Carol O’Connell - Find Me

And, of course, Charles had been turned down, but that was for the best in Riker’s o pinion. The detective had always believed that this man would be happier with someone from planet Earth, a nice, normal woman who did not collect guns. And this prospective wife should want children. Charles would make a wonderful father, and Riker could easily see a brood of eagle-beaked, bug-eyed kids in this man’s future. But he could not believe in a world with more than one version of Mallory; a gang of little blond clones with her green eyes and inclinations was too great a risk; he could not even be certain that she would remember to feed them.

Riker had lost the heart for this interrogation. Turning to the road and the departing car, he changed the subject. “So tell me what you think of the little guy.”

“Kayhill? Obsessive compulsive.” Charles was suddenly cheerful again- now that the inquisition was clearly over. “Obviously good cognitive reasoning. But he can’t sustain eye contact for more than a few seconds. That might indicate mild autism-that and the maps. He’s so totally absorbed in his patterns.”

“Some of them seem a little far-fetched,” said Riker, “but we’ll know more in another few minutes. The sheriff ‘s o n the phone to Kansas.”

Mallory’s knapsack rested on her lap. She sat in a wooden chair beside the police chief’s desk. They had taken their conversation indoors so he could check out her reference on the telephone. The chief carried on a guarded conversation with Sheriff Banner, answering most questions with one word. Reassured now, he became more chatty with the Missouri man. “Oh, sure I remember… Yeah, how long ago was that?… No, we identified the girl… No, that’s what we thought at first. Turns out she was a few years younger than we figured-just sixteen… W ell, we landed a flyer in her hometown… Ariel Finn was her name… You don’t s ay. Well, I assumed he identified his daughter. We shipped the body back there.”

Eavesdropper Mallory wondered why Joe Finn would be traveling with the parents of missing children when his child had been found. Denial was the easy answer. She could see him staring down at the dead body, refusing to believe that it could be his daughter. A corpse was nothing like a sleeping child. Only hours after death, the features would subtly change, eyes clouding and retracting into their sockets, the skin losing its bloom.

Some parents used each alteration as a rationale for denying their own children.

There was another possibility that Mallory liked better: Joe Finn might be planning to meet his daughter’s killer on the road and take some satisfaction in a murder of his own.

When the police chief hung up the phone, Mallory said, “You didn’t t e ll Sheriff Banner about the feds digging up the ground just down the road.”

“Feds? No, that’s just a crew fixing a busted underground cable.” He sounded only mildly sarcastic when he added, “And I’m sure you saw the electric company’s name on the side of their van.” His crinkled eyes and a smile echoed her own thought: Yeah, right.

And now it was her turn to be sarcastic. “And you never told the sheriff about the bones that were found in place of Ariel Finn’s missing hand.”

He only stared at Mallory, saying nothing, no doubt reassessing her. “Either you’re a really good cop, or the feds told you way more than they told that Missouri sheriff.” He seemed to be giving this puzzle some thought as he lit another cigar. “If you’d come by yesterday, I wouldn’t have had any idea what you were talking about. A year ago, Ariel Finn’s body was found by two kids on their way to school. One of them has a very suspicious mother. Yesterday afternoon, she ransacked his room, thought he was doing drugs. And he was only eleven on his last birthday. Don’t you wonder what the world’s coming to? Well, imagine how surprised the mother was to find an old cigar box with bones in it.” He stopped here, waiting for Mallory to add something of her own.

She knew just the right words. “Tiny bones-from the hand of a child-not the teenager you found on the road.”

He nodded. “Only half of them were in that cigar box. You see, both of the boys wanted souvenirs. Damn kids. The other boy had the rest of the bones, but he’d thrown his half away a long time ago. Said it gave him bad dreams. I expect he still has nightmares about that girl’s mutilated body. So that boy’s half went out in the garbage with the family chicken bones.” And now he made it clear that it was Mallory’s t u rn.

She never missed a beat. “When the boys found the bones of the hand laid out in the road, which way was it pointing-was it toward the latest grave?”

He smiled to tell her she had gotten it right. “Off the road a bit, I found a pile of rocks just a little too neat to be natural, and there was a hollow in the ground, the way grave dirt settles after a burial. I didn’t have to dig very deep before the shovel hit the skull-a very small skull.”

Each fact dropped into its logical slot, and, though Ariel Finn had died a year ago, Mallory still believed that it was the killer’s recent decision to turn from children to older victims. “Back when you found the other body, the teenage girl, I understand you had a problem pinning down her age. You told the Missouri sheriff she was a teenager or a young woman. So I’m guessing Ariel was tall for sixteen and well developed.”

The chief nodded. “Her death doesn’t fit too well with a child killer, does it?”

“No, I think he screwed up somehow. Something went wrong. He probably killed Ariel because she could identify him.”

And this had also been the chief ’s t heory, for he was nodding as she spoke, and now he said, “So-not one to waste a corpse, this sick bastard used Ariel’s body to call attention to the real work-killing a little kid. And he screwed that up, too.” He leaned forward. “Should I be looking for any more bodies in my neighborhood?”

“I don’t know.” She reached for a piece of paper and a pencil. “But I’m sure you’ve already been over every road around here. You looked for signs of another grave and came up dry.” After printing out a telephone number, she pushed the paper back across the desk. “Call this detective in Chicago. Kronewald knows where lots of little bodies were buried. I think he’d like to hear from you.”

“Little bodies ? A serial killer with a preference for kids. So, I’m right. Ariel wasn’t meant to die that day.” He rolled his chair over to an open filing cabinet, then pulled out a manila folder and tossed it on the desk. “That’s Ariel’s autopsy report. I’ll make you a copy-pictures, too, if you like. That poor girl was stabbed fifty times. Half those wounds were inflicted after she was dead, but that still leaves time for a lot of cold terror. Can you even imagine what went through that girl’s mind while she was bleeding to death?… And it was all a mistake .”

Yes, a mistake. The humming child-crazy little Dodie Finn-had been the intended target. The older sister had simply gotten in the way.

One by one, she examined the many autopsy photographs and counted up the defensive wounds on the hands and the arms. Not a quick kill. Mallory had difficulty achieving pity and seldom tried-what use was it to her? And so it was with something closer to approval that she imagined a teenage girl-terrified and all alone in her battle with a serial killer- fighting to protect her little sister and giving that child a chance to run, to live.

Fierce Ariel.

Ray Adler hovered close to the back door. The aroma of roast beef had drawn him in from the yard, but now he was repulsed by the photographs that Peyton’s g irl had spread across the kitchen table. They put him off his feed, these pictures of death.