BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 49. Killer in Town

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Saturday morning came and June and Blake were at the Dallas bus station at 5:15, in the waiting room sipping coffee from paper cups. Blake caught himself touching his gun more times than was necessary – he was nervous. He knew that plans on paper could look great, but in real time, shit could go wrong very fast. June also knew what was at stake, and she reached over and gripped his hand every so often.
    The station had been empty when they arrived, but as the 6 o’clock hour approached, two lines began to form at the ticket counter, and a few of the seats were taken by folks waiting for their people to get off incoming buses. A loud bang from behind them caused them both to jump. It was a man opening one of the little shops. Blake thought about going to the bathroom and checked his watch. It was 5 minutes to 6, so his bathroom break would have to wait.
    The loudspeaker came on: Express bus from North Carolina has arrived at Gate 4 and will be unloading shortly.
    June’s hand clamped onto Blake’s arm like a vice. “This is it!”
    Peter called to say that the other two teams and the computer had no sighting of the killer at their two locations, which meant that if Blake and June were fishing in a dry hole also, they were back at the beginning.
    Blake and June held up their phones to scan the picture of the inside of the station that Peter was feeding them. People were entering fast, most carrying a suitcase and in a hurry to get out of the bus station. To confuse things even more, these newly arrived travelers were running into the lines of people waiting to buy tickets. Blake was having a hard time keeping track of passengers getting off and passengers trying to get on. “Peter, I can’t make heads or tails out of this mess. Has the computer got a hit yet?”
    Peter had the same picture on the big screen in Operations and he and Mary were glued to the images. “Not yet, Blake, but the bus should be about empty. I’ll— There he is! He’s passing the restroom doors.”
    Blake could only make out the ballcap on the other side of the crowd, because the man wearing it moved rapidly along. Blake looked on his phone but the camera wasn’t picking up much more than what he himself could see with his own eyes. “Peter, he’s turning down the short hall leading out to the side door, and he has a backpack – do you have him?”
    Peter ran through all the camera angles. “I’ve lost him; the hall camera didn’t pick up anyone.”
    Blake turned the corner into the hall but found it vacant. To his right was an emergency door that he hadn’t even noticed before. Over his phone, he said to June, “June, go out the front door and try to spot him; he’s out of the station!”
    As Blake ran out the side exit and into the drive where the buses entered the terminal lot, June fought her way past the passengers who were also making their way out.
    Blake headed to the sidewalk and looked up and down the street. Seeing no one wearing a ballcap, he ran around to the front, where he spied June frantically searching for their killer. He went over to join her. “No sign of him out back.”
    June pointed up the street to a local bus stop. “Here comes the next bus. We need to be on it; that’s the only place he could be.”
    Blake wasn’t sure that it was the only place, but they ran toward the stop. By the time they got there the local bus was ready to pull away and there was no one under the shelter for the stop – if anybody had been waiting for that bus, he or she was already aboard. Blake banged on the door and the driver opened it. The bus wasn’t that full and most of the people were close to the front. The two of them took a seat about midway, out of anyone else’s earshot, and Blake called Peter. “Peter, if the camera on my phone gets a picture, can the computer pick out our killer on the bus?”
    Peter looked at the picture Blake was showing him and indicated not. “We don’t have a face shot, so the computer is going by height, weight, and walking habits. With everybody in seats, there’s no way she can tell if our guy is on board that bus. Get a picture of him getting off and maybe she will spot him. I’ll tie your phone into her program.”
    Blake told Peter to be standing by. “June, we messed up. One of us should have caught the next bus. He could be on the bus coming right behind us and we wouldn’t know it.”
    June stood and pulled the cord. “You’re right. I’ll get off here and catch the next one. We’ll keep in touch through Peter.”
    The bus stopped and June got out through the rear door. As the door closed behind her, Blake got the bad feeling that he should have been the one to get off.

June was wearing a thin jacket that covered the pistol in the holster under her left armpit. While she sat on the bench waiting for the next bus, she ran her right hand across her left breast and wrapped her fingers around the gun’s handle – a reassuring act.
    The bus stopped and she stepped aboard, paid her fare, and walked to the middle, where she found a seat across from a man in a dark gray T-shirt. The man was the right height and build, but so were the height and build of two other passengers she had passed. The other two, however, had both undressed her with their eyes, but this one avoided looking in her direction at all. And though he wasn’t wearing a ball cap, he did have a backpack.
    The bus stopped and the two men closest to the front stood up. She started to reach for her phone, but when she saw the men’s silver lunch boxes, she realized they were just going to work, not on reconnaisance for later that night. That left the guy next to her. Without thinking, she ran her hand over her gun once more.
    The man pulled the cord and the bus stopped. June reached for her camera, but the man turned away and exited by the back door. She had her camera out, but now the bus was driving off. She pulled repeatedly on the cord until at last the driver stopped in the middle of the block and opened the door.
    She walked from the street to the sidewalk, but the man was nowhere in sight. He had to have turned the corner at the end of the block. Fearing she had lost him, she ran as fast as she could, but when she turned the corner she saw no one. The building at the corner was being torn down, and a tall wooden safety wall had been put up to keep people out. Her close inspection revealed a couple of loose boards in the wall, so she removed her gun, slid the boards apart, and stepped into the relative dark behind the wall.
    June didn’t hear a sound. Nothing moved within the enclosure. Then she felt the cold steel at the back of her neck.

Copyright © 2019, 2020 by Ed Rogers