Serial Killer
Andy drove down a long stretch of a two lane farm road out in the middle of nowhere. In the distance was a lot full of open air stalls, each row connected by a single tin roof. He pulled into the county flea market and parked in the dirt and gravel parking lot. Rows and rows of portable fold out tables were spread out end to end. It was impossible in some places to tell where one booth ended and another began.
There were all sorts of trinkets and homemade items for sale. Some stalls sold only homemade preserves, jellies, and jams. He walked past a weapons trader and smiled at him, taking a mental note of the wares for sale. Andy was most impressed with the county inventors, the metal workers who were selling their gadgets. They all had something useful for the kitchen, trailer, or tractor. He watched every display with extreme interest.
Lastly he turned his attention to the garage sale booths. Old clothes, household items, toys. He looked through it all for anything that might be helpful to him.
A woman was selling her ex-husbands things while he was in jail. Among the jewelry, money clips, water pipes, and other paraphernalia sat a mobile tracking scanner. She sold it to him for fifty bucks and tried to push a few other belongings off.
Andy drove off to an abandoned gas station in a ghost town not far from the farm road. He installed the scanner and reached over into the cooler he had sitting on the front passenger floorboard. He pulled out a beer and popped it open. He switched on the scanner and pressed the auto-set button. In less than five minutes he could hear everything that was going on in the small towns surrounding him. He could hear the state troopers talking, fire and emergency dispatch, and local police.
He sat there and slowly drank his beer listening and switching between the channels. He began calculating response times. Not much was going on in the middle of the week, but it would be the weekend soon enough.