Badlands (3 page)

*   *   *

RHODINE TURNED
and draped his arm over the front seat so he could face her. He smiled as if to reassure her, but she read it as “Aren't I a good-looking man?” He said, “I don't know how much you know but I wanted to brief you on everything before you actually meet him. I know you talked to Sheriff Puente and County Prosecutor Leslie Behaunek yesterday, but I don't know if they stressed what an important role you have to play if we want to hold this guy.”

“We did,” Behaunek said wearily from the backseat.

Rhodine ignored her. Cassie could already discern the tension that had developed between the locals and the FBI. It wasn't unusual when the feds moved into a local jurisdiction to assist, because “assist” was often defined by the FBI as “take over from the stupid locals.”

“Basically,” Rhodine said, “law enforcement was first tipped off regarding the subject two days ago by a loading supervisor at a grocery warehouse distributor in Raleigh. The supervisor said he'd posted a full load from Raleigh that needed to get to Virginia Beach the next day. I don't know if you know about the system independent truckers use, do you?”

Cassie said, “Yes, I know about it. When someone needs a truckload of something delivered, they post the contents and the weight on a national computer network that is displayed on screens in most big truck stops. If drivers are close, they'll call the customer and make the deal. It's completely different from trucking companies that haul the same freight for the same companies most of the time.”

“Exactly,” Rhodine said. “Independent drivers compete with each other for work and they make the deals themselves directly with the distributor. There are no dispatchers or trucking companies doing it for them. We've been thinking for some time that Pergram likely went that route once he vanished. It's easier for a man like that to hide in plain sight if he's not working for any one company. And lord knows, we sent his photo to every trucking company in the country. When we never heard anything, we figured he'd likely gone indie.

“So anyway, this warehouse guy gets a call from a trucker who says his name is Dale Spradley and he's just a couple of hours away. The warehouse guy says he asks Spradley if his truck can handle a full load, and Spradley tells him he just made a delivery and he's got a refrigerated trailer and he's rolling empty at the moment.”

Cassie knew truckers referred to those trailers as “reefers,” but she didn't interrupt.

“So Spradley shows up and backs up to the delivery dock and the warehouse guys start loading the empty trailer with pallets of frozen food while they work out the paperwork. Just about when they're through with the contracts, a guy notices something odd about the trailer of the truck.”

“Odd how?” Cassie asked.

“Sheriff, why don't you tell her the rest?” Rhodine said.

Puente cleared his throat. “We got an old boy named Lightning Bates who works at the warehouse. He's a young fellow, and they call him ‘Lightning' because he's anything but. It's kind of mean but he don't seem to mind. Anyway, Lightning is pretty dim but when it comes to patterns and numbers he's kind of a genius. When he was in high school here he went to a swim meet at the brand-new pool and afterwards he told the principal the pool wasn't long enough for the races. Keep in mind they'd just constructed that pool and it cost an arm and a leg of taxpayer money. But Lightning
insisted
it wasn't fifty meters. Finally, they measured it just to shut him up and it turned out to be forty-nine point eight meters. You can imagine how that caused a stink.”

“Lightning Bates is an autistic savant,” Behaunek said crisply from the back as if to urge Sheriff Puente on with his story.

“Yeah,” Puente said, “like that. Anyway, Lightning helped fill that trailer at the warehouse but when they were done and closing it up he was real upset. He told his supervisor they'd just filled a fifty-three-foot standard trailer with a forty-eight-foot load. As you know, a trailer is either forty-eight feet or fifty-three feet. Those are the standard sizes in the trucking industry.”

“I'm aware,” Cassie said. “I've learned a lot about the ins and outs of trucking. My dad was a trucker. He had a forty-eight footer, too.”

She was intrigued. She said, “It takes a very trained eye to tell the difference.”

“Unless you're Lightning Bates, I guess,” Sheriff Puente noted. He obviously wanted to credit one of his own constituents for what happened next.

“Yes,” Rhodine said, “so this Bates and the supervisor discussed the discrepancy after the truck pulled away. They started talking about the alerts they'd received urging everyone to be on the lookout for the Lizard King. That guy has become kind of a legend, even though Spradley didn't exactly fit the description of Ronald Pergram. But the supervisor trusted Lightning Bates, and he thought it was suspicious that a forty-eight-foot load fit perfectly into a fifty-three-foot trailer. That made him wonder why five feet of space inside was unaccounted for. So he called the state police. Spradley was pulled over just inside the Wilson county line by a North Carolina trooper and asked to account for the misunderstanding.”

“Hold it,” Cassie said, raising her hand. “The police responded because a warehouse supervisor had a suspicion?”

Sheriff Puente said, “The supervisor's on the county commission. Some of them guys like to throw their weight around.”

Cassie nodded but didn't approve. She'd had it with local politicians influencing county law enforcement. It was no solace that it occurred in other states.

Rhodine said, “But Spradley made a big mistake. He got belligerent with the trooper and refused to open up his trailer. He claimed his load was frozen—which it was—but said if he opened it up and anything thawed he'd take a financial hit. Spradley said he was being railroaded by a bunch of Southern rednecks and worse.”

Cassie nodded. She hated to agree with Spradley, but …

“The trooper called in backup, which happened to be the Wilson County Sheriff's Department,” Rhodine said.

“My guys,” Sheriff Puente said. “This Spradley or whoever he is called them every name in the book. They charged him with noncooperation and threw cuffs on him and hauled him in. By the time he got to county lockup, he was going berserk. We had to pepper spray his fat ass just to calm him down.”

Cassie asked the sheriff, “When did you suspect Dale Spradley
was
Ronald Pergram?”

Puente said solemnly, “Not until we opened up that truck just up ahead. That's when we called in the FBI.”

As he spoke the words, the SUV slowed down and took an exit to a service road that paralleled the interstate. Through the trees, Cassie saw high chain-link fencing and a weathered sign that read:

MISSING YOUR CAR?

ALL VISITORS
MUST
CHECK IN AT THE OFFICE.

W
ILSON
C
OUNTY
I
MPOUND
L
OT.

Then she saw the huge eighteen-wheel truck and trailer on the lot.

She said, “That's not it.”

Agent Rhodine's formerly confident face went slack.

*   *   *

“PERGRAM DROVE
a black Peterbilt Model 379,” Cassie said as they approached the big rig. Pallets of once-frozen food were stacked unceremoniously on the asphalt. The smell of rotting meat hung low in the air. Cassie wondered who would cover the loss when something like this happened, but she didn't ask.

The driver slowed to a stop with the shiny grille of the big truck filling the windshield.

Rhodine leapt out, followed by Cassie and Sheriff Puente. Behaunek stayed in the SUV with her files.

Cassie said, “I saw his rig once even though I didn't get a clear look at the driver. But I never forgot the truck. He'd stripped all the chrome off it and had even blackened the exhaust stacks with some kind of heat-resistant paint. It was blacker than black.”

She gestured toward the truck in the lot. “This is a newer model Peterbilt 389 with an Ultracab Unibilt. And it's bright yellow. This isn't the truck or trailer I saw.”

“No one said it was,” Rhodine said through clenched teeth. “No one said he didn't trade his old one in on a newer model.”

Cassie paused and looked it over. She'd long speculated that Pergram would stay in his profession but figure out a way to change his identity and his vehicle.

“It may be a new rig,” Puente said, “but wait until you see what we found inside.”

Cassie approached the open back of the trailer with the two men. An aluminum loading ramp was attached to the back floor of the trailer and sloped down to the asphalt.

Before entering, she looked inside. It was empty and cavernous. The inside walls were scarred from hundreds of skids that had been loaded and unloaded. On the far end of the trailer, on the other side of the wall and out of view, was the refrigerator unit to keep the temperature constant inside.

“Go to the front,” Puente said.

“Remember the length discrepancy,” Rhodine said in a tone that indicated he'd regained his confidence from learning it wasn't the same truck. “Forty-eight versus fifty-three feet. The outside of this trailer is fifty-three feet on the nose. The inside measures forty-eight.”

Their shoes echoed inside the empty trailer and Cassie walked to the front of the trailer. She wondered what it was she was supposed to see. The front wall was made of sheet steel and scarred like the sidewalls. Mounted at eye level across the length of the front panel were a series of ringbolts. She knew they were used to secure netting over the top of cargo that might shift or fall. She pulled and twisted each one in turn. Nothing happened. She knocked. The wall seemed solid. With that in mind, she turned to the sheriff and Rhodine and said, “So?”

Sheriff Puente waggled his eyebrows in a gesture that suggested she look again. She got it. It wasn't until she bent stiffly in her too-tight suit on the right side of the wall that she saw the nearly hidden hinges.

“There's a room here,” she whispered.

“And we finally figured how to get it open,” Puente said, squatting clumsily to his haunches with a grunt. On the bottom of the sidewall, nearly flush with the floor, was an aluminum slide-out panel. When he opened the panel there was a single red button.

“Watch this, Miss Cassie,” he said, and pressed it. She was starting to like being called Miss Cassie.

There was a muffled click on the left side of the wall. Rhodine stepped around her and grasped one of the ringbolts and pulled.

She stepped back so the front wall wouldn't hit her as it opened.

Behind the wall was an eight-foot-by-five-foot compartment lined with polished stainless-steel siding. It was lit inside by bright fluorescent tubes on the ceiling triggered on by the open door. A sheet metal conduit from the outside refrigeration unit stretched across the top of the room into the cargo area and there was a small adjustable vent on the bottom of it. This way, she thought with a chill, he could keep both his cargo and his victim cold. A steel-framed cot was bolted to the floor. Ringbolts were secured to the walls. Beneath the cot was a round stainless-steel drain.

Cassie felt a chill shoot through her, and for a moment she almost reached out to steady herself on Puente. He noticed and grasped her hand to steady her. “Bless your heart, Miss Cassie,” he said softly, “But it looks like your man took his show on the road.”

“Obviously,” Rhodine said, “you can't touch anything.”

She swallowed hard and gently withdrew her hand from Sheriff Puente's grasp. She appreciated his gesture, though.

“Have your evidence techs been through it?” she asked, wondering how many women had been in the secret room. Dozens? Hundreds? She couldn't take her eyes off the drain.

“Nothing so far,” Rhodine said. “No hair, no fiber, no fingerprints, no DNA.”

“Nothing?” she echoed. “What about the drain?”

“We've swabbed it inside and out,” Rhodine said wearily. “We haven't found
anything
. This monster is thorough and he really thought this out. All he needed to do was wash it down with a high-pressure hose or steam cleaner. No doubt, he blasted the bottom of the drain under the truck as part of his routine. There's nothing inside that room for any evidence or fluids to cling to.”

Cassie shook her head. “In Montana, he was known as a knife man. Did you find weapons?”

“Sure, plenty of them,” Rhodine said with a sigh. “Butcher knives, filet knives, even a bone saw—the kind big game hunters use in the field. Plus a Taser and a dozen zip ties.”

Cassie looked over and arched her eyebrows as if to say, Isn't that enough?

“Clean,” Rhodine said. “Everything is meticulously clean. And it isn't illegal to have a Taser. Anyone can buy one over the Internet.”

“Frustrating,” Cassie said. But her anger was starting to build up. “You guys have the best forensic technology in the world and you can't come up with anything that will stick to him?”

“We're waiting on a team of super techs to arrive from Washington tomorrow,” Rhodine said. “They may find something we missed on the first pass.”

“For the sake of those girls, I hope so,” Cassie said.

“For my sake, too,” Rhodine said. “I've got a lot riding on this.”

Both Cassie and Sheriff Puente glared at him but neither said anything. The man was ambitious, Cassie thought.

Sheriff Puente folded his arms across his chest and rested them on his belly. He said, “It pains me we can't arrest him for driving around with this …
torture chamber
in his truck. But if we can't find any evidence that it's been used for what we know it's been used for, there is no law against it. This is one of those situations where we've got the law on one side and doing what's right—
what we all know is right
—on the other.”