“Wouldn’t it be one hell of a coincidence that a prowler and an abductor showed up at the same house, at nearly the same time?”
Rainey remained by the baseboard, still studying the smear. Bloody fingers had been drawn across the paint.
She asked Sheila, “Do you see anything here?”
Sheila moved closer. “No. Wait, kind of. It could be a ‘one’ or an ‘I,’ maybe a ‘four.’ I don’t know. It’s one of those things where your mind tries to fill in what isn’t there.”
Rainey pulled out her phone and took a picture of the smear, before standing and asking Sheila, “Let’s go back to Wendy's office. I don’t want anyone to hear what I have to say.” She led the way and closed the door before she spoke again. “Wendy came home to get something she wanted me to read. I didn’t see anything out there, so it must be in here.”
“Any clue what we’re looking for and why?”
“Wendy told Katie she thought she’d broken the case. I’m not sure which one. My sister has been playing detective. She was going through my file on the fetish UNSUB. She is also involved in a domestic abuse case. The abuser has targeted her, is stalking and has threatened her. His wife and kids are in hiding and he’s deteriorating rapidly. He’s ex-FBI and in the home security field. The third case is bothersome too. It involves high-level government officials and underage male prostitutes. It’s linked to the bodies found in the drainage pond. I told her to back off and call you. So, you see, there are three very viable reasons Wendy was abducted. We have to figure out to whom she tipped her hand. I hope it was the fetish guy. She’ll have the best chance of staying alive with him, at least for the next few hours.”
“I want Aaron Engel’s ass in custody right now,” Rex King’s voice penetrated the door before he burst into the office. He was looking over his shoulder at someone. “I said now!”
Sheila responded to this outburst calmly but firmly, “Detective King, you cannot interfere with this investigation. You can’t issue orders. A father’s participation could cloud the prosecution.”
“What about her?” Rex said, pointing at Rainey. “She’s Wendy’s half-sister.”
Rainey looked up from her study of Wendy’s desk. Rex bored her. She rarely if ever paid attention to his frequent rants and conclusion jumping. She was honestly surprised he spoke of her relationship with Wendy so openly.
“He’s right, Sheila. Run everything I say past Teague or call the BAU and ask for Paula Breedlove. She’s the most up to date on the fetish case. I talked with her yesterday at Quantico.”
Rex insisted, “Engel threatened to kill Wendy. He’s a better suspect than the fetish creep. Why would an organized killer, as Rainey has called him, attack a cop? It’s just foolish. She said he’s smart. Does that sound smart to you?”
Rainey agreed, “I think Detective King has the right idea about Aaron Engel. We need to know exactly where he was early this morning.”
“Okay,” Sheila agreed. “I’ll have Engel picked up and call Teague in. Detective King, I really need you to leave the premises. Would you walk out with me?”
“Why does she get to stay?” Rex complained.
Sheila grew impatient. “Because, you and I both know she’s the best shot you have at getting your daughter back. Don’t be an ass, King. You know Rainey is good at her job. Leave her alone and let her do it, for Wendy’s sake.”
Rainey continued her inspection of the desk while the other two argued.
“Don’t shut me out, Robertson. I want to know everything when you know it.”
Sheila proved she had more patience than Rainey. She calmly held out her hand, indicating the door, and asked Rex to leave with her one more time.
“I will keep you abreast of the investigation as much as possible. Now, will you walk out with me?”
Rex stormed out the door with Sheila following.
Rainey stopped her, asking, “Sheila, has anyone found Wendy’s phone?”
“Yes, we found it under the couch.”
“May I see it, please? She kept notes on there.”
“I’ll bring it back in with me after I call Teague and send someone for Engel.”
“Thanks. I’m going to keep looking in here if that’s all right?”
“I’ll close the door. Stay as long as you need to.”
As soon as she was alone, Rainey said aloud, “Okay, Wendy, what did you need me to know?”
She stared at Wendy’s neat desk. Everything was organized and in place. Wendy had binders for each graduate class she was taking. There were binders for “Theory of Criminology and Criminal Justice,” “Crime and Public Policy,” and Teague’s “Forensic Psychology.” Rainey picked up the binder for Teague’s class. The syllabus contained a class description and a list of topics to be studied, including “eyewitness testimony, false confessions, child custody, juvenile delinquency, expert witnesses, civil commitment, insanity and competency evaluations, risk assessment, and criminal profiling.”
“Survey class. Hit the high spots and move along, eh Teague?”
Rainey thumbed through Wendy’s notes, pausing on the section on paraphilia, Teague’s area of expertise. There were several case-studies, a couple Rainey recognized from her work with the BAU. The lust killer, foot fetish murderer Jerry Brudos was the most well known. There were papers written by Teague himself on inmates he interviewed for the study he authored. Rainey put the binder down on the desk and went through the other classes' documentation. Nothing stuck out, but she didn’t put Teague’s class binder back. She wanted to read more. It seemed the task force had the right expert for the fetish case at least.
Rainey opened all the drawers in the desk and in the file cabinet in the corner, asking herself, “What could she have wanted me to read? Which case was she talking about?” She examined Wendy’s bookshelf, filled with textbooks for the most part. There was an entire shelf dedicated to texts written about and by the initial Behavioral Science Unit members, Douglas, Hazelwood, Ressler, and others not so well known. The shelf’s contents included FBI publications, some with Rainey named as a contributor. Another shelf held every Thomas Harris title and some other novels about well-known fictional mindhunters. Wendy had wanted to be a profiler long before she knew Rex King was not her father and that her half-sister once had her dream career.
Rainey opened the closet door. The memory of Mack holding his palms up flooded her mind. That image would stay with her, she knew. How long had her little boy hidden there? How many minutes was he required to listen as his aunt fought the attacker? How long was Mack forced to endure the uncertainty of the quiet that followed? He had to have been terrified. She hoped he would process it and move on, with no nightmares.
“Please don’t terrorize him in his sleep,” Rainey said to the universe, in hopes that someone was listening.
She saw nothing to read in the closet and was about to give up when she noticed a backpack hanging from a hook on the back of the door. Rainey recognized it as the one Wendy had with her often. She pulled the bag off the hook, took it to the desk, and began pulling out the contents a piece at a time. When she found an essay, she read the first paragraph.
The title page was missing. Rainey had no way to know the author of the paper, but within seconds, she knew this was what she was looking for. It was written from the point of view of an offender, one with a thing for women’s undergarments. Rainey was positive it was the UNSUB she had been tracking.
The farmhouse sat back from the road, nestled into the surrounding woods. I saw her right after she moved in. She ran her tractor into a ditch. She was middle-aged, but still a hottie, MILF material. I had to stop and help. I went back that night, relieving her of a black bra and panty set. I repeatedly returned for more. She sure likes the pretty lacy ones. So do I. She knew someone was coming. She stopped hanging things on the line or porch. That’s when the game began to change. I watched from the woods when the new washer and dryer showed up early one morning. I had visited the night before. I took a whole basketful of her dirties, mmmm. She called the cops. Like that was going to stop me.
Rainey stood behind the desk reading. The bedroom door flew open, smacking into the doorstop. Sheila nearly met it nose first when it bounced back at her.
“Oh, sorry,” Sheila apologized to the door.
Rainey said. “What’s got you in a tither?”
Sheila explained her haste. “Chatham County picked up a guy this morning. His live-in girlfriend found some disturbing things in their garage and called the police. The girl produced a gym bag full of underwear and they were not hers. The officers emphasized she was adamant about that. One used the term ‘hysterical.’ They backed off and called in a supervisor. We are in the process of obtaining search warrants. They took the suspect into custody at his workplace and are bringing him to Durham. The son of bitch showed up at work on time, eight a.m. sharp, after what he did here this morning.”
“There could be more than one fetish burglar working the area. What makes you so sure he’s the guy? And what did he do with Wendy in such a short span of time, if he was already at work?”
“Maybe he stashed her somewhere, which could be in her favor, if—”
Sheila hesitated to finish the sentence, so Rainey did it for her.
“If she’s still alive, right?”
Sheila nodded. “Yes, if she’s still alive. It is my hope that she is.”
“Mine too,” Rainey said, with a twinge of sorrow she was trying to ignore. She pushed it back inside the little mental box labeled Wendy and asked, “What else do you know about him?”
Sheila pulled a pad from her coat pocket and read, “His name is Shaun George. He’s a teaching assistant at State College and is working on his graduate degree.”
Rainey interrupted with a question. “What’s his major?”
Sheila looked at the pad. “Uh, creative writing. Is that significant?”
“Just wondering,” Rainey answered. “What’s the rest of the story?”
“The girlfriend works four days on four days off as an overnight nurse at Memorial Hospital, and sometimes stays with her mother because it’s closer to work. That clears the way for his clandestine activities. The guy is obsessed with running, so the girlfriend says.”
“I don’t think he had time to take Wendy to where we believe his den is, do you?”
“No, but maybe we were wrong about that. The girlfriend also said the suspect goes off to hike and camp in the woods alone for days. She said he claimed he was working on his masterpiece, a ‘novel about a man who gives up his everyday life to follow his base desires’—her description, by the way. She says she hasn’t read it. He hasn’t shared the text with anyone that she knows of. We included any original writings and his computer drives on the affidavit for the search warrant.”
“What else might I have been wrong about?” Rainey asked, sensing that Sheila was holding something back.
“Teague was right, Rainey. The suspect is twenty-seven years old.”
“I suppose I’m not going to be interviewing him. Have I been officially booted from the case?”
“No, but Teague is coming in. I caught him out for his morning run. He said he was five miles from his house and would meet us downtown as fast as he could. I convinced the bosses that two profilers were better than one and that your experience far outweighs Teague’s. I emphasized that one mistake in the interview could have the whole case thrown out and that Teague is a professor and an expert, but he’s not and never has been a cop. You may both observe, but task force detectives will question the suspect.”
“Good enough. Thank you for the support. Did you pick up Aaron Engel?”
“They are looking for him. He’s not at home or his office. Do you still think he’s involved in Wendy’s abduction?”
Rainey stuffed Wendy’s things back in the backpack. She included the essay and added the binder for Teague’s class. Zipping it up and sliding it over one shoulder, she answered Sheila’s question.
“If Shaun George is the fetish killer, then he doesn’t have Wendy. He never would have taken her and not stayed with her. He would have called in sick or had a prearranged day off. At the very least, he would have been late. No way he takes a victim like Wendy, without planning. The UNSUB we’ve been tracking doesn’t do things spur of the moment. What good is a fantasy, if you’re going to ruin it by improvising and poor planning? Wendy would be a crowning jewel in this guy’s cap. Degrading and torturing a female perceived to have authority, a police officer for instance, is the ultimate power trip for this type. He couldn’t control that rush enough to simply show up at work on time.”
“Well, you have a point and speak of what you know, so I can see that possibility. Are you going to tell me about the other case, the one involving high-ranking government officials?”
“What would you say if I told you State Representative Reverend Jedidiah Lilly is using a pimp to supply him with underage male prostitutes and is involved in a group of men who wear masks and have sex with young boys for sport?”
“I’d say holy shit, literally. Do you have any evidence to back that up?”
“Did you bring Wendy’s phone?”
“It went back to the lab with the techs. I can get it for you when we get downtown. Does Wendy have evidence on that phone?”
“No, at least I don’t think so, but she does have a phone number I want. What we need is an excuse to bring Jedidiah down to the interview room. A ruse so he doesn’t suspect he’s a target of an investigation.”
“You think Lilly took Wendy? That’s a stretch. She’d beat that little bald man senseless and feed him that god-awful toupee.”
“I don’t want Lilly. He wouldn’t get his hands that dirty, but his pimp would if it threatened his income, which I understand is quite substantial.”
“Oh, I see. What makes you think Lilly will admit to anything and give up his connection to this guy?”
Rainey pulled out her phone and touched the screen a few times. She smiled, before turning the screen toward Sheila, saying, “Because, I have a picture of Jedidiah Lilly’s penis, which I’m sure he’ll recognize from the identifying mole on the left there.”
“Oh, good Lord. Where did you get that? And put it away. I could have gone my whole life without knowing what that idiot’s dick looks like.” Sheila chuckled. “But I can see why he’s so unhappy and his wife always has that lemon-sucking grimace on her face.”