GHOST_4_Kindle_V2 (38 page)

Statistically, the kidnapper is most often someone the kid knew: a disgruntled spouse, ex, or step parent. Maybe that’s how Smiling Jack did it. No, but that didn’t make sense. Shreveport, Louisiana and Anchorage, Alaska? And what about all the other victims from the photos. They could be all over the country, maybe all over the world. Smiling Jack couldn’t know each all of them personally…could he?

I watched as the woman herded the last of the three children into the back yard. She gave me a withering glance as she shut the gate. I put the car in gear and proceeded slowly down the road. I drove exactly the speed limit, but due more to my distracted mind than to propriety. If Smiling Jack and his accomplice did not know the children or their families, all it would have taken to get the killers caught was one child’s scream…one nosy neighbor. As if on cue, I passed an old guy pushing a lawn mower. He had a very round pot belly and a floppy fishing hat with a beer logo. He watched me drive by. He didn’t wave or smile, but he did raise an eyebrow.
 

I passed a small park nestled protectively beneath a canopy of broadleaf trees. Kids bobbed up and down on the seesaw. I watched a child clamber up a sliding board and then
whoosh
back down. The swings were occupied by kids as well. But for every clump of children, there were adults watching. Some wandering aimlessly over the chipped wood path; some in animated conversation on park benches; others just standing and staring—maybe lost in the magnificence of childhood—but all of them were watching. If I set foot in that park without a child of my own, every adult in the area would scan me up and down. They’d begin questioning my motives. Some would have their cell phones at the ready.
 

The park in my rearview mirror, I drove on. I passed a mailbox, a fire hydrant, and a couple of kids hard at work drinking the lemonade from their own stand. Sure enough, a parent sat on the front stoop. I felt like I had just a few more pieces to find to complete a large complicated puzzle, but the person who put the puzzle away last lost the very piece I needed. I knew the sort of piece to look for; I knew its general shape and the types of sockets it had to fill. But it just didn’t seem to be there.

The clock on the dash read 12:40. Still hours before Doc Shepherd might be free. I drove on, planning to exit the neighborhood by the next through street. Then, I heard a familiar jingling tune. I slowed and pulled to the curb, waiting. The chiming tune grew louder; it was a springy version of “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” A white truck pulled around the corner. Kids trailed behind it at a safe distance. A few moments after the truck came to a stop, a large side window slid open, and a man with a fuzzy grey mustache leaned out.

The Ice Cream Man.
 

No,
I thought. But it seemed to fit the puzzle. The driver of an ice cream truck wasn’t someone parents knew as a general rule, but the appearance of an ice cream truck was as accepted as a thunderstorm. Sometimes it came; sometimes it didn’t. Either way, no one really cared, except for the kids. And kids really did care…a lot.
 

All it took was a few distant jingly notes, and kids from all over the neighborhood would burst from their doors at mach speed. They’d leap fences, cut through yards, and even dodge traffic to get to that white truck. And then, they’d wave cash at the driver. They were doing it right now. Right in front of me.
 

Smiles everywhere. Smiles from the kids. Smiles from the parents. Smiles from the Ice Cream Man as he handed frozen goodies to the kids. It fit. Kids in every state would throw caution to the wind for the Ice Cream Man. They might even follow the Ice Cream Man into the back of his truck. I grabbed the cell phone, scrolled down to Rez’s number, and almost pushed send.

Almost.

The thought scratching at the backdoor of my mind hadn’t quite coalesced just yet. Half-conscious of what I was doing, I put the car in drive and made a slow u-turn. I glanced at the crowd still gathered around the Ice Cream Man. It was a good puzzle piece. The colors on the fringes matched, and it seemed to have the right shape. But it didn’t quite fit. Smiling Jack and his accomplice might have used the guise of an ice cream truck vendor to bring the kids running. But, if they did, they would also bring witnesses.
 

I drove back the way I came, passing the lemonade stand, the fire hydrant, and mailbox. I passed the park, now less populated, due to the Ice Cream Man no doubt. When the bells of an ice cream truck rang, lots of people came. Little kids, sure. But also, there were teenagers and even parents. Lots of people liked ice cream.
 

If little Susie disappeared and the last time anyone saw little Susie was around the ice cream truck, it wouldn’t take long for someone to go ask the Ice Cream Man a few pointed questions. Parents would remember their kids blasting out the door. Heck, most of the time that was preceded by kids begging their parents for money to buy ice cream. No, the Ice Cream Man puzzle piece didn’t quite fit.

There was something about the little group of kids playing at the sprinkler. Something I had seen but still missed. I knew they wouldn’t be there when I returned. The wary mom had tucked them into the backyard and out of sight. But still, I needed to revisit, to see if even the tiniest strand remained for me to grasp. I rolled to a stop at the curb directly across the street from the yard where the children had played.
 

As I suspected, the sprawling Bermuda grass lawn was empty. I left the car running, scanned the yard, and let my thoughts meander. I figured I had about five minutes before the eagle-eyed parent noticed me again and got nervous enough to call the local police.
 

“Big family,” I muttered, recalling the children bobbing in and out of the sprinkler. A redhead, a couple of brunettes, a blond, a towhead, a…
a diverse family.
That thought arrived, and it felt like a strand, so I pulled. Come to think of it, the woman who came out to keep the kids safe didn’t really look much like any of the kids. Maybe the brunette girl. She and the woman had the same long, coltish limbs. But I didn’t notice any overt similarities in the rest of the kids. Most of them looked about the same age too. So maybe not a family? Then…then it smacked me in the forehead.

I knew it before I read the little sign in the front yard.
 

“Little Miracles Family Daycare.”
       

I jammed the car in gear and had the phone dialing Rez in an instant.
 

She picked up. “Agent Rezva—”

“Daycare,” I said. “That’s how he did it.”

“What?”

“Smiling Jack,” I said. “That’s how he’s done it all these years. He runs a daycare.”

“Ghost, that’s insane,” she said.

“Go back and look at Erica Graziano’s file,” I said. “She was snatched from a daycare.”

“I remember that,” she said, “But she was taken
from
the daycare not
by
the daycare.”
 

“You sure about that?” I asked. “Did you crosscheck with the Kearney girl? She was four when she was taken, not quite school age, but perfect—”

“Perfect for daycare.” Rez was silent a few tics. “Okay, I’ll check it out. But think about this: most daycares are run by women. Sexist as it is, a lot of moms wouldn’t trust their kids in a daycare run by men.”

Chapter 32

I threw the assassin’s car into park while it was still moving, so it jerked to a stop at the curb. I knew Agent Rezvani would find a way to get the FBI’s trillion gigahertz engines to work, but I couldn’t leave it just to them. I returned to the Internet cafe where Mr. Scratch had appeared with the butterfly clue. I ducked out of the car, realizing I hadn’t noted the cafe’s name when I’d come the first time. No small wonder as I was severely diminished by a lengthy travel.
 

The Bean Machine. Not very clever, but I guess it didn’t matter when their coffee was that good and their data transmission rates were that fast. I was grateful to find Melanie again behind the counter. Her lively eyes brightened when she saw me.

“Hey, mister,” she said. “You aren’t going to slosh the restroom again are you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied. “Listen, I need a code and more of that incredible coffee you brought me last time? Same deal work for you?” I slid a hundred dollar bill across the counter. My last one. After breakfast, the surf shop, and this, I was officially broke again.

“You got it,” she said, blinking and shaking her head. “You just paid for my Econ book next semester.”

I sat at the same computer and typed in the access code Melanie had provided. My fingers flew over the keyboard. I searched both the Graziano and the Kearney abductions. And I searched out the most recent Smiling Jack photographs. I found the original article on Erica Graziano and scanned down the page. There it was.
 

Erica had been playing in the yard at Small Favor’s Daycare Center when she’d been taken. The daycare’s owner, Martina Palmer, had been quoted as saying, “I’d just called all the children in for lunch. It was grilled cheese, Erica’s favorite, so I wondered when she didn’t come running.”
 

I finished the article, noting once again the photo of little Erica and her parents. But there was no picture of Martina Palmer or the daycare center. Then, I clicked and browsed a dozen articles on Kearney’s abduction. Two years and more than four-thousand miles away, and the two articles were nearly identical in content. Pamela Kearney had also been taken while under the not-so-watchful eye of a daycare provider. This time, her name was Elizabeth Borden of Little Eskimo’s Family Daycare. The article’s author described Ms. Borden as heartbroken and visibly disturbed by the loss. In fact, Ms. Borden had closed the daycare in order to seek psychiatric help.
 

As Rez had suggested, both of the daycares were run by women. But on a whim, I searched Little Eskimo’s Family Daycare and Borden. Then I clicked on the images search filter. There were several photos: an Easter Egg hunt, a birthday party, a grand opening. One of them showed Elizabeth Borden straight on. She had long hair, pulled back tightly, distant darkish eyes—I couldn’t tell the color—and a grim smile. She also looked very familiar to me.
 

I tabbed to the Smiling Jack photos. I zoomed in on the bottom half of Jack’s face, all that was visible. I put it next to Elizabeth Borden. I increased the zoom on both. I shook my head. The chin had a dimple, maybe a cleft chin like Jack’s. Maybe. Nothing conclusive. The Smiling Jack photos had more detail, visible wrinkles, what appeared to be a very light 5 o’clock shadow. I began to wonder about Smiling Jack’s accomplice. Siblings?
 

Melanie appeared and blessedly refreshed my mug of dark bliss. I hoped I managed to pop up a new window in time to cover up the Smiling Jack images. Melanie walked away with a normal posture and pace, so I figured all was well. I tilted the computer’s thin screen a little and went back to scrutinizing the photos.
   

I was relatively certain that the FBI had some facial recognition software that could potentially check the features of Elizabeth Borden’s face with the lower half of Smiling Jack’s face, but to show what? That they are siblings? Rez was right: many parents wouldn’t entrust their young children to the care of a man. Too many male predators in the news. That left me with more questions about the daycare providers. Were they just innocent victims like the children who were taken from their centers? Victims like their parents?

There was something else to check, I realized. Something I should have checked first. I minimized the window with Elizabeth Borden. Then I searched: Martina Palmer, Small Favor’s Daycare Center. I clicked the filter again for images. I clicked through several shots that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the daycare itself: a summer camp with the same name, a snow cone shop, a May Fair at a local elementary school. I refined my search by putting in the name of the city. Similar results. No portrait of the provider herself. Then I added the victim’s name and the word abduction.
 

There was a photograph of interest.
 

The reporter had snapped the shot from the other side of a waist-high picket fence. Two uniformed police officers stood on the front stoop and, between them, partially obscured by the policemen’s broad shoulders, was a woman. She was somewhat gangly, wearing a petite dress that exposed her arms to the shoulder. Her hair was cut in a short bob and, even in black and white, she seemed to be wearing heavy make up: dark lips, plenty of blush, and stark eyeliner. But it was those eyes that struck me.
 

I zoomed in, but too far and it blurred out the detail I wanted to see. I pulled back and moved the window to the side. Then I brought back the window for Elizabeth Borden. I put them side-by-side.
 

“Brimstone hammers,” I muttered. “It’s the same woman.”

I didn’t need the FBI’s facial recognition apps to know for certain. If you’ve ever seen eyes like these, you don’t forget them; you don’t mistake them. They were cold eyes; brutally cold and intelligent. Killer’s eyes.

I couldn’t say whether this woman was Smiling Jack’s assistant or if she was actually the killer in all the photographs, the killer we’d always assumed was a man. But I now knew the face of one of the killers. As I dialed Rez to give her the information, I glanced back at the face on my screen. I felt a peculiar tingle trickle along my spine. It wasn’t
déjà vu, but it was something close. I’d seen her before…somewhere.

* * *
   
* * *
   
* * *
   
* * *

“This is brilliant work!” Deputy Director Barnes bellowed, smacking his palm on the conference room table. “LePoast, get in here!”

“Sir?” he said. A line of sweat already trickled down his forehead. He saw Rez and averted his eyes.

“Agent Rezvani made a breakthrough,” he said. “We can give the geeks we have a new angle for Smiling Jack.”