Deadly Stillwater

She was looking for the same kind of payback Smith was looking for. As the planning for the kidnappings began, she and Smith spent many hours together, scouting sites and observing targets. Their passion for revenge ignited the same within them, as though the two feelings fed off of one another. Within a month they were sleeping together. In another month, Smith and Monica knew they would escape together when everything was over. He was in love with her, and she said the feeling was mutual. Monica was married twice and divorced twice. Both times she had married unworthy men, weak men, men she couldn’t trust. Her brothers told her that Smith was none of those things. He was strong. He’d been a man in prison. He was a man they could trust, a man who wanted what they wanted and possessed what they didn’t: the ability and the connection to pull it off.

Now it was 8:27 PM, and they were lying in a musty motel room with an air conditioner working overtime to cool the room. They lay naked on the bed, her head just under his chin, the sheets and blankets on the floor and the sweat from the sex cooling on their bodies. Smith reached over and grabbed the remote for the TV. He turned to Channel 6, which was running a special bottom-of-the-hour report about the kidnappings. For the first time, Smith saw the videotape played by the media.

“I didn’t think they would release that to the public,” Monica said.

“I’m not sure I did either.”

“Are you worried about that?”

“Not particularly. The video snippets are short. The land is mostly private. I’m sure they’re hoping that somebody will recognize the road or some marking in the background. I don’t see that happening.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have put so much into the video.”

“You might be right,” Smith answered mildly. “I wanted to build the anxiety for Flanagan and Hisle before we showed the girls going under. I wanted them to see the process, let the pressure and suspense build. I wanted them fully motivated to pay. In the end, perhaps less would have been more.”

They listened to the rest of the report.

“Nothing about the house,” Monica said. “Perhaps the coast is clear.”

“Maybe,” Smith answered, lightly scratching her upper back. “The media has been on most breaks in the case, but they’re not on this one. Either the police have done a good job of keeping this one quiet, or they don’t think we were at the house.”

“What do you think is the case?” she asked, running her fingers through his chest hair.

“You cleaned the house well?”

“Yes. It’s clean.”

“They might think we were there. But they’re not finding anything, which means they’re no closer to finding us. And besides, we’re not going back,” he said, cupping her breast in his hand and stopping her questions with a kiss.

Jupiter Jones grabbed a Red Bull out of his Sub-Zero refrigerator and a bag of chips out of the walk-in pantry. He loaded up his coffee maker for a night’s worth of fuel. Frequent jolts of energy would be needed for what looked to be an all-nighter. The video of the kidnappers burying the girls alive had his utmost attention. If the video didn’t hit you, you weren’t human. He couldn’t imagine the impact on the chief or Lyman Hisle.

He tied his Hefner robe shut over his shorts, slid his feet into his flip-flops, and went back to his home computer lab. The FBI techs – who were good – very good – had gone over the video all afternoon and found nothing that seemed helpful beyond identifying the van as a Chevy Astro, 2001 edition, based on elements of the dashboard design. Jupiter didn’t believe there was nothing else there. There was always, always, something to be found, something that could help. To do that required patience, a keen eye for detail and, most importantly, top-of-the-line equipment – all of which he had. His equipment was better than anything law enforcement owned. Mac had called Jupiter in on more than one occasion as a secret weapon. Mac often said that Jupiter should be in one of those “Break in Case of Emergency” cases. Jupiter thought Mac was right.

Having watched the video a number of times, Jupiter had a feel for it now, knowing what it showed and how it flowed. Nothing jumped out at him initially, but then again, if something like that were there, the FBI or the police would have found it. No, what he was looking for wouldn’t be obvious, if not flat-out hidden. But it was there somewhere. You just had to know how to find it, or get lucky enough, and then extract it.

He needed to break the video down frame-by-frame. Jupe took a sip from his Red Bull, grabbed a handful of chips and started at the beginning: the van driving through the field.

Mac wiped sweat off his forehead as he sat on a dining room chair, looking out the front window of the Hall house and across the street at the rambler. The crime scene techs found nothing inside the house: no prints, no hairs, no odd fibers, no nothing. The house was clean. Or, as Mac bitterly stated, “It’s a safe house for these bastards because it’s clean.”