Find Me (23 page)

“Okay, I get the point. I’ll talk to the feds.” Riker crumpled his empty paper cup in one fist. “I’ve still one missing parent.” He slipped behind the wheel of the Mercedes and drove off into the night, leaving his witless little flock to go out in search of the lamb that was lost.

The caravan city
had taken shape under Oklahoma skies, and the hour was late.

Agent Christine Nahlman watched the man and his wolf walking across the prairie well beyond the campsite. In terms earlier laid down by Detective Riker, this parent, who called himself Jill’s D ad, was allotted only fifteen minutes to exercise the animal, and his time was nearly up.

He had offered to camp by himself down the road, perhaps recogniz- ing his status as a pariah here-though not on account of the wolf. Other parents shied away from him because he carried no pictures of his lost child, and because his eyes had gone dead-and his hopes-all gone.

The agent looked at her watch. His time was up. She waved her flashlight to call him back into the fold.

Most of the campfires were burning low, and some had been extinguished in favor of acetylene heaters inside the tents. The smell of coffee hung in the air. The breeze carried it everywhere. Dr. Magritte was passing out paper cups, holding court with those who had not yet retired. He seemed to give these people comfort, but Agent Nahlman had no faith in his ability to keep them in line.

She watched the man and his wolf approaching the camp. One hand was on her gun; the other held a cell phone, though she was hardly listening to Dale Berman’s assessment of the day’s d amage-the missing parent that Riker had failed to find. He gave her no credit for the backup plan that had snagged four other strays.

“This wouldn’t have happened,” he said, “if you’d checked all those people into the hotel.”

“And if I’d put them up in the hotel, a lot more of them would’ve bolted, and they’d be scattered all over Route 66.” Her cell phone went dead. Sometimes she forgot that self-defense was against the rules. Later he would call her back. Dale Berman was predictable that way. He would pretend that they had never had this conversation-that she had not all but called him a screwup, and he would forgive her for the mistakes she had never made.

When the wolf had been safely locked up in the cab of the pickup truck, Agent Allen joined his partner, saying, “Why not call Animal Control? They’ll just take the wolf away.”

“This is Riker’s idea, and we owe him. So you’re on wolf watch tomorrow morning.”

He was unenthused.

And now, because every day was a school day for Barry Allen, she added, “Never miss an opportunity to do a favor for a cop. It makes them feel stupid when they butt heads with you.”

Nahlman sent her partner off to get some sleep while she took the first shift of guard duty with one of the moles. She spent the time checking license plates against the list made at the last stop. The caravan had not shrunken by five runaways-it had grown. But only the parents from the last campsite had the map for this place. She suspected that Dr. Magritte could clear up this little mystery, and she waited until he was done with the small band of parents around his campfire.

Twenty minutes later, when she approached the old man, he was quick to look up at her, his face full of fear. He must believe that she was bringing him bad news about the runaway parent code-named by Riker as Lost Lamb.

The FBI agent only wished that all of these people could be scared so easily. “Sir, your caravan is growing by the hour.”

“It’s all right. I know who the new people are.”

“You led them here, didn’t you-by phone?”

“Well, yes.” Dr. Magritte seemed relieved now, assured that she only wanted to lecture him and that no more of his people had died. “You see, not everyone could make the meeting in Chicago. Some of the parents are coming in from neighboring states as we-”

“How many parents?”

“Hundreds.”

“What!” Had the old man gone insane? “You can’t be serious. They’ll choke the roads and-” And now she understood all too well. “That’s what you want, isn’t it. All the traffic will come to a stop for miles around… It’s like sending up a flare.”

The old man gave his apt pupil a generous smile. “Excellent metaphor- a distress signal. Do you know what these parents go through just to keep the story of a kidnapped child alive?” He looked out over his sleeping caravan. “They were invisible for so long. You’ve done a very good job of keeping reporters at bay.”

Nahlman nodded, though she could not take the credit for media control. Dale Berman had an idiot savant’s genius for manipulating reporters. To give Dale his due, he was brilliant at this game.

“The news media doesn’t know we’re alive,” said Magritte, “but I don’t think that will last much longer. As the caravan grows, people will notice. Oh, and your presence here will guarantee media attention.
Finally
the FBI will actually help these people.”

“But most of these parents have nothing to do with this investigation- their children won’t fit the victim profile.” Her words trailed off to a whisper. Of course the old man was already aware of this, and now she realized that the caravan parents must also know. “So the pattern of bodies on Route 66-that’s only part of it.”

“That’s right,” he said. “The only criteria for this road trip was a missing child.”

With stunning clarity, Nahlman saw the real caravan pattern in her list of license plates issued in coastal states, Heartland and Southland states. These parents came from all over the nation as representatives of grief- round eyes and Asian eyes and every shade of skin, carting prayer rugs and crosses and six-pointed stars. How damned democratic. This was America searching for her young; her numbers were legion, and she would not be stopped.

Her cell phone was ringing. The lighted number belonged to Dale Berman, and she let the call go through to voice mail. Agent Nahlman was too tired for another round of this man’s favorite game, Big Daddy Knows Best. She only wanted a little peace to listen to the music; some distant radio was playing a golden oldie. It was a car radio, and the song came from the Mercedes. Riker was behind the wheel and rolling across the campground, leading a small parade of five cars. Five! The lost parent was found.

It was early in the dark
of morning, and the neon-green pickup truck was driving northwest through Kansas along a patchwork quilt of county roads and state roads far afield of Route 66. Mallory had an appointment with a farmer in a distant town. She would have made better time, but now her car slowed down behind a wide load, a tractorlike vehicle with mechanical wings jutting out into the next lane-no hope of passing here. She had only two and a half hours to get to the Finn homestead at the hour when a school bus had arrived one year ago, the hour when Ariel had been kidnapped from her home and killed.

It would be impossible to keep this appointment if the young detective drove the legal speed limit of a serial killer who wanted no traffic tickets. She was going to be late, and yet she did nothing to hurry the tractor that blocked her way, no horn blowing, no tailgating.

Mallory had lost her edge.

She was actually listening to the words of a familiar song played by a local radio station.

This tune was not on Peyton Hale’s song list, nor did she remember it from her foster care days when Lou Markowitz had taught her how to dance to rock ’n’ roll.

It was a cut from an Eagles album that Riker had given her when she was eleven years old. At the time, he had told her it was more than just a gift of music-he had found her a theme song called “Desperado.” She had played this ballad a thousand times-and then put the album away when she was twelve.

Riker thought that
Agent Nahlman lacked Mallory’s t alent for scaring people.

The fed’s tone of voice was too civilized as she addressed the mothers and fathers of lost children, saying, “You can’t leave the safety of the group and go out on your own. You all know about Gerald Linden. Well, here’s something you don’t know. He wasn’t t he only murdered parent.”

This was news to Riker and he wondered if Kronewald was aware of it.

“Another dead parent,” said Nahlman, “was found in California. And one in Arizona. The crime scenes were identical to Mr. Linden’s. A lot of you knew both of these people. You belonged to the same Internet groups. W e have a serial killer focused on this caravan.”

Nahlman’s partner, Agent Allen, committed the sin of smiling when he stepped forward to hand out the route plans for the day. Next, he made the mistake of good manners, saying, “I know you don’t w ant to travel on the interstate, but
please
don’t t ake the highway exits.”

“Or you’ll die,” said Nahlman, doing damage control with more force. “If you leave the group, he’ll pick you off, one by one.” Now she demanded their patience, for they would be getting off to a late start this morning.

And that was fine with Riker. He stretched out in a reclining seat of the Mercedes to catch up on the sleep he never got last night. An hour had passed by the clock on the dashboard, but it seemed that he had just closed his eyes when he was shaken awake.

“Riker,” said Charles. “The FBI agents counted noses, and six more parents are gone. They just slipped away.”

Mallory approved of Kansas.
It was a flat but orderly state with neat squares of crop fields and straight roads that intersected at true right angles.

She found the long shed easily enough, though it was set back on private land. The broad side facing the road had been leased out to advertise a store in the next town. A gravel driveway led her past the shed and on toward the Finns’ empty farmhouse. Its wood was painted a crisp clean white, and the shingled roof had gabled windows. Beyond the house was a barn but no sign of animal life-no life at all. Brown wicker furniture lined the front porch, but this did not save the place from a look of desertion. She imagined the yard the way it had been a year ago. The wide green lawn would have been littered with toys and bicycles, the advertisements that young children lived here.

Mallory had driven halfway to the house when she stopped and looked back to take in the lay of the land. She could only surmise that a serial killer had waited for his victim by that long shed near the road. It would hide him from the people in the house. And no one passing by would take any notice of a vehicle parked on private property. A windbreak of trees would have prevented anyone in the house from seeing his car roll off the road to shelter behind the shed.

How many homes had the killer scouted before he found the layout that would give him the best chance of avoiding detection-and confrontation with an adult?

Mallory drove on to the house. A jeep was parked in the driveway, but the man she had come to meet was on the front porch. He rose from a wicker chair and waved to her with a smile of recognition. No doubt the police chief had found it necessary to explain to this man why a New York detective was driving a bright green pickup truck with a Jaguar hood ornament.

After showing him her badge, she endured that getting-to-know-you dance that everyone in these parts was so fond of. They talked as they walked back toward the shed by the road, and she learned that Myles White had taken early retirement from his job as an investigator for the county sheriff ‘s o ffice. His father was no longer able to run the family farm and someone had to take charge of it. Before reaching the road, she knew the names of his four children, none of whom showed any interest in farming, and Mr. White knew nothing about her beyond what he had read on her ID card. However, something in her eyes had given this former lawman a clue that they were done with this quaint custom.

She was a busy woman.

And so he began his murder story at the end. “We had Ariel’s body in the local mortuary for a solid week, but Joe refused to make the identification. Said it couldn’t be his daughter. How could Ariel be dead? No, she was only lost, he said. Well, the neighbors buried her in the church cemetery down the road. The headstone’s blank. They figure one day Joe will come to his senses, and then they can get on with the engraving. We’re very patient people around here.”

As they neared the edge of the road, he spoke of the day when Ariel was last seen alive. “Joe’s a widower. A neighbor woman stayed with the kids when their father was on the road. But that morning little Peter woke up with a cold, and Mrs. Henry drove back to her own place to get him some cough medicine. So it was just the three kids in the house, Ariel, Peter and Dodie.”

“Where was Joe Finn that morning?”

“He was in a Kansas City hospital. His last fight tore him up real bad. When I gave him the news, his eyes were so swollen he couldn’t see. But he just had to get home to his children. Well, he damn sure couldn’t drive, but he would’ve walked all the way home if I hadn’t g iven him a ride.”

“So the three kids were in the house,” she said, prompting him, only wanting him to get on with it.

“Ariel was trying to get the little one-that’s Dodie-ready for school. Peter was in his bedroom, but Dodie had a set of lungs on her, and he could hear his little sister badgering Ariel to finish making up her lunch box or she’d be late and the bus would leave without her.” He pointed to the edge of the driveway. “That’s where the school bus stopped.”

“Did they all take the same bus?”

“No, Dodie missed the cutoff date for first grade, and she was real disappointed, so Joe sprung for a year of charter school. Peter went to a public school a lot closer to the house. His bus came by about forty minutes later. But, like I said, the boy was sick that day.”