Chapter 72: The Hunt Begins

Rebecca

The nightmare I had been hoping to avoid had come true. In my wildest dreams I never really thought Angela was in danger. She was so far down the list... In the back of my mind I had to wonder if Amy had known this would happen. She seemed to know so much. Her warning to Jimmy that I would die if I tried to do this without him... One had to wonder. But for now all I could do was to try and make it easier on my young friends as they tried to deal with the knowledge of what had happened, was happening to their friend. That and try to catch the bastard in time to save her. The problem was that this particular bastard was being just as careful as he had always been. The letter he had left for me in Bakersfield had turned up exactly nothing. Not a shred of anything. You know that neat trick they always show you on the TV shows where they can identify the type of printer used to make the note?

Sounds good, but it doesn't work so well when the note is photocopied on a bad machine, especially if it's not an original copy. Our best guess was that the note had been run through a scanner or fax machine to reproduce it, then that copy had been photocopied again, and then that copy had been stuck in the envelope for me. The only thing we were sure of was that at least one of the copies had been done on thermal paper. Oh yeah, that narrows it down. The partial fingerprint hadn't gotten me any closer either, not enough to work with.

Tracking credit card purchases only works when your victim uses a credit card. Angela didn't even have a debit card. Fortunately she is a creature of habit and filled up her car at the local mini-mart before leaving. Not a lot of help but it did give us a time frame. Store video was useless. Most stores recycle their tapes or video feeds if nothing out of the ordinary happens. This particular store recycled theirs every 72 hours. Thursday had been a slow day, not so much as an attempted shoplifting. The tape had been recorded over at least once but we took it and sent it to the lab anyway. Sometimes there is enough residual signature left behind to catch an afterimage even after you have recorded over it. Kind of like deleting a file on your computer only this is a visible image. Fixed position cameras make it easier because most of the scene never changes, only the areas where someone moves through will change. The tech boys can sometimes read through the "white" to see the older shadows. I don't pretend to understand it. All I know is that sometimes you get lucky and I'll take all I can get, thank you very much.

The fact that she is a regular, and a very attractive regular at that, made it a little bit easier. The clerk on duty Tuesday morning when we got there was also on Thursday. Usually the day shift is an older person; summer break had opened up extra hours for one of their younger employees. The fact that he practically drooled on the photo when I showed it to him was a positive indicator.

"Angie? Oh hell yeah, sorry, I mean, yeah, she came in around... oh, maybe 9:30 or so."

"Do you remember what she was wearing?"

"Yeah, too much."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm sorry. It's just that she is sooo beautiful it's a shame to cover her up. She had on beige shorts, a white shirt with half sleeves, crew socks, and her running shoes."

"Anything else?"

"Thong panties and no bra."

I gave him dead eyes, "And you would know this why?"

He just blushed and gave me one of those 'guy' looks that said, "I can't believe you even asked me that," and I shook my head.

"Yeah, I should know better."

"You asked."

"Never mind. What I meant was, do you remember anything else about her being here, did she say anything, buy anything..."

"She picked up a pack of gum, a bottle of water, and a quart of oil for her car. Said she was heading for Phoenix. Is she all right?"

"She's missing. We're trying to figure out when and where she disappeared."

"That sucks. I hope she's okay."

"That makes two of us. Did you happen to notice if there was a white mini-van anywhere nearby when she was here? Older Chevy or GMC, ladder rack and conduit tube on top?"

"Nah, most of those are company rigs and they contract with the majors, someplace they can use their gas cards."

"Thank you for your help, if you think of anything else, please give us a call."

We had a little better luck when we pulled her cell phone record. She had made a call to the auto club from her cell phone about an hour after she left the mini mart, probably somewhere out past Indio. It took a while but we finally found someone who could access the right files and tell us that she had reported car trouble. They had dispatched a truck but she had been gone when they arrived. Apparently it happened often enough they didn't think it was that unusual. Sometimes the car would miraculously start again; sometimes a local competitor would stop and steal the call. Considering their response times were frequently over an hour that was happening a lot more often. But they did have a location. It was a long shot, but sometimes you get lucky.

Another one of those little television tricks that doesn't always work is the one where they find that perfect imprint of the tire at the crime seen. Have you ever noticed that the imprint they get is exactly that part of the tire where someone ran over their kid's lego and it left a perfect imprint that they could match up later? Angela Osborn broke down in the desert east of Palm Springs. The only dirt for fifty miles was sand, lots or fine, powdery sand. Any imprint that may have been there was likely gone fifteen minutes later.

Interstate 10 is a major artery for travelers and trucks. We had passed the Highway Patrol scales about thirty miles back, a rest stop about ten miles before that and an Indian Gaming Casino near the scales. We talked to the officers at the scales, they made notes and promised to ask the regulars if they had seen a late model Caprice broken down out near Indio. The Indians put up flyers in the entryway, the restaurant, and the big gas station next door. I don't agree with their state wide monopoly on gambling, but the Indians are good people. The FBI doesn't put up flyers for missing persons, but somehow a few of them found their way to the rest stop as well.

Tuesday ended with us no closer than when we started. The Osborne's had filed a Missing Person's Report with their local PD shortly after I called and it had immediately been flagged and matched to the call from the WeTip hotline the night before. It wasn't much but it did put a few more people on the case. As soon as the local cops found out we were already on the case they handed it off to a junior detective; one Raymond Turner, whose sole responsibility was pretty much to keep up with what we were doing with the case. I didn't care, as long as they shared any information they got I would be happy. I decided early on to let their man field any press inquiries that might come up as well. It didn't take him long to figure out he was over his head. As soon as the press asked about the previous murders he clammed up and hid behind the old tried and true, "I'm not really at liberty to discuss it at this time. It is an ongoing investigation and we will let you know as soon as more information becomes available." He even managed to keep my name out of it. I was starting to like him already. If he could keep it up he had a bright future ahead of him.

Jimmy

Tuesday was a tough day. I don't think I've ever wanted a day to end so much in my life. My friend, a girl I cared a great deal for, was in the hands of a sadistic killer being tortured and raped and I couldn't do a thing about it while I was awake. Asleep I at least had a chance to reach her, let her know we were, or at least Rebecca was, looking for her and hopefully give her some kind of comfort and relief from her ordeal. Awake I was useless. It gave me a whole new perspective on the limitations of my abilities, and a new respect for people like Rebecca who could at least do something.

We still hadn't even told our parents the details. On days when I'm supposed to be running with Tim I just do a quick mile or so to wake myself up. After so many years of starting my day that way I just didn't feel quite right if I didn't run. When I mentioned it to Allison she just shook her head, called me a junkie and suggested I seek help before it destroyed my life.

I called Rebecca when I got back. I got her voice mail so I left a message and called Bob to see if he knew what was going on. He told me that she was over meeting with the family already. He also passed on what Rebecca had learned so far. The fake email was pretty much the clincher. I had been right, and the killer had Angela. The police had been called early in the morning and the report filed. Since the killer already knew Rebecca was involved and there was no longer any need for secrecy, the story had already made the morning news.

The local detective handling the case had met with reporters early and released the basic information of Angela's disappearance. The media immediately tried to reach the family but so far the Osborne's weren't seeing anyone. The yard had been taped off and the reporters were currently camped out on the sidewalk waiting for the next bone to be thrown their way. Bob said he'd call me as soon as he heard anything but that for now he had to go to the school and pretend he didn't know anything about any of this. I thanked him and hit the shower.

By the time I got out of the shower Allison had my toast and juice waiting for me. Mom was up having coffee and Dad had skipped his run and gone to work early.

"So, can you tell me what's going on yet?" Mom asked.

"It was a bad night," I said. I took a long drink of my juice and sat down. "We were meeting with Rebecca, going over the latest developments. The good news is she found the missing girl. The bad news is that it was another setup by the killer. He took this girl just so Rebecca would go looking for her, stashed her in one of those rental storage places with a machine pumping drugs into her to keep her quiet for the weekend. When she woke up she started screaming her head off and they found her. They think he may even be the one that called in the disturbance."

"You're kidding."

"No, Rebecca said the call trace came up blank. He even left a note, addressed to Rebecca personally. I still haven't figured out how he found out she was on the case. Anyway, he said he was watching her in Fresno and that by the time we found this girl it would be too late to stop him from getting the one he really wanted."

"So this was what, a diversion?"

"Yeah, seems to be. He just wanted to make sure Rebecca was out of the way, and it worked."

"So you got the girl back but now he's got someone else you don't know?"

"Worse," I said. I could feel tears forming, "We know who he has." I took a deep breath to try and calm myself but it didn't work. I knew if I tried to speak I'd lose it. Allison rescued me.

"He's got Angela."

Mom was just starting to take a sip of her coffee and almost dropped her cup, "Oh my God! Your friend Angela? The one you went to Prom with?"

That was it. I lost it. Tears poured from my eyes and all I could do was nod. Allison was leaking a little too as she held my hand and tried to comfort me. Mom waited patiently for me to recover, sipping her coffee and wiping her own eyes to clear the moisture that had formed there as well. Finally it passed and I could speak again.

"I'm sorry, I just..."

She cut me off, "Don't apologize. You needed that. Better to do it now and put it behind you so you can focus on what needs to be done next."

"What's that?" Allison asked.

"I don't know, but whatever it is, you can't afford to break down in the middle of it. Better to do it now, get it over with, so you don't have to worry about it later. I'm sorry if that isn't the 'mommy' thing to say, but this isn't a 'mommy' moment. This is the real thing and this is how you have to play if you don't want to lose your mind. How did you find out who it was? You're sure it was her?"

"Not a hundred percent at first but we are now. She was supposed to be going to Phoenix to tour the University, and then back early yesterday. No one has heard from her since she left. Rebecca called the college and they got a fake email saying she couldn't make it and had to reschedule. That pretty much clinched it. I figured it out last night; they caught some footage from a nearby convenience store that appeared to show the killer putting the missing girl in the storage unit. The wall blocked most of it but you could make out the top of the van he was using. I recognized something on the van. He was watching Angela and me the night we went out back before Christmas. I called Rebecca and told her everything I could think of, including that Angela hadn't made it back yet; Tim told me that when we ran yesterday. She had me call it in on the tip line so there was an official record. That's what I needed Dad for last night. Once the tip was on record, she called the family and got the name of the people in Phoenix Angela was supposed to meet with. They told her about the email, like I said, that pretty much sealed it. I need to call Rebecca back to see what's going on and what else I can do."

"Well then, call her. I have to get ready for work. Allison, why don't you make him an omelet or something? This kind of stress takes a lot out of the body and he's going to need to keep his strength up. You should eat something too. Try not to worry, from what you've told me, you still have time to find her. She has something that the other girls didn't. She has you and Rebecca looking for her. You'll find her. I know you will." She kissed us both and left. At least I got one of Allison's killer omelets.

Rebecca couldn't call the house and I knew she was busy so I tried not to stress about it. When she was ready to talk she would call Bob, he would call me, and then I could call her. It was a pain, but we just couldn't risk the house number showing up on her call record anywhere.

The worst part of my morning was that I had to pretend to not know about any of it when I called Tim to see if he was coming over to run. After all, how many sixteen year olds do you know who watch the morning news?

"I... can't make it today. Something's come up." His voice was shaky as he tried to talk.

"Tim, what's up? You sound like crap. Is something wrong?"

"It's Angie?"

"Angie? What's wrong with Angie? Is she sick or something?" This part really hurt, "She party a little too much with the girls in Phoenix?"

"No! God I wish it was just that." He paused and took a deep breath. I knew what was coming and how hard it was for him to say it. "Angie's been kidnapped. She never..."

"Oh, yeah right. Let me guess, your mom went out and the two of you are making up for the weekend. It's me; you don't have to make up..."

His angry voice cut me off, "Listen to me, asshole! My sister is fucking missing! She never made it to Phoenix. The FBI woke me up at 2:00 in the fucking morning. They were at my house all morning."

"Oh my God! Dude, I thought you were pulling my chain. What happened? Wait. Don't answer. Listen, I'm sorry, why don't you come over anyway so we can talk. If you try and talk about this in front of other people it's going to kill you. Just grab your running stuff, tell them you have to get out for a while. I'm sure they'll understand. Jesus!"

I turned away from the phone, god I hated this. "Allison," I called. "Angie's missing... Yeah, Tim's coming over." Allison made all the appropriate noises in the background and I spoke back into the phone.

"Dude, beat it over here so we can talk. We don't need to run if you don't want to, but you need to get out of there."

That was my dirty deed for the day. Allison's was almost as hard. She had to tell Shannon. Poor Shannon always seems to be the last to know anything. I couldn't get back to sleep to bridge her, and we certainly couldn't call her up in the middle of the night and tell her what was going on. Especially since it was information that hadn't been released and we weren't supposed to have. I had standing permission to drive Shannon anywhere we were going so rather than tell her on the phone I asked my mom if I could take her to work so I'd have the car, you know, just in case, then I picked Shannon up on the way back, and brought her back to our house. Well, I tried to anyway; she immediately wanted to know what was going on, so once we were a couple blocks from the house I pulled over and gave her the basics. When I told her that Angela was the one the killer had taken she gasped and burst into tears. Suddenly I found myself repeating all the positive comments I had heard over the course of the morning. They sounded different repeating them to Shannon versus hearing them spoken to me. There was a definite positive feeling that seemed to come with repeating them and I decide that if necessary I would repeat them to myself when I started feeling negative. Tim hadn't arrived by the time I got back and both girls cried again when we got back into the house.

"Okay," I said, after the initial tears had passed. "We have to be careful when Tim gets here. Remember, we don't 'know' anything. We didn't see it on the news, so we don't know what has been released to the public, so when Tim gets here we ask questions and act shocked, surprised, angry, or whatever else we need to as the information comes out. Whatever you do, don't answer any questions or mention Rebecca's name. I'm going to have to go online and see if we can find a copy of the news reports that have been released so we don't make any mistakes talking to anyone later, but for now, we don't know anything. We can try to steer the conversation into specific areas so he can tell us what he knows and then it will be safe to talk about it, but we need to pay attention so we don't mention anything that he hasn't already covered. Just be careful. I don't think it would go over well if he found out we knew about all this before he did, much less knowing about it all year and not saying anything to him or Angie."

"But we didn't know she was on the list," Shannon said.

"We should have guessed," Allison countered. "We knew the requirements; we knew the situation and how closely she actually fit. If Rebecca had known about her and Tim she would have been a lot higher on that list. She's been State Champion two years running, top student, scholarships offers coming from everywhere. We blew it assuming that 'no one' knew about their relationship." She stopped for a second before continuing, "And now she's paying the price."

"That's not fair, Allison," I said. "Whether we had known or not would not have changed anything. In fact it would have been a lot harder on us if we had known." By now they were both looking at me. "Rebecca knew she was on the list, she also knew that she was a friend of ours. When we first discussed going to see Samantha, Shannon asked if she could look like Angela. So she knew then, but she couldn't say anything to us because we might have said something or done something that made a difference. And then the killer might know we were watching for him and move somewhere else. Even if we had known, and somehow managed to not react to that knowledge, there is still nothing we could have done to prevent this. Even with Rebecca on his case, he still managed to kidnap two girls in the top ten; Angela wasn't that high on the list so even if the FBI had tried putting watchdogs out on the girls they probably wouldn't have covered her anyway. We had no way of knowing that the killer knew about Tim and Angela. What ticks me off is that he probably found out from Angie and me that night we went shopping. I wish I knew how he found out about Rebecca."

"Well you could always try asking her," Shannon said.

"I plan to. Next time I see her, which should be tonight." I caught a flash of light reflecting on the wall and turned to see Tim's car pulling up outside.

The girls met him at the door and I stood back as they hugged him and asked what happened. They eventually pulled him onto the couch and sat on either side of him as he told us everything he knew. He mentioned Rebecca early on so at least we didn't have to worry about dropping her name by accident. In fact I got to have a little fun with it when he started to run out of news.

"So, this FBI chick, is she like, hot or what?" The girls quickly emptied the couch of pillows as they showered me with everything they could reach but it did help to lighten the mood. Once we had all had a bit of a laugh Tim got serious again.

"Dude, I'm really worried about her, the FBI chick..."

"Please, let's just call her Rebecca, or Agent Hampton, or something. Anything is better than 'the FBI chick, '" Shannon said, rolling her eyes and giving me a wink where he couldn't see it.

"Okay, anyway, Rebecca said they think he's already killed three other girls and never got caught."

"That may be true," Allison said. "But chances are he didn't have the FBI working on the case either."

"There is that," Tim admitted. "She said they just figured out this year that it was the same guy. The girls were hundreds of miles apart so no one connected them."

"There, you see. Angela has an ace in the hole. The big dogs are on his case this time. I bet this Rebecca chick nails his ass."

Tim blushed and mumbled, "I'd let her nail mine." The girls promptly picked up the nearest two pillows and started beating him. We all felt better now that the tension had been released a little bit.

Tim and I did go for a run and it was all I could do to keep up. He ran like he was possessed. I finally had to stop him. "Whoa, hold up there a second," I said after putting on a burst and grabbing his arm. "What are you doing? You're going to run yourself out; you're not paying any attention to anything."

He realized I was right as he tried to catch his breath enough to answer. Finally he got enough wind and said, "Dude, you're so right. I don't even know where we've been. I haven't paid attention to anything since we left your house."

Boy did this sound familiar. "Right, that's what I mean. It's like you're trying to run away from this. Like if you run far enough fast enough it will be different or something when you stop. Let's take a fiver and walk around for a bit, then we'll just head for the house and get in some extra stretching. This isn't doing either of us any good running like this."

Karen stopped by just after dinner, on her way back from Los Angeles. Tom waited in the car while she came in to give us the latest updates. When she had finished we gave her the news about Angela and she hugged Shannon as she cried again. She decided to just let Shannon spend the night since there wasn't really much she could do at home anyway. The rest of Karen's day would be spent helping Tom deal with his latest treatments, trying to get him to eat something and eventually helping him get to bed. We all went out to the car to see him. He really didn't want anyone to see him like this but we made it clear that we really didn't care what he wanted. Dad shook his hand, everyone else hugged him, the ladies all kissed his cheek and we tried to be convincing about not noticing the tears in his eyes at the outpouring of love and support. He didn't look good. Karen had said it was hard to get him to eat anything. He had no real appetite and food just felt and tasted bad in his mouth. It was all you could do to get him to swallow it. I suddenly had an idea I wanted to talk to Bob about when we got together later.

So now there were two good things about the day ending. Shannon was spending the night, and I could finally get started trying to find my friend.

Getting to sleep proved to be a bit of a problem. I was so keyed up about everything even social studies couldn't distract me enough to relax, and since Shannon was there Allison couldn't come in and snuggle me to sleep either. If it had been later and the parents had had time to fall asleep they could have both come in but that was not really an option until much later. Eventually I did fall asleep and the very first thing I did was 'feel' for Angela. I couldn't pick up the barest hint of her anywhere so I headed for the office to meet with the rest of the team.