“About himself. And the problem is, we can’t rule him out in our case,” Scott said, shifting his weight in his seat. “He killed one little girl. He could have killed Zoe.”
“Two in twenty-four hours?”
“Who knows?” Scott sighed. “I’ve asked Marcy Lake to follow that line.” An experienced agent, Marcy had a background in child sexual abuse. Kenzie had consulted with her on another case. “She’ll track Lopez’s movements over the last forty-eight hours, see if we can put him near the Grables,” Scott said. “If I had to guess, I’d say Lopez had nothing to do with Zoe’s disappearance. He got in a jam. He got this little girl in his apartment, and things got out of hand. He killed her accidentally.”
“You think?”
Scott nodded.
Ahead of them a bread delivery truck had double-parked. Scott checked his rearview mirror and waited until he could get around it. “How do you deal with this?” Kenzie asked him as he pulled around the truck.
“What?”
“You’re a father. How can you stand to see what people do to children?” The minute the sentence left her mouth, Kenzie realized more smoldered in her head than even she would admit.
Scott hesitated. He looked thoughtful, like he was carefully considering his response. “If some scumbag hurt Cara I could easily kill him,” he finally admitted. “If I were Grable right now I’d probably be on the streets with a gun, ready to shake down anybody I figured could even be remotely involved. And if I found the guy . . . he’d wish he were dead. I’d tear him apart with my bare hands and enjoy doing it.”
Kenzie looked at Scott. He looked dead serious.
“Nobody messes with my family. But this,” he said, gesturing, “this is my job. I have to compartmentalize. I have to stay logical, shove my feelings behind a wall, and be sure I stay within the law. It’s like a chess game, or a military maneuver. There’s too much riding on it for me to let my emotions have any play.” Scott glanced at her. “What lets me do so is this: My anger is nothing compared to what these scumbags are going to get from God. You know that Scripture, ‘If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better if a millstone were hung around his neck . . .’ It’s what I think about. God is not going to let this go unpunished. And God’s anger . . .” Scott shook his head, “is nothing I’d want to face.”
“But why didn’t he just stop it?” Kenzie said, her words tart on her tongue.
Scott looked at her carefully. “I don’t know. But I do know this: He knows and understands pain. He hates evil. Why he doesn’t act sometimes, I don’t know. I can give you the philosopher’s answer, but on days like today, it rings kind of hollow. All I know is he promises one day his justice will come. It’ll all be made right. Even for that dead little girl.”
Kenzie had nothing to say to that. It didn’t make sense to her: Why promise things would be right in the sweet by-and-by? Why not now? How much trauma did this little girl have to endure?
Scott continued driving and Kenzie laid her head back on the headrest. Fatigue had given way to exhaustion and soon sleepiness tinged the edges of her vision. “You know what I want more than anything?” she said.
“What?”
“A shower and some strawberry sorbet.”
Scott laughed. He started telling her a story about his family, about the last time they’d gone somewhere together. Something about getting gelato at an Italian ice place near their house. His baritone voice sounded soothing and soon it grew distant, his words muddled, their edges rounded and fuzzy. The next thing Kenzie knew, he was shaking her awake. “C’mon, Kenzie,” he said, “we’re here.”
The Grables were in the family room. The senator had his arm around Beth, and for an instant, Kenzie wondered if maybe this trauma would bring them together. Maybe it would make their marriage better.
Then Beth Grable opened her mouth. “You all scared me to death,” she said, glaring at the two agents, “believing it was my child. Bruce, with all your alleged power, I’d think you could demand some better investigators.”
The senator’s eyes met Kenzie’s. She saw his frustration. He removed his arm from around his wife.
Scott said, “We are continuing to view Lopez as a possible suspect. But I’m glad for you the little girl was not Zoe.”
The senator wiped his hand across his brow. “All right, Hansbrough. Where do we go from here? So far, what you’re doing doesn’t seem to be working. You got any other game plan?”
Kenzie saw the muscles in Scott’s jaw twitch. Grable was trying to regain some control in front of his wife, but it didn’t play well with her partner. “Senator,” Scott said, “right now my eleven-year-old daughter is in surgery, having a compound fracture in her right arm set. I can assure you, I’d much rather be there with her, and with my wife, than standing in this room.” Scott put his hands on his hips. “I’m here, Senator, because at least I know where my daughter is. You don’t, and I’m doing everything I can to change that. I wouldn’t be here if I thought we were spinning our wheels.”
Grable exhaled and Kenzie could see he knew he’d overstepped. A loud knock on the front door interrupted the conversation. An agent stuck his head in. “Scott? There’s a delivery for the senator.”
Scott looked at Kenzie then back at the Grables. “Are either of you expecting a package?”
“No,” they said in unison.
The two agents headed for the front door with the Grables right behind them. Behind the agent stood a deliveryman in a brown uniform holding a box in his hands. Grable rushed to take it.
“Senator! Don’t touch that!” Scott yelled, grabbing Grable’s arm and controlling his forward progress. Still holding the senator, Scott faced him. “We have to check it. It could be anything.”
Chagrined, Grable nodded.
Scott let go of him and jerked his Bureau radio off of his belt. “Dispatch a bomb squad to 3217 27th Street Northwest,” he said.
“What? What now?” Beth Grable wailed. She tried to move past Kenzie.
“Hold on, Mrs. Grable,” Kenzie said, restraining her. “Let us take care of this.”
“Put the box down gently on the front walk out there, away from the house,” Scott told the deliveryman. He flashed his creds. “I’d like to see the shipping orders on that, please.” He moved the man down the sidewalk, toward his truck. “Stay back,” he yelled to the Grables.
While Scott was dealing with the deliveryman, Kenzie looked at the package. It was addressed to Senator Grable. The return address was from out of state. “You know anybody in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania?” she called out.
The senator shook his head.
Thirty minutes later a robot from the bomb squad was handling the package, first X-raying it, then using sensors to check for explosives. Finally, when the squad leader seemed satisfied that no explosive or chemical devices were apparent, he asked Scott if he wanted them to destroy it or open it up.
Kenzie knew the safest thing would be to let them destroy it. But what if evidence lay inside? Or a note?
“Open it, if you can do so without undue risk,” Scott said, wiping a drop of sweat off his face with his sleeve. The afternoon sun seemed white hot.
“All right. You go inside and move away from the windows,” the bomb squad leader said.
“I’d like to watch,” Scott said.
“No, sir. We’ll tell you what we find.”
The discomfort of a ballistic vest is nothing compared to the heat generated by a bomb suit. Bomb techs call it “the stupid suit.” Once in it, their vision, hearing, and physical agility became so limited they would feel stupid and clumsy.
“All right?” the squad leader asked the tech who had suited up.
He nodded his helmeted head.
The leader had given Scott and Kenzie the frequency of their communications channel and would give them a play-by-play as the bomb squad opened the box. The police had closed off the street and warned the neighbors, and now a man in a hundr
ed-pound suit was about to discover what the mysterious package contained.
“The box is twelve by twelve by fifteen,” the tech said into his microphone. “No outer wrapper. We collected several latent fingerprints from the exterior. Probably belong to the delivery company’s employees, but we’ll see.” Sweat beaded on Kenzie’s forehead as she stood next to Scott in the Grables’ foyer, listening on the radio.
“The box is sealed with clear package sealing tape. I’ll save it so we can send it to the lab. OK,” the voice continued, “I’m opening the flaps. There’s no packing, no peanuts or newspaper or anything inside, just . . . just . . .”
Kenzie’s heart stopped. Just what?
“. . . just about eight inches worth of blonde hair. A whole head of hair.”
Kenzie followed Scott as he jogged down the front walk.
“No, no!” Beth started screaming as she emerged from the house and saw the hair. The senator took her arm, but she pulled away.
“What do you think?” Scott asked the senator, who stared at the hair in the bomb tech’s hands.
“Yeah. It could be hers. Could definitely be hers.” Grable’s voice cracked.
“Scott,” Kenzie said, “let’s see if we can get a rush DNA scan.” She turned to the distraught parents. “The evidence team already took Zoe’s hairbrush. I’d like to collect some strands of hair from the two of you as backup.” She ushered them back inside.
Scott had the tech put the hair in an evidence bag, labeled with date and time, and sign it. He collected the tape and the box itself, and the fingerprints taken off the box. He’d have another agent run all of the evidence down to the lab at Quantico.
Kenzie came back outside to where Scott stood. “So he may have cut off her hair,” she said quietly. “We’ll have to change the BOLO.”
“And we’ll have to tell our people he may be trying to pass her off as a boy.”
Kenzie shook her head. “This is so sadistic.”
9
Just tell her no!” Grayson barked. “She can’t have pink nail polish!” Every word seemed emphasized, like the bang . . . bang . . . bang of a pistol repeating.
The little girl wailed louder, burying her head in the blanket she clutched.
“But Grayson, she gets so upset when I try to take it off!”
Sandy looked like she wanted to start wailing, too. That’s all he needed, two hysterical females. “For crying out loud. Give it to me.” He grabbed the cotton and the nail polish remover from Sandy’s hand, sat down on the couch, and tried to pull Zoe’s hand away from the blanket. “Come on, honey, this won’t hurt,” he tried crooning but it soon became apparent Zoe wasn’t going to cooperate. Gray cursed. He resolutely unscrewed the cap of the nail polish remover bottle, doused a cotton ball, and set the bottle on the coffee table.
“Come here!” he said, and he grabbed the little five-year-old’s hand.
Zoe screamed. She fought. She tried to bite him.
“Give me your hand!” Gray commanded.
The little girl screamed louder. Sandy put her hands over her ears.
“Give it to me!” Gray tried prying Zoe’s fingers off the blanket. “Let go! Let go!”
The screams increased. Zoe twisted around and tried to kick him. Frustrated, Gray threw down the cotton ball, picked Zoe up by her upper arms, and held her up in the air. He shook her, and said, “Shut up! You shut up, do you hear me?”
And Zoe threw up all over him.
Grayson flew into a rage. He threw Zoe back down on the couch and turned away, wiping his eyes with his arm, but he knocked over the nail polish remover as he did and the smelly liquid spread all over the coffee table and spilled onto the floor. “You take care of this!” he screamed to Sandy. “Clean it up!” And he ran back to the shower.
Sandy stood motionless for a moment. Zoe lay on the couch, sobbing and hiccupping. Sandy found some towels and began gently cleaning the little girl’s face. “It’s all right, baby. It’ll be all right,” she said. She stroked Zoe’s newly shorn head. The poor little thing. Why did Grayson have to be so rough with her? How would he like it if someone cut his hair off? “We’ll work it out.”
The nail polish remover had stripped the finish off a large swath of the dark pine coffee table. Serves him right, Sandy thought, as she began sopping it up. Zoe lay curled up on the couch, sucking her thumb. After returning from the kitchen where she’d rinsed her rag for the third time, Sandy noticed the little girl had fallen off to sleep. Her hands were relaxed and visible. And Sandy thought for a moment of putting some of the remaining nail polish remover on a cotton ball and taking the polish off the little girl’s hands now, while she was unlikely to wake up. But no. She stopped herself. Zoe had fought for those pink nails. She’d won. She deserved the little bit of her own personality she had left.
Gray would just have to deal with it.
Kenzie reentered the Grables’ house. Her shirt had plastered itself to her back and her hair felt damp and stringy around her face. She got a big glass of water from the kitchen, downed it, and moved into the dining room.
She could hear Scott talking to the Grables in the senator’s study. He’d already dispatched an agent to take the evidence to the lab. This late in the afternoon, it would be a two-hour drive at least.
Kenzie would resume where she’d left off earlier in the afternoon: checking out Mrs. Grable’s friend Beau Talmadge. She stood in the dining room, searching Scott’s database for information.
Fifteen minutes later, Senator Grable walked in, his face weary. “What a day,” he said, blowing out a breath.
“Yes, sir.”
He had changed back into his nylon athletic suit and in an instant, looking at him, Kenzie could almost see his history: High school football star, college fraternity president, successful politician, and now a man who’d seen his world fall apart in the space of less than twenty-four hours. For all of his past achievements and even his huge mistakes, now he was just a dad who missed his little girl, a husband plagued by his own inadequacy in the face of a family crisis.
“Look, I’m sorry if I got a little testy.” The senator sat down heavily in a chair. He rubbed his hands together and tented them in front of his face “Why the hair?” His words were sparse, like he could hardly stand to articulate his question. He looked at Kenzie, his eyes pleading. “He’s a pervert, isn’t he?”
She sat back and studied his face, the face of a frustrated, terrified father. “I think the kidnapper is trying to scare you. I think he’s trying to disguise Zoe. And I think we’re going to find out what he wants from you very soon.”
Grable raised his eyebrows.
“Look at it this way.” Kenzie leaned forward. “It’s true: We can’t rule out the idea that this is a sexual crime. But if this were that, if some predator had grabbed Zoe for that reason, why would he bother tweaking you? He’d have what he wants, and he wouldn’t risk being ID’d through the package. This guy doesn’t want Zoe—he wants YOU. Zoe’s just a way to get to you.” She sounded convincing, even to herself.
A spark of hope flickered in Grable’s eye.
“Think about it: If a sexual predator wants a kid he can grab one off the street, from a store, at a playground, anywhere kids go. Why would somebody case out a house—go to all the trouble of planning an abduction? It’s too risky! He could have been surprised by someone else in the house; he could have failed to knock Nina out completely, a gazillion things could have gone wrong.” Kenzie could see the impact of her words in his demeanor. “No, Senator. This is all about you. Someone’s trying to get at you. That’s why I’m so interested in the people who’ve had dealings with you.”
Grable sighed and looked beyond Kenzie, to a picture on the wall behind her. In her mind, she could see it: A Georgia O’Keefe–style oil painting of magnolia blossoms. She watched his face. His eyes flickered back to her. “Is he really the best?”
Kenzie leaned forward. “Scott? He’s very aggressive, and very smart. A ter
rific leader. And he has a heart. He has kids of his own. He empathizes with you.”
Grable grimaced. “With a crook?”
Kenzie had to resist the impulse to reach out and take his hand. “With a father.”
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. After a time, he spoke. “She spends an awful lot of money,” he said softly.
Kenzie stayed quiet.
“Designer clothes, trips, the gambling . . .”
“Gambling?”
“Oh, yes. Atlantic City, Vegas, Foxwoods Casino . . . she does them all. And when she can’t go anywhere else, she heads for Maryland Live!”
“So there’s debt.”
“A lot of debt.” He looked up and gestured with both hands. “This house, it just sucks money. But you know,” he looked at Kenzie, “I love her. I don’t want another divorce.”
“But you don’t know what to do.”
He shrugged. “She doesn’t see it as a problem. So she won’t get help.”
Kenzie leaned toward him. “You know, Senator, it might help us find Zoe if we knew the names of the people with whom you’ve had financial dealings.”
“I’ve had to borrow and borrow, just to keep up.”
“That must be very frustrating.”
“But what can I do? What can I do? If I divorce her, she’ll get Zoe. That happened with my older kids. I missed their childhoods. Missed the soccer games, missed the proms, missed all the day-to-day stuff. I don’t want to miss that again.” He sighed. “So I have to, you know, get along.”
“Including covering the debt.”
He snorted. “Trying to, anyway.”
“How’d you meet her?”
“Beth’s father was a big-deal lawyer from Atlanta. Met him on business several times. One time we were all on a golf trip, a whole bunch of us, and then she showed up, saying, ‘Daddy, who are these fine gentlemen undercutting your game?’ That old-fashioned Southern charm. I just never knew,” he hesitated, “I never knew behind it lay a thoroughly modern woman, independent, strong-willed, and bent on spending me into the grave.”
Words of Conviction Page 7