by Dale Mayer
She smiled a watery smile but still held a bright sense of joy in her expression and said, “I didn’t ask, but my sister is coming down regardless.”
“That’s fine,” he said with a smile. “As long as we can clear security to let her in.”
“My sister would never hurt me,” she whispered.
“Good,” he said. “That makes you the better kind of siblings.”
She nodded. “She’s always looked out for me. It’s a complete reversal. I should be looking out for her, my baby sister. But, after what happened to me as a child, it was an automatic role that she took on.”
“Good,” he said. Then he pushed the trolley beside her. “How about some food?”
“I’m not sure I can eat,” she said.
“I know,” he said, “but the sketch artist will be here in the next ten minutes or so, and I thought maybe something in your stomach, outside of the drugs and the coffee, might help calm your nerves.”
They adjusted her bed, so she could sit up a little bit more, and then he brought over several of the dishes for her to take a look at. A beef pie was in one, and she smiled and said, “That’s so very British. I’ll have that.” And he gave her a fork, and she got about half of it down. And then she put the fork to the side and said, “I don’t want to overeat. I was so damn hungry when I was kidnapped, and he did feed me, but I don’t know how long ago that was. And I really want to eat more.” She stared at the food. “But I don’t want to get sick.”
“No reason not to take it slow,” he said. He motioned at the other tray. “A sandwich is in here, and a salad.”
He lifted the lid and brought the plate over. She looked at it and froze at the memory. She forced herself to move past it—that nightmare was over. She was free now. Taking a deep breath, she smiled. “I’ll have some salad.” He quickly switched out the plates, and she ate most of the salad before putting her fork down again and saying, “That’s all I can handle.”
He nodded and asked, “Do you want any of this for later?”
She said, “Yes, please leave it, and I’ll see if I can eat it in a little bit.”
When a knock came on her door, he moved the trolley off to the side. He caught her sucking in a breath, and he looked at her reassuringly and said, “It’s fine.”
She gave an irritable shrug. “It might be fine for you,” she said, “but I’m a long way away from feeling like everything’s fine.”
He smiled, nodded. “That’s good. That’s to be expected. Healthy even. We’ve got our sketch artist here, I hope.”
He opened the door to see the sketch artist standing there, his ID being photographed and checked over by the guard. Miles did the same himself, taking a photograph of the man before letting him in the room.
“Well,” the artist said, “I mean, I get the security, but …”
“We’re not taking any chances,” Miles said. He brought over a chair and had him sit down beside Vanessa. And then he introduced the two of them.
Vanessa looked at him, smiled and said, “Thank you for coming.”
“No problem. Now let’s get started.”
Chapter 5
It was extremely daunting to forcibly recall the man who Vanessa had met in that room where she had been held and then to see him again on the street with her. “I don’t know which face I’m supposed to tell you about,” she confessed. “The man I saw clearly inside the room wore a hat with sunglasses and had a beard,” she said. “And I did see him several times up close and personal. The man who threatened me in the street was the same man, but he didn’t have the hat or the sunglasses on at that point in time. Neither, I think, did he have a beard.”
“Good. Let’s start with the man you saw inside.”
And, with that, she gave him the answers to all the questions he asked: the shape of her kidnapper’s face, length of the beard, type of hat, type of sunglasses, and it was exhausting capturing those details from her memory. But she was reasonably pleased that she could answer everything the artist asked about. And when he showed her the picture, her breath caught in the back of her throat, and she instinctively cowered in her bed.
Miles immediately grabbed her hand. “I’ll take that as a good sign that you recognize this person.”
She took several slow calming breaths and then nodded. “That’s damn freaky,” she whispered. She nodded at the artist and said, “You’re very talented.”
He gave her a gentle smile. “The work I do is very difficult sometimes,” he admitted. “But, when we hit it right, then it’s pretty miraculous. Now we’ll take this image and make a few changes. And then we’ll work on that next version of him.” And he took the first image and handed it off to Miles, who took a picture of it. Then the artist redrew the same face but left the beard and sunglasses off. And he said, “When you saw him on the street, do you remember anything about his hair?”
“Brush cut,” she said immediately, “like a military haircut.” He nodded and drew away. She glanced at Miles, wondering at the stillness inside him. “Did I say something wrong?” she murmured. “You look angry all of a sudden.”
He smiled at her. “Of course I’m angry. Any asshole who did this and thought that he should be allowed to do it again and again is not somebody who should be breathing our air.”
Something else was in his tone, but she wasn’t sure just what it was. She smiled and nodded. “Hopefully these drawings will help. Do you share these with all the local police stations? What happens?”
“Both of these images will be circulated around. More than that, we can start nailing down neighbors and running this through several databases to see if this person comes up with a facial recognition match.”
“I guess that’s why the sketch artist is so important, isn’t he?” she said. “I didn’t really think about that.”
Miles smiled and squeezed her fingers gently again as the sketch artist asked a few more questions.
“Were you close enough out on the street to see his eyes?”
“Only to know that they had a laser vision and were locked on me, and he was furious,” she said. “His jaw was really square too, by the way.”
“Interesting,” he murmured as he kept on sketching. And when he stopped and settled back, he asked, “What about that?” And he turned and held up the sketchbook.
She cried out and then whispered, “Oh, my God. That’s him. That really is him.”
The artist looked over at Miles and said, “Looks like we might have gotten lucky on this one.”
“Good,” he said. “I need digital copies of each for myself. Can you email that to me?”
The artist opened up his laptop with a special scanner, where he quickly scanned in both images and sent them to Miles.
“Now you need to send it out to the law enforcement agencies,” Miles said. “They will all want a copy of these as well.”
Miles forwarded both sketches to Ryker and to Nico. Of Nico though, there was no sign. Miles frowned; losing track of his partner was never a good thing. He sent Nico a message. Where are you?
At the apartment where she was kept as a prisoner.
Find anything?
Forensics is busy, he said. I’m calling you now.
When Miles answered, he said, “What’s up?”
“Forensics is here. Her room was readily found. It’s an apartment, leased by a corporation, and the contact person for the corporation says they haven’t used it in a long time and were looking at putting it on the market. It was on the market several years ago, and, although they had several interested buyers, the proposed sale fell through. They leased it for a couple years to several people, and then those contracts ended, and they haven’t done anything with it since.”
“So it’s not been used for how long?”
“Upward of three years, it’s been empty.”
He shook his head. “That’s foolish.”
“Property prices have been rising, so they were more or less waiting for the sweet spot to sell it.”
“And they couldn’t get anybody else to lease it?”
“They did have somebody ask, but they didn’t like his references enough to sign a lease, so they refused to.”
“See if you can find out who that was,” he said. “And what’s forensics finding now?”
Nico took a deep breath and said, “DNA. Various DNA. We’re not sure how many different DNA samples were found and whether we’re talking male or female yet, but it’ll take time.”
“So, several people were in that apartment, but can we determine how long that DNA has been there?”
“According to the company who owns the place, the rooms and carpets were all steam cleaned after the last leaseholder left, all to prepare to lease it again.”
“Interesting. So we have a three-year window here.”
“Yes, but it’ll take days or weeks, if not months, to get all the DNA samples run and then to attempt to match them all.”
Miles snorted at that. “I don’t think so,” he said. “We’ll ask the Mavericks to kick that one up to the top. No way we’ll get timely information on the serial kidnapper if we have to wait for that.”
“I knew you would say that,” Nico said with a chuckle. “I’ve already pulled some strings, and we’re hoping to get this analyzed way faster.”
“It needs to be faster than way faster,” Miles said. “Otherwise, how will you explain to the families that their daughters became just a number?”
“Unfortunately,” Nico said, “it happens all too often.”
“It’s not acceptable. We have things that need to be dealt with, and, in order to do that, we need information. And, if there’s forensic information, that’s even more important to have.”
“I hear you. I’ll let you know more on that as we hear back from the labs.”
“Outside of DNA, is there anything else?”
“No. Well, there’s still the bed frame. The mattress went out the window, and the kidnappers took the bedding hanging out the window with them, and they left behind a little bit of furniture, but there’s nothing in it.”
“So potentially something could be there but maybe not. Let me know what you find.”
“Will do.” Nico hung up.
Miles escorted the sketch artist, who had everything packed up by now, out the door and then spoke briefly with the security guard, letting him know that, outside of the trolley meant to be picked up, nobody else should be coming by for a while except for Vanessa’s sister. “And you let me know when she gets here. We want to make sure that she is who she says she is.”
The security guard nodded. “Nobody’s getting past me who isn’t exactly who they say,” he vowed.
Miles headed back inside and checked over the food scenario, then asked Vanessa, “Want anything else from the trolley?”
“I could eat right now.” She studied the rest of the food on the plates and said, “Hand me the remaining meat pie.” She scooped out the filling and had some of it and a couple bites of the pastry, and then she was done.
He took the entire trolley with all the dishes and put it outside. “More coffee will be good though,” he said to the guard.
“I’ll order some more for you.” The guard nodded. “Could use one myself.”
“When are you off?”
“In two hours,” he said. “I’ll be fine until then with just coffee.”
At that point, Miles pushed the trolley out of the way against the wall between two hospital rooms and stepped back inside. The hospital seemed to be getting busier, and the sounds filtering into her room were almost overwhelming.
She stared up at him. “I wasn’t expecting it to be that loud out there.”
He shrugged. “Big city and big hospital. Busy place.”
She nodded. “I don’t spend much time in the hospital,” she said. “It’s not my favorite place to be.”
“It’s nobody’s favorite place to be,” he said with a smile. “I’ve ordered more coffee. Other than that, are you ready for a nap?”
She laid here for a moment. “I don’t know if I’m ready to sleep,” she said honestly. “There’s an awful lot to be said for just resting here. This was pretty traumatizing.”
“I’m sorry about that, that you even had to experience this,” he said.
She shrugged. “At least something good came out of it.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “We have a face now. And you’re feeling pretty solid about that face?”
She nodded. “It’s damn freaky.”
“Well, we have people running it through various databases right now.”
“I just hope we find him,” she whispered. “And I really want to find the guy who was supposed to come and check me over.”
“Depending on who it is,” he said, “he could be flying in for this meet, and I’m sure he’s been warned that the place has been compromised, so he won’t be showing up.”
“But he could be anywhere,” she said, staring moodily out the window. “For how long will I look at every guy and wonder if it isn’t him?”
“Potentially for a lifetime,” he said firmly as he sat down. “But you get your nightmares under control, and you take steps to be safe out there in the world because you can’t let it stop you from living a full life.”
She shook her head. “It seems so bizarre. People go lifetimes without ever having something like this happen, and here I’ve been attacked twice.”
“I know. It seems like some people lead lives full of charm.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” She laid back and closed her eyes.
“Sleep if you can,” he said. He stood, and immediately her eyes flew open. He looked at her, smiled and said, “I ordered coffee, so I’m waiting for that. Afterward, I’ll sit here with my laptop and do some work.”
“Thank you.” And shifting ever-so-slightly, she pulled the sheet up over her shoulders.
He reached over and tugged it a little more firmly and tucked it up around her. “Are you warm enough?” he asked. “There’s a blanket here, if you need that too.”
She nodded at the idea of a blanket, and he pulled that up over her. As soon as she was resting again, he walked to the door just in time to see coffee coming. He looked back, but she was sound asleep, so he handed one of the coffees to the guard and said, “Here. You might as well have it. She’s out.”
Then, with a smile, Miles stepped back inside the room and walked to his bag on the floor, pulled out his laptop and got to work.
As soon as he had it open, the Mavericks chat window opened up with a link. He clicked the link, and there was his guy. The sketches came back that fast with a ninety-nine percent match.
Military, all right, but American. Miles stared at that, feeling a wave of anger coming over him like he couldn’t believe. Even worse, their kidnapper was navy. A seaman for fourteen years. John Ambrose. A forgettable name. Something that the women would smile at, nod and not even think to remember.
But then his face had that same appearance too. Brown hair. His eyes could normally be quite soft and friendly, and, if he had a smile on his face, he would probably attract a lot of women. As it was, he had a frown and an ugliness in that angry picture with the look that the sketch artist had captured. It matched the other photo they had from his service record. The photo had captured a deadness inside him.
Miles quickly scanned the seaman’s record, reading dishonorably discharged. “Well, doesn’t that just figure?” he murmured. He kept reading through to see what the problem was, and it turns out he had been a fighter, didn’t get along with his coworkers and was well-known for brawling at every one of their ports. Still, Miles had seen that with a lot of guys; this anger often worked its way through their system until they were much more amiable to get along with.
But in this case, with John Ambrose, apparently it never worked. After fourteen years of this, John got kicked out, with numerous citations for bad behavior. But none of it was criminal. None of it had caused damage to the exte
nt of anybody needing surgery or leaving the navy because of him. John hadn’t killed anybody. At least none that they knew about.
Miles thought about that and wondered if that’s not where all this started. It would be quite easy to see how John’s career had gone in this direction. Obviously he still had rage issues that John had never successfully dealt with inside. What would make somebody so damn angry?
Miles studied the guy’s face so that he would recognize him on the street. The one sketch with the hat and glasses and beard was also excellent, as it gave Miles a whole different look to Ambrose to consider. Without the sunglasses and without the beard, all different kinds of combinations were possible too though. But, with any luck, they’d find John.
When John’s image was burned into Miles’s memory, he closed his dossier and started researching his quarry, to find any history throughout the police records in various states and countries. Once a man like that left the navy and, particularly with the dishonorably discharged tag, Miles couldn’t imagine that John’s anger got any easier.
As a matter of fact, John would probably have lashed out and might have started killing people. The navy discharge had been about fifteen years earlier. Miles frowned at that, thinking about what kind of anger would cause him to go after redheads. Reopening the dossier, he found contact info and reached for his phone.
By the time he tracked down the person on the report, he’d left the service himself. Swearing, Miles went to the chat window and typed, Ryker, I need specific information on this John Ambrose guy. I want to know why he was dishonorably discharged. And were there any redheads in his life at the time? We’re looking for a reason why he’s going after these specific women.
On it.
Have you contacted the navy?
Yes, the person who wrote the report is no longer there. He was superintendent at the time. Can’t see that in the report. Just then a name and a phone number popped up in the chat window.
Miles laughed and quickly dialed.
When a stern voice answered at the other end, Miles identified himself and said, “I’m looking into the history of John Ambrose.”