Lisa Gardner - Gone

The cemetery was active. Dark mounds of fresh-turned earth indicated new additions. Bright-colored flags adorned many monuments, leftovers no doubt from Veterans Day. Here and there, vases boasted fresh bouquets of carnations, daisies, roses. He took the map from Kincaid, studied it, and decided he hated this whole game.

“Time check,” Kincaid said.

“Ten fifty-eight.”

“So we have an hour until deadline.” The sergeant eyed the cemetery. “If we got a whole hour, how hard can this be?”

“Let me ask you something,” Quincy said abruptly. “This deadline… how will he know if we don’t meet it?”

Kincaid had the sense not to whip around. Instead, his body went perfectly still. “You think he’s watching?” he whispered.

“Or has a lookout. Or… electronic surveillance?”

“Not easy out here.”

“If he’s set up a wireless surveillance system, I think you would have to categorize him one step up from a ‘dumb mutt,’” Quincy agreed.

“Shit. That’s all we need, a little felonious MacGyver.”

“I don’t think I’d care for it much myself.”

Quincy expanded his walking path, moving more carefully now, trying to get a broader sense of his surroundings. The neighboring buildings could conceal someone quite easily. The tall surrounding grass as well. And as for cameras… behind a flag, peering out from a basket of flowers, nestled within the ferns. The possibilities were endless. They would need a full team of trained investigators to cover such a broad complex. No way two men could do it in an hour.

“Maybe you should tell me about this Fox guy,” Kincaid said tightly, staring hard at the surrounding buildings, the overgrown roads, any tombstone over five feet tall.

“He kidnapped a twelve-year-old daughter of a prominent banker in L.A.,” Quincy supplied. He started working his way toward the lone bush, still acting casual. He noticed Kincaid had his hand inside his jacket, near where an officer might holster a gun. “Her father received a series of ransom notes, all demanding fifteen hundred dollars in cash and signed ‘The Fox.’”

“Fifteen hundred dollars isn’t much money.”

“It was in 1927.”

“Say what?”

“Perry Parker, the father, gathered the money. As per the instructions, he handed over the bag to a young man who was waiting for him in a car. In the passenger seat of the vehicle, he could see his daughter. As soon as Perry handed over the money, however, the suspect drove off with Marion Parker still in the car. At the end of the street, he dumped her corpse onto the pavement.”

Quincy had reached the rhododendron now. He was just about to take another step when the bush suddenly shook.

“Duck,” Kincaid roared.

Quincy ducked. The black raven took flight. And Kincaid nearly blew off its fool head.

“Holy mother of-”

“It’s a bird, it’s a bird! Cease fire, for God’s sake.”

Kincaid drew up short, body still shaking, eyes wide and white-rimmed in his dark skull. He had his finger off the trigger, but remained in a shooter’s stance, every muscle tense. Quincy felt it as well.

His gaze was ping-ponging all over the place. Trying to see everything, focusing on nothing. He was losing it, Kincaid was losing it. They had started out as professionals, and now were two schoolboys, spooked out in the local cemetery.

“I don’t see anything,” Kincaid said brusquely.

“Me neither.”

“But I’m pretty sure if he was around, he’d know we’d followed his stupid map.”

“Seems like a safe bet.”

Kincaid inhaled. Exhaled. He finally eased up, his Glock.40 disappearing once more inside his jacket. He took a few steps, then shook out his arms. “I’m going to have to report discharging my weapon thanks to that damn bird,” he muttered, still sounding royally pissed off, but at least in a healthier sort of way.

“The bird that got away,” Quincy observed.

“Ahh shit. I shoulda become an accountant. You ever think that? My father, he’s a CPA. Maybe it’s not the most exciting job in the world, but he’s off most of the summer, and better yet, I don’t think he’s ever had to run around a cemetery hunting for masked men. He sits at a desk and adds numbers. I could do that.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a teacher myself. It would still involve spending large periods of time with violent offenders, but at least it would be at the beginning of their careers, and not later when they’d already killed half a dozen people.”

Kincaid stared at him. “You got a really interesting way of looking at things, Mr. Profiler Man.”

“I’m an absolute hit at cocktail parties,” Quincy assured him.

Kincaid sighed and resumed inspecting the grounds for signs of an X. “So you were saying? About this Fox guy?”

“Oh. Mr. Parker paid the ransom, and in return, the Fox dumped out his twelve-year-old daughter’s body. Marion’s legs had been chopped off, her innards cut out, and her eyes wired open to make it appear as if she were alive. Later, the police found her internal organs strewn all over sections of L.A.”

Kincaid looked faintly ill. “Jesus. This really happened?”

“It’s a fairly infamous case.”

“In 1927? Well, you can’t really blame that one on violent video games, can you? I don’t get it though. You’re talking nearly eighty years ago. I kinda doubt that’s the same cat we’re dealing with now.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s a different ‘cat.’ The Fox is dead. Mr. Parker recognized him immediately as a former employee, the police picked him up, and he was hanged in ’28.”

“So in other words, it’s got nothing to do with us,” Kincaid said with a frown. “One guy signed notes The Fox, another guy signed his note The Fox. Probably just thought it sounded cool.”

“In real life,” Quincy said quietly, “the Fox’s name was William Edward Hickman.”

Kincaid stopped, looked faintly ill again. “W.E.H.”

“Return address L.A.”

“Ah jeez… Can’t a criminal just be normal anymore? I swear even the felons have watched too much TV.”

“The nom de plume, the map, the cemetery.” Quincy gestured around the gray-gloomed space. “Whatever we’re dealing with here, I doubt it’s just about money. Frankly, if the criminally inclined wanted money, they could knock over a 7-Eleven. These, ransom cases, are always about something more.”

Kincaid narrowed his eyes. “All right. I’ll bite: How many of these cases have you worked?”

“Six.”

“And the success rate for happy family reunions?”

“Thirty-three percent. Two of the six abductees were returned alive.”

“Did the other four families pay up?”

“Yes. But it didn’t matter. In the other four cases, the victims were killed within an hour of abduction. There was never any intent to return them alive. It’s difficult to have a hostage, you know. One, if they’ve seen your face, they’ll identify you later. Two, there’s the sheer logistics of housing them, feeding them, dealing with them. It’s much cleaner to simply kill them from the start.

“Three of them were children,” Quincy added. “One was a girl who was only two years old. We caught the man later. He was a former business partner of the parents, who felt they owed him more money than they’d given him in the original buyout. So he killed their child in an effort to extract fifty thousand dollars. These kinds of predators… It’s never just about money, Sergeant Kincaid. It’s almost always a little bit personal.”

“I do not like the things you know.”

“Most of the time, neither do I.”

Kincaid glanced at his watch. “We have forty minutes.”