by CJ Lyons
He hated bullies.
Adam skirted the waist high fence that surrounded the playground. The boys were in the far corner near the staff parking, away from the teachers manning the bus drop off, where the security cameras couldn't see them. He ducked behind between the car parked in the first row.
Usually when bullies targeted Adam, he simply let them do what they wanted, kept quiet, showed as little pain as possible, and eventually they’d get tired of tormenting him and leave.
But this time he was the one with the power. He was the big brother. No way in hell was he going to let these skinny snot nose punks pick on his little brothers.
"I said, give me the watch, bitch," one of the older boys said when Adam got close enough to hear. He was the smallest—skinny but in that weasely, dirty-fighter way—and obviously the leader of the pack.
"No." Marty stood his ground, his right hand clenched over his left wrist, protecting his watch. Darrin stood behind him, obviously terrified but not running. Pride rushed through Adam. Good kid, sticking up for his friend—Darrin didn't have a clue Marty was his brother.
The leader backed off half a step as his three bigger friends closed the circle around the two six-year-olds. "Tell you what. I'm gonna give you a choice. Give me the watch—"
"You can't," Darrin spoke up in a voice made squeaky by fear. "It's his dad's. You can't take it."
The leader jerked his chin at Darrin. Two of the other boys grabbed him and shoved him against the wall. "Like I said. You have a choice. The watch. Or we see how much it takes to get your buddy here to wet his pants."
Before Adam could move, the leader sucker punched Darrin. Kid didn't even have a chance to defend himself. Marty threw himself at the leader, only to be grabbed by the fourth bully, a guy almost as big as Adam. He easily plucked Marty off the ground and held him so his feet kicked at the air.
"Four against two," Adam said, coming out from behind the car. He stepped over the fence as if it wasn't worth noticing. Fear coiled in his belly and he was damn lucky he didn't trip, but the bullies wouldn't know that. Adam approached slowly, not rushing, giving them time to think. "Maybe we should even those odds. What do you say, boys?"
Darrin looked up at Adam. His face filled with hope. No one had ever looked at Adam like that before. Like Adam was a hero.
Adam didn't focus on Darrin. Or Marty. Instead he focused on the leader of the pack. Scare him off and the others would follow. Just like the wild dogs trying to steal food from his dumpster back in Cleveland.
Adam forced a smile. It felt wrong, like his muscles were too tight with fear to turn his lips the right way. Whatever the result, it obviously startled the leader.
"This is none of your business. Get out of here," the leader said with bluster.
Now he too was outside the coverage of the security cameras, Adam slid his knife out. He flicked it open one-handed. "You got that wrong. Now listen close because you need to remember this. Everything to do with these two kids is my business. You lay a hand on them, you talk mean to them, hell, you sneeze in their direction, and I'm taking care of business."
Adam feinted with the knife then landed a solid left to the leader's groin that left him on the ground crying. A wet stain spread down his pants.
Adam turned to the others, frozen as they watched their leader's fall from grace. "Let them go." They released Darrin and Marty. "Take him and get out of here."
They hurried to obey, scrambling with their leader back to the safety of the playground. Adam closed his knife and pocketed it. Then he crouched down so he was at eye level with the two boys. "You guys okay?"
Marty eyed him suspiciously but Darrin jumped forward, hugging Adam so hard he almost tumbled them both to the ground. "You're real. You're really real!"
"Of course I am. Told you I'd keep an eye on you." Adam untangled himself from Darrin and held out a hand to Marty. "I'm Adam."
Marty looked at Adam then at Darrin. He didn't extend his hand.
"He's okay," Darrin vouched for Adam. "He's my big brother. Only no one knows he's here, so you have to keep it a secret, okay?"
Marty still stared at Adam, but finally nodded. "Okay."
Adam pointed to Marty's watch. It was huge on his skinny wrist, obviously meant for an adult. "Nice watch."
"My dad gave it to me before he left." Marty's voice quavered and he blinked fast. "Uh, thanks for not letting those guys take it."
"No problem. That's what I'm here for." Adam spotted movement from the corner of his eye. Mrs. Chesshir. He stood and waved at her. "Morning, Mrs. Chesshir."
"Adam," she came to a stop in front of them, obviously flustered. "You know you're not supposed to be here."
"I just came by to say goodbye," Adam adlibbed, marveling at how easily the lies came. Maybe because they were close to the truth? "I saw four big kids jumping these two. Thought someone should save them from getting beat up."
"Oh my." She crouched down, patting both Marty and Darrin on the arms as if inspecting them for damage. "You two okay?"
They nodded silently.
"Who did this?"
The boys said nothing. Only six, but they knew better than to rat out the older boys.
Mrs. Chesshir wiggled her mouth as she thought. "You guys go inside. Tell Mr. Mason I said it was okay."
"Yes, Mrs. Chesshir," they chorused and ran off. Darrin turned back to wave at Adam, his entire body getting into the movement. Marty tugged him back on course and they disappeared around the corner.
"Did you see who did this?" Mrs. Chesshir asked. It was weird, but suddenly it was like she and Adam were equals.
"Those four." Adam pointed to the bullies clustered at the far end of the yard, heads clustered together like they were plotting. "I kinda scared the leader a bit when I showed up. He wet his pants. Not used to anyone standing up to them, I guess."
"Craig Mathis and his gang. It's not the first time." She blew out her breath in a sigh. "I'll make sure they're disciplined. It was good you came when you did. We're just spread too thin…" Her hands fluttered out like butterflies, the pale November light making her wedding rings glitter.
"Glad to help. I'd better be off."
She thrust out her hand. "Thank you, Adam. I wish you the best of luck. You've turned into a remarkable young man."
Her words left him tongue-tied. All his life he'd strived to be unremarkable. The silent boy watching from the back of the class, unheard and unseen. Unnoticed by trouble. He didn't mind that the rest of the world never saw him—the only attention he wanted was his father's.
Finally he took her hand and shook it. "Bye, Mrs. Chesshir."
He left the way he came. Sweat itched between his shoulder blades as he felt her stare follow him. Being the center of attention wasn't a good thing, he decided. Far better to stick to his old ways. Hiding in the shadows, watching and waiting.
Then he glanced back and saw Darrin leaning over the fence, still waving at him. Like he never wanted to see Adam go. Like Adam was his last and only hope.
Adam knew that feeling. One he'd had too many times. Hopes that had been crushed too many times. Like back in Cleveland when Morgan and Dad drove away, leaving him to the cops.
He wouldn't let that happen to Darrin. Wouldn't let his brother down.
Now he just had to figure out how.
<><><>
Eight months since they ditched Adam in Cleveland, and finally, for the first time ever, Clint let Morgan choose their next fish and reel her in.
But, oh boy, what a fish she was. Morgan was determined to prove to Clint the value of patience. Of reconnaissance and research. Hell, maybe he'd even start using the Internet. Well, maybe not. That's okay, that's what he had Morgan for.
No matter what, he'd see how much more valuable Morgan was than stupid Adam. Even if Adam was older, had lived with Clint all his life, he just didn't have the natural born instincts Morgan had. Didn't have the heart for the family business like Morgan did.
The fish pull
ed out of her driveway at a little past five in the morning. She was an ER doctor at Akron General but she had all next week off. Told her co-workers she'd booked a cabin in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park where she planned to cross country ski, sit by the fire and get over the fiancé she'd just broken up with, and finally start work on the novel she'd been talking about writing for years.
She wasn't going to get to do any of that.
Morgan lowered the binoculars as Clint put the van in gear and followed the fish. And a cabin, out there in the wilderness, no one near enough to hear her screams…that was the best part of all.
Clint was gonna love it.
They'd taken their last few fish inside their homes. Single women, living alone, in houses far enough away from their neighbors to muffle any sounds. Clint and Morgan brought along their own chains with an assortment of other toys, but now that Clint no longer cared about keeping the fish alive, he enjoyed improvising with items on hand. The last fish had been a rock climber, lived down near Seneca Rocks. What fun they'd had with all those ropes and carabineers and pitons.
But this one? A doctor? Morgan knew she carried an emergency kit in her trunk. Complete with scalpels. Morgan loved a good cutting blade. So bright and shiny…especially when the blood was wet.
Chapter 9
Jenna had more patience than Lucy would have given her credit for. She waited until they were past the snarl of morning rush-hour traffic and headed north on Route 22 before asking her first question. "I was only able to skim the case summary from four years ago—"
"Not your usual Postal Service kind of report?" Lucy didn't want to talk about four years ago but knew it was inevitable.
"Definitely not. Maybe you could fill me in." Jenna waited.
Lucy said nothing.
"So this Unsub, he kidnapped victims from all over the eastern seaboard and Midwest? No one ever saw him take his victims, they'd just poof! Vanish. All young. Different races, different appearances, some prostitutes, some just walking the wrong street at the wrong time. How'd you put it together?"
Listening to Jenna was like riding a roller coaster. All up and down inflections until Lucy couldn't tell which sentences ended with a question mark. "We didn't. There was no pattern, no bodies. It wasn't until my supervisor at the time, Chad Hamilton, was talking to the press afterwards that anyone even labeled him a serial killer."
Lucy remembered the grief Hamilton had given her about "traipsing off on a wild goose chase" when she first approached him with her suspicions and requested to pursue her theory. He'd refused. But Lucy's curiosity itched at her. Since one of the witnesses lived close to her hometown and another lived near DC, she used her vacation time to pursue an unsanctioned investigation. A fact buried by the official report.
"Why did you join the SAFE task force?" she asked Jenna.
"Are you kidding? Do you have any idea the career opportunities you've opened up for agents like me?" Jenna ticked her fingers as if keeping score. "First, you worked with ICE to bust that sex trafficking ring. Then you and the High Tech Crimes guys uncovered a huge online pedophile community—Taylor told me all about that one. September you saved that girl abducted by a serial killer. And now Operation Roundup, using Postal Service mail forwarding records and IRS tax files to pickup some of the US Marshals' most wanted sexual predators?"
Her voice became high pitched, excited. She hauled in a breath. "This multi-agency sexual assault task force may have begun as an experiment, more about public opinion than anything else, but let's face it, Lucy, you put the sexy back in sex crimes."
Lucy pretended to concentrate on the road in order to ignore the smile Jenna beamed at her. Like the postal inspector expected a Hollywood director to jump in front of them and yell "Action!" or something.
"It's not all big headlines. Most of what we do is just good old-fashioned talking to people. You'd probably call it boring and routine."
Jenna shook her head, her ponytail whipping back and forth. "Compared to the cases I've worked for the Postal Service? Talk about tedious. Do you have any idea how many variations on the Nigerian letter scam there are? Don't get me wrong. I like my work. But, wow, this stuff you do…"
Great. Another adrenalin junkie mired in adolescence. Just like the Pittsburgh cop Lucy worked with in September. Last thing she needed was to end up playing mother hen. Again.
Jenna bounced in her seat, pulling her legs up Indian-style. "So, what tipped you? That the New Hope cases were linked."
"I was assigned to CIRG, the Critical Incident Response Group."
"The profilers and hostage negotiation guys, right?"
"Yes. But behavioral analysis isn't like what you see on TV."
"No Gulfstream flying you all over the country?"
"Try a windowless basement office filled with file cabinets and computers. And phones. Lots of phones. Most of the work is done that way. You rarely meet the local officers who call and ask for help."
"Sounds worse than life in the dead letter office."
"With the Bureau turning more toward counter-terrorism, a lot of the profiling is done by civilian consultants. I actually worked hostage negotiation with the HRT guys."
Nick had hated that assignment. She'd leave with no notice. Fly out in the back of a C-130 with the Hostage Rescue Team and their assault gear, spend days holed up in an office or trailer or whatever location had been commandeered as a command center, talk to prisoners barricaded behind concertina wire or fanatics ready to start the second war of independence to protect their perceived constitutional rights or desperate fugitives with federal warrants.
"CIRG members also teach and do research during their downtime," Lucy continued. "So I began a project using geographical information surveys to uncover hidden violent crime trends."
"Sounds boring as hell." Jenna flounced back in her seat, obviously disappointed.
"Once I figured out I didn't have to do the actual computer stuff, that I only needed to focus on the human patterns they exposed, it was kind of fun. That's when I found our first four victims."
"Living victims?"
"I eventually unearthed seven. Well, seven cases reported to the National Center for Violent Crime," she amended. She was certain there were more victims who'd never reported the details of their abduction.
Rape-kidnappings, especially with prolonged captivity, either went all major headlines like Jaycee Dugard or they slid quietly under the radar like John Jamelske's and David Ray Parker's first victims had. After her interviews with the few victims willing to talk, she understood these women all had damn good reasons to stay quiet and move on with their lives. Something the Unsub counted on.
"Still, that's seven witnesses—"
Jenna obviously hadn't spent a lot of time interviewing witnesses, especially ones shattered by violent crime. Plus, Lucy had found them years after their ordeal. Years to forget and bury and warp memories.
"Seven women whose stories differed vastly—at least according to the raw data entered. Scattered all over the eastern half of the country. Some thought they were kept in a cellar, two said they thought it was the basement of a church because of the noises they heard. Singing and organ music. Another thought a cargo container. Only one reported a cave as the possible location. None knew how far from the site of the initial attack they'd been transported. And none saw their abductor's face."
Lucy steered up the passing lane as they rounded the switchbacks over Blairfield Mountain, passing two trucks and a dawdling station wagon. "This Unsub, he liked playing games. He kept four of the victims alone their entire captivity, the others with one or two other women. Women never heard from again. Even the way he tortured them varied, as if each victim or group of victims was a new experiment in depravity. And they all had huge gaps in their memories."
"Drugged?"
"Yes. Although I realized later it had to be more than that. Think of the sensory deprivation—it changes the way you perceive everything. These women were kept in total da
rkness for weeks to months. The only light came when he brought it and then it was so blinding they couldn't see anything. Any food or drink they had, he provided. He controlled every moment of their existence, even when he wasn't there."
"But you put the pieces together. You figured out the one thing they all had in common," Jenna prompted. "The ones he released."
"I got lucky. Because the link had nothing to do with geography." Lucy's gaze drifted, searching the gray-brown landscape for something she couldn't see. "The survivors were all pregnant."
"But why?" Jenna persisted. "I mean, I'm glad those women lived, but why did he let them go? It's so damn risky. Was he trying to populate a cult?" She shook her head and answered her own question. "No. Then he'd keep the kids and their moms with him. Like Warren Jeffs or David Koresh."
The postal inspector was silent as she thought, her lips puckered together like she'd swallowed something sour and couldn't get rid of the bad taste. "When we're profiling serial bombers or stalkers using the postal system, we look for tells. These guys like attention, so they keep offending. Each time we learn more about them. Not your guy. Your guy stayed in hiding. If he wanted attention all he needed to do was dump the bodies. How many victims did you find in New Hope?"
"We found DNA matches to three women reported missing. Plus DNA too degraded to definitely identify at least six others."
Who knew how many DNA traces that time, the acid in the limestone caves, and the killer's liberal use of bleach had eliminated? Not to mention how many other crime scenes were scattered up and down the entire East Coast.
"Nine presumed dead and seven living witnesses and no one even realized this guy was out there." Jenna blew her breath out. "They should've given you a medal."
Hamilton traded her a promotion and the chance to keep her job instead of the official reprimand she should have gotten. In return for his taking the glory. Small price to pay.