Find Me

by Carol O’Connell

  “No nicks on the spinal column,” chimed in the assistant, almost gleeful as she leaned in for a closer look. “No signs of a knife wound.”

  The anthropologist shook his head as he worked his brush over the small neck. “I wouldn’t e x pect to see any nicks, not unless the murderer tried to decapitate this child.”

  “So it wasn’t a deep wound.” Mallory looked up at Officer Budrow. “And now we know it wasn’t a rage killing. He just wanted her dead. All the blood stains come from one wound to the neck.”

  “Well,” said Officer Budrow, “I guess there’s only so much you can tell from the bones. Any way to know if there was anything sexual? That’s what I was wondering. The parents will ask. They always do.”

  “Well,” said the student, “science can’t help you there. Without flesh and fluids-”

  “Melissa wasn’t molested,” said Mallory. Gerald Linden’s d e ath had been planned out for minimum physical contact with the victim, and this theme was also playing out with the children. “Pedophiles usually strangle the kids.”

  Before Mallory could finish this thought, the student took over, saying to Officer Budrow, “So you see, the key is the hyoid bone.”

  “No, Sandra, it’s not,” said the soft-spoken anthropology professor.

  This man seemed tired, and so Mallory took over his student’s training. She planned to teach this girl not to interrupt one more time. “The hyoid bone wouldn’t fuse until Melissa was in her twenties.” The detective pointed to the remains of the child in the hole. “But she was only six years old.

  Melissa died too young. If she was strangled, the hyoid would only flex- it wouldn’t b reak.” And now for the lesson of simple observation. “Look at the blood pattern on her dress-it flows down to the shoes. That tells you Melissa was standing when he hurt her. So she wasn’t fatally injured yet-not when he cut her. And killers so seldom strangle little girls after slashing their throats.”

  The student had lost her annoying smile and turned sullen-and learned nothing.

  “So that’s settled,” said Officer Budrow. “The perp favors a knife.”

  “And that’s odd for this kind of murder,” said Mallory. “I don’t t hink he likes to touch the victims-not while they’re still alive.” The detective looked down the road the way she had come. “That other crime scene you mentioned-the one with the fresh corpse. Did they find another grave near the victim’s body?”

  “Yeah,” said Budrow, “a state trooper found a woman’s c o rpse on the road. It was left out in plain sight. One hand was chopped off and…”

  “A woman,” said Mallory. “What was her name?”

  When she was told that the victim was April Waylon, the detective wanted to hunt that dead woman down and kill her all over again.

  11

  The caravan vehicles followed Riker’s instructions, via waving arms and hand signals, to form a tight configuration around the campsite. This was inspiration from a childhood of cowboy movies: always pull the wagons into a circle. The detective smiled as FBI agents arrived en masse to find parking spaces on the fringe, their cars exiled from the little city.

  Supplies were disgorged from one of the mobile homes, but these were automotive: cans of oil, transmission fluid, plugs and points and patch kits for threadbare tires. One of the parents, a mechanic, traveled from one old clunker to another like a doctor making hospital rounds. He listened to odd pings and grinds and other engine noises that only he could decode. On the Internet, he was known as Lostmyalice, but the other parents called him Miracle Man.

  Come twilight, Riker and Charles accepted the hospitality of Dr. Magritte, who prepared rib eye steaks from the freezer of a larder on wheels that doled out similar fare to other campers. And now they learned that three of the mobile homes were leased by the doctor and driven by parents who had no vehicles of their own. The old man was a good cook. He favored a grill set over an open fire, and he had actually paid good money for it.

  “But the best grills,” in the detective’s opinion, “are those little fold-out pieces you steal from shopping carts.”

  Throughout this tasty meal, Riker was working, albeit casually. He chewed his meat and sipped his coffee while noting every new face-there were many-and watching for signs of trouble. He found them. “Doc, your people are scared. Check out the weapons.” With one moving finger, he pointed out pup tents and lean-tos where deer rifles and a few shotguns had been propped up in plain view. “I always knew about the guns, but yesterday they were kept out of sight. Tonight they’re on display.”

  “It makes them feel more secure,” said Dr. Magritte. “And the FBI agents haven’t objected.”

  “And you know why,” said Riker. “Except for Nahlman, all the agents here are kids. You noticed that, right?”

  Paul Magritte opened a cooler to win back Riker’s goodwill with a cold bottle of beer. The old man smiled. The detective did not. But he took the beer.

  “And then there’s the problem of the handguns,” said Riker.

  This startled Magritte, and he looked around him, squinting to see the distant campfires.

  “You’ll never see them,” said Riker, “but they’re here, tucked away in tents and bedrolls-like bombs waiting to go off.” The detective stood up to take his leave of Charles and the doctor. He thanked the man for his dinner and said, in parting, “Don’t go walking after dark. This is a very scary place.”

  The detective glanced at his watch. It was time to walk the wolf.

  George Hastings, alias Jill’s D ad, led the animal on a chain, and Riker followed them outside the circle of vehicles. None of the camp dogs barked when the wolf was out and about, for every mutt loved its own life; they quieted down and cowered on their bellies, hoping death would walk past them tonight. Man and beast walked a straight line into the dark landscape, and Riker sat down on the ground with his flashlight, a gun and a six-pack of beer. Stone sober he was not a great shot, but, if he had to kill a charging animal, a little alcohol might steady his hand, and four or five spent bullets should hit some vital organ. He had trained Jill’s D ad not to stray beyond the flashlight beam. Riker only took his eyes off the wolf one time to look up at a sky unspoiled by the lights of the caravan city. The evening stars were popping out, one by one, when he heard the first helicopter.

  It was about time. He had wondered when the media planned to show up.

  Nahlman came to keep him company on wolf watch. She held a clipboard with a list of vehicle registrations as she sat down beside him. “So far I’ve only found one fake name.” The agent highlighted a page with her penlight as one finger traced the lines, then stopped. “This one, Darwinia Solho.” She looked up from her list and caught him in the act of being unsurprised. “You knew.”

  “Yeah, it always had the sound of a made-up name.” He placed a bottle of beer in her free hand. “But we’re not hunting for a woman. No offense, Nahlman. Personally, I think women are better at murder.” His eyes were on the sky, reading the call letters of a major television network on the bottom of the helicopter. “Hey, prime-time news.”

  “Damn reporters,” said Nahlman. “Our people have the rest of the media bottled up down the road.”

  Oh, Christ.

  “You have to let ’em through,” said Riker. “Reporters are only manageable when you’re throwing them bones. If you make them dig-and I mean really earn their money-then you lose control.”

  “It’s not my decision.”

  “It could be,” he said, planting a hint at disaffection from the ranks. “Let’s say we give them easy rules. No parent leaves the circle without an escort, and only the parents get back inside. You see how simple this can be when Dale’s not running the show? And now I need you to call down the road and get those reporters turned loose.”

  “I haven’t got the-”

  “Do you see Dale Berman anywhere? No, he’s holed up in a motel while you and your partner sleep on the dirt. You’ll never find him when you need him. That makes y
ou the senior agent in command. So just tell the kids down the road to let those reporters come through the lines-or mama will spank.”

  Oh, big mistake.

  Obviously, the NYPD’s diversity training had been utterly wasted on him. He watched her mouth dip on one side just before she turned her face away from him. Riker looked down at his empty bottle, but he could not put the blame there. That was the problem of being a hard-core alcoholic: He could down so many drinks while talking and walking a sober line.

  Riker tried again, one hand on her shoulder. “Hey, sorry, but I need this favor.” He pointed into the heart of the campsite. “It’s for them. It’s so hard for these parents to get five seconds on some backwater news show. This is their only shot at national coverage. And tomorrow, you know they’ll all stay with the caravan. No more dead strays-if we let the reporters join the parade.”

  The FBI agent was relenting; he could see it in the slump of her shoulders.

  “Dale might go along with it,” she said, “if you were the one who asked him. I think he respects you. God knows why. And I know you’ve got his cell-phone number.”

  “Not me. I haven’t had that much beer.” Riker pulled another bottle from his six-pack. “I figure a pretty woman has a better shot.”

  Whoa!

  Nahlman stood up way too fast, and now her hands were riding on her hips. Showdown! What’s a boy to do? He was too drunk to win a fair fight with a woman, but not drunk enough to stomach one more conversation with Dale Berman.

  “I’ll drink faster,” said Riker.

  Agent Christine Nahlman made the decision to bypass her boss, and it was not the second bottle of Riker’s beer that had won her over. She wanted no more dead parents on her watch.

  The floodgates down the road were opened, the reporters turned loose, and now the circus had come to town. The news crews arrived at the outskirts of the caravan circle, carrying pole lights and cameras, juggling microphones and makeup kits. The parents were overjoyed, holding up their posters and lining up for interviews, but not Jill’s D ad, though his wolf was safely locked up for the night. Another oddly camera-shy parent was Darwinia Sohlo, or whatever her real name was. Joe Finn was not in line, either, but that was no surprise to Nahlman.

  While waiting a turn at the reporters, Mrs. Hardy and two other parents could be heard comparing notes on how many seconds their tragedies had received on the local news back home, how many lines of type in their town papers and how many flyers they had tacked up to telephone poles in an average month.

  Searching for lost children was very hard work.

  Finally, it was Mrs. Hardy’s c hance to face the camera and tell America, “My Melissa plays piano.” She held up the photograph of a six-year-old child. “This little girl,” she would have them know, “has the brightest blue eyes, the sunniest smile. And she plays the piano. Oh, I’m sorry. Did I already tell you that? I’m such a fool.”

  After dinner, Peter Finn watched his father work the poles, the canvas and the ropes. Practice should have made this job easier, but it just got harder and harder all the time. Almost done, the big man used the back end of a hatchet to drive the stakes into the ground, each one the mooring for a tent line.

  A year ago, this man had been the monster in the dark, a creature who came late at night to sit beside young Peter’s bed. Some nights, his father’s face had been beaten into unrecognizable shapes. Blood had seeped through the bandages applied at ringside by the cut man, another monster in the boy’s c ast of characters from the boxing world.

  When Ariel was taken from them, the boxing days were ended, and this man had inexplicably become the Tooth Fairy who paid out coins for baby teeth, the cook and housemaid and packer of school lunches. The boxer was not much good at all these jobs that Ariel had done so effortlessly and fine. Over time, as Peter had watched his father struggle with each small improvement in folding laundry, the boy had cried with overwhelming sorrow and love.

  Joe Finn drove the last stake into the ground. All the ropes were taut, and the poles were straight. Oh, but now the big man discovered that he had laid the tent floor on a bed of rock. After pulling up every stake- silently with no complaint-collapsing the canvas and bringing down the poles, the boxer began again.

  Young Peter bowed his head. The tears flowed freely.

  Riker was alone on nightwatch, unless one counted unseasoned FBI agents. He did not.

  Interviews had ended hours ago, and most of the reporters had retired to a town down the road. A few of the jackals still haunted the perimeter of the caravan city, probably hoping for fresh blood, or maybe the sound bite of a scream in the night. Cooking smells haunted Riker with every breeze, though all the campfires were burning low, embers only. The site was better lit tonight. He had appropriated stationary power packs and pole lights from departing television crews. More illumination came from the traveling flashlights of patrolling FBI agents. Apart from the tinny music of a few radios and small conversations in twos and threes, all was quiet.

  And along came Mallory.

  Riker never heard the sound of her engine or the slam of a car door. She was simply there when he turned around and already passing him by. A knapsack was slung over one shoulder. She carried it everywhere these days, and he wondered if this was where she kept the letters that had once belonged to the late Savannah Sirus.

  Mallory walked toward the campfire of Mrs. Hardy, and now he knew whose little girl had been found in the grave down the road.

  And the mother sensed it.

  Mrs. Hardy sat on a blanket spread before a dying fire. She forced a smile for the approaching detective, perhaps believing that escape was still possible. But no-Mallory’s s t ride had the resolve of a train wreck in the making-this was going to happen. And now the older woman patiently waited for the younger one to come and destroy her with words. The detective sat down on the blanket, and the ritual began: the slow shake of the mother’s head-disbelief-no, not her child-some mistake. And when it was finally understood that denial was wasted on Mallory, the mother collapsed against the young cop’s b reast. Mrs. Hardy cried for a long time. None of the other parents approached her, as if the death of a child might be a contagious thing. And Mallory did not desert her.

  Turning his sad eyes away from Mrs. Hardy’s c ampfire, Joe Finn doused his own embers with a pail of water. Then he leaned down to kiss the brow of his sleeping son. Sleep was his only chance, for Peter had arrived at that heartbreak age when he would not hold his father’s hand in public anymore-a big boy now. One day a gangly teenager would take Peter’s place, a sullen moody version who would not even speak to his father, and that time would come all too soon. He kissed his child again, so greedy to love this boy while love was still allowed.

  He laid Peter down in the tent alongside sleeping Dodie. Fixing his eyes on his youngest girl, he stared hard, willing her damaged mind to heal. Settling for keeping her safe, he unrolled his sleeping bag in front of the tent so that his body would bar the way to his children.

  Irony was not in the boxer’s s t o re of words, but he had the sense of it in every twinge of pain from old fight wounds. He had endured so many blows and spent too much time away from home, and he had done this to buy a fine future for his children. But now he used his savings to go in search of the child that was lost because he had not been there to protect her.

  Ariel, my Ariel.

  His late wife had drawn from Jewish roots to give their firstborn child that name. In Hebrew, it meant Lioness of God.

  “How much can you stand to hear?” Mallory held the crying woman in her arms.

  “I want the rest of it. All of it.” Mrs. Hardy’s reply was a struggle, a gurgle of words. “I have to know.”

  The FBI agent standing behind them finally made her presence known to the crying mother. Mallory had been aware of Nahlman from the start, listening to the shift of feet, a clue of reticence to come any closer to raw emotion.

  Agent Nahlman knelt down on the blanket beside M
rs. Hardy. “I read the old police report. They found blood on the ground at the bus stop. So that’s where Melissa died.”

  “Then he didn’t-he never-”

  “No,” said Nahlman, “she wasn’t molested. We never found a child with signs of more than one wound-the fatal wound. That’s how I know she died where they found her blood on the road.”

  Mrs. Hardy nodded, for this was confirmation of what Mallory had already told her.

  “It was a quick death,” said Nahlman. “I don’t t hink Melissa ever saw the knife. There wasn’t e ven time to be afraid. It happened that fast. Shock was setting in. Melissa was losing consciousness.”

  “Like going to sleep?” Mrs. Hardy pulled back from Mallory the better to see the young cop’s e yes, wanting reassurance that this was true.

  Mallory only stared at the FBI agent and marveled that any mother could be taken in by that fairy tale.

  “Yes,” said Nahlman, stumbling for a beat in time, “just like going to sleep… no fear.” Having done her good deed for the night, the agent stood up, turned her back on them and walked away.

  Mallory was not a believer in kind lies to grieving parents. She had a clear picture of a little girl with a pounding heart, watching, wild with fear, as the blood flowed from her slashed throat to run like a river down her dress and splatter her shoes. And she could even see the terror in Melissa’s eyes as she was dying.

  All through the night, Mallory stayed to cradle Mrs. Hardy, lightly rocking her, patiently waiting for this woman to work through the lies. It was hard to fool a mother for very long; and Mallory should know, for she had two of them: Cassandra, who had borne her, and Helen, who had fostered her. Mothers knew things. They were spooky and wondrous that way.

  On toward morning, Melissa’s mother cried fresh tears and said, “She must have been so frightened.”