Carol O’Connell - Find Me

An icon on the laptop screen had his name on it. Thank you, Mallory. Now he would not have to rely on that ten-year-old boy for technical support. He watched Peter Finn take his little sister by the hand and lead her to the window. Both children faced the direction that Mallory had taken, as if expecting her to reappear at any moment.

Riker rested one finger on the mouse pad and moved the little arrow to his icon. One click and the computer’s s c reen changed to a simple menu. Mallory had created a number of options for him: F***.doc was Riker’s idea of overly polite obscenity, but it was Mallory’s o ld code for feds, which meant the same obscene thing in her lexicon as well. He knew that all her FBI data was stolen goods-finest kind. It was the next item on her menu that troubled him. The media was subdivided into links for every news blog and marginally more legitimate press with websites. Last was a personal note, and he opened that one first.

Riker, by the time you read this, Mack the Knife will be in the Chicago PD data bank, and cops all along this road will report to Kronewald. He’ll be calling you soon. You may also hear the sound of helicopters. That will be the media. The more eyes on the sheep the better. Good hunting.

Her letter was disappearing even as he reread it, words breaking up before his eyes. The other documents remained, but he knew every trace of her would be gone from this computer.

Good hunting?

What the hell? She would never abandon the caravan parents to the likes of Berman. No, she had to come back. If she did not, then what was he supposed to tell that little boy? As if the child had read his mind, Peter Finn turned his face to Riker’s, and the detective died a little.

His cell phone was ringing.

He answered it, and, even before Kronewald could give him the details called in by an Oklahoma trooper, Riker knew that one of the stray parents had been murdered. He was watching the sudden activity in the parking lot. All the portable sirens were coming out as agents burned rubber, their cars ripping back down the road to a fresh kill site.

And Kronewald had an additional piece of news, another child’s grave found by the road, but in the opposite direction-the way Mallory had gone.

The Mamas and the Papas sang - “California dreaming… on such a winter’s day” -as Mallory drove slowly past the digging men. Pulling up in front of a crime-scene van, she parked on the shoulder of the road.

A police officer walked up to the car. Not bothering to check her ID, he gallantly opened the door for her, saying, “You’d be the cop from New York City. A Chicago detective-Kronewald was his name-he said you might be by for a look.” He shook her hand as they exchanged names: Henry-J.-Budrow-but-most-people-call-me-Bud and Mallory-just Mallory.

He pushed a police barrier out of their way, and they left the road to walk side by side to the edge of a small grave. A man and a much younger woman had their backs bent over this hole in the ground, and they used soft brushes to remove a layer of dirt from a small skull that had yet to lose its baby teeth.

Now Mallory was told that these civilians were on loan from the anthropology department of a university, and then her guide in uniform asked, “So who’s running this show? Chicago PD or the FBI?”

“It’s Detective Kronewald’s case,” said Mallory. “He’s your liaison with the feds.” Loosely translated, the old man was gleefully parceling out information to humiliate the Bureau.

The officer stared at her knapsack. “Your cell phone is ringing.”

“It does that,” she said, but made no move to answer it.

He grinned. “Mine has the same problem every six minutes. I wish they’d never invented the damn things.” The officer watched the anthropologist and his student as the pair slowly uncovered the rest of the skeletonized child. He turned back to Mallory. “You know there’s a much fresher corpse back down the road about twenty miles. That one’s an adult, but Kronewald says it’s connected.”

She nodded, giving him nothing useful, as she looked into the open grave. “You should find something to help with identification-something small that a kid would carry.”

“Already found it.” He led her over to the police van. The back door hung open, and what he wanted was within easy reach. “This what you’re looking for?” He held up a bag with paperwork attached.

Through the clear plastic, she could see a small identification bracelet. “I can’t make out the engraving.”

“The metal’s c o rroded, but her little dress is still holding up. Can you believe that?”

Yes, she could. This was the upside of poverty. Cheap polyester and simulated leather would last forever in the ground.

He reached farther into the van and pulled out a charcoal rubbing. “The professor made this from the bracelet so we could make out the words.”

The tiny bracelet identified six-year-old Melissa as a diabetic.

At a more recent crime scene twenty miles down the road, Dale Berman wondered aloud, “What does he do with their hands?” He looked down at the corpse of a middle-aged woman.

The dead body was laid out on the shoulder of the old highway. Her right hand had been chopped off at the wrist. Agent Nahlman noted that this mutilation was postmortem. The pool of blood had spilled from the wound to the throat. The rest of the pattern was also holding up. Tiny bones had been positioned near the stump, and so it was a child’s skeletal hand that pointed toward another roadside grave. State troopers with shovels owned this crime scene, and they were waiting on their own people to finish the job of uncovering the smaller of the two victims found early this morning.

Kronewald had been a bit late to share this information with the FBI.

The federal contingent was forced to watch the exhumation from behind a police barricade. Dale Berman leaned toward one of the young agents, saying to this man, “Get a picture of the woman’s face. Fa x it back to the moles at the restaurant. They might recognize her.”

“I can identify her,” said Nahlman. “She’s one of the parents who joined the caravan in Missouri.”

“Why in hell would she leave the group?” He asked this so innocently, as if Nahlman had not apprised him of the problem with the strays and the need for backup. He was still waiting for her explanation.

Of course.

He would want witnesses to her incompetence, her failure as the senior agent to keep the caravan together. Nahlman’s head lolled back. She was looking up from the abyss, that black hole for agents with down-spiraling careers, and she could see Dale waving good-bye to her as she fell from grace.

“Nahlman, I don’t b lame you for this.” His hand was on her shoulder, marking her with all but a Judas kiss, blaming her in front of all these people. He came off well before this audience, so generous with his forgiveness. And the little bastard knew he could depend upon on her not to defend herself.

“Well, we won’t lose any more of them,” said Berman. “I’m personally taking charge of the caravan. If we keep them moving on the interstate, it’ll be safer.”

“No,” said Nahlman. “It’s only faster. I explained why-” Her words trailed off. What was the point of trying anymore?

If he was annoyed by her contradiction, it did not show. He was wearing the smile of a charming boy, almost an invitation to skip school today. But she was immune to professional charm. Nahlman looked down at the dead woman, not listening to the company line any longer, as Dale babbled on about the importance of carrying out command decisions.