Mia felt the thin fingers loosen that had somehow become intertwined with hers. The little red-haired girl’s face was filled with delight. She pulled away and began walking toward the car, entranced by the doll. Mia remained frozen on the curb. The man was luring her. He was going to take her. The child moved closer.
“No,” she whispered. “Don’t—”
She screamed at the hard tap on her shoulder. Whirling, she stumbled backward, the eerie vision dissolving like mist.
“Give me some money, lady?” The junkie’s eyes were bloodshot in his sweat-streaked face. He smelled like garbage. “I got kids at home. They need to eat.”
He gazed at her, hopeful and jittery, advancing a step closer. His eyes roamed her bathing suit top. Mia reached into her bag, grasping a loose ten-dollar bill. She shoved it into the man’s skinny chest and hurried away on wobbly legs.
“Hey! What’s your rush, baby? We can hang for a while—”
She slammed the Volvo’s door closed and locked it. Hands trembling, Mia started the engine and peeled away from the street. She’d been wrong to come here. As she drove, her eyes flicked to the Indian dream catcher swaying from her rearview mirror. She tore it down and shoved it into the glove box.
13
“Welcome back,” Grayson announced, striding toward Mia as she entered the newsroom on Monday morning. Her coworkers—reporters, copy editors, web masters and photographers—echoed the salutation, gathered around a tray of bagels and pastries that had apparently been laid out in her honor. Putting an arm around her shoulders, he escorted her over. “We’re just glad to have you back, kiddo.”
Mia accepted the staff’s well-wishing as they made a grab for the food and carried it back to their respective desks, ready to get a jump on the day’s assignments. However, she didn’t miss the sympathetic looks and curious glances at her still-chafed wrists and bandaged fingers, reminding her that she’d been the recent watercooler topic. Grayson handed her a paper cup filled with orange juice.
“Get settled in and come see me in my office,” he said.
“New haircut?” Walt Rudner asked pointedly, his mouth full of cream cheese and onion bagel, as Grayson departed. Balding and bearing a generous paunch, he was the senior reporter who had taken over the abduction stories in Mia’s absence. “Was that by choice or necessity?”
She gave him a hard look, causing the typically gruff reporter to spit cream cheese as he chuckled. “C’mon, Mia. The task force has a gag order on us. I can’t write about the specifics, but I know enough JSO detectives to hear things. Like the hair and fingernail fetish this freak has.”
He nodded to her midsection. “I also understand he has his own perverted take on the Dewey decimal system.”
Mia’s face grew hot. Walt could be an insensitive lout. “What do you want?”
“Information? Look, I know you supposedly don’t remember anything about what happened to you, but I’m betting you’ve got some special insight into the investigation.” He wiped his fingers on the pocket of his sports coat. “For starters, I saw Agent Macfarlane escorting you past the crime scene tape at the boat ramp on Thursday night—the same tape meant to keep the rest of us lowly scavengers on the outside. What gives?”
“I wasn’t there as a reporter,” she said quietly.
“So it was a social visit? I noticed you got an up close and personal with Pauline Berger. Or what was left of her.”
Mia bristled. She’d picked up a Danish pastry but dropped it into the trash, her appetite gone. “You’re an ass, Walt.”
“And you’re too tangled up in this. Which is why you’re not getting the investigation back. I know you asked Miller for it. Normally you get what you want around here, but not this time.”
She’d started to walk away, but she turned to look at him.
Shrugging his thick shoulders, he wolfed down the rest of his bagel. “Not my decision. Go ask him.”
Stopping by her desk in the bull pen, she plugged in her laptop, then shoved her purse into one of the drawers. Mia traveled through the newsroom to a row of glass-walled offices occupied by senior editorial and management staff. Grayson had the large corner room, giving him a panoramic view of the St. Johns River below. Mia knocked on the door. Glancing over the top of his bifocals at her, he motioned her inside. She entered and sat across from his desk.
“How did the parking garage go this morning?” he asked, concerned.
“It went fine.”
“We should’ve had someone from security meet you and walk you up. It couldn’t have been easy going back there—”
“I’m fine, Grayson,” Mia assured him, although in truth the garage had taken some courage to navigate, even in daylight. “I just want to get back to work.”
He nodded. “All right. I’m sending you to the county courthouse. They’re arraigning D’Angelo Roberts on vehicular homicide charges this morning.”
Mia had heard about the arrest. D’Angelo Roberts was a former NFL star who had moved to the upscale Ponte Vedra beach community. Over the weekend he’d crashed his Ferrari with an underage female passenger inside, killing her. Toxicology tests indicated a high level of cocaine in his system, as well as the girl’s. It wasn’t a horrible assignment—it could even be considered a rather choice one considering Roberts’s high profile. But it was a far cry from the recent abductions and Pauline Berger’s murder.
“Walt tells me I’m not getting reassigned to the investigation.”
“You know Walt—he’s marking his territory. He thinks the serial murder investigation’s going to earn him a Pulitzer.”
“Is he right?”
“About the Pulitzer?”
Mia didn’t find it amusing. “About me not getting back on the story.”
When Grayson failed to answer and instead glanced at his computer screen, she added, “Have you told him about the therapy I’m undergoing at the Naval Air Station?”
“Did you ask me not to?”
“Yes. That information’s off the record—”
“Then I didn’t.” He removed his eyeglasses and laid them on the desk. “Although as executive editor of this paper, I should be making it a top story. I knew this victim-reporter thing was going to get complicated.”
Mia sat rigidly. “If I wasn’t a victim, you wouldn’t know about the NAS sessions anyway. I agreed to confidentiality and only told you because it may require me to be away from work.”
“I thought you told me because we’re friends.” He stood and walked around to the front of his desk. Sitting on its edge, Grayson peered at her, lowering his voice. “Look at you, Mia. You’re trying like hell to act tough, but my guess is you’re barely holding it together. You don’t need to be covering the Anna Lynn Gomez abduction or any other part of the investigation right now. Trust me, okay? I’m watching out for you. You’re not ready.”
Releasing a breath, she thought of the hallucination she’d experienced outside the abandoned foster care group home the day before. She’d wondered if it was one of the memory flashes Dr. Wilhelm had warned her about. But that would require the memory to be real.
“Just take the D’Angelo Roberts arraignment, all right? I want something online by this afternoon. No later than two.”
With a faint nod, she got up and left Grayson’s office, ignoring Walt’s chortle as she went past his cubicle. Returning to her desk, she entered her network password so she could log on to the internet to update herself on the vehicular homicide investigation before traveling the short distance to the Duval County Courthouse. As she worked, Mia tried to ignore the rock song that had been on nearly constant replay in her head all morning. She was all too aware of where she’d heard it. In her vision, the same rollicking INXS song had been booming from the blue hatchback’s speakers. Even now, the heavy thud of its bass seemed to throb inside her chest. On impulse, she did a quick web search on the lyrics and discovered the song had been number one on the play charts in 1987.
It was the sam
e year she had lived at Miss Cathy’s.
The added bit of realism caused her to bite her bottom lip in thought. But last night, Mia had searched online for news articles on a female child abducted out of the foster care system in Jacksonville twenty-five years earlier, unable to get the image out of her head. After nearly two hours of looking, she had come up empty.
Maybe Dr. Wilhelm really was right. The car’s driver, the red-headed girl—they were all symbolic of her current situation. Maybe Grayson had been right, too, when he’d said she was barely holding it together.
Seeing him leave his office and head in her direction, Mia switched the computer screen to the information on the vehicular homicide case. Either way, she couldn’t keep thinking about it now. She had work to do.
Eric and Cameron returned to the FBI offices no better off than they’d been two hours ago. A woman jogging on the Southbank Riverwalk had been accosted earlier that morning, spurring a frantic call to 9-1-1. Task force members had sprung into action, but after searching the area and finding the male subject based on the woman’s description, the consensus was that it was a case of aggressive panhandling and not an abduction attempt.
“How’s your hip?” Eric asked as they crossed the parking lot, which had already reached the temperature of molten lava. Cameron had taken a fall as they tried to capture the fleeing perp.
“I’ll live,” he said, grimacing. “It’s my suit pants I’m not so sure about.”
The recent abductions and murder, as well as media talk of a serial killer, were wearing on the public’s nerves and creating a heightened sense of anxiety. A growing number of incidents were being reported—suspicious cars cruising parks and neighborhoods, believed sightings of the missing women. It was a lot for task force members to sift through.
A cold blast of air-conditioning met them as they pushed through glass doors and entered the building’s lobby.
“I’m going to the restroom to clean up.” Cameron indicated the grass stains on his knees. “I’ll meet you upstairs.”
Eric went ahead to the reception desk, his security clearance badge in hand.
“Agent Macfarlane.”
He turned to see a stout, middle-aged man with dark hair and tan skin moving toward him. It was Anna Lynn Gomez’s father. He and Eric had spoken before, just hours after his daughter’s disappearance had been reported.
“Mr. Gomez—”
“Where’s my daughter?” He spoke in a heavy accent, his eyes wild and pain-filled. “She’s been missing for over three days! What are you doing to find her?”
“Everything we can, sir,” Eric assured him. “We’ve gotten her photo out to the public and we’re following up on every lead—”
“It’s not enough!” He stepped closer and jabbed a finger into Eric’s chest. Alcohol emanated from his breath. “My Anna’s out there somewhere and you’re in here not doing a damn thing! Do you know what might be happening to her? She could end up like that Berger woman!”
Eric’s face infused with heat. In his peripheral vision, he could see other agents advancing. They would treat the man as a threat and he didn’t want that to happen. He braced himself as Gomez gave him a small, angry shove.
“It’s okay,” Eric told the closest agent who already had his hand on the butt of his gun. “You’re going to have to calm down, Mr. Gomez. Now. Look around you. This isn’t the place to be out of control. We can go into the conference room and talk—”
“Enough talking! Do your job! Get my little girl back!” Tears formed in his red-rimmed eyes. “She was the first in our family to go to college! A beautiful young woman with a bright future and now…” He let go of a sob. Overcome with frustration and grief, he shoved Eric harder this time, forcing him back a step. Two field agents intervened, grabbing Gomez.
“Take him home,” Eric instructed quietly, a dull ache inside his chest. “He shouldn’t be driving.”
“You don’t give a damn about my daughter!” Gomez struggled as the agents escorted him out. Looking over his shoulder, he remained focused on Eric. “Big man with the VCU! You’ve got no idea what it feels like to have someone taken from you!”
Cameron returned from the restroom in time to witness the last of the chaos. “Was that Victor Gomez?”
Eric didn’t respond. He watched as the two agents put the man in back of a sedan to take him away.
It was after dark by the time Eric returned to the bungalow in Jacksonville Beach. He let himself in using his key and deactivated the security system but chose not to turn on the lights. Instead, he stood in solitary darkness, his mind heavy and tired. They were no closer to finding Anna Lynn Gomez or her abductor.
You’ve got no idea what it feels like to have someone taken from you.
The pain-filled declaration—the sheer irony of it—had stuck with him, competing with Pauline Berger’s muffled screams inside his head. With a sigh, Eric divested himself of his gun, wallet and shield, laying them on the coffee table beside his cell phone before wandering into the kitchen. He wasn’t hungry, so instead he extracted a beer from the refrigerator and opened it. Taking a long sip, he stared out between the vertical blinds on sliding glass doors that led to a rear deck. Flimsy light from a streetlamp slanted across its bleached wood planks.
Anna Lynn was still out there somewhere, still alive. She would stay that way until The Collector took another woman. He wanted to find her more than he wanted his next breath, but he also knew they were running out of time.
He drank from the bottle again, letting in the memories he’d managed to stave off until now. Victor Gomez’s anguish—his grief—had summoned them, taking him back to a cold February morning. The sky iron-gray and spitting snow, it had been his own day of reckoning.
You don’t want to see her, Eric.
Bobby Crowchild, Eric’s partner at the VCU, had attempted to hold him back from the shallow grave on the undeveloped lakeside property. He’d grabbed Eric by his coat, trying to talk some sense into him. Bobby’s breath fogged in the icy air, his face lined with sympathy.
Listen to me. Don’t. You don’t want to remember her like this.
He hadn’t taken any heed. Throwing off Bobby’s grip, Eric had pushed through the overgrowth, frozen grass and leaves crunching under his feet. A sea of grim-faced Bethesda police officers and federal agents parted for him. No one but Bobby dared block him.
Rebecca lay in a ditch. Refuse had been brushed partially away from her corpse by the recovery team. The decomposition was limited due to the winter’s consistently frigid temperatures, but the stomach-turning odor of death still hung in the air.
Twigs and leaves were tangled in the blond hair that spread out on the ground.
She’d been mutilated and strangled.
Eric had literally dropped to his knees, the sight knocking his legs out from under him. On the ground beside her, he’d choked on his grief and guilt, tears flowing from his eyes. As much as he’d tried to prepare himself following her abduction, he hadn’t been ready. The pain had been so intense that for several seconds he considered taking out his gun and putting a bullet in his brain before anyone could stop him. Vaguely, he recalled Bobby’s hand on his shoulder. Bobby guiding him, half carrying him out of the woods and putting him in back of a Bureau car.
Victor Gomez was wrong about him. Eric was no stranger to grief. He knew exactly what pain felt like.
He pulled himself from the reverie before he drowned in it. Returning to the living room, Eric picked up his cell phone. He stared at its screen for several long seconds before hitting its auto dial, then closed his eyes as he heard the call going through.
“Eric?” Mia asked after the second ring. She must’ve seen his name on her caller ID.
“I…wanted to check in,” he said, voice raspy and uncertain. He hadn’t seen or talked to her since Saturday night, since his rather hasty departure after Grayson Miller had shown up at her home. “To see how things went on your first day back at work.”
&nb
sp; She sounded genuinely happy he’d called. He listened, drinking in the animation in her voice as she told him about the media frenzy surrounding D’Angelo Roberts’s arraignment that morning. She also relayed Miller’s continued refusal to put her back on the abduction stories. He was grateful for that, at least. She was already in this far too deep.
“Eric, are you all right?”
He heard her concern through the airwaves and realized she’d picked up on his melancholy. He rubbed his forehead. “I’m fine.”
“Did something happen in the investigation?”
An image of a sobbing Victor Gomez being ushered from the lobby appeared in his mind. “No. There’s nothing new. It’s just been a long day.”
“You should go to the beach,” she suggested. “You’re staying a few blocks over, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“At the risk of sounding New Agey, the ocean at night can do wonders. Sneak some beers and sit in the cool sand, watch the crashing waves for a while. It can give you a whole new perspective.”
“Do you ever do that?”
“Not lately—not at night, I mean. But before my life went crazy, I used to.”
He smiled faintly at the thought of a federal agent being hauled in by the local police for drinking on a public beach. However, the image of Mia at the shore, the rough winds blowing her dark hair, enticed him.
They talked awhile longer, mostly about the therapy session scheduled with Dr. Wilhelm at the Naval Air Station for the following afternoon. Eric remained hopeful she might remember something that could be a turning point in the investigation.
“Are you dreading it?” he asked.
“It helps to have you there with me.”
He swallowed, feeling bad for what he was putting her through. A few moments later they wished one another good-night. Eric disconnected the phone, and listened to the clatter of wind chimes outside the bungalow.
14
Pain brought her to a ragged consciousness, radiating up from her fingers in hot, pulsating waves. Dr. Wilhelm’s voice, faint and far off in her head, reminded her of her mission.
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