Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Dammit!” Sully barked as Charley’s cell phone went dead.
Stomping his foot on the gas pedal, he slid sideways on the snow and ice before the tires regained traction.
Tightening his grip on the steering wheel, Sully dodged around one slow-moving car and then sped in between two others.
His eyes were peeled for Charley, but the relentless storm was blinding.
His windshield wipers were on high, but visibility remained frustratingly low.
Glancing both ways, he raced through an intersection as the light was turning red.
Nearing the next stoplight, it was already red, but he ran it.
Running the third stoplight almost got him T-boned as the driver of a pickup truck blared his horn long and loud.
“Where are you, Charley?” Sully whispered.
He focused on the left side of the street, where her now-empty shop was, as he closed in on the location.
With Christmas shopping over and the blizzard raging, no one was on the sidewalk, and only a few drivers were braving the icy roads.
Turning left, the Jeep’s tires fishtailed some, but he managed to come to a stop on the corner of Charley’s former shop.
She was nowhere in sight. Hopping out of the Jeep, he hurried onto the sidewalk.
Under the glow of the lamppost, he recognized Charley’s red glove lying on the ground at the entrance to her shop.
He picked it up and shoved it in his coat pocket.
Cursing under his breath, he glanced in all four directions.
Besides his own, there were two other sets of footprints in the snow.
There appeared to have been a scuffle near her doorway.
From there, the footprints disappeared across the sidewalk and into the street.
To a car? Had Lerfeld forced her into his car?
Sully saw nothing and no one. He jiggled the door to the shop.
It was still locked. He wished he had Spike, the Brevards’ German shepherd, with him.
But with the snow, he figured the dog wouldn’t be able to pick up Charley’s scent anyway.
Standing in the snow near the spot where he’d found her red glove, Sully called Burt Groves who answered on the first ring.
“Detective Groves, this is Sullivan Custis, and I need your help,” Sully said. He briefly explained Charley’s disappearance, where he was, and asked, “Do you know anything about a man in his mid-forties named Leon Lerfeld? Like where he lives?”
“No, I don’t know him, Sully. But I can find out. I’ll call you right back.”
On his way to the Jeep, Sully texted his dad the circumstances and then jammed his cell phone into his jacket pocket.
Reaching the Jeep, he got in, and even with four-wheel-drive reaching Charley’s duplex at the top of the hill was no easy task.
The Jeep’s tires spun, and the vehicle fishtailed back and forth, but he made it up the hill.
The headlights didn’t show any tire tracks or footprints.
Nevertheless, he jumped out and jogged across the parking pads to her front door.
The apartments were dark, and both doors were locked.
He glanced around feeling helpless and returned to the Jeep.
He knew his dad was also making some calls as his phone rang.
“Detective Groves,” Sully said. “What did you find out?”
“A Lerfeld couple lives on a dead-end side street about three blocks north of where you are now.” There was a pause, and then Groves said, “But Leon Lerfeld is a man in his mid-eighties. Are you sure that’s the correct name?”
“That’s the only name I have for him.”
“Copy that. Lerfeld lives on Bleak Road. I’m headed there now.”
“Then so am I.”
“No, I will have backup. You wait where you are, Sully.”
“No chance. I’ll see you on Bleak Road, Detective.”
Sully hung up and headed back down the steep hill.
He turned left onto Colorado Avenue and drove three blocks northwest. Windshield wipers swiping, he saw a street sign for Bleak Road and made another left.
Fresh tire tracks showed in the snow. Had to be from Leon’s car.
There were no homes and only a shadowy wooded area for at least two blocks.
Bleak described this road perfectly. Uneven pavement turned to gravel under the snow and then a small wooden house and Lerfeld’s old car appeared at the end of the Jeep’s headlights.
Sully drove a little closer and stopped.
Earlier, he’d locked his revolver in the glove compartment when he’d escorted his dad into the ER.
He’d found Charley’s SIG Sauer there and remembered her placing it in the glove box the evening they’d taken the Jeep to have dinner at the Lodge. .
Leaving the Jeep’s headlights on, Sully cautiously emerged from the vehicle.
Standing behind the open door of the Jeep, he observed the shabby dwelling.
The place appeared dark and dead, but he knew differently.
There were footprints in the snow. Once again, two sets.
He grabbed a flashlight from the console, shut the Jeep door, and followed the prints.
They headed straight into the house. Stepping onto a worn-out porch, he stood to one side of the entrance, as he’d learned from his dad, and banged his fist against the door.
“Charley?” Sully called. Nothing. Complete silence.
Snow was falling heavily all around him.
“Lerfeld!” he yelled. Nothing. He kicked the front door open a split second before headlights shone in the distance, and then an SUV pulled up next to his Jeep.
Sully glanced over his shoulder to see Detective Groves getting out of his vehicle. “I’m going in.”
“Wait. I don’t have a search warrant,” the detective said, also shining a flashlight.
“Door’s open,” Sully said, shining his flashlight on the door.
“Did you hear a cry for help?” Groves asked. “Which would give us probable cause for entering this house?”
“Yes,” Sully said. Though he’d heard it on his phone when Charley cried out half of his name, he knew his answer gave them a legal way to enter the residence.
With that, Sully stepped into the dwelling and found a switch just inside the door, but when he flipped it, no lights came on.
“Hell,” he muttered as Groves entered right behind him.
“Colorado Springs Police!” Groves announced. “Is anybody here?” No answer.
Sully and the detective shone their flashlights around a tiny living room.
With trash lining all four walls it could only be described as a pigsty.
Walking forward, wind howled through cracked windows.
On a broken-down futon was a filthy cushion.
A dingy lamp with a crooked shade sat on a small end table.
Groves tried the lamp, but it didn’t work.
The place smelled. Bad. It was also freezing cold.
Peeling wallpaper and buckets of water on the floor further attested to the fact the place was not only unkempt but exposed to the elements.
Beyond the living room was a kitchen barely big enough to turn around in.
An apartment-size stove and refrigerator framed either end of a chipped and stained countertop.
“Look,” Sully said, shining his flashlight on a pile of toadflax on a rickety kitchen table.
“I’ll be damned,” Grove replied. “Toadflax, the Cave Killer’s calling card.”
“Charley said once that toadflax was found in degraded areas. How right she was.”
Groves led the way down a short hallway past a disgusting bathroom. It stunk, and a rat scurried across a floor marred by patches of missing linoleum. In the bedroom across the hall was a bed. Lying on it were two people. And a small dog.
“Police!” Groves announced and shined his flashlight on the bed.
A closer look showed the corpse of an aged, decaying man with dried blood on his torso. The decomposing body of the elderly woman beside him had a knife stuck in her chest. The dog’s head lay twisted at a fatal angle from its body.
“Think that man is Leon Lerfeld?” Sully asked under his breath.
“And his wife,” Groves said, pulling out his cell phone. “Explains some of the stench.”
As Groves called in a report on the bodies, Sully wondered if the couple had been killed in their sleep as they were clad in pajamas. Sully backed out of the room and opened a door in the hallway. What he saw stopped him in his tracks.
“Detective,” Sully called. “Come look at this.”
“Crime scene investigation, forensics, and the coroner are on their way,” Groves said, coming up alongside him. “Is that a hole in the floor?”
“Yeah, big enough for a person to fit through,” Sully said, shining his light into the hole. “And escape into the tunnels.” He looked at Groves and said, “Leon Lerfeld or whatever his name is, is definitely the Cave Killer.”
“Sure as hell looks like it,” Groves said, staring into the pit equipped with a wooden ladder. “If this hole leads to a tunnel or the maze of tunnels under this area, that would explain how he’s been killing women and getting away without being seen.”
“He has Charley. I’m going after them,” Sully said and took a step.
“No, I can’t let you do that,” Groves said and caught his arm.
“You can’t stop me,” Sully replied and jerked his arm free.
Before the detective could grab him again, Sully shimmied down the ladder into the pit.
He slowly aimed his flashlight in a full circle.
Darkness, muddy ground, and more rats. He pulled his Ruger Redhawk .
44 Magnum out of his holster. Sure enough, a tunnel opened to his right.
Holding the flashlight in his left hand, he veered in that direction.
Hearing a noise at his back, he made a half-turn in time to see Groves drop off the bottom rung of the ladder and into the pit.
“I let my team know we’re possibly on the Cave Killer’s trail,” the detective said.
Sully nodded, and this time it was he who led the way.
Except for the scuttling and occasional hiss of a rat, it was silent.
Sully and Groves were both tall and neither could traverse the tunnel standing up straight.
Charley and her captor could do so. Picturing Charley being dragged through this nightmarish dungeon at the hands of a psychotic serial killer was almost more than Sully could deal with and keep his cool.
He and Groves had gone several yards when the tunnel split in two.
“Damn,” Sully grumbled, wishing he knew which one would take him to Charley. “I’ll keep to the right.”
“Okay, I’ll go left,” Groves said. “Be careful, Sully.”
“If he’s got Charley, he’s a dead man.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”