And now she was looking at Arnie Pyle, the FBI agent. Once again, she was disconcerted. Rouge wondered if she recognized Pyle’s large sad eyes. The agent wore a faint smile as he nodded hello to her, and Rouge realized that these two had met before.
“The next group,” she said, “is the preferential pedophile. Some of these people are so introverted they never act out their fantasies. But even the extroverted seducer doesn’t generally abduct the child. He may have a job that puts him in touching distance. He averages three hundred incidents of molestation with a hundred and fifty victims. He does a lot of damage, but he usually leaves them alive.”
One hand went back, gesturing to the pictures on the easels without turning to look at them. “The one you’re looking for is the sadist, the child stealer—a serial killer. He knows he’s going to murder the child from the moment he takes her. Sometimes it’s just the cold-blooded elimination of the only witness, and sometimes it’s ritualistic. He’s the least common of the pack, and he has the fewest victims.”
She paused just a beat too long in a room full of cops with urgent business.
“Have you—” An edgy BCI man in the front row suddenly remembered his briefing protocol and raised his hand. When she nodded to him, he asked, “Have you got a more specific profile on this type? Anything useful?”
“You can’t rely on profiles. In previous cases, the killers ranged from dim-wit drifters to rocket scientists. Most have never married, but you can’t count on that. You have to look at the crime pattern to glean anything useful about the individual. Your man is probably Caucasian—victims are usually the same race. He has a heterosexual’s preference for ten-year-old girls. I believe he’s been killing them for fifteen years.”
The captain raised his hand to her, and a wordless agreement between them was acknowledged by a nod of her head.
She turned back to her audience. “Captain Costello would like you to know that this is only a theory. But
if
my theory is correct, I can tell you more about this particular man, based on details of prior crimes. He’s not on the dim-wit end of the spectrum—he likes a challenge. The primary target is the least accessible victim, a child of extreme wealth. And he’s found a way to defeat every security system a parent can devise to protect her.”
Another BCI investigator shot up her hand. “But the Hubble kid left the house on her own. We found her prints on the—”
“I know. He uses the child’s best friend to call her out. His pattern is very convoluted. That’s how I matched him to previous kidnappings. At the end of the briefing, I’ll be distributing the other case summaries. It’s a long list of children. Some were found dead, but most were never found. The best friend of his primary target is usually well-to-do, but never from a wealthy family. The friend is less protected, more vulnerable to attack. In the beginning—”
She turned to look at the easel where Susan’s portrait had been. Finding it empty, she appeared to be revising her speech, casting about for words. She gestured to the next easel, to the portrait of a child who had been battered. “In the beginning, he would throw away the body of the target child’s friend. The corpses of these girls were found close to where they were killed. This one was tossed in an irrigation ditch. Note the careless arrangement of the limbs. All the exposed skin shows the marks of a beating inflicted before death, but she wasn’t sexually molested. This is the child he used for bait.”
She moved on to the next portrait, and this girl appeared to be only sleeping, undamaged. “He left the primary victim out in plain sight on a heavily trafficked highway—so the parents would find her quickly.”
Ali found Rouge’s eyes, and she seemed almost apologetic in her next words. “The first child—the bait—was killed the day he took her, probably within the hour. The wealthy child was kept alive until the morning her body was found. This pattern was repeated in the next pair of children on your right. It points up the element of sadism. It destroyed the holidays for the family of his primary target—knowing that the girl died on Christmas Day.”
A few of the grayer heads in the audience were turning around, and Rouge knew they were making connections to the kidnapping of an auburn-haired ten-year-old named Susan Kendall, also found on Christmas Day. Only now were the older investigators tying her to the young cop by the same name—with the same auburn hair. They scanned the room, finding him in the crowd and searching his face for Susan’s likeness—and there they found it. Startled and uncomfortable, their eyes shot away from him.
“When DNA evidence achieved credibility in the courts,” said Dr. Cray, “your man stopped leaving the bodies to be found. Now that’s interesting. I think the forensic possibilities worried him. So he has a pattern, but he’s flexible—he improves on it. And there was a bonus to the pattern change. The children who were never found remained on the books as runaways. No one was looking for a killer anymore. The rest of the pattern remains intact. The children are always taken in pairs, they’re always—”
One detective in the middle row raised his hand, and she nodded to him.
“Pretty good organization skills for a psycho.” His tone of voice was dubious, distrustful.
“He’s not crazy,” she said. “Don’t underestimate him. Even prominent psychiatrists are changing the language to read
evil
instead of
ill
. This man functions as a normal person. He has a job, some tie to the community. I know he understands the difference between right and wrong, because he takes steps to avoid being captured. And I believe he’s a local man.”
She stood to one side of the center easel displaying a map of the tristate area. “Most of the children were from surrounding states, but their photographs appeared in national magazines and major newspapers. But
not
Gwen Hubble. He’s seen this little girl close to home—close to
his
home.”
Neither Rouge’s photograph nor his sister’s had ever appeared in public either. The Kendall twins had been very protected children. He wondered if Ali Cray knew this. He suspected she did.
“There’s more.” She turned to the map. “These red flags mark the homes of the children who lived across the state line. Every location is a day trip from this town. A full tank of gas, bought locally, will get him there and back. No credit card purchases, no gas station attendant to remember a stranger in town. There’s no signature on a motel registration. He’s just another motorist passing through. As I said, the bodies are never found anymore. I think the other children are all close together—a mass grave in a secure location. This may support the idea that he owns property.”
She nodded to another raised hand in the crowd.
“These other cases—did they call in the feds?”
“Yes.” She gestured to the easels. “In these two kidnappings, they were called in after the bodies were found.” She pointed to the first portrait on the left. “In this case, the FBI determined that the battered child was the main victim because of the rage in the beating that killed her. But I believe this child was the bait. He used her to call out the other girl—and he had to hurt her to make her do that.”
Another hand shot up, and a woman’s voice asked, “What’s the frequency of the attacks?”
“Sometimes a few years go by between incidents. It doesn’t take much time to locate the private school of the wealthy child. The newspaper articles usually solved that problem. But it does take time to find the right bait, a close friend from a less protected environment—less money, no professional security. This is important to him—everything must fit. The elaborate pattern is what identified him. All my case summaries share the same basic elements.”
She was staring down at the papers on the lectern, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “And last—all the children were taken when the schools closed for the holidays. The family’s guard was down. It was perfect timing. He’s sadistic, but he’ll show some patience with Gwen Hubble. He’s made an investment in her. He’ll keep Gwen alive until Christmas morning.”
“Gwen?” A woman FBI agent stood up, not waiting to be recognized. “What about the other girl?”
“Sadie Green is dead.” Ali Cray’s tone implied that she thought this was understood. “That’s the pattern. He probably killed that child an hour after he stole her.”
In the dead silence of the room, there was a ripple of movement throughout the crowd. Younger heads were shaking from side to side in denial, and older people were nodding to say,
Yes, of course she’s dead. It all fits.
As Ali Cray moved away from the lectern, her eyes locked with those of Special Agent Arnie Pyle. A conversation took place between them in this brief exchange of passing glances, and Rouge decided there was more to this relationship than the business of criminal acts.
Wiry Agent Pyle seemed almost cocky as he walked toward the lectern. He moved with the attitude of an elegant pool hustler in clothes that hung well on his lean body. In a further departure from FBI cloning, he loosened his tie until the knot hung inches below the undone collar button. As he moved farther away from the company of federal agents, he seemed to cross over to the ranks of the state investigators, with a knowing nod and a tough smile for the troops. And they smiled back at this man’s man, a cop’s cop. Pyle had become one of them, even before he took his place behind the lectern. And because of this masterful illusion of defection, Rouge deeply distrusted him.
Agent Pyle stood before them without notes or props, for this was not a speech to strangers, but a conversation with old friends whom he was meeting for the first time in his life.
“Dr. Cray only picked out the facts that supported her case. You
know
nationwide stats on runaways are staggering. We’ve got more than ninety thousand kids on the road every day of the year, right?” His expression conveyed that this was a given, that they all knew the lady’s theory was crap.
Rouge looked around the room and heads were nodding, already agreeing that Ali Cray was a civilian, an outsider—an amateur.
“In an overview of any hundred cases, I can use stats to develop lots of patterns that don’t exist.”
And now, judging by the expressions of the other investigators, Rouge knew that Ali’s case was nearly a dead issue; the FBI man had killed her off that quickly.
Agent Pyle turned to look at the easels and pointed to a child’s photograph on the far right. “That little girl’s name is Sarah. There was a ransom demand. Dr. Cray never mentioned that.” His tone condemned her for that. And then, in a slight elevation of volume, he bordered on evangelistic zeal with his next words. “We
caught
the perp who sent that ransom note, and we got a
conviction
on the bastard.” Unspoken were the words,
Praise God and the FBI, my brothers and sisters.
There was a sprinkling of applause which died quickly, as each man and woman realized that this was not a revival meeting. But it was a contest of sorts, a game of oneupmanship. However, the agent was playing by himself. Ali Cray was only a passive observer now. If Rouge could read anything in her face, it was disappointment in Agent Pyle and no animosity whatever.
Curious.
“I can’t speak for the cases where we weren’t called in,” said Pyle. “Some of the kids might’ve had good reason to run—abuse in the home, beatings, incest—I’ve seen it all. About the statistics in Dr. Cray’s group of ten-year-olds. Sometimes you see stats clustering in one area for no good reason. And this tristate region has a dense population.”
Rouge thought this had the ring of covering ass, or getting even. Something in Pyle’s delivery made his assaults on Ali Cray’s theory all too personal.
“I don’t believe we’re dealing with a pedophile,” said Agent Pyle. “The logic is pretty clear. This is a crime for profit. The fact that there are no public photographs of Gwen Hubble supports this theory. The kidnapping of Sadie Green was a screwup, an accidental departure from a plan to kidnap the Hubble girl for ransom. The perp was in the right place, but he snatched the wrong kid. The only thing Dr. Cray and I can agree on is that Sadie Green is probably dead. Sadie was just an error in his—”
“I heard that!”
All eyes turned to the door, where Sadie Green’s mother was struggling with a state trooper. The captain waved the uniformed officer back. The woman entered the room, tightly wrapping her brown cloth coat closer about her body, perhaps feeling a sudden coldness. Costello walked toward her, moving quickly to head her off before she could see the photographs on the front wall. “Mrs. Green? The purple jacket—was it your daughter’s?”
“Yes, it’s Sadie’s!” she screamed at the captain, but her eyes were on the FBI man at the lectern. She stretched out one arm and pointed a damning finger at Pyle, yelling, “She is
not
dead.” Her hand closed into a fist. “And she’s not a mistake! Not an
error
!” Her voice trailed off with her next words, not from lack of anger, but from exhaustion. “She’s a little girl, and I want her back.” The angry fist was still raised high, and she paused to stare at it now, surprised to see it growing there at the end of one plump arm.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Her hand dropped limp to her side. Four federal agents were moving in tandem to block the easels with their bodies so she would not see the giant photographs of dead children.
“I’m so sorry,” she said to all of them. “Please don’t hate me.” She was smiling as she peered into the faces of the men and women surrounding her, seeking their reassurance.
Rouge ached for her. That smile must have been bought at an enormous cost. Her shoulders sagged, and it seemed to drain her, trying to maintain this more friendly expression.
“I’m in trouble, I know that.” She turned to the captain. “But you said if I remembered anything important—Well, I did.”
She avoided Costello’s attempt to take her arm. In a burst of renewed energy, she stepped to the center of the room, like a dancer hitting the chalk marks on a stage. “But first, I want to thank you guys for turning out that time my daughter did her arrow-in-the-heart routine.” She grinned, playing to every pair of eyes in her audience. “Sadie still looks back on that as her best day.”