The Trinity Murders Read online

  Mandy was full of hope and excitement as she saw the sign welcoming her to Beaumont, and those feelings held until she got to Jason’s apartment and realized he was a thirty-five-year-old out of work mechanic and not a nineteen-year-old college student. But Jason was a smooth talker and he convinced her to stay the night. Knowing that he lied to her, he had it all planned out ahead of time and he talked about the connection they shared and their love for each other. He had made dinner and there was a bottle of wine and the deal was finally sealed later that night when they slept together for the first time. She agreed to at least stay the week; she didn’t think her parents realized she was gone anyway.

  Soon Jason introduced her to drugs, first soft, then hard and her plans to finish high school and go to college went out the window along with the smoke from her pipe. Things seemed to go okay for a couple months until she woke up late on a Wednesday afternoon to find her car gone. When Jason finally showed up the next day, he had sold her car to a guy he knew in Louisiana called Jimmy Chop. Jimmy gave him a couple grand for the car and by the time he got back to Beaumont, most of that had already been spent on drugs.

  After a long fight, which really wasn’t since Jason was so high, Mandy grabbed what she could and got out of there. With very little money and nowhere to go, she hitched rides all the way up to Dallas and lived on the streets for awhile until she met some local drug dealers in West Dallas who took her in. Her stay wasn’t free though. She earned a lot of her keep on her back but they kept her supplied with drugs so she didn’t complain. She stayed with those boys for a few months until she ended up in her final resting place in the Davey Crockett National Forest.

  5

  The three had a long drive ahead of them, so Sergeant Trufant used that time to get Topper up to speed on the Davy Crockett National Forest, which was three hours south of Dallas, where the body was found. The forest has over 160,000 acres used for everything from oil production to hunting to recreation. The body was found by two boys who knew the park well. They were hiking in the back woods and decided to cut over a ridge instead of staying on the trail, saving themselves about an hour in the process. They stumbled upon some freshly turned dirt which seemed odd to them so they started digging.

  “How do you have jurisdiction on this if it’s three hours south of Dallas?” asked Topper.

  “Bottle of Jack was all it took … mostly. My buddy George is the sergeant down in Lufkin where the case was caught. I’ve shared the particulars with him of what I’m looking into and when this came in he thought it fit the bill. He said he would give me access to whatever I wanted for a bottle of Jack and one of my pecan pies.” He turned around in the passenger seat to look Topper in the eye. “Now see, my pecan pie is the best in three counties, so that’s a pretty big price, but I figured if I could get Topper to come down and have a look with me, then it’d be worth it.”

  The two men had a mini staring contest and finally Topper offered the slightest grin. “Let’s just hope I haven’t put you through any undo work.”

  Trufant turned back around and they rode the rest of the way in silence, which allowed Topper time to roam. Reaching into his shirt he pulled out the white king and began rolling it back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. It was something he did often when he wanted to focus and think.

  Thirty-two murders in three states. All the murders were similar and there was definitely a pattern of where they were occurring but Topper still wasn’t ready to attribute them all to one killer. There was definitely something connecting these crimes but he wasn’t sure yet what it was. Topper continued manipulating the king until soon he turned his attention to the greenery as they made their way down the highway. Soon after that, he put the king back inside his shirt and napped for the rest of the ride down to Lufkin.

  They pulled into a parking lot at the south end of the national park. There were thirteen trails heading in various directions from that lot but the one they were looking for headed north. They had a little over a mile to hike before they would abandon the path and another hundred yards to the east before they would find the site.

  With the high Texas sun, the parking lot was empty except for one Lufkin police cruiser near the trailhead they were looking for. As they parked, Sergeant George Chase and a uniformed officer exited the patrol car.

  The temperature was pushing the upper 90s and Detective Mayfield came prepared for the hike. A cooler in the back of the SUV had three water bottles which he passed out to each of the men. Topper reached into his go bag and pulled out his favorite Washington Capitals hat.

  Introductions were made and the five men started their hike through the back country. The heat kept most hikers away this time of year and they didn’t pass anyone on their trek up. Topper thought the heat could have helped decide the dump site as it would take longer before the body was found. Once they broke the path and started heading deeper in, it was a short distance until they came across the police tape baring the crime scene. The tape could not be seen from the trail.

  Although the mountainside was thick with trees all along this ridge, the area where the body resided was a little more sparse. As if by magic, a clearing of about one hundred square feet appeared and was flanked on all sides by trees. The ground was bald, no vegetation. It was almost as if this piece of wilderness was devoid of life and would not sustain it.

  “Here we are,” said Sergeant Chase wiping a handkerchief across his forehead and taking a drink from his water bottle. “It’s lucky those boys left the path or who knows how long until we would have found her.”

  “That brings up a good point,” said Topper. “Sergeant Trufant, you said there were thirty-two bodies. How can you be sure that number is accurate?”

  “Well, ultimately I can’t. I do feel pretty confident in that number though. Although there are subtle differences in these murders, one constant is the regularity of the bodies. Each state is in order and there has never been a deviation on that. I think he wants the bodies to be found, just not right away. Jane Doe #14, which was victim #18. She was found in a popular hunting area in Oklahoma but the body was left six weeks before the start of deer hunting season. She was found within two hours of the park being opened to hunters.

  “Victim #4, Sarah Beech. She was buried in a part of Louisiana that was popular with rock climbers but her body was buried ten weeks before rock climbing season got under way. Once it did, it was only a few hours before her body was discovered. I think he wants these bodies to be found but he’s clever enough to dispose of them in areas that won’t receive visitors immediately.”

  Although Sergeant Trufant had his files with him he did not need to reference them to speak of their facts. He had been looking at these murders for about a year and he had all the pertinent information kept to memory.

  “What do you think, Topper?”

  Topper took a second before he answered. Before today he was part of a team. His opinion was asked for often but usually as part of that team. Today was the first day since becoming a profiler that people looked to him for his opinion and his was the only one being offered. It felt both terrifying and exhilarating.

  Topper squatted down next to the hole in the ground. “That’s absolutely right. Once he is done with the body, it’s over for him. He feels no need to revisit the crime scene.”

  “How so?”

  “For one, he wouldn’t leave the bodies in areas that are so easy to find. If he ever did come back to revisit his crime, he would run the risk of running into other people.”

  “Couldn’t that be part of the appeal? To revisit a body while others are around but only he knows what is there. That could be a big turn on.”

  “Not really, for guys like this it’s about control, power, privacy. The last thing he would want is for other people to be around and ruin his memories. Take this crime scene. Sergeant Chase, didn’t you say that this is a common shortcut for the locals?”

  “I did.”

  “So he leaves th
e body in an area he knows will be discovered; it was just lucky for us that it was discovered so quickly, but did you notice you can’t see the path from where we are?” All four men turned to the east to confirm they couldn’t see the path. “And if you were paying attention, you couldn’t see the police tape from the path either. If he wanted to come and revisit the body, he would have buried it closer to the path. Close enough that he could see where she rests. He didn’t do that.

  “Which leads to the question, why? I think his trophy is the police coverage that comes after a body has been found. Since it is usually a couple months before a body is found, it’s possible he uses the coverage to taunt his latest victim or it’s possible that he is creating a scrapbook. Many serial killers revisit the scene of the crime to relive that crime but for this un-sub, I believe that seeing the details in the paper is his version of reliving the crime. So to answer your question sergeant, yes, he wants these bodies to be found. That’s his trophy. This latest murder hasn’t been reported yet has it?”

  “Not yet,” said Sergeant Chase. “As soon as we found her I called Travis because I knew this fit what he was looking for. He asked me to keep it out of the papers.”

  “Perfect. We’re going to solve this, but for now let’s keep it out of the papers. My guess is that he is monitoring the local paper waiting to hear about the discovery. At the very least we don’t want to tip him off that we’ve already found the body, but if it doesn’t get reported at all, maybe he will contact us to tell us where the body is. That will give us another piece of the puzzle.”

  “We’ve already decided that he won’t be expecting a discovery for another six to eight weeks,” said Mayfield.

  “I know, and like I said, we will solve this, but if for some reason we don’t right away, this could give us another piece of leverage.

  “He’s definitely smart. He abducts runaways who may have people looking for them but they have no idea where. So rarely is there a family to continue pressing a case and soon it just runs cold. No one has ever stepped up as an eye witness, so he’s careful. He’s not just abducting them off the streets. Being runaways, it’s possible they are working as prostitutes but nobody has come forward to report a suspicious car or van.

  “Even now, it’s early August. How much longer until this heat breaks for good?”

  “Another month or so,” said Chase.

  “Exactly. Another well planned out crime scene. Had those kids not been out here cleaning up trails for their scout badge, it’d be a couple months before we’d be up here.”

  Topper spent some time walking around by himself. Aimlessly he walked around the dump site looking at different things but not looking at things. He was really just thinking to himself. The other four continued to discuss aspects of the case but Topper didn’t hear them. He had his white king between his fingers as he was lost in own thoughts.

  He thought he spotted something to the north and started moving in that direction. At first all he saw was a broken branch but that had been enough. Soon he found footprints and then the tree.

  “Sergeant Chase, you might want to get your techs back out here, I think I found something,” said Topper.

  “My guys went over this dumpsite with a fine tooth comb,” said Chase a little defensively.

  “The dumpsite sure, but did they come this far north?” said Topper. “Look here, first I noticed this broken branch which is odd among an area that doesn’t attract many people. That led me to these footprints. We might be able to get an approximate height and weight from these prints, and then look here.”

  Topper led the guys to a tree just down from the grave site. “Here, look at this branch. Some of the bark is torn away and it looks like something was tied here. I’ll bet if you go back and look at the rope you’ll find traces of this tree. Also,” Topper climbed the tree a little ways, “yep, there are a couple indentations here on this tree branch. I’ll bet you a second bottle of Jack that if you brought that shovel back out here, it would match the indentations in this tree.”

  Topper jumped back down from the tree and rubbed his hands together to clear off some of the tree bark and sap he collected. “So we have a few more pieces of the puzzle. We have footprints leading to and from this tree where it appears the shovel found in the hole was tied using the rope which was also found in the hole. This tells me that he digs the hole ahead of time and then comes back with the body. That way he doesn’t run the risk of getting caught with the body. He also leaves the shovel here for the same reason.

  “This guy is good,” said Topper. “There’s no question about that. What I’d like to do now is go back to the station and look over everything you’ve got on these murders. I’d also like to do some searches on the computer.”

  With that, the five men made their way back to the cars. On the way down, just as on the way up, they didn’t pass another soul. Getting back to the parking lot, there still only remained the two cars that were there when they left, which also happened to belong to them. This part of the forest was a ghost forest.

  The five men said their goodbyes, got in their respective cars and went their respective ways. Jane Doe #24 was already hours ahead of them on her way back to Dallas. When Sergeant Chase confirmed with Sergeant Trufant that they were on their way down, he released the body and the case to Dallas.

  Sergeant Chase still couldn’t make a decision on whether or not all the murders were committed by the same person. A year ago when Trufant contacted him about his idea, he looked into everything involving the murders. He thought there were definitely some similarities between the cases but he hadn’t been ready to make a decision. He knew Trufant had been trying to get the FBI to look into these murders but they had come to the same conclusion, that there just wasn’t enough to send the team, especially with all the other cases they had on file. Although Chase believed that the right man was finally looking into all of this, it still didn’t do anything to change his views.

  6

  Amanda’s death almost brought an end to Sergeant Trufant’s career. The dissolving of his marriage three months later almost brought an end to his life. After his daughter died, he thought he could find answers in the bottom of a bottle, but all he found was despair. After his wife left, he thought he could find answers with a running car, a length of hose and a tightly sealed garage. He took it as a sign when the car ran out of gas.

  Their marriage had been on shaky ground prior to Amanda’s murder but her passing accelerated the process. He turned to Jack and Coke and soon stopped messing with the Coke. There was no sense of partnership that made his wife stick around, and after three weeks of watching him pass out in the living room, she packed her things. Travis knew he hadn’t seen her in awhile but he didn’t give it much thought until he got a copy of divorce papers in the mail. Instead of signing them and making her a divorcee, he decided to make her a widow.

  He grabbed the butcher knife from the kitchen and the bottle of Jack and went out to the backyard. There he cut a length of hose and went out to the garage. He cracked the back window and ran the hose from the exhaust pipe into the cabin and then got in and started the car.

  He took a big swallow of Jack, closed his eyes and promptly passed out. Three hours later he woke up sober as if he hadn’t been drinking at all. The splitting headache was a giveaway that he wasn’t dead, otherwise he would have thought he had passed on. It only took him a second to look down at the gas gauge and figure out what happened.

  Sergeant Trufant was a proud man who kept his private business private. Although everyone knew of his daughter’s passing and his wife’s departure, nobody knew of the drinking or the suicide attempt and that was how he planned to keep it. Waking up in that garage had felt like a rebirth and he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since.

  He went into work the next day with a feeling of purpose and never looked back. He caught a case which later would be referred to as Jane Doe #4. As with all the previous bodies, the case went nowhere and wi
th no family coming forward, it was easy to push this case aside like every detective before him. It would have been easy for everyone but Sergeant Trufant.

  This girl was Amanda’s age and height. She had similar hair color and a similar build. For those reasons, he felt compelled to dig deeper. With each body he uncovered, it validated the fact that he was working this case for Amanda.

  He still lacked closure. He lacked closure in the death of his daughter and he lacked closure in the relationship with his wife. Not a day passed where he didn’t pick up the phone to call her and then promptly put it back down. He knew that chapter of his life had closed and he needed to move on. He would be made whole again when he closed this case.

  On the drive back to Dallas, Sergeant Trufant was occupied by these thoughts and thoughts of his daughter Amanda as he stared out the window and the scenery rushed by in a blur. Most nights he still woke up in a cold sweat thinking he could save her if he only knew. It seemed impossible to him that he missed the signs of her drug use. It seemed impossible to him that he let her slip through his fingers as easily as he did. If he could just solve these murders, maybe he could sleep through the night.

  The rhythm of the tires over pavement and the air conditioner on full blast were almost enough to put Trufant to sleep. They had been on the road for two hours and he was ready to get back. Since he caught this case, he had been traveling between Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana talking to anyone who had information on these murders, so he was used to the long car trips, but now that he had Topper on board he felt like he had caught a break as good as any piece of evidence.

  “Sergeant … sergeant,” said Topper, trying to get his attention.

  “Sorry.” Trufant turned in his seat to face Topper and saw him holding the king from a chess set between his fingers.