Find Me

by Carol O'Connell

  Riker opened the bag for a quick look. Inside was the canvas tote bag with the collection of Route 66 maps. The familiar small crosses in pencil and ink were visible on one. “Good night, Horace.” He looked up at the trooper. “It’s his stuff all right. So I guess there’s no way to tell what killed the little guy.”

  “A car killed him, sir. We found Mr. Kayhill’s shirt. Tread marks all over it.”

  This could hardly be a traffic accident if the body had been found in the middle of nowhere—no roads. Charles leaned toward the young man, saying, “So Horace was murdered?”

  “Yes, sir.” Unacquainted with rhetorical questions, the trooper phrased his words ever so politely. “With all that open space, you’d really have to aim a car at a man to hit him. In this case, we got cross tread marks. That means the car hit him more than once. So, yes, sir, we thinks it was real deliberate.”

  “Well, poor man.” Charles was somewhat put off his meal. “This is sad news.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” said Riker with genuine remorse. “I really liked that little guy. He was on my shortlist—right up near the top.”

  “I always liked him, too.” Mallory opened a small notebook and crossed Horace Kayhill’s name off her own suspect list. After slinging her knapsack over one shoulder, she picked up the laptop computer and left the table.

  The trooper was rising, anxious to follow her, perhaps with the idea that they could be close friends. Riker, with the kindest intention in his smile, placed an avuncular hand on the younger man’s shoulder, saying, “No, kid. Only if you like pain.”

  On the pretense of returning Kayhill’s bag of maps to the state trooper, Detective Riker carried his cell phone out to the parking lot. He needed privacy for his incoming call. After settling into the front seat of the Mercedes, he resumed his conversation with New York’s chief medical examiner. “Hey, Doc, thanks for waiting. So how’s it going?”

  “Kathy Mallory never answers her phone,” said Dr. Slope.

  Thank you, God.

  “That’s okay,” said Riker. “I take messages.” And before the medical examiner could make contact with his partner, Riker would have to officially notify her that Savannah Sirus was dead. Other wise, Dr. Slope would find it odd that she had never been told, and the old man might have a few questions.

  “Tell her this,” said Slope. “I am not her personal funeral director. Then tell her the crematorium called. They’d like to know when she plans to pick up Miss Sirus’s ashes…. Riker?…Still there?”

  “Yeah, Doc.”

  “So what should I tell them?”

  “Soon—a few more days. So when did you talk to Mallory?”

  “She might’ve called the day after we found the body. I didn’t speak to her myself. I assume you were the one who told her about the suicide.”

  “Yeah,” said Riker, in his first lie of the day. In Mallory fashion, he cut off the call with no good-bye.

  How had she known that Savannah was dead? Was the woman’s suicide so predictable? Had Mallory made the connection between a LoJack tracker on her tail in the state of Illinois and sudden death in New York City? Maybe she had phoned her apartment that night and got no answer from her erstwhile houseguest. Was the morgue her next call?

  He did not suspect Mallory of murder. Thanks to Charles Butler, there was no doubt that Savannah had shot herself. What made him close his eyes just now was the possibility that Mallory had stayed to watch.

  Dr. Paul Magritte held his cell phone to one ear as he checked the rearview mirror. He was not expecting to see the FBI moles driving behind him. Those two were so preoccupied with one another. He doubted that they would notice his absence for some time yet. He was looking in the mirror for a car that would keep pace with him. He slowed down, and all the traffic went whizzing past his Lincoln.

  For the past few miles, he had believed that he was being closely observed as he followed his orders and left the parking lot to ride the interstate. However, now he realized that his caller was not behind him, but up ahead—waiting. The constant phone requests for his exact position could have no other explanation.

  He pulled onto the shoulder of the interstate and left the car, removing his jacket as he walked toward an exit sign. He trusted that Mallory, who missed nothing, would remember this article of clothing. Even if she did not recall its color and herringbone pattern, the sight of it waving in the wind—that would be meaningful to her. He devoutly believed that the young detective would be the one to find him.

  He laid his plans on faith—in her.

  Riker opened the car’s trunk and tossed in the black plastic bag with Horace Kayhill’s maps.

  He heard the shouts before he saw Mallory winding her way through the haphazard lanes of parked cars. Dale Berman called out to her, hurrying now to match steps with her longer legs, and then the man put one hand on her shoulder. Never breaking stride, she turned to give him a look that made him think better of annoying her anymore. Finally the fed gave up and returned to the restaurant.

  And Mallory kept coming.

  Riker closed the trunk and leaned back against the car. When she joined him, his eyes shifted to the retreating back of Dale Berman. “What was that about?”

  She set the laptop on the trunk of the Mercedes and opened it. “I told him I knew he was dragging out this case.”

  “Well,” said Riker, “I guess the longer he drags it out the greater the glory. Some people just like to see their names in the newspaper.”

  “That’s not it. He did everything he could to keep the media away from this case.” She powered up the laptop and turned the screen so he could see it. “You thought Dale Berman was just incompetent.”

  “Well, yeah, but that’s true.”

  SHe shook her head. “I told you the screw ups were over the top—even for Berman. So I followed the money.”

  Ah, Mallory’s all-time favorite. Trust her to find a money motive in the slaughter of little girls. He stared at the glowing screen of number columns. “What am I looking at?”

  “Dale Berman’s payroll records. He’s been reporting fifty hours of overtime every week.” She pulled a notebook from her back pocket and pointed to a November date. “That’s when Berman takes early retirement from the Bureau. I found the paperwork in his car.” She turned back to the laptop screen. “Now look at these figures for earnings with overtime.”

  Riker whistled in appreciation of the large sum. “Dale’s really building up his retirement fund.”

  “You’re close,” said Mallory. “This has been going on for years. He started padding his paychecks after the Bureau buried him in North Dakota.”

  “You see? I told you he was an idiot. That state only has a handful of people and some buffalo. Nobody does overtime.”

  “And Dale worked in a satellite office—no oversight. That’s what triggered this audit.” Mallory diddled the keyboard to show him a new set of figures. “Lots of pressure—the auditors are coming. He has to explain the overtime. A federal payroll scam is worth five years in prison. So he makes a bogus file for Mack the Knife, and he backdates it.”

  Riker shook his head in disbelief. “That’s good for another charge—falsifying government documents. More jail time. I told you he was an idiot.”

  “No,” said Mallory, “he was a man with a high-maintenance wife and a field agent’s pay grade.”

  “And he was stuck in a backwater office with no action, no overtime.”

  “So he gave himself a bigger salary,” said Mallory. “That’s how it started, and then it snowballed. Berman can’t close out a bogus case with no results—not right after an audit. It has to look like an ongoing investigation. Then he gets posted to a Texas field office. He’s running it—all those eyes on him every day. More pressure. He can’t leave the bogus case with another agent in North Dakota. So he develops a false lead in the Texas jurisdiction. The overtime keeps rolling in, but he’s not doing it for the money now. He can’t stop. He only has two
years to retirement, and he needs a real live serial killer.”

  “And then he found Nahlman. She saved him.”

  Dr. Magritte left the car at the junction, and he left his wallet in the middle of the road, the one that led west toward an unknown destination. He was following directions fed to him as he traveled. The knife in his pocket gave him no comfort, but the expectation of being found either dead or alive, this was a joyful prospect. His prayers carried no requests for an angel of deliverance.

  Send Mallory.

  Mallory closed the laptop. “And now, thanks to Nahlman, he’s got a big inventory of bodies and evidence, more than enough to account for his time.”

  “I got a problem with this,” said Riker. “Dale knew that warehouse morgue was gonna be opened some day. If not by Harry Mars then—”

  “And the feds would find a hundred cartons of sloppy paperwork—all hard copy with missing files, fake reports, no times and dates for hunting and digging—nothing to match records with human remains. Berman only needed to drag the case out. He never intended to solve it. He would’ve retired in another six months. The case would get fobbed off on his replacement—along with the keys to the warehouse. The agent who replaced him would put everything down to gross incompetence.”

  “And Nahlman could back him up on the incompetence,” said Riker. “She’s Dale’s worst critic.”

  “Of course she is. Berman groomed her for the part.” Mallory let that settle in for a moment, and, when the poison had taken hold, she went on. “Even now thet the Bureau’s onto him, he can still get away with it. Let’s say Harry Mars opens an investigation. Nahlman will testify that her boss had no idea what he was doing. If Harry asks her about the warehouse full of dead kids, she’ll tell him that’s no surprise, not to her. She’ll swear under oath that Dale Berman is just a garden-variety screw up. And he’ll still get his pension, even though people died on his watch. He never developed any of Nahlman’s leads because He didn’t want this case solved—not yet.”

  “Okay.” Riker threw up his hands. “I’m a believer. Dale’s not just a screwup. He’s a sociopath. The little monster doesn’t care who dies. You were right about everything.”

  Mallory had her half-smile in place, the one that warned him to run while he could; he had seen it before, and he knew she was going to turn on him. Riker braced himself, hands spread flat on the trunk of the car. He had watched her grow up; he had loved her so long and knew her too well.

  “And all this time,” said Mallory, casually offering him the stolen driver’s license of the Illinois LoJack tracker, “even before Savannah Sirus died, you thought I was a sociopath—a monster.”

  Riker was bending over in the manner of a man who has just had his entrails pulled out and held up before his startled eyes.

  “Now let’s talk about your friend Nahlman.” Mallory pulled a small blue velvet pouch from her knapsack and emptied it on the hood of the Mercedes. Tiny bones clattered across the dusty metal. “I found them in Nahlman’s glove compartment. Or maybe you think I’m lying?”

  Make it stop!

  He shook his head. She was telling him that it was time to choose up sides, her side versus the rest of the world. “You’re my partner,” he said. “I’m with you.”

  “Good.” Mallory scooped up the little bones and put them back into the pouch. “Now it’s time to arrest Dr. Magritte.”

  “What?”

  The FBI moles had become engaged behind the travel plaza’s garbage dumpster.

  One mole gently caressed the face of the other and said, “I love you.”

  Behind them, startling them, a man’s voice said, “How nice. But where’s Dr. Magritte?”

  The moles spun around to face the detectives from New York City, Riker and Mallory.

  “Tell me you didn’t lose that old man,” said Detective Mallory, “not again.”

  One of the moles said, “Oh, shit.” And the other one was only thinking it.

  “Yes, I see it,” said Paul Magritte to his caller. “The turn is just up ahead.”

  This was a lie. His car was parked, and he was walking back to the juncture of dirt road and hard pavement. He spread an open book on the ground. This might be the most useful thing he had ever done with it. Looking down the unpaved road, he could see for miles and miles, and so could the killer of children. This would be the last time he dared to stop.

  Dr. Magritte held the cell phone to his ear and offered more reassurance that he was quite alone. In turn, he received the good news that the kidnapped parent was still alive. And was this story believable? No. Up ahead there was only death on two legs, no heart, no soul. But this time, he would see it coming, and soon—so would every one else.

  He returned to his car and continued to follow the directions of a coldly mechanical voice that conjured up fat black flies inside his ear. He knew his final destination would be some distance away. The man would want privacy for what he planned to do to his old doctor—his former priest.

  The moles ran back to the restaurant to make their report. Riker took the old road east, and his partner drove west on the interstate.

  Mallory was flying across the highway, taking every exit ramp and doubling back to take the next one. It was slow going even at great speed. Finally, she spotted the jacket tied to an exit sign, and she turned onto a stretch of Route 66, still racing, only slowing when she came to the crossroad and saw the wallet lying on the pavement. She knew it was Magritte’s, and she left it there. He was headed west. As she approached another turnoff, her car crawled along in search of other signs.

  He recognized the early model car of an impoverished caravan parent.

  Paul Magritte knew what he would find even before he had closed the door of his Lincoln. He moved on leaden feet toward the other vehicle. The trunk was open, awaiting his inspection. Inside lay the dead body of a slender man in his middle thirties. This time, the only blood came from the corpse’s gaping mouth. The throat had not been slashed, but the cause of death was clear in the tire tread marks made on the clothing. This body had been run over by car, not once, but many times. Magritte had not known this man by name. So many people had joined the caravan in recent days. Yet he grieved for the stranger.

  By force of habit, he began the ritual of commending the dead man’s soul to God, though they were much estranged these days, himself and the Almighty.

  Mallory slammed on the brakes, and stared at the open book lying on the ground, its pages rippling in the wind. She never had to leave her car to know that it was a Bible, an ex-priest’s version of the proverbial bread-crumb trail.

  She drove over it.

  A car was approaching from a distance, coming overland, just a dot on the horizon of mesa and desert brush. He watched it grow—his impending death—and when he could see it clearly, he yelled, “I never betrayed you!” And though vengeance was the province of God, one hand closed on the knife in his pocket.

  Soon.

  He had anticipated an exchange of words, but that was not to be. The jeep was not slowing down but gathering speed. Impact came with a sickening thud of the metal impacting on flesh and bone. The force knocked the air from the old man’s lungs and he was in flight, flying forever it seemed. He lost consciousness before his body hit the hard ground.

  When he opened his eyes again, he tasted blood in his mouth—proof of life.

  His assailant—soon to be his murderer—was standing not far away in some new incarnation so different from the misshapen child he had known all those years ago.

  Paul Magritte’s resting place was a deep and narrow ditch, and now he could understand why he was still alive. It would not be possible to run him down a second time. And so this killer—loath to touch a living body—was helpless. He could only wait for an old man’s death rattle.

  Wait a little longer.

  Paul Magritte suffered much pain. It was agony only to lift one hand—to beckon his murderer—come a little closer.

  Mallory looked do
wn at the corpse in the trunk, a clear death by vehicular homicide. Gone were all the trappings of a ritual, a killer’s pretense of a twist in the game. Once his monument was finished and all the little girls were laid out in a row, he had simply turned his sights on advertising. But these attacks were different. The old man was a material witness, a loose end. And the dead parent in the trunk of the car? That was bait. But what was his agenda with the murder of Horace Kayhill?

  The detective returned to the ditch and knelt down beside Paul Magritte. The old man had been fading in and out, but now he was conscious again. “The ambulance should be here any minute.” She was not looking at him but at the old dirt road, watching for the first sign of an emergency vehicle, listening for a siren.

  “Mallory?” Dr. Magritte’s voice was weak. He was also staring at the road. “My faith doesn’t lie in that direction…. It lies with you.” And now he turned his eyes to the great prize he had given her.

  She looked down at the bloodied knife in her evidence bag. “It was a good try, old man. A good try.”

  “No…a success.” His words came out with ragged breath and fresh red bubbles of spittle from his lips.

  “Don’t talk,” she said.

  “That blood on my knife…not mine…significant.”

  Mallory decided not to tell the old man that it was all for nothing, that this DNA evidence was useful in court but not in the hunt. “It’s significant,” she said. “He’s getting reckless, careless. With any luck at all, he’s suicidal, too. That’s how it ends sometimes.”

  “He can’t go back…to the caravan…. I cut him.” Magritte’s moving finger drew a jagged line on his neck.