Eyes of the Predator (20 page)

“Not my fault? I could have
stopped that car. Hell, on most nights, I would have stopped it just for not
recognizing it and it being out and about on that road. I just…”

Ronnie interrupted sharply, “Not
your fault that he committed the murder.” He paused allowing George time to
understand that he was not granting him
blanket absolution. The murder may have been done but
George should have stopped the car. They both knew it. Fatigue or not, he
should have followed through. It was his job. Their eyes locked and George gave
a short nod to indicate that he understood.  Ronnie continued in an effort
to rehabilitate one of his best deputies. “George, there was nothing you could
have done anyway. She was already dead. The bastard just dumped her up Tom
Ridley’s road. You couldn’t have known that. You shouldn’t have been sleeping.”
He paused and looked George in the eye. “Cut back on the part-time jobs if you
have to, work a different deal on the child support, but no more
sleeping…ever.”

“Okay, Ronnie.”

“I mean it, George. This is a
one-time pass. There will be consequences next time.”

“I understand.” He continued
looking at the ground taking his medicine.

Putting it completely behind
them, Kupman continued, “Good job on the vehicle description. We need to get
this out and get all the jurisdictions around looking for the car,” Ronnie gave
George a light thump in the shoulder, “and a male driver with a longhorn ring
on his hand.”

“Ronnie, I feel sick about this.
I could have stopped him. I should have.”

“The way I see it, George, we
have two real clues in this case, the car and the ring, and they both came from
you. Pretty damn good police work in my mind.”

The look on George’s face was
doubtful.

 “All right, George,” Ronnie
went on, “here’s what we are going to do. You are going to go to your car, get
on the radio and put out a BOLO on a mid-nineties GM make, probable Chevrolet
sedan. Dirty, dusty or with primer paint. And a driver, probably male, wearing
a ring with a longhorn head on it. Then you are going to go interview the
Ridleys. I’ll meet you afterwards.”

George nodded quietly.

“I,” Ronnie continued, “am going
to advise Sheriff Klineman and Bob Shaklee that you reviewed your note pad from
last night and found the description of the vehicle along with the approximate
time you saw it. When the Sheriff asks why you didn’t bring this up earlier, I
will tell him that you wanted to check your notes and confirm the description
and time before putting out potentially incorrect information. Just another
example of excellent work by Deputy George Mackey.” Ronnie’s eyes crinkled in
amusement, “He won’t believe it of course, but as the Savannah stations will be
here soon to interview him, he is damn sure going to make sure they know that
the key pieces of evidence uncovered so far, were discovered by one of his
deputies and not the GBI. He won’t want to rock the boat with reports of any
alleged sleeping in rest areas and such.”

He chuckled outright, “Actually,
George, thank you. This is going to be interesting.”

“Ronnie, I can’t…you don’t have
to…”

“Shut up, George. For once just
do what I say. Oh, and make sure that that information about the car is duly
recorded in your notepad…just in case someone wants to see it.”

Chief Deputy Kupman walked off
towards the crime scene and Sheriff Klineman. There was a wry smile on his
face.

George Mackey turned to his
truck, took the mike in his hand and inhaled deeply before sending the notice
across the airwaves for officers to ‘Be on the Lookout’.

“All units, BOLO…”

 A minute later, the
description of the suspect car and the ring was traveling at the speed of radio
waves, which is the speed of light, throughout Georgia and northern Florida. It
would make its way eventually through the Carolinas, Tennessee and Alabama by
the end of the day, and then steadily across the country. But George knew that
if there was no follow-up information or additional evidence within the next
day or so, the BOLO would be filed away and forgotten, along with a thousand
others, in favor of newer more relevant notices coming through the law
enforcement networks.

George
finished giving the information over the radio and put the microphone back on
its clip on the dashboard. He took the notepad from his breast pocket and wrote
for a minute or two. When he was finished, he put his truck in gear. He had
work to do.

About the time the Purcell
brothers were pulling their pickup out of the lot to go to their jobsite, Lylee
Torkman had pulled the old, faded Chevrolet to the self-service gas pump
furthest away from the truck stop store and cafe. He leaned forward as he
pulled in scanning for CCTV cameras watching the pump. This was an old truck
stop, and he did not see any that were obvious, but there were sure to be
cameras at least to record tag numbers of vehicles that drove off without
paying. Reaching in the back, he plucked an old, white painters cap off the
floorboard and pulled it over his head. It had a large bill that would obscure
his face and made him look harmless; a painter filling up before heading to the
job. He couldn’t do anything about the car’s plates, but some things couldn’t
be helped. He had taken the precaution of removing the tag off a similar make
and model car in Texas and putting it on his own when he got to Florida. Stolen
tag reports didn’t make it across state lines unless they were associated with
some other crime, and right now, he was not associated with any crime, at least
that anyone knew about.

Stepping from the car he
continued to scan around, ever cautious and alert to danger or, if he was
lucky, to prey. Truck stops were busy places which made anonymity easy.

Lylee walked to the store to
prepay cash for the gas he would buy. The windows of the store were plastered with
signs advertising beer. It was a great combination, eighty thousand pound
trucks and beer. The irony was not lost on him, and a thin smile flashed across
his thin face.

Pulling the dirty glass door
open, Lylee entered the store. There was movement everywhere. The herd was
restless, in constant movement, and he would blend in without trouble, staying
on the periphery and observing without being noticed.

A fat kid at the register was
sweating and waiting on customers with an indifferent manner. Lylee noticed
that he was a bit more attentive to the rough looking truckers than he was to
some of the other customers. The kid might have been an indifferent smart ass,
Lylee saw, but he was smart enough to know what line he best not cross with the
truckers, male and female, roaming through the store looking for sundries or
just killing time.

Avoiding contact with anyone,
Lylee wandered and watched. He examined an item off a shelf now and then, but
his attention was always peripherally taking in all that went on around him, in
a sort of subconscious mental scan mode, seeing everything and everyone at once
without really focusing on anyone specific unless to examine and evaluate them.
The evaluation usually only took a second or two, and then Lylee was back to
scan mode. But during the evaluation, Lylee’s senses would soak in all that was
possible to absorb. All of the data gathered was instantly used to classify the
object of the examination as Threat, No-Threat or Prey. Occasionally, not
often, the classification might be, Interesting and Curious, and after a short
diversion examining the curiosity, Lylee would move back to scan mode.

An old couple was standing in
front of the drink cooler as Lylee walked by.

“Albert, they don’t have Diet
Pepsi, just Diet Coke,” the old woman said to the frail looking man next to
her.

“I don’t like Diet Coke,” he
replied truculently.

“Well that’s all they have.”

“Well, I don’t like it.” The
conversation was going nowhere.

The old woman threw up her hands,
“Fine then, pick something you like and let’s go.”

Lylee squeezed behind the pair in
front of the cooler saying, “Excuse me.” The tone was perfect, indifferent but
polite, drawing no attention. Too friendly, and they would notice him, smile
and possibly make eye contact. Eye contact might lead to identification. Too
curt, and they might notice him for the opposite reason. He moved by them in
the narrow aisle, avoiding contact. The couple remained unaware of the chilling
man who had just brushed by, scanning them and taking in the old woman’s thick
perfume and the dark liver spots on Albert’s hand holding the cooler door open
as he searched for the perfect soft drink.

Moving slowly from aisle to
aisle, Lylee continued scanning. At the end of an aisle, he stopped in front of
a rack of snack cakes. His peripheral vision caught sight of a pretty,
dark-haired girl in front of the magazine rack. She was holding a magazine, but
just looking down and not reading. Instantly his senses reacted, and he went
from scan mode to detailed examination. Data was needed. Potential prey had
been discovered. As he watched, a heavyset man, a trucker, took up station a
couple of feet away from the girl and picked up a magazine. Lylee knew
instantly that the large man was there for the girl, not for the magazine. The
girl, however, was oblivious.

A short conversation started
between the two. The girl was clearly uncomfortable. While Lylee couldn’t hear
everything, he could pick up that the man was offering her a ride. Lylee knew
that the offer of a ride was just a pretext to get the girl into his truck. The
trucker was reasonably smooth though. Not expert like Lylee, but he knew enough
to let her decide he was safe by not pressing the issue. She was desperate or
she wouldn’t be standing alone in the truck stop with that look of hopelessness
on her face. The trucker knew, as did Lylee, that she would accept the offer.
Clearly, she was frightened, alone, and intimidated by the business of the
truck stop and the people around her. If he could win her trust, she would
gladly accept the ride to escape the truck stop. She might not like the price
she would have to pay for the ride, but that would not be collected until
later, and she would have no choice at that point.

The large trucker gave her a
smile and went outside. The girl stared after him. Lylee walked down the aisle
and passed behind the girl. She was unaware, still staring out the window at
the trucker who was standing beside his truck. His senses drank in everything
about her as he walked by. Her height, the small mole on her neck, her scent,
everything. That instant of close proximity to the prey aroused him profoundly.
He felt the blood rise and the plan began forming in his mind.

Lylee walked up to the fat kid
and put two snack cakes and a pint of milk on the counter.

“Three eighty-five,” the kid said
indifferently. Clearly, the slight man at the counter was not a trucker. No
need to waste any politeness on him.

Lylee took two twenties from his
wallet and tossed them on the counter. He kept his head down so that the hat’s
bill completely blocked his face from the camera behind the cashier.

“And twenty in gas. Pump seven,”
he said not looking up.

  The kid gave a deep sigh
of disgust, and turned to activate the pump.

“That all you got?” he said in
annoyance, pointing at the extra twenty to pay for the milk and snack cakes.

“What did you say to me?” Lylee’s
voice was low, but the tone was hard and threatening. He raised his head just
enough for the fat kid to see his eyes. The narrowed slits with only the pupils
showing stared fiercely into the cashier’s own eyes, which widened perceptively
at the intensity of the stare.

“Uh, nothing, just a little short
of change. I’ll make it work though, no problem.” The kid nervously swallowed.
This guy might not be a trucker, but there was an air of danger about him that
the kid was not going to challenge.

Lylee knew that he should have
just paid the clerk and moved on without drawing any attention to himself, but
his blood was up. There was prey near. His body twitched with excitement. He
was the king, the predator, and whether this fat kid knew it or not, he would
do well to show the king some goddamned respect.

“Would you like a sack for that,
sir?”

“Yes, I would,” Lylee replied.
His threatening eyes staring at the cashier from under the bill of the
painter’s hat.

The kid quickly looked away, put
the snack cakes and milk in a sack, and slid it over.

Giving him a last look, Lylee
walked outside. The kid felt himself relax as the danger moved away. Nothing
was said, and no one would have noticed the exchange between the two, but he
sensed that he had just come close to some force that was dangerous in a way
that was far beyond the normal tough guy trucker attitude he was used to.
Creepy, the kid thought.

The old couple was next in line
and they placed their goods on the counter. Todd-the-clerk was intently
watching the young girl who walked out in front of the creepy man and was
talking to the fat truck driver. Annoyed at the distraction from the elderly
couple, he began ringing up their items with his normal surliness, giving one
last glance at the girl across the lot. Yea, a little skinny, but nice ass.

Outside, Lylee walked across the
lot to his car and began pumping gas, showing no outward interest in her. She
walked slowly and tentatively across the lot, unaware of his presence and of
the gray eyes following her.

The girl spoke briefly with the
trucker. He smiled broadly and showed her how to climb into the truck.

Lylee watched intently without
appearing to. The prey was his. The fat trucker was nothing more than a
scavenger, a jackal. Jackals didn’t take prey from lions. This jackal just
wasn’t aware that there was a lion around. He would be, soon. The anticipation
beat rapidly in his chest, surging adrenaline through him. The predator would
fight to protect its kill. A barely audible rumbling sound escaped the thin man
at every smile the girl gave the big trucker. It would have been called a growl
had it come from another species of mammal.