How could this
Now he wished he’d chased her on foot. But even that would have been problematic; he doubted he could have gotten through the break in the fence.
One more car and he could turn right. But as he watched, the white van slowed down.
Come on, dammit!
The turn signal came on.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered. “Shit or get off the pot.”
But the van didn’t turn in. It kept going, turn signal still on. He tried to catch a glimpse of what kind of asshole would play a game like that, but couldn’t; the windows were too dark.
Suddenly he remembered the white van at the Motel 6, the one he’d flipped the bird at. He thought they were similar: a white Ford utility van with dark windows.
The van continued past, and he pulled onto the street behind it. Suddenly, it U-turned four lanes and headed in the other direction. Cretin.
Down the road from the El Rancho was the next business, the Desert Rose Motel. The Desert Rose was a horseshoe of peeling, white brick buildings around asphalt, a drained pool in the center. This was the kind of place that rented by the week. Place looked deserted, but he knew people lived here—if you could call this living. Could she have come here for help?
He swerved in off the road. He scanned the highway, the few buildings, tried to see between them at the desert. Finally he turned in and drove around the horseshoe. He didn’t see anyone—it was too hot to be outside. Still, he looked, paying particular attention to the four cars parked nose-in to the cabins. Looking for movement, looking for feet underneath.
He came back around to the road. He didn’t know what to do. She could be anywhere.
At the next street, he turned right. He cruised along slowly, watching the desert, but he was thinking about the van. There was something about it that bothered him.
It was the stripped-down version. Blackwall tires. Nothing fancy. But clean. Government? He wished he’d gotten a gander at the plates.
Were they that close? He knew the FBI was involved—had seen it on CNN—but they’d been pretty close- mouthed. Not even a press conference. If they knew what he looked like, they weren’t letting the public in on it.
Why was that?
And then it occurred to him.
His ISP.
They’d used his ISP to track him to the Motel 6.
Nobody home in the Fleetwood Pace Arrow parked at the El Rancho Trailer Court. The door was ajar, the screen door dented as if someone had bulled through it. No car, but Laura noticed a tow rack on the back.
The plates had been switched, but VIN numbers don’t lie. The motor home belonged to Lundy.
After making sure the motor home was clear, Laura and Victor took a quick look inside as they waited for the tow truck.
Laura spotted some drops of blood on the floor near the bedroom, as well as a few smears where it had been hastily wiped up with a towel. “Don’t come back here,” she said to Victor. “We’ve got some blood evidence.”
She retrieved a can of fluorescent paint from the car and spray-painted a circle around each drop of blood.
Victor said, “Not a whole lot of it.”
“Unless he got a lot up with the towel.”
“Look at this,” Victor said, showing her the padlock and the way the door was configured. “Doesn’t look anything like the floor plan we have back at the squad. The bedroom and bath have been modified. He remodeled the bedroom door into a swing-out door that locks from the outside.”
He also noted the boarded windows. “His own personal dungeon.”
Lace curtains squeezed between the window and the plywood. They looked like the ones at his mother’s house.
Laura spotted a broken table leg on the floor. She squatted on her heels and studied it. “Blood on the end of this,” she said, pointing it out to Victor.
“You think he stabbed her with it?”
“Or the other way around.”
She took photographs of the table leg while Victor went back into the living room.
“What do we have here?” he said a few minutes later. She glanced back; he was holding two round, pleated stretches of vinyl. “Wheel covers. For the spare wheel on the back.”
One of them depicted a quail under the legend THE ANDERSONS. The other, in cursive writing said: “Happy Trails! Jeff and Pat Lieber.”
He laughed. “Pretty cute. We’re looking for a motor home with THE ANDERSONS on the back, and he morphs into Jeff Lieber and his lovely wife Pat.”
“Too cute,” Laura said. “He’s a little too elaborate for his own good.”
Victor shrugged. “Seems to have worked so far.”
