The Search

by Nora Roberts

  “Fee?” Jana signaled, then lifted her hands in frustration. “She’s just not getting it, and she seems confused and, well, bored. We nail this at home. She loves this behavior, and we’ve got it down cold.”

  Focus, Fiona ordered herself. “You’re not at home. Remember, a new place, new environment, new problems.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know you’ve said that before, but if we make it, every time she goes out on a search it’s a new place.”

  “Absolutely true. That’s why the more experiences she has, the better. She learns every single time. She’s bright and eager, but she’s not pulling it in today—and she feels your frustration, too. First thing, relax.”

  Do the same yourself, Fiona thought and glanced back to where Davey stood watching.

  “Go back to where she started to circle and lose interest. Refresh, reward, reestablish. If she just can’t get it today, take her to the source, let her find it, reward.”

  They were a good team, Fiona thought as she hung back. But the human partner tended to want quick results. Still, she put in the time and energy, had a strong relationship with her dog.

  She turned to watch Mike and his Australian shepherd mix celebrate the find. The dog happily accepted the food reward and praise before Mike pulled on his plastic gloves and retrieved the cylinder containing human bone fragments.

  Well done, she thought. And her third student held both his nose and his tail in the air, which told her he should find his source soon.

  One day, she thought, one or all of them might go out on a call, search woods, hills, fields, city streets, and find human remains. And finding them would help give closure to family, help police find answers.

  Bodies, she thought, like that of Annette Kellworth. Cruelly posed under a couple feet of dirt, left like a broken toy while the one responsible hunted something new.

  Would there be another? Closer yet? Would her own unit be called in to search? She wondered if she could do it, if she could take one of her precious dogs and search for a body that could have been her own.

  That would be hers if a man she didn’t even know had his way.

  “She got it!” Jana called out as she bent to hug her Lotus. “She did it!”

  “Terrific.”

  Not bad news, she reminded herself as she stored her training tools. She got a Coke out of the refrigerator for both of them.

  “Okay,” she said, “let’s have it.”

  “The feds have a lead. They think it’s a strong one.”

  “A lead.” Now her knees could tremble. She braced a hand on a counter stool to stay on her feet. “What kind of lead?”

  “They’re looking for a specific individual, one who had contact with Perry inside the prison. An outside instructor. An English teacher from College Place.”

  “Looking for?”

  “Yeah. He quit his job, packed up some of his things and took off between Christmas and New Year’s. Cleaned out his bank account, left his furniture, defaulted on his rent. He fits the profile—they say. The thing is, he hasn’t had contact—that they can verify—with Perry in nearly a year. That’s a long time.”

  “He’s patient. Perry. He’s patient.”

  “The feds are putting pressure on Perry right now. Trying to find out how much he knows. And they’re digging into this guy’s background. What we got from them is he’s a loner. No relationships, no family. His mother was a junkie, so he was in the system even before she OD’d, when he was eight.”

  “Mother issues,” she murmured as hope and fear bubbled up in a messy stew. “Like Perry.”

  “They’ve got that in common.” Davey took a fax out of his pocket, unfolded it. “Does he look familiar?”

  She studied the facsimile photo, the ordinary face, the trim, professorial beard, the ever-so-slightly-shaggy hair. “No. No, I don’t know him. I don’t know him. Is this really him?”

  “He’s who they’re looking for. They’re not calling him a suspect. They’re careful not to. But I’m going to tell you, Fee, they believe this is the guy, and they’re all over it.” He gave her shoulder a quick rub. “I want you to know they’re all over it.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Francis Eckle. Francis Xavier Eckle. His age, height, weight, coloring are all listed on the fax. I want you to keep this picture, Fee. He may have changed his appearance. Cut the beard, dyed his hair. So I want you to keep this, and if you see anybody who looks anything like this guy, you don’t hesitate. You call.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.” Even now his face was burned into her mind. “You said he was a teacher.”

  “Yeah. His record’s clear. He had a rough childhood, but he didn’t make any waves—not on record, anyway. They’ll be talking to his foster families, his caseworkers. They’ve already started that, and interviewing his coworkers, supervisors, neighbors. So far, there’s nothing in his background that you’d look twice at, but—”

  “People can be trained. Just like dogs. They can learn, good behavior or bad. It just depends on the motivation and methods.”

  “They’re going to get him, Fee.” Davey put his hands on her shoulders, gave them a squeeze when their eyes met. “You believe that.”

  Because she needed to believe it, she rushed over to Simon’s shop.

  He stood at the lathe, music blaring, tool humming as he hollowed and smoothed the pale wood in his hands.

  A bowl, she realized, one of those lovely ones he made with a sheen and texture like silk and a thickness that seemed hardly more than tissue.

  She watched how he turned and angled, tried to figure out the method to help keep herself still.

  He switched off the machine. “I know you’re over there, breathing my air.”

  “Sorry. Why don’t you have any of those? You need one about twice that size for your kitchen counter, for seasonal fruit.”

  He’d pulled off his ear protectors and goggles and simply stood. “Is that what you came in here to tell me?” And looked down as Jaws dropped a scrap of wood at his feet. “See what you started?”

  “I’ll take them out for a game before my next class. Simon.” She held up the fax.

  His body language changed. Alerted, she thought. “Do they have him?”

  She shook her head. “But they’re looking, and they—Davey said—they think . . . I have to sit down.”

  “Go outside, in the air.”

  “I can’t feel my legs.” With a half laugh, she stumbled out, dropped down onto the shop porch.

  Seconds later he came out with a bottle of water. “Let me have that.” He shoved the water at her, snatched the fax. “Who is this mother-fucker?”

  “Nobody. Mr. Average Joe, except not really. Where’s the rope! Go get the rope!” All four dogs stopped poking with noses and bodies and shot off. “That’ll take a few minutes. Davey came to tell me what the FBI told them. His name’s Francis Xavier Eckle,” she began.

  He continued to study the photo as he listened. When the dogs came back—the crafty Newman the winner—Simon took the rope. “Go play,” he ordered and heaved it hard and long.

  “Don’t they check people out before they let them work at a prison?”

  “Yes, of course. I guess,” she added after a moment. “The point is, there wasn’t anything there. Not that they’ve found so far. But he had contact with Perry, and now he’s changed his behavior. Drastically. They probably know more now. More than they told the sheriff’s office, or more than Davey could tell me. I’m looking at this because Tawney cleared it. Because he wants me to look at it.”

  “Teaching at a small college,” Simon speculated. “Looking at long-legged coeds all day who probably don’t look back. It’s still a big leap from ordinary to Perry copycat.”

  “Not so big if the predilection was there all along, if the drive was in place but he never knew how to engage it. Or didn’t have the nerve.”

  She’d trained dogs like that, hadn’t she? Recognizing or finding hidden potentials, exploiting sup
pressed drives, or channeling overt ones, systematically altering learned behavior.

  “You talked about the importance of motivation before,” she pointed out. “And you were right. It’s possible Perry found the right motivation, the right . . . game, the right reward.”

  “Trained his replacement.”

  “He taught there four times,” she added, “and Perry signed up for all the classes. He’s a chameleon. Perry. He acclimates. He’s acclimating in prison, doing his time, keeping his head down. Cooperating. So he becomes, in a way, ordinary again.”

  “And they don’t pay as much attention?” Simon shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “He’s a student of observation. It’s how he picked his victims, and how he blended so well for so long. He probably stalked and discarded dozens of women before the ones he abducted. Watching them, judging their behavior, their personality type.”

  “Moving on if they didn’t fit his needs well enough.”

  “That, and calculating the risk factors. Maybe this one’s too passive, and not enough of a challenge, or this one’s too chaotic and difficult to pin down.”

  She rubbed her hand between her breasts, on her thigh—couldn’t keep it still. “He knows what to look for in people. It’s how he killed so many, how he traveled and engaged others so easily. I understand that. I can usually tell if a dog will respond to advanced training, if the dog and the handler will forge a team. Or if they’re better off strictly as the family pet. You can see the potential if you know where and how to look—and you can begin molding that potential. Perry knows where and how to look.”

  Maybe she just needed to believe it, Simon thought, but she was damn convincing. “So you think Perry saw, we’ll say, potential, in this guy?”

  “It could be it. It could be this Eckle approached Perry. Nobody’s really above flattery when it comes to their work. And killing was Perry’s work. But if either of those happened, if these two made that connection, Perry would know how to begin the mold. And, Simon, I think—if this is how it went—that the payment for that training, that molding, is me.”

  She looked back at the photo. “He’d kill me to repay Perry for recognizing and grooming his potential.”

  Perry’s dog, Simon concluded, who’d want to please his handler. “Perry’s never going to collect on that IOU.”

  “He should’ve come for me first. They both made a mistake there. I was relaxed. I felt safe, and would’ve been an easier target at that point. Instead, they wanted me to live with the fear. That was stupid.”

  He saw it happen, saw the nerves funnel into a steady anger and steely confidence.

  “I’ve lived with fear before, and I’m older and smarter and stronger than I was then. Knowing I’m not invincible and that terrible things happen, that’s an advantage. And I have you. I have them.”

  She looked over as the dogs played a kind of tag-team tug-of-war with the battered rope.

  “You’re older and smarter and stronger—good for you. But if he tries to put a hand on you, I’ll break him to pieces.” When she turned her head and stared, he met her eyes with a blink. “I don’t say what I don’t mean.”

  “No, I know you don’t. It’s a reassuring, if occasionally frustrating, behavior. It helps hearing you say it, and knowing you mean it. And I’m really hoping you don’t have to follow through. They have his face now, and his name. I’m going to believe that before much longer, they’ll have him.”

  She let out a breath, tipped her head to his shoulder for a moment. “I have to get ready for my next session. Actually, you might want to keep Jaws in the shop with you for the next hour or so.”

  “Because?”

  “He’s not as mature or calm as my boys, and I’m doing a one-on-one behavioral correction session with a rottweiler with aggression issues.”

  “A rottweiler with aggression issues? Where’s your body armor?”

  “He’s coming along. We’ve had a couple sessions already, and he’s making good progress. Normally I’d go to the source on this sort of thing, but under the circumstances, I asked the client to bring Hulk here.”

  “Hulk. Perfect. Are you carrying your gun?”

  “Stop it. This is what I do,” she reminded him. “Or one of the things I do.”

  “If you get bit, it’s going to piss me off. Hang on a minute.”

  He got up, walked inside. She considered if they kept going down the path they were on now, he’d probably get pissed eventually. She’d rarely been nipped, but it did happen once in a while.

  He came out with a box. “Those slats you wanted.”

  “Oh, great. Thanks.”

  SHE CAME THROUGH the session unscathed and decided to busy herself in the kitchen for the next hour. And since she had a chunk of time on her hands and was—more or less—confined to quarters, she thought she might make use of what could very loosely be termed Simon’s home gym once she’d finished up her kitchen project.

  Dogs weren’t the only ones who needed to keep up with their training. Pleased with her first project, she emptied one of the kitchen drawers, scrubbed it, measured and cut the liner she’d asked Sylvia to pick up for her. Using the pattern she’d outlined in her head, she slid in the wood dividers—and deemed them perfect.

  She’d nearly completed the third drawer when the phone rang. Her mind on organization, she answered it without thinking.

  “Hello.”

  “Oh, I must have the wrong . . . I’m looking for Simon.”

  Fiona laid spatulas, slotted spoons, serving forks in their allotted space. “He’s here, but he’s out in the shop. I can go get him for you.”

  “No, no, that’s fine. He’s probably got the music blasting and machines running. That’s why he didn’t answer his cell. Who’s this?”

  “Ah, Fiona. Who’s this?”

  “Julie, Julie Doyle. I’m Simon’s mother.”

  “Mrs. Doyle.” Wincing a little, Fiona closed the drawer. “I know Simon would want to talk to you. It’ll just take me a minute to—”

  “I’d much rather talk to you—if you’re the Fiona Simon’s told me about.”

  “He . . . really?”

  “He may not say much, but I have years of experience prying things out of him. You’re a dog trainer.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how’s that puppy doing?”

  “Jaws is great. I hope your years of experience helped you pry out of Simon that he’s madly in love with that dog. They’re a great team.”

  “You do Search and Rescue. Simon mentioned to his brother you’re training the pup for that.”

  “He mentioned to his brother?”

  “Oh, we e-mail a lot, all of us. But I need a phone conversation at least once a week. The better to pry, plus I’m angling for him to come home for a visit.”

  “He should.” Guilt stewed in her belly. “Of course he should.”

  “And he will when everything’s back to normal. I know you’re in a hard situation. How are you doing?”

  “Mrs. Doyle—”

  “Julie, and why would you want to talk about all of that with a perfect stranger? Just tell me, are you staying with Simon now, at his place?”

  “Yes. He’s . . . he’s been wonderful. Generous, supportive, understanding. Patient.”

  “I think I must have the wrong number after all.”

  Fiona laughed and leaned back on the counter. “He talks about you. Just little things he says once in a while. He’s madly in love with you, too.”

  “The madly’s often the key word in the Doyle family.”

  It was easy to chat. Relaxed, Fiona opened the drawer again and filled it systematically as she and Julie Doyle got acquainted.

  When the door opened, she glanced over her shoulder. “Well, here’s Simon now, so I’ll turn you over. It was really nice talking to you.”

  “We’ll do it again, soon.”

  “Your mom,” Fiona mouthed and offered the phone.