Find Me

by Carol O’Connell

  “But most of these parents have nothing to do with this investigation- their children won’t fit the victim profile.” Her words trailed off to a whisper. Of course the old man was already aware of this, and now she realized that the caravan parents must also know. “So the pattern of bodies on Route 66-that’s only part of it.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “The only criteria for this road trip was a missing child.”

  With stunning clarity, Nahlman saw the real caravan pattern in her list of license plates issued in coastal states, Heartland and Southland states. These parents came from all over the nation as representatives of grief- round eyes and Asian eyes and every shade of skin, carting prayer rugs and crosses and six-pointed stars. How damned democratic. This was America searching for her young; her numbers were legion, and she would not be stopped.

  Her cell phone was ringing. The lighted number belonged to Dale Berman, and she let the call go through to voice mail. Agent Nahlman was too tired for another round of this man’s favorite game, Big Daddy Knows Best. She only wanted a little peace to listen to the music; some distant radio was playing a golden oldie. It was a car radio, and the song came from the Mercedes. Riker was behind the wheel and rolling across the campground, leading a small parade of five cars. Five! The lost parent was found.

  It was early in the dark of morning, and the neon-green pickup truck was driving northwest through Kansas along a patchwork quilt of county roads and state roads far afield of Route 66. Mallory had an appointment with a farmer in a distant town. She would have made better time, but now her car slowed down behind a wide load, a tractorlike vehicle with mechanical wings jutting out into the next lane-no hope of passing here. She had only two and a half hours to get to the Finn homestead at the hour when a school bus had arrived one year ago, the hour when Ariel had been kidnapped from her home and killed.

  It would be impossible to keep this appointment if the young detective drove the legal speed limit of a serial killer who wanted no traffic tickets. She was going to be late, and yet she did nothing to hurry the tractor that blocked her way, no horn blowing, no tailgating.

  Mallory had lost her edge.

  She was actually listening to the words of a familiar song played by a local radio station.

  “-some fine things have been laid upon your table-”

  This tune was not on Peyton Hale’s song list, nor did she remember it from her foster care days when Lou Markowitz had taught her how to dance to rock ’n’ roll.

  “-but you only want the ones that you can’t get-”

  It was a cut from an Eagles album that Riker had given her when she was eleven years old. At the time, he had told her it was more than just a gift of music-he had found her a theme song called “Desperado.” She had played this ballad a thousand times-and then put the album away when she was twelve.

  “-your pain and your hunger, they’re driving you home-”

  Riker thought that Agent Nahlman lacked Mallory’s t alent for scaring people.

  The fed’s tone of voice was too civilized as she addressed the mothers and fathers of lost children, saying, “You can’t leave the safety of the group and go out on your own. You all know about Gerald Linden. Well, here’s something you don’t know. He wasn’t t he only murdered parent.”

  This was news to Riker and he wondered if Kronewald was aware of it.

  “Another dead parent,” said Nahlman, “was found in California. And one in Arizona. The crime scenes were identical to Mr. Linden’s. A lot of you knew both of these people. You belonged to the same Internet groups. W e have a serial killer focused on this caravan.”

  Nahlman’s partner, Agent Allen, committed the sin of smiling when he stepped forward to hand out the route plans for the day. Next, he made the mistake of good manners, saying, “I know you don’t w ant to travel on the interstate, but please don’t t ake the highway exits.”

  “Or you’ll die,” said Nahlman, doing damage control with more force. “If you leave the group, he’ll pick you off, one by one.” Now she demanded their patience, for they would be getting off to a late start this morning.

  And that was fine with Riker. He stretched out in a reclining seat of the Mercedes to catch up on the sleep he never got last night. An hour had passed by the clock on the dashboard, but it seemed that he had just closed his eyes when he was shaken awake.

  “Riker,” said Charles. “The FBI agents counted noses, and six more parents are gone. They just slipped away.”

  ***

  Mallory approved of Kansas. It was a flat but orderly state with neat squares of crop fields and straight roads that intersected at true right angles.

  She found the long shed easily enough, though it was set back on private land. The broad side facing the road had been leased out to advertise a store in the next town. A gravel driveway led her past the shed and on toward the Finns’ empty farmhouse. Its wood was painted a crisp clean white, and the shingled roof had gabled windows. Beyond the house was a barn but no sign of animal life-no life at all. Brown wicker furniture lined the front porch, but this did not save the place from a look of desertion. She imagined the yard the way it had been a year ago. The wide green lawn would have been littered with toys and bicycles, the advertisements that young children lived here.

  Mallory had driven halfway to the house when she stopped and looked back to take in the lay of the land. She could only surmise that a serial killer had waited for his victim by that long shed near the road. It would hide him from the people in the house. And no one passing by would take any notice of a vehicle parked on private property. A windbreak of trees would have prevented anyone in the house from seeing his car roll off the road to shelter behind the shed.

  How many homes had the killer scouted before he found the layout that would give him the best chance of avoiding detection-and confrontation with an adult?

  Mallory drove on to the house. A jeep was parked in the driveway, but the man she had come to meet was on the front porch. He rose from a wicker chair and waved to her with a smile of recognition. No doubt the police chief had found it necessary to explain to this man why a New York detective was driving a bright green pickup truck with a Jaguar hood ornament.

  After showing him her badge, she endured that getting-to-know-you dance that everyone in these parts was so fond of. They talked as they walked back toward the shed by the road, and she learned that Myles White had taken early retirement from his job as an investigator for the county sheriff ‘s o ffice. His father was no longer able to run the family farm and someone had to take charge of it. Before reaching the road, she knew the names of his four children, none of whom showed any interest in farming, and Mr. White knew nothing about her beyond what he had read on her ID card. However, something in her eyes had given this former lawman a clue that they were done with this quaint custom.

  She was a busy woman.

  And so he began his murder story at the end. “We had Ariel’s body in the local mortuary for a solid week, but Joe refused to make the identification. Said it couldn’t be his daughter. How could Ariel be dead? No, she was only lost, he said. Well, the neighbors buried her in the church cemetery down the road. The headstone’s blank. They figure one day Joe will come to his senses, and then they can get on with the engraving. We’re very patient people around here.”

  As they neared the edge of the road, he spoke of the day when Ariel was last seen alive. “Joe’s a widower. A neighbor woman stayed with the kids when their father was on the road. But that morning little Peter woke up with a cold, and Mrs. Henry drove back to her own place to get him some cough medicine. So it was just the three kids in the house, Ariel, Peter and Dodie.”

  “Where was Joe Finn that morning?”

  “He was in a Kansas City hospital. His last fight tore him up real bad. When I gave him the news, his eyes were so swollen he couldn’t see. But he just had to get home to his children. Well, he damn sure couldn’t drive, but he would’ve walked all the way home if I
hadn’t g iven him a ride.”

  “So the three kids were in the house,” she said, prompting him, only wanting him to get on with it.

  “Ariel was trying to get the little one-that’s Dodie-ready for school. Peter was in his bedroom, but Dodie had a set of lungs on her, and he could hear his little sister badgering Ariel to finish making up her lunch box or she’d be late and the bus would leave without her.” He pointed to the edge of the driveway. “That’s where the school bus stopped.”

  “Did they all take the same bus?”

  “No, Dodie missed the cutoff date for first grade, and she was real disappointed, so Joe sprung for a year of charter school. Peter went to a public school a lot closer to the house. His bus came by about forty minutes later. But, like I said, the boy was sick that day.”

  “And Ariel?”

  “Oh, no bus for her. She was a smart one. Graduated from high school when she was just fifteen. She had a scholarship to an eastern college, but that got put off a year. Joe thought she was just too young to leave home.”

  “You know this family pretty well.”

  “I’ve known Joe Finn all his life.” Myles White stopped at the end of the driveway. “I see where you’re going with the business of the buses. You think the killer staked out the house for a while-learned everybody’s habits. Some might figure that he just drove by that day and saw Dodie out h ere all by herself. Now, I’m with you. I think he was waiting for her.”

  “So you knew the real target was Dodie.”

  “Oh, yeah-and I’m gettin’to that.” He turned back to look at the house. “So Peter was up in his bedroom when he heard Ariel yelling at Dodie to wait for her lunch box, and it was real loud like she was calling across the yard. Then Peter heard the screen door slam and figured she’d gone after Dodie.” Myles White looked down at the ground near the corner of the shed. “This is where Ariel dropped the lunch box.” He walked toward the midpoint of the shed on the side that faced the road. “And this is where I found Ariel’s b lood, but not her body. The ground was drenched with it. I knew she had to be dead.”

  Mallory nodded. The killer’s vehicle would have concealed the act of murder from any traffic on this road. “I guess Dodie wasn’t much help with the investigation.”

  “Oh, sure she was. She told me the color of the van and gave me the first three numbers on the license plate. It turned up abandoned in Oklahoma, just the other side of the state line. But that was months later. The owner never reported it stolen. It was an old junker, and he didn’t t hink it was even worth a phone call to the police.”

  “Did the feds help you find that van?”

  “They didn’t help with squat. Months went by, and they never answered a letter or returned a phone call. Then one day they turned up to interview Dodie. Well, Joe told them to go straight to hell. I think I would’ve felt the same in his place. Then the feds sicced Child Welfare on him, and he lost the kids for a while. Peter went into foster care and the feds made off with Dodie. Called it protective custody of a material witness.”

  “So that’s when they realized that Dodie was the target, not her sister.”

  “But I told them that the day Ariel was taken.”

  “Then they didn’t c are until they could link her to a bigger case.” And now Mallory had to wonder if another one-handed corpse had turned up on Route 66 in those intervening months. That would’ve sent up the red flag for Ariel’s murder. Maybe Gerald Linden wasn’t t he first parent to die.

  “Feds.” Myles White spat out this word. “It took me weeks to clear up the bogus charges and get those kids back for Joe. Dodie wasn’t t he same when she came home again. She was real quiet-and that was never her nature.”

  “Any idea what happened while she was in custody?”

  “No way to know,” said Myles White. “Just a theory. I think they gave her the idea that Ariel’s d e ath was her fault. It’s not true. Her sister never had a chance that day. I figure he went after her because he didn’t w ant to leave any witnesses. And Ariel never screamed-all that time when he was stabbing her.” The man looked up at the sky. “I know you’ve seen the autopsy photos. You know how long it took for her to die? All those wounds.”

  “I’ll tell you why she didn’t s c ream,” said Mallory. “She was protecting the kids. She didn’t w ant Peter to come outside, and she bought Dodie some time to run. And you’re wrong about one thing. Ariel did have a chance to save herself that day. Ariel could’ve run, too, but she stayed to fight.”

  Myles White slowly moved his head from side to side. This did not square with his notions about tender young girls. “You’re saying-”

  “I’ll show you,” said Mallory, who was not inclined to say things twice. She opened her knapsack and pulled out the autopsy photographs. “Look here.” She pointed to the reddened knuckles of Ariel Finn’s right hand. “She tried to deck him. So Ariel made the first strike. She only had one chance to land that punch. After that, she would’ve been warding off the knife blade, fighting for her life.”

  “Oh, God.” His fingers trembled as he held the photograph. “I’ve looked at these pictures a hundred times.”

  But this quiet farming community was not a murder capital, and this man had only seen what he had expected to see-the defensive wounds of a helpless girl. He had not understood the lesser damage to Ariel’s right hand-wounds of a fighter-just like her father.

  They walked back to the house in silence.

  ***

  Riker ended his day in the same place where it had begun. Back from the road and a new search for strays, he could hardly keep his eyes open. All this time had been wasted. He was no closer to Mallory, and one of the caravan strays had eluded him.

  Nahlman shared half her sandwich and poured more coffee into their cups. “Enough. You’re done. I told them what the risks were. Why don’t they listen?”

  “I was watching their faces this morning-while you were reaming them out. They were looking around, counting heads and figuring the odds. It was like they were playing some backward kind of lottery.”

  Agent Allen joined them. A cell phone was pressed to one ear as he spoke with his boss and relayed apologies to Riker. “Agent Berman’s s o rry he can’t s u pply any backup, but he’s really spread thin.”

  Riker ripped the cell phone from the younger man’s hand and relayed a string of obscenities to Dale Berman that concluded with the words “shit for brains.” He ended the call by sailing the cell phone far across the Oklahoma grasslands.

  Mallory stood in the open doorway of Ray Adler’s autobody shop, the keys to his truck in one hand. Her own vehicle was no longer in many pieces, but it still needed work.

  “We’ll be done tonight,” Ray promised, “or tomorrow morning for sure.”

  She returned to the house and fired up the vacuum cleaner for an assault on the last bastion of dust, the basement. Around midnight she was almost done labeling the cardboard boxes with lists of junk that Ray never used but could not part with. There was no way to play the cassettes or the vinyl records. The man’s stereo only accepted CDs. Among this useless collection, she had found a box with Peyton Hale’s name on it. It was filled with music, and she wondered which of these songs had been his personal favorite. None of the letters had been able to tell her.

  At one in the morning, showered and ready for bed, the detective placed a call to Chicago. This chore had been saved for last in hopes of waking Kronewald from a sound sleep. She had some new issues with this man, and every little bit of payback counted.

  The groggy Chicago detective answered his home phone, saying, “This better be good.”

  “It’s Mallory. Find out if any other adult bodies turned up on Route 66-or maybe you already know.”

  “Two of ’em,” said Kronewald, perhaps not realizing that he had just confessed to holding out on her. “One was found on the road in California and one in Arizona. And here’s the kicker. That number carved on Linden’s face? They’ve all got that, and I mean
the exact same number, a hundred and one.”

  Ariel Finn had no numbers carved into her flesh, but Mallory let this slide.

  “Weird, huh?” Kronewald was more awake now. “He doesn’t count the grownups when he tallies up his kills.”

  “So you’ve been holding out on me-again.”

  “Naw. Riker phoned that in hours ago. Don’t you guys ever talk?” He endured her silence for three seconds, the outside limit of his patience. “Got anything else?”

  “Do you have a current list of Dr. Magritte’s campers-the ones with kids who fit the profile?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Find out if they live in rural areas, no close neighbors. I think I know how the perp shops for the little girls. He follows the school bus. That gives him a chance to scout out the kids and the property, too.”

  “Okay, so our perp might be a stalker. Thanks, kid. I’ll get on it. Where are you now?”

  “Still in Kansas. This perp is comfortable with car theft. He was probably driving a stolen car when he killed Linden. It’s all about the road. He lives to drive. Long distances don’t faze him.”

  “Okay, I’ll start with stolen car reports for the-”

  “No,” said Mallory. “There may not be a police report. You’re looking for abandoned cars, old junkers with nothing as fancy as a car alarm or a LoJack. Maybe you’ll get lucky with forensics.”

  “Did you give any of this to Riker?”

  Mallory ended the call without the formality of saying good-bye. Maybe tomorrow she would run Riker down, perhaps literally.

  ***

  Click.

  The photograph was expelled from the camera, and it took some time to develop. The blood from the victim’s s lashed throat was bright red as it flowed onto the Oklahoma road.

  A less inspired photographer might have discarded this picture and taken another, for it was slightly blurred by motion. The victim was still twitching-still alive.