Eyes of the Predator (9 page)

“Just checking us in to the
honeymoon suite, dear.”

The grin on his face made her
tremble uncontrollably.

The lot of the motel was nearly
deserted. Grass and weeds crowded the gravel at the edges and grew up the rear
and sides of the old cinder block exterior. Two other cars were parked in front
of rooms. One near the small office, and the other midway down the length of
the motel. A fast food bag and several beer cans sat on the ground beside the
nearest car’s passenger door.

Pushing a plastic button on the
metal frame of the office door, he heard an out of place doorbell chime.
Through the glass, he could see someone stirring in the small room behind the
desk. After a minute, a bleary-eyed man with bedhead stumbled out to the desk
pulling an overall strap over his shoulder. He bent slightly and peered through
the dirty glass. After several seconds of examination, he decided that it was
safe enough and reached down to press a button under the desk. A loud buzz
sounded and the office door unlocked.

There was no greeting from
either.

“Need a room,” the thin man said.

“How long?”

“For the night.”

“All night?”

He nodded, and motel man clerk
said, “Thirty-five.”

He took cash from his front
pocket and counted out the bills. Motel man reached behind him for a key on an
old peg board.

“At the other end of the
building.”

The man shrugged and replaced the
key he had started to retrieve and handed over a different one.

Taking the key, he turned and
walked through the door into the night. Motel man watched him through the
glass. Sitting behind the wheel, he waited. After a minute, the man dimmed the
lights and went back to the room behind the desk. It was not unusual for the
StarLite’s customers to want their privacy. Best to give the customers what
they wanted.

When the motel desk clerk was out
of sight, he cranked the engine and drove slowly through the lot to the other
end of the building. He backed into the space in front of the room so that the
car’s license plate was not visible and so that the passenger door was away
from the office and the possibly prying eyes of the night clerk. Parked in this
position, he could easily and quickly move the girl from the car to the room.

Walking to the room door, he
pulled the large plastic fob with the single key attached from his pocket. The
door opened and he did a brief visual check. Taking the small trash can from
beside the bed, he propped the door open. He did not turn on the light.

He walked outside to the car and
glanced back at the office. The motel clerk was not visible.

With a quick motion, the
passenger door was swung open, and he was leaning over the girl. She cringed
and trembled but could make no sound. The knife was out and the tie wraps cut
with a quick flick of his wrist, hands then feet. Another flick and the duct
tape was cut and pulled roughly from her face, strands of her hair clinging to
the tape where it had circled her head. He could probably have carried her
bound and gagged into the room and no one in Roydon would have noticed, or
cared if they had noticed, but years of careful practice had taught him not to
take chances. No need to arouse the curiosity of anyone who might have
accidentally noticed them. 

 With strength deceptive for
his size, he jerked her up and out of the car. The movements were so quick and
the girl in such a state of shock, that there was no time or thought to escape.
It would not have mattered anyway. She would not get away.

This was the moment of danger,
moving his prey to the killing ground. If she cried out or struggled, the game
might take a drastic turn for the worse, for him at least. But he had mastered
the art of control, physical and psychological. Instinct, cunning, or skill.
Whatever the mechanism, he was in control and he knew it. More importantly, she
knew it.

The girl stepped quietly as
directed from the car. He was close, whispering in her ear. They might have
been lovers, except for the knifepoint pressing deeply under her breast. The
parking lot was dark, just the light from the neon sign casting a glow at the
other end of the lot.

“Just get through this with me,
honey. Help me. Then I will let you go.”

Somehow, she was convinced. She
wanted to be convinced. Deep inside, she needed to be convinced, to believe. He
just had needs. She could get through it. Despite what she had witnessed
earlier, the old man was an accident. She would survive and hide this deep away
somewhere and never think about it again. Right now, just survive.

She nodded quietly. He saw the
hope in her eyes and couldn’t help a small smile. She smiled back a little. It
thrilled and aroused him. Hopeful but helpless.

The whole process had taken less
than thirty seconds.

A final glance around the lot and
at the office to see if anyone had observed, and he closed the door. This was
just an habitual overabundance of caution. In places like Roydon, it was
unlikely that anyone would deliberately notice anything that anyone else was
doing. Noticing could be unhealthy.

Bolting the door, he turned and
gazed with a thrill into the pleading, terrified eyes. A long, deep sigh
escaped his chest and hissed through his teeth.

There, snug between the two
brothers in the pick-up, Lyn felt the fatigue set in. Not just the fatigue of
the day, it was the bone weary numbness of a life of empty horizons and
desperation.

Accepting the moment, and feeling
warm and somewhat safe between the two young men, strangers though they were,
she felt about as secure as she ever had. Her knees were close together, and
she sat as upright as she could to avoid physical contact, but that was
impossible in the closeness of the truck cab.

The wind rushing by the window
reminded her of the wind blowing against her bedroom window earlier and the
confrontation with her father, the hulking man who filled their lives with
misery. She shook her head trying to drive the memory away and the picture of
her tearful mother firmly pushing her out of the house.

“You warm enough?”

She turned her head slightly. The
young man’s voice brought her back to the here and now. It was the one called
Clay.

“What?” she said softly.

“You warm enough? You shuddered.
Thought maybe you were getting cold. We can turn the heat up some if you want.”

“No, I’m fine,” she replied
staring out the window into the pre-sunrise dark. Headlights approached and
passed on the southbound side of the interstate in a streaming blur. It was
hypnotic.

 Lyn closed her eyes. She
was tired.

The two brothers exchanged looks
over her head as Lyn leaned unknowingly, on Clay’s shoulder. Small breathing
sounds escaped her partially open mouth as she drifted off.

“She sleeping?” Cy, the older
brother and driver whispered.

“Reckon so,” Clay whispered back
with an eyebrow shrug.

“Gonna be a long day for her.”

“Yeah. Looks like it’s been a
long night too.”

The pickup rushed on in the dark. The brothers sat
quietly, staring up the highway and listening to the girl’s soft snores. 

Pungent diesel fumes from the
generator on the county’s fire department light truck hung heavily in the damp
night air. The garish white light seemed to turn all color into shades of gray.
Even the blood pooled around the shriveled, lifeless form of Harold Sims was
just a darker charcoal gray seeping into the gravel.

The noisy hum of the generator
drowned out the night sounds. The light and droning white noise gave the little
churchyard an isolated, surreal feel.

Two firefighters stood by the
light truck drinking coffee and talking, watching what was going on. Every now
and then, one would adjust the throttle on the light generator.

George Mackey stood beside his
pickup ‘preserving the crime scene’. The assignment left him little to do in
reality. Sandy Davies was the primary on the call and would handle all county
follow-up. Of course, there were the Georgia State Patrol troopers who had
gathered at the scene when the call went out. Standing, huddled around one of
their high-speed pursuit cars, they talked quietly. A couple of them smoked.
Their voices were hushed, almost reverent as if they were in church, or at a
funeral. They also had no real function here, but what the hell, you didn’t
find an old man dead in a churchyard every night, at least not in this part of
Georgia, not in Pickham County. Mr. Sims’ lonely, painful demise in the dark
parking lot would be a remembered thing in these parts. Deputies and troopers
on duty would spend a lot of time talking about the crime scene and their
presence that night, even if they had no part in the subsequent investigation.
They weren’t happy about Harold Sims’ death, but he was dead and being there was
definitely something.

A deputy or state trooper in
Pickham County might go years, even his whole career, without handling one
murder. Accidental hunting shootings, sawmill accidents, traffic deaths, bar
fights, yes, but a for real, stabbed through the kidney, bled to death in the
dust, whodunit murder? Those didn’t come around often, maybe never again. The
death of Mr. Harold Sims, black male, five feet-eight, thin build, seventy-nine
years of age would be remembered.

An investigator from the Georgia
Bureau of Investigation stood with Sandy asking him questions. Occasionally, he
would gesture at the body, the crime scene, or the woods, and Sandy would
respond in short, direct sentences. It was clear that Sandy didn’t care for the
intervention from the GBI, but it was policy with the sheriff’s department in
Pickham County that all homicides were referred to the GBI. It was that way in
many rural counties, and it made sense. They handled these cases routinely.

The GBI man gave a nod at
something Sandy said and walked towards George.

“How you doing, deputy?”

“Had better nights,” George
replied, still leaning against his pickup. “Don’t get many of these out here.”
He nodded towards Mr. Sims’ form still lying in the dust.

The GBI man turned his head
slightly and followed George’s gaze. “Yeah, me too.” He turned back to George
and put his hand out.

“Bob Shaklee, GBI.”

“George Mackey.” George returned
the quick handshake.

“This one’s a puzzle. No apparent
reason for someone to take out Mr. Sims. He and his wife heard noises, he comes
through the woods to check it out, and then he’s dead. She never sees or hears
anything from him again. No scream, no shouts, nothing. The church is locked up
tight, and there’s no sign of forced entry anywhere. But he stumbled on something
out here in the dark. Something bad, but no sign of what. No damage to the
building. No way to make out tire tracks in the gravel. Nothing.”

“Except Mr. Sims,” George said
nodding again toward the body.

Shaklee looked over at the body.
“Yeah, that’s going to be a tough situation. Mr. Sims, what’s left of him, is
the only evidence we have. Family’s not gonna get the body back for a while.
We’ll have to take it to Savannah and have the medical examiner do the autopsy.
There may be some evidence on the body. Fibers, hairs, something. The wound
will tell us something about the weapon at least.”

“It was a knife, a big one. Not
too hard to figure that one out, and tough as this might be for you, it’s a
hell of a lot tougher for old man Sims, I’d say.” George looked at the ground
and spit a stream of tobacco juice to the side.

Shaklee stood quietly, letting
the acid in George’s comment fade away into the night.

“Sorry,” George said looking up.
“A little edgy I guess. Like I said, don’t get many of these around here. Shit,
we don’t get
any
of these around here.”

“I understand,” Shaklee said,
nodding somberly. “Guess we have our work cut out for us.”

“George. Call me George.”

“Okay, George. I’m Bob. Let’s get
to it then. Deputy Davies said you know the county as well as anyone.”

“Probably true. Been here all my
life.”

“Any ideas? Who might do
something like this? Got some bad folks in the area? Drug dealers? Bad kids?
Anything or anyplace we can start looking.”

George thought of the Gantry boys
out and about that night, but no, they weren’t this mean. Whoever did this was
just mean. Really bad, not just teenage drinkers.

“We have our share of bad folks,
and there are some druggies in the county. Same as everywhere I expect. This
doesn’t seem to fit them though.”

“Why’s that?” Shaklee asked
letting George think it through until he was ready to say his piece.

“Seems too professional,” George
continued slowly pondering the scene. “If they’d beat him, hit him with a tire
iron, even shot him, might make more sense. But that knife wound, from the
back, through the kidney. Seems like he was ambushed and then executed. Just
one wound, least that’s all I saw. If it was a local knifing, I’d expect it to
be real sloppy, multiple wounds, a lot of them, some defensive wounds too, but
non-lethal. Maybe one final death wound once he had weakened. But messy. Know
what I mean?” George looked over at Shaklee.

The GBI man examined George with
a bit more respect.

““That’s pretty observant,
George. Yeah, one well placed knife thrust. Seems pretty professional.”

“One more thing,” George added.

“What’s that?”

“Professional but not military. I
think the perp intended to cause maximum pain under the circumstances,” George
let that sink in for a moment. “Large knife, through the kidney. He didn’t cut
the throat and trachea to kill and prevent Mr. Sims from making noise at the
same time. One thrust, right through the kidney, back to front. The shock and
the pain must have been terrible. I think that’s what he wanted. He’s a mean
asshole.”