Eyes of the Predator (18 page)

He led George across and off the
right shoulder of the dirt road and into the brush. George followed exactly in
Ronnie’s footsteps. He didn’t know what was there and didn’t want to destroy
any evidence that might be lying in the dusty weeds.

They walked beside a patch of
grass and weeds that were beaten down as if something had been dragged over
them. Ronnie stopped, knelt and pulled the sheet back that had been placed over
the girl’s body while the investigation continued. George came up even with
him.

“Jesus.”

“Yep. Jesus, Mary and all the
saints. Not pretty.”

Squatting a couple of feet from
the nude body of the young girl, George eyed the scene from different perspectives.
On the other side of the body, about ten feet away, a crime scene technician
was bent over slowly looking through the grass and weeds. A bedspread was on
the ground next to him, and another technician was using a tweezers to pluck
fibers and other minute items of interest and place them in plastic bags. Bob
Shaklee, the GBI man from the night before, was standing beside the crime scene
techs. He nodded at George who nodded back before returning his eyes to the
body.

The girl appeared to be young, although
the blood on her face and torso made it difficult to see. The blood seemed to
come from slicing wounds on her face and body.

Ronnie squatted next to George
taking a drag on his cigarette, exhaling slowly and deliberately as if the
smoke would somehow change the scene before them as it cleared.

“Lot of surface blood,” he said,
inhaling deeply from the butt hanging from the side of his mouth.

“Yeah.” George rocked back and
forth with his forearms draped over his knees. “You shouldn’t be smoking around
the body, Ronnie,” he added without taking his eyes off the body.

“Yeah, I know. Couldn’t help
myself.” He quickly stubbed the cigarette out on the pack of smokes and shoved
the butt inside the pack.

 “Lot of surface blood.
Messy, but the wounds aren’t deep enough to kill. The son of a bitch wanted to
hurt her. Probably took his time with each cut. Cause the most pain.” George
looked down at the dirt between his boots and shook his head. “Fucking animal.”

“Yep.”

There was nothing more to say as
they took it all in. Squatting on their haunches in the Georgia dust and weeds
alongside a dirt road, they contemplated what must have been the horror of the
girl’s last hours.

Sheriff Klineman came up behind
them. There was something vaguely annoying about seeing them squatting in the
dust like a couple of old dirt farmers talking about the rain and crops. Of
course, that was the life they had both come from. Backcountry, Georgia dirt
farmers. The sheriff’s department had been one of the few ways out of that
life, although George still clung to his roots a lot more than Ronnie did. He
shook his head at the site of the two squatting dirt farmers wearing the
uniforms of deputies.

“So what do you think?”

George looked up. Ronnie stood
up.

“Well,” George said slowly rising,
“she’s dead.”

The sheriff’s face reddened. The
look on Kupman’s face was a warning to play nice, so George added nonchalantly,
“Took her a long time to get that way. She was cut to cause pain, not to kill
her.”

“Yep, that’s what the GBI said,
too,” Ronnie Kupman added to direct the sheriff further away from George’s
comment. He shot George a look that said, ‘knock it the fuck off, Deputy’!

George smiled and shrugged as if
to say okay, okay. Ronnie was always worried about what the sheriff was going
to say or do.

“So, have they determined the
cause of death?” George asked inclining his head towards the GBI looking for
evidence on the other side of the body.

“Not yet, officially,” the
sheriff replied, eyeing George for some sign of insubordination.

“There are some ligature
marks…bruises… on her neck,” Ronnie added, again to distract the sheriff and
lead George onto safer ground.

“I know what ligature marks are,
Chief Deputy,” the sheriff shot back impatiently.

“Right, probably strangulation.
Won’t know for sure until the autopsy is done.”

“Yeah,” George said softly,
looking down at the girl’s body. “He took his time with that too. Choked her
slow.”

“How in the world can you make
that determination standing here?” The sheriff said with disdain.

George just looked at the girl.
He was focused now. “He wanted to hurt her. Wouldn’t have wanted her to die too
quick.”

Ignoring the scorn on the
sheriff’s face, he stepped carefully around to the other side of the body
staying in areas where the crime scene techs and GBI had already searched for
evidence.

“Hey, Bob.”

Shaklee approached. “Hey, George.
How you doin’ today?” They stood side by side looking down at the body.

“Ok I guess. Better’n her, for
sure.”

“Yeah, for sure.” Bob Shaklee
replied somberly.

Shaklee had only met George the
night before at the scene of the Sims murder, but he had already developed an
appreciation for the deputy’s commonsense abilities.

“Guess you’ll be checking motels
around for a missing bedspread like that one.”

Bob smiled, “Yeah we’re on it.
That part is simple. Any ideas?”

George looked down at the girl
and asked, “What’s that? There on her head just under the hairline.”

“Yeah, we saw that. Looks like he
hit her with some object. Left a mark and broke the skin.”

“Mind if I get a little closer?”

 Shaklee nodded him forward.
Good old boy or not, George knew his way around a crime scene.

George squatted again, this time
near the girl’s head. He took a pen from his shirt pocket and carefully, gently
separated some strands of bloody hair covering a mark on the girl’s head. He
studied the mark for a minute, and then took a small pad from the same frayed
shirt pocket and began making notations on the pad.

Sheriff Klineman watched. He
hated having George here. He resented the way the GBI treated George with a
respectful familiarity, as if he were one of them. George was a redneck, pure
and simple. He was the perfect caricature of the country lawman. A throwback,
he gave the rest a bad name. In the sheriff’s mind, George was an impediment
and an embarrassment. The GBI were highly trained professionals, but they
seemed actually to like George and his rough ways. He couldn’t understand that.

Sheriff Klineman resented George,
he resented the GBI, he resented anything that might get in the way of his reelection,
and most of all, he resented two murders in twelve hours in his county, casting
doubts on his law enforcement leadership and possibly putting the election in
jeopardy. Yes, he especially resented that.

Bob Shaklee and Ronnie watched
George also. Ronnie stepped over next to Bob as George stood up and showed them
his notepad.

“I know this isn’t professional
or even legal evidence, but I don’t think she was hit with an object.” George
turned the pad towards the two lawmen.

“See this here, I kind of drew
out the marks from that place on her head. There’s kind of a rectangle with a
sort of faint oval inside and these curved marks coming out of the oval. Wasn’t
an object. The asshole beat her with his fist. That’s the imprint from a ring.”

Bob and Ronnie studied the sketch
on the rumpled notepad for a minute and looked at each other. George was right.
It was definitely the imprint of a ring on the hand that had beat her and then
killed the young woman.

“Kind of looks like a longhorn
design doesn’t it?” Ronnie looked over at Bob Shaklee. “You know, Texas
Longhorn.”

“Yep, it does,” Bob said. “This
is important, George.”

Ronnie smiled at George, “Good
job, Mackey.”

“There’s something else,” George
was focused and not interested in Ronnie’s platitudes.

“What’s that?”

“Bob, you remember at the scene
last night? The knife wound?”

“Yeah,” Shaklee regarded the
deputy through narrowed eyes. He thought he knew where this was going and knew
the sheriff’s reaction would be interesting.

“Well, that wound was designed to
kill, but also to cause maximum pain.”

“I agree.” Shaklee let him speak.

“The wounds on the girl were not
intended to kill.”

“Right,” Sheriff Klineman stated
in firm agreement.

“But,” George paused, “the wounds
on the girl were designed to cause maximum pain, like the knife wound in Mr.
Sims. That’s the common denominator. Both murders were committed by the same
sadistic bastard. At least that’s how I would work it for now.”

“What!” The sheriff’s exclamation
gurgled and sputtered out in disbelief. “You’re saying we have a serial killer
in Pickham County. My God, are you insane!” He looked at Ronnie Kupman, “And
you said we needed him here. You must be insane as well. Do you know what would
happen if people thought we had our own county slasher? Our own Ted Bundy right
here in Pickham.”

George shrugged. “That’s how I
see it. But don’t worry; I doubt he’s still in Pickham County.”

“Sheriff, I have to say that we
agree with the deputy’s theory,” GBI Agent Shaklee stated quietly, but firmly.
“I assure you that the serial killer aspect will not be discussed in public,
but it is an important part of our working theory in the investigation.”

Klineman turned and strode
briskly from the body, not being all that careful about where he stepped.
“Jesus,” he muttered pushing through the brush.

“Where do we go from here?”
Ronnie asked Shaklee.

“I’ll get a technician to get
some good photographs of the ring imprint during the autopsy so we can use it
as evidence when we find the bastard.” He looked around the scene. “Be a couple
of more hours here at least, then we’ll start digging into it. I suggest we
meet up with you and the sheriff say about six o’clock at his office.

“Sounds like a plan. If you don’t
mind, George and I are going to go down the road here and talk to Tom Ridley
and his wife.”

“That’s fine. See you at six.”

Ronnie and George started away.

“One other thing,” Bob said.

The two stopped and turned.

“The person who did this may be
looking for more victims. These cases go in different ways. Sometimes there are
no more victims for years. Sometimes there are a lot in spurts. Don’t know
which this is gonna be, but we should hurry and see if we can catch up with him
while there is some trail. If you have any ideas, don’t sit on them waiting for
us to give the okay. We need to move quickly. If you need to interview someone,
just do it.”

George’s eyes narrowed, “He
tortured and killed this little girl and dumped her body like a bag of trash on
a dirt road in my county. We’ll be hurrying, Bob.”

George spun and worked his way
quickly back out to the dirt road.

Bob said nothing in reply as
George and Ronnie moved away. He wasn’t offended by George’s terseness. He
understood.

That was the second time that day
that Shaklee had heard someone call Pickham ‘their county’, and he noted the
look of displeasure on Sheriff Klineman’s face who had overheard the remark.
Shaklee chuckled to himself as he turned to the crime scene tech. Poor George,
there’d be hell to pay for that later. Right now, Klineman needed George. So
did he, for that matter. So did she, he thought, looking at the girl sprawled
before him, but whatever they did for her now would be too late.

The girl on the ground stared
open-eyed into the dusty weeds in agreement.

She wandered around the truck stop
store with no idea where to begin. Drivers, mostly men, were coming and going.
A chubby clerk at the cash register was busily ringing up roller-heated hot
dogs and sodas for customers, while pointing out the restrooms for others. The
few non-truckers seemed to be families on vacation or older couples driving RVs
who found it easier to gas up at the truck stop instead of a gas station. The
non-truckers all stood out, like her, she thought. It was a busy place.

It occurred to her to try
speaking to one of the families or older couples. They were probably safer. But
would they understand her need to get away, or just try to talk her into going
home or even call the police to take her home? They were regular people, family
people, people with normal lives, whatever that was. She had no clue. In a way,
their normalness made it harder for her to try to speak to them. She was not
part of their world. Trying to step into their world seemed as alien and
impossible as stepping onto the surface of the moon. Her life, to them, was
irregular and ‘un-normal’ and would be incomprehensibly different to them, she
knew.

Lyn moved over to the magazine
rack in the store. She picked one up and stared blindly at the cover. Staring
into the magazine, not seeing the page, she felt completely alone. The brothers
who had given her the ride to the truck stop, or rather, who had been told by
“Auntie Kathy” to take her to the truck stop, had been told to find her a safe
ride. That was easier said than done, she now understood. They hadn’t been able
to find someone they felt comfortable leaving her with and had said they would
check back on her after work. That was probably their conscience, guilty at
leaving a girl alone here, but she was beginning to think that maybe she would
just wait for them to come back.

She considered the offer Clay had
made for her to go home with them. How could she do that? He seemed nice and
very normal, like the families wandering around her. That was an attraction for
her. Different from the other boys she had known, he and his brother had a
plan, a goal. They were working towards something. She had never been exposed
to people like that.

A young boy from one of the
family groups came running down the aisle, chased by his older sister. The girl
grabbed his arm as they brushed past Lyn.