Authors: Wayne Batson
I opened the glove box, found a little magnetic key box stuck to the side. When I opened it up, I found a wad of hundred dollar bills. “I’m an idiot,” I muttered, thinking of all the Waffle Houses I’d passed up in the morning.
When I’d thought I had no money, I’d willed my hunger away. But now, my body woke up and demanded food. I didn’t think I could bear to drive south again to search for a Waffle House. I practically jogged into the truck stop.
Surrounded by a bunch of burly, bearded guys wearing flannel shirts with the sleeves cut out, I ordered two T-bones, double mashed potatoes and gravy, and a salad.
The waitress brought the food a short time later and set it out for me: all four plates worth.
“Sure you got room for all that, honey?” the waitress asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I replied. “I’ll have room for dessert too. You have dessert, right?”
“Best Pecan Pie you ever had,” she said. “Butter brickle brownie cake too.”
“I’ll have both,” I said.
I was halfway through the first steak when one of the truckers clapped his hands. “Now that is one manly meal!” he said. “Yes, SIR!”
Another trucker chimed in. “Shoot, he might just beat Otis’ record.”
I turned and nodded politely.
“A man’s meal,” the trucker repeated. “Yes, sir!”
That’s when it happened.
I am sixteen going on seventeen; I know that I’m naive.
Of all the times.
I dropped the silverware and dug around in my pockets and found the phone, but not before its ringtone belted out:
Fellows I meet may tell me I’m sweet, and willingly I believe.
I hammered the green button. “What do you want, Agent Rezvani?” I growled, feeling the truckers’ stare, heavy with accusation. “I thought you weren’t going to contact me anymore.”
“Fine,” she said. “You don’t want a lead, I can just—”
“No, wait!” I said. “You’ve got something on Smiling Jack?”
“The victim’s father,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Halfway back to Panama City, why?”
She cursed. “This isn’t going to work.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “You’re not making sense.”
“The guy’s in Shreveport,” she said. “Bureau’s already choppered out to the airport. That would have been…almost two hours ago. Best guess is they’ll be there inside of forty minutes. Once they get there, you won’t have a chance to talk to the guy. I don’t guess you can pull any strings, get someone there first, huh? No, of course you can’t. That’s not how it works.”
I pushed aside my plate. Left a hundred dollar bill and started out the door. “I can make
something
happen,” I said. “Give me the address.”
“Wha—you can?” she asked, and I could hear the thrill in her voice.
“I’ll make it happen,” I said. “But what about your orders? What about the ‘arrest on sight’ bit?”
“I can’t promise anything,” she said. “I’m…I’m uh, not exactly working by the book on this.”
“I understand.”
“But, Ghost, listen,” she said. “Don’t leave me out of the loop on this. Don’t cut me off.”
“Whatever I find out,” I said, “is all yours. Plus some other things I’ve learned since we last spoke. Now, give me his name and address.”
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
I stood in the shade of an ancient magnolia tree at the end of a driveway. The tarnished numbers on the white clapboard house told me I’d arrived at 618 Bay Avenue, Shreveport, Louisiana. I dropped to one knee and gasped for air. I couldn’t help it. Pushing myself the way I had was very dangerous. On most missions, I refused to utilize
surging
unless it was a matter of life and death. The drain on my entire body was immense and long-lasting. I wouldn’t be back to full strength for days. A cold shower would help but initially, just in a cosmetic way.
Still panting like an overheated German Shepherd, I stood up and tried to collect myself. I might have fifteen minutes before the FBI arrived, maybe less. Mr. Graziano had an old bird bath in his weedy front lawn. It was chipped and stained and covered in some kind of pale lichen, but there was rainwater in it. So I splashed my face a few times, pasted my hair back, and breathed a regular breath at last.
I knocked on the front door and got no answer. I knocked again and waited. Nothing. I was about to knock a third time when the door creaked open and a sunken eye blinked at me.
“Whaddaya want?” he asked, his voice ten years of pack-a-day hoarse.
“Mr. Graziano?” I asked, holding up my ID and badge. I could see him squinting at my credentials. No way he read it all. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about your daughter.”
He cursed, widened the door enough to lean out and spit a wad of something just left of my feet, and said, “You’re fifteen years too late.”
Something in the pit of my stomach turned very cold. “Mr. Graziano,” I said, “you contacted the FBI, said you recognized the victim we found in Florida. If she is your daughter, then any information you could give us might save other lives.”
“She’s my daughter all right,” he said. He swung open the door and stepped aside. “My little Erica.”
I followed him inside and realized that Mr. Graziano and the house were one. He was thin, gaunt even. The house had narrow rooms with nothing on the walls except for water stains. His skin sagged and drooped in wrinkled folds. The furniture looked like it had been out of style forty years ago. The upholstery was faded, sunken, and threadbare. But the greatest and saddest similarity was the pervasive emptiness I felt from him and the house. This was a shell of a man living in the shell of a home.
Mr. Graziano motioned me to a chair. I sat, sinking down so that my knees were way higher than comfortable. He pulled a wobbly chair from the card table I suspected he used for meals. He sat down and asked, “Whaddaya want t’know?”
Pangs of pain washed through me. I didn’t want to grill this man about his daughter. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was for his loss. I wanted to offer a thousand comforts. But I had to wade in. I didn’t have much time, and I wouldn’t get another chance. “Mr. Graziano,” I said, “could you begin by explaining how you knew the victim was your daughter?”
“I told’em on the phone,” he said. “It was the birthmark on her right thigh, just above the knee.” He pointed out the spot on his own leg. “Coupl’a blotches, looked just like a bunny jumping over a log. Erica was my little bunny.”
“How did you see the birthmark?” I asked. “Did the FBI show you…did they let you see her?”
“No,” Graziano said, his eyes welling up. “The article online had a picture of her face, and I didn’t really think much of it, ‘cept she sort’a looked like my ex-wife. That’s the only reason I kept reading the article. When I read there was a birthmark, I about had a heart attack. I called you guys, described my little Erica’s birthmark, and well, here you are. What do you think, Mister…uh?”
“Spector,” I said, my brain too busy elsewhere to hide my name. Much of what Graziano had said left me puzzled. What had he meant by fifteen years too late? Why did he keep calling her my little Erica? “Mr. Graziano,” I said, “Could I have a look at your most recent photograph of Erica?”
He nodded and disappeared around a corner. I heard a drawer open and close, and then he reappeared carrying an old photo album. “I dug it out already,” he said. “Figured you’d want to see.”
He handed it to me with both hands as if it was a jeweled crown upon a velvet pillow. He nodded, letting me know that it was okay for me to take it. I held it reverently for a moment and wondered. Just looking at the dust collected on the frilly lace, I thought something was wrong. When I opened the album I became certain. The first few pictures were of a toddler who apparently liked to wear princess dresses. She was a beautiful child: dark hair and eyes, skin so pale she almost looked porcelain, and the cutest dimply smile I’d ever seen. I flipped through the pages and watched the little girl grow up…a little.
There were birthday parties and pony rides. There was Christmas morning where she’d been given a Lite Brite toy. There were bubble baths and puppies. And finally, as I came to the last couple of pages, there was a little girl getting ready for her first day of kindergarten. She had a pink backpack, and there was her mother, helping her step up onto the bus. The chill in my gut flash-spread all over my torso.
I remembered the pale-skinned brunette…dead, left curled in the fetal position in the sandy catacombs of Fort Pickens. The little girl and the young woman: too many features matched. The mother too, even more so because of her adult features. But the dead young woman at Fort Pickens couldn’t be the mother. Mr. Graziano hadn’t called the FBI to identify the victim as his ex-wife.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Graziano,” I said. “But don’t you have more recent pictures of your daughter?”
“Mr. Spector,” he said. “Those
are
the most recent pictures of Erica. She was taken away from me and her mother fifteen years ago. She was only five.”
Chapter 27
If Rez’s estimate was accurate, I wouldn’t have much more time before the cavalry arrived. And this cavalry would be none too pleased to find me on their turf, questioning their suspect.
“Mr. Graziano,” I said, “our meeting here today is a preliminary. Other men, agents from the FBI, will be here soon. They will likely want to take you in under protective custody.”
“Protective custody?” Graziano said, blinking. “You think I’m in danger?”
“It’s purely precautionary,” I said. “You have information critical to an ongoing investigation. What you have to tell us may save lives.”
“I hope so,” he said. He stared at the ground, and then he started shaking. “She…she was all I had, y’know? Sunshine in my life, and it all fell apart after she…after she was gone. All this time…after I’d given up hope…to know she was alive—I gave up on her. How could I? How could I?”
“From what you told me,” I said, “you and your wife did everything you could. This falls on the FBI’s shoulders, not yours. This is a failing of law enforcement and an act of pure evil by the person or persons responsible.”
“Who could do such a thing?” Graziano asked, wiping messy tears off his face. “Take a little girl away, keep her for years, and then kill her?”
“You don’t have words for that kind of evil,” I said.
“You gonna get this…” He uttered a blistering string of anguished curses. “Promise me that you’re gonna get him!”
“Mr. Graziano,” I said, “Erica’s blood cries out, and this time, it hasn’t fallen on deaf ears. I promise you: Erica’s killers will fall.”
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
I had wandered two blocks up from Bay Avenue when a convoy of FBI-standard-issue SUVs rounded the corner and headed for Graziano’s place. The manpower they brought, and the way they tore into the neighborhood, you’d have thought they were securing a beachhead.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh
—they sped past me without so much as a tap on the brakes. Just as well; I had no time to trifle with them. Too much on my mind.
I followed Bay Avenue, turned a corner and found two bridges crossing the bayou that ran behind Mr. Graziano’s neighborhood. One was steel and new stone, rising on a high arc over the water, and open to traffic. The other was a pedestrian thing that was in such a state of flaking disrepair that it looked like it had been hewn from sandstone. No cars on this one. There was an old guy fishing about sixty yards away but no one else. I took a seat on the bridge and shoved my legs through an opening to dangle. I spent maybe ten minutes trying to corral my unruly thoughts, reeling with new information. Once I had it catalogued enough to speak on it, I opened the phone and dialed Rez.
“Rezvani,” she said. “Hold, please.”
I frowned.
Hold, please? Really?
Thirty awkward seconds later: “Ghost?” she said. “Sorry. I had to get out of the office. Too many ears. Listen, I have news. Tracy in Speech and Language finally got back to me. You were right. The victim on the video, the redhead, she was talking just before Jack killed her.”
“Anything useful?”
“Not certain,” Rez said. “Tracy’s one of the best, and she said a lot of the vic’s speech was repetitive, like mumbling or…or singing. But she did make out one coherent string: ‘Lucy, Lucinda, come braid my hair…before the doctor comes.”
“Some kind of nursery rhyme?” I wondered aloud.
“None that I’ve ever heard of,” Rez said. “We’re working on it here. What about Shreveport? You couldn’t organize something fast enough, could you?”
“I got to Graziano,” I said.
She made a triumphant growling sound and said, “Finally! Flexed a little higher-than-the-FBI-muscle. Sweet! Who’d you send?”
How to answer that? If I told her I’d gone to Shreveport, there’d be too much time wasted with new questions I could not answer. “A trusted agent,” I said finally. “No one I trust more.”
“Good, good,” she said. “What’s the deal? Is Graziano on the up-and-up?”
I was about to answer when I heard a strange warbling beep. I looked at the phone’s display and saw the little battery icon blinking. “I think this battery’s about to die, so I’m going to give it to you fast. You have something to write with?”
“Yeah, yeah, just a sec,” she said. I heard a lot of muffled noise. “Got it; go ahead.”
The battery warning beeped again. “Erica Graziano is the victim we found at Fort Pickens,” I explained. “She was taken from her parents when she was just five years of age. She—”
“Five?” Rez blurted. “That can’t be right. Medical examiner said she was twenty-two years old.”
“I said she was taken when she was five. She was killed fifteen years later.” Silence from Rez. The battery beeped again. I didn’t have time to let Rez puzzle it all out. “Agent Rezvani, I need you to track with me here. Erica Graziano is the Fort Pickens victim. Your FBI buddies will confirm this when they compare DNA with the sample Mr. Graziano will provide from an old hairbrush, a lost tooth, or…or something. She was kidnapped from a local daycare center and never seen again…until the Smiling Jack pictures.”