Vanished (10 page)

God, was this her MO? To let him close only when she was an emotional wreck?

If that was hers, his MO was apparently to take what he could get. Because even as his mind warned this wouldn’t end well, his body didn’t seem to be getting the message.

One hand still clutching hers, he tightened his hold on her with the other, until she was plastered against him, his tongue in her mouth. Until she made a soft, utterly female noise that sounded like approval and she actually did climb in his lap.

And then anything resembling coherent thought fled. He had no idea how long he kissed her—seconds, minutes, hours —when her phone blared, loud and insistent.

She jerked backward so fast she would have fallen off the bed if he hadn’t grabbed her. Flushed and panting, she stared at him, eyes wide with pure shock.

Then she leaped off him and fumbled for her phone, answering it breathlessly.

He could immediately tell it was bad news, because all expression instantly fled. Her game face.

“Okay, I’m on my way,” she said a minute later, then hung up.

“What happened?”

“Another girl was just abducted.”

Nine

E
velyn entered the station’s briefing room, overflowing with police officers and FBI agents. It was almost hard to breathe as she waded into too many opinions and too much emotion.

“Who did we have under surveillance when this happened?” Jack demanded.

“How close does this victim live to Brittany?” Carly called out.

“
How
did this happen?” a rookie officer boomed, his voice carrying above the fray. “How the hell did he grab her with the whole town out there looking for him? With all the cops on the streets? How could no one have seen anything?”

His loud, frustrated questions silenced the crowd and Tomas stepped behind the podium. The exhaustion that had been evident from the day she’d arrived had multiplied, leaving a grayish hue on his skin.

“We got the call one hour ago. Time is crucial,” Tomas reminded them. “So, I’m going to brief you fast, and then everyone’s going out. Four of the CARD agents are already at the victim’s house, getting statements. But we’ve got the basics. There was a note.”

At those words, the tension notched up. Evelyn looked around. Nothing but locked jaws and nervous eyes.

She felt as tense as everyone around her. Even though she’d expected the abductor not to stop—she’d tried to drive it home in her profile—she hadn’t expected it to happen this fast. It meant the abductor was impatient. Which might make him more likely to mess up, but also more dangerous.

“We have a short window of opportunity for the abduction time. The victim’s mom had seen her an hour before she found the note. The girl was grabbed from her own private, fenced backyard.”

Cops shifted on their feet, visibly quivering with anxiety and anger. Someone muttered, “Parents are actually letting their kids outside alone?”

“She wasn’t supposed to be outside,” Tomas said. “She’d gone into the backyard when her mom thought she was in her bedroom.”

“Are we sure she wasn’t grabbed from her bedroom?” Evelyn spoke up, thinking of Cassie.

“Yes. The note was left in the backyard, taped to the girl’s jump rope. Her mom said that’s usually kept in their shed, so her daughter must have gone outside to play. She hadn’t expressly told her not to go out alone.” Tomas hunched lower over the podium. “The mom’s beating herself up over that. But her daughter had said she was going to her room to read and the mom was running the vacuum, so she wouldn’t have heard the door open.”

Evelyn nodded. Of the original cases, only Cassie’s had happened inside her house. It was logical that after eighteen years the abductor would be more cautious, not take that kind of risk again.

On the other hand, any grab in the middle of a multiagency investigation of this magnitude was risky.

It was an odd combination—the careful abduction combined with the increased pace after eighteen years of silence. Her hopes for a mistake slipped away, and her worry over what he might do next increased.

“Any chance this isn’t really the Nursery Rhyme Killer? Any chance it’s a family thing?” Jack’s partner asked.

“We’re looking into that,” Carly contributed from near the podium. “It’s always possible someone is taking advantage of Brittany’s abduction to make a grab. The girl’s parents are divorced. We’re trying to track down the dad, because he did fight hard for custody and lost. The stepfather is making a lot of noise, saying the note is just a way to get us to look in another direction, away from the girl’s father.”

The cops around her seemed to take a collective breath, until Carly added, “But the note was pretty similar, so our instinct is that this is connected.”

“We’ll have the profiler review it for her impressions,” Tomas said, “but right now, we’re putting most of our resources into the assumption that it’s the same person.”

“What does the note say?” someone asked.

Tomas looked down at the podium and flipped a few pages. “This time, he manipulated the nursery rhyme ‘Humpty Dumpty.’” He picked up a remote, and the screen behind him flashed to life, showing the note blown up huge.

I can’t believe you have the gall,

Not to watch ’cause the fence is tall.

She won’t be safe until the moment when

I whisk her off to the warmth of my den.

“Sicko,” a rookie spat, and around him officers nodded and clutched their batons.

Evelyn reread the note. The abductor was focused on the abduction stage and addressing the parents. His appetite for punishment was stronger now than it had been eighteen years ago. But he still seemed to think he was helping the girls he abducted.

Or at least that was the motivation he wanted them to see.

“Who’s the victim?” Jack’s voice, more timid than usual, seemed to echo in the room.

“Her name is Lauren Shay.” Tomas flicked the remote and a picture replaced the note up on the screen.

Lauren was fair-skinned and freckled, her brown hair short and curly, her light brown eyes full of mischief. The picture had caught her midlaugh, looking like a twelve-year-old should. Happy. Carefree. Safe.

“Oh, God,” the cop next to Evelyn whispered. “I’ve been friends with her stepdad for years. I can’t believe it’s Lauren.”

“Where are we with the surveillance?” Evelyn asked. If the pair of cops had been watching Darnell, that would eliminate him as a suspect.

Tomas shook his head at her. “We’d just gotten that coordinated, Evelyn. We didn’t have anyone on Darnell yet.”

“At any rate, this knocks Wiggins off the list,” Jack’s partner said. “Since he’s in the hospital.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Tomas sighed. “He was released yesterday. We had officers on him for a few hours today, but he didn’t leave his house, and we’re stretched thin.”

What he didn’t say aloud, Evelyn knew, was that they’d been pulled to run some other leads she’d suggested instead.

Shit. What horrible timing. A coincidence? Or was Walter Wiggins more resourceful than she’d realized?

“I want to talk to Wiggins,” Jack blurted, his tone indicating it wasn’t a request.

Tomas looked pointedly at her and Evelyn nodded. “I’ll go with him.”

“Okay.” Tomas glanced around the room. “We’re also going to be reviewing the lists of search party volunteers. The search parties were out in force today, and Lauren’s mom saw a lot of those volunteers searching the fields near her house. It was getting late by the time Lauren was taken, so the groups had thinned out. But it’s possible the perp used the search parties as cover to grab Lauren.”

Evelyn could sense disgust rolling through the room as she realized Tomas was right. She’d suspected all along that the abductor was joining the search parties. If he could use them to help him get a new victim, that would feed his fantasies even more.

“Noreen?” Tomas said, gesturing his administrative assistant forward.

Noreen walked toward the podium, wringing her hands. She was about twenty-five, with shoulder-length dark hair and perpetually downcast eyes. Every time Evelyn had seen her at the station, she’d been wearing a long skirt and blouse, and was almost painfully shy. She was clearly more comfortable working quietly behind a desk than talking to a room full of noisy cops.

But they must have respected her, because the cops quieted down as she reached Tomas’s side.

“Noreen’s in charge of taking the names of all volunteers. Anyone who joined the search parties is on her list.”

“I’m doing background checks on everyone,” Noreen told them. “We’ve got some volunteers with criminal histories, but nothing related to children so far.” She looked over at Tomas, as if she didn’t know whether she was supposed to say anything else.

Not surprising, Evelyn thought. Even though Walter was beginning to look like more of a possibility, her gut was still telling her the perp hadn’t been caught before—at least not for any crime related to kids.

She’d also had Tomas check records for the night of Cassie’s abduction, but there hadn’t been any arrests. There
had
been a pileup that had sent several people to the hospital but none who fit the profile.

Tomas thanked Noreen, who scurried away from the podium. “Carly Sanchez, from the FBI’s CARD team, will be giving out everyone’s assignments,” Tomas said. “Let’s go now.”

The cops around Evelyn sprang forward. They seemed encouraged by the fact that there’d been less time between Lauren’s abduction and their notification. Which should mean a better chance of finding her.

But Evelyn knew what Tomas hadn’t said. Since the Nursery Rhyme Killer had taken Lauren, Brittany’s chances had just dropped to near zero.

* * *

“There it is!” Jack set his giant cup of take-out coffee in her drink holder and pointed.

Evelyn tried not to roll her eyes in response. Like she could possibly miss Walter Wiggins’s house.

It was ten-thirty at night, but the street was well-lit, and all the houses had security lighting. West Shore Drive was lined with nicely manicured lawns and well-maintained middle-class homes. It practically screamed
respectability
.

And then there was the house at the end of the block. The house and yard were looked after, although lacking in personality or flowers. But someone had taken a sledgehammer to the white picket fence, spray painted the words
pervert
and
child killer
across the front door and driven a huge wooden sign into the ground. As they got closer, Evelyn saw the sign had Walter Wiggins’s sex offender registry picture glued to it.

“Is anyone doing something about this?” Evelyn parked in the driveway, hoping no one would vandalize her rental while they were inside.

“Are you kidding me?” Jack demanded as he stepped out and stomped toward the front door. “We’re a little preoccupied. Jeez.”

Evelyn frowned. He was right. Brittany had been missing for forty-nine hours now, Lauren for an hour and a half. That was where her focus was, too.

But it made her sad to see the town she’d grown up in like this. As hard as it could sometimes be, she believed in equal application of the law; it had to protect criminals and innocents alike.

Will I feel that way if it turns out Walter is the culprit?
a tiny voice whispered in her head. If she learned he’d abducted, molested and murdered Cassie? She hardened her heart, and pushed the thought aside, not wanting to answer that question, even to herself.

She tried to step in front of Jack as they went up the walkway, but he used his bulk to block her, and pounded on the door. “Wiggins! Open up! Police!”

“Jack. Low-key. Like we talked about in the car.” When he ignored her, she grabbed his sleeve and forced him to look at her. “I realize I’m not your favorite person here, but I know this kind of crime better than you ever will. You follow
my
lead here. Okay?”

When the door opened an inch—still chained from inside—Jack was staring at her in shock. Apparently, despite the past two days, he still expected her to act like the timid twelve-year-old he’d once brought to tears.

Well, he was in for a surprise. Because no way was she letting anyone screw this case up.

She peered through the crack in the doorway and into the well-lit house. “Walter Wiggins?” She held her FBI credentials up close to the sliver of face she could see—just a long, pale nose, blotched with purple from the recent beating, and nervous gray eyes. “I’m Evelyn Baine, FBI. I have a few questions.”

Walter squinted at her credentials. Then his gaze darted to Jack and a muscle near his eye started twitching. “What now?” he asked so quietly Evelyn had to lean closer to hear.

“This will only take a few minutes, Mr. Wiggins. Can we come inside?”

Walter’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbed, then the door closed and opened again, wider this time.

Evelyn tried not to reveal her shock. The vague memory she had of Walter from thirteen years ago—right before she’d left town for college—was still pretty accurate. Short brown hair was styled across his forehead in a schoolboy cut, big ears peeking out from the edges. He couldn’t maintain eye contact. He was thirty-eight, according to her records, but he could almost pass for eighteen.

Even the dark purple bruises beneath his eyes and the tape on his broken nose didn’t make him look dangerous. To someone who didn’t know him, Walter probably looked like a schoolkid who’d been bullied and beaten up. Not a convicted child molester who’d been on the losing side of an angry father’s fists.

Discomfort squirmed through her. Walter’s nonthreatening appearance would be an asset if he was still trying to charm children. Regardless of whether parents warned their kids to stay away from him, he just looked harmless. No outward sign of the monster within.

Behind her, Jack pushed his way into the house, aggressively enough to make Walter back up a few steps. “Wiggins. Can we take a seat somewhere?” Jack asked in a strained voice.

Walter blinked a few times, glancing from her to Jack, then straightened his spine. “Sure. Okay. Come on.”

He led them down a short, dark hallway, walking on the balls of his feet, silently, and slightly hunched over.

As they reached the living room, a feeble voice called from the other end of the house, “Who’s here?”

“It’s okay, Dad!” Walter said. “Just a couple of guests!”

Jack snorted as he sat on a couch straight out of the fifties. He stretched his legs in front of him; he seemed to be settling in for the long haul.

Evelyn surveyed the room as Walter huddled in the recliner as far away from Jack as possible. The room had peeling wallpaper and doilies on every available surface, and Evelyn suspected it hadn’t changed since Walter’s mom had died. If there was any sign of Walter’s personality here, she didn’t see it.

It didn’t give her much to go on. Usually, questioning people inside their houses gave her a starting point, some personality cues. With Walter, all she had was body language.

She sat on the third chair in the room, across from Jack and next to Walter. “Thirteen years ago, you were convicted of three counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and two counts of third-degree sexual assault. The victims were all girls around the ages of Brittany Douglas and Lauren Shay.”