The night was balmy, one of the last summer nights of the year. It was still fairly warm in the first hour of morning. Martin and Danny could already see the yellow crime scene tape around the back of the small rest stop store. A uniformed officer was walking up to them from the far part of the rest stop, secluded by darkness and trees, on the other side of the store.
"Agents, EMS already rushed her off to St. John's. We're still waiting on CSU. We've been trying to hold all the witnesses until you came. Some have been pretty anxious to leave." The uniformed officer spoke the words in a rush and he was kneading his hat with both hands. He seemed nervous, but didn't appear to be either very young or very inexperienced.
"Back up a few steps, Officer..." Martin stopped him, wanting to know exactly what was going on. They had been called out, saying that Linda Buckner had been spotted by Highway Patrol at a restop outside the city. But as it was often the case, reports came in piecemeal at first and they would get the full story only after arriving at the scene.
"Officer Glenn Degen, Highway Patrol. We were alerted to a possible drunk and disorderly in the area behind the kiosk at 11.47p.m. Found a woman unconscious between the dumpsters. EMS says she's going to make it. We recognized her from the APB," Degen explained as they arrived at the back of the store.
There wasn't much to see. The store was housed in a pale yellow square building with peeling paint. At the back of the store were two dumpsters left and right of the store's open back door. Only about ten meters behind the dumpsters, the terrain fell into a several-meter-deep ravine. The whole area was littered with trash; on the sides of the overfilled dumpsters stood trash bags and a box for the paper waste.
"She was right beside the dumpster, half hidden in the shrubs," Degen said as he pointed out the spot.
Calling the broken and dried remnants of a plant a shrub would be saying too much. The area was littered with empty beer and soda cans and food wrappers. The paramedics had done the rest to ruin all potential evidence. Danny couldn't even spot a drop of blood between the chaos and the bad lighting.
"I can't see any blood here." Martin voiced what Danny had been thinking. "Did you see where she was injured?"
"No, not really. The storeowner kept ranting on and then the paramedics were here. But this place was already in a mess when I arrived," Degen said defensively.
Martin shook his head. "Where's your partner?"
"Back with the car. Kind of..." Degen mumbled. "Our squad car was stolen. We noticed maybe two minutes before you got here. We were only gone for maybe ten minutes." Degen's composure was failing fast. "Ritter is calling it in now."
"That's just great!" Danny exclaimed. "What about witnesses? Have you taken any statements yet? Maybe somebody has seen something."
"Three witnesses are waiting inside the store. The owner who found her and two guys who say they saw suspicious activity." Degen winced. "They are pretty anxious to leave."
"I'll talk to them," Martin offered. "Go find your squad car." He nodded to Officer Degen, who seemed very eager to take care of the embarrassing car theft situation.
"I think I have an idea what happened to your car, Officer Degen," Danny said before Degen could leave. He pointed his flashlight forwards into the darkness in front of them. In the far distance, down the ravine about fifty meters away, something red was in the brushwork. It was too far out of this light's reach, but the street lamps reflected off the red paint. Linda Buckner drove a red Volvo.
"I think we should call for a tow to impound," Martin remarked with a sigh. "It's going to be a while out here."
oOo
Viralli's Truck Stop stocked pretty much everything one might need on the road in a room the size of Martin's living room. The shelves were packed tight and crammed on a table; in between lighters, ballpoint pens and batteries was the registers. Francis Viralli sat behind it, sipping from a can of soda.
"I don't get a lot of regulars around here. Some commuters, but most folks around here take the train. I'm pretty sure I have never seen her before." Viralli shrugged and took another sip of soda. He sounded bored as if a half naked woman amidst his trash was just another night in New York City.
Martin pulled out the search pictures of Richard Dane and Christine Buckner. "Have you seen any of them around here in the last few hours?"
Francis shook his head. "Don't think so." Viralli had barely looked at the pictures. His initial anger at the FBI closing his store for the night had cooled, but he wasn't too co-operative.
"Take another look." Martin was impatient. It was nearing 2 a.m. and he was tired and hungry. He could be at home right now, with Sam if they were still good after they had taken their champagne-fuelled header into bed.
Viralli reached into his pocked and pulled out a pair of spectacles. Peering through them, he took another look at the photograph.
"The guy. He was here. He bought a few candy bars and some milk. That was odd. Everyone buys coffee or soda. But that girl, I haven't seen her. I'm pretty sure he was in here along."
Martin smiled. "See, that wasn't that hard. What else do you remember? Did he say anything?"
"He wasn't a talker, but he looked at the maps." Francis pointed to the carousel of maps next to the counter. "I don't know which one," he added before Martin could ask. Martin finished his notes.
Martin walked outside. The CSU were still working the scene behind the store, but the red Volvo had been recovered from the ravine. Martin joined Danny, who was talking to the technician examining the car.
"...surprised that nobody saw anything. But I can tell you that this car went over the edge at a very slow speed. More after the accident reconstruction."
"It's not the accident that we're after. What's that? It looks like blood." Danny shone his flashlight into the back of the car. Only the front had been damaged by the crash, and the car was relatively clean. The dark spots in the grey seats stood out.
"Looks like it. CSU will go over everything at the lot," the technician explained.
Martin turned to Danny. "It's not a lot of blood. She might still be alive. The shop owner recognized Richard Dane, but didn't recall seeing Christine."
Danny tucked his hands into the pockets of his coat. " They spent all day in the city. Dane kidnapped them at least twelve hours ago. That's a lot of exposure when he could he driven straight north. We have been thinking that this all connects to the bank robbery somehow. So maybe Dane wanted Clyde's share of the robbery, or what was left of it. He threatens her daughter, they collect the loot, and then he dumps her."
"I don't know. I checked Buckner's financials. After his business failed, his money was gone. I don't get this case. A bunch of ordinary people got together, robbed a bank, shot several people and turned back to their normal lives. And now after ten years, it's suddenly coming apart?"
"Let's concentrate on the why later. Right now, the who is more important. The update on the APB is out and the hospital will call as soon as we can talk to Linda. A new press update might help; we need to talk to Van Doran," Danny suggested. There was fatigue swinging in his voice. He rubbed a hand over his face. It had been a very long day and there was no end in sight. But as long as the trail was hot, he couldn't step away--not when a child had been kidnapped.
"Van Doran won't be in until tomorrow morning. We could try to get something for the morning news, but it's too late for tomorrow's paper anyways. I guess we can start going through the calls from the tip line," Martin answered. "It's going to be the fruitcake fest of the year."
While Clyde Buckner's disappearance had gone unnoticed by the media, the disappearance of his wife and daughter had caught the attention of TV and the press alike and the FBI was deliberately using the citizen's interest to find potential witnesses. Crank calls and false sightings were a neccessary evil, but there was always a chance that the broadcasts would trigger the memory of an unwitting witness.
oOo
Although the FBI office was never deserted, it was considerably quieter at night. Martin and Danny had divided the stack of phone transcripts from the tip hotline. Danny stood at the white board, sticking little dots to the locations where Linda and her daughter had been sighted. Most of them were all over the city, none of the very likely.
"I have something here that sounds legit," Martin said, looking up from his pile of transcripts. "Someone saw Linda Buckner with a redheaded man outside of Self-Shelf in Queens. The news only mentioned Linda and Christine." This could be it, the vital lead to unravel one of the mysteries of the case. A new wave of excitement filled the two agents, the energy that comes with renewed hope.
Danny briefly studied the map he'd made. "There were two other sightings in Queens along the same six blocks. What do you say we find out if Self-Shelf is open 24 hours?"
"Everything in this city is open 24 hours," Martin joked and reached under his desk for the yellow pages. Flipping through the thick, well-thumbed book, he retrieved the number within ten minutes.
oOo
Self-Shelf was on the low rent end of the scale. Aside from a pimple-faced teenager who looked not a day over fifteen manning an empty office facing the street, the TV was blaring an action movie when Danny and Martin walked in.
"Evening. Your key, please." The teen tore himself away from the TV for a second.
"We're with the FBI." Martin showed his badge, even though the teen wasn't looking. "You rent any storage space to Clyde Buckner?"
"Yeah, his wife came in earlier today," he replied to the agents' surprise. He pointed to the sign-in sheet.
Indeed, Linda Buckner had signed in at 4.15 p.m..
"Was she here alone?" Danny asked.
"No, she was her with a kid and her husband," the teen replied, finally turning the TV to mute as the conversation seemed to catch his interest after all. "What she done?"
"We need to see the space she rented," Martin said firmly. They had no warrant. Weighing the options, getting to the storage unit had taken precedent over calling the judge covering night court.
They were in luck. The attendant didn't care about the legalities of their actions.
"It's number 106. Through the door back here. Here's the key." The teen handed Martin the key to Linda's space. "My boss is going to kill me if she's storing a stiff in there. Can't store perishables at Self-Shelf," the teen quipped.
"Thanks. We'll return the key later." They walked through the back door out into the yard.
Storage shed 106 was in the fourth row of units. Martin unlocked the gate and they led themselves in. They had expected an empty shed, but the garage-sized space was almost half filled with moving boxes and old furniture. Most of the items hadn't been touched in a long time; a thick layer of dust coated most of the objects.
"That looks like a case for a gun." Danny gravitated towards a black plastic case. "And it's been recently touched." He opened it. The depression in the foam was characteristic of a large automatic weapon. Danny recognised the shape immediately.
"There is a MAC-10 missing. Eric Dane was shot with a MAC-10. We need to get another look at the sign-in sheet," Martin confirmed darkly. They had uncovered another piece of the puzzle and perhaps solved a murder, but without knowing the driving force behind the actions, the answer gave them little satisfaction.
TBC