Page 81 of Return of the Spider
“Game-trap camera?” Detective Girard said angrily. “You didn’t tell me that, Calvin.”
“Honestly, I didn’t think to look till just last night ’cause I thought the batteries in it were dead. I went to put new ones in last evening and there was a full roll of used film. But because the batteries were low, the camera triggered on a delay and caught only the back end of the van at a weird angle. Pennsylvania plate, beginningTN.”
CHAPTER
66
Calvin maddox went tohis truck and retrieved a print of the image his game camera had taken. It was slightly blurry due to the weak batteries and the speed of the van and showed only the left rear quarter of the vehicle, including part of a Pennsylvania plate with the lettersTN.
But we also had decent images of two large scrapes on the left rear quarter panel and a serious dent on the back bumper, enough that we felt sure we’d be able to identify the van if we came upon it, even if there was no damage to the front left headlight. Bunny’s brother had to return to his job but said he was working only a couple of miles away if we needed him.
We planned to request a search of Pennsylvania DMV records for an older white Ford Econoline panel van with a license plate that began withTNas soon as we returned to our offices. Butfirst, Sampson, Detective Girard, and I looked at the printed photographs Maddox had taken shortly after his sister disappeared. The photographs were glary and showed raindrops beaded on Bunny’s Galaxie and clinging to the grass and the walls of kudzu growing on either side of the drive.
In the daylight shots, the rain had dried, but we could see where some of the grass and weeds in the little ditches along the drive were pressed down. I walked over and looked at the ditch, then held up one of the pictures taken at night.
“See how the grass is different here, darker?” I said. “I think someone walked up the ditch that night.”
“Why?” Sampson said.
“My guess? To shut the gate. To stop Bunny.”
Detective Girard said, “And get her out of the car.”
“So he could get her into his van”—Sampson continued the thought.
“Definitely,” I said. “Which means this was an ambush. Which means he hid somewhere, waiting for her.”
“Which means he knew her,” Girard said.
“Knew her habits, anyway,” I said.
Sampson gestured to trees across the road. “I’m betting he hid over there so he could come up behind her.”
“Check it out,” I said. I asked Girard for the night and day pictures Calvin had shot. She found them and laid them on the hood of her car. He’d stood a couple of feet away from the Galaxie with his lens aimed from the front right bumper diagonally across the vehicle to the left rear quarter panel. I didn’t know what I was looking for at first, but then Girard pointed at the night picture, beyond the brilliant reflection of the camera flash showing on the Galaxie’s windshield, to the wall of kudzu on the other side of the car. “What’s this shadow here?”
I squinted to better see what she was showing me. I could kind of make it out, but I could not see it at all in the daylight shot.
Girard returned to her car and came out with a large magnifying glass she said her partner gave to her when he retired.
“It comes in handier than you’d expect,” she said and began poring over the nighttime picture. “You can see part of Calvin’s reflection on the windshield along with the flash, and there’s that big shadow. You look.”
I took the magnifying glass from her and studied the area she was pointing to.
“Definitely looks darker, and there are no raindrops on a lot of the leaves and vines,” I said, shifting the magnifying glass to the same spot in the picture shot the morning after Bunny disappeared. “Okay, now. Look at that. Good call, Detective.”
Sampson walked over. “What call?”
I handed him the magnifying glass and pointed at the kudzu beyond the Galaxie in the daylight photograph. “There are snapped branches and vines and places where the vegetation has been pressed back.”
“If he hid there,” Girard said, “he would have been right on top of her when she got out of the car.”
“Or just in front of her,” Sampson said, nodding. “Either way, she gets out of the car, shuts the door, takes a few steps, and he’s right there.”
I took the daytime photograph and walked down the drive toward the open gate with Sampson and Girard following until I found the spot where Calvin Maddox had taken the photographs. We all agreed on the angle, then walked the fifteen feet or so to the thick wall of greenery there teeming with new growth even in mid-November.
The sheriff’s detective peered in. “Kudzu grows so fast, I don’t know if we’ll…” she began. “Wait, there’s one of those broken vines, right there. And here’s a couple more.”
“I see them,” Sampson said.
