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  THEY HAD ONE more interview to do. Annie and her computer people had discovered that old and close friends of Paul and Jennifer’s parents were still alive and living in a retirement apartment just off the Strip. Ray and Lorraine Walter.

  Lott had called them and asked to talk about the Vaughan family if they had time and the Walters had both agreed.

  The retirement apartment complex turned out to be very nice, with large expanses of green lawn and palm trees surrounding what looked like small two-bedroom cottages. The complex had a large function space near a pool and the Walters had wanted to meet there. They were going to watch their two grandkids swim in the pool.

  Lott was impressed by the health that radiated from the Walters. Both were clearly in shape and tanned. Lorraine was short, slim, and still seemed to have freckles on her face. She wore a blue sundress and a large blue hat.

  Ray stood straight and tall and was about Lott’s height, with an easy smile and an attitude that he had survived and from here on out everything was just funny.

  They both walked and acted much younger than their mid-seventy years. Lott decided in ten years he wanted to be exactly like them. And he never knew, maybe either Julia’s daughter or Annie might end up giving them grandkids.

  But to be in that kind of shape in ten years, he was going to need to start joining Julia at the gym regularly. Might be easy once they started living together.

  After introductions to the Walters and their eight- and ten-year-old grandkids who headed for the pool at top speed, they all settled around a metal pool table tucked back in the shade beside the brick pool building. The late morning was still cool enough to make the table comfortable and there was just enough of a breeze to keep the air moving around them.

  “So what can we do for you, detectives?” Lorraine asked, pulling off her hat and dropping it beside her chair.

  “We’re looking for any information we can about the Vaughan family,” Julia said.

  “Messed up,” Ray said, shaking his head.

  That surprised Lott and clearly Julia had been surprised at that answer as well.

  Lorraine laughed and waved off her husband’s comment. “They just had some different beliefs than were completely common.”

  “Walking around in the nude all the time in their backyard is messed up,” Ray said. “And letting their kids do it as well after they hit puberty. Messed up.”

  Lorraine laughed. “They believed in nudity and free love or some such nonsense. We lived next door to them. We could see their backyard from our upstairs windows and we weren’t the only ones in the neighborhood who could.”

  “We saw things we didn’t want to see,” Ray said, shaking his head in clear disgust.

  “Can you mention one or two?” Julia asked. “We really are trying to get a picture of the entire family.”

  Lorraine glanced at Ray and he shook his head.

  “Might as well tell them. Dead can’t hurt us now,” Ray said.

  Lorraine shook her head and Lott could tell she wasn’t going to say anything.

  Ray, clearly disgusted still after all the years, was far from shutting up.

  “Paul and his sister used to have sex out on that patio,” Ray said. “When I told their parents, they both laughed and said they knew. That it was natural.”

  Lott and Julia both sat back. Lott was feeling stunned.

  “Messed up,” Ray said, shaking his head.

  Lorraine waved her husband’s comments away. “Why are you interested? Did Paul do something?”

  “Paul supposedly killed himself twenty years ago,” Julia said. “His sister cleaned up his things. We just talked with her.”

  Lorraine just looked puzzled and Ray laughed.

  “Why was that funny?” Lott asked, feeling more confused than he had in a long time.

  “Because both parents and Jennifer were killed in a car wreck over thirty years ago,” Lorraine said. “They were coming back from some nudist free-love thing in San Francisco.”

  “Can you imagine they invited us to go along?” Ray asked, then laughed again. “Damn lucky we didn’t swing that way or we might have been in that car.”

  Lott looked at Julia and she was blinking.

  Oh, shit, they had just played right into Paul’s hands.

  Lott stood and Julia followed almost instantly. He reached out and shook Lorraine’s hand. Then Ray’s hand.

  “Thank you,” Lott said. “This information will really help us.”

  “After it’s all over,” Ray said, “mind coming back and filling us in on just what the hell is going on?”

  Julia laughed. “We will and that’s a promise.”

  At that they both almost ran for the car.

  On the way back out to the subdivision where they had met Jennifer, Julia filled in Annie on what they had just discovered.

  “He’s good,” Annie said. “He covered her death in a really amazing way. I’ll find out how.”

  By the time they got back to the expensive house in the subdivision, the For Sale sign was back up and the realtor lock-box was back on the door.

  Whoever that Jennifer was had put on a show for them using an empty house. No wonder the house looked staged and clean and perfect. It was staged to sell.

  As they sat in front of the house staring at the sign, Annie called.

  “The house Jennifer gave you the address to is owned by a bank and is for sale.”

  “We know,” Lott said. “We’re sitting in front of it right now.”

  Beside him Julia shook her head. “We were played.”

  “And Jennifer wasn’t Jennifer,” Lott said. “I don’t know who that was, but I think we now know why he takes twenty-two year old girls.”

  “Why?” Annie asked.

  “He’s turning them into his sister and having sex with them.”

  Annie just sort of gasped softly.

  “Ask her to look up two dates,” Julia said. “Jennifer’s birthday and the date of the wreck.”

  Lott relayed that request to Annie and she said holdon.

  After a moment she came back. “You are right. Jennifer was born on the 3rd of December. The wreck was on the 27th of February, almost three months later.”

  Lott nodded to himself, completely numb. “So we have until the 27th of November to find Mary May.”

  “If we haven’t already spooked him,” Julia said.

  Lott didn’t want to think about that.

  NINETEEN

  September 18th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  THEY WERE BACK into the center of town when Lott’s phone rang. He handed it to Julia and pulled over into a Burger King parking lot.

  “Detective Lott’s secretary,” Julia said.

  Annie laughed. “Driving, huh?”

  “Just pulling over,” Julia said.

  “Tell dad that Mike and Heather have swept the entire location of Duane Thorn’s land and there is no surveillance at all. Nothing within ten miles, actually.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Julia asked. After the meeting with Paul dressed as his dead sister, she still wasn’t balanced yet.

  “Andor and the chief are getting a warrant to search the grounds and will be out there in under an hour,” Annie said. “Mike and Heather are gathering up their equipment and will be there in about that same amount of time.”

  “We’ll meet them there,” Julia said.

  “I’m staying here and continuing to dig,” Annie said. “My computer people are damn angry that the sister’s death was hidden from them and they want to know how. I figure the answer to that might help us run this guy to the ground.”

  “I agree,” Julia said and Annie hung up.

  Julia had never heard Annie be so focused and determined before. She clearly was angry.

  Julia told Lott what his daughter had said and Lott quickly got them off the side of the road and into a parking spot and stopped. They both used the Burger King rest rooms and got some fries and Diet Cokes. They a
lso bought six bottles of water in case no one else going out had thought of that. There was no telling how long they were going to be out on that hilltop.

  Julia had suntan lotion in her purse and they both had large hats in the back of the car just for situations like this that they didn’t have a lot of time to prepare for. There was no doubt the day was going to be warm, especially out on a rock knoll in the desert.

  Thirty-five minutes later, they were pulled off to one side of the road next to the address and the weatherworn mailbox of Duane Thorn. Julia was convinced now that Thorn was Paul. No proof other than the photo on a license, but it made sense that he was.

  If anything made sense in this case.

  Julia had just gotten off the phone finding out where everyone was located.

  “Andor and the chief are five minutes out and Mike and Heather just a minute from here.”

  Lott nodded. “We wait for the chief and the search warrant.”

  Julia nodded and looked up the dirt road that twisted around rocks to the top of the ridgeline. She had no desire to go up there now or ever, but she knew they needed to.

  They had a suspect who had supposedly killed himself almost twenty years ago, a woman, or a man pretending to be Paul’s dead sister, and a man who looked like Paul named Duane Thorn selling the missing women’s cars.

  They had a lot of theories, but sadly, finding bodies would give them even more clues. But between the cars and the strange nature of this road leading nowhere, they did have enough for a warrant.

  Mike and Heather pulled into the driveway and stopped. They were driving a huge Ford Expedition SUV. They climbed out and joined Lott and Julia in the running Cadillac.

  “Going to be a warm one up there,” Mike said.

  Julia and Lott turned around in their seats so they were facing them in the back.

  “Good thing Fleet’s not here,” Heather said, laughing. “He has a phobia against snakes.”

  “Not fond of them myself,” Julia said. In fact, she hated them, but had learned to deal with them when needed. She lived in a desert state. Snakes were a way of life.

  “See anything up there?” Lott asked.

  Mike shook his head. “We didn’t really get that close. Only did scans for any sort of metal or electronics or signals.”

  Julia glanced around at the mailbox. “Did you check the box there?”

  “Only thing in there is some mail,” Heather said. “We didn’t open it or look at it because we figured the police would want to lift prints from the box.”

  Julia turned and opened the glove box of the Cadillac and pulled out some thin evidence gloves and pulled them on. “Search warrant will cover the contents of the box and I want to see who he’s getting mail from.”

  All three nodded and she climbed out into the heat and moved to the box. She hoped like hell Mike and Heather were right and this box wasn’t rigged to explode.

  With a stick she found on the ground near the box, she opened the box and looked in. Four letters and nothing else.

  She carefully, without touching any edge of anything, took out the letters and looked at them.

  Two were junk mail for credit card offers. A third looked like some sort of accounts letter from Maxwell in Reno.

  She put all three back in the box as they were.

  The fourth was addressed to this address and postmarked Las Vegas. It had no name or return address, but simply a notation on the envelope.

  Attention: Cold Poker Gang Detectives.

  She waved for the others to join her and they came quickly.

  She felt light-headed and the heat felt far more intense than it should. She didn’t want to drop the envelope.

  But after everything today and now this, she had no idea what to think anymore.

  She held up the envelope, making sure she held it by the corner to not smudge any possible fingerprint.

  “Damn it,” Lott said, turning and walking away after he saw the envelope.

  “Looks like this guy is a ways ahead of us,” Mike said, shaking his head.

  “A long damn ways,” Heather said.

  “He’s been kidnapping and killing women for thirty years and no one has come close,” Julia said, carefully putting the letter back in the box. “This is going to take everything we have to catch this guy.”

  “Then we throw everything,” Mike said, his voice sounding nasty and downright mean.

  Julia nodded and turned to see where Lott was.

  He was on the phone, pacing beside the car, more than likely telling Annie what they had just found.

  He looked furious.

  Julia looked at the letters for a moment and then used a stick to once again close the mailbox.

  They were being taunted. And laughed at, clearly.

  And she hated that.

  Hated that with a passion.

  And she hated worse the feeling of knowing they had no idea who exactly was doing this.

  TWENTY

  September 18th, 2016

  Outside of Las Vegas, Nevada

  AFTER FOUR HOURS in the hot sun, they hadn’t found a thing.

  Nothing.

  Not one body, not one stick of reason why the wide dirt road into this area even existed.

  Not one bit of the desert around that turnaround had been disturbed in any way. Ever.

  There weren’t even more than small animal trails in the sagebrush and dirt.

  Lott was feeling more and more frustrated by the moment.

  Earlier, when Andor and the chief had arrived, Julia showed them the contents of the mailbox and the two of them had decided to take those contents back to the lab and expedite work to get into that envelope and find out what was in it. And they planned on sending out some techs to dust the mailbox for prints while the four of them searched the turnaround.

  Lott had followed Mike up the hill and they parked away from the main flat area over the ridge. Mike and Heather had pulled the equipment and Lott and Julia had taken two of the cameras and started systematically taking pictures of the entire area.

  Four hours of work.

  Nothing to show for it.

  This wasn’t a body dump.

  Someone, on a regular basis, driving different cars from the looks of the different tire tracks, came up here and drove around the rock and then left.

  As the four of them were siting in the air-conditioning of Lott’s Cadillac, drinking water, Lott focused on the large rock jutting up in the middle of the turnaround.

  None of them were talking, the frustration was that high.

  The rock had pretty steep sides and seemed to be flat on top. It was a good ten feet tall and the size of a small shed in width.

  If they hadn’t been parked so far back, Lott doubted he would have even noticed the rock any more than he noticed any of the piles and mounds of rocks and boulders scattered as far as they could see.

  But there was something about the flat top of that boulder that felt off.

  He was sitting in the driver’s seat and turned back to Mike. “Did you check that rock in the middle of the turnaround?”

  Mike nodded. “No electronics, or explosives on it or in it, if that’s what you are asking.”

  Lott could tell that Mike was feeling as frustrated as he was. Four hours in the sun without results could do that to a person.

  “Spot me, would you, Mike,” Lott asked and climbed out of the car and headed toward the big rock.

  Julia looked at him worried, but Lott indicated she just stay in the car and cool off.

  Just like he always had someone spot him these days when he got on a ladder, he didn’t want to climb a rock without someone behind him if he slipped. He used to bounce when he fell, but somewhere in his mid-fifties, he got the feeling that if he fell, he wouldn’t bounce but instead break. And that feeling gave going up ladders and climbing on chairs to change a light bulb entire new senses of caution.

  Lott walked along the wide dirt road to the rock. The afternoon heat be
at at him and he ignored it. He didn’t plan on being out in the heat much longer anyway. It would feel good to get home, take a shower, and just rest watching television in his cool television room. After today he and Julia deserved that kind of night.

  He slowly walked on the road that circled the rock, looking for an easy way up.

  On the far side, away from the Cadillac where Heather and Julia still sat, he found a way up. Nothing was worn as if anyone else had climbed it, but the ridges in the rock formed a clear series of steps upward.

  Once he got up there, getting down might be another matter, but he would deal with that in a moment.

  Mike came up behind him. “What are you looking for?”

  “Honestly,” Lott said, “I don’t know. The reason this road exists around this rock, maybe? Maybe a path through the rocks we have missed. Anything, actually.”

  Mike nodded and Lott turned and started up the rock.

  Mike stayed behind him and Lott was surprised he found the climb on the hot stone easy. Even after he had spent hours in the sun.

  It took only a moment and he found himself standing on top of the flat area of the tall rock. The flat area was about the size of a king bed. Mike was standing below him, looking up at him and shaking his head.

  Right smack in the middle of the rock was a white mailing envelope.

  It couldn’t have been out in the sun more than a day because it wasn’t yellowed or brittle from the heat. It was held in place by a fist-sized rock.

  “Mike, get your camera,” Lott said. “There’s an envelope up here.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Mike said.

  He started back quickly for the car. Lott glanced up as Julia and Heather climbed out.

  “Camera!” Mike shouted to them and then turned and came back to his position below where Lott went up.

  Lott got on his hands and knees and studied what he could see of the envelope. It had clearly written on it “Cold Poker Gang Detectives. Enjoy the view.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything inside of it, but Lott sure wasn’t going to move that rock and find out. Not without a lot of tech people checking everything first.