“He then contacted us when he learned the kids were missing from Oklahoma and we’d have jurisdiction.”
I opened the folder and stared at the two photos of Wendy and Tyler. They both had soft doughy complexions and Wendy was a freckled red head. Tyler had eyes that were too small for his face, and a broad flat nose. The effect was that it made him look suspicious.
“They’re both dead,” I told Rodriguez. “They were abducted and killed someplace else.”
Rodriguez took a pull from his Dr Pepper. “You really think they’re
both
dead?”
“Yes.”
This seemed to unsettle Rodriguez.
“You thought they were alive?”
He shifted in his chair. “We thought they might have argued, and that Tyler could have killed Wendy, and hidden her body somewhere, then taken off without claiming the car to make it look like they might both still be alive.”
I shook my head and focused again on the photos in the file. “No. That’s not how it went down, although I’m sure there was a struggle. A third party killed your teens.”
“Who?” Rodriguez pressed.
I closed my eyes to concentrate, calling out to my crew for assistance.
“Was it the motel manager? He passed a polygraph, but I never believed that guy was telling the truth. I’ve always thought there was more to the story than he was telling us. He’s a creepy-looking dude, too. We did a background check on him and—”
Annoyed, I opened one eye. “Shhhh,” I whispered. “Psychic at work.”
Rodriguez looked chagrined. “Sorry.”
I closed the eye again and focused. My mind flooded with the image of the tow truck that had come to pick up the car from the pipe. I frowned.
“What’s the matter?” Rodriguez whispered. I could feel him watching me very closely.
“Nothing,” I said. “My brain’s just jumbled with too much input from this afternoon. Hang on a minute.”
I took a deep breath and tried again.
Hey, guys,
I thought.
Help me out here. I need to see who took Wendy. Show me who killed her.
Again the tow truck barreled into my thoughts, and it was too intense this time to dismiss. I snapped my eyes open, knowing I had the answer. “Agent Rodriguez, when Wendy and Tyler broke down, did they call a tow truck to take their car to be repaired?”
Rodriguez cocked his head. “I think so. My partner worked the case alone in the beginning—I was on vacation when it first came in.” Motioning for me to give him the file, he flipped through the pages after I’d handed it to him, and said, “Huh.”
“What?”
“Jeff didn’t note it.”
“Would that Russell Clady guy remember who towed the car?”
“He might,” Rodriguez said, pulling out his cell phone and dialing the number for the shop. After several rings I heard him say, “Hey, Russell, it’s Agent Rodriguez calling. I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I have a few quick follow-up questions on the Wendy Hayes and Tyler Harvin case. Give me a shout as soon as you can, please.”
Rodriguez left his return number and hung up. He then eyed me curiously. “How would you feel about going to Clady’s?”
It was my turn to shift in my seat. Dutch would be royally ticked off if he knew we were following up on a lead. “I’m not supposed to interview suspects, remember?”
Rodriguez smiled broadly and began to pile our leftover wrappers onto the tray. “Russell’s not a suspect, remember? He called the authorities. Plus, the old man’s harmless. He’s got to be eighty with a bum hip. I’m pretty sure he couldn’t hurt a fly.”
Still, there was an unsettling feeling in my stomach and I didn’t say anything for a long moment, trying to decide what to do.
“Maybe meeting Russell would help your sixth sense figure out more about the case,” Rodriguez suggested. And that’s what really helped make the decision. Sometimes, all I need is to interact with someone who’s got a personal connection to a missing person and I can pull even more clues out of the ether.
“Okay,” I said, getting up. “I’m in.”
We arrived at Clady’s Ace Car Repair about twenty minutes later. The place wasn’t so “Ace,” though. It was more like a dump.
All manner of decaying and rusty cars were scattered about a large fenced-in lot with a small garage in the middle. There was dirt, grease, and oil everywhere, and lots of litter too. Old tires, oil drums, car seats, and smaller car parts were strewn about everywhere. It was like an elephant graveyard where the jackals had come to spread the bones.
“Nice,” I said as I passed through the narrow gate to the small dirt road leading to the garage.
“Watch your step,” Rodriguez warned as he parked a few yards from the entrance and got out of the car. “There’s probably all kinds of small scrap metal that could pierce your shoe.”
“Lovely,” I muttered, wrinkling my nose. The place smelled heavily of oil and gas. We approached the front door and saw the sign in the window that said that the owner was out to lunch and would return by one. I looked at my watch. “It’s quarter to.”
“I think we should wait,” Rodriguez said.
“Okay,” I agreed, really hoping Russell wasn’t going to be late getting back from lunch. I didn’t like this place. It gave me the creeps actually, and I wanted to leave.
While we waited, Rodriguez called in to check on the car retrieved from the pipe, while I moseyed around and used a big stick I found to poke at stuff in the grass. I must have wandered farther than intended, because the next thing I knew, I felt a very subtle slashing sensation around my neck. It was so slight that I almost didn’t notice it, but it was still enough to make me stop poking the ground and look around. That’s when my crew practically burst into my head in alarm.
My head whipped up as I tried to find the source of the intuitive feeling of something slicing across my neck. What the heck was I picking up?
I was at the back of the garage and there were two large oil drums resting against the building. Both were sealed and rusted, but as I approached, something foul tickled my nostrils, and it wasn’t petroleum.
My heart began hammering in my chest and I realized that I was breathing really hard. Wendy and Tyler were in the drums. I knew it like I knew my own name. I called out to Rodriguez, but he didn’t appear. I could barely pull my eyes off the containers, but I had to get him, so I hurried through the tall grass, watching my step, to the other side of the building.
“Agent Rodriguez!” I called, seeing him still on the phone by his car. He held up his finger in a give-me-a-minute gesture, but I was too wound up to be ignored.
“Agent Rodriguez!”
I shouted.
I saw his eyes flash to me with irritation, but he quickly realized something was wrong because he ended his call abruptly and hurried over to me. “What’s the matter?”
I grabbed his wrist and tugged him toward the back of the building. “I’ve found them,” I said, my voice shaking.
“You’ve found who?”
“Wendy and Tyler!”
Rodriguez didn’t ask me anything else until we’d dashed around the building. He stopped then and looked around. “Where are they?”
I gulped and pointed to the drums. “In there.”
Cautiously, Rodriguez approached the rusty metal containers. He stopped when he was about five feet away and sniffed. He looked back at me and asked, “Are you sure?”
Anxiously, I pumped my head up and down, my stomach threatening to give up the burrito. “They’re both in there.”
Rodriguez moved in and began turning and twisting the right drum out from against the wall. Something clunked around inside and a wave of the most awful odor hit me like a ton of bricks.
My stomach bunched and I turned away, gagging and trying desperately not to toss my lunch—but it was useless. The smell was too intense and the horror of the scene was just too much for me. After I’d recovered myself, I looked back to see Rodriguez eyeing me critically. “You okay?”
I wiped my mouth with my sleeve. “Fine,” I croaked.
He seemed to take me at my word and left it at that. “There’s a label on the drum. It reads, ‘Clady’s Ace Towing and Car Repair.’ ”
“He was the tow truck driver,” I gasped, and put my arm over my nose.
Rodriguez wiped his hands together and moved away from the drum. “Come on,” he urged, heading back to the front of the building.
“Where’re we going?” I had to run to keep up with him.
“We need to get you out of here and I have to get a warrant.”
“You’re just going to
leave
them there?”
“I can’t open the drums without probable cause, and right now, as far as the law is concerned, you and I are trespassing. We gotta do this by the book, so let’s get out of here before Russell comes back and sees us snooping around. The last thing I need him to do is move that drum away from here before we have a chance to get back with a warrant.”
“Good thinking,” I said, trotting along beside him. But as we rounded the corner, we both came up short. Parked in the middle of the dirt road, blocking the exit was a large tow truck with CLADY’S ACE TOWING imprinted in large gold lettering on the doors. A tall, greasy fellow with thick arms and salt-and-pepper hair leaned his head out of the truck and eyed us suspiciously. “Can I help you?” he asked, his Texan drawl prominent.
“Afternoon,” Rodriguez said, with an easy smile. “We were looking for Russell Clady.”
The man’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “He’s dead,” he told us. “Died last spring.”
Rodriguez appeared surprised but recovered quickly. “Can you tell us where the owner is, then?”
“That’d be me,” said the driver. “I’m Russell’s son, Darrell.”
Rodriguez appeared to be processing that while my crew was repeating the words
Duck and cover!
over and over in my head.
I leaned in toward Rodriguez and whispered, “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Darrell spat some chew on the ground. “What is it you two want, exactly?”
Rodriguez’s eyes moved from the exit, which was blocked by the tow truck, to his car, parked near the building, and all the while the air filled with tension. “We were having some car trouble and we were hoping you could take a look at it for us,” Rodriguez said casually.
Darrell chewed his tobacco thoughtfully, but I could tell he didn’t buy that for a second. “What kind of trouble is she giving you?” he asked, motioning with his head toward our car.
“I’ve been hearing a rattle in the engine,” Rodriguez said.
There was a long pause while Darrell continued to stare at us with his cold, suspicious eyes. Finally he turned off his engine, leaving the exit blocked, and climbed down from his truck. I could see he was a big man, maybe six four or six five, and he carried himself with a sense of confidence that made me incredibly nervous. I knew Rodriguez carried a gun, which was good, because in a wrestling match, this guy would have made mincemeat out of him.
He passed us on his way to the garage without saying a word and moved to unlock the garage door. Rodriguez leaned close to me and whispered, “While he’s working on finding that rattle, I’ll call for backup and a warrant.”
I relaxed a teeny bit. Thank God he had a plan.
When the garage was unlocked, Darrell motioned to Rodriguez. “Why don’t you start her up and pull her in here so I can take a look?”
Rodriguez moved over to the car and I followed, sticking close to him. “Where’re you going?” he asked me.
“I left my purse in the car,” I said loudly when I realized I might look stupid getting in with him because he was only going to pull it forward a few yards. “And I need to get my files from work.” Rodriguez nodded; he registered that we didn’t need the man seeing those and realizing we were FBI.
We got in and I pushed the seat back to get at the files on the car floor. One had fallen under the seat far enough that I practically had to bend myself into a yoga pose to get at it.
“What are you doing?” Rodriguez whispered while he started the car.
I grunted. “There’s a file way under the seat,” I explained, straining to get my arm into the right angle to grab it.
“Why don’t you get it from the backseat?” he asked me.
I stopped straining and blinked stupidly. “Good thinking,” I said, and started to withdraw my hand, but the phrase
DUCK AND COVER
bolted so loudly into my brain that I winced. I sat there frozen for a moment, wondering what the heck that was all about when in the very next instant there was an explosion of glass right above my head.
I screamed. Rodriguez swore. A moment later another explosion and more glass tore our world apart.
Chapter Five
Rodriguez’s body hit me like a ton of bricks, pinning me down on the floor of the car. Something splattered wetly across my face, and shards of glass clattered and clinked against the dashboard.
I screamed again and tried to cover my head with my arms. “My gun,” I heard Rodriguez say hoarsely. “Get my gun!”
I stared at him while adrenaline rushed through my veins, causing my palms to sweat and my breathing to intensify. My brain was having a really hard time absorbing what was happening, but certain things were starting to click. We were being shot at. And by the amount of red stuff pooling on the seat by Rodriguez’s right shoulder, I knew he’d been hit.
“I can’t move my arm!” he growled angrily, while his left hand struggled to free the gun at his right hip.
I reached over to help him as another round hit our car and a small hole opened up in the seat right above my head. I bit down on my lip hard, trying not to scream again, and tugged Rodriguez’s gun free of its holster.
I tried to put it in his left hand, but he wouldn’t take it. Instead, he laid his left hand over my own and whispered, “Shoot him!”
I stared at him in disbelief.
Another explosion shattered the back window and more glass flew. I felt a shard slice my cheek and I winced.