Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Redemption for Avery (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Ryker Townsend FBI Profiler Book 2) (6 page)

San Bernardino National Forest

Afternoon

Ryker Townsend

The trail system and the marshlands that surrounded where Lily’s body had been discovered were a hive of activity by the time Crowley and I arrived. Six cadaver dogs and their handlers had been deployed to search for human remains—three German Shepherds, a Golden Retriever, a border collie, and a Malinois.

The dogs were trekking over the terrain, running back and forth with their noses to the ground. If they found a high concentration of target odors, they would slow down and focus on a spot. Handlers called this behavior ‘in scent.’ When the dogs found a body, they would give their signal, usually by lying down at the location until their handler released them. Wherever dogs identified a possible site, a neon-orange flag on a metal stake marked the spot before the team would move on.

As I stood alongside Crowley on a ridge overlooking the body dump site, countless flags waved in the breeze. The sight chilled me.

“Oh my, God.” Lucinda’s voice broke with emotion. “I see more than thirty flags and the dogs are still working.”

Hutch and Cam joined us.

“Did you know it would be this bad?” Hutch directed his question to me.

My evidence recovery techs talked about my gut instincts and often questioned how I knew certain things. My stock answer of intuition or a gut feeling had worn thin, but no matter how much I trusted them, I couldn’t risk my career over a slip of the tongue.

“No. With all the missing girls, I thought we could get lucky and give closure to a few parents, but nothing like this.”

Along the periphery, forensic archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar to identify anomalies on flagged sites before they directed crews to excavate. Potential sites were marked for crews to dig and some bodies were in various stages of exhumation. Local and county sheriff’s personnel, state troopers, volunteers from the LAPD and other agents from the FBI field office had come to render assistance.

Body recovery of this magnitude and the painstaking identification process would take weeks. National and local news media would soon have a presence and turn our investigation into a living hell. My team and I had to brace for the long haul, but I didn’t want to lose sight of Avery’s and Lily’s cases. If they were killed by other UNSUBS, I didn’t want their cases to be shoved under an avalanche of forensics.

I wouldn’t forget them. I couldn’t.

I filled my lungs with mountain air and stared across the clearing until my eyes settled on something familiar in a stand of trees in the distance. One large pine had a distinctive broken branch I recognized. I wasn’t sure if I followed my instincts into those trees that I would find my way once I got under the thick canopy, but I had to try.

“I’ll be back,” I said to Crowley in a hushed tone. “Give me some time alone.”

“You got it.”

By late afternoon, I’d traversed a ridge that encircled the crime scene and followed a thin trail into a dense copse of pines. The shadows of elongated trunks stretched like tentacles into the growing murkiness of the forest.

Something drew me into this particular stand of trees. I did not falter and I couldn’t stop.

I came straight to a single tree and when my eyes searched the ground at the base, I knew I had found what I came for. I didn’t need confirmation from an investigation file to know I had discovered where Avery Reed’s broken body had been discovered by hikers, left to scavengers. Like Lily, there had been no attempt to hide the remains.

As sure as I was that I’d found the spot, I sensed she’d led me here.

“Hello, Avery,” I whispered. “We’re finding them, because of you. Is that why you came to me, to show where the others were?”

I knelt on the ground and grabbed a handful of soil. As the dirt slid through my grasp, I closed my eyes to draw her to me. When I heard the snap of a twig behind me, I reached for my Glock and spun to my feet, aiming my weapon into the gloom.

“Who’s there? Lucinda?”

“How did you know where the bastard dumped her body? He tossed her here like garbage.”

A man’s voice made my stomach lurch. I searched the shadows for anything that moved and aimed my Glock. It took me a moment to recognize the voice of Navy SEAL Sam ‘Mozart’ Reed. When he stepped from behind a tree with a broken twig in his hands, I lowered my weapon and let out the breath I’d been holding.

“What are you doing here?” I narrowed my eyes. “Are you following me?”

It unnerved me that he’d come too close without me realizing he was there, or maybe he’d been there before me. Either way, if he hadn’t deliberately snapped the twig, I never would’ve heard him.

“I had to make my own mark, to remember where they found her body.” He pointed to a tree, to a set of old gouges in its shredded bark, made by a knife long ago. “But you came straight here. Why is that, Agent Townsend?”

“I’ve taken an interest in your sister’s case. That’s why we came back. We found dozens of bodies.” I pointed back toward the clearing. “Avery’s case led my team to all those missing girls and young women. Families will have closure. Avery did that.”

He stared at me in silence with his lie-detector eyes.

“You’re not telling me the truth. Not the full truth, anyway. Why is that?” He wouldn’t let it go.

I holstered my weapon as I stared through the trees into the clearing where the bodies were being unearthed.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Mozart.”

When I looked around, Mozart was gone. I didn’t see him go and never heard another sound.

***

Dusk

By the time I returned to the crime scene, the dogs had stopped working and body recovery teams were setting up electric generators. They needed light to work into the night until they recovered every last body. I found Crowley and before I asked, she gave me the count.

“Thirty-four. We won’t be able to keep this from the media. They’re already camped out at the trailhead.”

“A glorious way to cap off the day.”

“There’s more,” she said.

“Yes, of course there is. What is it?”

“Sinead called. It seems the real Dennis Whitehall died at five years old. Lily’s teacher paid good money for his fake credentials, but he didn’t cover his tracks well enough to hide from our pit bull in glasses.”

“Didn’t the high school run a background check?” I felt a headache coming on and grabbed for the pills I kept in my uniform windbreaker.

“Sinead called the school and asked. They used his resume and references to make their decision and Dennis Whitehall doesn’t have a criminal record. Sinead dug deeper and found an anomaly with his fingerprints being in two databases.”

“So who is this guy? Why is he using an assumed name?”

“His real name is Wade Thomas Altamonte. He’s a registered sex offender, Ryker. Our teacher is a violent pedophile who likes teenage girls. Deputy Lovell is bringing him in for questioning. They’ll isolate him in an interview room until we get there.”

It took balls for a sex offender—flying under the radar of law enforcement with an assumed identity—to seek gainful employment in a high school. His credentials had to be good enough to work for the average background check. Had Lily gone to him after her father threw her out? If the girl threatened his safe haven in any way, Altamonte had a lot to lose, and that meant he had motive.

“I want everything we have on him.”

Big Bear Sheriff’s Station

Evening

Ryker Townsend

“The leeches are gathering. You ready for this?” Crowley asked.

I heaved a deep sigh when I saw the news media standing outside the building as we turned into the parking lot of the Big Bear Sheriff’s Station on Summit Boulevard.

“Make sure no one speaks to the press until we give the word,” I said. “Deputy Lovell strikes me as someone who likes the sound of his own voice.”

“He’d be the only one.” Crowley winced. “Let’s get this over with.”

She parked the Chevy Tahoe away from the milling crowd of talking heads and the bustle of cameramen staging from their news vans. All were vying for a juicy sound bite. Deputy Zander Lovell had detained Wade Thomas Altamonte in an interview room and he waited for our arrival.

Altamonte had a disturbing record of escalating crimes towards young, teenage girls, but instead of going into hiding after his last arrest, he brazenly changed his name to Dennis Whitehall and conjured the background of a high school teacher to insert his life into a target-rich environment.

Had he found a safe haven in Big Bear by accident or had he deliberately come to the resort town with reason?

“Hutch and Cam will report in tonight, no matter what time they get to the motel,” Crowley said as she turned off the engine.

“Good. No one will sleep anyway.”

My ERTs, Hutch and Cam, had stayed with our team’s medical examiner, Dr. Martinez, to handle the body recovery from the San Bernardino National Forest. They had thirty-four souls to identify. It would take a team of cross-jurisdiction law enforcement personnel to get the job done. The local FBI field office had established a call center to handle inquiries. Families of the missing were already calling in to beg for information and offer dental records.

Crowley kept her head down as she shoved through the news crews and I followed in her wake.

“Are you with the FBI?” A voice called out.

Once the questions started, it turned into a feeding frenzy.

“How many bodies were found today?”

“Is this the work of a serial killer?”

I waved my hand, didn’t make eye contact, and said, “No comment,” until I made it inside the building. Deputy Lovell stood by the lobby reception desk with a toothpick in his mouth and a grin on his face that made me nervous.

“Where do you have him?” I asked.

“Interrogation room three. Upstairs.” He hooked a thumb into the air, telling me where the second floor could be found in a two-story building.

“Has anyone spoken to him since he’s been in the box?”

“No. Well—” When the deputy scrunched his face, I braced for what he’d say. “I asked if he had dinner yet. After he said ‘no,’ I ordered pizzas. They should be here soon. You want in on that, it’ll cost you ten bucks, each.”

“He’s not eating until I say he does. Where’s observation? Crowley and I want to watch him before I go in.”

“Follow me.”

As we took the stairs to the second floor, Deputy Lovell told us they had arrested Dennis Whitehall, aka Wade Thomas Altamonte, before he left his home for an evening tutoring session with a local teenage girl, Alexis King. A deputy had been dispatched to find the girl.

“We read him his rights. With him not registering as a sex offender under his real name, we got him on enough violations to hold him. It could give us time to build a case against him for murder,” Lovell said, pointing his spent toothpick at me. “With this guy’s record and the fact that he lied about his name, he’s looking pretty good for Lily Rae’s killing. Don’t you think? Give us time and we could tie him to the others.”

I didn’t answer him. I had a question of my own.

“How long has he lived in Big Bear?”

“He moved here from Arkansas after they hired him. That’s been four years.”

The disappointment on my face must’ve shown. The deputy grinned.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“I know what you’re thinking. You think four years isn’t long enough for him to be linked to the older murders, the bodies they’re digging up.”

“You’re a mind reader.”

“What you don’t know is…I heard he was related to old lady Sanderson. Betty was some kind of aunt.”

“Was?”

“Yeah, she died about ten years ago.”

“How does that factoid help us today? Enlighten me,” I said.

“I heard he visited Big Bear, plenty. Summers mostly. Old lady Sanderson would be anyone’s favorite aunt, living in a resort town, right?”

“Thanks, deputy. You’ve been a big help.”

When I pulled Crowley aside, I kept my voice low.

“Have Sinead look into this Betty Sanderson. See if she can find any relationship to Altamonte and have her correlate the dates of the missing girls to see if they were taken in the summer months.”

“You got it.”

The autopsy on Lily Rae Hubbard was still pending a final result. It would take time for lab work and to finish processing the body for trace evidence. From seeing his arrest record, I knew Altamonte’s DNA would be on file with the FBI in CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System. If we were lucky enough to find DNA from the convicted sex offender on Lily’s body, we could link her murder to him, which would be a start.

If Sinead could confirm Altamonte’s tie to the aunt and his summer visits to Big Bear Lake, that might explain some of the abductions, but we still had our work cut out for us.

Crowley and I were the only ones who knew that I’d already come face to face with many of the missing. They would be identified in the thirty-four bodies recovered. Altamonte might not be responsible for all the deaths. With the missing person reports spanning decades, he would’ve had to be abducting and killing girls from a young age. We would need evidence to implicate anyone else.

“Let’s do this,” I muttered to Crowley.

We entered the darkened observation room next door and watched Wade Thomas Altamonte through a two-way mirror. The man sat at a table with his eyes darting around the room. Anytime a noise came from outside the locked door, he would fidget. With faded jeans and a black Nirvana T-shirt and hiking boots, he wore his dark hair long and had scruff on his chin, no doubt trying to appear edgy to the girls he taught.

“Can you believe it? He teaches biological science, specializing in anatomy and physiology. A pedophile’s wet dream job,” Crowley said.

I let Altamonte sweat for another hour before I’d seen enough.

“I’m going in.”

With Crowley in observation, I headed for the interrogation room. The man sat bolt upright in his chair with his first question on his lips.

“Am I under arrest?”

I tossed a file onto the table and sat across from him.

“Mr. Whitehall, I have no reason to arrest you. You’re a model citizen and a school teacher.”

The man’s shoulders slumped in relief and his lips twitched into a subtle smile.

“But Dennis Whitehall isn’t your real name, is it Wade?”

The man’s body stiffened and his smug expression vanished.

“What do you know about the disappearance and murder of one of your students, Lily Rae Hubbard?”

Altamonte clenched his jaw and wouldn’t look me in the eye.

***

Thirty minutes later

Ryker had Altamonte talking. The man hadn’t asked for a lawyer, but with the sweat glistening on his forehead and down his neck, Lucinda suspected he had something to hide.

When the door to the darkened observation room opened, someone handed Deputy Lovell a message.

“Well, this could be something,” he muttered, spitting his chewed toothpick to the floor.

“What is it?” Lucinda asked.

“The canvass in the Hubbard neighborhood paid off. It seems Bob Sanford had been away for the weekend, but when he packed his car on Friday night, he saw Lily. It took him until now to say something, because he just got back.”

“What did the neighbor see?”

“He saw Lily get into a car outside her house. Someone picked her up.” Lovell grinned. “Now that’s good police work.”

“Did he get a license plate?”

“Uh, no. Not exactly.” The deputy shrugged. “But he said he noticed the car, because he had one as a kid. A vintage Mustang.”

Lucinda smiled and crossed her arms.

“I bet it’s red.”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

Lucinda stared into the interrogation room where Ryker still had Altamonte sweating buckets. Grayson Barbour had lied when he claimed not to have heard from Lily after she’d been kicked out. His words replayed in her head.

‘Her dad kicked her out, the tight-assed bastard, but she never came to me. She wouldn’t even return my phone calls.’

Grayson lied for a reason and Lucinda would find out why.

“You’re with me, deputy. I know who owns that Mustang and we’re bringing him in for questioning.”

***

Barbour residence

Lucinda saw Deputy Lovell’s cruiser parked outside the Barbour residence. Driving on his own, the deputy had beaten her to the address. Before she rang the front doorbell, Lovell opened the door and let her in. With watery eyes, Grayson’s mother sat on the living room sofa clutching a tissue.

“Where’s Grayson?” the woman pleaded. “Where’s my boy?”

Lovell stepped in front of Lucinda and lowered his voice.

“Grayson’s in the wind. His mother said he never showed at his part-time job at
El Pollo Loco
. She’s been trying to reach him on his cell since noon, but he’s not answering. She even tried his friends, but no one has seen him. She was about to call 911 until we showed up.”

“What about his Mustang?”

“Gone. Mom says some of his clothes are missing, too. Do you think he’s on the run?” The deputy hoisted his duty belt with both hands. “He’s the last one to see Lily alive. You think he’s the one we’re looking for?”

“Mrs. Barbour. We’ll need your son’s cell phone number.” While the woman reached for a pen and paper, Lucinda said to Lovell, “Issue a BOLO on Grayson and his vehicle. He could be out of the state by now.”

Lucinda took a deep breath and shook her head. The BOLO, be on lookout order, might not cover enough ground. Once she had Grayson’s cell, Lucinda would get it to Sinead. If it were activated, his phone could be tracked with GPS. The kid could have good reason to run, but had he been capable of brutally killing his girlfriend, the way Lily had died?

Truthfully, she had no idea.

“Can I see Grayson’s room, Mrs. Barbour?”