Venator Page 11

  Furman dropped his box to the ground and quickly placed two aerosol cans into the deep pockets of his camouflage pants. He carried a third in his hand and left the rest as the crowd swept around him.

  Eric saw that Provo was the closest to the buyer. Then the folding table underneath of him collapsed and Eric fell under a stampede of running feet.

  Wheatley and Emily made it back to the burgundy van ahead of the crowds.

  "Alright gentlemen," Wheatley said to the techies who manned the surveillance equipment. "Eyes and ears open."

  Provo wrapped her fist around the buyer’s tree trunk of a bicep. The man turned to her with an awkward smile. She was pretty sure she had gotten out that she was a federal agent by the time he sprayed her in the face.

  56

  Where are they?" Wheatley cursed.

  "I don’t know sir," The taller tech said. "Detective Williams appears to be in the parking lot somewhere. I think he lost his earpiece. And Detective DeJesus’ camera is out. The only thing I’m getting out of his mic in something that sounds like thunder."

  "That’s the sound of running," Wheatley said. "He must have dropped his mic too. What about Agent Provo."

  "Well, it looked like she grabbed the buyer then her lens went foggy and now we can’t see anything."

  "What about audio?"

  "She’s still transmitting. It’s a lot of voices in the background. Wait! A car door just opened. A loud thunk. The door is closing. Wait... wait. The car is starting up!"

  "Is she beside a car?"

  "No sir, she’s inside the car. The surrounding commotion is much more muffled now. All I can hear is the engine."

  "Can’t you raise her on the earpiece?"

  "I’ve been trying sir, but she’s not responding."

  Emily looked into Wheatley’s ashen face and mumbled, "He’s got her."

  57

  I don’t think I understand officer?" Furman said to the State Trooper.

  "There is the possibility of another abduction by the I-95 kidnapper sir, we’ve been asked to have anyone fitting a certain physical profile be stopped and have their vehicle searched."

  In fact the trooper had already gone through twenty vehicles and the road block was still growing. The last he heard, it was 5 miles of bumper to bumper traffic. 5 miles of a lot of white males, dark hair, and wearing a black shirt.

  "Please sir," the trooper reiterated. "If I could just have you pull into the median strip, we’ll have you on your way shortly.

  Furman pulled his hearse into the grass between the north and southbound lanes of interstate 95. The city of Richmond rose up around him, skyscrapers and industrial buildings, the Medical College of Virginia in the distance, interstate 64 east just a whisper away. He stepped out of the car and thanked God when the trooper didn’t frisk him. He still had two cans of BZ gas in his pockets. He’d dropped the third carrying the fed to his car. And thank goodness he hadn’t brought the duffle bag today either. The trooper was being very thorough as he rummaged around in the cab of the hearse.

  Furman thought about the woman in the back and how she reminded him a bit of his sister, Phoebe. Why, if he stared at her long enough, his vision would take on that watery consistency and she might even become Phoebe. But Furman shook off the feeling, it was clear he was in trouble, the trooper wanted to have a look in the back of the hearse.

  Furman opened the back door and casually scanned the interior.

  "Looks alright," the trooper said. "Let’s have a look inside that coffin."

  Furman swallowed hard. There was no way out this time. The median strip was choked with vehicles and cops. He couldn’t escape.

  "Now what do we have here," the trooper asked.

  Furman gritted his teeth and for the first time in a long time, he wished he had the scythe nearby. He thumbed the latch on the coffin and his body tensed, ready to explode into the trooper. Right index finger into the eye and left hand against the throat. If he was lucky, the moaning cop could be deftly shoved into the back of the hearse while the other cops were busy searching the parking lot of vehicles around him and Furman would be on his way home with two toys, not just one.

  The trooper showed Furman a few strands of blonde hair that were inside the otherwise empty coffin.

  Furman feigned a shy smile. "My girlfriend," he muttered.

  "She’s one of those?" The trooper asked impartially, closing the coffin and the back door of the hearse.

  "What can I say, I’m a lucky man," Furman smiled.

  58

  The FBI Regional Headquarters in Richmond was a mad house. Emily Sanderson, Jay Will and Eric DeJesus sat in SAC Tatum’s office, waiting for him to return.

  "I feel like I’m sitting in the fucking principal’s office," grumbled Jay Will.

  "We did everything we could. Provo should have known better," countered Eric.

  "What? Just because she’s a woman she shouldn’t have gone after the killer by herself?" Emily shot back.

  "No," Eric fumed. "She should of waited for back up. It doesn’t matter if she’s a woman or not."

  Tatum kicked open his office door. Jay Will jumped in his seat.

  "Well, that couldn’t have gone any worse!" He roared, slamming his desk. "The media is all over this fucking thing and they're calling for my head on a platter! So, I want some answers now!"

  Wheatley sulked in behind Tatum and found a seat.

  "Well?" Tatum demanded. "Who wants to start?"

  "Sir," Wheatley began. "Agent Provo witnessed a money drop with a known Russian weapons dealer and a man fitting our killer’s profile. Somehow, the Russian made or undercover people and caused a panic. Detective Williams and DeJesus tried to follow the Russian but lost him in the confusion. Agent Provo elected to stay with the suspect and..."

  "Who was supposed to be spotting for this disaster?" Tatum spat.

  "I was sir. But I had Ms. Sanderson with me and when the commotion broke out, I made the decision to get her to safety before following our suspects. Plus, I thought it would be easier to track them from the van using our pole cam and the body cameras. But, there was too much confusion, too many bodies. We just lost them. The road blocks went up very quickly thanks to a combined effort by the Virginia State Police, Richmond and Henrico County law enforcement. As you know traffic was snarled in downtown Richmond for," Wheatley looked at his watch. "Well, going on 8 hours."

  "Sir?" Emily said. "This whole thing is my fault. I talked Agent Wheatley into letting me inside with him. I wanted to gather some intel on the Hell’s Angels and a few local gang bangers that were supposed to be attending the event. If I hadn’t been a liability, Agent Wheatley would have been able to help Agent Provo and this whole thing would be over now."

  Tatum sighed, "Are we sure it was our boy?"

  "Yes sir," Wheatley said. "We found an aerosol can used for distributing the BZ gas in the parking lot, no prints unfortunately. We already have analysts running the surveillance footage from today. We’re hoping for an ID confirmation of Agent Provo and her abductor as well as the vehicle make, model and tag number. It's only a matter of time before we bring him in."

  An analyst came rushing into the office. "Sir? Richmond City Police just received this fax. It came from a local Kinkos on Main Street."

  SAC Tatum took the sheet of paper and read aloud, "You cannot cheat Death, so said the Hunter, You stare in gape-jawed amazement and wonder, Death is next and will be torn asunder, All that will be left is, the Hunter."

  He dropped the sheet on his desk and looked at Agent Wheatley soberly, "Well, time may be something that Agent Provo has very little of."

  59

  Provo sat handcuffed to a wooden chair in the sparse kitchen of what appeared to her to be a plantation house. The man who sat across from her, she assumed, was the I-95 killer or Death or the Hunter or whatever he was calling himself. The killer looked exhausted, it must of been a long car ride. Provo’s back was in knots.

  "What’s you name
?" She managed.

  The killer looked up from his bowl of macaroni casserole and grunted.

  "Your name. What is it?" she said a bit more diplomatically.

  The killer stuck his face back into the bowl and ate greedily.

  "My name is Mary," She tried. "Where are we? Is this your place?"

  The big man finished his meal by licking the bowl clean. He pushed away from the table and the wooden chair made a sickening screeeeech on the floor. Provo fought off the chill on her spine and watched her abductor drop his empty bowl in a bucket.

  "I’m going to do the dishes. You hungry?" He mumbled.

  "Finally," Provo thought. "Yes, I am pretty hungry."

  He ignored her and spooned some macaroni casserole out of a tupperware container and onto a plate for Provo. He then placed the cold meal in front of her.

  "I’ll feed you when I get back," he said.

  "What is it?" she asked, casually.

  "Katie," he grumbled, heading out the back door.

  Provo spent the next half hour waiting for the killer to return and deciding exactly what part of the casserole in front of her was made from the dead girl.

  60

  I think my eyes are going to bug out of my head," Jay Will muttered as he stood up from his chair. "I’m going to get some more coffee. You guys want any?"

  "No thanks," Emily smiled tucking her bare feet under her.

  "I’m okay," Eric yawned.

  "I could use the exercise. I’ll go with you," Wheatley said, getting up.

  Emily rubbed her eyes and tried to refocus on the flickering computer screen. This was the third time they’d gone through the surveillance footage looking for some clue as to what had happened to Provo. Eric blinked his tired eyes, stretched and looked around the quiet conference room. There were only a handful of agents manning the fort. He checked his watch, 3 in the morning, no wonder.

  "Hey look at that," Emily said.

  "Huh? What?"

  "There in the top corner. Is that guy carrying something?"

  "I don’t see him, enlarge it."

  Emily clicked her mouse and a fuzzy figure appeared, walking away from the camera and into the parking lot.

  "It sure looks like he’s lugging something," Eric said.

  "Or somebody," Emily added clicking the mouse again. Now the enlarged figure was even more blurry as it hunched over beside a black vehicle.

  "Pause that," Eric said. "Can we..."

  Emily was already clearing up the frame. "White male, dark top. That’s him! That’s the guy I saw Provo going after. Looks like he’s wearing, fatigue pants?"

  "I think so, and is that... ?" Eric said, pointing at the screen.

  "A hand?" Emily finished. She clicked again. "It is, he’s carrying a body and putting it in the back of that van."

  "That’s awfully low to the ground for a van. Can we get the plate?"

  "Hang on... It’s only a partial."

  "Hey!" Eric yelled, "Can somebody run this plate, please?"

  "Eric?" Emily moaned as the video moved forward.

  "Hang on," he said as an agent came over.

  "Eric!" she said more emphatically.

  "What is it?"

  "It’s not a van," Emily managed, her face losing its color. "It’s a hearse."

  61

  Emily spent a sleepless night pouring through the Colonial Heights, Richmond, Charlotte, Virginia and North Carolina State Police road block field interviews searching for the black hearse.

  The conference room had come to life at about a quarter of four. Faxes were humming and fingers were pounding on keyboards, cell phones began to ring and the noise level steadily increased. SAC Tatum arrived at 4:15am with his hair disheveled and wearing the same wrinkled suit from the day before. He talked quietly with Wheatley, who was on about his twentieth cup of coffee. Eric was somehow managing to dose during the racket and Jay Will was in the bathroom suffering from too much coffee.

  "Finally," Emily muttered. "A black hearse was stopped by Colonial Heights Police during the roadblock after the Southpark mall kidnapping."

  "Agent Wheatley?" she yelled over the noise. Eric wook up in the chair beside her. Tatum and Wheatley walked quickly over.

  "What is it?" Wheatley asked.

  "Take a look," she said. "I found our boy. F. Frye, driving a black hearse, North Carolina resident. Dammit, a lot of this has been left blank."

  "What is the interviewing officer’s name?"

  "It’s right here, Darryl Jones"

  "I want that moron in my office by six," Tatum seethed.

  62

  Provo awoke in what appeared to be a child’s room. She was handcuffed to the headboard of the bed she was laying in. There was another bed that had obviously been slept in, a small child-sized rocking chair and a large, ugly chest of drawers. Provo’s head swam in a wave of disorientation.

  She remembered the weapons show. Taking off after the buyer. Waking up in the killer’s kitchen, had she fallen asleep at the table? Yes, she was waiting for him to come back and feed her... a chill ran down her spine. Her stomach began to twist in knots. How was she going to get out of this?

  Provo forced herself to remain calm. It would only be a matter of time until they found her, surely they caught this sicko dragging her out of the complex on tape. She made herself breathe. It was going to be just fine. She just had to figure this man out so that she could stay alive.

  63

  Tatum was still grilling the cop. Emily looked down at the killer’s business card like it was a treasure map. It was seemingly the only thing Officer Darryl Jones had done right and the sad part was, it had been by accident.

  "You guys want to give me some space?" she said to the men clustered around her computer. They all backed up a step or two but as she punched in the website address listed on the card, they crept forward again.

  The website had a laughing skull with, "The Halloween House of Death," emblazoned on the main screen. Emily clicked on the skull and a directory came up. A picture of a skull mask filled the left hand side of the screen with a price blinking under it of $49.99 while the right had open fields where you entered your name, address, credit card information and hat size.

  "Can you believe this? They look so real!" Jay Will said while squeezing in beside Eric.

  "I wonder if they are?" Wheatley asked.

  "You think they might be?" Eric added.

  "I wouldn’t be surprised," Wheatley replied. "Pedophiles often put photos of the kids they abuse online. Why can’t killers put their trophies online too?"

  "This is disgusting," Emily frowned.

  A smile crept across Wheatley’s face, "Go ahead and track down this guy’s IP address. We can be there in time for brunch."

  64

  He had been staring at her for over an hour and she let him. Something in his manic eyes told her that to speak would be to sign her own death warrant. So she laid still, handcuffed to the bed. Her back was killing her.

  Somewhere during their silence, rain began to tic-tac on the roof. From the corner of her eye, Provo could make out a low rolling fog coming in off the river. It crept in between the trees and swallowed a round structure buried halfway down in the ground. Soon, what appeared to be a large outhouse disappeared in the thick soup and the fog began reaching for the house.

  The big man sat Indian style on the other bed. His eyes seemed to focus and then glaze over. Occasionally he would scratch a rouge itch or re-adjust his seat on the bed. Finally his mouth opened. To Provo it seemed to be in slow motion, longs strands of saliva framing his thin chapped lips.

  "Phoebe?" the killer questioned.

  Provo went with it, "Yes?"

  "I’m sorry," he whispered.

  "It’s alright."

  "I miss you."

  "I miss you too," and who the hell was Phoebe? One of his victims? Someone close to him? Both? "What have you been doing since I saw you last?" she tried.

  "I got a job at a funeral h
ome."

  "Really? That’s great."

  "It was only part time. I didn’t need much money."

  "How long have you been here?"

  "I didn’t leave for a long time. I was afraid of the Indians in the woods. But not anymore, now they’re afraid of me."

  "Why is that?"

  "They know what I can do to them."

  Provo fought off a shudder. "Where do you go when you do leave?"

  "I like to travel. Make new friends."

  "Is that right?"

  "I’ve done some really bad things, Phoebe."

  "What have you done?"

  "I killed some people," the big man said, his lip quivering. "I killed a lot of people."

  "Why?"

  "Because I wanted to. Because they were pretty. Like birds, and deer. People are so pretty."

  "You’re right. We’re all pretty."

  "Not me," the man muttered. "I’m scary. I even scare me sometimes. Like Dad. Sometimes I’m just like him."

  "Why was he scary?"

  "You know why. He used to scare you plenty too. Big dirty boots creaking down the hallway. That one floorboard was always so loud, remember? You always said it sounded like it was screaming."

  "I remember," she lied, trying to keep up with him.

  "But then you weren’t scared no more. You liked it. You liked him."

  Provo’s body tensed on the bed.

  "I had to do it. Just like you did. I only did it because you did it first, Phoebe. You did it first!"

  "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I take it all back," she tried, groping for a way out.

  "You just wanted Daddy to like you more than me!" The killer’s face was red as he screamed, "Well he didn’t! You know why Phoebe? You know why? Cause I got one of these!" The big man leapt off the bed and tore off his pants.