Carol O’Connell - Find Me

“Probably Gerald Linden,” said Mallory, “the Chicago victim.”

“I just can’t believe this incompetence,” said Mars. “The case should’ve gone to our task force for serial killers. I’ve got no idea how Dale managed to keep all these bodies and bones under wraps.”

Mallory understood it too well. A gigantic bureaucracy could never have a handle on what every single field office was up to, not until they heard about it on the evening news. So the Assistant Director of Criminal Investigations was not insulting her intelligence when he told her this utterly believable lie. However, the man was an ally and a friend of the family-and so she would not accuse him of deception-not just yet. Timing was everything.

Harry Mars seemed to be uncomfortable with her silence, and he rushed his words now, so anxious to share.

Yeah, right.

“I can’t hold any other agents responsible,” he said. “Dale was probably the only one with the total body count. He had different teams working different states. In and out-very fast operation. None of the evidence was ever developed. So it looks like no one but Dale ever had the whole picture.”

Oh, no. It was not going to be that easy-one sacrificial FBI agent for the media and no harm done to the Bureau.

“Harry, you’ve known about this case for a while-before you saw it on television.” This was not a question, not an invitation to lie to her. “What tipped you off first, the letters from George Hastings? Maybe you’d know him better by his Internet name-Jill’s D ad? Or was it Nahlman who got your attention?” Mallory smiled. Gotcha.

Assistant Director Mars looked out over the pallets of dead children, stalling for time. Finally, he pulled a sheaf of folded papers from his inside breast pocket. “The lab got these e-mails from Agent Nahlman. She wanted to know what happened to her test results on some soil samples.”

“And the lab was clueless, but they didn’t w ant to admit it.”

Harry Mars let this comment slide. “Then, the other day, Nahlman made a request to release the body of Jill Hastings. Up till then, I swear I thought George Hastings was a crank.” He wadded these papers into a tight ball. “That’s when we started looking for this warehouse.”

A lie well worded.

Mallory had her own ideas about the starting date of the FBI’s internal investigation. According to Kronewald’s sources, Agent Cadwaller had been attached to Dale’s field office three months ago, and she took him for a spy from the Assistant Director’s office. “Now,” she said, “the next question is motive.”

“For Dale? He’s a bungling screwup.”

“No,” said Mallory. “That’s not it.” Her favorite motive would always be money, but there was no market for the bones of little girls.

“I can suspend him pending investigation,” said Mars. “But I think you’d rather I took out my gun and shot him.”

“Yes, I would.” She rewarded Lou Markowitz’s old friend with a smile, though she knew this man was still holding out on her. “But you’re going to leave him in charge.” It was easier to work around Dale Berman. A competent task force would present problems; they might decide to run her case. “I’ll tell you how this is going to play out with the Bureau- my way.”

Harry Mars was appalled as she laid out her list of demands, but he recovered quickly, and then he smiled. “I wish your old man could see you now. All this leverage to embarrass the Bureau. You’re even better at it than Lou was. I think he’d be so proud.” This was said with no sarcasm whatever.

Riker sat at the boxer’s campfire, trading baseball stats with Joe Finn and his son. Dodie lay quiet in the safe cradle of her father’s arms. Both children were yawning, and the detective was waiting for them to fall asleep. Then he would talk to the boxer about Kronewald’s plan for protective custody. The Finns must leave this road.

The fire had burned low, and Peter dropped his head against his father’s shoulder. At this same moment, a teenage girl came walking through the camp with a sleeping baby riding on one hip. Her big brown eyes searched everywhere. She grinned when she looked toward Darwinia Sohlo’s fire, and she called out, “Mom!”

Heads turned from neighboring campfires as a stunned Darwinia rose on unsteady feet to embrace the young mother and child. The woman would have fallen to her knees, but a young man rushed to Darwinia’s side and caught her up in his arms. He was the same age as the girl, and Riker pegged him as the father of that baby. The youngster was broad in the shoulders and tanned, built like a workingman who did hard labor for his living. This boy was so painfully young that he probably believed he could always keep his family safe; he would not have heard the boxer’s story of Ariel. The conversation around Darwinia’s distant fire was low and Riker could only watch the smiles, the hugs and imagine the talk of miracles and wonders.

What destroyed the detective in this moment was the look in Joe Finn’s e yes.

And the tears.

If this reunion could happen for Darwinia, why not for him? And now it was clear that the boxer preferred his fantasy that Ariel was alive, for he could not live in a world where she had died. And nothing-not an act of God, not even Mallory-could take him off this road.

Charles Butler waved good-bye as Darwinia Sohlo and her family drove off in separate cars but in the same direction, for the woman had not only found a lost child but also a safe haven-a home.

“Shouldn’t t hey have an FBI escort?”

“No,” said Riker. “Those people aren’t part of the pattern. The biggest threat to Darwinia was that nutcase husband back in Wisconsin. And our freak likes to plan his murders around an isolated victim. Can you see him picking a fight with the son-in-law?”

“Yet Dodie’s father’s is a professional fighter, and you worry about her.”

“You bet I do,” said Riker. “Thanks to Dale’s little showdown with the boxer, Dodie’s a threat to a serial killer. There’s a safe house waiting for the Finns in Chicago, but I don’t think Joe can get there from here. Not unless I can reach him.”

Charles shook his head. “He won’t hear you. He’s not thinking clearly. Probably lack of sleep. It took him an hour just to assemble that little pup tent.”

And now, with his children safely tucked away, Joe Finn was too tired to unroll his sleeping bag. He laid his body down in the grass before the closed tent flap. The man’s t hick arms were his pillows, and his gaze was fixed upon heaven. The boxer’s lips moved, perhaps in an old custom of prayers before sleep.

Good night, sweet prince.

Charles raised his eyes to the stars and also bid goodnight to Ariel.

Though Assistant Director Harry Mars had lived most of his life in the east, a Texas drawl was creeping back into his voice as he stood upon the land where he was born. He turned to the young woman beside him. “I won’t be going back to Washington just yet. Tomorrow morning I’ve got a meeting with Kronewald in Chicago. I think that old bastard’s holding out on me.” Oh, but that was the game they all played. It was an easy guess that Kathy Mallory had not disclosed half of what she knew-and neither had he.

The sun had been up for hours when the two sightseers stood on the old road, just beyond Amarillo, Texas. The FBI man was feeling some wear after a long night in Dale Berman’s Nursery. The soil samples had been located, and he planned to ram the tests through the crime lab within the hour. As a final order of business, he had offered a Bureau job to the young detective from New York City, and she had turned him down-much to his relief.