UNSEEN (13 page)

He jogged back toward the stairwell. There was no way he would make it to the bottom floor in time. What was he going to do with a baby? He had to get back over to his sister's apartment. He had to find Gabe. He didn't have time to track down this baby's mother.

As he approached the stairwell door, he noticed the baby had stopped crying. He creaked it open.

The baby, and the blanket, were gone.

Chapter 14

Holly's head pounded, and her tongue felt like a foreign object in her mouth. She watched Dan with weary eyes as he brought a tray of food for her. She hadn't really seen him in over two years. He was more muscular than she remembered, and his boyish face now had a growth of thick dark hair on it. Was this the nerd she remembered from high school, the gangly class clown who sat in the back corner of the room reading comic books? His eyes looked darker, and his brows thicker.

A news break came on, and Holly's attention shifted to the television. A horrible picture of her was being shown in a tiny box above the newscaster's left shoulder. He spouted off details of the kidnapping as one might list items they need at the grocery store. As usual, there was nothing helpful to glean from it. It was the same story repeated for those who had missed it the first ten times.

There was a knock at the door and Jake pushed through with Dan’s laptop tucked under his arm. "What'd I miss?" he said.

Holly looked at the tray Dan had brought; sandwich, chips... She reached for the Pepsi. "We haven't heard anything."

"
How's the mob out there?" Dan asked.

"
There's a lot more of them, it’s kinda creepy. They're just milling around chatting. I expected more drama." He handed the computer to Dan. "Let's get this set up."

Dan took it into the kitchen and set it on the table. Jake and Holly followed.

Holly leaned against the wall, even though she needed to sit. Her legs felt like they were going to buckle, but she didn't want to miss anything on the computer screen. "Dan said you went to get this so we could look at some websites? Figure some things out?"

Dan gave Jake a weird look. It was so brief, she wondered if it had happened at all.

"
Yeah," said Jake. "We want to look up information on this serial killer, maybe see something the FBI missed."

Dan sat down, plugged the laptop into his phone, and clicked some buttons in rapid succession. The desktop appeared on the screen. "Let's start with a search and see what we get for hits." He brought something else up and searched for "Cape murderer.”

"
The top hit," said Dan, "looks like a site dedicated to serial killers."

Jake leaned in. "Let's see what they have on this guy."

Dan clicked some things and scrolled down a few pages. "This is perfect. There are articles and photos from dozens of serial killer cases in here." He scrolled down another page. "Here we go. The Cape murderer."

Jake looked at Holly. "You sure you want to see this?"

She was caught off guard by the question. A hidden barrier had gone up inside her, protecting her, shielding her from thinking about Gabe directly, but this question chipped away at that barrier. If she viewed these pictures, she would be forced to remember that her son could already be dead like these children. She would be forced to remember that horrible emotionless white mask, those dead evil eyes. Did she have the strength to see the possible end her son may yet face?

She gripped the cold soda can. "I have to, Jake. I have to know if there is anything here that will save my son."

"
All right, Holly, but you tell us if you need to stop." He looked down at Dan. "Go ahead."

Dan clicked through dozens of pictures before Jake stopped him. "Which one is this?"

Dan read from the description of the photo. "Carmen Thomas, victim number three."

"
She's the chubby blond one?"

Holly noticed the look again. It was as if Dan wanted to ask her brother a question, but stopped himself. She might have missed it if she was watching the computer screen with them, but she could only bear a few quick glances at a time.

Jake squinted at the screen. "Are there better pictures of the children? Like home photos?"

"
Why?" asked Holly. "Why are you so interested in what the children look like?"

Jake looked up at her, and there was a fraction of a pause. "Just curious. Why?"

"
Curious," she parroted. He was hiding something. She didn't know what, but the two of them knew something and were keeping it from her. She wasn't blind. She could see their non-verbal communication. She could see Dan's hesitation and Jake's reassuring hand moving to rest on his shoulder.

Jake spoke in an even tone. "Let's take a peek at the children and see if there are any physical similarities."

Holly squinted at him. He’d said that before during the meeting with Agent Grant. Did he have a lead? If he did, why would he hide it? She folded her arms. "Okay, what are you two up to?"

Jake masked a guilty look. He was such a terrible liar. "We're just looking for clues. If you have a better idea, I'm all ears."

"
Agent Grant said there were no physical similarities between the children. Why are you still on this? Do you know something?"

He grimaced. "What do you mean? Why would I hide anything from you?"

"
Jake, you can't lie to save your life. You've always been bad at it. You two know something and you're keeping it from me."

Dan twisted around now to add his look of indignation to the pile.

"
Fine," she snapped. "Keep your secrets." She leaned back against the counter and let them know, with no uncertain body language, that she was not happy with whatever game they were playing.

Jake and Dan gave each other a look, as if they were wondering what her problem was, then promptly returned to scanning the webpage. With each image of the children, Jake’s face grew more and more perplexed.

"
I'm guessing you didn't find what you were looking for," said Holly.

Jake put his hands on his hips. "Agent Grant was right. There’s no similarity."

"
Now what?" said Dan.

Jake slumped down into a chair. "I don't know."

Holly fumed. "That was your plan? Look at pictures of the other victims and then give up? Don't they have bios or something? Let's find out where they lived, who their parents were, where they went to school. There has to be some connection between them."

"
The FBI would have already done that."

"
Well let's do it again! Maybe they missed something!"

Dan clicked through more pages and read what he found. All the children had a single mom who collected welfare. The kids were all between two and six, which they already knew, and the author noted that each of the mothers had sought counseling from their local women’s clinic.

Holly remembered the haunting accusations of the killer, and how they centered on the choice she had made to keep Gabe. He assumed she had made the choice out of weakness, but it wasn't. It was the hardest thing she had ever done. It would have been so easy to make the problem go away. She was told by the State-funded clinic that it would be quick and discreet.

No one would ever know—not even her mother. Anyone above the age of thirteen was considered, in this circumstance, to be an adult; no parent signature was needed. Her mother didn't need to know. Her boyfriend didn't need to know. Her friends didn't need to know. Her reputation would have remained unscathed by the scandal of a teen pregnancy. But she’d made the hard choice and gave up everything to have Gabe.

How odd it seemed to her now that the sweet middle-aged woman at the clinic and this cold-blooded killer would share the same ideology. The woman at the clinic never once suggested that she should keep her baby. Instead, she took every opportunity to reinforce Holly's doubts about herself. She wasn't ready to have a child. What kind of life would she give a baby? What kind of mother would she be? Sure, she said it in a sweet gentle voice and with great compassion, but they were the words of a killer.

"
Are you okay, Holly?" Jake had noticed her mood change.

"
I think there is a connection with the clinic. I don't know how, but I think there is."

"
What are you thinking?"

"
I don't know. It's just a weird feeling I have about that place. The killer obviously has a real problem with mothers who aren't ready to be mothers. You should have heard him. It was like he was angry at me for choosing to have Gabe, like his life with me was so horrible it wasn’t worth living—just because I was his mom. He said it was better to kill him than let him live the life I chose for him."

"
Don't let him get in your head, Holly. He's a whack job."

"
He knew exactly what to say."

"
Have you shared those thoughts with anyone? A boyfriend maybe?"

She shrugged.

"
You must have said something to someone."

"
I didn't even know I had those thoughts until he started accusing me."

"
What men have had contact with Gabe in the past year? Has anyone new come into his life? Anyone who might be connected to the clinic?"

"
I don't know, Jake. I know a lot of guys. But I don’t believe any of them are capable of something like this. Sure, they're a bunch of losers, but they're good guys."

Jake remained diplomatically silent.

"
I know you don't approve of my friends, Jake, but they're good people."

"
I'm not saying they aren't."

"
But you're not saying they are, either."

"
Let's not get into this again, okay? Gabe is out there somewhere in the hands of a very bad man, and we need to figure out who this guy is."

She wanted to be angry; she needed someone to lash out at. It hurt to keep the emotion inside. But Jake was right. She had to get hold of herself and concentrate on finding her son.

"
What else is on that website?" she said.

Dan turned back to the screen and scanned through more articles and more photos. Some of the images were from the crime scenes. Holly had to turn away twice to recompose herself. It was desperately hard to look at the dead bodies of the other children. One shot in the head. One found in a dumpster wrapped in plastic. But she forced her eyes to return to the screen each time, if only for the briefest of moments.

"
Wait!" She pointed. "Go back to that last picture." She came in and gripped Dan by the shoulders. "I don't believe it!"

Jake scanned the photo on the screen. It was a police barricade with one of the victims, a little boy, lying on the ground. Professional men stood around the body as bystanders watched with intense expressions.

"
What do you see, Holly?"

She stabbed at the screen. "There! The man in the yellow shirt. I know him. That's my roommate’s boyfriend!"

Chapter 15

Angela Grant stood when the detective came out of the interrogation room. He set his coffee mug on one desk and his butt on another.

The edges of his mouth disappeared into his bushy mustache. "If this is the guy, he is the best actor I've ever seen, and the most nerved up basket-case I've ever seen. He's already confessed to three crimes unrelated to this case, and I'm sure if I pressed him, he'd confess to a dozen more, even if he didn’t do them."