Committed (4 page)

The man gave him an unsure look.

“Just do it,” Nick said. He prodded the man in the ribs with the gun.

The man started the car and pulled from the parking spot. He made a hard left into the exit for the semi area of the rest stop—a Do Not Enter sign passed on the car’s right.

“That RV there,” Nick said. “Pull up alongside it.”

He did as instructed.

“I’ll be back in a jiff,” Molly said. She left the backseat and returned a moment later with an armful of camping gear. Molly lifted the hatch on the car and tossed everything inside. “One more trip,” she said. Molly once again went to the RV and reappeared in the doorway with an armful of rifles a moment later. She popped her head from the RV’s door and looked left to right to make sure the area was clear. Satisfied it was, she quickly transferred the guns to the back of the hybrid and jumped back in.

“Back out on the interstate,” Nick said.

The old man turned the car and did as he was told.

Nick held the gun barrel on the man as they pulled back onto the interstate, heading west.

“Give me your phone,” Nick said.

“What do you need my phone for?”

Nick pressed the gun against the man’s stomach. “Phone,” he said.

The man passed it over. Nick lowered his window and tossed it out.

“Wallet.”

The man handed it to him. Nick pulled out the cash inside and jammed it into his pocket, a little over a hundred dollars. He looked at the man’s driver’s license. “Your name is Lindsay?”

“It’s Scottish.”

“That’s a girl’s name,” Molly said from the back.

“Well, Lindsay Dunbar,” Nick said, “we appreciate the lift. You’re a real help.” He tossed the man’s wallet out the window.

“Where… where are we going?” the man asked.

Nick pointed out the windshield straight ahead. “That way.”

The man obeyed. The car was silent for almost ten miles.

Lindsay, driving, cleared his throat and spoke. “You’re the two from the television,” he said.

“Ding, ding, ding. Well, aren’t you a smart one,” Nick said. “What does he win, Molly?”

She lunged forward with her revolver and placed it to the side of his head. “Bang! A bullet!” She laughed and sat back again.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I want you to shut up and drive until I tell you to do something else,” Nick said.

He went quiet.

“Hon, isn’t this puppy just the cutest?” Molly asked.

Nick looked at her in the backseat. Her gun rested on her lap—clutched in her hands was the dog, licking her face.

“What’s his name?” Molly asked.

“It’s a she, and her name is Matilda,” Lindsay said.

“Matilda? What kind of name is that for such a cute little thing? I’m going to call you Boots because of your little white feet,” Molly told the dog.

Nick turned his attention from Molly cooing over the dog back to Lindsay. “Get off on the next exit,” he said.

“And then what?”

“I’ll tell you when we get to that point.”

Two miles up the road, Lindsay followed Nick’s instructions and made a right off the freeway.

“Make another right,” Nick said.

Lindsay did and drove down a rural two-lane road. Nothing but cornfields spread out to both sides of the street. Since they’d left the interstate, not a single car had passed. Nick looked back at Molly briefly. She nodded her head.

“Pull over here,” Nick said.

“Here?” Lindsay asked.

Molly smacked him in the back of the head. “He said
here
, didn’t he? What are you, deaf?” She flicked Lindsay’s ear.

He slowed and pulled to the side of the street. The gravel shoulder crunched under the car’s right-side tires. “You can have the car,” he said. “Just let me go.”

“Get out,” Nick said.

The man did as instructed.

Nick opened the passenger door and stepped out. “This side of the car. Get over here.” He waved the man to the passenger side.

Lindsay rounded the front of the vehicle, paused for just a second, and then ran toward the cornfield just beyond the ditch at the shoulder of the road.

Nick brought his gun sights up on the man just as he juked right and disappeared into the corn. “Son of a bitch!” Nick said.

The rear passenger-side door of the hybrid opened, and Molly ran past Nick in a flash. “I’ll get him, baby,” she said as she disappeared amongst the cornstalks. Nick glanced back to see the dog leap out of the car’s open rear door and run behind Molly.

A moment later, Nick heard the sound of two gunshots echo in the distance. He went to the driver’s door and took a seat behind the wheel.

Our food came, followed immediately by an incoming call to Scott’s cell phone.

“Agent Matthews,” he answered.

Scott only said a few words over the course of the brief phone call, but from the sound of his end of the conversation, we may have had another scene. Scott clicked off from his call and waved our waitress over. “We need our bill,” he said.

The woman acknowledged.

“Shovel your food down. We’re headed out,” Scott said. “North of here about fifteen miles.”

I spoke over a mouthful of chicken sandwich. “What did they say?”

“That was the Omaha office. They cover all of Nebraska and Iowa. They just got a call from the local sheriff’s department at the scene of a fire in Van Meter. It’s our couple, and apparently they torched the house they were at.”

“No sign of the couple, though?” Bill asked.

“Gone.”

“Why light a house on fire to announce where you are?” Beth asked.

“Don’t know. But it means they’re still around,” Scott said. “We need to get on scene and see what we can come up with as quickly as possible.”

“Is someone from Omaha going to meet us there?” Bill asked.

“Yeah. A couple of agents and a forensics team, but we’ll beat them there by a half hour or so would be my guess.”

The waitress came to the edge of the table and set down a black folder with our bill inside.

“I’ll get it,” I said. “We can figure it out later.” I glanced inside the folder, took my copy of the receipt, and fished enough cash out of my wallet. I jammed the remaining quarter of a chicken sandwich in my mouth and stood.

“We’ll meet you out front in a minute,” Scott said. “We need to go gather our things.”

“Not coming back?” Beth asked.

“Doubt it.”

We waited for them out front of the hotel and then made our way to Van Meter, a small city located next to West Des Moines.

Beth and I followed Scott and Bill down a two-lane country road. Each home was spaced out by an acre or more at the minimum—a handful of times we didn’t spot a house for a half mile or more. Miles from the property, we saw smoke hanging in the air above the treetops. We could smell it coming through the vents of our rental car as we neared the house. A minute or two later, I saw law-enforcement vehicles and a fire truck at the right-hand side of the street. Beth slowed, and we tucked in behind Bill and Scott, pulling to the road’s shoulder behind a local sheriff’s cruiser.

The four of us stepped from our cars and headed toward the scene.

Scott pointed over toward the house as we approached. “There’s our BOLO truck.”

A white Ford F-150 sat parked off to the side of the driveway in the grass. The house was a light tan ranch, and the left side of the home, including its roof, had mostly burned through, leaving a few smoldering studs. I spotted what appeared to be charred appliances farther back inside the building. The right side of the home, including the garage, was still intact. The garage door was open—a black pickup truck and a smaller dark-blue car were parked inside. To the right of the garage was a double-tall carport that spanned the entire depth of the home.

A deputy in a brown sheriff’s-department jacket over a tan shirt and brown tie met us at the base of the driveway. He held out his hand for a handshake to Bill, who led our group. “I take it you’re with the FBI?” he asked.

We went through a quick round of introductions with the deputy, named Marrero. He took us up the driveway to meet with the fire chief, Paul Siegfried, and Captain Partridge of the sheriff’s department. The pair of men stood together, talking roughly fifty feet from the front of the home. We made our introductions while the firemen, nearer the house, sprayed down a few areas still smoldering.

“What do we know here?” Bill asked.

Siegfried, the fire chief, tucked his helmet under his arm. “The call came to us about an hour ago. We were on the scene here with our truck maybe ten minutes later.”

“Who called?” Beth asked.

“A car driving past saw the flames and made the call to 9-1-1,” Captain Partridge said. “A couple of my deputies were here on scene about the same time the fire department was arriving.” He scratched at his round, pink cheek. “Bennet and Stadler. Bennet is the one who spotted the BOLO Ford there and made the call to the FBI. Both of them are out doing some door knocking with the neighbors now. I have a handful of other deputies patrolling the area.”

Beth looked at the fire chief. “What did you guys see when you arrived?”

“No cars, no people. The home was mostly engulfed. We called inside, searching for any occupants but never got a response. The rooms we could get at safely were searched. We got hoses on it pretty quick and knocked the fire back a bit before my guys could get in to search the rooms. Well, that’s when we saw the two at the kitchen table—or what was the kitchen table. Both bodies were nailed to what remained of the table’s surface by their hands. It looks like most of the fire was concentrated to the kitchen area of the home where the occupants were.”

“The occupants, they weren’t burned alive, were they?” Beth asked.

“I couldn’t tell you that,” Siegfried said. “They were deceased at the time we found them. We’re assuming it’s the homeowners, a Nancy and Bruce Crawford. We can’t really be certain at this point, though.”

I pulled my notepad from my inner jacket pocket and wrote down the names of the homeowners.

“Did you want me to get a coroner in here, or do you have a forensics team coming?” Partridge asked.

“We have a team coming,” Scott said. “Let’s keep out everyone that’s not needed to keep the flames under control until our forensics guys can have a look in there.”

“Sure,” the captain said.

“Do we know what we have for registered vehicles for the property owners?” Bill asked.

“Same thing the agent I spoke with over at the Omaha FBI asked. They have a 2012 Honda and a 2010 Chevy pickup. Both vehicles you see in the garage there. The agent told me that these two have been stealing the vehicles of those they attacked, but both of the homeowners’ cars are here. Like I said, I put some deputies out patrolling the area on the chance these two are on foot.”

“Okay, good,” Scott said.

“What was in there?” I asked. I pointed toward the double-tall carport.

“I don’t know. Looks like a carport for something. Motorhome or big rig maybe,” Partridge said. “Nothing like that registered to them, though.”

I nodded. “How long do you suppose it was until now since that fire was started?” I asked.

“An hour and fifteen minutes or so,” Siegfried said.

I looked over at Scott and Bill. “They left the vehicle they arrived in here. They’re either on foot or took something else.”

“They could have come in two cars,” Beth said.

“They could have. But they have been traveling in a single vehicle since they started their little road trip,” Scott said.

I couldn’t take my eyes from the empty carport. I doubted they took a big rig, which left the chance of an RV. The thoughts started flowing on how it was the perfect vehicle for two people on the run. “Captain, can you have your deputies knocking on doors, asking what the homeowners had, if anything, parked in that carport?”

“Yeah, I’ll get them asking,” Partridge said. He made the call over his shoulder radio, and someone confirmed on the other end.

“I bet they went west if they were driving,” Scott said.

“Still think they’re headed to Montana?” Bill asked.

“Don’t know for certain one way or the other, but if they were continuing north, they would have stayed on I-35. We’re ten miles west of the city, just off I-80,” Bill said. “They could be taking I-80 into Omaha and then going, well, pretty much any direction.”

“They’re probably still on I-80 if they are headed toward Omaha straight from here,” Siegfried said. “It’s about an hour-and-forty-five-minute drive. Maybe a touch more with getting over to the interstate from here.”

The captain’s radio came alive with the words, “Neighbors confirm recreational vehicle.”

“Tell him to get whatever information he can on the RV and get back up here,” Scott said. “I’m making the call to get the birds circling.” He stepped to the side and pulled his phone from his pocket.

Beth stared over at the empty carport and looked at me. “Think that’s what they’re in? An RV?”

“If there was one here, probably. Think about it. An RV would let them move around and be self-contained. Hell, if they were going to Montana and planned to vanish, they could just park the damn thing in the woods and live in it. You could stay in it for days on end without people being able to identify you. It’s perfect. They could lie low until the heat dies down and then try to cross the border if that’s their goal.”

“It is perfect,” she said.

I walked over to the carport to have a bit of a look around, and Beth followed. I hoped that something stacked along the outside wall of the garage could be related to the RV, and give us a make or model. The blacktop driveway turned to gravel underneath the tin-roofed carport. Some miscellaneous cut wood was stacked in the front corner. Beyond the wood was an old lawn mower and a big tarp. I continued farther into the carport and spotted a few cinder blocks stacked along the side of the house. That was it—nothing that would help.

“See anything?” I asked.

Beth shook her head. “Nothing. Want to check the garage?”

“Yeah, sure.”

We exited the car port and made a right to enter the garage. A fireman stood nearby, looking over at us.