Smith's Monthly #18 Page 14

  “None of the men in Kirk’s high school has any interest or family in mining at all,” Annie said. “They had already done that search. They are now going after ovens and class members.”

  “Damn,” Andor said. “So why, beyond some strange sexual thing I have never heard of, would a guy cut off a woman’s butt and large muscles in her thighs?”

  “Steaks, roasts, maybe jerky,” Annie said.

  “Damn dry steaks and roast,” Lott said. “From my little experiment. But jerky makes sense if the flesh was going to be eaten.”

  “How much was taken from each body?” Julia asked.

  “A lot,” Andor said. “Maybe twenty pounds or so from each woman if I remember the autopsy reports right.”

  “That’s a lot of jerky every month,” Lott said.

  “So we let Fleet and his people do the searches and see what they come up with.”

  Everyone nodded and then sat there silently, just letting the casino sounds wash around them.

  Lott felt the frustration of the week climbing back. Just so many odd details and none of it was fitting together. He knew it had to be the mines that were at the center of this in some fashion or another. He just couldn’t figure out how.

  He turned to Julia. “You up for a trip to visit a couple of mines tomorrow while we wait for Fleet’s search to be done?”

  “Not really,” she said. “But I see where you are going and I think I need to see them as well.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Annie said. “I’ve been feeling that the mines are the key to this all along, just don’t know how.”

  “I’m in,” Andor said. “But I’m going to be bringing a cold pack for my neck.”

  Lott laughed. “Field trip.”

  “Let’s hope it turns out a bunch better than the field trip those girls in the bus took,” Andor said.

  “We’re bringing cases of bottled water,” Annie said, “cell phones, and telling Doc and Fleet exactly where we are every hour.”

  “Where’s the adventure in that?” Andor asked, shaking his head.

  “Thank you,” Julia said, smiling at Annie.

  Lott could only smile at his daughter as well and say the same thing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  August 14th, 2015

  9 A.M.

  Outside of Las Vegas

  WHERE THE BUS had gotten lost was surprisingly close to Las Vegas city limits, yet it felt remote and very isolated. But in the intense heat of a summer’s day, close was still a death sentence without protection.

  Lott took the Cadillac SUV expertly along the narrow dirt road up the rocky canyon. He could only imagine a bus up here in this kind of heat. It was well over a hundred already outside and would be climbing as the day went on.

  That kind of heat got very deadly very quickly.

  Lott had on a light long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up and suntan lotion all over his arms, face and neck. He smelled more like a coconut than he liked, but he also didn’t spend much more than a few minutes a day in this sun and he wanted to be prepared.

  He had also brought a wide-brimmed hat.

  They all wore jeans and hiking boots and both Julia and Annie had on tank tops with a light open jacket over that to protect their arms some and wide-brimmed Panama hats.

  Andor had on a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a ton of lotion smeared all over his arms and face and neck as well. He had on a baseball cap and a wet towel over his neck that he planned on dipping in iced water from a cooler before he got out.

  They had a couple cases of bottled water and some food in the back, plus a cooler full of ice and water bottles. They were about as ready as four detectives without any desert experience could get to go look at some mines in hot desert heat.

  Lott decided to come into the canyon from the top of a slight ridge, the same way the bus had gone. From the top of the ridge, it took him only a few minutes going along the winding, one-lane dirt road of the canyon before he found where the bus had broken down.

  He pulled the car over and stopped, letting it run and the air conditioning working to keep the inside of the car cool. The car blocked the dirt road completely.

  On the left side of the car were steep rock walls. The mine was up a brush-covered slope on the right and still in operation, from what it looked like from the fresh dirt. A rough dirt road twisted up through the brush toward the mine tailings.

  No cars or people were in evidence.

  Lott was surprised at how far up the hill the mine was from the road.

  They had expected that the mine would be in use, but it still sort of surprised Lott. It had actually been in operation when the girls died in there, but the owner had been out of town.

  “We need to get a complete background check on the owner of this mine,” Andor said.

  “Fleet already has it,” Annie said, handing Andor the file. “The guy that is working this now is an attorney from Las Vegas, working the mine on weekends. He bought it from the guy who owned it when the girls died. Seemed the guy could never go back into the mine after all the death in there and it took him five years to find a buyer.”

  “What happened to that guy?” Andor asked a moment before Lott could.

  “Died seven years ago,” Annie said.

  Lott nodded. Figured that would be yet another dead end on a case full of them.

  Lott glanced at Julia, then around at Annie and Andor behind him. “Anyone have any desire to walk up there and look around?”

  “Not a bit,” Andor said. “That’s a pretty good hike.”

  “I can’t see a reason to now that I see it from here,” Annie said.

  Julia nodded. “Carrying those girls up that road must have been almost impossible.”

  “Especially for two men who had just tried to go for help in heat like this,” Annie said.

  Silence filled the car.

  Lott stared at that road. Impossible described the feat. Kirk and his father could not have done it. Not after trying to go for help and getting turned back by the heat.

  Lott swung around and looked at his old partner in the back seat.

  Andor was staring up at the mine and frowning.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Lott asked.

  Andor nodded. “No chance in hell Kirk and his dad carried those eleven girls up that hill. More than likely they got back to the bus after trying to go for help and just passed out with everyone else.”

  Julia frowned. “So who carried them up there and why?”

  “And then why not admit it?” Annie asked.

  Lott shook his head. “More questions. No answers.”

  “This damn case is driving me crazy,” Andor said.

  Lott and Julia nodded together, both staring up the hill at the mine.

  “Let’s see the other place, Dad,” Annie said. “Maybe we can see something there that will make sense of this.”

  Lott nodded and with one last look at the mine up on the hillside, he put the car in gear and headed down the dirt road.

  About a quarter mile down the winding narrow dirt road, he glanced at Julia. “What in the hell was the bus full of kids doing up here anyway?”

  “I didn’t see the answer to that in the file,” Andor said. “They were supposed to have been up between Boulder City and the dam on the other side of town. That’s why it took so long to find them out here, on the north side of town.”

  “There’s a ton more to this tragedy than what is in that record,” Annie said.

  Lott could only agree with that.

  “There sure is,” Andor said. “And I think the chief of police can help me get to the bottom of it all this afternoon.”

  Lott smiled. He knew that tone in his old partner’s voice and no way in hell was he going to take no for an answer.

  “I’m going to get Fleet and Doc digging as well,” Annie said, pulling out her cell phone.

  “Good idea,” Andor said. “Usually when I smell this much fish, there’s an
ocean nearby.”

  Julia and Annie laughed and Lott just smiled and shook his head as he kept working the SUV down the canyon and back toward the city. He had heard Andor use that phrase a bunch over the years. And when he did, there had always been something very wrong about a story.

  Always.

  And Lott had a hunch, this time would be no exception.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  August 14th, 2015

  9:45 A.M.

  Outside of Las Vegas

  JULIA WAS SURPRISED when Lott pulled off the paved highway and headed along a straight dirt road toward some low hills, dust billowing up behind their SUV.

  After leaving where the bus tragedy had happened, Lott had wound his way back to Highway 95, gone only about two miles back toward Vegas, and turned off again.

  “These two sites are very close together in the scheme of things,” Julia said.

  “They are at that,” Lott said. “We didn’t know about the bus tragedy fifteen years ago, so this didn’t seem odd.”

  “It seemed like a long damn ways out in the desert,” Andor said.

  The dirt road went into a narrow canyon and Lott slowed down, moving up through the curves slowly until the canyon seemed to open up and there, beside the road, was an old mine entrance.

  This one had no climb to get to it at all. Hauling bodies from a van or truck or car and getting them into the mine would be easy.

  “Well, this brings back nightmares,” Andor said.

  Lott had stopped the SUV directly across from the mine and was sitting there, just staring at it.

  Julia eased her hand over and put it on his leg for support as she too just stared at the mine entrance.

  “Boarded up just as we found it,” Andor said. “Shit I hate this place.”

  Julia understood that. She had seen the pictures of what those women in there looked like. She could only imagine finding them.

  Lott glanced at Julia. “I think I’ll wander over there and chase some demons away.”

  Julia squeezed his leg and nodded. “I’ll go with you.”

  “You don’t need to,” Lott said.

  “But I do,” Andor said as he opened the cooler between him and Annie and dunked in his towel in the ice water, then put it around his neck.

  “We’ll all go,” Annie said. “We’re here to look for something, anything, that might give us a clue to move forward.”

  Lott shut off the car as Julia opened the door and stepped out into the heat. It felt like putting her head in an oven. The air off the dirt and rocks was so hot, it just seemed to radiate from everywhere.

  “We can’t be out in this too long,” Annie said as she got out and moved to the side of the road with Julia.

  “Luckily that mine is only about thirty paces off the road,” Andor said.

  “Think that fact might be important?” Annie asked.

  Julia nodded. “It could be.”

  With Andor walking ahead of them in his normal bullish fashion, Julia followed with Annie and then Lott right behind her. There was a rough path to the mine, but nothing really. More than likely still left from fifteen years ago.

  And she knew it was far, far too hot for snakes to be moving around, but she watched the shadows along the path anyway.

  The mine opening had been dug between a large rock outcropping. A massive sign was faded, but plastered across the wood covering the mine entrance. It said, “No trespassing. Dangerous Conditions!”

  “This is exactly how we found it,” Lott said. “Same sign and all.”

  Julia touched Lott’s back for comfort. This had to be almost impossible for him to come back to.

  “We were about to not open it and just ignore the psychic,” Andor said, “but Mr. Nose here thought he smelled something.”

  “I still smell it,” Lott said. “That memory is so damn strong.”

  Julia frowned and glanced at Annie, who was also frowning.

  “A musty smell, like something had gotten wet in a closed-up garage?” Annie asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the smell,” Lott said.

  “I’m smelling it now,” Julia said.

  “So am I,” Annie said.

  Lott had a panicked look in his eyes that Julia could never imagine the man she loved having.

  “That smell can’t still be here,” Lott said.

  “But it is,” Annie said.

  Julia watched as both Lott and Andor went at the side of the boards.

  They pulled them and the sign off without so much as a grunt. That was not a good sign. That meant this mine had been entered a bunch of times and the boards put back up.

  The smell hit them all hard the minute the mine opened up.

  Julia just sort of held her ground. She had smelled a lot of smells over the years as a detective, but this one seemed to just clog every pore of her body in the heat.

  All four of them pulled out their phones and turned on their lights.

  Lott turned to Annie. “Stay out here. One of us has to call for help if this thing collapses.”

  Julia saw Annie start to protest, then nod.

  Lott stepped into the smell of the small tunnel first, followed by Andor.

  Julia followed, bracing herself for what she would find just as she had done all the time when on full duty.

  The thick overhead wooden beams were low and Lott almost had to duck.

  Julia was right behind Andor, but she couldn’t see much ahead of them since the tunnel was so narrow.

  Ten feet in both men stopped, side-by-side in the narrow tunnel, holding up their lights to illuminate what was in front of them.

  Julia moved up and looked between them, gently touching Lott on the shoulder to get him to lean a little out of the way.

  Eleven women, dressed in schoolgirl uniforms, were sitting against the mine wall on the left. All had black hair, cut and trimmed exactly the same.

  All were mummified completely.

  It was the most horrific sight she had ever seen.

  Ever.

  And with the thick smell of dried death clogging her every sense, she had no doubt that she would ever be the same.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  August 14th, 2015

  10:45 A.M.

  Outside of Las Vegas

  LOTT SAT BEHIND the wheel of the SUV, letting the air-conditioning blow directly on his face.

  They had managed to talk Annie out of going into the mine after they came out and had just gone back to the car to call for help.

  Annie was about to call 911 as they got out of the intense heat and into the car when Andor stopped her. “We need to get the chief out here and only a few detectives he can trust.”

  Lott had turned to look at his partner as he wiped down his face with the iced towel, then put it back on his neck.

  Julia was looking as if she was in complete shock.

  “Why?” Annie asked, still holding her phone.

  “The last thing we want to do is force this sicko to go to ground at this point,” Andor said. “This creep has been thinking he can get away with this for fifteen years. We need him to keep thinking that for just a few more days while we track him down.”

  “You think we’re closer now than an hour ago?” Julia asked.

  “I do,” Andor said and Lott was starting to understand what Andor was talking about.

  “We now will have the entire force back on this case,” Lott said. “Combine all those resources with the resources of Fleet and Doc and the four of us and we might stop this guy if we keep this discovery silent for just a day or so.”

  The car was filled with only the sounds of the blowing air-conditioning. More than anything, he wanted to get home and take a long, long shower to get the smell off, but he knew that wasn’t going to be possible for some time now.

  Andor started to dial his phone. “I’ll get the chief out here. And he’s going to have to pull some strings with the State Police as well to keep this under wraps, if he agrees.”

 
Lott nodded. Beside him Julia nodded as well.

  She had been supportive of him going into this, now he eased his hand over and touched her leg to offer his support in return.

  She smiled and put her hand on his and then nodded that she would be all right.

  Lott knew she was one damn tough cop. She would be affected by what she had seen in that mine, but she would be all right in the long run.

  “At least we have closed eleven missing persons’ cases today,” Lott said softly, “and given some families some closure.”

  Julia nodded and took a deep breath of the cool air pouring over her.

  Lott glanced back over at the mine. They had left it open, the boards pulled to one side.

  He really wasn’t looking up at the mine, just at it across a small distance from the road.

  And he suddenly had another idea.

  He turned in his seat to look at his daughter as Andor waited for the Las Vegas Chief of Police to come on the phone.

  “Can you get Fleet and Doc to search records of abandoned mines in a fifty mile radius of Las Vegas,” Lott asked.

  “They have already done that,” she said. “There are upwards of five hundred.”

  “Have them sort the mines for elevation to the nearest road,” Lott said, pointing over at the mine. “Use this mine as a baseline.”

  Julia looked at him. “You think our perp doesn’t like to carry bodies up hills?”

  “That’s exactly what I think,” Lott said as Annie smiled and pulled out her phone. “I think he did that from that school bus and never wants to do it again.”

  “I’m going to tell Doc and Fleet what we found,” she said, nodding. “I’ll tell them we’re going to try to keep it under wraps for a day or so.”

  Lott nodded and about that point Andor got on the line with the chief.

  Annie climbed out into the heat and closed the door quickly.

  “Chief,” Andor said. “The gang has something and it ain’t pretty. No announcement to anyone, just grab a few detectives you can trust to keep their mouths shut and a couple of forensic boys and get out here.”

  Andor nodded. “Chief, just trust me. You need to see this and we need to keep a lid on it for a day or so if we’re going to catch this bastard.”