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Thursday, August 6, 2015

67 Born to Make the Kill

They had only traveled another ten minutes when Tony saw a yellow sign with a cross indicating an intersection just ahead. The further north they travelled the darker the sky became. The drizzle turned to rain and Tony increased the speed on the windshield wipers. When they reached the crossing, Tony turned the HEMI powered truck off the main highway, and headed east on the road. Where it led he didn’t care right now. I need to disappear long enough to find another ride.

The countryside, cluttered with outcroppings of dark volcanic rock and sagebrush, stretched out flat on both sides. In the rearview mirror, Tony could still see vehicles on the main highway. He felt like the burgundy truck had become a beacon which would draw the cops to him like an airport signal reaches through the night sky to approaching aircraft. He had to find cover, so he pressed harder on the accelerator until the truck approached eighty miles per hour. After a minute, the road dropped over a small rise and he began to feel some relief as the truck hid from SR 21.

He steered the truck onto the shoulder, stomped the brakes until it skidded to a stop, and threw open his door.



As morning had turned into afternoon, Special Agent Angela Hawk felt rummy. She had been on duty since eight a.m. yesterday and except for a brief nap just before sunrise, she had been awake for an entire day. Instinct and caffeine had directed her thus far, but her optimism faded as the hours and erroneous reports came and went.

At about ten this morning, she had heard the tan Nissan had been located. Even though she turned the search over to Baker Police Chief, Clarence Bigad, it had been no surprise his name wasn’t mentioned in the report. The Stanza had actually been found by a woman out for a jog. She spotted the car behind some granite boulders that jutted out of the ground, wedged between a stand of trees and had called 9-1-1. The Pacific County Sheriff responded.

As Angela suspected, Hank Rogers had been in the trunk, dead. The preliminary medical report said he had died twelve to fourteen hours before. There had been evidence the other three people had been in the vehicle. Plenty of trash from junk food wrappers, and empty water bottles and soda cans cluttered the floor. Along with an overflowing ash tray, in the backseat a few blond hairs had also been recovered. Lots of forensics, she thought.

Armed with the information that the suspects were possibly en route to Canada, an APB had been circulated around Washington State for the stolen pickup. Throughout the day there had been a number of reports, but most made no sense. Some of them were too far away from the scene of the crime for the suspects to have covered that much ground. Some of them were headed south instead of north. Another had been a solitary driver and one had an elderly couple in the front seat. In every case, when the license numbers were checked, they proved not to be the stolen vehicle’s plates.

This morning, the FBI in Detroit had paid a visit to Rudy Valencia’s father. The report she took over the radio stated that he had been unwilling to give any information at first, but when confronted with the knowledge his son was connected to a string of murders and robberies, he gave up the location of his brother’s hunting cabin in Canada. The most direct route to the cabin would put them on SR 21.

Agent Hawk had monitored all the reports since she left the site where the truck had been stolen, and, when the Washington State Patrol reported a new sighting, she had been alerted within a few minutes. The details sounded promising. The truck, spotted on SR 21, according to the patrolman’s report, had two men in the front seat.

Angela felt her intuition had kicked into overdrive. She had driven in hopes of being on the right trail and, like the homing device in a homebound salmon points her without wavering to the site of her original spawning, Angela’s instincts had lead her over the last day to within twenty miles of their location. She flipped on her emergency lights, shoved the accelerator pedal to the floor and let the adrenaline lift her spirits. She was so close she could kiss them goodbye.



Natalie was still on her knees behind the driver’s seat when the back door flew open. She saw Tony’s fist aimed at her face and even though she tried to throw herself to the side, he still connected with brutal force on the bridge of her nose. The blow knocked Natalie on her back behind the front passenger seat, with her hands and feet tied behind her. Pinned by her own weight, she felt trapped. Waves of agony radiated over her face, and pulsated from the point of impact.

“One more goddamn trick like that and I will kill you,” he yelled, “Make no mistake about it.”

He slammed the back door.

Natalie couldn’t hold the tears of physical pain and frustration back and they rolled into her ears. On the floor stunned, though, she felt something else trickle across her cheek.

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