Carol O’Connell - Find Me

Mallory nodded as she scanned a state map of graves. “I liked the early pattern you developed in Illinois. It was a good start.”

“That’s my computer.”

“Well, you left it on the seat of your car.”

“My locked car.”

Mallory waved one hand to say that these little distinctions were un- important. “Geographic profiling won’t predict a kill site-not in this case. When he kills a parent, it’s a crime of opportunity.”

“You broke into my car, stole my laptop- government property.”

“I’m the criminal?” Mallory was not good at mock innocence. “ Y o u used a little girl to bait a serial killer.” Ah, bombshell. Annihilation was her forte. The agent looked as if she had been kicked in the gut.

“That was never the plan,” said Nahlman when she found her voice again.

“Back in Oklahoma, you knew what was going to happen before the boxer decked your boss. I saw you arguing with Dale Berman-but you didn’t s t o p him.”

“I’m just one agent, not even the-”

“You let him draw a target on Dodie Finn.” Mallory leaned close to the woman, the better to cut out her heart. “Fr agile, isn’t s he? I found the psych evaluations-Dodie’s FBI file. Federal agents interrogated a little girl who belonged in a hospital. They wouldn’t even let her father visit. And why? Because they knew she’d tell them anything- anything -if they would only let her go home. But Dodie had nothing to give them. Dodie is crazy.”

And now-a little fear.

Mallory only glanced at the lineup of reporters out by the road. “I promised them an interview for the six-o’clock news,” she lied, and then opened her pocket watch, though she knew the time to the hour and the minute. “It’s almost showtime.” The implied threat of ugly disclosure hung in the air between the two women.

“Dale Berman personally guaranteed Dodie’s safety,” said Nahlman. “Two agents on her all the time. That’s why I-”

“He lied. He does that a lot. Berman wanted a serial killer-a kid killer-to believe that Dodie could give up something important. Well, she can’t.” Mallory stared at the screen for a few moments of silence, her best imitation of self-righteous indignation. “Better to sacrifice Dodie than Paul Magritte, right? You’d never risk any damage to your best witness-even though the old man’s got it coming.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Why does your boss run sloppy background checks? I’m not going to do his job for him. And one more thing. I’ve seen the FBI files- all of them. You never got any credit for your work. The forensic techs who do your grave digging-they think old Dale’s got a crystal ball.” Mallory scrolled through the maps and data. “No one but your boss has ever seen this material.”

“You do a poor imitation of Agent Berman. That’s his style,” said Nahlman, “pitting people against each other. And he does it better.”

“You think I care about your little relationship problems?” Mallory touched the eject button on the agent’s laptop computer, and a disk came sliding out. She held it beyond Nahlman’s reach, saying, “I only came to steal.”

So inattentive were his watchers that Dr. Paul Magritte never feared being missed, though he had driven fifty miles from the campsite to find solitude in this church. Rice grains crunched underfoot as he climbed the short flight of stone stairs. The large wooden doors were unlocked, but, upon entering, he sensed that no one, not even the priest, had remained after the ceremony. A large vase of white blooms graced the altar, and some flower girl had strewn the aisle with rose petals. He pictured a small child in this task, taking slow toddler steps toward the great stained-glass window in advance of the bridal procession. He hoped that this union would be fruitful. If the earth could not restore the lost children, it would at least be replenished.

The psychologist dropped his jacket and his nylon sack on the seat of the first pew. The lightest of burdens were troublesome to an old man with arthritis in every joint, and yet he had come here in search of fresh agony. After climbing three steps to the altar, he lit all the candles and stepped back. Eschewing any comfort of a padded riser, he knelt on the stone floor. This caused great pain to his knees, and he called it atonement.

Mary Egram had been the first to die. It must always begin with the loss of Mary.

The ruby glass beads of his rosary played across his fingers. Each time he performed this ritual, it called up an image of the old Egram house back in Illinois. All those years ago, it had seemed always on the verge of pitching into the front yard. He recalled the interior of the home with the same tension, every wall leaning, and he remembered waiting, moment to moment, for the ceiling to come crashing down.

Next, with hands clasped tightly in prayer, he conjured up the floral patterns of worn upholstery and threadbare scatter rugs. A large television set was the only luxury item, and this would have been chosen by the man of the family, no doubt an avid football fan. In mind’s eye, Mr. Egram was seated on the couch and staring at his blank TV screen, feet tapping the floor, measuring time and willing this visit to pass more quickly.

Paul Magritte had played this home movie in his head a thousand times so that he would not forget one detail, not one tap of the other man’s foot. Memory also recounted exactly twelve votive candles encircling the photograph of Mary, fair-haired and only five years old. The lost child’s shrine had pride of place atop the television set, and this had surely been the mother’s work. The parents had been abandoned and their loss forgotten by the media. However, Mrs. Egram had been determined that her husband would never forget, not even for the respite of a ballgame on a Sunday afternoon.

Small plaster saints had abounded in the Egrams’ front room. The religious theme had also played out in the dining area and the hallway. Mary Egram’s mother had apparently bought out the entire stock of a church gift shop. But that was to be expected, for the woman was a lapsed Catholic who had lately returned to the faith in zealot fashion.

And the father of the missing child? Not a great fan of the Lord.

Sarah Egram had sought to explain her husband’s aloofness with the information that he was from Methodist stock. The Protestant truck driver had borne a look of grim tolerance for his wife, who constantly fretted her rosary beads and moved her mouth in silence, seeking help in magical incantations. Her eyes had sometimes strayed to the window, perchance to see if her prayers had worked. Or maybe she had been keeping watch over the child in the yard-the surviving child.

That had been Paul Magritte’s second thought on that long-ago afternoon.

His eyes snapped open. Perhaps it was the pain in his knees that had called him out of reverie and back to the cold stone floor of this Texas sanctuary. No, he had sensed something-someone. And now the flames of the altar candles flickered and bowed, as if swayed by a body in motion and very close to him. How fragile was he-that a current of air in a drafty old church should have the power to stop his breath-his heart. He feared it still, but never looked behind him, never turned his head. Instead he closed his eyes again, to see the mistakes of his distant past. He escaped into his re-creation of a shabby front room in another time, another place.

Once more, he pictured Mr. Egram seated on the couch beside his wife, reaching out to her with one large hand and gently covering her fingers and beads to end the incessant rattle and movement. The woman’s mouth also ceased to move. Out in the yard, their child was approaching the house, and then the ten-year-old stopped halfway up the flagstone path and stood motionless, possibly taking a cue from the mother.