However, when she glimpsed the driver, she felt no alarm - he was probably just lost, and looking for directions.
Dyer hurried excitedly into the yard of the house, and called out to the woman. ‘Excuse me, ma’am.’
Janey looked up, holding one hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, sure.’ Dyer grinned. ‘I need you to get on the fucking bus.’
‘What?’ Janey stifled a shocked laugh.
Dyer pulled a butterfly knife from his rear pocket. ‘I’ll not tell you twice, bitch,’ he said in a dry humourless voice.
Jane made a sudden lunge to the side, and before Dyer could respond, she jumped over the laundry basket, and ran across the yard. Stumbling to the door, she got inside the hallway of house. Gasping for breath, she locked the door behind her, hoping the other passengers on the bus had seen the psychopath’s behaviour, and were currently calling the cops. She didn’t see the large man in the Hawaiian shirt step out of the kitchen and into the hallway behind her. He grabbed her around the waist, picking her up. Jane kicked and screamed, knocking off one of her shoes in the process, but her efforts were wasted - he was simply too strong. Using his free arm, her attacker opened the front door to find the scrawny man still outside, stepping from side-to-side, like an excited child.
‘You need a hand there, Stein?’ he said, grinning at the large man.
‘I’ve got her,’ he replied angrily. ‘Just get back on the fucking bus before anyone sees us!’
The scrawny man did as he was told, but still appeared dangerously excited, as he hurried across the yard. Janey, who had allowed her body to go limp, was simply playing possum. As the man carried her across the yard, she remembered something from her high school self-defence class. She balled one hand into a solid fist, then slammed it backwards, as hard as she could, into the man’s groin. He groaned in agony, and momentarily released her. That was all Jane needed. She broke away from him, and burst into a sprint. No longer trusting the house, she ran sideways out of her yard, and into the scrub-land parallel with the road.
The large man yelled out in pain and rage, then began pursuing her through the dusty countryside. Janey stumbled over rocky terrain, with only one shoe on, cutting her bare foot on sharp rocks and cactus spines. She knew they didn’t want to be seen, so perhaps, if she made it to the road, she could flag down a car.
Despite his bulk, Stein was fast, and caught up with her, just as she reached the road. He threw his bulk against Janey’s back, knocking her to the ground. Standing up, her grabbed her by the hair, and yanked her towards the now approaching bus. She screamed in response to the burning pain ripping across her scalp.
As Stein clambered aboard, dragging the squealing woman behind him, he stopped on the final step, and looked straight at Dyer, who was grinning in the driving seat, then punched him fully in the face, bursting his lip like a squashed pink slug.
‘You put everything at risk, you selfish prick. You can take her to the house, but I have a booking in an hour. If you’re not finished with your cougar by then, I’ll gut and skin the both of you. Now, get the fuck out of that seat, and deal with her!’
He threw the woman on to the aisle of the bus. She was nothing more than an inconvenience to him. Unlike Dyer, he only liked natural blondes, and they had to be clear-skinned and aged between fourteen and twenty-five - give or take. Dyer pushed past Stein, and wiped the blood from his month.
‘Can somebody get the halothane, please?’
Stein put the bus in gear, and it lurched finally forward again.
36
At 2:33 p.m., Gretsch was finally getting some lunch. As he leaned over the paper bag on his desk and bit into the turkey and bacon sub, he tried to formulate a potential strategy. The shit-fest surrounding Leighton Jones and his delusion about an imaginary bus full of serial killers, was starting to impact on the real world.
For most of the previous hour, Gretsch had been locked in a heated conversation with Agent Andrew Donaldson, from the Bureau, who wanted to know why a recently retired Oceanside detective had contacted Quantico that morning to report a group of suspected serial killers active in California. He was particularly curious about the fact there had been no indication of such suspicion from any police station in any of the state’s major cities.
Donaldson had said, in a deliberately accusative manner, this generated two equally alarming possibilities. The first was there was a fantasist ex-cop, running around sharing all sorts of wild claims with national agencies; the second was three thousand police officers across two states had failed to notice a mobile nest of serial killers operating in their own back yards.
It had taken some time, but Gretsch had gone through Leighton’s history with Donaldson, explaining he was generally considered unstable and should be ignored. He, of course, made no reference to the incident at Black Mountain Ranch, in which Leighton had saved both his chief’s life and his career. Instead, Gretsch painted a picture of depressive cop, with an unhealthy fixation on a vulnerable young woman.
The bus story was, he suggested, probably just something Jones had invented to keep the girl scared, and therefore, interested. Donaldson listened in ambiguous silence then suggested Gretsch should formulate a strategy to deal with the situation a little more effectively.
As he hung up the phone, Gretsch leaned back in his chair and stretched. He had taken a single sip of now cold coffee and a second bite of his sandwich, when there was an abrupt rap on the office door, which opened, and Officer Lusk entered, holding a sheet of A4 paper in front of him like a thin shield.
‘Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt your lunch, but think you should know about this.’
‘Okay.’ Gretsch wiped at his mouth with a white handkerchief. ‘What is it?’
‘Well, it relates to this business with Leighton Jones.’
‘There’s a fucking surprise.’ Gretsch belched, and waved his hand dismissively. ‘Go on.’
‘Yesterday morning, we took a call from a guy called Coombs, whose elderly mother was due to arrive in San Francisco on Monday, only she never showed up.’
‘So what? Elderly folks regularly go walkabout every day.’
‘He called his mom’s neighbour and asked him to check. The neighbour confirmed the house was locked up, and said he saw Mrs. Coombs leave.’
‘Is that it? You interrupt my brief fucking lunch for that?’
‘Wait, there’s more. Mr. Coombs also said he booked his mother on to a new bus service. Got the ticket himself on-line. Anyway, he said when he tried to call the bus company to see if the lady got on the coach, the company doesn’t seem to exist.’
Gretsch narrowed his eyes, and pushed the remainder of his sandwich away. He then sat up, placed his shoulders on the desk, and pushed his fingers together.
‘Anything else?’ he asked, in a slightly more concerned tone than before.
Lusk nodded.
‘This morning, we got a call from Detective Steve Abornazine up in Laughlin. He’s following up a missing person report on one Joanne Palmer - a twenty-five-year-old female, who apparently boarded a bus to San Diego, and never showed up at her destination either.’
‘Any witnesses see her get on this bus?’
‘Yeah, her boyfriend, apparently. He was the one who called it in.’
The colour began to drain from Gretsch’s face.