Smith's Monthly #24 Read online

  Thorn’s picture on his reseller’s license looked very familiar to Annie, but she couldn’t place it. All the way back to Vegas it had been nagging at her.

  As they stepped off the plane, Julia actually felt like she was returning home. The air was thinner and much warmer, and all the noise of the airport around her sort of held her like a welcome blanket.

  She had lived all those years in Reno, but clearly her home was in Las Vegas.

  Lott suggested that they meet Annie and Andor at the Bellagio Café just before two to make sure everyone was on the same page and find out what Andor had discovered about Paul Vaughan’s death.

  Julia liked that idea a lot. Even with a few snacks on the plane, she was getting hungry. Breakfast had been a pretty good number of hours before. An entire trip to Reno and back before.

  As they left the car at valet parking and went inside the Bellagio, it struck Julia that the Bellagio Café never seemed to change day or night, one of the things Julia loved about it. It was a timeless place and honestly helped keep her balanced in a strange way.

  On top of that, the food was good and there was a wide range of choices. There were a lot of great places to eat in Las Vegas, but this one seemed to fit all of them the best.

  Annie was already there, as was Andor, sitting in a large booth surrounded by plants and tucked off to the back of the main area of the café. There were no other customers close to them.

  Neither looked happy as Julia and Lott approached. Julia had no idea what that meant, but Lott asked what was wrong before either of them sat down.

  “Your fear was grounded,” Annie said, sliding a paper with a list of names and dates on it toward them across the table. “Every car this Duane Thorn sold to Maxwell was from a missing person’s case around Vegas.”

  Julia just sat there stunned, looking at the list of women’s names on the sheet of paper.

  “Shit, just shit,” Lott said.

  Annie sat there feeling sick.

  They didn’t have four murders. From the looks of this, they had many. A serial killer had been working the Las Vegas area for thirty years and no one had known.

  How was that possible?

  Could a killer be that good?

  “And I have other bad news for you,” Andor said.

  He slid the copy of Duane Thorn’s reseller’s license toward them. “Anything look familiar about this guy?”

  “Been driving me crazy trying to figure that out since Reno,” Lott said.

  “Me too,” Julia said.

  Andor slid another piece of paper toward them, this one with a photo of Paul Vaughan on it.

  Julia almost recoiled back in her seat.

  They were the same man.

  The very same.

  PART TWO

  Bad Cards

  ELEVEN

  September 17th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  ALL FOUR OF them sat there in silence for a moment until finally Lott decided he needed to get this moving. They had lost over a year when they found the other bodies, and if this guy was still around, and from the looks of it, he was, another woman’s life might be in the balance.

  “So how did this guy kill himself as Paul Vaughan and still be alive?” Lott asked Andor.

  “The supposed Paul Vaughan died from a shotgun blast to the face,” Andor said. “Set up to look like suicide. Nothing left to identify, so since the guy was in Paul Vaughan’s apartment, had Vaughan’s wallet in his pocket, and was dressed in his clothes, they assumed it was him and that he had killed himself.”

  Julia took out her notebook and started writing as she talked. “So did this Duane Thorn take Paul Vaughan’s picture for his license, or is Paul Vaughan still alive and just faked his death?”

  Lott stared at the list and the dates. Three women had disappeared and had their cars sold in the year right before Becky Penn’s disappearance. He pointed to the list. “I’m betting those three are the three buried under Becky.”

  Andor nodded. “We need to visit families of those three, see if we can get anything to identify them from the family that might have been in that grave with the bodies. Clothing, hair length, necklaces, that sort of thing.”

  “Better than waiting for DNA testing,” Lott said.

  Julia wrote that down as well.

  Annie hadn’t said a word so far and Lott knew that meant that something, beside the ugliness that they were uncovering, was really bothering her.

  “Daughter?” he said. “You want to tell us what’s spinning?”

  Annie laughed. “I can’t figure out why Paul would date one of his victims, then stage his own death ten years later and write down where he buried four of the women? Just can’t seem to come up with a reason for any of that.”

  Lott sat back and took a deep breath and Julia wrote all that down.

  Thankfully, the waitress showed up to take their orders to give him time to think. Annie was right. Not one bit of that made sense.

  In fact, killing people for their cars made no sense either. There had to be something much deeper going on here. And with serial killers, something much sicker.

  After the waitress left, Andor turned to Annie and Julia. “We know for certain that whoever wrote in that notebook knew where those women were buried and is the killer.”

  Lott nodded to that.

  “But we don’t know if it was this Paul Vaughan or Duane Thorn,” Annie said. “Or it could have been anyone who planted that notebook.

  That made no sense to Lott either. “If you have been getting away with murder for thirty years, why tell the police where four of your victims are ten years later?”

  Julia was writing all this down as fast as she could. There was no doubt they had far, far more questions at this point than even theories, let alone answers.

  Again, they sat there in silence with the distant sounds of the casino echoing over them before Julia did what she was so good at and organized them.

  “So what do we know for certain?” Julia asked.

  “We know that all of these are unsolved missing person’s cold cases,” Andor said, jabbing his finger at the list of names. Lott could tell that list upset Andor. Lott felt the same way.

  “We know that a man by the name of Duane Thorn sold all those women’s cars to a car dealer in Reno,” Julia said, writing.

  “We have a physical address for this Duane Thorn,” Annie said. “We checked and the address is still valid on his reseller’s license and driver’s license as of last year.”

  They sat there for a moment, all thinking. Lott could come up with nothing at all more that they knew for certain at that point. Every other bit of data they had was in question.

  “So we give this Duane Thorn’s home a drive-by before we send in the youngsters,” Andor said.

  “No stopping,” Julia said.

  “No stopping,” Lott said. He had no intention of confronting a possible serial killer without major backup. His days of doing that were behind him as far as he was concerned.

  “Then, if that’s a dead end, we see if we can figure out if that person who killed himself twenty years ago actually was Paul Vaughan,” Andor said.

  “And how do you suggest we do that?” Lott asked.

  Andor shrugged. “Figured we come up with a plan if we needed to.”

  Everyone laughed and at that point, thankfully, the food came.

  TWELVE

  September 17th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  JULIA RODE BESIDE Lott in his big white SUV Cadillac as they headed north out of city limits of Las Vegas. Andor had decided he would be better off taking the list of names and getting the files from headquarters.

  Annie had gone back to the offices Doc and Fleet kept here in Vegas to keep working with the computer people on various searches. Annie said she would have computer satellite images of the property they were heading toward shortly. Maybe even before they made the thirty-minute trip to the place.

  Lott and Juli
a had promised they wouldn’t stop, but just do a recon of the address this Duane Thorn kept. If it actually was a house, the two of them and Andor would present what they had to the chief and more than likely the chief could get a warrant with the information they had about the cars to go in fast and hard.

  But Julia had no doubt this all wouldn’t end that easily. This killer had been getting away with murder in this town for over thirty years without getting caught or even noticed until the murderer told them where some bodies were.

  And even after that nothing had happened for another year-and-a-half. So she had no real hopes this would end easily.

  Or that they would find anything at all.

  They left the main road about twenty-five minutes north of the last Las Vegas suburb on the two-lane highway headed toward Reno. The paved road they were now on was narrow and wound its way toward Death Valley and other older military sites out in the desert before finally turning back toward Vegas.

  After about a mile of mostly desert with a few mailboxes along the pavement indicating dirt roads heading off toward distant houses, Julia said to Lott, “Slow down, should be right up here.”

  She had been watching the GPS and it showed they were close to the address.

  And as she expected, the address was nothing more than a mailbox with a dirt road leading up and through some rocks. The mailbox had the numbers printed clearly on it, but it had seen better days, tilting to one side on its wooden pole. Sand and wind had made the metal look almost gray.

  “Call Annie,” he said. “See if she has images of that place yet?”

  Lott drove on past and then over a slight rise before stopping.

  Annie picked up almost instantly. “Nothing at the end of that driveway,” Annie said as Julia put her phone on speaker so Lott could hear.

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Road goes up and makes a small circle around a rock,” Annie said. “The road has had some regular traffic but no building. No mine entrance. Nothing.”

  Julia could tell that Annie was as frustrated as she felt.

  “How close in can you get on the ground around that turn-around?” Lott asked. “And can you do any other kind of imaging?”

  Annie paused for a moment, then said, “Dad, are you thinking we might have found a burial ground?”

  “Exactly what I’m thinking,” Lott said. “But damned if I want to go up there to look because, for all we know, it might be monitored or have explosives set.”

  Julia was impressed. She hadn’t thought of any of that. But the moment Lott said it, she knew he might be right. They had dealt with that smart of a criminal in the past.

  And if they were going to catch this guy, they couldn’t go stumbling into places. They had to assume this guy was really, really smart.

  “I’ll see what I can have them do,” Annie said.

  “We’re headed back,” Lott said.

  “Good,” Annie said, and hung up.

  Julia felt the same way as Lott turned the big Cadillac around and headed back past the target address and toward the main road.

  “You really think that might be a burial ground?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “If this guy really is killing women and selling their cars, and has been for thirty years, he has to have a safe place to put the bodies. And over that rise looks as private and safe as can be.”

  Julia nodded. He was exactly right. No one out here would approach any of these houses or go up these driveways without an invitation. Too many survivalist types living out in these rocks.

  “So we need to figure out exactly who this Duane Thorn really is,” Julia said after they rode in silence for a minute.

  Lott nodded. “But what has me puzzled is why tell us about that other grave by planting that journal?”

  Julia had no idea on that either.

  “What’s different about those first four?”

  “His first?” Julia said, knowing that was the answer. “Before he got this property?”

  Lott glanced at her and smiled.

  Julia knew at once she was on to something. She redialed Annie and before Annie could even say hello this time, she asked, “When did this Duane Thorn buy this property out here?”

  “Hang on,” Annie said.

  Lott had reached the main road and turned back toward Las Vegas. Julia felt a sense of relief just being off that road.

  Annie came back. “Two months after Becky Penn went missing.”

  “One explanation down,” Lott said, smiling.

  “How much did he pay for it? Do you have those records?”

  “Twenty acres for nine thousand,” Annie said. “He paid cash.”

  Julia had another idea. “Can you tell me from the list we got in Reno how much Thorn made from selling Becky’s car and the three he sold before hers?”

  Lott was nodding.

  Annie took a moment, then said almost too low for them to hear, “Nine thousand dollars total for all the cars.”

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Julia said softly. “I so wanted to be wrong on that.”

  “I’ll keep working on the satellite images,” Annie said and hung up.

  “So why did he plant the location in Paul Vaughan’s journal, assuming Duane Thorn wasn’t Paul Vaughan?”

  Julia knew the answer. “To clean up what he considered a loose end,” she said. “He expected that journal to be found when Vaughan killed himself, or was murdered, as the case might be. Put all the blame on a dead man and he would be free to move forward.”

  Lott nodded. “I think you are right.”

  “I hope I’m not,” Julia said. “Because if I am a lot of women have died in all the years since.”

  “Yeah,” Lott said.

  They rode the rest of the way back to Las Vegas in silence.

  THIRTEEN

  September 17th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  IT HAD BEEN a very long day and it was barely five in the afternoon when Lott pulled into his driveway. He and Julia had picked up a large bucket of KFC and it smelled wonderful sitting on the console between them the last mile.

  Annie and Andor were both coming over when they broke clear of what they were doing, but as Andor said, he would come by only if there was a promise of chicken.

  So they got chicken. And considering that Andor had spent most of the day at headquarters copying old files of missing person’s cases, he deserved chicken.

  As they went into the kitchen and Julia set the chicken on the table, Lott decided they needed a little something to distract from thinking about the case for a moment.

  “Got something I want to show you,” he said.

  He took her hand and led her through his dining room and toward the bedrooms.

  “If you’re thinking what I think you are thinking,” Julia said, laughing, “you know your daughter might show up at any minute.”

  Lott laughed. “I was sort of thinking that, but I wanted to show you some remodeling I had done lately.”

  He took her into what had been the house’s master bedroom, but was now a massive double walk-in closet with all built-in cabinets and clothes racks. He had had it all made of a light oak and put in cam lights over each dressing area, with two large mirrors on the walls of each area as well.

  He had moved his clothes into one side of the closet and sadly everything he owned didn’t begin to fill the space.

  “Wow,” Julia said, stepping into the room and just stopping. “What did you do with the bed?”

  “Annie’s old room,” he said. “She assured me she would never be using it again.”

  Julia laughed. “With as much money as she has, not counting Doc’s fortunes, I don’t think there is any worry of her moving home.”

  “I left the door to the master bath at the back of this room,” Lott said, pointing, “and opened another door into the master bath from Annie’s old room, so this entire three rooms becomes one big master suite.”

  “Wow, just wow,” Julia said, walkin
g through the empty part of the closet and into the remodeled bathroom.

  Lott was almost as proud of the bathroom remodel as he was of the closet. Designed perfectly for two people with a large vanity with two sinks, a shower, a whirlpool tub and a toilet room that could be closed off.

  After she looked into the bedroom area with the new king bed, she turned back to Lott. Lott was very glad to see that she was smiling one of the happiest smiles he had seen on her.

  “You interested in saving some money on rent?” he asked, indicating the new closet and bathroom. “This place is all paid off and I also have the third bedroom set up as an office with two computers and work stations.”

  Julia came toward him and just kissed him, one of the hardest kisses she had ever done.

  Then she pushed him back and held him at arm’s length. “Carol’s things? And are you sure you are ready?”

  “I have what I wanted to keep of Carol’s things in boxes in the storage area off the poker room downstairs. Tucked away safe and sound.”

  Julia nodded, but kept looking at him.

  “I’m ready,” he said. “Carol told me she wanted me to move on after she died. I didn’t believe I ever could. But I never believed I would meet a woman like you either.”

  “I can’t replace Carol,” Julia said. “And I never want to.”

  Lott nodded. “I know. What you and I have together is very different than what I had with Carol, just as what you and I have I imagine is different from what you had with that former husband of yours.”

  Julia laughed at that because her former husband was in prison at the moment and had married five women at the same time as he had been married to Julia.

  “That’s why I did all this remodeling of the front room and the layout of the house and these rooms,” Lott said. “Not to erase Carol, but to give us a new starting place, since we both love that poker room downstairs so much.”