Find Me (24 page)

“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.

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.

The beeping cell phone
startled Riker, but he was slow to open his eyes. The detective had no memory of crawling off to sleep last night, and now it was day. He awakened in the front seat of the Mercedes. Fortunately, Charles Butler was driving.

Riker pulled out his cell phone and said, “Yeah?” And now, with no pity, he listened to Kronewald’s own story of interrupted sleep in Chicago. “Where’d she call you from?… So our perp’s a car thief… Y eah, thanks.” He tossed the cell phone into the back seat, where it would not trouble him anymore. “Mallory’s in Kansas. Now where am I?”

“You’re approaching a travel plaza.”

Riker patted down his shirt pockets and he found a crumpled pack of cigarettes. “I guess this is weird for you, huh? I mean chasing Mallory.” He was still seeking a way back into the story of Charles’s last meeting with her, the one that had ended with a proposal of marriage.

“Well, I don’t t hink she expects to see me again.”

“So I’m guessing she didn’t let you down easy.” After a few miles of silence, Riker tried again. “Did she at least say good-bye?”

Charles steered the Mercedes onto the exit road for the travel plaza. “That night after dinner, I walked Mallory home, and she kissed me.” He pointed to his left cheek to indicate that this had not been a moment of passion. “Later-a month later-when she wouldn’t return phone messages or answer the door, I realized that the kiss-
that
was good-bye.” Charles pulled into the large parking lot. “Lunchtime.”

This place was also a rendezvous point for the FBI. Riker’s first giveaway clue was the slew of government cars and the rentals favored by feds in the parking lot. He checked out the young people near these vehicles, almost standing at attention. There were no agency logos in sight, though their clothing approached a kind of uniform in the similarity of blue jeans, hiking boots and navy blue jackets that were missing only the initials of the Bureau. The colors of their T-shirts varied, but the detective gave them no points for this lame attempt at disguise.

“Mallory’s not in Kansas anymore,” said Charles Butler.

Riker turned his head to the other window in time to see Mallory glide across the parking lot with the top down on her silver convertible. And he could not speak nor even move. This was the culmination of night-into-day worries and tension. Finally, the road-weary detective managed to stumble from the Mercedes, and then he treated everyone in the lot to an explosion of involuntary emotion.

Mallory was on foot and heading for the door of the restaurant when she recognized that loud, laughing voice. She turned to face Riker. He walked unsteadily, approaching her V o lkswagen Beetle and pointing at the roll bar. The other hand was holding his side where the laughter had caused him a stitch of pain. An impartial observer might have likened the man’s outburst to hysteria, for he could not stop himself. He was so happy, he was in tears.

Later, he would put his mistake down to lost sleep, but now he committed the worst error on Mallory’s scorecard of crimes against her- derision. He pointed to her convertible and said, maybe a bit too loud, “A
roll bar
on a
VW
?” When laughter subsided long enough to speak again, Riker said, “I’ve seen it all. I can die now.”

Mallory glared at him, perhaps with an idea for arranging this early demise.

He yelled, “Hey, kid! Yo u planning to
race
this car?” His best line spent, he was truly helpless, leaning against the side of her Vo lkswagen for support. He was enjoying himself so much that he thought he might fall down.

In icy calmness, the control freak turned her back on him with not even a word of hello after all this time when they had not seen one another.

Charles Butler appeared at his side, saying, “Uh, that might’ve been over the top. I’ll just explain to her that you were tired and overwrought.”

“Oh, come
on.
” Riker slapped the roll bar, saying, “
This
is funny.”

“I have another theory.” Charles was watching the wide window of the restaurant. “Wait-she’s going into the ladies’ room.” He pointed toward her car. “Can we take a look under the hood?”

“If that car’s got an alarm-and I promise you it does-Mallory won’t even bother to step outside. She’ll just shoot you through that plate-glass window, and then she’ll order a cheeseburger.”

In a test of this theory, with one pull on the handle, the car door opened quietly for Charles.

“Bad sign,” said Riker. “Normally, the kid’s too paranoid to leave a car unlocked.” And now she had walked away from an open convertible. He leaned inside to search for the hood release and found it. He noticed that the dashboard was oddly absent Mallory’s usual road show of technology toys. There were no built-in computers, no global navigator, only a police scanner, but who, besides his anti-tech traveling companion, did not own one of those?