Not Our Daughter

Twenty-Five

An FBI helicopter arrived from Denver within an hour of Burns and his team tracing the phone call. It was one of the FBI’s light utility choppers that could travel up to 175 miles per hour. With the Shipleys now out on the open road, Burns needed to be able to cover a lot of ground as fast as possible. The helicopter landed in a parking lot right next to the Viking Lodge and likely startled awake vacationers staying in other hotel rooms. Burns, Davis, and Agent Myers quickly boarded. The pilot had them up in the air within sixty seconds and began racing across a dark sky toward Alamosa, Colorado.

So far, there had been no confirmation from the Alamosa County Sheriff’s Office that the Shipleys had been apprehended. But he’d been getting regular updates. The store clerk and security footage both confirmed Cole had been inside the gas station. But the clerk said he never saw the vehicle he was driving. And the exterior security cameras were all down. The sheriff’s office was trying to find other security cameras in proximity that might have caught sight of a vehicle coming or going around the same time.

Agent Myers had been able to track the specific phone the daughter had used to place the call to Tyler Healey. According to their GPS tracking map, the device was still located somewhere near the gas station. Burns guessed Cole had dumped it. It was clear from the brief exchange he’d overheard between Cole and his daughter he was not pleased she’d used the phone. Burns found it ironic his fugitive was dealing with the same kinds of frustrating daughter issues he was. Neither of them had any control over their teenager.

They finally landed in an open field right next to the gas station around five thirty in the morning. It was still dark outside. There were two police vehicles in the parking lot. Burns, Davis, and Myers all climbed out of the chopper and hurried over to the building. A sturdy fiftysomething man in a tan police uniform with a matching cowboy hat met them at the front of the store.

“Sheriff Lewis,” he introduced himself.

They shook hands. Burns had spoken on the phone with him several times already.

“Anything new?” Burns asked.

“Nothing. We still don’t know what the hell we’re looking for out there.”

“So no luck with other area security cameras?”

“Not yet. This is a safe town. Not a lot of store owners feel the need to put up security cameras. I should take that as a compliment, I guess. We’ll keep checking around. As we discussed earlier, we put up a checkpoint on 285 within minutes of you first alerting us to the situation. We’ve had maybe a dozen vehicles pass through there the past two hours. But nobody matching the descriptions you gave us.”

“How many other ways to get south other than 285?”

“Honestly, dozens.”

“Figured. They probably fled town before you even got it set up.”

“Maybe. But I’ve had a dozen officers out there looking. Plus, we called over to La Jara, Monte Vista, and the Costilla County Sheriff’s Office to get them all up to speed.”

“Thank you, Sheriff.”

“One last thing.” He held up two matching phones in a sealed plastic bag. “We found both near the dumpsters at the edge of the parking lot a few minutes ago. I presume one of them is the phone you’ve been tracking here.”

“Most likely.” Burns turned to Myers. “See if we have a match.”

The sheriff handed over the phones. He turned, nodded toward the inside of the station. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news, Agent Burns, but that clerk in there is about as clueless as a rock. I know him. His name is Johnny and he’s completely baked. His dad has been in and out of my jail many times. Mostly minor stuff. Not sure he’ll be much help.”

“Appreciate the insight.”

“You bet. I’ll be out here if you need me.”

Burns and his crew went inside the building. The young clerk was situated behind the front counter, watching them closely, fidgeting nervously while shifting his weight back and forth. Johnny was clearly not comfortable around the police. There was no telling what the kid might have stashed in a backpack somewhere.

Burns introduced himself and the others and then instructed Myers to work on the security system behind the counter. The agent quickly brought up camera footage showing Cole enter the store earlier, grab some items, and approach the counter. As expected, his head was now bald, and the beard was completely gone. He paid, and then, after a brief exchange, the clerk handed over his laptop.

“Why did he want your laptop?” Burns asked the kid.

Johnny shrugged. “He offered me a hundred bucks, so I let him borrow it. Didn’t ask any questions. I checked the browser history after the SWAT team arrived and scared the hell out of me. The guy only went to one website and spent about five minutes on there.”

“Show us,” Burns said.

Johnny grabbed his laptop from a back counter and set it in front of them. Myers came around to share in the viewing. They all huddled close as the clerk pulled up his browser history and then clicked on a website that had a set of random letters as the web address. A new web page opened that showed only a black screen with three empty text boxes situated directly in the middle.

“What kind of website is that?” Davis asked.

“Looks like a secure server,” Myers replied.

“Can you get in?” Davis asked him.

“I’ll give it my best shot.”

Myers pulled the laptop in front of him and started pecking away at the keyboard.

Burns turned back to the clerk. “What exactly did this guy say to you?”

Another shrug. “Like I told the sheriff, not much. Said he needed to jump online for a few minutes and that his phone was dead. That was it, I swear. When he was finished, he left without another word.”

“And you really saw nothing in the parking lot?” Davis asked.

“Sorry, dude. I mean, sir. I wasn’t paying attention. I just kinda get lost in my own world in here in the middle of the night.”

Burns glanced around the station. When he’d first heard about Cole using the clerk’s laptop, he figured his fugitive was just checking the news to try to stay a step ahead of their pursuit. But that didn’t appear to be the case at all. So what could Cole have stored on a secured server that he felt he had to access right now in the middle of being hunted? Hopefully Myers would have the answer to that question shortly.

They caught a ride in the back of a police cruiser over to the Alamosa County Sheriff’s Office, where they tried desperately to find something that would help aid them in their pursuit of Cole and Lisa. After an hour or so, they finally got their first major break. But it didn’t come from their stop in Alamosa; it came from Winter Park. Burns was standing in a small conference room with Myers sitting at a table and working on a laptop in front of him when Davis rushed into the room holding up his phone.

“Boss, got a Deputy Richards here on the phone. He was working the checkpoint for the Berthoud Pass last night.” Davis spoke into the phone. “I got you on speaker now, Deputy. Can you tell Agent Burns what you just told me?”

“Yes, sir. So, like I said, I was manning the checkpoint for the pass last night, turning everyone back. An old white van came up with a guy sitting in front. Probably in his forties. But he didn’t look anything like the fugitive we’d been searching for. He said he was a plumber. I recognized the name of the plumbing company printed on the van. Anyway, I didn’t think anything of it until this morning, when I more closely examined the new mock-up of Cole Shipley you guys sent out late last night. I’m certain it was the same guy.”

“How certain?” Burns asked.

“Ninety percent. Shaved head, no beard, same facial features and eyes.”

“Did you search the van?” Burns asked.

“No, sir. I mean, I should have in hindsight. But like I said, I recognized the plumbing company. The old man who started it was a friend of my dad’s. So I just stupidly assumed. Not my best police work. But there were a lot of cars in that line.”

Burns growled in frustration, shook his head.

“What can you tell us about the van?” Davis asked.

“White Ford. Probably twenty years old. Looked a little run-down. Gunderson Family Plumbers was on the side in blue. It was faded but legible. I called Teddy Gunderson a few minutes ago. He said he sold off his vans a decade ago, when he shut down his company. You can still find photos of the vehicles online.”

“And you saw no one else in the van?” Davis asked.

“No, sir.”

Burns asked, “Anything else you can tell us about the guy that might help?”

“Not much. But I’ll give him credit. He was smooth. Never flinched. Seemed totally relaxed sitting there and talking to me. Made up a helluva story on the spot about how disgusting the back of the van was from a job he’d just come from. It was smart.”

“All right,” Davis said. “You think of anything else, you call us.”

“Will do.”

Davis hung up, held up his phone to show Burns. He’d already been searching for Gunderson Family Plumbers vans online. “Matches the description of some sort of white van one of the neighbors at the storage facility mentioned.”

“Yeah, it does,” Burns said, still shaking his head. “But, dammit, we had him. This should all be over right now. Ask the sheriff to help get that photo out to every police department from here on down to El Paso. And then call our pilot and tell him to get the chopper up and running. If they’re headed that way, we’re headed that way.”

“I’m in,” Myers suddenly announced.

They circled in behind him to examine his laptop screen.

“Not much to it,” Myers said. “One short video. Nothing else.”

“Play it,” Burns instructed.

The agent pressed play, and Burns leaned in close. It was a home security video taken at night showing a front sidewalk and street. He immediately recognized it. It was thirteen-year-old footage from the night Cole Shipley had killed Candace McGee. The video showed the woman arriving at his home in the middle of the night, followed by a mystery man several minutes later. It was the only known security footage from the night in question. Everything else had been deleted from the home’s security server.

“What is this?” Davis asked.

“A video Cole Shipley’s lawyer sent to us the day after they disappeared back in Austin claiming his innocence. We investigated the man in the video but found nothing. We could never identify him and had no clue why he was also at the Shipley home that night. We thought maybe he somehow helped Cole. An accomplice. It’s always bothered me. But because we had a murder weapon with Cole’s fingerprints, and they ran, we continued to pursue them as the primary suspects.”

“Interesting. Why would Cole stop here at this gas station, borrow this clerk’s laptop, and pull up this video? Kind of random, don’t you think?”

Burns pondered that a moment. “If I’ve learned anything about Cole Shipley, nothing he does is random. Everything is calculated. Maybe this guy is still helping him. We need to figure out who he is.”