Mounted Page 6

  The woman drove straight ahead for another mile and made a left into a residential area—William followed. She made a right at the next street inside the neighborhood. William looked at the houses on the block—most of the lights inside were out. While the location wasn’t ideal, the time to act had come.

  William quickly rounded the corner and flipped the switch at the bottom of the dash for the red-and-blue lights in the grille of his car. The woman pulled to the side of the road. He killed the grille lights and then stepped from his car, leaving it running. He watched the nearby homes, looking for lights turning on, people watching, or anything of the sort—he saw nothing. William approached her driver’s-side window and removed a small flashlight from his pocket. He flicked it on and pointed it in at her. Her window lowered.

  “Detective Matt Paulson,” William said. “Can you turn off your headlights and the vehicle?”

  She did.

  “Do you have your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance?” William asked.

  He kept the light on her, taking her in as she dug into the glove compartment of her vehicle. The woman appeared in her late twenties—she’d do. She removed some paperwork from the glove compartment and her ID from a small handbag and then held it out the window at him.

  “Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

  William took the items in his hand but didn’t leave the window of her vehicle. “Ma’am, is there something wrong with your vehicle?”

  “No. Not that I know of. Why?”

  “You didn’t use your directional two turns back.”

  “Oh, um, I don’t know. If I didn’t, I apologize. I actually try to be a good driver,” she said.

  William took the light from her face, and aimed it down at her ID. Her name was Courtney Mouser. The weight listed was one eighteen. The street on the license was not the one they were on, and William was not familiar with it. With a quick bit of mental math, he put her age at thirty-one, a bit older than he would have liked. He wondered if there would be an elasticity problem in her facial skin. He pointed the light back on her for a quick check—wrinkle free.

  William tucked the ID and paperwork into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. “Been drinking tonight, miss?”

  “No—I mean, I had one drink after work. That’s it. I’m not intoxicated,” she said.

  William paused. “Prescription drugs?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Have you taken any prescription drugs this evening?” he asked.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Is there any prescription drugs on your person or in the vehicle that I should be aware of?” William asked.

  “No, I don’t do any of that.”

  William paused again, saying nothing as second after second passed. He kept the flashlight pointed directly into her eyes.

  “Can you step out of the vehicle for me, miss?”

  The woman pulled her head back at the request. “For?”

  “Please step out of the vehicle, ma’am.”

  She let out a puff of air and opened her door.

  “I’m going to ask you to take a seat in my vehicle there,” William said.

  “What did I do?” she asked.

  “Your eyes are glazed over, and I have reason to believe that you’re under the influence.”

  “I’m not under the influence of anything,” she said.

  William ignored her comment and walked her to the rear door of his car. “Place your hands behind your back for me.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Place your arms behind your back, ma’am. Don’t resist.”

  “Am I under arrest?” she asked.

  “You’re being detained while I search your vehicle for contraband.”

  “There’s nothing in there,” she said.

  “Ma’am, this is the last time I’m going to ask,” William said.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said but obeyed his command.

  William pulled a set of cuffs from his pocket and linked her up. He opened the rear door of his vehicle—behind the tinted glass, a metal grate was welded to the interior of the window frame.

  “Watch your head,” William said as he placed her in the back. “I’ll be back with you in a moment, miss.” William closed the door and took two steps forward. He looked left and right, spotting no one. He walked to her car, pulling a pair of rubber gloves from his back pocket. William put the gloves on, clicked on her ignition, and rolled up her driver’s side window. He took her phone, purse, and keys from the vehicle, locked it, and walked back to his car. In William’s mind, leaving each woman’s vehicle in a bit of a different state would keep the authorities off his trail. He opened the driver’s door, took a seat behind the wheel, setting her belongings on the passenger seat, and shifted into drive.

  “What are you doing?” she asked from behind the metal grate separating the rear passenger area from the front.

  William didn’t respond as he pulled away from the curb.

  “What’s going on? Where are you going?” she asked. “What the hell is this?”

  William didn’t respond.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Ma’am, you’re under arrest. I’m taking you back to the station.”

  “This isn’t right. I didn’t do anything,” she said.

  William didn’t respond. He stopped at a stop sign, pulled the battery from her phone, and then made a right, leaving the neighborhood.

  “No,” she said. “Show me your badge!”

  William chuckled and then spoke over his shoulder. “I must have forgot it at home. We’ll see if I can dig it up when we get there.”

  “What?”

  William lowered his window and tossed her cell phone out.

  A long silence came from the rear of his car. William waited for the situation to dawn on her—it had happened the same way with each woman he’d grabbed—the moment of realization that they were at his mercy.

  A bloodcurdling scream broke the dead air inside of the car. The metal divider behind his head rattled and banged from the woman kicking it. William smiled, turned up the radio, and made the half-hour drive back to his house with her slamming her feet into anything she could—he’d stopped briefly to throw her purse into a trash bin at a gas station. William made a left turn into his gravel driveway and clicked a button on his visor to lift the overhead door on the detached shed. He pulled inside, lowered the door, and stepped out. After he closed the car door at his back, he could still hear the woman screaming and kicking in the back of the car.

  “It’s no use.” William walked to the bench at the back of the garage, grabbed his catch pole, and returned to the car to open her door.

  Her feet kicked at him as if she was pedaling a bicycle. She screamed and yelled and ripped back and forth. William knew from Kelly Paige’s abduction—and getting kicked in the face—that the women were literally fighting for their lives when they were released from the vehicle. He’d since purchased the catch pole and devised a far more suitable way to subdue them and take them inside.

  William stood at the rear quarter panel of his car with the catch pole and waited for one of her kicks. The second he saw a foot, he went to loop it but missed. He stood a few feet back from the open doorway, looking in at her, in an effort to get her to kick again. She did, and William’s catch-pole loop found its mark around her foot. William yanked the tensioner on his end of the pole, securing the loop tightly around her ankle. He took a few steps back as he pulled. The woman slid across the backseat of the vehicle and landed squarely on her back and cuffed hands on the garage’s concrete floor. The woman moaned in pain, moving slowly.

  William dropped the pole, kicked her onto her side, and sprawled down, taking her back. He placed his left arm around her neck, grabbed his right bicep with his left hand, and placed his right hand behind her head. William rolled his shoulders back and pushed down with his right hand on the back of
her head, tightening his grip—the move, a rear naked choke hold, was applied to perfection, and she went limp in seconds. William held the choke for another moment before letting go, quickly scooping her up, and carrying her from the garage. He walked to the back door of his home, twisted the knob with the hand holding her legs, and pushed the door open with the toe of his shoe.

  The woman mumbled something as she began to regain consciousness. William hurried toward the basement in order to restrain her before she fully came to.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I woke a couple minutes past six and got ready for my day. I showered, plotted out my individual stops for the morning, and picked up a cup of coffee from the lobby. I was still unaware of what Beth planned to do. The topic of her calling Ball and removing herself from the investigation was still up in the air. The idea, when she and I had left the bar the prior night, was that she’d sleep on it, decide in the morning, and let me know—that was after an hour-plus talk with her asking me what I thought she should do about the ex-husband situation. I didn’t have much for her other than I didn’t care for his behavior. I’d just finished up phone calls with Karen and Agent Duffield and was getting ready to head out when I heard a knock at the door and figured it was Beth. I walked over and pulled the door open.

  Beth stood in the doorway, dressed for work, with the bag that she normally held investigation files in draped over her shoulder. I didn’t spot a suitcase.

  “Sticking around?” I asked.

  “I am. Can I come in for a minute?” she asked.

  I stepped to the side of the door, waved her in, and then passed her, heading for my cup of coffee on the desk by the window. “I was just getting set to leave. Are you still planning on meeting with the friends and family, then?”

  “I am. I guess I just needed to ask you a question.”

  “Shoot.” I turned back to face her. She hadn’t moved more than a foot or two from the door into the room.

  “Are you planning on mentioning this to Ball?” Beth asked.

  “What? Scott showing up here and being an idiot?”

  “That—and everything else. Like, I’m one hundred percent not asking you not to. I understand if you do because of the nature of our occupation and all that. It’s just… If you were going to, I’d like to be able to tell him myself, prior to him hearing it secondhand.”

  “I wasn’t planning to,” I said.

  “But I don’t want you to feel like you’re keeping something a secret from your boss, you know?”

  I held up my hand. “It’s just not that big of a deal, Beth. So he showed up here unexpected, acted like an ass, and that’s it. I kind of see it more as a personal matter. It’s not really my or Ball’s or anyone else’s business. It could have just as easily happened anywhere, where I wouldn’t have been there to see it. I mean, would you mention it to Ball if I wasn’t there?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Right. So something that was personal happened off the clock. Big deal. Shit happens.”

  “You don’t feel weird about not mentioning it to Ball?” she asked.

  “If you keep making such a big deal about it, eventually I’ll feel weird about it.”

  She didn’t respond to my attempt at humor.

  “Look. Forget about it, already. Can you do your job over the next few days?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “He’s gone, I assume?”

  “He is,” she said. “I made sure.”

  I wasn’t going to ask her how exactly she’d made sure, but I took her word for it. “Then we’re good, partner.”

  “All right,” she said. “Thanks for having my back last night. I appreciate it.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  Beth took a seat on the foot of the bed. “What’s your first stop today?”

  “The business center downstairs. I need to print some photos of these women that I grabbed from the DLs. After that, I’m going to make a quick stop out at this Katelyn Willard’s apartment complex. Then move on to the scenes where the women we know to be deceased were taken from. Then, I have a pile of things that I want to get into. I want to stop in at the paper that received the box. We need to speak with the guys from missing persons that created the reports. I still want to find out some details about the vehicle found on the side of the road with a flat tire. The list goes on and on.”

  “I know—we have a full plate,” Beth said. “We’ll just have to go down the list and start getting things checked off. You’re going to the missing girl’s place first, though?”

  “I got the address from Duffield this morning. It’s actually on my way to my first stop, so I figure I’ll make a little pit stop at the area and just have a look around. The girl was pretty clearly abducted, I’m thinking, and while we don’t know if it’s connected to our investigation, I kind of think that a half hour of my time spent there is worth it. If it ends up being connected, at least I’ll have viewed the freshest scene.”

  “Sure,” Beth said. “Did you want to just give me a ring sometime throughout the day and let me know if you get anything new?”

  “Yeah, I will.”

  “Okay,” Beth said.

  I grabbed my things and started for the door. Beth rose from the edge of the bed and followed me out. She rode the elevator down with me and left me at the lobby. I headed for the business center, got my photos printed, and left the hotel. The drive to the site of Katelyn’s abduction took me a solid twenty-five minutes. On the way, I called the office of the Oldham County Sheriff, to see if they had any updates on their investigation into the girl’s disappearance. Chief Deputy King said they’d had nothing new and the ex-boyfriend’s alibi had checked out. He offered to meet me at the apartment complex, to which I agreed.

  The robotic female voice on my GPS told me the address was ahead on my right. I slowed and made a right into the complex’s main entrance. Each of the countless buildings rose two stories. I had the unit number Katelyn resided in, but with no point of reference and not seeing any signs that listed which units were where, I was driving blind. I figured I’d do a lap around the facility, looking for the chief deputy, prior to stopping in at the rental office to get the location.

  I slowed at the first crossroads of the complex, looking up and down the crossing street. I spotted neither anything that looked like it could be law-enforcement issued, nor any vehicles not in the assigned parking stalls. I continued on, slowing at the next crossroads and then the next. The road in front of me terminated up ahead, allowing me to park in a visitor section or make a left or right turn. I slowed, checked both directions, and made a Y-turn to head back the way I’d come. As I drove back toward the front of the facility, a dark sedan driving my way stopped in the roadway, and the driver’s-side window lowered. I recognized the car as a standard undercover issued Dodge Charger, and King sat inside.

  “Saw someone driving slow and you make the turn down there. I thought that might be you,” he said.

  “I figured I’d make a pass through and look for you prior to stopping in the rental office and finding out just exactly where her unit was. They don’t make it too easy to find what address is what back here.”

  “Sure don’t,” he said. “It’s actually at the back, where you’d made the turn, and off to the left.”

  “Okay, I’ll get spun around and follow you back.”

  He nodded and raised his window.

  I turned around at the next crossroad and followed him back to the end of the road. King parked in one of the visitor section spots and stepped from his car. I pulled in beside him and did the same. After meeting him at the trunk of his car, we started toward where he’d said the girl’s car had been parked.

  “Did you get anything else from the car?” I asked.

  “Nope,” King said. “No prints other than what we confirmed to be hers. I guess she had a prior for shoplifting right around the time that she turned eighteen, so we found her in the system. The set of prints on the phone w
ere hers as well. We either had someone wearing gloves, or they didn’t actually make contact with her things. The car was parked back there.” He pointed toward the far corner of the lot, next to a small square building. “The little building there is some kind of a service shack for water or something.”

  We walked toward the area. I noticed the parking lot wrap around the end of the apartment building and continue back toward the front of the complex.

  “Does this lot turn back into a street and go back toward the entrance?” I asked.

  “It does,” he said. “There’s the main road that we drove in on, and one on each far end of the facility that gets you in and out.”

  I nodded.

  “So here is where her car was,” he said, coming to a stop, “next to the shack here.” He motioned toward the empty parking spot adjacent to the small building.

  I walked around the vacant parking area and surveyed the ground looking for any little scrap of anything—I saw nothing. “What kind of vehicle?” I asked.

  “Newer Hyundai. Mid sized,” he said. “The roommate said she usually parked way down here to avoid picking up door dings.”

  “Sure.” I stopped searching the ground and looked up a light pole that sat behind the shed. I pointed to a camera mounted at its top. “That’s the camera that doesn’t work?”

  “Correct.”

  I looked in the other direction, past where we’d parked, to the mirroring apartment unit on the far end. I spotted another pole at the back corner of the parking lot and what looked like a camera at its top. “What about that one?” I asked.

  “We saw that as well. Also inop.”

  “Okay.” I looked toward the apartment building nearest us. The ground floor held four banks of paired maroon entrance doors and four sets of sliding glass patio doors. Above the ground-level patio doors were small second-story patios set into the building. Groups of windows filled the remaining areas of the two-tone brown building. I assumed one of each of the paired doors belonged to a lower level and the other door to the upper. “What unit was hers?” I asked.