Lisa Gardner - Say Goodbye

One day, she should thank Mel, but thanking him would mean acknowledging what he had done, and so far, both of them had preferred this system.

It took her a long time to get home. She was starting to feel a little unsteady, swaying more and more with each step.

It would be good to get inside, have a cup of Earl Grey, hot, black, and strong. She would put her feet up in the front parlor as her daddy used to do. Maybe take a little nap.

But when she opened her front door, she discovered she had a guest. The boy had already returned, except this time, he was not waiting on the back porch. He was standing in her parlor, holding a framed portrait of her family.

For a long time, they simply regarded each other. Then Rita stepped firmly into her house, closing the door behind her, unwrapping the scarf from her neck.

“Son, the proper way of entering someone’s home is to knock on the door and ask permission. Did you knock on my door, did you ask permission?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then this was not the proper way of entering my home. Do not do it again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

That settled, Rita shrugged out of her coat, discarded her hat. “I was going to have some tea, but I suppose I could make hot cocoa instead.”

His eyes lit up.

“I don’t have marshmallows,” she warned. “Too expensive, that kind of nonsense.”

He nodded his head.

She shuffled past him into the kitchen, pretending not to see the way he watched her through half-slit eyes, nor the slim blade protruding from the back pocket of his jeans.

When your time comes, your time comes, Rita knew. But she was a tough old bird, and she figured the boy would discover soon enough that she had plenty of time left.

“SO TO RECAP, YOU HAVE MET WITH A POTENTIAL INFORMANT, processed a potential piece of evidence, and received two disturbing phone calls on your cell phone, both of which appear to have originated from our own call desk.”

“According to GBI Special Agent Lynn Stoudt,” Kimberly interjected, “caller ID on a cell phone is meaningless, thanks to ‘spoofing.’ You go to the right website, and for a ten-dollar fee, have access to a toll-free number where you supply the destination phone number and the caller ID number of your choice. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and any seven-year-old with a laptop can do it.”

“Hardly an encouraging thought.”

“Now that we know what’s going on, our own tech services department can probably set up a system for tracing the original call-”

“More resources,” Supervisory Special Agent Larry Baima countered, “for a case that isn’t a case.”

“Well it’s something !”

“Yes. It’s a mess. For God’s sake, Kimberly, how do you manage to get yourself into these situations?”

Baima sighed heavily. Given that it was a rhetorical question, Kimberly did the smart thing and shut up. In truth, she and Baima respected each other enormously. Which was good, because another supe probably would’ve written her up by now.

“One more time,” Baima said. “What precisely do you know?”

“GBI Special Agent Martignetti believes an unknown predator has been picking off high-risk victims-prostitutes, drug addicts, runaways, the like. He has a list of nine girls ‘unaccounted for,’ plus he has received, from an unknown source, the driver’s licenses for six of the girls. Enter Delilah Rose and her story of a fellow hooker, Ginny Jones, last seen three months ago in the company of a john named Dinchara with a fetish for arachnids. Delilah claims to have recovered a ring belonging to Ginny on the floor of Dinchara’s SUV. I have traced the ring to Tommy Mark Evans, who graduated in oh-six from Alpharetta High School. Also listed as a classmate: Virginia Jones.

“Adding to the puzzle, we have two phone calls, both placed to my cell phone from an unknown number. First call, I personally believe, was the caller testing out the system, to ensure it would work for the middle-of-the-night main event. At this time, however, I cannot substantiate that claim.”

“But the caller was a male? Not Delilah Rose?”

She hesitated. “According to Special Agent Stoudt, the same websites that provide caller ID spoofing also provide optional voice scrambling to make the caller sound like a member of the opposite sex. Sort of an upgrade feature. Given that…Hell, I’m not sure what to be sure of anymore.”

Baima pinched the bridge of his nose. “I hate the Internet.”

“Yet it brought us eBay and Amazon.com.”

“I still hate the Internet.”

Kimberly didn’t argue with him. “At the end of the day,” she ventured, “I’m guessing the caller was Delilah Rose simply because I gave her my phone number at our last meeting. Maybe this was her way of trying to prove her case.”

“You could say that.” Baima had listened to the tape of the phone call twice already this morning, when Kimberly had brought it straight to his attention. Needless to say, it wasn’t a great way to start the day.

“So,” Baima said briskly, “we have a man-an unidentified subject-sexually assaulting, then torturing a female until she fulfills the UNSUB’s demand for a name, at which point she is killed. The woman provides Ginny Jones’s name, claiming to be Ginny’s mother. Can you substantiate that claim?”

“Just submitted a request to Missing Persons,” Kimberly assured him. She hesitated again, then confessed, “But I didn’t have a first name, just a general description and the last name Jones. That’s going to take some processing.”

Another dubious look from her supervisor. “Moving right along then, your impression of the audio,” he pressed. “Genuine, fake, real-time, taped? There are numerous possibilities. Give it your best shot.”

Kimberly tried to sound more certain this time. “I think it was genuine. Not sure of timeline.”

“Explain.”

“The sounds over the phone…If this is a tape, then whoever made it knew exactly what violence and murder sound like. It’s too real to be a script.”

Baima granted her a short nod of acknowledgment, a supervisory agent’s way of giving a special agent just enough rope to hang herself with.

“Timeline?” he prodded.

“Last night, it felt live. This morning, however…I’m thinking recorded.”

Kimberly leaned forward, trying to explain herself. “The second batch of IDs Sal received belong to three roommates who all disappeared, one by one. Coupled with what I heard on the phone, I think that may be how this subject operates-part of his MO is to have each victim choose the next victim, someone close to her. Given the fact that Ginny Jones disappeared three months ago, then what we heard must have occurred prior to December.”

“Ginny’s mother was abducted first. She gives up her daughter, who is taken second,” Baima stated.

“It’s a theory.”

“Well, theories are fun, Special Agent Quincy, but in case you haven’t noticed, we’re pretty busy these days. To open a case, federal agents require evidence and-here’s a thought-jurisdiction.”

“I have a recording of the phone call-” Kimberly started.

“Not admissible as evidence, as you cannot substantiate the source, nor establish chain of custody if it is a tape, which you believe it may be.”