Mouse and Lonnie had left the tarp, a couple of half-finished cans of soda, and a bag of trash. I dumped the trash onto the ground and poured through it. A receipt from a florist named Nell’s caught my eye. They had spent thirty dollars for flowers, and I wondered what they were for.
I checked the time. Twelve minutes had passed since I’d called 911. I needed to walk down the dirt road to 27, and flag down the police, who wouldn’t be able to find this place otherwise. As I started to leave, I called for Buster. No response.
An uneasy feeling came over me. Had Buster stepped into another trap? I called again. To my relief, I got a loud Yip! in response. Buster only yipped when he found something that he didn’t want to part with.
I followed the sound through the forest to another clearing. My dog lay on his belly in the dirt. He was clearly pleased with himself, and his tail thumped the ground.
“What did you find, boy?”
Next to Buster’s feet was a bouquet of freshly cut carnations. Half were red, the rest white. I picked them up, and saw they were resting on a pile of small white rocks. Someone had put the rocks there, and I wanted to know why.
I took the top rock off the pile. Lying beneath it was a thin gold chain. I gently pulled the chain free from the pile. Hanging from it was a gold crucifix.
I swept the remaining rocks aside. Lying at the bottom of the pile was a laminated card covered in dirt. I cleaned the card on my pants leg and stared. It was a Florida driver’s license for a woman named Kathi Bolger.
“What the hell,” I said.
Bolger’s head shot was on the card, as was her weight, height, and DOB. Born June 9, 1969, she stood five foot ten, and weighed one hundred and sixty pounds. The photo showed a pretty blond with expressive eyes, and sun streaks in her hair.
My hand shook. Bolger’s profile was the same as Mouse and Lonnie’s other five victims. Young, pretty, and of good size.
I looked at the gold crucifix hanging in my other hand, and the white rocks spewed across the ground. Then it clicked what Buster had found.
It was Bolger’s grave.
CHAPTER 36
As I walked toward 27 to meet the police, I realized who Kathi Bolger was.
Kathi Bolger was the oldest open missing person case in Broward, and had gone missing in 1990. I’d reviewed her file as many times as Naomi Dunn’s. Like Dunn’s case, the details of what had happened to Bolger were etched in my brain.
Bolger had lived by herself in an apartment near Bonaventure. Enrolled at the local community college, she’d held down several part-time jobs to pay tuition. She had a boyfriend, and got along well with her family. Her life was normal, except the fact that one day she’d vanished off the face of the earth.
The Broward cops had conducted an extensive manhunt. Dogs, horses, choppers, and an army of volunteers had searched for Bolger. Not a trace of the young woman had been found. Not even her car had been located. In that regard, her case was different from Dunn’s. There was no evidence in the Bolger case to suggest foul play. She had simply vanished, something that happened to dozens of people in south Florida every year. Because of that, I had not considered her a possible victim in this case, but now I knew better. Bolger had been Mouse and Lonnie’s first victim.
I came to a padlocked gate at the end of the road. I hoisted Buster over, and climbed over myself. Standing next to Highway 27, I looked both ways. Not a car in sight.
I took Bolger’s license from my pocket, and studied her photo. She’d gone missing at the same time Daybreak had been shut down. Maybe a coincidence, only I didn’t believe in those. The solution to her disappearance was right in my hand.
My skin started to tingle. A story was taking shape in my mind. Nineteen years ago, Mouse and Lonnie had escaped Daybreak. They’d abducted Kathi Bolger and brought her to this remote farm. Something terrible had happened, and Bolger had died. Needing a replacement, they’d sought another woman similar to Bolger. That woman had been Naomi Dunn. And the cycle had continued, right until a few nights ago.
A flashing light caught my eye. A police cruiser was racing down 27 from the south. I hailed it down.
Although I’d left the force in disgrace, some cops considered me a hero for what I’d done. The one who responded to my 911 call belonged to that club. Officer Riski shook my hand, said it was a pleasure to meet me. He grabbed a T-shirt from the gym bag in his cruiser, and said I could keep it.
I put the T-shirt on, and found it was a perfect fit. It had the words Broward County’s Finest stenciled over the pocket. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
Riski cut the padlock on the gate to the farm. I loaded Buster into the cruiser, and we took off down the dirt road. By the time we’d reached the cracker house, I’d told Riski everything that had happened.
“You’re sure this is the woman’s grave,” Riski said.
“Yes,” I said.
Riski called CSI on his radio. Normal response time was twenty minutes. Riski would have to go back to 27 to meet them, just like I had for him. It gave me an idea, and I said, “With your permission, I’d like to look inside the house.”
“Think it might contain some clues?”
“Yes. I think the woman in the grave might have been kept there.”
“Go ahead. Just don’t touch anything,” Riski said.
I got out of the cruiser with Buster, and Riski drove back to the highway.
The cracker house was made of cinder block and had a pitched metal roof. As I shouldered open the front door, sunlight flooded the interior, followed by the scampering of little feet. I gave the critters a good head start, then let Buster loose.
I followed him inside. The front of the house was a combined living room/dining room, the few pieces of furniture covered in mold. I noticed the walls in the room were shifting. I had seen this phenomena before. The house was so thick with cockroaches that they made the wall panels move.
I stuck my head into the kitchen. The linoleum floor and counter-tops were coated with dust, which lifted eerily into the air whenever I exhaled.
In the back of the house were two small bedrooms. The first bedroom looked like a man cave, and contained a pair of twin beds, a boxy TV sitting on an upturned orange crate, several unopened crates of beer, and a pile of adult men’s magazines.
The second bedroom was more feminine. It had a queen-size bed, a dresser, and a vanity. Rifling the dresser drawers, I discovered an assortment of women’s clothes, including a see-through nightgown and several pieces of filmy lingerie.
From outside the house I heard a noise. A vehicle had pulled in, and I heard the CSI team get out of the van. I wanted to be there when the CSI team exhumed Bolger’s grave, and decided to leave.
I headed back to the front of the house. Buster had trapped a rat beneath the dining room table. I hooked my finger in his collar.
“Enough of that,” I said.
I noticed a stack of yellowing Polaroids lying on the table. Blowing away the dust, I picked up the photos by the corners. The photographs were so old, the subjects were starting to fade away. I placed them in a row on the table. The deeper the photograph lay in the stack, the sharper the subjects became.
The last photo was the clearest. It was of Lonnie and a young woman, whom he held lovingly against his chest. Lonnie was much younger, and had a full head of dark hair. I studied the woman’s face. She was smiling through clenched teeth. A fake smile, probably done for the camera. Her eyes told another story. I had seen that look in the faces of abducted children I’d rescued who’d thought they were never going to be found. It was the look of hopelessness, of dread. Taking Kathi Bolger’s license from my pocket, I compared it to the photo.
