The pickup turned back onto the main road at the same time Clark pulled down the short drive to the white stone house. He parked his rental on the far left of the driveway, making it more difficult for Ernie to see it unless he came outside. He moved quickly, hoping to take advantage of the old man’s recent departure, banking on Ernie thinking his dad had forgotten something and returned—maybe even to say good-bye.
There was no peephole, just a floor-to-ceiling window to the right of the door. Clark stayed to the left, out of the line of sight. He beat on the door with the flat of his hand, not too hard, but like someone who knew the occupant had just walked inside. Pacheco opened the door a half-second later.
Police Tasers deliver a fifty-thousand-volt shock for a five-second duration. Clark shot Pacheco with a civilian model called a Bolt that gave him a thirty-second ride. The instant he pulled the trigger, a compressed nitrogen canister propelled two barbed steel darts from the nose of the device on coils of whisker-thin wire. Deploying at an angle, one dart struck Pacheco just over his left nipple, and the other in the center of his right thigh. The device chattered as it discharged electricity. Pacheco came up on his toes, arms rigid, teeth clenched, and toppled backward on the tile entry like a felled tree, body arched on his heels and the back of his head.
Thirty seconds gave Clark plenty of time to duct-tape Pacheco’s wrists behind his back, using several turns of tape to connect his hands and feet, bending his knees almost up to his buttocks and effectively hog-tying him. Next Clark stuffed a wadded paper towel into the man’s mouth and then covered that with a strip of tape before dumping him into the trunk of the rental car. Two minutes later, Clark was driving north on Highway 144.
Traffic was almost nonexistent, and he reached his destination on the outskirts of Fort Worth in just under an hour. The rental car bounced as he turned off the main street into a deserted industrial park. Clark did his best to hit every pothole and bump, bringing a chorus of muffled cries from behind the backseat.
He used a pair of bolt cutters to defeat the cheap padlock and pushed open the gate, closing it behind him after he’d driven through so as not to rouse the suspicions of any roving police or security patrols—though he doubted there would be any. This area didn’t have anything worth stealing.
Clark parked the rental beside a nondescript metal building, tucking it in behind row after row of bright red fifty-five-gallon rubber bins full of old oil filters and other industrial waste. Whistling to himself, he got out and slammed the door, pausing a few seconds so his passenger could anticipate—and worry about—what was going to happen next.
Clark stood off to the side as he opened the trunk. There was always a chance that Pacheco had wriggled free of his bonds. Still tied, he gazed up at Clark in the red glow of the taillights. His eyes sparkled with abject horror.
“You scared?” Clark asked.
Pacheco nodded emphatically.
Clark gave him a wink. “Kiddo,” he said, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
He hauled the terrified man out of the trunk and dragged him by his feet along the gravel. It would do him good to watch the process as it progressed.
Clark had never been here before. That would have left him at too great a risk of being recognized. He had, however, studied the place at length through the satellite images from Google Earth. He knew that the iron contraption the size of a train engine beside the tin building was an industrial incinerator. He also knew that the controls were located in a square blue box on the side of a steel chute where employees of the plant loaded refuse to be destroyed. What the Google images did not show was that a fire from the day before still glowed inside the belly of the incinerator, the thermometer on the box still reading 600 degrees.
A placard above warned that temperatures should not drop below 1,600 degrees when refuse was being burned. The company’s website advertised its ability to destroy industrial and hospital waste at temperatures exceeding 1,900 degrees.
Clark studied the directions for a moment, surprised to see there was no lock or computer key code, just a simple on/off switch to start the flow of gas to the primary burners and two buttons on either side of the box that needed to be depressed simultaneously.
He turned the switch, then counted to three before pressing both buttons. On the ground at his feet, Pacheco gave a muffled cry behind the duct tape as the gas inside the chamber ignited with a hollow whoompf!
“Hmmm,” Clark mused, loud enough for Pacheco to hear. “Works just like my grill at home.”
The chamber of the incinerator itself was a somewhat stubby cylindrical tank, approximately ten feet long by seven feet high. A large walk-in door was cut into the front, used for raking ash, replacing any of the foot-thick insulation, or loading refuse that was too large to fit into the rear chute. Secondary burners at the top of the chamber reached 1,200 degrees, igniting unburned gases before they could escape through a fifteen-foot chimney.
Clark waited for the reading on the control panel to reach 1,880 degrees and then lifted the heavy metal lid on the three-by-six-foot chute attached to the rear of the chamber. The rusty, coffinlike box was smeared with black oil and flecked with bits of fiberglass insulation and other trash. A trapdoor hung down in front of the firebox, telltale orange flames just visible around the edges of blackened metal. The face of a heavy steel ram was flush with the back end of the chute. A red plastic sign affixed to the box above the controls warned: Use by unauthorized persons is prohibited.
Clark looked down at his prisoner and smiled. “Don’t pay any attention to that. I’m authorized.”
Pacheco was no lightweight, and it took some maneuvering for Clark to get the thrashing man up over the edge. Both men were sweating, albeit for different reasons, by the time Pacheco landed inside the chute with his feet toward the fire chamber and his head against the ram. He rolled and thrashed, trying in vain to gain some kind of footing that would allow him to escape from the narrow prison. As he was wearing only gym shorts and a T-shirt, his hairy legs and arms were covered in black oil and grime in a matter of moments.
Clark leaned over the side, peering down into the greasy darkness. He caught the sudden odor of urine. That made sense. For an instant, he felt a pang of guilt, and then remembered the dead girls in the sorghum field, the snuff videos, and a child named Magdalena who was still somewhere out there, perhaps even dead already.
He clapped his hands together. “They say this can melt bone,” he said. “But I’d imagine they’ll find a knuckle or two.”
Pacheco began to sob.
Clark pushed the red button.
Nothing happened, except for the muffled screams, thrashing—and more urine.