The Nobody Girls (Kendra Dillon Cold Case Thriller Book 3) Read online

  Miles set aside time for them to lay down Kendra’s voice tracks.

  Kendra cleared her throat, pulled the mic down to her lips, and stretched the padded earphones over her hair.

  She had a music stand in front of her, where the script they’d written fit nicely.

  “Give me a level,” said Miles.

  “Cold Trail, Linda Kay.”

  Miles gave her a thumbs up.

  Linda Kay Ellis grew up in Port Lawrence. She rode her bike on Harvey Street decades before they built a Costco on the corner. In Linda Kay’s day, there were fields, a little general store, and mom and pop gas station on that corner.

  Linda Kay’s friends called her Elke, like the ‘60s movie star Elke Sommer. It was a play on her initials, L. K.

  Linda Kay was pretty, not blonde like Elke Sommer. She was a brunette with a sweet smile and a turned-up nose who won her elementary school potato sack relay race.

  And Linda Kay was protective of her little sister, Wilma Kay. She was independent and rebellious, but she looked out for her friends and her sister.

  The moment she graduated from Port Lawrence High School, she was out of her parent’s home.

  She wasn’t exactly a runaway, but she wanted distance from her parents. She wanted out of there. That was the phrase, out of there. Though no one knew where you went from out of there. Out of there was more of a concept than a clear destination.

  “My dad hit my mom, us, anyone in his way. My mom blamed all of us for whatever set my dad off. The words they use today, abusive, toxic, that would give you an idea of how we kids grew up.”

  Wilma Kay was Linda’s little sister. Wilma Kay adored Linda, Elke.

  “She was the cool one. She smoked cigarettes, wore bell-bottom jeans, listened to cool music, had neat earrings.”

  The bellbottoms Wilma Kay mentioned, they were wrapped tightly around Linda Kay Ellis’s neck when her body was found. She was neatly wrapped in a garbage bag and left by the side of I-75.

  Linda Kay hadn’t been Elke in quite some time.

  She was on her own, out there. And she’d gotten into trouble. Out there was just as tough. By 1978, Wilma Kay said her sister was gone from her life and living a much rougher one.

  In July of 1978, a group of college kids was hitching from the University of Toledo to a party they knew of at Bowling Green State University, about a forty-five-minute drive south. They were walking along I-75. Cars whizzed by as they thumbed for a ride.

  Something caught their eyes, far enough off the road to miss if you were driving, but not too difficult to see if you were walking.

  They got closer and found Linda Kay Ellis.

  Authorities say she wasn’t there long. She was still identifiable.

  But the truth was, no one reported her missing. No one could be sure who had grabbed her or what had happened.

  “We didn’t know until the policeman came to the door. That’s never good when a policeman knocks. My mother answered with her typical bad attitude. Like our staff was off or something, and she was slumming, doing normal things, like answering the door. I watched her, still can see her standing there. Her back was to me, and the policeman was trying to be calming and talking to her. They were telling her that Linda Kay was dead. And that it was an awful death. It was the moment I went from being a kid to an adult. I hadn’t seen my sister in a year. I knew she was living a dangerous life. But the idea that I’d never see her again, I still can’t get my head around it. I expect to see her, long hair, great earrings, swaying to ‘In My Room.’ Almost every day, I expect to see her.”

  Linda Kay’s story is an old story, an old crime.

  But this old crime deserves new attention.

  Two weeks again, crews found a body, mostly decomposed, wrapped in a garbage bag along I-75.

  But even after all this time, there was something familiar to the way the body looked, was wrapped, was placed. There were tights around the victim’s neck, wrapped the same way Linda Kay’s bellbottoms were wrapped around hers. There was enough of a similarity to prompt an old-timer, who wanted to remain anonymous, to say this:

  “It’s like The Nobody Girls.”

  On this episode of The Cold Trail, we’re going to try to show you that Linda Kay Ellis wasn’t a nobody girl. She was loved, she was missed, and her little sister still mourns her.

  It’s been decades. But Linda Kay Ellis, this nobody girl, deserved our time, your time.

  Here’s her story.

  I’m Kendra Dillon, and this is The Cold Trail.

  They sent the episode to Art. If he signed off, this would be their new season.

  Did two episodes make a season? No, but hopefully, what that had so far was enough to move ahead.

  Time was up, though, on their leeway. Kendra had made a commitment that started on the side of the highway with the High Timbers discovery. It had solidified with Linda and then Sincere.

  After Art had listened, Kendra and Shoop sat in front of him again.

  “Before you decide, we have another,” Kendra told him. “The episode is almost ready. This is Ophelia.”

  Kendra played a portion of the interview with Ophelia.

  “Wow, she’s good.”

  “Right? And thanks to Ophelia, we know more about Sincere, at least a little, and even after all this time.”

  “So, the time’s up, you both in on this?”

  “Yes. Each episode, a new Nobody Girl, until we know them, as best we can.”

  “Fine. Shoop, get some clips to Miles. We need to get rolling on promotions.”

  Kendra hated that part but knew Art was a big part of their success too. He’d brought them in when they were down and out, he’d trusted their instincts, and ultimately, he’d found the money to fund them via J.D. Atwell.

  A little promotion was in order, even if Kendra hated it.

  “We can use Wanda’s sound,” Shoop said.

  “And Ophelia’s, she’s incredible,” Art added.

  It was decided, The Cold Trail: The Nobody Girls, was officially their season.

  Now all Kendra had to do was find more people who knew them.

  The season hinged on it.

  Chapter 13

  I-75 is the major north-south Interstate Highway that connects the northern tip of the United States to the southern part of Florida. It’s one of the longest highways in the nation. It passes through six states. It winds through the stunning vistas of the Smokey Mountains and cuts a path along miles and miles of flat farmland.

  It takes travelers over the waters of Lake Michigan and the Ohio River.

  Planning for it started in the 1950s, and the final stretch in Miami-Dade County and Broward County was not finished until 1986. It roughly follows older routes and offered a faster, better way for others, like Dixie Highway.

  Maybe Route 66 is more famous, but no U.S. highway is more traveled.

  In Ohio, I-75 passes through several major cities, Port Lawrence being one, right before it hits Michigan.

  Midwesterners, Shoop and Kendra included, travel I-75 during the cold of the winter in pursuit of the warmth of the south. From Dayton to Daytona, Kendra remembered the rallying cry when they were kids on spring break.

  While they waited for their FOIA requests and the FBI to provide them with someone to interview on camera, Kendra decided to retrace Sincere Anderson’s steps.

  Wilma Kay didn’t know much about her sister’s day-to-day life once she moved out, but Ophelia knew everything about Sincere Anderson’s in her final days.

  Kendra was armed with the names of the establishments that the two women frequently worked and planned to visit each one.

  Of the four places Ophelia named, two were still in business. Two others were out of business or had been replaced.

  Easy On Plaza was the first on her list. From the looks of it, the plaza hadn’t undergone much in the way of upgrades. It included a huge fueling station, a convenience store where you could buy anything from breakfast cereal to nudi
e magazines, and a huge lot for truckers to rest up. Or, well, whatever else they wanted for their downtime.

  Kendra wandered around the store. There was the classic row of road trip snacks. There was a hallway that led to restrooms and a shower stall area too. While it was all on the edge of seedy, Kendra admitted that for someone on the road all the time, this was its own manner of refuge.

  The man behind the counter looked old enough to remember the 1980s, so she plunged in, tape recorder on.

  “Hi, I’m Kendra Dillon. I’m investigating a cold case murder from way back. Could I ask you a few questions?”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “Ha, well, case closed,” Kendra said.

  The man wore a vest over a t-shirt. The t-shirt hung off him. He had thick brown hair, but Kendra suspected it was died that color. She’d also not be surprised if there was a hair dye aisle in this place.

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Longer than you’ve been alive.”

  “So, I’m doing a story on the murder of Sincere Anderson, she was a sex worker. She worked here and a few other places along the highway.”

  “Sex worker? How politically correct of you. We run a clean place. There’s none of that here.”

  Kendra stared him down. She looked at his name. It was embroidered on the vest.

  “Eugene, I don’t want to cause you any trouble. I’m just trying to tell her story.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re poking around where you shouldn’t.”

  “Did the FBI ever interview you? Sincere was one of a couple of women found in a garbage bag. It’d be something you’d never forget.”

  “Yeah, they did. And they moved on. I suggest you do the same. Unless you’re buying those chips.”

  Kendra lifted a bag of spicy chips out of the counter display, and Eugene rang them up.

  “Good for you, puts hair on your chest.” Eugene thought his banter was enjoyable. It wasn’t. The stark reality was that the odds were tiny of finding anyone who saw or remembered anything from forty years ago. It was why cases stayed cold. New crimes at least had living witnesses, heck they had DNA, they had security cameras. Talkng to Eugene did not equal a crack in this case.

  She paid him and then left the items on the counter. She didn’t even want the damn chips.

  Kendra walked out to the parking lot and looked around. The most likely scenario for Sincere and Linda Kay was that they got into the wrong vehicle. There were long-haul truckers, business travelers, day-trippers. None of it would seem out of place here. A beer truck rolled in and pulled up along the side of the main building. Not only were there travelers stopping in for food or gas, but there were also deliveries. She imagined several trucks a day for that as well.

  Finding a suspect in all this had to be near impossible, even for the FBI, much less now, decades later.

  She was disheartened and wondered if this was a waste of time. It felt lonely here. It probably always did. It made you see how it was possible for Sincere and Ophelia to pick up a steady stream of clientele in places like this.

  “Kendra! Miss Dillon!”

  A man was calling to her from the cab of a huge rig parked closest to the building.

  “Yes, hello.”

  “I remember her,” the man said. “I know what story you’re doing.”

  “You do?”

  “Yep, been coming here a long time. It’s very, very sad.”

  Kendra took a step closer to the rig. She was at the low point, and then this. Maybe this wasn’t a waste of time.

  “You knew Sincere?”

  “Oh, not like that. I have a steady woman back home. She’d not appreciate it. But you know, a lot of fellows do. I mind my own business. Best policy.”

  “What do you remember about the incident?”

  “Here, come on up. I’m happy to tell you what I know.”

  Kendra hesitated a moment. Was it wise to get in this guy’s truck?

  “Oh, wow, sure—I mean, I don’t want to scare you. I apologize. I have to get rolling out anyway.” With that, the man rolled up his window.

  Kendra decided she needed to take advantage of this opportunity. So far, there weren’t many avenues in this case. Maybe this was one. Maybe she could find a link in the chain. She muscled down her apprehension and forged ahead.

  “Hey, no, hang on! I would like to hear.” She walked around to the other side of the truck. The driver pushed it open. Kendra climbed in. This was no easy task for her. The door handle was above her head. The step-up was huge for her height. But she navigated it, and as she got in, the door swung shut. “I, uh, I’d like to know what you remember.”

  “Yeah, Sincere, Sincerely.” The truck driver sang the old tune.

  “I’d like to record our interview.” Kendra fished her digital recorder from her bag.

  “Well, nothing in life is free, is it?” The trucker gestured with his eyes at his dashboard.

  Kendra followed his eyes to a bumper sticker slapped on the dash: Grass, Cash, or Ass. No one rides for free.

  “Look, I’m a journalist. I’m not here –” The trucker grabbed her arm to pull her closer. “Let me go!” she yelled and smacked the side of his head at the temple with her digital recorder.

  “Dammit!”

  “Did you even know Sincere?”

  “I heard you in there talking to the clerk, you stupid, c—”

  Kendra didn’t listen for the rest. She grabbed the handle and leaped from the cab. She landed on her knees, not her feet. But she scrambled up and took off at a run. Her knees were both bleeding, she knew that, but she didn’t care. She made it to her Jeep. And once in, she engaged the locks.

  Only then did she look back.

  The trucker was making an obscene gesture at her with his mouth and fingers. Kendra started her engine and hit the gas pedal.

  This hadn’t been a waste of time. It had been an eye-opener about how dangerous and raw places like this could be. She realized it only took one wrong move to cost you your life.

  Sincere, Linda Kay, the High Timbers Jane Doe—they’d learned it too.

  But too late.

  Chapter 14

  Kendra didn’t tell Shoop or anyone else about her near-miss with the trucker. It was a stupid decision on her part. And normally, she wasn’t that stupid. Likely the trucker wasn’t going to really do anything. He was messing with her, she reasoned. But he could have.

  She drove a moment or two on the highway, but she felt anxiety pushing in from all sides. She knew what was coming. She fought to stay present. She was driving. Pay attention to that. Keep your mind here. These were the things she told herself, the mental exercises she did to fight the flashbacks. It was PTSD, and it was mostly under control, but it was there, and the trucker had triggered it.

  The next exit had a McDonald’s. She could get a coffee in the drive-thru. She could pull herself together.

  Kendra focused on her breathing and not on the past. She wasn’t a kid. She wasn’t trapped. She pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot and put her car in park.

  She felt the air change. She heard his voice. She saw his slender outline. Her wrist ached with the memories of pain stored in her bones.

  “No, that is the past. You were in a scrape just now. But you got out. You got out then too. You’re safe.”

  Kendra reassured herself that she was okay.

  She slipped off a Chuck Taylor and deliberately rubbed the bottom of her foot on the rough surface of her Jeep’s floor mat.

  “I’m here.”

  She had learned that grounding herself in her own physical reality was key in these moments. She needed to reassure her senses where she was.

  She looked down at her knees. Both legs of her jeans had ripped, and her blood, seeping through, was visible.

  “Way to stick the landing, Dillon.” Kendra grabbed a tissue from the glove box. She dabbed the blood off her scraped knees. “Things you didn’t think you had to tell yourself: Do not ge
t in a truck with a stranger.”

  The trucker had been eavesdropping on her conversation with Eugene. He had no special knowledge of Sincere. He’d tricked her for his own amusement.

  Asshole, she thought.

  She was okay now. She started up the engine of the Jeep and pulled into the drive-thru. She chucked the idea of a coffee and realized this was a good time for hamburgers and fries. She often forgot to eat and let herself get swept away in work.

  It was time to take care of herself better and not rely on Kyle or Shoop or anyone else. And in this particular moment, a burger was the reward for not getting raped and murdered at the Easy On Truck stop.

  On her trip back into Port Lawrence, Kendra’s phone rang. It was Gillian.

  “Yeah, look, I’m out of town, this profiling seminar—”

  “Cool, that is so up your alley, I think—”

  “Yeah, no, Dad is why I’m calling. He just checked himself out of River Park?”

  “What? He has at least another week out there.”

  “Yeah, can you go over there, to the house? I got a text from him that he’s, uh, engaged.”

  “What in the actual? I’ve been driving, so my alerts are off.”

  “When you turn them on, it’ll be so much fun,” Gillian said.

  “I’m headed to the house.”

  “Good, yeah, and you know, ask where he’s registered.”

  “I can’t even with him right now!”

  “I appreciate you doing this. I know you’re just as busy as I am.”

  “It’s okay. I’m just glad they had two of us because no one else would ever understand them.”

  “Right?”

  “I’ll call you after I figure out what he’s up to and, uh, unravel it.”

  “‘Kay, I called Mom.”

  “Ugh, I’m sure she’ll be very helpful.”

  Stephanie Dillon would either ignore this completely or make it fifty-times worse. There was no middle ground.

  All thoughts of Kendra’s near-miss at the truck stop disappeared. She focused on getting to her dad’s house without crashing her car. She also put in a call to her dad’s doctor.