Elizabeth Heiter - Vanished

And he knew there was no way she’d leave Rose Bay now until she uncovered the truth. No matter how horrible it was, no matter what it cost her.

The image of Evelyn faded as the smell of something rotting wafted up. Please, God, don’t let it be Brittany Douglas.

He tried not to inhale too deeply as Frank splashed into the low marsh waters, startling three turkey vultures. They gave deep, guttural hisses, then took off into the sky, revealing a carcass along the edge of the marsh.

The breath stalled in his lungs. It was the remains left by some hunter, but it wasn’t human. Just a deer. He shut his eyes and allowed himself a moment of relief.

Beside him, Gabe sighed. “Thank God.”

Frank stared down at the carcass, then off into the distance, where the marsh wound through tall grasses and eventually disappeared from sight. “Let’s keep looking.”

Far behind them, the search was continuing.

* * *

Each time Evelyn read the note that had been taped to Brittany Douglas’s bike, goose bumps rose on her skin.

It wasn’t so hard,

I went to the yard,

Where you’d left the poor child alone.

When I got there,

It felt like a dare.

I thought to myself, Take her and run.

It matched the notes from eighteen years ago...and yet, it didn’t. Back then, just like now, the nursery rhymes focused on two ideas. First, that the child was being neglected in some way by the parents. And second, that the abductor was rescuing her from that.

But eighteen years ago, the abductor hadn’t displayed such obvious joy at the abduction. That idea dominated the new note, a macabre revision of “Old Mother Hubbard.”

Unlike the notes eighteen years ago, which had talked to the victim, this one was directed at the parents. In context, the change made sense, given the increased focus on the abduction stage.

But was it because the abductor had developed a taste for the actual abduction? Or because it was a new predator entirely? She’d pored over the case details from the three old abductions and the new one for more than an hour, but still wasn’t positive.

And that was the most important part of the profile she’d promised to deliver to the cops in less than two hours.

So far, what she knew were the statistics. She knew the chances of a child abductor going dormant for eighteen years and then starting up again were slim. She knew Brittany Douglas, at eleven years old, was the average age of child abduction and murder victims. Statistics said Brittany had first met her abductor within a quarter mile of her home. Statistics also said she’d been dead before Evelyn had even arrived in town.

But it didn’t matter how slim Brittany’s chances were; if there was any hope at all, Evelyn had to try.

A rush of cold swept over her in the too-warm hotel room, leaving behind an intense fear. The fear that she might fail.

Evelyn tried to ignore it as she picked up the photograph of Brittany Douglas. With her long, dark brown hair, hazel eyes and shy smile, Brittany looked nothing like Cassie. In fact, none of the victims looked alike. The only similarity was age and gender. And the fact that the killer either believed—or wanted police to think he believed—that their parents were neglecting them.

“Damn it!” Evelyn sprang to her feet, raking her hands through her bun so violently she’d have to fix it before she went back to the station. The most important case of her life and she was blowing it.

Was Dan right? Was she too inexperienced in child abduction cases to spot the important details? Too personally invested to see the case clearly?

Evelyn blew out a heavy breath. No, she could do this. She’d been training all her life for this case. She was going to put everything she had into it. She couldn’t consider the profile from eighteen years ago, couldn’t review the original suspects, because it might taint her analysis. Especially if this was a new abductor.

She had to rely on her training and the case evidence to tell her about the perpetrator. And even though Brittany’s abductor hadn’t left much behind, he’d left something of himself. They always did.

Dropping back onto the hotel bed where she’d spread out the case files, Evelyn lined up the four notes. Direct communication from the abductor could tell her a lot or it could lead her totally off track.

A smart perp, knowing the police were going to analyze the notes, would use them to misdirect the investigation. And everything about this case, from the lack of forensic details to the high-risk abduction right out of the child’s front yard, screamed that this was an intelligent perp who planned carefully.

But the notes also had an odd intensity about them. He was taunting, yes, but there was more to it. The abductor had left clues to his identity in the words. And Evelyn vowed that would be his undoing.

She glanced at her watch again. Ninety-eight minutes and counting. Somehow, in that time, she needed to figure out whether the original Nursery Rhyme Killer was back or if they had a copycat.

* * *

The Rose Bay Police Station’s briefing room was jammed full. Cops, both in uniform and in street clothes, watched her, all with exhaustion slouching their shoulders and fear lurking in their eyes. FBI CARD agents stood stiffly among them, trying to look confident. The smell of sweat and dirt, of too many bodies packed too closely together, overwhelmed the inefficient air-conditioning. The buzz of voices came to an instant halt as Evelyn stepped up to the front of the room.

She gripped the podium with slick hands. She’d given hundreds of profiles in her year’s tenure with BAU, but she suddenly felt all of twelve again.

She had an instant flashback to the last time she’d been at the Rose Bay Police Station. She remembered sitting on a plastic chair, her feet dangling. She’d held tight to her grandpa’s hand on one side and her grandma’s on the other while the cops asked unending questions. Did she remember anything unusual from the day Cassie had gone missing? Had she ever seen Cassie talk to a stranger? Did she know anything that could help them bring Cassie home?

Now, just like then, those answers seemed elusive.

Someone in the audience coughed loudly, bringing Evelyn back to the present. She looked over the sea of law enforcement officers, and jerked backward at the animosity she saw in one cop’s eyes.

Jack Bullock. It had to be. He was in his midforties now, not the rookie who’d questioned her until she’d cried so many years ago. But there was no mistaking the too-sharp planes of his face, the deep-set brown eyes, the thick shoulders stacked on a stocky body. The thin streaks of silver through his brown hair and the lines etched deep into his forehead were new, but not the intimidating glare.

Evelyn redirected her gaze. “I’m Evelyn Baine, from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. My job is to review the evidence in your case to give you a new perspective—a behavioral portrait of your perpetrator. I’m here to tell you how he thinks, why he’s choosing his victims and what he’ll do next.”

The officers seemed to lean forward as one, glancing at one another as if to gauge their colleagues’ reactions to her. At the front of the crowd, Tomas was listening carefully, his deep-brown eyes filled with too much hope, too much expectation.

She prayed she could provide him and his officers with what they needed to find Brittany. Looking down at the profile she’d furiously finished minutes before racing back to the station, Evelyn began. “Your perpetrator is a male in his late forties or fifties. He’s almost certainly white.”

“Why?” someone from the back of the room called.

“Why do I say he’s white? Frankly, because High Street is still all white. Someone who’s not would be noticed, even now.”