceful sitting there.

The diver moved back to a place where he and his partner could see the entire pile.

“There have to be at least forty cars here, if not more,” the diver said.

Agent Munn glanced back at Lott and Julia. “We suspect Williams of over forty women’s disappearances in the three states. It seems we found the women.”

“Now we just have to trap the bastard who did this,” Lott said. “Make sure he is tied to every one of those women’s deaths.”

“We’ll get him,” Agent Munn said, nodding as she stared at the image of the piles of cars on the lake floor. “We’ll get him.”