Carol O’Connell - Find Me

Though all her traps for him were laid with words, he envisioned Mallory digging a deep pit and covering it over with twigs and branches. “I’m not so talented,” he said. “I never foresaw a prolific child killer making the jump to murdering adults. But I could see the danger of the Internet. What an opportunity for someone who feeds off the pain of others.”

“You’re holding out on me. You’ve had contact with this freak.” She leaned closer to drive this point home. “You just diagnosed him.”

He turned to his windshield and the lights of the caravan city. Mallory’s hand was on his arm, and her grip was tight. No escape.

“Gerald Linden was part of your core group,” she said, “the people you met up with in Chicago.”

“Yes.” He watched the Finn children as they walked by, hand in hand. Dodie had been announced by her humming. Those four notes were almost a mantra to him.

Mallory’s e yes were also on Dodie Finn. “You have to get these people off the road before the next one dies.”

“They can’t go home. If the killer could find Gerald Linden before he ever joined the caravan-well, you see what that means.” He looked out over his flock, mindful of the humming child. She was always in his thoughts-his sights. “The killer knows their names and addresses.”

“Not all of them.” Mallory lost interest in Dodie Finn and turned her eyes back to him. “He knew Linden’s movements, where the man lived, what kind of car he drove. He would’ve learned all of that when he stalked Linden’s d aughter. The killer only knows the parents of his victims. And so do you.”

Dodie’s humming had stopped.

He looked around nervously, searching every window of his car. Ah, there they were. Peter and Dodie had wandered back to their own camp-fire, where their father still struggled to set up their tent. Paul Magritte’s interest in the Finn children was not lost on Mallory. She looked at him as if she had caught him in some obscene act. Did she take him for a child killer, or did she only share a suspicion about that insane little girl?

“Back in Illinois,” she said, “you told me Joe Finn had a missing daughter. How old was she?”

“A teenager. I really can’t s ay more than that.” But did he have to? She was nodding, adding this to her store of evidence against him. And now she turned back to look at that little family only yards away. Her interest should have waned with the information that Ariel Finn had not been a child. But no, her focus on the Finns was keener now.

Canny Mallory.

She pointed toward Joe Finn and his children. “So you’re not worried about them?”

As she searched his face for telltale furrows and maybe tics, he found her method of extrapolating information was something akin to vampirism. She had bled him until she was satisfied, and now he was almost certain that young Dodie’s secret belonged to Mallory.

“Tell me about April Waylon,” she said. “I know that woman was invited to the meeting in Chicago. When were you planning to tell me that she was missing?”

“Oh, but she’s here. April arrived an hour ago.” He observed a slight fault line in Mallory’s façade, a look of surprise, fleeting-gone now.

“Make a shortlist,” she said. “All the parents who make likely targets. Then get them off the road and off the killer’s radar.”

“By sending them back home? If the killer is targeting parents, they’re safer here. What chance would they have isolated in their own houses? You think they’d e ver see it coming?”

“It,” said Mallory. “You mean the killer, don’t you? Interesting word for a shrink to use. But then you know him better than I do.”

He shook his head, and the line of the detective’s mouth dipped on one side to tell him that denial was wasted on her. And just when he thought the inquisition was about to begin in earnest, she opened the door of the car, preparing to leave him.

“The sheriff will be back in a little while,” she said, one hand resting on the chrome door handle. “He’s arranging a guard of deputies to get you through the night. The locals have a personal interest in this case.” She stepped out of the car. “So maybe you’ll tell Sheriff Banner what you wouldn’t t e ll me.” The door slammed in anger.

He thought that she had vanished, but then her face appeared in the open window, startling him.

“Something else to think about,” she said. “What if it was the road trip that made him decide to kill one of the parents? If you’d left them on the Internet, he might’ve been satisfied with that-feeding on all their misery… but then you cut off his food supply.”

After so neatly slaying Paul Magritte with words, she wiped her hands together, seeming to shed his problems along the ground as she left him behind. And yet he was still hopeful as he watched her walk away. In this new century, he had regained his faith in gods and monsters-and she was both.

The caravan was twenty miles behind her when she found the motel. This was the place Sheriff Banner had named as a federal rendezvous point.

The silver convertible rolled into the parking lot, and Mallory counted up the FBI jackets on people standing by their vehicles, twelve of them. This was not a typical task force. Every face was newly minted, unlined. And where were their mentors? These fledgling agents should be partnered up with senior feds. The youngest of them hurried to block her path before she could drive into the last remaining space.

And Mallory did not run over him.

This was to be expected of kiddy agents-they ran in front of moving cars.

“The motel’s full up, ma’am.” The young man pointed toward the access road. “If you get on I-44, it’ll take you to a-”

Mallory flashed her gold shield, but not long enough for him to read the city of issue by the poor light of the motel’s neon sign. “Who’s in charge of this operation?”

The young man hesitated too long.

“The SAC, the special agent in charge,” said Mallory, as if she needed to spell out the initials. “Give me a name.” She made this demand with all the authority of a woman who carried a bigger gun. She left her car to stand toe-to-toe with the rookie agent. “You don’t w ant to waste my time while people are dying. And I know you’ve got orders to play nice with cops. So give me a name.”

“Special Agent Dale Berman.”

Bad news-the worst. Why did it have to be Berman? But now she understood this playgroup of unseasoned agents without their mandated babysitters. When did Dale Berman ever pay attention to protocols? She supposed one or two rookies would have to die before someone in Washington realized that the wrong man was in charge.

“Where is he?”

“You just missed him.” The agent pointed to a field where a helicopter was spinning its rotors in a small cloud of dust as it lifted into the air. “Agent Berman’s destination is more than a hundred miles away, but he’ll be back tonight. If you can’t w ait, we can raise him on the radio.”

Mallory got back into her car, wondering what the air speed of the helicopter might be. A landing site on Route 66 was predictable, but the aircraft would not be hampered by traffic and winding roads. She would have to move back onto the interstate to catch it-and maybe even beat it. Her engine was a perfect machine, and FBI equipment was crap.

“Detective, you don’t w ant to drive that distance for nothing.” The young fed had to raise his voice, for she was revving the engine to drown him out as he yelled, “Agent Berman will probably just turn around and-”

He was talking to the air. Mallory was gone.

Riker blew smoke from the passenger window as the Mercedes pulled up to a field lit by campfires and the smaller flames of propane bottles. Spinning cherry lights flashed from the roof racks of cruisers parked out on the road, and officers in uniform patrolled the perimeter on foot.