Page 88 of The Last Straw

Charlie was still digesting the comment as he finished off the spring roll, and cleaned up what was left of their mess, unaware Wyrick was already in search mode, determined not to let a killer get away.

She dressed quickly in black leather pants and a red V-neck shirt. The only button on the shirt was midway across her stomach, leaving more than enough of her dragon for the world to see.

As soon as she was ready, she hurried back to her office. Her first move was to get the names of J.J. Burch’s parents and grandparents, and then she began searching deeds and land records to see if there were any properties still owned in their names in the state of Texas.

Sixteen

It didn’t take long before Wyrick found records of the deeds, and then she began tracing deaths, and heirs, and more deaths, until she determined that the property in Dallas, once owned by his maternal grandparents, was no longer in the family.

However, the property once belonging to Burch’s paternal grandparents was located in a rural area east of Dallas, and was now owned by a grandson named Joseph Jonathan Burch, who had the same social security number as the Sonny Burch who’d gone missing. She had the right place. Now all she needed was to see if Sonny was there.

She rolled her chair to a different computer, pulled up an icon on the screen and then activated her satellite search. She keyed in the GPS location of the farm, and as an aerial view came up, she started zooming in.

Burch owned a leasing company. If the house was habitable, maybe he’d leased it. Or maybe he’d just leased the land. She needed to see if there was anyone in residence, and kept zooming in until she saw outbuildings, fences and an old, two-story farmhouse.

The house looked empty. The grass in the yard was long enough that it was lying over, like hay ready to cut, and she couldn’t tell if there was power on anywhere.

She moved the camera to the outbuildings, and as she did, noticed the rear end of a newer-model car parked just inside the barn. She moved in closer, and closer, until she saw the make of the car, and then zoomed in to get the tag.

She turned back to her other computer, hacked into the DMV and checked the registration, then grinned.

“To quote Charlie...hot damn.”

It was registered to Burch. She began saving images of everything she’d seen to send to Detective Floyd, and when she was finished, she was pulling back on the satellite view when she saw a door open on the front porch, and then a man came out.

The skin on the back of her neck suddenly crawled. It was Burch. She recognized him from his picture on file at the DMV and immediately saved the image. And then she went back to the active screen and zoomed in on his face.

He looked so ordinary. Midforties, a nose that might have been broken once or twice, a chin people would have referred to as weak, pale eyes and blondish/graying hair.

It was horrifying to know that this man had tried to kidnap her. He’d had his hands all over her, and she could have passed him on the street and never known who he was.

This was the man who kidnapped Rachel and the other women. And if it hadn’t been for Charlie, she would have been the fifth. A bitter taste was suddenly in the back of her throat, as if she might vomit. She leaned closer to the screen until they were digitally face-to-face.

“I’m taking you down, you sorry bastard, and I’m doing it for free.”

Then she heard Charlie coming up the hall at a fast pace and guessed he’d heard from Floyd.

She dragged all of the photos into the desktop folder she’d made for the deeds and land records and sent in the whole thing as an attachment to Floyd’s email just as Charlie came into the office.

“We have to go,” Charlie said.

“Call Floyd,” she said.

“But we’ll see him at—”

“Please. Just call him now.”

Charlie pulled up the number and called.

Floyd answered promptly. “Did you get my text?”

“Yes, just now, but Wyrick needs to tell you something. She’s on speaker.”

“Hey, lady. What magic have you conjured up now?”

“Sonny Burch inherited his paternal grandparents’ farm east of Dallas. It’s north off Highway 80...between the towns of Elmo and Edgewood. He’s there...now.”

“How in the world do you know that?” Floyd asked.

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