Opening the screen door, Mike found the inner door was ajar. This did not alarm Mike - on hot days, both the front and rear doors were kept open to allow a through breeze. What did alarm him, however, was the single item of footwear lying in the middle of the hallway.
‘Janey?’ he called, as he knelt down and picked up the tennis shoe.
There was no reply.
Mike felt an uncomfortable shift of energy inside him, confirming at some primal level something was very wrong. He took the shoe with him, as he hurried back outside into the bright morning light. Clambering back into the jeep, he revved the engine, and sped off in screeching cloud of dust.
When he got the place where he had seen the shoe, Mike pulled up the jeep, switched on the emergency warning lights, and climbed out. The internal part of him already knew what to expect, and was simply allowing his conscious mind to catch up.
As he reached out to the discarded training shoe, Mike picked it up, and held next to Janey’s shoe - making a perfect pair. On the recovered shoe, a smear of blood was vividly contrasted against the bright yellow material. He held the two shoes to his stomach, and let out a single sob.
Staring at the dusty roadside in disbelief, he noticed something that broke his paralysis. There were tyre tracks alongside the verge where his wife’s bloodied shoe had been lying. Given the fact Mike had spent thirty-one years working as a truck mechanic, he knew the tyre tracks belonged to a bus, and most likely the one that had near run him off the road, seventeen minutes earlier.
Climbing back into his jeep, Mike pulled the glove compartment open again, only this time, he threw the cigarettes aside and removed a 9 mm Cougar pistol. He took the safety off the handgun, started the engine, and slammed the jeep into gear.
34
Abigail Reiner walked through the front door of the beach house, carrying her two items of matching luggage, and closed the door with her foot.
‘Victoria – are you in?’ she called, and placed her bags neatly against the wall closest to the door.
Despite the fact she had been joint owner - along with her deceased ex-husband - of the house for over a decade, Abigail Reiner felt little emotional connection with the place. Her ex-husband had suggested she was incapable of such a response, but he was wrong. She simply had too many responsibilities to indulge in time wasting emotions. Without her efforts and lack of soul searching, she would not have a successful career, and luxuries such as the beach house could quite simply have never been achieved.
The house felt warmer than she liked it – possibly as a consequence of spending so much time in the fresher environment of the East Coast. Her heels clicked noisily on the tiled floor as she walked over to the wall mounted panel and turned on the air conditioning. She walked through to the living room, and surveyed the place with a critical eye.
Making her way along the hallway to the bedroom, Abigail fully expected to find her over-sensitive daughter to be curled on her bed, hiding from the world. This personality defect in her daughter, which must have been inherited from her father, was what had driven Mrs. Reiner to return to Oceanside for the week. If she allowed Vicki to spend any more time retreating from the world, her career prospects would plummet even further. She called her daughter’s name again. There was no response.
Eventually, Abigail walked into the stale air of what had once been her own, beige-coloured bedroom. She crossed the spacious room, and sat on the bed. Reaching down, she opened a small bedside cabinet, and removed a TV controller.
Abigail switched on the wall-mounted television. She then bit on her bottom lip as she selected the designated channel connected to her security camera, and the HD recorder located in her wardrobe.
As she reviewed the car park footage of the previous few hours, Abigail resisted the urge to scream in rage.
Instead, she snapped open her phone, and used a manicured nail to tap a staccato pattern on the screen. Holding the telephone to her ear, she chewed on inside one cheek.
‘Hello, police,’ a bright voice answered. ‘Can I help you?’
‘My name is Margaret Reiner. Who is the most senior person in your building right now?’
‘I can deal with any report you might wish to make.’
Abigail pulled a face, as if she had bitten into some bitter fruit ‘What’s your name?’
‘Officer Piper.’
‘Well Officer Piper, I’m sure you believe that,’ she said calmly, ‘but let me be blunt. I want to speak to someone more senior than a glorified answering machine about an urgent police matter. If you continue to be obstructive, I will hang up this phone, call my lawyer, and instruct them to start preparing a case for obstruction against you.’
There were a few moments of silence, then a new voice answered the phone.
‘Hello, Mrs. Reiner, this is Chief Gretsch. What can I do for you?’
‘I called last week regarding my daughter being harassed by a retired detective.’
‘Yes.’ Gretsch sighed audibly. ‘And I can assure you, Mrs. Reiner, I personally spoke to the man concerned. He won’t be bothering your daughter again.’
‘Well, that doesn’t inspire me with confidence.’
‘Why would that be, Mrs. Reiner?’
‘I believe my daughter has been abducted by Jones, and, Chief Gretsch, if this turns out to be the case, and if you do not bring the full weight of the law upon this bastard, I’ll see you in court to request your head on a fucking plate.’
35
The woman on the floor of the bus had finally been subdued. Two of the passengers were sitting on top of her, and a third was holding a halothane mask over her red face. All of the remaining passengers were staring serenely out of the bus windows.
The tall, scrawny man holding the mask in place was dripping with sweat. His appetite had put them all at risk. His name was Desmond Dyer, and up until that day, he had been responsible for the murder and sexual assault of no less than thirty-six women - all of them aged between thirty and forty-five, with long dark hair. Three of them had been killed on the bus, two others at the farm in Laughlin.
Forty-two minutes earlier, the bus had been rumbling to an agreed drop off point six kilometres outside Blythe, when it had passed by the garden of a house, where a slim woman with chestnut hair had been hanging washing on a line. Dyer, who was on driving duty, had slammed on the brakes. Some of the passengers had lurched forward.
‘What the fuck are you doing, Dyer?’ Wendell Stein, a large man in cargo pants and yellow Hawaiian shirt, called out, and waddled down the aisle to the driver.
‘Her,’ Dyer said softy, and pointed to the woman the garden.
‘No way!’ Stein narrowed his eyes. ‘You know the rules. Bookings only.’
Dyer wasn’t listening. His eyes were fully locked on to the woman, as she pegged the clothes on the washing line. Stein recognised the expression of obsessive desire on Dyer’s face.
‘Hey.’ Stein clicked his fingers at him. ‘Hey, get back in the room, you crazy bastard.
Without replying, Dyer had leapt out of the driver’s seat, and lurched off the bus.
‘Oh shit!’ Stein made a grab for him, but was not quick enough.
Janey Bernal was lost in thought about Mike when she was startled by the hissing brakes of the long silver bus stopping opposite her yard. She had been thinking about how maybe they could adopt a child. It seemed such a waste of life, otherwise.