Haunted Wastelands: Haunted Wastelands Series Book 1

Chapter 1: Dead Men Tell No Tales

The preliminary cause of death for both victims had been listed as a gunshot wound to the head. Agent Xander Ventura stood in a charcoal suit under the heat of the Nevada sun, sweat stinging his eyes, and stared down at the first of the two bodies.

“Who said this was a gunshot?” he asked.

It was clearly not a bullet that had hit the man’s head. There was no exit wound, though that didn’t necessarily preclude a bullet, but that was the least of the issues. There was no swelling at the wound site, puckering of flesh or even tearing at the edges. It was the smoothest wound entry Ventura had ever seen.

The size of the wound was also too large. It was also irregularly shaped, not a perfect circle.

Most notable was the tissue damage around the edges of the entry wound. The flesh was darkened, but not by a burn or a chemical, and it was also very dry. Ventura had no doubt that it was frostbite. Something freezing cold had been shoved into the victim’s head, not a bullet.

“Jed. He’s on his way. But we Facetimed and he was shown the bodies,” came the answer from one of the officers, a younger man named Malcolm. He wore big, mirrored sunglasses that made him look like a highway patrol officer from a movie.

“Facetimed…?” Ventura shook his head. “And who is Jed?”

“Coroner,” Malcolm said.

“And he’s on his way. Why hasn’t he arrived yet? Shouldn’t the coroner be one of the first to arrive on a murder scene?”

Malcolm shrugged. “You were coming, we all thought you might want to see them before they were moved.”

“How long’s he been coroner?” Ventura asked.

He used the end of a pen to pull down the collar of the dead man’s shirt. There were handprints on the twisted neck. Frozen ones.

“No idea. Been elected a dozen times over, I think,” Malcolm replied.

“Elected,” Ventura said to himself. “Is Jed a doctor, Officer Malcolm?”

“What?” Malcolm asked.

Ventura took a photo of the handprints on the victim’s neck. Dry ice could cause the damage he saw, but the handprints were not dry ice. Someone with hands at around negative one hundred and ten degrees had twisted the dead man’s head backward.

“Does he have a medical license? Did he go to med school?”

“Oh.” Malcolm looked for one of the other officers, but no one was nearby. “I mean, he has to, doesn’t he? He’s a coroner.”

“He does not.” Ventura got to his feet. “A medical examiner must have medical training. A coroner should but doesn’t have to. Why didn’t the Las Vegas medical examiner respond to this?”

“Wrong county,” Malcolm said. “If they died about four hundred yards east, maybe. But not here.”

Ventura said nothing. The two men, Donnie Kent and Zachary Pruitt, were the sixth and seventh bodies to have been found in the desert in the same relatively small area. There were also three missing people whose vehicle was found nearby.

“We figured it was someone being ironic. Or nostalgic? Not sure what word is right to use here,” Malcolm said.

“What does that mean?”

“You know. Gunshot to the head, shallow grave in the desert. Like the mob used to do back when they ran Vegas.”

He chuckled, and Ventura looked at the body again. An ironic murderer. That was something, maybe.

No one had publicly said the words “serial killer”, but it was only a matter of time. The deaths were so far from any population that they had not garnered a lot of attention. The first were thought to have been accidents, hikers who got lost. These two would easily put an end to that belief. No one accidentally twisted their head backward in a makeshift grave after poking a hole in their skull.

Ventura had taken an interest when he had read some of the details of the case. The earlier victims had the same signs of extreme cold on their bodies. Not enough that anyone seemed to care, and now that he knew the coroner was an elected official who was likely not schooled in forensic pathology, it made more sense.

There was not a lot to go on beyond Ventura’s initial inspection of the two most recent bodies, and looking at previous crime scene photos, but he had an idea about what happened. He was fairly certain he was looking at the victims of a ghost.

The first victims had only been a month and a half earlier. All so far had been found in the deep desert, miles from Las Vegas. A few ranches and homesteads were nearby, but so far, no suspects had been identified by local police, and no evidence pointed to who it might have been.

It was unlikely anyone would have even discovered the two new bodies if not for a photographer and a model heading down a dusty road to do a photo shoot who’d found the abandoned vehicle, as well as a suspicious flock of vultures.

The latest victims’ vehicle was a head-scratcher. The police could not explain it, and Ventura was not sure what might have gone wrong, either. They still had half a tank of gas, the engine was fine, and the battery was fine, so there was no reason to abandon it. Nevertheless, it appeared as though the men had driven out into the desert, stopped the car in the middle of nowhere, got out, and then walked another several hundred yards before they were killed.

The wind had ensured there were no footprints to determine if a third person was with them, but there were no signs of struggle on the victims. The mysterious head wounds had barely bled, another side effect of the extreme cold.

“How far from here was the first crime scene?” Ventura asked.

“Can’t be more than five or six hundred yards over that ridge.” Malcolm pointed to some rocks.

“What did the nearest resident say when you interviewed him?”

“Who?” Malcolm asked.

Ventura sighed loudly.

“Who lives closest to the spot where we’re standing?”

“Oh. The Ross Ranch is over there a ways. I mean, it’s still a good clip from here. He never heard anything.”

“Is this Ross a suspect?”

“Ross? Nah. My old man and Ross used to play poker. He’s a bit of a blowhard, but he’s not shooting people in the head in the desert.”

Ventura nodded. Sometimes, he forgot that police work in certain parts of the country was a little more rustic than where he was from. There were parts of the world where a person being your dad’s poker buddy precluded them from being a murderer. Places where a hole in the head had to be caused by a bullet, because what else would put a hole in somebody’s head?

“Do we have a working theory?”

“These two were booked at Caesars, so they were going to Las Vegas, coming in from San Diego. They had another guy booked with them, but we checked, and he’s flying in from Michigan, supposed to be touching down any time now. Looks like they left the main road around eleven-thirty, based on credit card receipts from their last gas purchase and distance traveled. We think they drove up that dirt road, left the vehicle, and were murdered up here in the graves where the bodies were found.”

Ventura stared at the other man and waited for more. His mirror image stared back at him in Malcolm’s glasses, but the younger officer had nothing to add.

“No theory about why they left the road? Why they left the car? Why they came up here? Who killed them?”

“No, sir,” Malcolm replied. “It’s like one of the previous crime scenes, as you saw in the file. We think it’s the same suspect.”

“Yes, we think that,” Ventura said to himself.

He was hoping for a little more information to go on before he began his investigation. The local cops would not be looking for a ghost, but if they had discovered anything, it could have pointed him in the right direction. If not a motive, then maybe a witness, or something more to the M.O. other than leaving a dead body in the desert. It looked like none of that was in the cards.

With seven bodies already and potentially three more somewhere in the sand, the killer was swiftly racking up a body count. Area police were in no position to solve the crime, or even help anyone else survive.

“What about the first few deaths?” Ventura asked.

“Coyotes,” Malcolm said. “Couple of hikers killed by coyotes is what Jed figured.”

“He hasn’t revised that opinion in light of these recent murders?”

“Well, they were being eaten by coyotes when they were found,” Malcolm pointed out as though Ventura were stupid for not acknowledging that.

The agent pulled out his phone and scrolled through his apps.

“Victim one, Jamie Huxley, aged twenty-eight. Six-foot-two, one hundred eighty pounds, construction worker. Victim two, Mark Emmett, aged twenty-seven. Six-foot even, one hundred sixty-seven pounds, worked in construction with Huxley. You’re telling me Jed thinks two large, healthy young men wandered into the desert and were both killed by coyotes?”

“You can look at the photos,” Malcolm said.

“Malcolm, do you know how many people coyotes have killed in North America?” Ventura asked.

Prior to traveling to the crime scene, Xander Ventura had no idea how many people were killed every year by coyotes, so he had looked up the statistics.

“Agent Ventura—” Malcolm began exasperatedly.

“Ballpark number,” Ventura said, cutting him off.

“I don’t know. A hundred?” the officer replied.

“No. None. Coyotes have only killed two people in North America since anyone started keeping track. One was a three-year-old back in the eighties. They don’t kill full-grown construction workers. It doesn’t happen.”

“I saw the bodies, agent. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Ventura sighed. The sun was hot, and he could feel the sweat soaking into his shirt. He wanted to get back to town. He wanted to talk to Jed.

“You like steak, Officer?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Malcolm replied.

“You kill the cows yourself?”

“What?”

“Just because you eat food doesn’t mean you killed the animal it came from. Where can I find your friend Jed?”

Malcolm gave him the address of the coroner’s office, and Ventura wished him a good day. When he got back to his car, he put the air conditioning on full blast and sat there for a moment, waiting for the car to cool down.

He hoped that Officer Malcolm was not an example of the level of law enforcement in the area. Maybe someone had sent him to babysit Ventura as a joke. It wouldn’t be the first time that jurisdictional issues had caused him to butt heads with local police. He feared that might not be the case though, and that the investigation was already being mishandled.

Ghosts or not, everyone should have nailed down some basic details by now. Blaming two deaths on coyotes was borderline negligence, incompetence at the very least.

Ventura stared at the map app on his phone that showed him the quickest route to the coroner’s office. It was miles from where he was, back down the road he had already traveled, and away from Las Vegas.

He could go there and track down Jed the coroner. He could try to get the man to account for his questionable findings, but it would prove nothing in the end. He would be no closer to finding out why the victims were dead or who had done it.

What little evidence he’d seen had convinced Ventura that the murderer was a ghost. The local cops might run interference or do background checks for him, but they would be of no help to the investigation he needed to conduct. In fact, they would only get in the way. They didn’t have any value to add to what he was doing.

With three people still missing, time was not on Ventura’s side. Even if they were dead, the ghost was killing at a rapid pace. There would be more victims, and with little to go on, Ventura did not think he could prevent the next murder. He needed someone who could help, someone who knew what they were doing.

Ventura closed the map app and switched over to his contacts before pressing the button to dial the phone.