Words of Conviction

by Linda J White

  He turned up the volume.

  “Police say they have no firm leads on the whereabouts of little Zoe Grable and they’re asking for the public’s help in finding the five-year-old. If you have any information, you’re encouraged to call the number on your screen. And so the wait continues for one very distraught U.S. senator. This is Peggy Tripp in Georgetown.”

  Grayson clicked the remote. Yeah, he thought, I’ll bet you are “distraught,” Senator. And it’s about time. “Sandy!” he yelled, striding out to the kitchen.

  Grayson never saw the little girl hiding behind the couch, never saw her peeping around the side and staring, wide-eyed, at the TV, never realized the cover story he’d thought he’d sold her—that her daddy needed him to take care of her for a little while—had just been irredeemably blown.

  Now, Zoe Grable knew the truth.

  When Kenzie got back to the Grables’ house she went immediately to the dining room, empty except for Crow, who stood in the corner talking on his cell phone. Only after Kenzie had sat down at the computer and activated the screen did she hear enough to realize he was speaking Navajo.

  His words flowed, one after another, like a brook over smooth stones. So many long vowel sounds, so few fricatives or gutturals. He was singing more than speaking.

  She cleared her throat so he would realize he wasn’t alone. He turned around, saw her, and kept on talking. Ten minutes later, he clicked the phone off. “Did you get all that?” he said, smiling at her.

  “It’s a beautiful language,” Kenzie said, looking away from the computer.

  “There’s no point in talking to my grandfather except in Navajo. He insists on it.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “My grandfather? He’s fine. I had some things I wanted to talk to him about, that’s all. I’ve got to go. I’m headed over to the field office to see if I can get those offshore banks to cooperate with us.”

  She watched him go. Momentarily, she wondered what it would be like to have a mother she could call and just talk to, someone to whom she could say, “I’ve met this guy, Mom, and I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

  Impulsively, Kenzie picked up the phone and dialed her mother’s number. “Mom? How’s Jack?” she said.

  Why had she hoped it would be different? After her mother complained about him drooling water on the kitchen floor and chastised Kenzie for not taking him to the groomer more often, Clarice began a litany of criticisms of her neighbors, her friends, and, of course, Kenzie’s Aunt Cici. Ten minutes later, Kenzie hung up. Her head was pounding. She looked up. Beth Grable stood in front of her, her purse in her hand.

  “I just want to thank you,” the senator’s wife said.

  Kenzie rose to her feet.

  “You were right. He did want me. And . . . and I’m going now, to see a counselor. I do need some help.”

  Impulsively, Kenzie touched Beth’s arm. “Anyone in your circumstance would. Good luck to you.” The senator’s wife responded with a hug.

  Standing in a bullpen on the third floor of the Washington Field Office, where he was directing a team of three agents trying to identify the kidnapper’s Cayman Islands bank, John Crowfeather kept thinking about Kenzie. He’d worked with many women, many of them beautiful. Agents. Support staff. Lawyers. He’d had plenty of opportunities, he realized, to get involved, but no one had really captured his attention until he met Kenzie. And why was he attracted to her?

  He thought his grandfather would be upset with him, even mentioning a non-Navajo woman, but that didn’t happen. Instead, his grandfather told him he’d been praying and asking for a sign his grandson would be all right. Three days ago, he said, he’d seen a white deer.

  It was the day, Crow realized, he had met Kenzie.

  Crow wasn’t superstitious, nor was he a believer in such signs, but his grandfather, like most Navajos, believed there were no coincidences. “Everything has a cause,” the old man would say, “and the first cause is God.”

  What would Scott say about that?

  Kenzie looked pretty, beautiful, really, in an all-American girl sort of way—minimal makeup, hair casually pulled back in a low ponytail, her clothes simple and serviceable.

  He liked that about her. But there was something else, too. It took him a while to put his finger on it.

  Kenzie was smart. It took about two seconds to figure that out. But more than smart, she had a depth about her that most women Crow had met didn’t. She actually reminded him of Julie. He could talk to her, and she understood him.

  That, Crow thought, was about as rare as a white deer.

  Ten minutes after Crow left, Kenzie was sitting in the senator’s home office, waiting for Scott. The senator sat behind his desk. He picked up a pencil and rolled it between his fingers. “Thank you for convincing Beth to come home.”

  Kenzie smiled slightly and nodded. “Sure.”

  “We’ve talked all morning. I never realized . . . well, how she felt.” Grable sat back. “I’ve got some things I have to change.” The senator placed the pencil, point down, on his desk blotter, and then flipped it and pressed the eraser end, repeating the movement over and over in a display of nerves.

  Kenzie felt sorry for him. “Anything else new?”

  “The code word he gave for the bank account seemed odd: Curtis. Alicia came up with something: Curtis is the name of a CISU SWAT team member on High Stakes, a loyal, paramilitary figure. He lost control on a mission and was about to kill a terrorist who was actually working with them. Connor had to kill him, instead.”

  “Connor killed a friendly?”

  “One of his best friends.”

  “Wow,” Kenzie said. She tapped her lip with her finger. “So wait. If you are CISU . . .”

  “Or Connor . . .”

  “. . . or Connor, and you killed your good, loyal friend . . . does this guy think he’s Curtis?” Kenzie sat straight up. Just then Scott walked into the office.

  Kenzie had to stay level, professional, to pitch her idea. “Scott, I have a theory.”

  The two men waited for her. She opened a folder on her lap and handed each a picture of Grayson Chambers.

  “What?” Senator Grable said. “No way . . .”

  “Listen to me. As I read documents at the senator’s office I noticed some of the writing seemed extraordinarily good. The syntax, word usage, logic . . . all pointed to a highly literate person. I found out that Grayson Chambers, the former legislative aide, was the writer.”

  “He’d never do something like this! He was a loyal employee, personally loyal, to me!” The senator’s face looked red.

  “Sort of a ‘Curtis’? Like the one Connor had to kill? Listen.” Kenzie looked at Scott. “Louise, the senator’s secretary, gave Chambers high marks for politeness, effectiveness, and so on. But another coworker, April, had an entirely different view of him.”

  “So what? People get along with some people better than others!” Grable said.

  “Yes, but it’s typical for a corporate psychopath, a sub-criminal psychopath, to be very adept at using people, at playing up to those who are valuable to him and dismissing those who aren’t. You, obviously, were a valuable source of power and prestige. Louise would be a great source of information and access. April, a correspondence intern, could be dismissed, ignored, and put down with abandon.”

  The senator stood to his feet. “But he loved Zoe! Every time he came over here he would bring her toys.”

  “He came over a lot?” Scott asked.

  “He slept right upstairs in the third-floor bedroom on many a night,” the senator responded.

  Kenzie’s heart began beating hard. “So she would be used to him.”

  “Sure, but . . .”

  “And he knew exactly where her room was.”

  “Yes.”

  “It wouldn’t have been totally unusual for her to see him in that upstairs hallway. So he might be able to show up and talk her into some ruse, some story about why she had to go with h
im somewhere. And he certainly knew how much you loved her.”

  The senator looked flustered.

  “Did Grayson Chambers know about the inside deals you’d arranged?” Scott asked.

  Grable reddened. He hesitated before responding. “Well, yes, I guess he had to know.”

  “Did you cut him in on the money?”

  The senator sat down heavily in his chair. He put his hand to his brow. “No. I guess I didn’t.”

  Kenzie and Scott looked at each other. “Where is this guy now?”

  Grable waved his hand. “Teaching. At some college in California.”

  “Louise didn’t know exactly where he was either,” Kenzie confirmed.

  “Get on that,” Scott said to Kenzie. “Let me know if you need help.”

  But before she could even move out of her seat, Scott’s cell phone rang, and his immediate response to the caller, the way he stood up, pulling his notepad out of his pocket, the way he furiously started taking notes while cradling his phone between his shoulder and his ear, kept Kenzie transfixed. Something was up. Grable saw it too, and he rose to his feet with a mixture of fear and hope on his face.

  Scott clicked off his cell phone. He looked straight at Kenzie. “Alexandria police have nabbed a suspect in a couple of cold cases they’ve been working. They think we ought to look at him.”

  “What?” Kenzie asked. She tried to regroup. “You go and I’ll keep tracking Chambers,” she said, the frustration clear in her voice.

  “No. I need you. Come on.”

  Outside, Scott opened up. “This guy’s DNA connects him to two abductions and murders several years ago, two children, taken from their homes.”

  “But, Scott . . .”

  “He shaved their heads, Kenzie.”

  A feeling of dread washed over her, sucking whatever energy she had away.

  “Crow’s going to meet us there.”

  Kenzie insisted on taking her own Bureau car. Maneuvering through the traffic, she kept right behind Scott’s SUV. Their blue lights were activated, but that seemed a big ho-hum to Washington drivers, whose lives were routinely interrupted by processions of high-level government officials and foreign diplomats, and few seemed to notice, much less move out of the way.

  Finally, Scott shook off the congestion, whipped onto the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and crossed the Potomac. Once on the Virginia side, he entered the George Washington Memorial Parkway and headed south, past the Boundary Channel, Roaches Run Waterfowl Sanctuary, Reagan National Airport, and into the brick, colonial charm of downtown Alexandria. They pulled their Bucars up onto the sidewalk outside the police station and went inside.

  The police chief, Ed Sikorsky, waited for them, along with Crow. He had changed into a black suit, a white shirt, and a blue and black striped tie and he looked sharp to Kenzie. His eyes met hers and she could tell from his look he felt tense.

  Sikorsky, a fifty-something, graying, slim veteran, greeted Scott warmly. Kenzie wondered if there was anyone in the greater Washington law enforcement community who didn’t know Scott. After introductions all around, he ushered them into a small conference room. Kenzie put her dark blue portfolio, embossed with the FBI seal, on the table and sat down. Crow sat down next to her.

  Two Alexandria detectives came in, plopped thick files on the table, and, after introductions, began briefing the agents on the cases. “The first incident occurred April, 2003,” the burly man named George Carter reported. “Six-year-old female, abducted from a single-family home located at 2669 Pickett Street. Perpetrator entered through an open window by cutting the screen. Used chloroform to drug her, according to a rag we found. Parents reported her missing the next morning. Somebody walking their dog in a nearby park found her body six months later.

  “The second case is similar: A four-year-old girl taken from her bedroom in the Glebe Road area, August, 2005. Buried in a shallow grave in a park nearby. In both cases the victims had long blonde hair. When they were found, their heads had been shaved.”

  Kenzie’s head spun. “But he never asked for ransom, right? There were no notes or calls?”

  “No.”

  The other detective, as slim as Carter was stocky, took over. His name was George Miller. Together, the two detectives were known around the station as Team George. “The suspect is Lee Richard Waller,” he said, “age forty-four. He’s a construction worker, lives up near the airport. One of those areas where the duplexes are being torn down and condos built. Lives alone. Has priors for drug possession, DUI, and one assault. Did short time here in the city jail for a bar fight. Fairfax ID’d him in a child porn sting. DNA registered a hit on these cases for us.

  “We didn’t have much on those murders,” Miller said, continuing, “just a similar MO and the chloroform. But we found a little DNA on the second child, a single hair, and that gave us enough to start looking at Waller.”

  “We’ve been talking to him all night,” Carter said.

  “Has he lawyered up?” Crow asked.

  “Not yet. Says he ‘ain’t got much use for them types.’ ”

  Kenzie blinked. “Is that a quote?”

  Carter looked at her blankly.

  “Are you quoting him?” Kenzie repeated.

  The cop nodded. “Yep, that’s what he said.”

  Kenzie looked at Scott. It sure didn’t fit the profile she’d come up with. “Did you ask anything about Zoe?”

  “Left it for you all. We just noticed the similarities.”

  Scott nodded. “OK. I guess it’s our turn.”

  “I want to do the interview,” Kenzie asserted.

  Crow looked sharply at her.

  Scott paused, considering her request. Then he nodded. “OK. He’s yours. Let’s strategize.”

  23

  Half an hour later, they were ready. They had read the files on the two old murders, asked more questions, and prepared an approach. Kenzie would lead off and when she hit a wall or got tired, Scott would come in. Scott cautioned her, “He’s shackled and cuffed to the chain on his waist. But he’s got nothing to lose, so watch it. Crow and I will be right outside.”

  “OK.” Kenzie straightened her suit jacket, brushed a stray hair out of her eyes, and pushed open the door to the interview room.

  Immediately the smell of stale tobacco and unwashed skin hit her. The odor seemed almost feral.

  When the prisoner saw her, he grinned and began rhythmically clanging the waist chain his cuffs were secured to. “Well, lookee what they sent me!” he said in a rough, raspy voice. “Lookee, lookee.” His graying hair looked scruffy and unkempt. He had a two- or three-day beard and he was missing an eye tooth on the right side. His creased skin held a large scar from his eyebrow down across his temple.

  But it was his eyes that nearly did Kenzie in. They were blue, light ice blue, and when he fixed them on her, his gaze assaulted her. It felt like he was undressing her. Her skin crawled.

  Resolutely, she sat down across from him and put a file folder on the table in front of her. The point of the interview was to find out if Lee Waller had abducted Zoe Grable. To do so, she needed him to open up.

  If Waller was a psychopath, or had psychopathic tendencies, he would have no conscience. Appeals to a sense of fair play, or justice, or compassion for the survivors would go nowhere. He would also be quite narcissistic. Appeals to his ego, to his grandiose sense of self, might work. She had talked Scott into taking that approach.

  “Mr. Waller,” she said, staring right into those pale blue eyes, “you are amazing.”

  An expression of surprise passed momentarily over his face, then Waller started laughing the wheezy, phlegmy laugh of a man who’d spent over half his life smoking. “How’d you guess?”

  “Five years we’ve been looking for the person who killed little Wendy Williams. Seven for Catherine Jones. We’re usually pretty good at finding people . . . how’d you keep us from identifying you?”

  “What do you do for the Bureau?” he asked.
r />   “I’m an agent.”

  “I never did think much of women in that job.”

  “I study people like you. Not very many can do what you did.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Talk to me for a minute about Catherine Jones. Was she your first victim?” Under the table, Kenzie’s knee shook. Waller looked at her as if he was inspecting her, or recalling that crime and thinking of her along with it. It gave her the creeps. “What about Catherine Jones, Mr. Waller?”

  “Lemme see, which one was she?”

  Kenzie reminded him of a couple of details and put a photo of the dead child in front of him. “How did you do that?” she asked him with intense interest.

  Waller began talking about his crime, step-by-step recounting the details, the same way some people talk about their vacations. He seemed to relish the memories, and Kenzie knew he had gone over this many, many times in his own mind in the intervening years. Why he had chosen that girl; how he had gotten into the house; the tools he’d brought with him; and most disturbing, the pleasure he’d taken in killing her.

  Then he started again, with Wendy Williams.

  All the time Waller talked, Kenzie noticed his arms and shoulders moving. She couldn’t see his hands, but she could tell the man was letting off tension by tugging at his cuffs. Sometimes she could hear the chain rattling as he moved.

  So many of the details of both crimes fit Zoe’s case: the chloroform, the entry into the house, the shaving of their heads. But why would Waller pick a house in Georgetown? Most of them were alarmed. Had he known only the nanny would be there with Zoe? And so many of the indicators in the Grable case pointed to someone trying to get at Grable. Did Waller have any reason to do that? Did he even know Grable? Had he worked on their house?

  For the next hour, Kenzie asked questions. Waller denied taking Zoe, denied even being in Georgetown. “I ain’t been down there in twenty, thirty years,” he said.