by Mark Gimenez
Gracie had left here alive.
But why did the abductor leave her shorts behind? Ben closed his eyes and remembered working in the shop with her. She had been carving her name into her rocking chair when she paused and said, “Ben, why do you always know when I’m in trouble, when I need you?”
“I don’t know, doll. There’s something in our lives that binds us together. I don’t know what and I don’t know why, but there is a reason.”
God had bonded them together. Ben Brice knew that as well as he knew how to build a rocking chair or kill a man. And he knew that if she came to him, their bond was unbroken. And she was still alive.
Gracie, show me the way. I will come for you.
“Colonel Brice!”
Ben opened his eyes. He was sitting cross-legged inside the crime-scene tape where Gracie’s shorts and shoe had been found. A young FBI agent was jogging through the woods toward him. He arrived out of breath and said, “Colonel Brice, Agent Devereaux needs you back at the command post!”
2:12 P.M.
Jan Jorgenson had been born five years after the Vietnam War ended. Twenty-four years later, she had graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.S. in Education—the only degree her parents would pay for—and a Masters in Criminal Psychology. She had told her parents that school boards across the country considered crim psych the most relevant degree for a teaching career in America’s public schools. They had bought it. Immediately upon graduation, she had applied with the Bureau. Her parents wanted her to be a teacher; she wanted to be Clarice Starling.
So Jan Jorgenson had left the family farm outside Owatonna, Minnesota, driven to Quantico, Virginia, and entered the FBI Academy. She wanted to be a profiler, interviewing and compiling detailed psychological traits of imprisoned serial killers, psychopaths, and sexual predators, and constructing scientific profiles of suspects in pending investigations. But upon graduation from the Academy, she had been assigned to the Dallas field office, where for the last eleven months she had tracked down and interviewed young Arab men who fit the Islamic terrorist profile.
In fact, this was as close as she had ever come to anyone in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, sitting next to the parents and across the Brice kitchen table from two real live FBI profilers, Agents Baxter and Brumley. They looked like partners in an accounting firm.
“Strangers abduct children for sex.”
Agent Brumley had thus opened this meeting with the family. He could have worked up to that, Jan thought. The mother obviously thought the same; her eyes were now drilling holes in Brumley’s bald head. Oblivious, he forged ahead.
“This perpetrator has a long history of sex offenses, I guarantee it.”
The victim’s father looked like he was going to throw up; he abruptly stood and almost ran out of the kitchen just as Colonel Brice walked in and leaned against the wall.
“We’ve constructed a profile,” Agent Baxter said, “a personality print, if you will, like a fingerprint.” He passed out copies to everyone at the table and then read from his copy. “We believe that the timing of the abduction was relevant to a significant stressor in the perpetrator’s life, perhaps the loss of his job or some other personal rejection. And that the abductor is a loner, over thirty and single, immature for his age, has no friends, is unable to maintain a relationship with a female his own age, probably employed in a job involving children, lacks social skills, abuses alcohol or drugs, reacts violently when angered, handles stress poorly, is selfish, paranoid, and impulsive, possesses an inflated self-esteem that cannot handle rejection, and harbors antisocial tendencies.” He looked up. “We’ll release this profile to the media. Hopefully, a citizen can identify someone they know with these traits.”
The mother abruptly stood. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I can.” She held up her copy. “Immaturity, no social skills, selfishness, paranoia, inflated self-esteem, can’t handle rejection—I can identify every one of those traits to someone I know.”
Agent Baxter was almost out of his chair with excitement.
“Who’s that, Mrs. Brice?”
“Every partner in my law firm.”
Agent Baxter exhaled and sat back down, realizing he’d been had. The mother tossed her copy of the profile on the table.
“Look, Agent Baxter,” she said, “cut the psychobabble bullshit. The guy’s a pervert who likes to fuck little girls!”
The mother stormed out of the room. Agent Baxter was visibly taken aback. After an awkwardly long silent moment, Colonel Brice spoke in a quiet voice.
“He wasn’t alone. There were two men, probably the two men on the videotape.”
“Mr. Brice,” Agent Brumley said, “sexual predators work alone, that’s proven. They’re what we call ‘loner deviants.’ ”
“I was at the park,” the colonel said, “retracing Gracie’s steps. He grabbed her behind the concession stand and took her through the woods to an accomplice waiting for him in a vehicle leaking oil. He didn’t work alone.”
“Then why did he leave her shorts in the woods?” Agent Baxter asked.
“Because he wanted them found.”
Agent Baxter frowned. “Why?”
“So you’d do just what you’re doing—hunting for a sexual predator.”
2:27 P.M.
“Are you okay, Mrs. Brice?”
Elizabeth was sitting in her formal living room—now the FBI’s command post—and staring across the table at Agent Devereaux.
“No, I’m not okay. My daughter’s been abducted.”
“Mrs. Brice, I can still get a psychologist in here.”
“No.”
She had gained control of her emotions again. Her mind was alert and angry again. She had a plan. And it required a banker, not a psychologist.
“Let me know if you change your mind. Now, Mrs. Brice, what kind of kid is Gracie? See, with these guys, it’s all about control. They like to intimidate their victims, make the victim feel helpless and cornered so they feel powerful. What would Gracie do if she was cornered?”
“She’d fight.”
“Good. That’s the key to her survival.”
“She will survive.”
Agent Devereaux nodded. “Yes, ma’am. So, Mrs. Brice, you used to work our side of the street?”
“Yes.”
A little smile. “What made you go over to the dark side?”
She paused. “Life took me there.”
The agent frowned, then he said, “Well, then you understand why I need polygraphs.”
“You said it wasn’t random, that she was targeted. Now you think one of us did it?”
“No, ma’am. All I’m saying is, the Bureau is committing extensive resources to finding your daughter and the man who took her. But we’ve been burned before— you remember the Susan Smith case, said she was carjacked, her kids abducted? Turned out she drowned them herself. We must eliminate any family involvement.”
Elizabeth glared at Agent Devereaux, the rage making a move to escape the darkness. “I just left your two brilliant profilers in my kitchen. I listened to them telling me that a predator abducted my little girl for sex.” She slammed her fist down on the table. “Goddamnit! And now you’re telling me you want polygraphs of me and my husband?”
Agent Devereaux nodded. “Yes, ma’am. And Colonel Brice and his wife, and the household staff. Mrs. Brice, I know it’s an intrusion, but from our standpoint, it’s always a possibility. Fact is, only a couple hundred children each year are abducted by strangers. The rest are family related.”
He reached across the table and took her clenched fists in his hands. She refused to allow the tears to come.
“Look, Mrs. Brice, this isn’t a family abduction, I know that. But Washington doesn’t. And I just got off the phone with my superiors, requesting authorization for additional staffing—ten more agents to help find Gracie. So this ends well. Do this, Mrs. Brice, so the Bureau will give me more people to find your daughter. Do it for Gracie.”
“I’ll do it.”
The voice came from behind them. Elizabeth pulled her hands free of Agent Devereaux’s and turned. Her father-in-law was standing in the door. She started to object just because Ben Brice was a drunk and she hated him. But something in his eyes made her hold her tongue. She turned back to Agent Devereaux.
“I want it done here. I don’t want us on TV being marched into the police station.”
Agent Devereaux said, “We’re setting up in the library.”
Ben entered the library to a young FBI agent holding his hand out to him. “Mr. Brice, I'm Agent Randall.”
Randall was thirty, glasses, an accountant trying hard to be sociable. He was holding a rubber tube.
“If you’ll remove your shirt, Mr. Brice, I’ll strap the pneumograph tube around your chest.” Agent Randall moved around behind Ben, continuing his friendly chatter. “Nothing to be nervous about. A polygraph machine measures your breathing rate, your blood pressure—”
Ben unsnapped the cuffs of his shirt and then the front snaps.
—“your pulse rate, and your skin’s reflex to an electrical flow. See, the idea is, when someone’s lying they—”
Ben slipped the shirt off his back.
“Jesus!”
Ben felt Agent Randall’s eyes on his back; his chatter had been cut short. After a moment, Randall reached around Ben from behind to connect the tube; his hands were trembling.
“Is that, uh, is that too tight, Mr. Brice? It doesn’t hurt this … these … your back?”
“No.”
Agent Randall returned to Ben’s view. “Okay, where was I? Oh, you can sit down, Mr. Brice.”
Ben sat in a leather chair next to the polygraph; it looked like a laptop computer. The leather was cool on his bare back. Agent Randall stepped in front of him.
“This is an electrode,” Agent Randall said.
He took Ben’s hand and slipped a small sleeve onto the tip of his right index finger.
“And this is just an ordinary blood-pressure cuff, like at the doctor’s.”
The agent wrapped the cuff around Ben’s upper right arm and stepped back.
“Okay, I, uh, I guess we’re ready.” Agent Randall sat in a chair behind the machine and to Ben’s right. “Mr. Brice, I’m going to ask you several basic questions, just to get you comfortable so I can establish a baseline. Please breathe steadily, remain calm, and don’t take deep breaths. And answer each question truthfully with a yes or no. Okay?”
Ben nodded.
Agent Randall’s first question: “Is your real name Ben Brice?”
“Yes.”
“Are you Gracie Ann Brice’s grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever taken a polygraph exam, commonly known as a lie-detector test?”
“No.”
That was a lie.
Ben closed his eyes and recalled his first lie-detector test: he is naked, his arms and ankles are strapped to a wood chair, and his eyes are tracking two wires taped to his testicles and running along the concrete floor to a battery-powered field telephone with a hand crank manned by a grinning sadist. The small room reeks with the smell of urine and feces.
The North Vietnamese Army officer administering the test is determined to discover whether Brice, Ben, colonel, 32475011, 5 April 46, is lying about American troop presence in North Vietnam; certainly an American officer of his rank was not operating alone this close to Hanoi. He thought the American colonel would have succumbed to the beatings with the fan belts. Big Ug, as the Yanks called Captain Lu, is an artist with a fan belt; he carved up the colonel’s broad back like a woodcarver cutting designs into a block of wood. But, to his great surprise, the colonel revealed only his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth.
However, this test has proved particularly effective at convincing the reluctant Americans to reveal their secrets; the prisoners call it the Bell Telephone Hour. They enjoy their gallows humor, these Yanks. Fortunately, prior to his untimely demise, Uncle Ho had advised his officers that the Geneva Convention did not apply to the American prisoners; since there is no declared war between the United States of America and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, there are no American prisoners of war, Ho Chi Minh had said. Only American war criminals. Who will never forget their stay at the San Bie prison camp, if Major Pham Hong Duc has anything to say about it.
He nods at Lieutenant Binh, who cackles as he turns the crank, sending an electrical charge racing through the wires and into the colonel’s genitals. The American’s body snaps taut as the charge surges through him. That’s odd, the major thought. Most of the Americans scream like banshees and lose control of their bladder and bowels when the charge hits them—hence the hole in the chair and the bucket beneath—but the colonel only grits his teeth and takes the pain, his arms and legs straining mightily against the leather bindings—
“Mr. Brice! Mr. Brice! Are you okay?”
Ben’s eyes snapped open. His teeth were clenched, he was sweating and breathing hard, and his fingers were digging into the leather arms of the chair. Agent Randall was standing over him.
“Your respiration’s off the chart!”
5:33 P.M.
“They’re clean,” Agent Randall said.
FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux was chewing on the earpiece of his reading glasses. He and Agent Randall were standing in the command post next to Devereaux’s desk.
“Didn’t figure this to be family related. But headquarters said to follow the protocol.”
“The grandfather,” Randall said, “his back looks like someone carved him up with a steak knife.”
“He was an Army colonel. Must’ve been a POW.”
“In Vietnam?”
“Yeah.”
“They tortured American prisoners?”
Devereaux chuckled. “They still teach history in college?”
Randall was looking at him like a kid who didn’t know what he had done wrong.
“Yeah, the NVA tortured our guys, and none of that Guantanamo Bay kind of torture, making them listen to Barry Manilow twenty-four/seven. NVA beat our guys, electrocuted them, broke their arms and legs …”
Randall was now looking past Devereaux to the door. “Here he is,” he said, and he walked off.
Devereaux turned. The lean blond man walking toward him was maybe six feet and one-eighty, but he now seemed bigger in Devereaux’s eyes.
“Colonel Brice—”
A momentary pause. “You’ve done some homework.”
“Part of the job, sir.”
The colonel nodded. “No need to address me as colonel. Or sir.”
“You earned it, sir. I was a lieutenant, ROTC, Texas A&M. Course, drilling on a practice field didn’t exactly prepare me for Vietnam.”
“Neither did West Point.”
They both smiled, sharing a thought private to combat soldiers who had lived to try to forget it. Devereaux put on his reading glasses, reached across the desk, and picked up the blow-ups.
“The coach couldn’t ID the men from these blow-ups,” Devereaux said. “And this tattoo … I’ve never seen anything like it in the military, thought maybe you might’ve. Top half is covered by his shirtsleeve, but what’s showing looks like Airborne wings, except for the skull and crossbones.” He held the blow-up of the tattoo out to Colonel Brice. “I’m running it through the Bureau’s gang database. Could be a biker tattoo. Says ‘viper.’ ”
The colonel abruptly snatched the blow-up from Devereaux’s hand then stared at the image as if it were the face of Satan. The blood drained from his face. He dropped down hard in a chair. His hand released the blow-up; it floated to the floor. He leaned over and covered his face with his hands.
“Colonel, you okay?” Devereaux retrieved the blow-up. “You seen this tattoo before?”
Colonel Brice ran his fingers through his blond hair, then he slowly sat up. He inhaled and exhaled like a doctor was checking his heart. He spoke without looking at De
vereaux.
“It’s not a biker tattoo.”
“How do you know?”
The colonel’s jaw muscles clenched and unclenched several times. He unsnapped the cuff of his left sleeve and began rolling it up his arm. He was wearing a black military style watch. His forearm was tanned with sun-bleached blond hair; his upper arm was pale where the sun had not done its damage. The distinctive feature of his upper arm, however, was the Airborne eagle wings etched in black ink in his white skin; but in the center of the wings where the open parachute was supposed to be, signifying a soldier’s survival of jump school, was a skull and crossbones instead. Arched above the wings were words in an Asian script, and below that, in English, SOG-CCN; and below the wings, in quotes, VIPER. Devereaux leaned down and held the blow-up against the colonel’s arm; the portion of the tattoo visible in the blow-up matched up precisely with the bottom portion of the colonel’s tattoo.
Devereaux rose, removed his reading glasses, and waited for the colonel to speak. He didn’t press him; he couldn’t. This man was a real goddamn American hero. When Colonel Brice finally spoke, his eyes remained on his boots.
“SOG team Viper conducted those covert operations presidents lied about. SOG was Studies and Observation Group, CCN was Command and Control North. We conducted cross-border operations in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. Our mission was to disrupt shipments on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, assassinate NVA officers, recon for air strikes … none of which officially happened. We operated off the books.”
Devereaux pointed to the Asian script on the colonel’s arm.
“These other words, they’re Vietnamese?”
The colonel nodded.
“What do they say?”
The colonel hesitated a moment, then he said, “ ‘We kill for peace.’ The unofficial Green Beret motto.” He now turned his eyes up to Devereaux. “Damn hard thing to get rid of, a tattoo.”
Devereaux handed the blow-up of the big man to the colonel.
“This is the man with that tattoo. Do you recognize him? Be kind of hard to forget that scar.”