Forgotten (2 page)

“Ridiculously so,” Portia assured her. “Everything you’ve read and more.”

“Damn,”
Miranda whispered between tightly clenched teeth.

THREE

T
he black SUV eased into the first reserved parking spot, the name on which read simply,
J. MANCINI
. No first name, no title, but anyone arriving at this nondescript four-story redbrick building in a Baltimore suburb knew that the J stood for John, and that John Mancini was the head man in one of the FBI’s most elite investigative units. The SUV’s engine was cut, the driver’s door opened, and a man emerged carrying a briefcase in one hand and a take-out cup of coffee in the other. He slammed the car door shut with his elbow and was inside the building in less than half a dozen long strides. He greeted the security guard and headed straight for the elevator. He got off at the third floor and acknowledged his assistant, Eileen, by raising and tipping his cup as he hustled past her on the way to his office.

“Uh, John,” she called to him. “You have…”

“A conference call in fifteen minutes, I know.”

“Yes, but right now you have a visitor,” Eileen said softly, tilting her head in the direction of the modest reception area where a young woman sat watching.

As he turned to look, the woman got up and approached him.

“Mr. Mancini? You’re John Mancini?” she asked.

“Yes, I am.”

“Mr. Mancini, you wouldn’t remember me. My name is Lisa Williams,” she told him. “My brother was Christopher Williams. He…”

“I remember the name.” John nodded. “I remember your brother. We always thought he was one of Sheldon Woods’s victims but we couldn’t prove it.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “How is your mother?”

“Actually, I’m here because she asked me to find you.” The young woman’s eyes welled with tears.

“Here, come into my office.” John led her toward his door, then glanced back over his shoulder and said to Eileen, “Hold my calls for a few minutes, okay?”

Once inside his office, John dropped his briefcase on the floor next to his desk and closed the door.

“Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea?” he asked as he sat his own cardboard cup on the desk.

“No, nothing, thank you. I appreciate you seeing me without an appointment, and I’ll try not to take too much of your time.” Her voice quivered with emotion.

“You said your mother asked you to find me.” John sat on the corner of his desk. Less intimidating, he figured, than sitting behind it in that big leather chair his wife, Genna, had bought for his birthday last year.

“My mother is very sick, Mr. Mancini. She might have a few weeks left, not more than a month, according to her doctors.” Lisa took a tissue from her pocket and wiped her eyes.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. I admired your mother very much.” Madeline Williams’s valiant effort to have her son included on the list of Sheldon Woods’s victims was still clear in John’s mind. Woods had capped the list at thirteen—his “Baker’s Dozen,” he called them. But he wouldn’t admit to having killed Christopher Williams. For some reason, he’d adamantly refused to add that final name.

“My mother really believed that he’d killed Chris.”

“Well, she wasn’t alone in that. I believed it, too.” John’s head began to pound. The Woods case had changed his life. There was hardly a day that passed when he didn’t think about some aspect of it.

“Well, that’s what she asked me to talk to you about.” Lisa took a very deep breath. “She wants to know if you would please try one more time. If you would go to him and ask about Chris.”

“She wants me to ask Woods if he killed your brother?”

The young woman shook her head. “She knows he killed him, Mr. Mancini. She wants you to ask him where he left the body.”

After a long moment, he said quietly, “Lisa, I am probably the last person on the face of the earth that Sheldon Woods would give that information to.”

“But you got him to reveal where all those others were buried,” she protested.

“No, that’s not the way it happened. He gave up the others because that was the deal he and his attorney made with the prosecutor. That he’d tell where to find the remains of those thirteen boys in exchange for thirteen concurrent life sentences without parole, instead of the death penalty.” His voice dropped again. “I found him, I brought him in, but I was not involved in the bargaining. His attorney was the deal maker.”

“But you found the graves. I remember seeing the pictures in the newspapers and on TV…”

“Yes, I found the graves, and I was part of the recovery team. But I was responsible for arresting Sheldon Woods. He has no great love for me, Lisa.

He wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

“So what do I do now? What do I tell my mother?” Her face fell. “The only thing she wants before she dies is to find Chrissy. She wants to be buried next to him.”

John looked out the window and watched two squirrels chase each other around the trunk of a maple tree. For a moment he wished he was out there with them.

“Lisa, I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I don’t know how I can help you.”

She nodded her head and began to weep. “I understand. My mother just thought that maybe…”

John’s private line began to ring. He glanced at his watch. It was the call he was waiting for.

“I’m so sorry, but I have to take this.” He went behind his desk. “Leave your number with Eileen. Maybe I can think of something. I’ll give you a call if I do.”

“Thank you.” She backed out of the doorway, clutching the tissue in her hand. “Thank you so much, Mr. Mancini.”

P
ortia Cahill watched the elevator doors close and felt as much as heard the creak as it began its ascent. She blew out a long breath and resigned herself to the fact that she was going to receive an assignment she knew she wasn’t going to like. It almost didn’t matter what it was; domestic investigations just didn’t have the panache or sense of danger that undercover work had.

A weeping young woman was waiting for the elevator when the door opened on the third floor, and Portia held it for her before stepping into the quiet of a brief hall. Beyond a glass door to her left sat a receptionist, and after showing her ID, Portia was directed through a maze of gray fabric-covered cubicles and small peripheral offices to an area clearly presided over by a red-haired woman in her sixties.

The woman glanced up from her phone and did a double take when she saw Portia. Then, smiling, she pointed to a seating area and raised her index finger to indicate she’d be free in just a moment, though it seemed to Portia the woman took her time wrapping up the call. When she finally hung up, it wasn’t to address Portia but to make another call.

“Portia Cahill is here to see you,” the woman said into the receiver. Hanging up, she turned to Portia and said, “John can see you now, Agent Cahill. His is the door straight ahead.”

“You’re either a psychic or you know my sister,” Portia said as she passed the woman’s desk.

“Everyone knows your sister. Everyone knows she has an identical twin. Besides, John told me you’d be in this morning first thing.” The woman smiled broadly. “Welcome back, Agent Cahill. By the way, I like the short hair. I’m used to seeing Miranda with that long mane, but I do like the short cut.”

“Thank you. It was easier to take care of where I’ve been for the past few years…Eileen,” Portia added, reading the nameplate on the desk.

The woman nodded. “You’ve been gone for quite some time, I know. I’m new since your last stateside assignment.”

“All of this is new,” Portia noted, looking around at the spacious office. “Last time I worked for John, we were crowded into a little warren of offices in Virginia.”

“John thought—and the director agreed—that it was best all around to move the unit into space of its own. We’re close enough to headquarters to get something if we need it, but of course, with so much on the computers these days, we hardly…”

“Eileen, perhaps you could fill Agent Cahill in after we have our ‘welcome to the rest of your life’ chat.” John stood in his office doorway, his arms crossed over his chest. “I have to leave here in about thirty minutes.”

“Well, hopefully, it won’t take you that long to fill me in,” Portia said as she walked toward him. “How are you, John?”

He took the hand she offered him and sandwiched it between his own. “Couldn’t be better. I’m glad to see you, Portia. You look great. I guess all that covert stuff agreed with you.”

“Thanks. And yes, it did.” She followed him into his office. He closed the door and pulled out a chair for her.

“I’ve heard you were very good at what you did over there. Your superior was very unhappy to transfer you out.”

Portia’s face hardened slightly. “He didn’t really have to…I mean, he could have found something else for me to do. I shouldn’t have had to leave.”

“You can’t seriously believe that.” John took his seat behind the desk and stared across at her. “Once your face is out there, once you’ve been identified, it’s over, Portia. That’s what
undercover
means. You get your face all over the British tabloids, that’s the end of it.”

She tried to mount a protest, but knew he was right, so she sat silent.

“Anyway, we’re glad to have an agent with your investigative skills back with our team. We have a lot going on right now.” He glanced at a stack of files on his desk. “Any particular area of interest?

We’ve got a couple of serial killers, a serial arsonist in Pittsburgh, serial rapist in South Carolina, abducted children in three states…”

Portia shrugged. “Whatever.”

John’s smile faded. “Your enthusiasm is over whelming me, Portia.”

“It’s no secret that I didn’t want to come back to domestic work, John. I don’t see any reason to pre tend that I’m thrilled to be here. But I will do what ever job you assign to me, and I’ll do it to the best of my ability.”

“If I thought otherwise, you’d be at home, polishing your résumé.” His stare ate right through her. She could feel his ire from across the desk.

“So we both know I’ll do a good job at whatever.” She averted her eyes. “Just give me my assignment and I’ll get on with it.”

“Let’s get one thing straight, Agent Cahill.” John’s voice dropped an octave and she raised her eyes to meet his. That stony gaze she’d seen trained on other agents who’d met with his disapproval was now turned on her. “I know you think the work you did undercover over there was much more important than anything you could be doing here. I get that. Counterterrorism
is
important. But the fact of the matter is that you are
here
rather than
there
because of a colossal blunder on
your
part. And while the domestic cases that we get may not require you to crawl through mountain passes on your stomach in the middle of the night or any of the other exotic things you may have experienced over the past few years, the work we do here is damned important.”

He paused, then added, “There’s a lot of misery in this world, Portia. A lot of pain. It isn’t all confined to the Middle East.” John leaned forward slightly, pronouncing each word slowly, distinctly, as if speaking to a child. “When you’re dealing with demons, it doesn’t matter where you find them or what language they speak. Torture is torture. Pain is pain. Fear is fear. It isn’t confined to one part of the globe. The demons are everywhere.”

Portia felt her face flush as she uncharacteristically struggled for a retort. By the time something came to her, John had moved on and was dialing an extension on his desk phone.

“Eileen, would you bring in the file we started this morning?” He replaced the receiver and turned back to Portia. “A situation came up today that I’m going to assign to you to look into before I give you anything else.”

“All right.” She sat up a little straighter and tried to look enthused, though she suspected he could see right through her. She’d worked with John be fore he’d been named the head of this elite unit, before she’d gone overseas. She knew without question that he was a good man, a great agent, and she had immense respect for him. He wasn’t an easy man to bluff. Still, she felt obligated to give it her best. She put on her most interested expression and sat back to listen.

“Back in nineteen ninety-six, the first of what be came a long series of child abductions was reported in Kingsley, Maryland. Over the following three years, several dozen young boys disappeared from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, New Jersey…” His face was taut, his eyes dark.

“Sheldon Woods. I remember,” Portia said to spare him from repeating the details. She knew the case well. It was the case that had almost ended John’s career, had almost taken his sanity, had al most cost him the woman he loved. There was no need for him to say more. Portia knew. “The press called him the Pied Piper. You worked it.”

He nodded and was quiet for a few minutes. Then he said, “Anyway, he admitted to killing a certain number of these missing boys…”

“Thirteen. A ‘Baker’s Dozen,’” she said softly.

“You do remember.” John looked out the window. “Thirteen sets of remains were found buried around the region. Woods made a big deal out of identifying each victim and his burial place. Wouldn’t
tell
where they were, he had to
show.
And wouldn’t give up the child’s name until they were at the grave site. Then he’d tell us who he’d buried there, how he’d abducted him. What he’d done to him…”

“Made you all listen…”

“It shook the soul of every man and woman who was there.” John continued to gaze at the sky.

Portia knew he was thinking about how Woods had latched on to John, the agent in charge, and had made his life a living hell, often calling John to taunt him, to force him to listen while he tortured and killed his victims. John had stoically seen the case through after finding Woods hiding in the basement of an abandoned bungalow in western Maryland. She’d heard how he’d made certain Woods was not touched except to handcuff him, that he’d been read his rights, that everything about the arrest was by the book. He’d completed the paperwork, he’d been present at the hearings. And once Woods had entered his plea and had been sentenced, John quietly disappeared for months while he tried to regain the bits and pieces of him self he’d lost through the ordeal.