by CJ Lyons
Walden was silent. Not because he disagreed with her, but because he was busy cursing himself. He’d been working this case alone for so long that he hadn’t even thought to bring Lucy on board before now. He’d let his stubborn pride blind him—he’d wanted to be the one to capture Daddy. Foolish, arrogant, idiot. He might have cost a little kid her life.
“Do it,” Oshiro said. “Lucy’s the best tracker I’ve ever worked with.”
High praise indeed, coming from Oshiro. Also something he’d never say if he wasn’t under the influence of strong drugs. Still, he was right.
“Got a pen and paper?” He gave Lucy the data. No need to check his files, he had it memorized. Thought about those poor kids all the time.
“We’re sure it’s Daddy, not some other predator?”
“No, but the BAU guys said it would fit his profile.”
“We don’t know enough about him to build a profile,” she said. Lucy was not a big fan of the BAU profiles, he knew. They’d led her astray too many times by being either too vague or too specific.
“But the time line and locations fit. It has to be him,” Walden argued. “Besides, what else do we have to go on.”
She made a small noise of agreement. “So, we have an adult female with an infant, and two toddlers taken? But no adult bodies? Just the two girls?”
“My thought was he gets rid of the women as soon as he no longer needs them to care for the babies. Worried about the risk, so changed to grabbing toddlers instead.”
“They never surfaced? June’s mother and the woman he grabbed the day he abandoned her at the mall?”
“No. But the girls—those he leaves where they’ll be found. They’re washed, no trace evidence at all, wrapped in plastic—not a tarp, more like shrink wrap, like they’re dolls or something. Remote locations with no cameras, then anonymous calls, untraceable, to 911.”
“He cares about what happens to them.”
“Warped as it sounds, yeah.” He rubbed his temple; he’d been doing this for too damn long if these scumbags were starting to make sense to him. Maybe it was a good thing he was moving to the bank squad. Time for a transfer to a desk.
After he caught this sonofabitch.
<><><>
LUCY FINISHED PLOTTING the other points Walden gave her. Locations where women and children were stolen; locations where the girls’ dead bodies were found. She added a time line on a sheet of parchment paper as well.
Tracing the locations over time, they formed a definite spiral—a bit zigzagged, but that was to be expected. People liked to think they could be truly random, but in reality their habits always imposed order onto the chaos.
“There’s one more point, if it helps,” Seth said. He’d watched her in silence, drinking his coffee and Lucy had almost forgotten he was there.
“What’s that?”
“Washington DC, five months ago.”
His tone held more bitterness than the dark brew in his mug. Lucy glanced up. “What happened five months ago?”
“That’s the day I met him. June’s daddy.” He set the mug down. It rattled against the tabletop, his hand shook so bad. But his voice was steady. As was his gaze. “That’s the day he killed me.”
Chapter 16
LUCY STARED AT Seth. He stared right back. Gave her a slow nod as if his head was too heavy to lift. She remembered this morning thinking how gaunt he looked, aged prematurely—he was only thirty.
“Tell me everything.”
He raised his mug but set it back down without drinking, using the time to collect himself. “This was before the threat on the judge when we got protection. I was leaving my office, on the way to file some motions, when a man called my name. He walked up, shook my hand, and said he’d heard what I was doing and wanted to thank me. Then he was gone again.”
“What’d he look like? Where were you—on the street? How about his voice?”
“There were no cameras anywhere around. It was a cold morning, he wore an overcoat with the collar turned up and a scarf, had glasses and a tweed hat. I remember thinking he was a professor—but I think that’s just because he looked like the one I had for Constitutional Law. Brown eyes. Forties, fifties, who knows? Nothing special.”
He paused, his lips twisting into a grimace. “Except that he wore gloves. And when he shook my hand, I could tell they were really thick. Figured the guy didn’t like cold hands, didn’t think anything of it until the next day when the funeral flowers came.”
“You traced the delivery?”
“Nothing there. Paid with a prepaid credit card, delivery guy took the order over the phone, no way of tracing it. The card said: Warm thoughts for June after the untimely early demise of her husband.”
“You thought it came from him?”
“I thought it came from another crackpot. You have to understand, ever since we started this, I get a dozen death threats a day. Only thing different about this one was that it came in the real world instead of anonymous emails and tweets from Internet trolls.”
“How did you finally put it together?”
“Not me, my paralegal—she loves puzzles. The guy signed it HG. That’s the chemical symbol for mercury. And the florist’s logo is Mercury, the winged messenger. Then our entire office was flooded with spam about some miracle cure involving mercury—all untraceable, of course. She made me go see my doctor and ask him about mercury poisoning. Turns out she was right.”
“But that was five months ago? If they found out so fast, why couldn’t they do something about it?”
“I think that’s why this guy basically told me what he’d done—he knew they couldn’t do a damn thing about it. They tried all the standard chelation therapies, but this is a rare form of mercury. One drop, absorbed through the skin and you’re toast. But the kicker is, you won’t see any symptoms for weeks, maybe even months. Then, once they arrive, you have only days before you’re dead.”
He wrapped both his hands around his coffee mug. “I’ve lived weeks longer than the experts thought I would. My doctor can’t wait to write up the case report—says there was a chemistry professor had the same thing happen to her, by accident, he wants to compare my brain to hers at autopsy.”
“June doesn’t know?”
“No. She has enough to worry about. After everything she’s been through, how can I tell her that she’s about to raise our child alone?”
Lucy didn’t agree—if it was her, she’d want time to prepare. But she didn’t know June and Seth, not well enough to interfere in their marriage. “Oshiro? Walden?”
“I told them. Made them promise to protect her no matter what. And my family—they don’t know I’m dying, but they love June, she and the baby will always have a home with them.”
She thought about it. Daddy’s perfect revenge on the man who dared to fall in love with his Baby Girl and wanted to raise her daughter. God, what a twisted, evil sonofabitch.
“How long do you have?”
“I started to have weird muscle twitches last week. Sometimes my arms or legs, they’ll just give out on me. And I’m weak—not just tired, physically weak.” He lifted his mug with both hands as if to demonstrate. “Maybe another week. Maybe just a few days. I can tell my brain is foggy, slow to react.”
He gave her a sad smile. “Funny thing is, that probably saved my life. When that guy pulled his gun and aimed it at me, I wanted to turn and run but instead my leg gave out and I ended up tripping and falling. Bullet went right past me.”
And into Oshiro. “You’re sure he was aiming at you, not Oshiro?”
Tactically it would make sense for the shooter to target the greatest threat first—Oshiro. But if Seth was right, he’d aimed first at the man least likely to be able to stop him.
“You don’t forget a big, fucking gun aimed right at you. When I fell, Oshiro was moving to intercept the shooter, ended up in the line of fire.”
“If Daddy already poisoned you and knows you’re dying, why would he want to kil
l you now?” Did they have two crazy ass factions out there gunning for June and Seth?
“The doctors said I should have been dead a month ago, but they bought me more time with new experimental therapies. Maybe Daddy is upset that I might be around to see my baby born?”
“Maybe he wants you totally out of the picture so he can move on June?”
“Or maybe he’s just playing with me.”
She jerked her head up at that. “Seth, have you been in contact with Daddy?”
“Yeah. I think. Not sure. But I get these anonymous messages—as soon as I read them, they vanish. I had the computer forensic guys check and they said they can’t trace them.”
“Maybe Taylor—”
He shook his head. “It’s too late. He’s here. I can feel it. And he’s coming after June. This is our last chance to stop him.”
Chapter 17
AS THEY PULLED up in front of Gram’s house, Megan spotted a familiar car in the driveway.
“Taylor. What’s he doing here?” she asked, jumping out of the car before her dad had the parking brake on. She ran past the MiniCooper. She liked Taylor, he didn’t treat her like some stupid kid—truth be told, she kinda crushed on him, but he had a girlfriend. Plus he was old, like in his thirties. But cute, very cute.
Wait. She stumbled on the steps leading to the porch. If Taylor was here, did that mean something happened to Mom? A rushing noise filled her head and her mouth tasted of iron. She plowed through the door, fear propelling her feet.
“Taylor?” she shouted.
Her dad was right behind her, steadying her with his hands on her shoulders, just as Mom came from the kitchen. Not Taylor. Mom. “Megan, Nick. What are you—”
Fine. Her mom was just fine. Didn’t even remember Dad and her were coming. Obviously not happy to see them here either. Of course not. Why would she be happy to see her own daughter? Why would she even be worried about scaring her daughter about to death? Again.
Megan jerked free of her dad and stomped down the hall, not bothering to take her coat off. Her heart was still racing, fear and fury competing for her attention, making her desperate to just feel nothing.
Hard to do here, surrounded by memories of Grams. God, she missed her. Every day.
Megan opened the door to Grams’ bedroom and stumbled inside, banging it shut behind her. She let her coat and scarf fall to the floor but then realized there was a woman lying in Gram’s bed. The pregnant woman from the video.
“Hello,” the woman said. “I’m June.”
The Girl Who Never Was: Memoirs of a Survivor
by June Unknown
How I Found My Voice
I’LL NEVER FORGET that first case where Seth had me testify during the sentencing. He said I could have just given him a victim’s impact statement and he’d submit it. When he told me that, gave me that out after all the work he’d put into finding me and prepping me, put my needs before his, that’s when I knew I couldn’t let him down.
By then, I was nineteen, I realized I couldn’t live like most people do, but I still had no idea where my place in the world was. Living like a hermit, alone except for my paintings, that felt like having a limb amputated.
Living with others, that was being drawn and quartered in front of a crowd, watching, judging my every response.
I wanted a reason to leave my solitude. I needed someone I could be with. Seth gave me both—and so much more.
But that was later. Now I had to survive this first trial.
The guy is already convicted, Seth kept reminding me. No matter what happens, nothing will change that, so don’t worry.
I don’t think “worry” comes remotely close to how I felt when I walked into that courtroom. Walden came with me since Seth was busy up front with the other lawyer and the defendant, a guy named White.
Is there a state of being beyond panic? When your heart beats so hard and fast that it pushes your being out of your body? That’s how I felt, floating, tethered to reality only by the tightness that constricted my chest and made it impossible to swallow. Like my body was an anchor and I wasn’t at all sure that I didn’t want to cut it free and just drift away.
But then Seth turned to scan the row of seats behind him and he saw me. He looked so proud and happy to see me—no one had ever looked at me that way, not even Daddy. Like I was special. Like I was important.
To hear White’s lawyer and friends and boss and church deacon and wife tell it, he was the victim, here. Poor, overworked, overstressed shoe store manager, he’d turned to porn to alleviate his tension and accidentally downloaded photos from the wrong site.
Never mind that there were over three thousand of them, all preschool aged girls. White pled for leniency, this wasn’t his fault, his family needed him, would be ruined if he was sent to prison.
And the judge kept nodding, like he was buying it. Even smiled at White’s wife.
Then it was my turn. Seth introduced me—I was so nervous, I didn’t hear what he said—and I approached the podium. I smoothed the pages of the statement I’d carefully crafted with Seth’s help, my sweaty palms smearing the ink. Didn’t matter—I can’t read very well anyway, but I’m good at memorizing things I see and hear, so I was going to recite it from memory.
Except then I looked at White. At all the people sitting behind him, supporting him. His fine upstanding wife. His fine upstanding deacon. His fine upstanding paperboy. Whoever these people were, they looked at me like I was some kind of vile, corrupting, ungodly creature sent to seduce fine upstanding men like White.
To them I was the one who should be locked away to protect society. To them it was all my fault.
Heat blazed through me. My hands shook the entire podium, so I closed them into fists and placed them onto the printout of the statement that I would never read.
“Are you okay?” Seth whispered from where he sat at the table beside me.
I nodded, still unable to speak. The silence lengthened. People shifted in their seats, whispered behind me. The judge cleared his throat and nodded to me to start.
Still, I was silent. The judge, his patience ended, glared at Seth. “Mr. Bernhart—”
Before he could finish, I opened my mouth and began to speak.
“The first thing I learned when I was little was that girls are to be seen and not heard,” I said, focusing my entire being on the judge. Seth had told me that in almost half of child pornography cases judges would ignore the sentencing guidelines and give defendants less time than even the minimum called for.
Not this time. Not if I had anything to do with it.
“After living the first ten years of my life never being heard, I’d like to thank you for the chance to speak. To add my voice to the ones you’ve heard today.”
I gathered my breath, totally improvising, but the judge was paying attention and that was what mattered. “I lived the first ten years of my life only knowing one other person. That person was my whole world—literally. I lived for him and him alone. When he sent me away, when I grew too big for him, I thought I would die without him.
“Learning how different my childhood was from everyone else’s was a shock. I didn’t know how to read or write or do math beyond counting. I didn’t know how to talk to other people—didn’t even know how to play with kids my age. How could I? I’d never met other kids or any other adults. It was years before I could catch up enough to go to school. I managed to graduate from high school but left college after a year—I didn’t know how to be around people, especially men. Every relationship ended with me feeling ashamed, guilty, and abandoned.
“I live a fragile existence. Unable to trust myself. Unable to trust anyone else. Unable to focus or do so many things normal people do. I can’t drive a car. Have never been able to hold down a job—I can tell time on a clock, but have never learned to translate that into anything meaningful. All of which you could blame on those first ten years.
“You probably wonder what Mr. White and his fasci
nation with underage girls has to do with my failures. Why should he be held accountable for my inability to make up for those first ten years? Ten years of my life that he and others like him watch as entertainment with no thought to the fact that the girl on the screen, the girl growing up before their eyes in thousands of images, that girl deserves a life beyond serving their sexual gratification.
“That girl—me—deserves a voice. Deserves a chance to be heard.”
I swallow hard, a feeling of power surging through me—I’ve never felt like this before. Every person in the room is listening to me and only me.
“Now that I’m old enough to understand what was taken from me, I’m in constant fear. Fear of someone like Mr. White recognizing me and coming after me. Fear of men like him using those images of my childhood to coerce other victims. Fear of men like Mr. White using my images to recreate that horror for other little girls.
“Fear that because of my stolen childhood, the violence and horror will never end.” I pause, trying to figure out how to wrap up. Wished I could remember anything from the statement Seth and I wrote, but it’s too late now. “Mr. White may not be the man who stole my innocence or my childhood or my voice, but he’s the man who has stolen my dignity, my privacy, and my future. He's the man who paid for it, who made it profitable for me to be victimized. He. Paid. Money. For my innocence.
“I’ve been diagnosed with depression and PTSD and panic attacks and generalized anxiety, but these fears that haunt my every waking moment and that twist my dreams into nightmares, they are not unrealized, vague, neurotic anxieties. You know that, Mr. Bernhart knows that, Mr. White knows it as well if he’s honest with himself.
“These fears are real. They will torment me for the rest of my life. Will knowing that I have one less predator to fear by asking the court to sentence Mr. White to the maximum allowable by law and to request some measure of accountability in the form of financial restitution give me any measure of comfort?” I pause, hoping I’d used the right terms from Seth’s coaching.