Find Me

by Carol O’Connell

  “How did they find the grave?”

  “They didn’t,” said Kronewald. “I did-with a little help from you and Riker. And thanks for the FBI files, but they didn’t have any of Nahlman’s reports. So I call in my own guy, and he-”

  “Why would you expect to find reports from Agent Nahlman?”

  “She’s a geographic profiler. You didn’t know? I checked her out. A real hotshot-as good as it gets.”

  This made no sense. Mallory prided herself on being a very thorough thief; she overlooked nothing. A geographic profiler’s w o rk would have been the bedrock of a case like this one. How could that data be missing from the purloined files?

  “Anyway,” said Kronewald, “I fed the data to my guy, all the known grave locations. He gave me the same twenty-mile spread that Riker got from the Pattern Man. Now, eighteen years ago in Oklahoma, about twenty miles from where you are now, a drunk hit a dog on the road.”

  “I’m going to hang up on you now.”

  “Hold on, kid, I’m getting to the good part. Well, this guy’s a dog lover. He’s out in the middle of nowhere, and he decides to bury this dog. So he pulls out his silly little camp shovel, and, before he digs the hole, he looks around for some stones to put over the body. He doesn’t w ant wild animals to eat the dead mutt. Now remember, this guy’s real drunk, and he’s just determined to do this right. Well, he finds a pile of rocks, and the dirt underneath is real loose. The ground’s been turned over. Less work, right?”

  “So he dug a grave for a dog and found a dead child.”

  “Right. A fresh kill with one wound-the kid’s throat was cut. Now the Oklahoma cops can’t find the old files on that kid, but they say there was no molestation.”

  “They lost the files?”

  “Hell no. Those cops had a visit from Dale Berman’s c rew nine months ago, and the feds probably walked off with everything they had on the case. So I asked them to check for another rock pile down the road.”

  Finally-an answer to a simple question. Mallory abruptly ended the call.

  After a search of the iPod menu, she selected Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Following this music recommendation, Peyton Hale wrote, “If you only follow the Buddha’s road, you can only go where the Buddha goes… only know what he knows. But all our questions are personal. Why am I here, where did I come from, where am I going?”

  The letter was put aside. Her cell phone was beeping again, probably Kronewald, and she responded with a testy, “What now?”

  “I know what you did,” said a familiar voice. “Have you gone psycho?”

  “You can’t b lame all your screwups on cops.” She wondered if Dale Berman was recording this call in some lame attempt to document her footprints in the FBI computers.

  “No, don’t b u llshit me,” said Berman. “I’m talking about the database-all the case details. Now Kronewald’s got everything. And he’s got cops calling him from seven states. Containment is shot to hell. That’s your work, isn’t it?” There was a moment of silence, as if he actually expected an admission of guilt, and then he said, “Tell me you didn’t c all out the media.”

  Her thumbnail rested on the button that would end this call.

  “Just one more question, Mallory. This perp we’re looking for-is he another psychopath with spooky green eyes? Does insanity run in your family?”

  Agent Christine Nahlman sat at Riker’s t able, comparing notes on parents missing from the caravan. “We raised the Wolfman on his CB radio,” she said. “He lost a muffler on the road a few miles back.”

  “Jill’s D ad,” said Riker, correcting her. He liked this Internet name and loathed the monster-movie tag that the feds had pinned on that sorry man. “I had Kronewald run a background check. His daughter’s name is Gillian on the birth certificate, Gillian Hastings.”

  Nahlman’s e yebrows were slightly raised, and her lower lip tucked under her teeth, the only tells that the more formal name of this child was familiar. So preoccupied was she with this little surprise that Riker caught her nod- ding in unconscious agreement when he blamed the feds for making a mess of the last leg of the trip.

  “It’s way out of control,” said the unshaven detective, “and it’s gonna get worse if you try to keep these people on the interstate.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve got no choice. The old highway couldn’t handle all of them, not without one bottleneck after another. There’s a public campground only a few hours down the road. Dale wants them all together in one place while it’s still daylight.”

  “So he can count noses? Like that matters anymore. His moles couldn’t even keep track of how many people we lost today. No offense. I lost count myself. All these people wanna be on the old road. Let’s get them back on it. Speed isn’t e verything.”

  “I can’t do that.” Nahlman rose from the table.

  She agreed with him; he knew she did, but the agent would not say a word against her boss, the prince of pricks. Instead, she said, “The best solution would be to catch this guy and catch him quick.”

  Riker took her arm to stop her from leaving him. “Dale’s idea of speed is reckless. Don’t let him get you killed. If you’re in a bad place-” He took out his pen and scribbled across a semi-soggy napkin, then handed it to her. “That’s my cell. Call me. I’ll come get you.”

  She put the napkin in her jacket pocket, then wiped the smile off her face before she turned around to rejoin the other agents.

  He looked out the window on the parking lot. Dr. Magritte and Charles were still trying the reasonable approach with Dale Berman, but the agent only gave them his political smile, a cue that he was not even listening. In another hour, all of these people would be back on the road-the wrong road. How many more parents would they lose today?

  The detective looked down at the open laptop that Mallory had abandoned-again. The screen came to life at the touch of the mouse pad, and it was good that she had left it running. Normally, it took him an hour to find the power button on a strange computer, but that was with a hangover. Today he was merely in withdrawal, and the solution for that problem was in hand. Riker popped the cap off his beer bottle, lit up a cigarette and remembered to say grace. He blessed the state of Oklahoma for not going completely nuts on the issue of second-hand smoke. God love these people-they even put ashtrays on the tables.

  An icon on the laptop screen had his name on it. Thank you, Mallory. Now he would not have to rely on that ten-year-old boy for technical support. He watched Peter Finn take his little sister by the hand and lead her to the window. Both children faced the direction that Mallory had taken, as if expecting her to reappear at any moment.

  Riker rested one finger on the mouse pad and moved the little arrow to his icon. One click and the computer’s s c reen changed to a simple menu. Mallory had created a number of options for him: F***.doc was Riker’s idea of overly polite obscenity, but it was Mallory’s o ld code for feds, which meant the same obscene thing in her lexicon as well. He knew that all her FBI data was stolen goods-finest kind. It was the next item on her menu that troubled him. The media was subdivided into links for every news blog and marginally more legitimate press with websites. Last was a personal note, and he opened that one first.

  Riker, by the time you read this, Mack the Knife will be in the Chicago PD data bank, and cops all along this road will report to Kronewald. He’ll be calling you soon. You may also hear the sound of helicopters. That will be the media. The more eyes on the sheep the better. Good hunting.

  Her letter was disappearing even as he reread it, words breaking up before his eyes. The other documents remained, but he knew every trace of her would be gone from this computer.

  Good hunting?

  What the hell? She would never abandon the caravan parents to the likes of Berman. No, she had to come back. If she did not, then what was he supposed to tell that little boy? As if the child had read his mind, Peter Finn turned his face to Riker’s, and the detective died a little.
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br />   His cell phone was ringing.

  He answered it, and, even before Kronewald could give him the details called in by an Oklahoma trooper, Riker knew that one of the stray parents had been murdered. He was watching the sudden activity in the parking lot. All the portable sirens were coming out as agents burned rubber, their cars ripping back down the road to a fresh kill site.

  And Kronewald had an additional piece of news, another child’s grave found by the road, but in the opposite direction-the way Mallory had gone.

  ***

  The Mamas and the Papas sang -“California dreaming… on such a winter’s day”-as Mallory drove slowly past the digging men. Pulling up in front of a crime-scene van, she parked on the shoulder of the road.

  A police officer walked up to the car. Not bothering to check her ID, he gallantly opened the door for her, saying, “You’d be the cop from New York City. A Chicago detective-Kronewald was his name-he said you might be by for a look.” He shook her hand as they exchanged names: Henry-J.-Budrow-but-most-people-call-me-Bud and Mallory-just Mallory.

  He pushed a police barrier out of their way, and they left the road to walk side by side to the edge of a small grave. A man and a much younger woman had their backs bent over this hole in the ground, and they used soft brushes to remove a layer of dirt from a small skull that had yet to lose its baby teeth.

  Now Mallory was told that these civilians were on loan from the anthropology department of a university, and then her guide in uniform asked, “So who’s running this show? Chicago PD or the FBI?”

  “It’s Detective Kronewald’s case,” said Mallory. “He’s your liaison with the feds.” Loosely translated, the old man was gleefully parceling out information to humiliate the Bureau.

  The officer stared at her knapsack. “Your cell phone is ringing.”

  “It does that,” she said, but made no move to answer it.

  He grinned. “Mine has the same problem every six minutes. I wish they’d never invented the damn things.” The officer watched the anthropologist and his student as the pair slowly uncovered the rest of the skeletonized child. He turned back to Mallory. “You know there’s a much fresher corpse back down the road about twenty miles. That one’s an adult, but Kronewald says it’s connected.”

  She nodded, giving him nothing useful, as she looked into the open grave. “You should find something to help with identification-something small that a kid would carry.”

  “Already found it.” He led her over to the police van. The back door hung open, and what he wanted was within easy reach. “This what you’re looking for?” He held up a bag with paperwork attached.

  Through the clear plastic, she could see a small identification bracelet. “I can’t make out the engraving.”

  “The metal’s c o rroded, but her little dress is still holding up. Can you believe that?”

  Yes, she could. This was the upside of poverty. Cheap polyester and simulated leather would last forever in the ground.

  He reached farther into the van and pulled out a charcoal rubbing. “The professor made this from the bracelet so we could make out the words.”

  The tiny bracelet identified six-year-old Melissa as a diabetic.

  At a more recent crime scene twenty miles down the road, Dale Berman wondered aloud, “What does he do with their hands?” He looked down at the corpse of a middle-aged woman.

  The dead body was laid out on the shoulder of the old highway. Her right hand had been chopped off at the wrist. Agent Nahlman noted that this mutilation was postmortem. The pool of blood had spilled from the wound to the throat. The rest of the pattern was also holding up. Tiny bones had been positioned near the stump, and so it was a child’s skeletal hand that pointed toward another roadside grave. State troopers with shovels owned this crime scene, and they were waiting on their own people to finish the job of uncovering the smaller of the two victims found early this morning.

  Kronewald had been a bit late to share this information with the FBI.

  The federal contingent was forced to watch the exhumation from behind a police barricade. Dale Berman leaned toward one of the young agents, saying to this man, “Get a picture of the woman’s face. Fa x it back to the moles at the restaurant. They might recognize her.”

  “I can identify her,” said Nahlman. “She’s one of the parents who joined the caravan in Missouri.”

  “Why in hell would she leave the group?” He asked this so innocently, as if Nahlman had not apprised him of the problem with the strays and the need for backup. He was still waiting for her explanation.

  Of course.

  He would want witnesses to her incompetence, her failure as the senior agent to keep the caravan together. Nahlman’s head lolled back. She was looking up from the abyss, that black hole for agents with down-spiraling careers, and she could see Dale waving good-bye to her as she fell from grace.

  “Nahlman, I don’t b lame you for this.” His hand was on her shoulder, marking her with all but a Judas kiss, blaming her in front of all these people. He came off well before this audience, so generous with his forgiveness. And the little bastard knew he could depend upon on her not to defend herself.

  “Well, we won’t lose any more of them,” said Berman. “I’m personally taking charge of the caravan. If we keep them moving on the interstate, it’ll be safer.”

  “No,” said Nahlman. “It’s only faster. I explained why-” Her words trailed off. What was the point of trying anymore?

  If he was annoyed by her contradiction, it did not show. He was wearing the smile of a charming boy, almost an invitation to skip school today. But she was immune to professional charm. Nahlman looked down at the dead woman, not listening to the company line any longer, as Dale babbled on about the importance of carrying out command decisions.

  Agent Allen was running toward them, cell phone in hand. “The parents are getting ready to leave the restaurant.” When he stopped in front of them, he was out of breath but posture perfect, and Nahlman half expected him to salute his hero. “They’re going to-”

  “I told them to stay put till we got back,” said Dale Berman, as if this mass disobedience of civilians were still inexplicable to him. “How many of them are leaving?”

  “All of them, sir.”

  “On whose authority?”

  “That detective from New York, Riker.”

  Dr. Paul Magritte stood in the parking lot, placidly handing out area maps and the simple guidelines for picking up after themselves. Only yards away, an insurrection was going on with his approval and his blessing.

  Detective Riker sat on the fender of the Mercedes-Benz, alternately sipping beer and shouting instructions to the people gathered all around him.

  A young man who had passed himself off as a grieving parent now identified himself as a federal agent. He used his FBI credentials, waving his open wallet as he vied for the policeman’s attention, shouting, “You can’t do this!”

  “I’m doing it,” said Riker. To the crowd around the car, he yelled, “Everybody top off the gas tank whether you think you need to or not! No stops till we get to the campsite! And from now on, keep more distance between the cars. Fa ster traffic can leapfrog the slower vehicles. We don’t want to turn the interstate into one long parking lot. At the next campsite, you will meet and greet the ladies and gentlemen of the press for your coast-to-coast publicity.”

  A chorus of cheers rose up from every quarter.

  “So,” Riker continued, “nobody goes off on their own. I don’t w anna see any cars taking exits back to the old road. Anyone who does that loses a shot at national TV coverage. Is everybody clear on this?”

  “Yes!” was the rousing comeback from the crowd.

  “Good. We take the interstate all the way to the exit on your maps. Just follow this car.” He slapped the Mercedes’ fender. “Remember-no side trips! Pee in the car if you have to, but nobody stops.”

  There were nods all around the parking lot as people headed toward their
vehicles, and Riker took his place in the passenger seat of the Mercedes. “Okay, Charles, let’s get in position. You’re the lead car.”

  Charles Butler started the engine and proceeded to the front of the lot. Other cars were falling in behind him. “I wonder how many people we’ve already lost.”

  “Don’t t hink about that anymore.”

  After Officer Budrow had introduced her as Kronewald’s cop on the scene, Mallory hunkered down beside the anthropology professor, a man ten years her senior. He was dusting arm bones still partially embedded in the dirt. His student, a teenage girl, ran a soft brush over the tiny shoes.

  “Any marks from a weapon?”

  “Not yet-nothing obvious,” said the professor. “I’ll know more when we get the bones back to the lab.”

  The detective had heard this old song before back in New York City.

  “Shallow grave,” said the cop called Bud. “The killer didn’t w aste much time with the digging.”

  Mallory stared at the little dress on the skeleton. The dark brown stains began at the neck and spread down to the small shoes. “That’s blood.”

  “It could be.” The teenage assistant wore a condescending smile, for she had just promoted herself to the wise woman of science. “We have to test the stains before-”

  “I don’t,” said Mallory. “That’s blood from a wound to the throat.”

  The detective moved a piece of the dress-the school dress-away from the skeleton’s neck. “Stop what you’re doing and clean these bones.”

  The teenager leaned over the skeleton, brush at the ready, when the professor stayed her hand, saying, “No, Sandra. I think she means me.” And now the man bent over the exposed bones, and the student went back to cleaning the shoes.

  Officer Budrow turned to the New York detective as his new source of expertise. “You think the freak did anything to Melissa before he killed her?”

  Mallory recalled the reports of bodies found along this road. “There was a slashed throat on one fresh corpse and a few of the mummified bodies.”

  The anthropology professor kept his eyes on his work when he said, “The mummified bodies won’t help you establish a pattern. Tearing of the skin around the neck is common-no matter what the cause of death.”