Eyes of the Predator (33 page)

Canada was Lyn’s dream of escape.
In her way, she was trying to achieve that dream, without any help or guidance
from anyone. He and Cy had had the guidance of a mother and an uncle. She had
none. That thought gave him a deeper respect for her and the Canada dream.

Respect. That was something. Was there
anything else there? Some deeper feeling? Sure he felt sorry for her. Pity, but
that seemed insulting and the thought made him feel guilty again.

The cell phone on the truck seat
rang.

“Hello,” Clay said, knowing who
was on the other end.

“What are you doing?” Cy’s voice
was calm, without inflection and clearly annoyed that Clay had not called.

“Wish I knew.” Clay had been
expecting this call as the distance between himself and Savannah and his
brother grew. Taking a deep breath he continued, “She wasn’t there, at the
truck stop.”

“Oh. Sorry. I know you were
counting on seeing her.”

“No, it’s not that,
Cy…something’s not right.”

“Not right? What does that mean?”

“She got in a car with a
stranger…”

“Clay,
we
were strangers
this morning. She got in the truck with us. Might be a pattern here, you
think?”

“Maybe, but it doesn’t seem
right. The voice mail she left was, well, she seemed scared, frightened like
something had happened.”

 “Something did happen,” Cy
was trying to be patient with his brother, but it was a struggle. “She had a
bad fight with her father, bad enough that she had to leave for her safety.
Then two strangers…you and me…take her to a truck stop in a strange city and
leave her.”

“That was because…”

“I know, because she was going to
Canada. I know. Sounds silly but I felt for her too, Clay. It was silly but
kind of innocent. Couldn’t laugh at something like that. I get it.

But now she is gone. Probably
found her ride to Canada, or at least to some place closer than Savannah,
Georgia. That’s the way it is.”

Clay was silent, allowing Cy’s
words to sink in. They made sense to a point.

“The voice mail, Cy. She was
scared, and she trusted us and called. Can’t let that go. She was counting on
us because we offered her a place to stay.”

“Clay,” Cy’s voice sounded tired.
“We are strangers, and she is a stranger to us. I think you are carrying this
too far.”

“I know, Cy. One more thing
though. At the truck stop, I talked to some people who said she got into some
trouble with a trucker and another fella had to save her. She left with that
guy, but no one knew if she left voluntarily.”

“Sooo…?” Cy said, asking for the
point his brother was making too slowly.

“So, she was scared. She got into
trouble with a trucker who tried to force her into his rig. Another guy comes
along and saves her from the trucker. She leaves with him later. But in
between, she called us, Cy. She was counting on us being there. She trusted us.
I don’t think she has too many people to trust.”

“No, I don’t reckon she does.”
Clay could not see the look of complete resignation and even partial
understanding flicker across his brother’s face. “Well, I guess you need to do
what you’re doing brother. Seems right, I guess. I’ll keep things going here.
You keep in touch,” As an afterthought, Cy added, “Be careful, Clay. We don’t
know what this is all about.”

“I will. You too.” The brothers
disconnected simultaneously and the road noise filled the pickup’s cab.

Despite the passion of his
argument in explaining things to his brother, Clay’s thoughts were a turmoil of
emotion. The only thing he knew for sure was that he had to make sure Lyn was
all right. If she had made up her mind to take the brothers up on their offer,
why had she then left with the man in the Chevy? She had had the trouble with
Henry. Why would she get into a car with another stranger? If he was the man
that had saved her from Henry, maybe she trusted him, but why would she have
called Clay? It was a question he could not answer for himself, but the memory
of her recorded voice sounding confused and maybe frightened, settled it. At
the least, he would have to make sure she was safe. Clay’s head pounded at
trying to sort it out any further than that.

An older model Chevrolet Impala
got onto an exit ramp up ahead. It was only about ten years old, but Clay
didn’t have much to go on. He followed the car up the ramp and into a gas
station. Pulling through the station, he watched the car.

The Chevrolet pulled up to the
gas pumps and an older couple got out. The man went to the rear of the car to
pump gas. The woman went inside the convenience store.

Clay pulled through the lot and
back onto the road. Driving down the entrance ramp to the interstate, he
accelerated quickly. No telling how many cars had gone by while he had gone up
the exit. He had to move quickly to catch up and scan cars as he headed west on
I-16 towards Atlanta. The largest city in the state seemed as good a direction
as any.

Tools rattled in the bed of the
truck. Cy was going to be really pissed if he didn’t wrap this up soon. There
was a limit to a brother’s patience.

Bob Shaklee kicked his shoes off
and stretched out on a hard bed in the Colonial Hotel in the center of Everett.
It was a hell of a lot nicer than the StarLite motel in Roydon, but a long ways
from the Ritz in Atlanta. He had worked a case involving threats to the
governor once that had taken him to Atlanta. The governor’s office had put him
up at the Ritz Carlton in the upscale Buckhead neighborhood, instead of the
usual mid-market, garden variety hotel the state generally provided. But today
the hard bed and austere room provided by the Colonial were fine with him.

Pulling his cell phone from the
case on his belt, he leaned back on the pillow and punched ‘Home’ on the speed
dial. A smile that erased the weariness and unpleasant memories of the day
spread across his face when his sixteen year old daughter answered.

“Whatcha doin’, Punkin’?”

“Daddy! Hey, mom. Dad’s on the
phone.” The background noises coming from his home melted the memories of the
day.

****

In a room on the fourth floor of
the Colonial, Sharon Price stood leaning on the window frame and staring out
onto the quiet court square of Everett. The fourth floor was the highest floor
in the hotel. That made it the smoking floor, which suited Price completely.

She inhaled deeply from the
cigarette in her hand and let the smoke wisp away into the night air through
the open window. Slowly the thoughts of the day faded. The images of the bodies
of the old man and young girl receded from the front of her brain where they
had been seared in place all day.

There was no phone call for her
to make. She was alone. Sharon Price had grown up in a backwater part of
Georgia, not much different from Pickham County. Change the names of the towns;
you would hardly be able to distinguish one from the other. Her mother had died
of breast cancer at an early age. Her father had been there when she went away
to the University of Georgia in Athens. He was a good father who had done his
best to raise a daughter on his own. She had come home for Christmas during her
sophomore year and then never saw her father again.

Just after the New Year, he had
been working late in the convenience store he owned on the outskirts of the
small town they lived in. It was a town much like Everett. Someone had come in
while he was closing and shot her father in the chest. Robbing the till, the
killer managed to make off with a grand total of three hundred seventy-four
dollars. He was never caught.

 Her father lay bleeding out
on the floor. They said it probably took over an hour for him to die. He wasn’t
found until the next morning when a local farmer came in for coffee.

After the funeral, Sharon Price
changed her major at the university from accounting to criminal justice. She landed
a job with the GBI after graduation and worked her way into investigations.

The cigarette smoke drifted
through the window into the night air letting the day’s memories drift out with
it until the room began to chill. Stubbing the butt in the small plastic
ashtray that had not been cleaned after the previous tenant, she tugged the
window shut and pulled the musty drapes. Time for bed. There was another long
day ahead tomorrow.

****

Anxious frustration pushed Clay
on his quest, and his foot pushed the accelerator of the pickup. Scanning side
to side and ahead, he looked for any vehicle that might resemble an older
Chevrolet sedan. Having no idea where to go, he had been driving around east
Georgia, searching the major highways and interstates for the old Chevy.
Eventually he had decided to just head west from Savannah towards Atlanta, two
hundred and fifty miles away. It wasn’t north, but it was a central hub for
interstates and highways. Anyone traveling very far in any direction through
the state might well pass through Atlanta. And there were several truck stops.
He would search them all if necessary. Besides, it was still in Georgia, still
home, or close to it.

Like Lyn, his backcountry Pickham
County roots might make him seem naïve, but he was not stupid. He knew that
this was a useless chase. He had stopped trying to understand what compelled
him to search and just accepted it.

Still, the odds of finding the
girl were…well, finding her wasn’t very likely. He would give it another day,
no more. Then, having fulfilled whatever sense of obligation it was that urged
him on and, hopefully, shed of the guilt and sense of responsibility that had
preyed on his mind all day, he would have to turn back to his brother and the
job in Savannah.

A light rain had begun to fall,
and the drops of rain on the sides of the windshield reflected the lights from
the cars around him. Some of the drops reflected red and blue light, as if from
a prism.

Clay glanced at the mirror while
traffic around him slowed. The police car, emergency strobe lights flashing,
roared up to his bumper.

Great. The perfect end to the
day.

He guided the car through the
slowing traffic and moved onto the shoulder of the interstate. The Georgia
State Patrol cruiser followed. As they pulled off the road, the rest of the
traffic picked up speed, resuming their trips. Clay waited impatiently in the
truck, both hands on the wheel, as the Trooper approached carefully, flashlight
shining into and around the truck’s interior.

****

Spray from the semi rig he was
passing covered the windshield, temporarily blinding Leyland Torkman. He turned
the wipers on with a jerk and continued passing the truck. Easing back into the
right lane, he signaled carefully and put some distance between the Chevy and
the big rig.

The bright pinkish lights of the
I-95 and I-26 intersection glowed garishly ahead in the rainy mist. Knowing
that police communications between states were notoriously unreliable, and that
in the unlikely event anyone had reported his abduction of the girl, it would
take hours for that information to make its way to local police, even in an
adjacent state, Lylee had left Georgia and proceeded up the coast of South
Carolina. The old car whirred steadily along on the wet pavement. Contentment
flowed in a loop from him into the car, to the wheels splashing on the
pavement, back through the chassis and frame into the seat, and into him. It
was a pleasant sensation.

Turning his head, he reached out
and placed his hand on the thigh of the pretty brunette. After several hours in
the car with him, she had overcome the initial shock and fear. She stiffened
and looked at him with defiance.

A smile spread across his face at
that. He moved his hand up and down her thigh as she straightened as much as
she could in a symbolic effort to resist him.

Defiance. That would change, he
thought, smiling more broadly at her. Before he was done, she would be
whimpering at the realization that there was to be no salvation. He would take
his time. She was special. The end would be special. He would see to that.

Blue and red emergency lights
ahead signaled an accident on I-95 that had traffic slowed at the giant
interchange of the two major traffic corridors. There was no thought, just
reaction as his planned direction changed. Smoothly, Lylee guided the car onto
the ramp from I-95 to I-26 towards Columbia. He would not be slowed, or
possibly stopped, while the law muddled around him at a traffic accident.
Merging into traffic, he settled again in the seat and the contentment returned.

****

Swallowing the scream down and
pushing the fear deep inside, Lyn glared at the man touching her. She had been
staring through the rain speckled glass, head resting against the window when
his touch had startled her. As she had earlier during their ‘pit stop’, she
sensed that it was important for her immediate survival to show some
resistance, to challenge him just enough to show that she was different, but
not enough to anger him. It was a fine line to walk, and a mental effort that
heightened the fatigue she felt, but she had no choice.

Hours ago she had forced out of
her mind all of the ‘what ifs’. What if she hadn’t had a fight with her father?
What if she hadn’t taken the ride to the truck stop? What if she hadn’t gotten
into the truck with Henry, or into this car with…with whoever this was?

For now, she had to live with
what was happening and survive. Most of all survive. The thought of Clay and
the call she had made to him on Big Leon’s phone was a guilty memory to be
pushed down inside for now. She was where she was. There had never been any
dramatic rescues or heroes in her life. She expected none now.

****

Sitting on the edge of his bed,
stripped to his underwear, George Mackey cradled a dirty tumbler holding three
full fingers of bourbon in his hand. The thought of calling his ex-wife and
asking to speak to the girls crossed his mind. He considered it for a moment
and then pushed it aside. He had no desire to fight tonight, and a call to
Darlene would inevitably lead to an argument. Besides, it was late and the
girls were probably in bed.