“That means, ‘Beat it, lot lizard, there’s a woman at home,’” Cassie explained.
“Gotcha.”
“Three refusals,” Cassie said. “But now watch.”
The prostitute moved parallel to the front bumper of the truck with the bra in the window and turned and walked between the third and fourth trucks. She was blocked from camera view by the side of the fourth truck.
“We can’t see her, but we can assume she’s standing between the two trucks negotiating with the driver in the fourth truck. If you watch closely, you can see the curtains rustle in the sleeper cab.” Cassie pointed it out. “He’s going to invite her in,” Cassie said.
There was a glimpse of the prostitute through the passenger window—just a smudge of white—as she entered the cab and turned toward the sleeper cab.
“I couldn’t see her very well,” Kirkbride said.
“That’s because he must have disconnected his dome light so none of the other truckers could see her get in. Why do you suppose he did that?”
Kirkbride didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
“Note the time,” Cassie said, pointing toward the time stamp. “It reads 10:58 PM.”
Kirkbride nodded.
“I’m going to fast-forward again but it doesn’t matter. You can see that nothing happens … until 11:17.”
The only movement in the nineteen minutes was the crazy swirling of exhaust from the stacks of the idling trucks, a cat that seemed to skip across the pavement going left to right, and a vibration in the curtains of the sleeper cab.
Cassie poked the icon to slow the video to normal speed.
At 11:18, the headlights came on from the fourth semi followed by its running lights. The truck slowly pulled out of the slot, turned sharply, and drove out of camera view.
The space left by the departing truck was empty.
“She didn’t get out,” Kirkbride said. “She’s still inside.”
“We know his MO,” Cassie said. “He’s done this dozens of times—maybe hundreds of times. He gets them inside his truck and injects them with a syringe filled with Rohypnol. When she’s comatose, he binds her up and drives her away. Either that, or he stashes them in the kill room he’s built in his trailer that we discovered in North Carolina. But in this case, he can’t risk taking her outside to put her in there … So he drives down the highway to a pull-out or rural road and then stashes her.
“It’s his truck,” she said. “Bright yellow Peterbilt 389 with a Unibilt Ultracab pulling a reefer trailer. North Dakota plates. It’s him all right.”
“Where did you get this clip?”
“Her name is Leslie Behaunek,” Cassie said. “She’s the county prosecutor in Wilson County, North Carolina. I met her last year when they flew me there to try and identify the Lizard King. Leslie felt guilty that he got away on a technicality and she blamed herself. Since then, Leslie and I made a pact to stay in touch and to finally get this guy. She’s made contacts with law enforcement and truck-stop owners across the country. Her contact in Eau Claire sent her this just a couple of hours ago.”
Kirkbride shook his head. “Why didn’t this contact call the Wisconsin Highway Patrol?”
“Because by the time he saw this clip he knew the Lizard King was likely out of the state and hundreds of miles away. That’s the thing—he’s always moving. He’s five states away by the time anyone realizes a prostitute didn’t come home. That’s why he’s been impossible to catch.”
“Do you think she’s still alive?”
“I do,” Cassie said. “He doesn’t kill them right away. He likes to make videos of himself while he does it to watch later. The videos are his trophies. He assaults them, sometimes for weeks. That’s his history. Then they disappear.”
“And he’s headed here to Grimstad?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s his ETA?”
She shot out her arm and checked her wristwatch. “Three hours, fifteen minutes. He should be here by eleven this morning.”
“How do you know that?”
Cassie spoke fast. “He stopped at the weigh station in Hudson, Wisconsin at 1:10 AM. As you know, weigh stations are the bane of every trucker’s existence and every state has to have them to make sure trucks are safe and overweight rigs don’t pulverize their highways—and so they can check driver logs to make sure the truckers are in compliance and their log books are up to snuff. The truckers call them ‘coops’ like ‘chicken coops’ and the ones in Wisconsin are called ‘badger coops.’ Anyway, the station is unmanned that time of night but truckers have to drive through it and get weighed. When they’re on the scales they get a photo of the DOT number of the truck on the door and the license plate and they go after the driver later if there’s a weight issue.”
She took a breath and tried to be calm. Kirkbride watched her warily.
“Anyway,” she said, “it’s ten hours from that weigh station to Grimstad. That puts him here at eleven.”
“Assuming he drives the speed limit,” the sheriff mused.
“Oh, he does,” Cassie said. “And he never misses a weigh station, either. One thing we know about this guy is he’s a stickler for rules and regulations because he doesn’t want to get pulled over for something trivial. He knows that the only serial killer truck driver ever caught red-handed was when a state trooper in Arkansas pulled a guy over for a busted taillight and saw a human leg inside the cab. So our guy obeys every traffic law and regulation. When he drove through Hudson his gross vehicle weight was seventy thousand pounds. So he was ten thousand pounds light.”
“And you know he’s coming here?”
“Yes.”
“Cassie, how do you know that?” Kirkbride said, genuinely puzzled. Then: “Oh yeah, I remember now. You set up a scheme to lure him in.”
“And he finally bit,” Cassie said. “I actually talked to him myself.”
“When?”
“Yesterday afternoon. He called from somewhere in Michigan. He said he was headed west. I didn’t say anything to you at the time because there was no way to promise he’d follow through. Sometimes he’s called—I recognized his voice—but he was shopping rates for the best deal and he never came. He’s done the same to Leslie. But this time he texted a confirmation. He’s coming. I alerted the highway patrol but told them not to intercede in any way. They’re to report his progress only. He’ll show up at Dakota Remanufacturing to pick up the load.”
Kirkbride stroked his mustache. “If he texted you then we have his cell number. We can track down the location of the phone.”
“No we can’t,” she said. “He uses burner phones he buys in bulk at truck stops. They don’t have GPS chips. So when he calls the display reads UNKNOWN CALLER.”
“I should have known,” the sheriff said. “He’s always a few steps ahead of us.”
“Until now,” she said.
“Have you called Tibbs?”
Avery Tibbs was the new county attorney. They both knew he might be a problem.
“Not yet.”
“The FBI?”