Authors: Leslie Tentler
Mia parked the car against the curb. She sat and stared at the structure for several long moments, emotion welling inside her.
Face your fears.
Taking a breath, she grabbed her canvas bag and got out, walking up to the front lawn. It was more dirt than grass now, and patches of overgrowth remained where Miss Cathy’s flower garden had been. Broken beer bottles were scattered on the porch. Mia felt a coldness despite the heat of the midmorning sun on her bare shoulders.
Why
had
she come here? Maybe she was still attempting to make some sense of the unsettling dream. Trying to prove to herself the red-haired girl never existed. But standing in the neglected yard, all she felt was foolish and alone. A sense of betrayal and abandonment, as strong as it had been when she was a child, fell over her. Mia took another long look at the dilapidated house, then turned back to her car. The sound of a barking dog came from farther down the street, and sirens wailed not too far off in the distance.
Reaching the curb, the air left her lungs.
The powder-blue hatchback rolled slowly past her, its engine rumbling and exhaust pipe belching black smoke.
This isn’t real,
she told herself, trying to control a sudden wave of dizziness.
The car stopped and began backing up. Mia’s heart pounded in time with the vibrating bass beat of its radio. A male hand protruded through the open driver’s-side window, dangling a doll with yellow hair. The vehicle came to a halt again, its brake lights glowing red on the street.
Mia felt the thin fingers loosen that had somehow become intertwined with hers. The little red-haired girl’s face was filled with delight. She pulled away and began walking toward the car, entranced by the doll. Mia remained frozen on the curb. The man was luring her. He was going to take her. The child moved closer.
“No,” she whispered. “Don’t—”
She screamed at the hard tap on her shoulder. Whirling, she stumbled backward, the eerie vision dissolving like mist.
“Give me some money, lady?” The junkie’s eyes were bloodshot in his sweat-streaked face. He smelled like garbage. “I got kids at home. They need to eat.”
He gazed at her, hopeful and jittery, advancing a step closer. His eyes roamed her bathing suit top. Mia reached into her bag, grasping a loose ten-dollar bill. She shoved it into the man’s skinny chest and hurried away on wobbly legs.
“Hey! What’s your rush, baby? We can hang for a while—”
She slammed the Volvo’s door closed and locked it. Hands trembling, Mia started the engine and peeled away from the street. She’d been wrong to come here. As she drove, her eyes flicked to the Indian dream catcher swaying from her rearview mirror. She tore it down and shoved it into the glove box.
13
“W
elcome back,” Grayson announced, striding toward Mia as she entered the newsroom on Monday morning. Her coworkers—reporters, copy editors, web masters and photographers—echoed the salutation, gathered around a tray of bagels and pastries that had apparently been laid out in her honor. Putting an arm around her shoulders, he escorted her over. “We’re just glad to have you back, kiddo.”
Mia accepted the staff’s well-wishing as they made a grab for the food and carried it back to their respective desks, ready to get a jump on the day’s assignments. However, she didn’t miss the sympathetic looks and curious glances at her still-chafed wrists and bandaged fingers, reminding her that she’d been the recent watercooler topic. Grayson handed her a paper cup filled with orange juice.
“Get settled in and come see me in my office,” he said.
“New haircut?” Walt Rudner asked pointedly, his mouth full of cream cheese and onion bagel, as Grayson departed. Balding and bearing a generous paunch, he was the senior reporter who had taken over the abduction stories in Mia’s absence. “Was that by choice or necessity?”
She gave him a hard look, causing the typically gruff reporter to spit cream cheese as he chuckled. “C’mon, Mia. The task force has a gag order on us. I can’t write about the specifics, but I know enough JSO detectives to hear things. Like the hair and fingernail fetish this freak has.”
He nodded to her midsection. “I also understand he has his own perverted take on the Dewey decimal system.”
Mia’s face grew hot. Walt could be an insensitive lout. “What do you want?”
“Information? Look, I know you supposedly don’t remember anything about what happened to you, but I’m betting you’ve got some special insight into the investigation.” He wiped his fingers on the pocket of his sports coat. “For starters, I saw Agent Macfarlane escorting you past the crime scene tape at the boat ramp on Thursday night—the same tape meant to keep the rest of us lowly scavengers on the outside. What gives?”
“I wasn’t there as a reporter,” she said quietly.
“So it was a social visit? I noticed you got an
up close and personal
with Pauline Berger. Or what was left of her.”
Mia bristled. She’d picked up a Danish pastry but dropped it into the trash, her appetite gone. “You’re an ass, Walt.”
“And you’re too tangled up in this. Which is why you’re not getting the investigation back. I know you asked Miller for it. Normally you get what you want around here, but not this time.”
She’d started to walk away, but she turned to look at him.
Shrugging his thick shoulders, he wolfed down the rest of his bagel. “Not my decision. Go ask him.”
Stopping by her desk in the bull pen, she plugged in her laptop, then shoved her purse into one of the drawers. Mia traveled through the newsroom to a row of glass-walled offices occupied by senior editorial and management staff. Grayson had the large corner room, giving him a panoramic view of the St. Johns River below. Mia knocked on the door. Glancing over the top of his bifocals at her, he motioned her inside. She entered and sat across from his desk.
“How did the parking garage go this morning?” he asked, concerned.
“It went fine.”
“We should’ve had someone from security meet you and walk you up. It couldn’t have been easy going back there—”
“I’m
fine,
Grayson,” Mia assured him, although in truth the garage had taken some courage to navigate, even in daylight. “I just want to get back to work.”
He nodded. “All right. I’m sending you to the county courthouse. They’re arraigning D’Angelo Roberts on vehicular homicide charges this morning.”
Mia had heard about the arrest. D’Angelo Roberts was a former NFL star who had moved to the upscale Ponte Vedra beach community. Over the weekend he’d crashed his Ferrari with an underage female passenger inside, killing her. Toxicology tests indicated a high level of cocaine in his system, as well as the girl’s. It wasn’t a horrible assignment—it could even be considered a rather choice one considering Roberts’s high profile. But it was a far cry from the recent abductions and Pauline Berger’s murder.
“Walt tells me I’m not getting reassigned to the investigation.”
“You know Walt—he’s marking his territory. He thinks the serial murder investigation’s going to earn him a Pulitzer.”
“Is he right?”
“About the Pulitzer?”
Mia didn’t find it amusing. “About me not getting back on the story.”
When Grayson failed to answer and instead glanced at his computer screen, she added, “Have you told him about the therapy I’m undergoing at the Naval Air Station?”
“Did you ask me not to?”
“Yes. That information’s off the record—”
“Then I didn’t.”
He removed his eyeglasses and laid them on the desk. “Although as executive editor of this paper, I should be making it a top story. I knew this victim-reporter thing was going to get complicated.”
Mia sat rigidly. “If I wasn’t a victim, you wouldn’t know about the NAS sessions anyway. I agreed to confidentiality and only told you because it may require me to be away from work.”
“I
thought
you told me because we’re friends.” He stood and walked around to the front of his desk. Sitting on its edge, Grayson peered at her, lowering his voice. “Look at you, Mia. You’re trying like hell to act tough, but my guess is you’re barely holding it together. You don’t need to be covering the Anna Lynn Gomez abduction or any other part of the investigation right now. Trust me, okay? I’m watching out for you. You’re not ready.”
Releasing a breath, she thought of the hallucination she’d experienced outside the abandoned foster care group home the day before. She’d wondered if it was one of the memory flashes Dr. Wilhelm had warned her about. But that would require the memory to be
real.
“Just take the D’Angelo Roberts arraignment, all right? I want something online by this afternoon. No later than two.”
With a faint nod, she got up and left Grayson’s office, ignoring Walt’s chortle as she went past his cubicle. Returning to her desk, she entered her network password so she could log on to the internet to update herself on the vehicular homicide investigation before traveling the short distance to the Duval County Courthouse. As she worked, Mia tried to ignore the rock song that had been on nearly constant replay in her head all morning. She was all too aware of where she’d heard it. In her vision, the same rollicking INXS song had been booming from the blue hatchback’s speakers. Even now, the heavy thud of its bass seemed to throb inside her chest. On impulse, she did a quick web search on the lyrics and discovered the song had been number one on the play charts in 1987.
It was the same year she had lived at Miss Cathy’s.
The added bit of realism caused her to bite her bottom lip in thought. But last night, Mia had searched online for news articles on a female child abducted out of the foster care system in Jacksonville twenty-five years earlier, unable to get the image out of her head. After nearly two hours of looking, she had come up empty.
Maybe Dr. Wilhelm really
was
right. The car’s driver, the red-headed girl—they were all symbolic of her current situation. Maybe Grayson had been right, too, when he’d said she was barely holding it together.
Seeing him leave his office and head in her direction, Mia switched the computer screen to the information on the vehicular homicide case. Either way, she couldn’t keep thinking about it now. She had work to do.
Eric and Cameron returned to the FBI offices no better off than they’d been two hours ago. A woman jogging on the Southbank Riverwalk had been accosted earlier that morning, spurring a frantic call to 9-1-1. Task force members had sprung into action, but after searching the area and finding the male subject based on the woman’s description, the consensus was that it was a case of aggressive panhandling and not an abduction attempt.
“How’s your hip?” Eric asked as they crossed the parking lot, which had already reached the temperature of molten lava. Cameron had taken a fall as they tried to capture the fleeing perp.
“I’ll live,” he said, grimacing. “It’s my suit pants I’m not so sure about.”
The recent abductions and murder, as well as media talk of a serial killer, were wearing on the public’s nerves and creating a heightened sense of anxiety. A growing number of incidents were being reported—suspicious cars cruising parks and neighborhoods, believed sightings of the missing women. It was a lot for task force members to sift through.
A cold blast of air-conditioning met them as they pushed through glass doors and entered the building’s lobby.
“I’m going to the restroom to clean up.” Cameron indicated the grass stains on his knees. “I’ll meet you upstairs.”
Eric went ahead to the reception desk, his security clearance badge in hand.
“Agent Macfarlane.”
He turned to see a stout, middle-aged man with dark hair and tan skin moving toward him. It was Anna Lynn Gomez’s father. He and Eric had spoken before, just hours after his daughter’s disappearance had been reported.
“Mr. Gomez—”
“Where’s my daughter?” He spoke in a heavy accent, his eyes wild and pain-filled. “She’s been missing for over three days! What are you doing to find her?”
“Everything we can, sir,” Eric assured him. “We’ve gotten her photo out to the public and we’re following up on every lead—”
“It’s not enough!” He stepped closer and jabbed a finger into Eric’s chest. Alcohol emanated from his breath. “My Anna’s out there somewhere and you’re in here not doing a damn thing! Do you know what might be happening to her? She could end up like that Berger woman!”
Eric’s face infused with heat. In his peripheral vision, he could see other agents advancing. They would treat the man as a threat and he didn’t want that to happen. He braced himself as Gomez gave him a small, angry shove.
“It’s okay,” Eric told the closest agent who already had his hand on the butt of his gun. “You’re going to have to calm down, Mr. Gomez. Now. Look around you. This isn’t the place to be out of control. We can go into the conference room and talk—”
“Enough talking! Do your job! Get my little girl back!” Tears formed in his red-rimmed eyes. “She was the first in our family to go to college! A beautiful young woman with a bright future and now…” He let go of a sob. Overcome with frustration and grief, he shoved Eric harder this time, forcing him back a step. Two field agents intervened, grabbing Gomez.
“Take him home,” Eric instructed quietly, a dull ache inside his chest. “He shouldn’t be driving.”
“You don’t give a damn about my daughter!” Gomez struggled as the agents escorted him out. Looking over his shoulder, he remained focused on Eric. “Big man with the VCU! You’ve got no idea what it feels like to have someone taken from you!”
Cameron returned from the restroom in time to witness the last of the chaos. “Was that Victor Gomez?”
Eric didn’t respond. He watched as the two agents put the man in back of a sedan to take him away.
It was after dark by the time Eric returned to the bungalow in Jacksonville Beach. He let himself in using his key and deactivated the security system but chose not to turn on the lights. Instead, he stood in solitary darkness, his mind heavy and tired. They were no closer to finding Anna Lynn Gomez or her abductor.