The 7th Victim kv-1

by Alan Jacobson

  On the way out of the commerce center, she had given the front desk receptionist the photo of Emma and Nellie, and asked her to place it in intra-agency mail for immediate shipping to a buddy of Vail’s, Tim Meadows, at the FBI lab.

  Once in the car, she had called Meadows to explain the package he would be receiving. “I need a huge favor, Tim. I want a computerized aging of the woman on the right. It’s personal, not for a case.”

  “That’s bigger than a huge favor. We’re not supposed to—”

  “I know, Tim. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. The woman is my mother. I need to find her.”

  There was a few seconds of silence. Vail figured Meadows was mulling over her request. “Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll do it, but it’ll have to wait till eight o’clock, when I clock out. At least if I get caught I won’t be doing it on taxpayer time.”

  She thanked him, then left a voice mail message for Bledsoe, relaying and explaining the VICAP findings so he could share them with the task force. She told him she would call him soon.

  Vail chose a spot in the main parking lot and made her way toward the administration building. The Academy was laid out like a campus, with multistory earth-toned structures connected by nearly identical windowed corridors, or tubes. If you weren’t careful, you could find yourself wandering down one of the hallways without the slightest hint of where you were. Directory maps, mounted on the walls and lettered in white against a milk chocolate background, provided three-dimensional renditions of the campus. Labeled plaques above each map used oversized arrows to point you in the proper direction. The directories were especially helpful to senior law enforcement supervisors who attended the eleven-week National Academy certification program to improve their management, administrative, and investigative abilities. Without the maps, or a personal guide to take them through the labyrinthine hallways, the attendees might never find their way to class.

  Vail walked into the administration building, signed in at the receptionist desk, and passed the x-ray machine en route to the glass doors. With the darkness outside and the windowed corridors well lit, she felt like a rodent on display in a maze.

  She walked into the library’s rotunda and looked up at the second and third stories, marveling at the beauty of the large room. The architects who created the Academy were not typical government designers. This complex was functional, but like a high-end home it had a majestic flair, a feeling of grandeur and self-importance.

  She sat down at one of the computers and logged onto the system. Huddling over the keyboard, she organized the information in her mind. Emma’s maiden name was Irwin, and she had been born in Brooklyn. While Vail didn’t know anything about Nellie Irwin, she made the initial assumption she had also been born in New York. If her searches came up empty, she could then widen the parameters.

  She curled some hair behind her right ear, then attacked the keyboard. Like a fisherman, she would first troll the waters where information would be most likely to yield results: birth and death records, then real estate holdings, criminal databases, and so on until she got a tug at her line . . . something that would make her stop the boat and weigh anchor.

  The next three hours passed without thought of food. People came and went, the overcast darkness had dissipated into a rural star-lit sky, and her stomach finally let her know it was beyond late. She made her way into the closed dining hall, picked out a ready-made turkey sandwich, and devoured it in a matter of minutes. She had been checking her cell throughout the evening, hoping it would bring news of Jonathan’s improvement.

  But like a criminal facing a murder charge, the BlackBerry remained silent.

  Vail returned to the library and reviewed her notes. She had located Nellie Irwin’s place and date of birth: Rutland Road in Brooklyn, February 16, 1947. She did not have a criminal record, but had worked two jobs, from 1964 through 1967. She worked one week into 1968.

  Vail had been searching by social security number, so even if she had gotten married, she still would have been able to trace her. But there was nothing . . . not even a tax return had been filed. She widened her search to the entire United States, then waited as the computer sifted through records.

  As she reached for her cell phone to dial in to the hospital, the vibration of a text message startled her. Jonathan—

  She pulled the device from her belt and looked at the display. Not the hospital. A number in DC. Headquarters. Tim Meadows.

  AT 9:45 P.M., the drive from Quantico to the Hoover Building took forty-five minutes. She was checked against a clipboarded list of expected guests and given clearance by the FBI Police sentry standing at the mouth to the underground garage. She parked and continued up the elevator to the lab, where all was quiet except for the plucking of Andreas Vollenweider’s New Age electracoustic harp. She followed the music to a back room lit with subdued fluorescents, where Tim Meadows sat at a twenty-four-inch flat panel screen, moving his mouse across an image.

  “Don’t look,” he shouted at Vail as she neared.

  “What, this is a surprise?”

  “I would think so,” he said.

  She glanced around the room. She had only been in the back room once, about three years ago. They’d added some equipment since then, but it was nevertheless the same: a techie’s dream. Floor to ceiling electronics were mounted in steel racks that resembled bookshelves. Wires and cables snaked up and down, side to side, feeding one device and sucking from another. Reel-to-reel tape decks stood beside TV screens, VCRs, DVD players and burners; stacks of VHS tapes and jewel cases, labeled with case numbers and dates, littered the Formica desk that sat like an audience inside a three-sided stage, facing the digital and analog devices . . . the performers who put on the show.

  Vail remained ten feet behind Meadows, who had angled his body to block the screen. Her eye caught an LED clock that hung on the wall above Meadows’s head: it was 10:40 P.M. but she felt wide awake, as if she had just gotten out of the shower.

  “I really appreciate you doing this, Tim. I owe you.”

  “Yes, you do. How ’bout dinner at McCormick & Schmick’s?”

  “Whoa, that’ll place a strain on the wallet. This photo that good?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He struck a couple keys, then said, “Okay, come on over.” Onscreen was the original photo Vail had sent to Meadows. Seeing it again—seeing Emma—sent a pang of emotion coursing through her gut. In that split second, she felt sympathy, anger, frustration, love. And distance.

  “Okee dokie. That’s the original. Now, you didn’t give me any parameters to work from, that being what year the photo was taken, so I had to do a little extra work.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Not a problem. Consider it the appetizer. How about clams on the half-shell?”

  “How about I’ve got a kid to clothe and feed?”

  Meadows winked at her. “But they’re soooo good.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Read a review.” He indicated the screen, zoomed in on the photo. “I determined, through a little chemical analysis of the paper and the approximate age of the automobile fender in the background, that this was taken around 1959 or ’60.”

  Vail looked up at the ceiling and did the math. “That’s probably about right.”

  “Thought so.” A self-satisfied smile thinned his lips. “So, working on that assumption, I first enlarged your mother’s face to this,” he said, then clicked the mouse. “Then I began aging it. Here’s about age twenty.” The computer morphed the facial features and a mature woman stared back at her. “Then, if I keep going, we can see her age through the years.” He struck another series of keys and the image subtly shifted, changed, evolved.

  “What a horrible thing to see. Bad enough watching the aging process in the mirror. At least it happens gradually. This thing makes it happen in a matter of seconds.”

  He looked at her. “Happens to all of us. Wrinkle here, sagging there, some age spots thrown in fo
r flavor.”

  She frowned. “See this one?” Her finger found the exact spot on her cheek without having to look in a mirror. “This isn’t flavor, Tim. It’s aggravation.”

  The computer beeped and they turned to look at the screen. “Ah, very good. There she is. That’s your mother, aged to about sixty.”

  Vail stared at the screen. She immediately recognized the face. “Holy shit. . . .” She pried her eyes away and rested them on Meadows, who was smiling at her.

  She swallowed hard. Her eyes were pulled back to the image as if drawn by an unseen force. “Can you make a print of that?”

  “You betcha.” He clicked with his mouse. “It’ll take a few minutes.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “Thought you might.”

  “How accurate is this thing?”

  “You questioning my work?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Pretty accurate. But not a hundred percent. Things happen to people, stress and other environmental factors come into play that influence the result. I’d use it as a guide.”

  But Vail knew the answer before he’d responded. It was a very accurate result.

  “By the way you’re looking at the screen, I take it you recognize her. Shit, I recognize her.”

  Vail nodded, but couldn’t pull her gaze from the screen.

  “Whatcha gonna do?”

  The Andreas Vollenweider CD ended just as she was about to answer, and an eerie silence permeated the room. “I’m not sure.”

  VAIL’S FIRST COURSE OF ACTION had been to return to the FBI Academy. It was now approaching midnight, but she still felt no signs of fatigue. She was a bloodhound, nose to the ground, sniffing her trail. Her prey was near, so near she’d actually seen it. Now it was a matter of gathering information before going in for the kill.

  There was no one around this time of night, other than a few new agents sitting in the commemorative hall, telling stories of their days as a beat cop or detective or attorney . . . now in training to become one of the elite law enforcers in the world.

  Vail found the maintenance engineer and sweet-talked him into letting her into the library for a while. She told him the truth about locating the mother who had abandoned her, and being the sap that he was, he felt sorry for her and pulled out his ring of keys. That was forty-five minutes ago, and rather than stopping to read through the results popping up across the screen, she printed the pages to make the most efficient use of her time. Even at that, it was taking longer than she had anticipated.

  While waiting for the computer to finish the last search, she pulled her cell phone and dialed the hospital. Nothing new to report, she was told by the desk nurse. Jonathan had continued to open his eyes, and had moved them a bit—more “incremental improvement”—but that was all she could tell her. Vail thanked the nurse and watched the last of the search results flicker across the monitor.

  She hit PRINT, then waited by the mammoth HP LaserJet for the document. As the papers emerged, a wide yawn spread her lips. Fatigue had finally set in. She would go home, get some sleep, and review the paperwork in the morning.

  There was nothing else demanding her time at the moment.

  thirty-six

  Go ahead, grab her hair and stab the eyes. Stab, stab, stab! Do it!

  Grasp a handful of straw dry hair, lift the head, then plunge the knife down into the eye. Squish!

  Look at yourself, don’t be blind. Look up, into the window, and see. See for yourself.

  After letting go of the knife, the slime from blood and eye juice spatter trailed off the fingertips like saliva from a hungry wolf salivating over its prey. Straightened up . . . looked into the dark window across the room. It was her. Again. Karen Vail in the reflection.

  You killed your mother. How does it feel?

  Vail craned her head down and tried to look beyond the knife protruding from the right socket, but she couldn’t see the face. She moved closer for a better angle. She killed her mother?

  Yes, the bitch had to die. You did it, you did it, you did it. . . .

  THE MORNING SUN burned away the clouds that had been hovering over the region the past couple weeks. Vail couldn’t help but think the lingering haze had become a symbol of her misfortune. Perhaps the break would bring the promise of new opportunities, of a reversal of her bad luck.

  Of course, first she had to get past the image of having murdered her mother. She needed to do something, talk to someone about it. These dreams had to stop.

  While driving to the hospital, she called her Aunt Faye, who had taken on the task of finding an assisted care facility in the Alexandria region. Based on Emma’s long-term care coverage, Faye had narrowed the list of possibilities to three, and it was now in Vail’s hands to investigate each one to determine which would best accommodate her mother’s needs. In the meantime, rather than move Emma out of her familiar surroundings, Faye’s three daughters were taking turns staying at the house to make sure Emma ate regularly and did not wander off. With a backyard as large and wooded as hers, she could get turned around fifty feet from her house and forget how to get home.

  Vail arrived at Fairfax Hospital and carried in with her a sampling of Jonathan’s favorite childhood books: The Hobbit, Old Yeller, The Phantom Tollbooth, and one he had been in the middle of when he was hospitalized: the seventh Harry Potter tale. She brought a thermos of coffee and sat beside him, at first just looking at him, his eyes opening and closing, tracking back and forth, as if his brain was taking in the surroundings but not processing what it saw.

  She read to him for an hour, then took a break and dove into the task of making screening calls to the three assisted care facilities. Based on the attitude of the staff and level of service provided, she immediately eliminated one of them. The other two would work, subject to a records search for pending complaints and violations.

  She gave Jonathan a kiss, told him she loved him, and headed out for lunch with Bledsoe. They met at a Subway restaurant a mile from the op center. His face was long, but when she walked in his expression brightened. He stood as she approached the table.

  “Whatever you want, it’s on me,” he said.

  “Tuna on wheat, everything on it.”

  He nodded, turned to the counter person and put in the order. Bledsoe watched through the display case glass as the woman slapped on tomatoes and sprinkled oil. “How was your visit with your mother?”

  “She’s got Alzheimer’s. It’s bad, I’ve got to move her to an assisted care facility.”

  Bledsoe sighed. “Sorry.”

  “Me, too. I wasn’t prepared.”

  “Must’ve been tough.”

  “Add it to the list.” She considered telling him about Nellie and Emma, then thought better of it. “I thought I needed some time by myself, but given everything that happened, I’m glad Robby was there. Thanks for letting him go.”

  Bledsoe eyed her obliquely. “I didn’t.”

  “You—”

  “We didn’t quite see eye-to-eye on the matter. He told me he was taking some personal time and walked out.”

  Vail chewed on that one. Robby had led her to believe Bledsoe gave his blessing.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “He and I had a chat. It won’t be a thing between us. We’ve got bigger issues to tackle.”

  “Yeah, about that . . . sorry I didn’t show up this morning,” Vail said.

  He turned his head to face hers. “You’re on leave.”

  “From the Bureau, not from the task force.”

  Bledsoe moved a few steps down, paid for the sandwiches, and loaded them on a tray. “Linwood and the police chief wanted you off the case.”

  Vail slid into a booth and sat down. “Guess I’m bad publicity. Beating up your husband doesn’t play well in the papers. Too much fallout.”

  Bledsoe unwrapped his sandwich and pulled off the pickles. “I told her no pickles. You heard me say that, right?” He shook his head.

  “You have to clos
e this case,” Vail said. “I make your job easier—and probably faster. And a faster resolution means fewer women die. You need me.” Vail bit into her sandwich and let her comment ride on the wind for a moment.

  “They made it pretty clear they want you to stay away.”

  “Do you want me to stay away?” She had stopped chewing and focused on his eyes.

  “No.”

  “I work for the victim, Bledsoe. Not the government, not you, not the police chief.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then to hell with ’em all. Let me work the case. I’ll do it at home. Get me a copy of the file, we’ll work it together.”

  Bledsoe took a bite and looked at Vail as he chewed. She returned the gaze. Pleading without speaking. He finished off his sandwich a few bites later, then took a long pull from his Coke.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “You’ll get me a copy of the file?”

  “I’ll bring it by your place myself.”

  She nodded. “Keep me up on what the task force does.”

  He wiped his mouth, then got up. “Thanks for meeting me for lunch.”

  “Thanks for paying. And for sticking with me.”

  Vail watched Bledsoe walk away, knowing she had done the right thing for the victims. But she couldn’t help wondering if it was the wrong thing for her career.

  thirty-seven

  There was a sunset for the first time in weeks, and Vail pulled over to the side of the road to watch the reds burn into oranges, then fade into an expansive horizon of pale pink, as if God had blown brilliantly colored chalk dust off the palette. She pulled down on the gear shift and yanked it into drive, then got on I-495 toward 193 and Great Falls, Virginia.

  She turned on the radio, not bothering to change the station—it didn’t matter what was playing, because she wasn’t listening. It merely served as background noise to take her mind off where she was headed, and what she would say when she got there. As dusk descended, she turned on her headlights and exited at Georgetown Pike. The area of Great Falls was a sprawling community set amongst rolling hills, forests of mature oak and helm, and million dollar homes.