by Alex Gates
The tension scratched my skin. The others took the harsh words in stride, but Ben shared my glance. The notes on the Gibson family hadn’t mentioned any marital strife. Not that tragedy united families anyway, especially when children were involved. Bad marriages stayed together for the kids. Good marriages were destroyed when they were lost.
“Mrs. Gibson is right.” I stared at Tim as I said it. Probably the first time he’d heard any sort of authority say such a thing. “We have a new lead, but the change in command was a mutual decision. Detective Simms felt stepping aside would better serve your families. Detective Chase and I are here now—fresh eyes on the case.”
Tim wasn’t impressed. “Heard that before. We want some fucking answers. It’s been years. No one has a goddamned clue what happened to our kids. And now that freak is just…running through the neighborhood—picking his next little girl. Someone’s gotta do something.”
“Before we do it ourselves,” David said.
His honesty made the threat more dangerous. The room quieted.
“Oh!” A pocket-sized woman with baby cheeks and blue eyes leapt off the couch. She called for one of her boys to fetch her purse and rooted through the inside. “I brought this.”
My heart raced, but Michelle Carter only handed me a picture of Sophia from her birthday party—probably the last photo taken of the poor thing.
At least…by her family.
“We found this,” Michelle said, breathlessly. “Look. Her hair is in a ponytail. So far, we’ve only given you pictures of her with long hair. But she usually wore it back. Maybe that’ll help. You know…focus on her face more. And my husband…” She pointed to the skinny man on the couch. “He was able to Photoshop a couple of the pictures. We changed her hair color. Darker, lighter, red. Just in case he’s dyed her hair. We heard…” Her voice cracked. “They said he’d dyed her hair.”
Ben turned away and pretended to study the photographs on the wall. I couldn’t blame him for the distraction. My heart was already broken for these families. How many other ways could it shatter?
I took the picture. “Thank you. I’ll make sure we add it to the file.”
Michelle nodded, but her husband twisted to her side. Thin, bony, and still nudging his nose like he wasn’t used to exchanging his glasses for contacts yet, Jason Carter twitched. Nervous energy thrummed through him. He crossed and uncrossed his arms. The man seemed to exist on caffeine at this point. Neither he nor his wife looked like they had slept in the five months since Sophia’s disappearance.
“What exactly are you doing?” Jason asked. “Do you think you can find this guy? I mean…we need something. Anything, Detective.”
“We’re going to do all we can,” I said. “Look through every piece of evidence. Rework the scenes.”
Jason groaned. “You’ve already done that. Again and again. After every kidnapping. If it wasn’t bad enough that Alyssa was taken, we went through the same exact process when he grabbed Kaitlyn. And then our baby…” He cleared the frustration from his voice. “How are you going to be able to find her when she was kidnapped from a birthday party with thirty people in attendance? Explain to me how no one saw anything.”
The others awaited my answer. I had none to give. “Every aspect of the case needs to be reexamined. I’ll build another profile by reading the girls’ files again—”
“Oh, the files.” Jason didn’t swear—couldn’t with the boys listening—but he made an awkward sound in his throat. “What is the file telling you?”
“Everything we know about the case and the girls.”
“But you don’t know anything about the girls. Simms didn’t bother asking. Didn’t know that I got my Sophia a bike for her birthday. Little pink tassels. A bell. Just like she’d asked for. It was all she could talk about.” He groaned. “She was taken ten minutes before I finished building it. Can you believe that? If I had just built her damn bike the day before…she’d have been riding it right there in the street where I could have watched her. Made sure she was okay.”
“Don’t,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”
“I don’t know what you want from us.” His voice rose. It wasn’t panic anymore, just a furious desperation. “Nothing we tell you seems to help. You know where we last saw her. What she was wearing. Who was with her. Doesn’t matter.” He bit his lip. “But I’ll tell you what matters to us. Sophia hated peanut butter, but she liked it with jelly. So she’d scrape it off the bread every day at lunch until she had just the right amount that it blended with the sandwich but didn’t make her gag. She spent hours sitting in our kitchen, reading Harry Potter to our twelve-year-old dog, even though the damn thing had been deaf for three years.” He tried not to cry. Failed. “She wanted to be a horse when she grew up, and when we told her that wasn’t possible, it broke her heart. So, I promised her…I said I’d get her a whole farm with horses. All brown horses with white spots, the ones she liked. As many as I could find.”
I could do nothing for these families but listen.
And so I did. I let him vent. I let him talk about his daughter.
And in the end, it didn’t help.
Michelle hugged her boys. Amy stared into the fireplace. Heather lowered her head, her tears irritating Tim. He shoved a box of Kleenix at her and told her to weep in the bathroom.
“I know it’s absolutely heart-wrenching,” I said. “But I’m going to do everything I can to get them home safely.”
“That’s not good enough,” Jason bit back. “This is my daughter we’re talking about!”
David turned from the window, his voice low. “You’re not the only one who lost a child.”
“She’s not lost!” Amy’s shrill cry stilled the room. Her eyes—flat and tearless—betrayed a hidden pain. “She’s not lost. She’s alive. We have to keep hoping that they’ll be saved.”
“If they can be saved.” Michelle sunk onto the couch, head in her hands. “God. Who would want to live through what they’ve experienced? I almost wish…I wish Sophia…”
I stopped her before she’d say something she’d never forgive herself for uttering.
“You can’t become despondent,” I said. “They need you. I need you. Here’s my plan. All three of your girls were taken off this street—each abducted three to four years apart. That’s a long time for man to stalk each family, and more than enough time for him to make a mistake. Yes, we think there’s no witnesses and no evidence, but there must be something hidden that we haven’t seen, something we couldn’t have imagined before. I’m going to work with each of you to gain a more accurate profile of what happened. Together, we might find something in the past that correlates to the kidnapping. Something you didn’t see before. Something you never thought to mention.”
David wasn’t a man who hid his anger well. His scowl darkened the entire living room.
“Are you saying…this is our fault?”
“No. Not at all.”
“That we forgot something? That we never told you all the facts?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He shook his head. “Oh, I know exactly what you meant. You think we were too stupid to realize that some maniac was stalking our homes.”
Ben chose to speak, redirecting some of his rage. “We never said that, Mr. Wicker.”
“But you’re thinking it! Both of you. Your whole worthless department. You think we did something wrong. That we didn’t see him coming for our kids. That we forgot to tell you something important. That we were too naïve to keep our kids safe!”
This wasn’t going well.
The other families stiffened, sympathizing with David. I couldn’t lose them too.
I dropped the pleasantries. “Mr. Wicker, I assure you. I’m here to help.”
He didn’t believe me. “Then get it through your skull. Some sick pervert is out there. He picked a street at fucking random from a map, and he took our girls. We told you everything we know, and it’s been seven years. Seven. An
d my daughter still isn’t home!”
Ben tried to help. “We’re investigating a new lead now. We may have found someone who knows more about the girls. But these things take time—”
“Who?” Jason leapt from the couch. Michelle took his hand, both gasping a relieved breath. “What is it? Can we do anything? Is it someone we know?”
“We have to investigate further.” I could have strangled Ben. He gave them hope so I could stomp it under my boot. “I’m sorry, I have no information for you now, but I may in the coming days. We’ll be able to widen the scope of the investigation—”
“Bullshit,” David spat. “She won’t tell us what she’s doing. No one tells us a goddamned thing. Don’t believe a single word she says.”
“I can promise you…” I tried to meet everyone’s gazes. No one lifted their heads. “I promise. I will tell you everything I know as soon as I can verify it, as soon as I think it might help to find your girls.”
“We don’t want your promises, Detective.” David’s voice lowered. “We want you to do your goddamned job. Bring them home.” A pause. He sneered, pushing past me to leave the room. “Or don’t come back.”
A door slammed from deeper in the house.
And the silence suffocated us all.
I still held the damn business cards. With a sigh, I left them on the table and gestured for Ben to follow.
“I’ll do all I can for your children.” It wasn’t a promise. It was the truth. “Don’t give up hope.”
Amy shuffled from the couch to guide us into the hall. She led us to the door but stopped me before I stepped outside.
I’d never seen such sadness in a woman’s eyes.
“I know you want to try…but I don’t think you’re going to find them, Detective.” She leaned her head against the door and swallowed her tears. “Empty promises don’t fill empty graves.”
7
Ever the optimist.
I bet you even taste sweet.
-Him
The kidnapper wasn’t a man, he was a monster.
I thought reading over Simms’ files would be easier to…handle. Better than starting with the videos.
I was wrong.
The initial Missing Person report for each child broke my heart.
Alyssa, taken after leaving her school bus.
Kaitlyn, stolen from her bed during the night.
Sophia, captured in the middle of her ninth birthday party.
Why hadn’t anyone seen it happen? No one had any information. Not the parents or extended families. Not the friends or neighbors.
How did he do it?
How did he know the street so intimately? How could he understand the patterns and routines of the families? He must have blended in so well no one suspected he was the true deviant.
Or…
He studied his prey with such dedication that obsession didn’t begin to describe his level of fixation with the girls.
I pushed Kaitlyn’s file away. Her report had the least amount of information. The family went to bed, woke up in the morning, and Kaitlyn and her favorite teddy bear were gone.
I’d found the bear.
Where was she?
Ben dropped a load of dark folders on my desk. “Anything new?”
He didn’t apologize, but the sentiment was there. On the first day, we’d decided that more sensitive details of the case would be carried in different colored folders. Just so we wouldn’t be…
Any more traumatized.
Not that it mattered. The color couldn’t hide what the words said or pictures showed.
“Nothing yet.” I showed Ben the criminal file I’d pulled on Eddie. “He fits. He got out of jail in 2009. Plenty of time to fixate on a particular girl and begin tracking her.”
“One girl, maybe. But why keep going back to the same street? Where’s the benefit for him?”
“He’s sick, and he probably enjoys terrorizing the neighborhood. It works. The more girls he takes, the more are worrying that he’s coming for them. When he finally steals them, it’s not a surprise. They’ve expected it. They’ve resigned themselves to it. It’s a form of control before he even removes them from their homes.”
“You really think that?”
“It worked on me.”
Ben made a face. “That freak? Did you know…did you think he was coming after you?”
I cleared my throat. How was I to answer without sounding like a complete idiot who deserved to be captured? “Not at the time. It was just a warning around the campus. But if I had been more aware…watched my surroundings.”
“And when he grabbed you?”
Most people knew better than to ask for the details.
And even less heard them.
The memories hadn’t dulled with time or fear or shock. They never would. I only feared speaking them aloud would pull me back into that darkness.
“He kept me in a butchery, in a place permanently stained with blood.”
“Did you think he’d…” He shrugged. “Eat you?”
Only once the knife had sliced over my belly. I’d survived, but the scars remained. I hated them more than any morbidly curious question.
“He wanted to kill me,” I said. “But I was a twenty-year-old woman, not a child. They’ll be far more compliant for their captor.”
“A girl like you? Bet you gave him hell.”
No. That hell was what made a girl like me.
I checked my watch. Three o’clock. Too early to leave, too late for lunch. I pulled a Powerbar from my bag. Ben took the second without asking. So much for my dinner.
My cell rumbled. I checked the message. James.
Any luck?
If only. I swiped the screen and returned the message as Ben brushed his crumbs over my desk.
“That Secret Agent Novak?”
“He’s not a secret agent,” I said. “And he prefers Doctor.”
“Kinky.”
“Think I hear your phone ringing. Better check it.”
Ben plucked a picture frame from my desk. I took it back, but he tapped the photo, snorting at the happy smiling couple. My first vacation with James. We’d made it all the way to New York without stopping to check either of our emails. Even managed to get two days into the four-day trip before we were both paged home. We considered the vacation a success.
“When are you gonna tell the doc that you aren’t marrying him?”
My phone rattled to the floor. “Excuse me?”
Ben retrieved it for me. “You’re not the marrying type, hotshot.”
“You know my type?”
“If you were gonna marry the man, you’d have already done it. Guy like that? He’s a dream. Girl would be lucky to have him.”
“Do you want to marry him?”
“I could do a lot worse.”
The insult cut deep. “Not that it’s any of your business—or even appropriate to talk about—but I happen to love James.”
“I never said you didn’t love him. Said you were too fucked in the head to get married.”
“No, I’m not.” I lied.
“Look, if I was almost butchered alive, and the only man offering to marry me was the profiler who had tweaked around in the killer’s head…” He hesitated. “I’d be hesitant too.”
I’d elope right then to prove him wrong.
But James probably wouldn’t see the romance in that.
“Listen here, Alimony,” I said. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. Do you even have an ex-wife? Rumor is, you only tell people you were married so they stop asking why you live alone in an RV.”
Ben was open, honest, and casual about his personal life, and somehow I was the freak.
“Heartbroken at twenty-eight,” he said. “I swore off women. Makes me kinda tragic.”
“No. Just pitiful.”
“We’ll start a club—Self-Sabotagers Anonymous.”
Like hell. “I’m getting married.”
“I’ll toss fi
fty bucks on that.”
Game on. “You’ll still have to pick a present from the registry.”
He grinned. “I’ll get you the biggest gravy boat at Bed Bath and Beyond.”
My phone mercifully rang. I answered with a relieved sigh, “McKenna.”
“Hey, Detective.” The baritone was familiar, but he didn’t stop to chat. “This is Johnson over in Zone One. I might have found something you’re looking for over at Beechwood Elementary.”
I leaned forward. “You’re making me a very happy woman.”
“You’re the first. I’ve located a blue 2005 Jeep Cherokee, license matching the memo you sent out.”
“Holy shit.” I covered the receiver and called to Ben. “Get up. We got Eddie.”
“Want us to approach?” Johnson asked.
“No. He’s technically a Missing Person. Keep an eye on him, but wait for us. He might…spook.”
“I’m not losing a visual on this creep. He’s got his sights on the playground. Couple kids over there.”
My heart sunk. “If he gets near them, grab him. He’s got a rap sheet that’ll turn your hair white.”
“You’re making some strange friends, London.”
“Always do.”
The car keys were in my pocket. Meant Ben was following me to the parking lot. We jumped in the car, and I peeled out, lights on just to cross the West End Bridge and skirt traffic up the two lane Saw Mill Run Boulevard.
I didn’t want to think this particular mission was blessed, but traffic wasn’t bad. We raced into Beechview in only ten minutes, more than enough time to sneak through a back alley bordering the school to circle Kirwin’s position.
We turned the lights off as we approached the school entrance. Patrol had stayed close, but not enough to scare him.
And there was the Jeep Cherokee, parked on the alley next to a derelict shed. Engine off.
Driver’s seat occupied.
He’d parked the vehicle at an angle, allowing him to stare directly into the playground. A couple kids bundled up in parkas attempted to roll down an uncooperative slide. The red and blue jungle gym entertained another child though his older brother took a tumble when his gloved hands slipped from the frozen monkey bars. Only three parents watched the swarm of ten kids. They paid more attention to their conversations and phones than the potential predator eying the laughing children.