Critical Pursuit

by Janice Cantore

  Swallowing what felt like cotton, Brinna nodded.

  In the homicide office, she saw Chuck and Ben huddled over a computer screen.

  Ben looked up. “Hey, is squad over already?” He glanced at the clock.

  “Yep. Now what have you guys got?” Jack asked as he took a seat. Brinna leaned against a desk.

  “So Jack filled you in on Pearce,” Chuck said, facing Brinna, holding a file in his hand.

  Brinna nodded. “What a cover he’s had all these years. The government declared him dead.”

  “And he’s made the best of it.” Chuck held out the file. “I’ve searched through the past ten years for any crimes that match Pearce’s MO. Unfortunately I’ve found quite a few. It looks like he’s left his mark all over the country.”

  “All because of an incompetent coroner and a ‘helpful’ tech,” Brinna said, a bitter taste in her mouth. “I can’t believe no one noticed the body count was off. Someone from the recovery program must’ve shown up missing.”

  Chuck nodded. “Someone did. His name was Jared Collins. The agents now investigating the mess in San Bernardino have gone back through everything and concluded that Collins, who was listed as on an approved leave, must’ve come back early. Somehow he got caught up in the drama. After the smoke cleared, the administrators, not realizing he’d most likely returned, listed him as a walk-away.”

  “How are they going to prove this? Exhume bodies?” Jack asked.

  “They’ve already dug up quite a few,” Chuck answered. “And they’ll be digging up a lot more.”

  “Back to the similar cases.” Ben took the file out of Chuck’s hand. “We have a total of six cases across the country over the past ten years that we consider an exact match to Nigel’s MO. Three victims were found alive, but they were too young and traumatized at the time to describe their attacker.” He paused and thumbed through the notes.

  “And there are more unsolved abductions of little girls who could be Nigel’s victims,” Chuck continued. “These girls vanished and never resurfaced, but they all lived miles apart, so different agencies never connected the dots or compared the MOs. Our theory: Pearce has been attacking and moving throughout the country.”

  “In a way, we’re lucky he chose to stop here and bait you,” Ben added.

  Brinna rolled her eyes and said nothing.

  “We have a chance to stop him before he moves on again,” Jack said. “And we’ll have an advantage once we get an age-enhanced photo to flash everywhere.”

  “Good work checking this out, Jack.” Chuck nodded his way.

  “Thanks. I trusted my instincts.” He cast Brinna a look she couldn’t define.

  Her feelings about Pearce had ramped up to a palpable need. He’s been an animal hunting freely for ten years, she thought. I will stop him if it’s the last thing I do.

  52

  NIGEL QUIT HIS JOB.

  He’d be moving on soon—Nevada, Texas, or maybe Florida, and the planning for his next great caper was too important. This one demanded perfection. His actions had to make the dog cop stand up and take notice. Besides, keeping his eyes on the prey he’d decided on was imperative and downright fun.

  Twins. Why hadn’t he considered twins years ago? he wondered. The possibilities were multiplied by two. He’d followed them. He knew where they lived; he knew their routine; he knew their unguarded moments; he knew everything but when the perfect time to strike would be.

  He watched the paper for news on the dog cop’s shooting, when the trial would be. At first he thought he’d like to pile on—wait for the trial and kick her when she was down. But impatience got the better of him. He wanted to strike as soon as possible. And he wanted the press limelight to be centered directly on his handiwork, nothing else.

  53

  “WHY ARE WE ALWAYS a step behind?” Brinna asked. “It’s time we preempted him.”

  “Working on it,” Chuck said. “His picture will go to any jurisdiction where we have a similar crime. We’re checking his Social Security number and other things since he must have been earning money all these years. I doubt he kept on using the name Nigel Pearce. Finding his new identity is the key.”

  “You’ve got other pressing obligations,” Ben observed, concern in his eyes when he turned Brinna’s way. “The shooting board.”

  “Yeah, it convenes in ten minutes.”

  “So soon?” Jack’s eyebrows arched.

  Brinna shrugged. “Rodriguez called over the weekend and asked if I minded a rushed one. Hester hasn’t officially filed a wrongful-death suit, but all indications are she’ll do it this week. The brass wanted to grab a headline before her. Official findings should take the wind out of her sails.”

  “Bravo.” Jack clapped. “Meet her head-on. That’s the only way.”

  “I won’t be there,” Ben said. “I’ve been assigned full-time to this kid case. All my other cases were farmed out until we resolve this. You’ll be fine.”

  * * *

  Brinna wished she had a touch of Jack’s bravado and a pinch of Ben’s confidence as she took a seat in front of the shooting review board. The board consisted of Commander Cobbley, her division commander; Officer Mitchell, a peer officer from patrol; Sergeant Cannon, the firearms training sergeant and tactics trainer; and Lieutenant Hoffman, the homicide lieutenant, Ben’s boss.

  “Relax, Officer Caruso.” Cobbley smiled. “This is merely a review of your statement, along with the facts we’ve compiled since the shooting, including the autopsy report on the deceased.”

  “If you’re ready, I’ll start the tape, and we’ll get this show on the road.” Hoffman nodded at Brinna, his thumb poised over the Record button. Brinna returned the nod and he pressed the button.

  Hoffman began by stating the date and time and reciting the names and ranks of everyone present. For the next twenty minutes, Brinna answered questions, mostly centered on her frame of mind before, during, and after the shooting.

  After the first few minutes, she relaxed. They’re just after the truth, she thought. The brightest moment in the meeting came when they advised Brinna they’d found a slug, dug out of the side of a house down the street from the crash scene. It matched the kid’s gun, and the trajectory was consistent with Brinna’s version of being shot at. The autopsy also showed that the kid had ingested enough methamphetamine to kill himself, even if Brinna hadn’t.

  When they finished up and she left the room, some of the tension she’d felt earlier had eased. The pervasive feeling she got from the proceeding was that evidence proved Brinna had done nothing wrong and the officers on the board knew it. Brinna felt sorrow that the kid had been so young, but the sorrow was tempered by the knowledge he could have just as easily killed her.

  The truth of what happened will be out now, Brinna thought, draped in the official findings of the shooting review board. Trouble is, will the official truth really be enough to douse the fire Hester Shockley has fanned?

  54

  “HOW’D IT GO?” Jack asked as Brinna joined him in the patrol car.

  “Okay, I guess. They didn’t hammer me. The autopsy report supports my version of events, and the slug he fired at me was recovered. Plus, the autopsy showed that the guy had enough meth in his system to make an elephant hallucinate. I hope it’s enough to put a sock in all the lies media outlets and Shockley keep spouting.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Jack assured her as he started the car and backed out of the lot. “I got a call from Tracy Michaels just as I was heading out to get a car.”

  “Lucky you. Reporters aren’t high on my list right now.”

  Jack chuckled. “Mine either. But she intimated that there might be some interesting information surfacing about that Times reporter Gerald Clark and his ethics.”

  “Like what?”

  “She wouldn’t say because I wouldn’t tell her what we’re working on now. I don’t want to jeopardize our investigation into Pearce. If we tip our hand too soon, it could cause him to slip away. I
figure if Clark is ethically challenged, it will come out sooner rather than later.”

  Brinna agreed. “And I don’t want Pearce to disappear again—not this time. We’re chasing my real-life bogeyman.” She clicked her teeth. “Though I’m glad I have the opportunity to confront him, it’s tragic he’s had ten years to victimize other little girls.”

  “We have the upper hand now.” Jack tapped the steering wheel. “When we get his picture plastered everywhere, we’ll have him in custody before you know it. This is the Information Age. He won’t be able to escape twenty-four-hour news coverage or Amber Alerts.”

  Brinna grunted in agreement as they settled into the unit and their work shift. The radio was quiet, and Jack drove at a slow patrol cruising speed. This was the kind of night Brinna normally relished. She and Hero could prowl just about anywhere they wanted, to check up on kids or creeps. But tonight she was hard-pressed to feel excited about the shift’s prospects. Too much weighed on her mind.

  She balled a fist and pressed it into her Kevlar vest, taking comfort in the stiff strength of it. “Do you mind taking a trip up to North Long Beach?” she asked.

  “Anywhere in particular?”

  “Heather’s house.” She stared out the window but felt Jack’s questioning gaze. “I missed her funeral. I want to pay my respects.” Too many funerals, too much death.

  “Sure.”

  They made the trip to the Baileys’ in silence. Brinna could only guess what Jack was thinking. Her own gut clenched with a grief knot so tight she wondered if she’d be able to stand up straight.

  Flowers covered the Baileys’ lawn, along with cards and stuffed animals of all kinds. Brinna wished she had thought to bring some Beanie Babies to add to the collection.

  “You can wait here,” Brinna said as Jack opened his door.

  “That’s okay. I’ll go in. I know what they’re going through.”

  All the way up the walk, Brinna thought of Milo. I know what they’re going through too. And it sucks big-time.

  This time it was Mr. Bailey who opened the door. His face was haggard and his eyes rimmed red. “Officer Caruso.”

  “Mr. Bailey.” She sucked in a breath. “This is my partner, Jack O’Reilly. We came to . . . uh . . . Well, gosh, I feel just terrible.” Her throat closed and she stopped speaking, lost for a second in the grieving father’s eyes.

  Jack held his hand out and Bailey shook it. “We’re terribly sorry for your loss,” Jack said.

  “Thank you both. I’d ask you in, but Emily is sleeping. It’s been a rough couple of days.”

  Brinna swallowed and found her voice. “I, uh . . . Well, I just wanted you to know that we’re on it. We’ll do our best to catch the guy who did this.”

  “I know you will. And I know Emily would want to thank you for all your hard work. I just wish . . .” His voice cracked with emotion, and Brinna felt something in her heart rip. Bailey brought a hand to his mouth before he continued. “They can’t tell us how she died, you know. I just wish I knew whether or not she suffered.”

  Jack spoke up as Brinna lost her tongue again. “She’s not suffering now, Mr. Bailey; you can be sure of that. She’s in a better place.”

  * * *

  As he and Brinna walked back to the black-and-white, Jack felt the Baileys’ grief hit as if it were his own. It was as if a tsunami of sorrow rose up and slammed him in the face.

  As he pulled the car away from the house, his hands tightened on the steering wheel. All the elation he’d felt about moving forward on the Pearce investigation evaporated like water on a hot sidewalk.

  They drove in silence for a while.

  It was Brinna who finally spoke up. “Thought you didn’t believe in God anymore.”

  The question jolted Jack. “What? What do you mean?”

  “A better place. Heaven,” she said. “What you said to Mr. Bailey. According to my mom, God and heaven go hand in hand. Can you have heaven without God?”

  Jack shrugged and chewed on his lower lip, wondering why he had said that to the grieving man. “It, uh, it was just the only thing that came to mind at the moment. That man’s life has been torn apart. I guess I hoped to mitigate the pain somehow.” Jack swallowed. Pain was an understatement. The anguish radiating from Bailey had been palpable, and it had hit Jack like a sucker punch.

  When confronted by the grief, he’d reverted to Christian platitudes. Though they never helped him, he wondered if they did anything for Bailey.

  “And Christians believe that heaven waits for us when we die?” Brinna asked.

  “Yeah, they believe that once absent from the body, present with the Lord.”

  “Heaven is a perfect place with no crying or pain or evil like Pearce, just the goodness of God, right?”

  Jack blew out a breath and glanced at Brinna. The line of questioning forced him to open a door he’d purposely locked. If there was no God, then there was no heaven. So where was Vicki?

  “That’s what the Bible says. Sounds like you know it pretty good,” Jack said.

  “I’ve heard it from my mom often enough. I never really thought much about death.”

  His partner continued down a road he had no desire to travel. Jack needed quiet to gather his thoughts.

  “I’ve handled murders, suicides, traffic fatalities,” Brinna went on, “but never really thought about it past the paperwork. But when it’s someone close to you . . .”

  Jack stared across the car at Brinna, but she didn’t return his gaze. He realized this new train of thought from her came because of the death of her mentor. For some reason that knowledge eased some of the tension he felt. “Ben told me about your friend. I’m sorry. On top of Heather, it has to be very hard.”

  “It’s harder than I ever imagined. Milo was the last person I ever would have thought would eat his own service revolver.” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat. “We talked about death a lot but about the physical aspect. He told me what to expect at crime scenes, traffic accidents, that kind of stuff. And he took me on ride-alongs. I saw my first dead body when I was nineteen, two years before I entered the police academy. There was never a thought of anything else after death. Milo’s attitude was dust to dust, case closed.”

  “But now you’re wondering?”

  Brinna nodded. “Only because he was. He left me a journal. On the last pages he really wanted to believe that there was a heaven, but to him that meant there had to be a God. He was terrified of nothingness, of going to hell. I’ve always believed like Milo, but now . . .” She turned to stare out the window.

  Jack sighed and said nothing. His whole life he’d believed in heaven. The full import of denying the existence of God dawned on him.

  Where is Vicki if there is no God?

  Jack looked across the car. Brinna’s head was still turned away. He felt lost all of a sudden and a little afraid. Swallowing his fear, he tried to focus on his partner and not consider Vicki’s eternity at the moment.

  Her whole demeanor is different tonight, subdued, he thought. He didn’t think it was only because of the shooting board or even because of Heather.

  He cruised downtown for a while. Radio traffic was virtually nonexistent. Brinna stayed silent.

  After about an hour, Jack broke the silence. “You feel like some coffee?”

  “Yeah, that’s a great idea. The only place we can get good old-fashioned, bitter coffee downtown is the doughnut shop at Fourth and Orange.”

  “I’ll head right over.” Jack chuckled and directed the car to the doughnut shop.

  Once they had their coffee in hand, they walked back to the car. Jack leaned against the front fender while Brinna took a seat at one of the outside benches, facing him.

  They sipped their coffee for a couple of minutes before Jack spoke up. “Ben said that Milo had cancer and didn’t want to hang around and be a burden.”

  “That’s what his note said.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “It’s not that
. I wish he’d told me, given me a chance to help or something . . .” She glanced at her coffee cup and then up at Jack.

  “When people are determined to commit suicide, they do it.” Jack held her gaze. “No one can stop them. Don’t blame yourself.”

  “Harrumph” was all he got in response.

  The pair went back to their coffee for a while. The only sound around them was dwindling traffic on quieting city streets.

  “Maybe he was afraid he’d lose his nerve if he talked to you,” Jack said finally.

  “His nerve? Milo was the strongest man I ever knew.” Her voice rose as if she tried to convince herself.

  Jack watched her gulp her coffee. He gave her time to compose herself.

  “In the journal he left me, he wondered if he’d been wrong to deny God and only trust in himself and what he could do. And he talked to my mom. He asked her to repeat all the Christian stuff she’s always spouting.” She gulped some more coffee.

  It appeared to Jack as if she were working up the courage to say something else. “I take it before he was sick, he never cared for your mother—or at least not her religion.”

  Brinna chuckled mirthlessly. “He thought she was nuts.”

  “There is a measure of comfort in believing that something better waits for us after we die.” It makes me feel better to envision Vicki in heaven, Jack thought, and not rotting in some hole. A shiver ran through him.

  “Seems like that was what Milo wanted.” Brinna’s voice brought his focus back to Milo and away from Vicki. “He asked my mom a lot of questions and seemed to find peace in her answers. The thing is—” she paused and took a deep breath—“for me, it always comes back to what we talked about before. If there is a God, and if he’s so good, why do little kids like Heather get killed by creeps like Nigel?”

  She held Jack’s gaze. As he formulated his answer, Jack asked another question in his own thoughts. Why do good women like Vicki get killed by idiot drunks like Gil Bridges?