Blink of an Eye (Kendra Michaels #8) - Roy Johansen Page 0,87
maybe Jessie.” Kendra crossed around to the back of the vehicle. “We need to—” She froze. “Oh, God.”
Lynch rushed to her side. “What is it?”
She backed away and pointed to the covered compartment. “There’s a dead body here.”
“You can smell it?” Lynch said.
She nodded jerkily.
“Because I’ve been around more than my share of corpses,” Lynch said. “I know what death smells like, and I’m not picking anything up.”
Kendra backed farther away, trying to get away from that awful odor. “So do I. This is fresh, only hours old.”
“In my experience, it takes at least a day for a body to begin giving off—”
“Not true,” she said. “Ask any hospice nurse.”
Lynch turned to the deputies. “Open this compartment. Now.”
Merritt grabbed a pry bar from his squad car. He ran back and started working on the locked cover.
Kendra couldn’t take her eyes away. What—or who—was she going to see in there? Logically it was clear it wasn’t going to be a good outcome. A brutal kidnapping. A ransom delivered and yet the victims not returned.
The victims…Dee? Jessie? Please, no…
“Easy.” Lynch pulled her closer.
Merritt popped the trunk, and then stepped back. “Oh, God. You’re right. We gotta call this in.”
Kendra could see the figure curled in the trunk. She stepped nearer to get a better view.
It wasn’t Jessie.
It wasn’t Dee.
Oh, thank you, God.
It was a man.
She forced herself to examine his features, which she had seen before on the photo on his car license.
Dorset, she realized. “James Dorset.”
“They knew we were on to him,” Lynch said. “He was a loose end they needed to clip off.”
Kendra pulled a pair of evidence gloves from her pocket and slid them on. She checked the dead man’s pockets. Empty.
“His hair smells like that spot of the Los Angeles River we were on last night. But there’s nothing here,” she said. “No wallet, nothing.”
“You were expecting a hand-drawn map to the kidnappers’ secret prison?” Lynch pulled out his phone and snapped photos of the corpse.
“Would have been nice.” She thought for a minute. “We think Dee was trying to tell us something…having to do with an airplane. Are there any airports in the desert up there?”
“Edwards Air Force Base.”
She shook her head. “Military. Doesn’t seem too likely.”
“I agree…” Lynch suddenly whirled toward her. “But wait a minute…What if it isn’t an airport at all?”
“What are you talking about?”
His gaze was narrowed, his expression intense. “The Boneyard.”
“I still don’t follow.”
“It’s an outdoor storage site for civilian aircraft. It’s in the desert and it goes on for miles. Over a thousand commercial airliners are stored out there, almost in the middle of nowhere. What better place to hide Dee? You could lose an army in that—”
“Of course, you could.” Kendra was already running back toward her car. “Let’s go. I’ll call Kelland on the way.”
* * *
Kendra had already pulled onto State Route 14 by the time she’d called Kelland and explained what she and Lynch had seen and put together.
“Let’s check it out,” he said instantly. “I’ll put together a team and rendezvous with you and Lynch at the Mojave Air and Space Port. We can be there inside of two hours.”
“We’re not waiting around,” Kendra said. “We’re less than twenty-five minutes out.”
“Kendra, listen to me…”
“You listen. They have their money, and they still haven’t released Dee. And now they have Jessie. There’s no telling what they’ll do. They have to be on edge. They’ve just killed one of their own men in the last couple hours. We can’t waste time.”
“I’m in charge of this investigation. I’m ordering you to wait for us, Kendra.”
“Sorry, Kelland. Call me when you get there.” She cut the connection and glanced at Lynch. “We’re on the same page, right?”
“Of course. It was my idea, and I’m far too arrogant not to believe it’s a good one,” Lynch said. “But Kelland may have a point. Who knows what we may find out there?”
“We may find nothing.” Her hands clenched on the steering wheel. “But I can’t just sit around for hours when Dee and Jessie might need us.”
“And I agree. But we don’t know who and how many people we may find ourselves up against. I wasn’t exaggerating when I told you there might be over a thousand commercial planes to search through. We need to be careful.”
She gazed at him in disbelief. “Now I’ve heard everything. What is the world coming to when Adam Lynch wants to be cautious? It’s almost as if—” She broke off as Lynch’s phone rang.