The Brotherhood of the Wheel (15 page)

 

SIX

“10-5”

Stepping into the offices of the Louisiana State Crime Lab was, at first glance, like stepping into any other cubicle farm—work spaces with three partition walls, desks, computers, pictures drawn by tiny hands with large crayons pinned to cube walls, stress balls, and family photos.

Lovina, now dressed for work in a dark navy Brooks Brothers pantsuit and gray sleeveless top, looked around for Russell Lime. She had her badge lanyard out, hanging around her neck, since she had to show her ID at the lobby to gain access to this part of the building. She walked between the cubes, and the differences between the lab and any other office became apparent just by the fragments of conversation that drifted past her:

“The assailant's blood tested positive for HIV, and type is the same as the other three victims. We're still waiting on DNA results. I know … I know! Well, look, it's going to take two to five days … yes, I know … I'll see if I can rush it, but don't…”

“The spatter pattern at the crime scene would be consistent with blunt-force trauma from a sledgehammer, yes.… You've got a possible weapon? Good! I need you to…”

“The brand of bleach he forced his daughter to ingest is consistent with the brand that was found in his trunk. The chemical burns in her throat…”

Lovina took a left at a wall of file cabinets full of horror, death, and petty inhumanities and saw that they had moved Russell to a larger, private office with a window on the edge of the floor. She walked past the doors to laboratories, conference rooms, and other offices. It always made her smile to flip on the television and see the spate of crime dramas with forensic labs. She tried to imagine the lab techs and criminalists she knew zipping around in designer clothing, driving Hummers to respond to crime scenes. And any forensic scientist or cop would trade his soul for a magic computer that got you DNA results or hits off partial prints in a few seconds, along with a photo of the suspect, an address, and a list of his hobbies. Those shows fell into the realm of science fiction.

The title on the glass of Russell's door said R
USSELL
L
IME,
S
ENIOR
T
ECHNICAL
D
IRECTOR
.
Lovina rapped on the open door and waved when Russ looked up and broke into a wide smile. “Love-e-ly Lo-vina!” he said. “How are you,
chère
?” Russell Lime was in his early seventies. He was still dangerously charming, and every woman who spent more than five minutes with him knew that. Lovina also knew that the dirty-old-man routine was all show. Lime's heart belonged to his wife of forty-eight years, Treasure. Russ was a tad over five feet and rawboned. He had a full head of snow-white hair that he combed back from his face. He had prominent ears and an animated face with expressive hazel eyes that actually twinkled sometimes. His nose was a little bulbous and red. He looked like one of the elves at the North Pole crossed with an elderly Tom Waits.

“I'm good, Russ, how are you?” Lovina said, holding up a plastic bag and a large cup of coffee. “Good as my word—coffee and doughnuts from Blue Dot.”

“Ah!” Russell exclaimed. “
Vous
êtes aussi doux que vous
êtes belle, chère!
” He stood and pulled a chair by the door over to his desk. He gestured for her to sit.

“Merci monsieur. Tu es très gentil,”
Lovina replied, and sat. As Russell began to dig into the doughnuts, he handed her a small USB flash drive. She nodded and slipped it into her pocket. “This Rears's computer data?” Lovina asked.

Russell nodded, talking around the doughnut in his mouth. “Everything I could decrypt,” he said. “This fella is into some very weird stuff, darlin'. UFOs, Bigfoot, Mothman, ghosts, demons. Looks like he's been some kind of paranormal investigator and writer for years now.”

Lovina sipped her hot tea and nodded. “I got that impression from his apartment. Russ, you find anything that would make you like this guy for the abductions you said he was tracking?”

“I wish I could say yes, beautiful, but I'm sorry. He was visiting the scenes of the abductions, but he was keeping track of those visits like they were business expenses. If he was involved in them, it seems foolish to keep records of them on his computer.”

“Wouldn't be the first foolish criminal we've met,” Lovina said. “Russ, you think you could help me with some technological hoodoo?”

Russell laughed and leaned back in his chair. “
Chère
, if it hums, buzzes, clicks or whirrs, I am your man.”

Lovina grinned. “I'll bet you are.” She slipped a piece of paper from the pocket of her leather jacket. It was the folded computer printout of the photograph of Shawn Ruth Thibodeaux, charging toward the person taking the picture, her head lowered and a look of savagery on her face, as if she were fighting for her life. She handed it to Russell. “I need to know everything you can tell me about this picture,” she said.

Russell took the photo, looked at it, and then looked at Lovina a bit longer than he should have.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing, dear,” he said. “Okay, well, for starters, this photo is one of several located on Rears's computer hard drive. Come over here, let me show you.”

Russell stood and insisted on wrestling her chair over to his side of the desk, facing his large flat-screen monitor. Lovina entertained his gallant nature as much as possible; considering the chair weighed almost as much as he did, she provided a little help to the old man.

“Rears has that photo here,” he said, clicking on a file-folder icon titled “BEK Confirmed” on his computer screen. The file expanded, and columns of photos appeared. The majority of them were of kids who looked like the two boys in hoodies Lovina had confronted at Rears's apartment last night, right down to the inhuman, ink-black eyes. There were dozens of photos of children or teens with the same dead eyes.

“What is it?” Russell said, looking at her. “You all right,
chère
?” Lovina nodded.

“Fine, Russ. What is all this?”

“One of the newer versions of the Boogeyman brought to you by the Internet,” Russell said. “These, my dear, are Black-Eyed Kids, or BEKs, if you're into that whole LOL, SMH, OMG nonsense that passes for language these days.”

“What are they supposed be?” she asked.

“It's the latest iteration of the stolen-away-by-fairies myth,” Russell said, clicking on the picture with Shawn Ruth in it. The photo filled the screen. “Back in the olden days, people believed the fay folk would sneak into your house at night and steal your baby away, replace it with a changeling—a fairy baby. It was one of the early explanations for mental-health issues and missing persons, or just weird behavior.

“As our technology became more sophisticated and science began to understand the universe a bit more, the myth changed to alien visitations and abductions to fit the times. Now, in our age of callousness being considered cool, impersonal sexting, and social-media posts passing for relationships, where our children are so connected to the world and so alone, so alienated from it, we have cyber-urban myths; we get BEKs. These kids are putting their own twists on the old scary story by the campfire. I'd wager most of them have never seen a real campfire. They're reflecting their own culture, their own fears, in these stories, these creatures.”

“But this, this isn't real, right?” Lovina said, leaning forward. “These kids are wearing cosmetic contact lenses, or these pictures have been Photoshopped? Right?”

Russell narrowed his eyes at her and then broke into a smile. “You have a run-in with something, Lovina?” he said. “You seem a little … unnerved?”

“It's nothing,” she said. “I just hate weird.”

“You picked the wrong city and the wrong career, then,” Russell said with a laugh. “There was a case a few years back, in Wisconsin, where two teenage girls lured a third out into the woods to sacrifice her to some urban myth called Slender Man. It's madness,
chère
. Give me bank robbers and forgers any old day of the week.”

“Yeah, ain't that the truth,” she replied. “What can you tell me about my picture, Russ?” He minimized the photo on the screen and opened another program.

“Of course, dear,” he said. “I'm using FairPlay and a few other programs to give this one a good going-over. This might take a spell. You want to use my laptop to review the other stuff on Rears's drive while you're waiting?”

“Thanks,” she said.

Russell set her up at a small desk in the corner of his office and opened the drive for her on his computer. She casually scanned the contents, looking for anything that might jump out at her. Once she was sure Russell was deep into his work, she clicked open Rears's files on Black-Eyed Kids.

She noticed that beside the photos in the file Rears also had notes and detailed interviews with parents and friends of missing children in more than thirty states. Shawn Ruth's family was among those interviewed. There was also a map of the U.S., with each abduction he had investigated pinpointed on it, along with hyperlinks to news articles about missing children, abductions, and the sex-slave trade. Another layer of links connected the map to some of the photos in the file, which, in turn, were linked to the interviews and any media coverage about the missing children. Another layer of links bizarrely connected all his data to a map of the U.S. highway system, showing, for each disappearance, the relative proximity to highways and major routes.

“Russ,” Lovina said, turning in her chair, “did Rears try to access the FBI database at any point on his computer? Especially the Highway Serial Killings Initiative?”

Russell looked up from his screen, his white eyebrows raised. “As a matter of fact, in between frequenting numerous porn websites, 4chan, and 9GAG, he made several inquiries to the bureau's site, and that section in particular. He even incorporated the map they have on there of the national unsub cases into that interactive database you've been perusing. Guess what turned up?”

“A highway serial case near every abduction point,” Lovina said, nodding, as she clicked between the layers of the database. “At least one, most more than one. Looks like Rears was onto something.”

“Or involved in something,” Russell said. “This may have been his way of keeping trophies of his victims. And going back and interviewing the victims' families, making them relive all the horror he caused. That's powerful stuff to these monsters.”

“Anything that would tie him to a crime in here?” Lovina asked. “A photo of a victim or a crime-scene photo he shouldn't have? Anything past theory?”

“Nope,” Russell said. “Like I said, clean as an investigative-reporting whistle. You don't like him for this,
chère
?”

“I don't,” she said. “Just doesn't feel right. “Of course, my gut has been known to be wrong.”

“Well, darlin',” Russell said. “It wasn't wrong on your prize photo here.” He gestured for Lovina to come look at his monitor. “This photo shows up on a few Black-Eyed Kid and paranormal websites. Its point of origin is an IP address that goes back to a cell-phone service in Granite City, Illinois. Any current cell activity to that phone number has been flagged by the FBI and the Illinois State Police—”

“—due to it belonging to a missing kid,” Lovina said.

Russell nodded. “Exactly,” he said. “They found the phone at the crime scene, but no kid. I'm requesting access to the Illinois State Police case-management system. Give me a second.” A page with the Illinois State Police seal at the top and columns of case file numbers filled the screen. He selected the case number and, after a moment, a police report appeared. A picture of a smiling young girl with long brown hair was in a box in the upper left-hand corner of the report. “Here we are. Cell phone belongs to Karen Collie, age fifteen at the time of her disappearance. She went missing along with friends: Stephanie Bottner, Aaron Kline, Kristie Plunkett, and Mark Baz. All of them teens, all good kids with no record of any trouble. They were going to the mall, and when none of them showed up back at home that night Mark's parents filed a report. They found Mark's car in the mall's parking lot, but all five kids were gone without a trace.”

“Sounds familiar,” Lovina said. “Group of kids, no history of trouble. All just up and disappear. So Shawn Ruth and her friends go missing five years ago. Then they show up on a cell-phone photo from this Collie girl several states away, who also goes missing with her friends two years ago. Russ, what are these Black-Eyed Children supposed to do, exactly?”

“They approach people,” Russell said as he read from a website. “Usually in pairs. They are teens in apparent age, and they ask to be let in to wherever the witness is—their house, their car. They keep asking.”

Lovina felt her breath catch in her chest, a cold, tight hand clutching the air in her lungs. “So what happens?” she asked. “What happens to you if you let them in?”

Russell grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “No one knows … because if you let them in you're never heard from again. Muwhahahaha!” he laughed, doing his best mad-scientist impersonation.

The spell broken, Lovina shook her head. “Hilarious.”

Russell grabbed another doughnut. “Well, that's part of the myth, anyway,” he said. “They're always saying they were sent to gather you. But they never say why or to where. Are you holding out on me? Did something happen?”

“Russ,” Lovina said, leaning forward in her chair, “Do you … do you believe … in any of this? Have you ever seen something you couldn't explain away?”

Lime leaned back in his chair. “Yes, of course I have,” he said. “Any cop, any EMT, nurse, lab rat, fire and rescue—we've all had those unexplained things that happen when you're on the job. We see the world with the curtains pulled back—we see horror that other human beings can't even begin to comprehend. Then, every once in a while, you get something that goes so far beyond even that—beyond the street, beyond reason, sanity, logic. Back in 1972, I had a corpse, on the table, dead for over forty-eight hours, Y incision and all, open his eyes and speak to me—without lungs attached in his chest anymore, mind you.”