Vanished (4 page)

Unlike the notes eighteen years ago, which had talked to the victim, this one was directed at the parents. In context, the change made sense, given the increased focus on the abduction stage.

But was it because the abductor had developed a taste for the actual abduction? Or because it was a new predator entirely? She’d pored over the case details from the three old abductions and the new one for more than an hour, but still wasn’t positive.

And that was the most important part of the profile she’d promised to deliver to the cops in less than two hours.

So far, what she knew were the statistics. She knew the chances of a child abductor going dormant for eighteen years and then starting up again were slim. She knew Brittany Douglas, at eleven years old, was the average age of child abduction and murder victims. Statistics said Brittany had first met her abductor within a quarter mile of her home. Statistics also said she’d been dead before Evelyn had even arrived in town.

But it didn’t matter how slim Brittany’s chances were; if there was any hope at all, Evelyn had to try.

A rush of cold swept over her in the too-warm hotel room, leaving behind an intense fear. The fear that she might fail.

Evelyn tried to ignore it as she picked up the photograph of Brittany Douglas. With her long, dark brown hair, hazel eyes and shy smile, Brittany looked nothing like Cassie. In fact, none of the victims looked alike. The only similarity was age and gender. And the fact that the killer either believed—or wanted police to think he believed—that their parents were neglecting them.

“Damn it!” Evelyn sprang to her feet, raking her hands through her bun so violently she’d have to fix it before she went back to the station. The most important case of her life and she was blowing it.

Was Dan right? Was she too inexperienced in child abduction cases to spot the important details? Too personally invested to see the case clearly?

Evelyn blew out a heavy breath. No, she could do this. She’d been training all her life for this case. She was going to put everything she had into it. She couldn’t consider the profile from eighteen years ago, couldn’t review the original suspects, because it might taint her analysis. Especially if this was a new abductor.

She had to rely on her training and the case evidence to tell her about the perpetrator. And even though Brittany’s abductor hadn’t left much behind, he’d left
something
of himself. They always did.

Dropping back onto the hotel bed where she’d spread out the case files, Evelyn lined up the four notes. Direct communication from the abductor could tell her a lot or it could lead her totally off track.

A smart perp, knowing the police were going to analyze the notes, would use them to misdirect the investigation. And everything about this case, from the lack of forensic details to the high-risk abduction right out of the child’s front yard, screamed that this was an intelligent perp who planned carefully.

But the notes also had an odd intensity about them. He was taunting, yes, but there was more to it. The abductor had left clues to his identity in the words. And Evelyn vowed that would be his undoing.

She glanced at her watch again. Ninety-eight minutes and counting. Somehow, in that time, she needed to figure out whether the original Nursery Rhyme Killer was back or if they had a copycat.

* * *

The Rose Bay Police Station’s briefing room was jammed full. Cops, both in uniform and in street clothes, watched her, all with exhaustion slouching their shoulders and fear lurking in their eyes. FBI CARD agents stood stiffly among them, trying to look confident. The smell of sweat and dirt, of too many bodies packed too closely together, overwhelmed the inefficient air-conditioning. The buzz of voices came to an instant halt as Evelyn stepped up to the front of the room.

She gripped the podium with slick hands. She’d given hundreds of profiles in her year’s tenure with BAU, but she suddenly felt all of twelve again.

She had an instant flashback to the last time she’d been at the Rose Bay Police Station. She remembered sitting on a plastic chair, her feet dangling. She’d held tight to her grandpa’s hand on one side and her grandma’s on the other while the cops asked unending questions. Did she remember anything unusual from the day Cassie had gone missing? Had she ever seen Cassie talk to a stranger? Did she know anything that could help them bring Cassie home?

Now, just like then, those answers seemed elusive.

Someone in the audience coughed loudly, bringing Evelyn back to the present. She looked over the sea of law enforcement officers, and jerked backward at the animosity she saw in one cop’s eyes.

Jack Bullock. It had to be. He was in his midforties now, not the rookie who’d questioned her until she’d cried so many years ago. But there was no mistaking the too-sharp planes of his face, the deep-set brown eyes, the thick shoulders stacked on a stocky body. The thin streaks of silver through his brown hair and the lines etched deep into his forehead were new, but not the intimidating glare.

Evelyn redirected her gaze. “I’m Evelyn Baine, from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. My job is to review the evidence in your case to give you a new perspective—a behavioral portrait of your perpetrator. I’m here to tell you how he thinks, why he’s choosing his victims and what he’ll do next.”

The officers seemed to lean forward as one, glancing at one another as if to gauge their colleagues’ reactions to her. At the front of the crowd, Tomas was listening carefully, his deep-brown eyes filled with too much hope, too much expectation.

She prayed she could provide him and his officers with what they needed to find Brittany. Looking down at the profile she’d furiously finished minutes before racing back to the station, Evelyn began. “Your perpetrator is a male in his late forties or fifties. He’s almost certainly white.”

“Why?” someone from the back of the room called.

“Why do I say he’s white? Frankly, because High Street is still all white. Someone who’s not would be noticed, even now.”

“
Even
now? Does that mean he’s been here before? Is it the same guy from eighteen years ago?” Tomas’s voice vibrated with dread.

Nervous whispering rippled through the room.

“I’ll get back to that.” She knew discussing those details first would distract everyone. And she didn’t want them to miss anything that could help them find Brittany.

“First, let’s talk about how the abductor fits in. He lives close by, either here or in a nearby community, and has for a long time. It’s possible he moved away and came back, but he’s recognized here. He’s accepted as belonging, which gives him a plausible reason to be in the vicinity of the crime scene.”

“Hold on,” Jack demanded. “You think the asshole we’re looking for
belongs here
? He’s well liked?”

“Probably. It’s unlikely he has a lot of close friends, but he is socially competent. He doesn’t stand out. If asked about him, people would probably describe him as being decent, and if not likable, at least not unlikable. And he’s intelligent. He doesn’t act inappropriate around children, although a closer look into his background may reveal a suspicious incident. I’ll get into that later, when we talk about motivation.”

“This guy is grabbing
kids
,” the officer beside Jack argued. “How can he be decent?”

“I didn’t say he
was
decent,” Evelyn clarified. “Just that people
view
him that way. We’re not talking about the usual suspects here, because this guy is too smart to attract attention to himself. When we find him, people aren’t going to say they always thought something was off about him. Quite the opposite. Everyone will be shocked, because he’s been living among you.”

Officers shuffled, looking down at their feet, frowning. When they looked back up at her, their faces showed a mixture of trepidation, wariness and disbelief.

“The offender drives a vehicle that doesn’t stand out, and it is conducive to hiding someone inside. It could be a van with tinted windows or a sedan with ample trunk room. He also has a job with flexible hours. He works for himself, has hours that change, or a job that would require him to be away from the office for periods of time. The kind of thing where people wouldn’t notice unusual absences.”

“But Brittany was taken at night,” an officer near the podium pointed out. “Why would he need to miss work during the day?”

“Because he stalked her first. This offender is a planner. He knew Brittany’s routine and her family’s schedules. He wrote this note
in advance
and it fit the situation when she was abducted. She was in the yard alone at that time. And he knew she would be, because he’d watched it happen before. So he waited for the right time to grab her.”

Evelyn glanced around at the attentive officers and added, “He’s probably developed a ruse to approach children. He may have used it when he abducted Brittany, so she wouldn’t be concerned when he approached her in the yard, or he may have used it beforehand, to test her response. A lot of serial criminals do this, especially those who target strangers.”

“I thought you said this guy was known in the community?” Carly Sanchez spoke up, her voice clear and loud.

“Yes, but not necessarily to the children he’s abducting. So, he may try to test them. A child who’s eager to please or naive about strangers is a more likely candidate than one who’s street-savvy. Of course, this is also dependent on his motivation.”

“Which is what?” Carly pressed.

Evelyn wished she had one absolute answer for them. “There are two possibilities,” she began. “The first is that his motivation is exactly what he’s telling us in the notes—that he believes the child is being neglected. If that’s the case, he sees himself as her savior. And he has a tragedy in his own past involving an important young female. It could be a daughter, a sister or someone else he cared for deeply. He’s using that loss to justify his actions now.”

Jack jumped in. “What’s the other possibility?”

“Well, as I said, this offender is intelligent. He may be leaving the notes to throw us off track. And if that’s the case, then his true motivation is molestation.”

“Damn it,” Jack burst out. “We’ve got to go talk to Wiggins again.”

Before Evelyn could ask who Wiggins was, Carly demanded loudly, “Which do you think it is?”

“I don’t know.” It galled her, but pretending to have the answer when there wasn’t enough behavioral evidence to conclusively support either option would do more damage than admitting the truth.

Except perhaps to the stock these officers put in her profile, Evelyn thought ruefully as Jack shouted, “Isn’t it your job to know?”

The room went quiet, and Evelyn tried to pretend it didn’t bother her. “When I know more, so will you. But it’s possible both motivations are right. If the abductions are driven by molestation, the offender might have tried to convince
himself
as well as us that he’s saving his victims. An excuse he tries to believe to make himself feel better.”

Jack just scowled at her, but Tomas cut in. “What about the connection to the earlier abductions? You said you’d tell us if this was the same abductor.” He rubbed a hand across his temple and asked, “Is it?” as though he was afraid to hear the answer.

“Yes.”

Evelyn had expected an eruption of voices, but instead Tomas’s voice, barely above a whisper, seemed to echo as he asked, “Are you sure this isn’t a copycat?”

“Yes.” She’d gone over it again and again in her hotel room and it was the only way to explain the similarities.

“Take the notes, to start. I know there’ve been a few false confessions over the years, and those people always knew nursery rhymes were left at the scene, because that was in the papers. But the station has done a good job of keeping exactly how the nursery rhymes were changed out of the press. And these notes are too similar—in tone, content, style, everything—to be from a copycat.”

“Damn it,” she heard Tomas muttering, new stress in his voice.

“I’d like to have an expert in handwriting from the FBI give a second opinion, but the notes are our best indicator. And this perpetrator just knew too much to be a copycat.”

She frowned down at her profile, not really seeing the words, not really needing them. “The abductions are also much too similar to be a coincidence. The lack of forensic evidence and the pattern of abducting the child from her own property late in the evening or at night after stalking her first suggest a patient, determined predator.”

She surveyed the room, wanting everyone to understand why she’d concluded that they were looking for the same person. “I reviewed all the evidence from this case first, separately from the older cases. And everything about this abduction points to someone who’s done it before. It was way too savvy for a first abduction, and way too close in the details from the older cases that were never released to the public.”

“And he’s either molesting these girls or trying to ‘save’ them, whatever that means?” an officer asked.

“That’s right. Although, this time around, his motivation has definitely shifted. With this latest abduction, he’s enjoying the actual act of kidnapping more. He’s fantasizing about it beforehand and it’s part of the thrill, maybe as much as his ultimate motivation of molestation or his idea of saving them.”

“Then why did he stop for so long?” Tomas asked, his voice even wearier than it had been a few minutes earlier.

“There are a number of possibilities.” Evelyn ticked them off on her fingers. “He was jailed for another crime and recently released. He’s had an illness that prevented him from carrying out the abductions and he’s since gotten well. Or he was otherwise prevented from carrying them out for a period of time—because, for example, someone in his life would have noticed.”

It looked like Jack was going to interrupt, so she said quickly, “It’s also possible he didn’t really stop. If it’s molestation he’s after, he might have had an available victim in his life, like a family member. Or he obtained a position in the community that gave him easy access to children. He could have moved away for a while and still been abducting children without leaving the notes, so the cases weren’t connected. Or he was abducting children who wouldn’t be missed at all.”