Find Me

by Carol O'Connell

  She was done with her meal when she saw Charles Butler’s Mercedes pull into the lot with Riker at the wheel. He parked it behind her own car on the sidewalk, and FBI agents hurried across the room to hold open the door to the restaurant. This sudden anxiousness to please might be the work of Harry Mars.

  Good.

  Riker deposited Kronewald’s laptop on the table by her knapsack. “You keep walking off without this thing.”

  Mallory never looked up, and her partner melted away, slouching off in search of a cheeseburger. He passed near a corner table perfect for conspiracy, but failed to catch a word of the conversation between the two FBI agents.

  Agent Barry Allen was doing his best to talk his partner back onto the right path following the Bureau’s strict chain of command. “You can’t cut Dale Berman off at the legs that way.”

  “I needed those results on my soil samples,” said Agent Nahlman. “The bastard never even ordered the tests. I checked with the lab.”

  “You can work around it.”

  “No, I can’t. It’s an oddball element. Two different kinds of soil in three of those graves—think about it. The perp dug up his kills and reburied them. If I can pinpoint the original burial sites, I can get names and dates—real leads. But Dale Berman doesn’t care when we wrap this case. What’s one more death to him? He all but offered up Dodie Finn on a plate.”

  “That’s cold.”

  “And at least a hundred kids are dead. Mallory was right. This case could’ve been wrapped a long time ago. But people keep dying.”

  “And that’s Dale’s fault? So now he’s a killer?”

  Nahlman sat back in her chair, surprised that this rookie agent was now on a first-name basis with the SAC. “You really like him, don’t you?”

  “He’s a great guy,” said Allen. “So promise me this crazy idea just dies right here, right now.”

  How absurd was this? A baby-faced boy assuming the mantle of wise man and doling out advice for her own good.

  “All right,” she said, lying. “I’m done with it.”

  Or was this the truth? She was so tired of breaking her fists on all the barriers Berman had placed in her way. And she had yet to answer Agent Allen’s question. Did she take Dale Berman for a killer? Oh, yes.

  In the neutral territory of a center table, Charles Butler had been way-laid by Agent Cadwaller, and he was doing his best to explain to this man why Joe Finn might want to kill him. “Don’t go near the children one more time. Your people have already done too much damage to Dodie.” He put up one hand. “Please don’t deny that. She was just a little girl, severely traumatized, but she was still talking when she went into FBI custody. Not anymore.” Did this come as a surprise to the federal agent?

  “The Finns have to leave this road,” said Cadwaller.

  Well, now that was interesting. This man was the only member of Berman’s team to share in that belief. However, he was arguing a case for federal custody.

  “You know that little girl needs counseling,” said the FBI man. “It would help if I could talk to her. Then I could make arrangements for—”

  “No!” Charles had estimated Cadwaller’s credentials as something of a joke, and he had tried every polite way to say that a little dangerous knowledge did not a psychologist make. Having failed in that, he decided that good manners were overrated. “Rather than push Dodie into a psychotic break, I suggest you just pull out your gun and blow her little head off. No, really. Shoot her. It’ll set a good example for the others.”

  A broadcast reporter and her cameraman passed Cadwaller’s table in pursuit of Riker, who warded them off with a New Yorker’s one-fingered gesture for love and friendship. And now the detective joined Dr. Magritte, pulling up a chair At the old man’s table. He wasted no time with pleasantries.

  “Okay, Doc, we’re hunting a nutcase and you’re leading a parade of ’em. You gott a have a few favorites who aren’t covered with doctor-patient confidentiality. You said these people came from a lot of different therapy groups.” With a nod, he gestured to the Pattern Man’s table. Horace Kayhill was sitting alone with his spread maps. “Horace keeps coming back to the caravan. He likes being close to you, doesn’t he? This trip must be nutcase heaven—a doctor who can’t get away from his patients.”

  Dr. Magritte gave up a smile of apology and a wave of the hand to say that Riker would get nothing helpful from him, not even the admission that Horace Kayhill was his patient.

  Riker watched the doctor’s face, hoping to see something useful there if he should hit upon the right question. “You know who the killer is, don’t you? Do you talk to this freak on the phone? Are you Internet pen pals or what?”

  And now the doctor, somewhat surprised, said, “You and your partner don’t communicate very well. I bet you’re wondering how I know that.” He smiled. “Your cheeseburger is getting cold, Detective.”

  Special Agent Dale Berman was basking in camera light and sharing a table with a celebrity anchorwoman. This prime-time personality seemed disappointed in his basic profile for a serial killer. She pulled back the microphone to say, “Isn’t that sexist? Why not a woman suspect?”

  “It was a man.” Dale Berman wore his mask of tragedy today, but only while the camera was on him. “A female serial killer is very rare.”

  The newswoman extended her microphone to the next table occupied by the wonderfully photogenic cop from New York City. “What do you say, Detective Mallory? Could a female have done all those murders?”

  The detective never looked up from her laptop computer. “Female killers are as common as dust.”

  Dale Berman’s face fell.

  “Like that prostitute who killed her customers?” The newswoman’s professional smile was waning as she waited for a response. Precious airtime was slipping by. “And then we’ve got mothers killing their own children.” She gave Detective Mallory a smile of encouragement. When was this young cop going to open her damned mouth? The reporter filled in the silence with, “Nurses killing patients? Oh, and the black widows—wives killing husbands for insurance money.”

  “I like money motives.” Detective Mallory looked up, finally hearing some thing of interest to her, but She was facing Dale Berman, not the camera.

  The cameraman stood before Mallory’s table, bowing low, hoping for eye contact, and the reporter said, “So, Detective, you think a woman could be—”

  “It was a man,” said Mallory, who had now engaged Agent Berman in a staring match. “Men are monument builders. That’s what the killer’s done with this road.”

  “That’s right!” And with these words, Dale Berman had recaptured the cameraman’s attention and the lens. “The killer believes these murders will make him live forever in the—”

  “And what do you think, Detective?” asked the reporter as her cameraman swung around to refocus on the New York City blonde.

  “Nobody lives forever,” said Mallory to Dale Berman.

  At a far remove from Dale Berman and the reporter, Mallory found another empty chair by the window and sat down with the Pattern Man, who promptly spilled his coffee. As she arranged her knapsack and the computer on top of his maps, she had to endure his apologies for clumsiness and listen to the day’s figures for the amount of caffeine ingested by way of coffee and cola. He did not seem to mind that she never spoke to him; the little man was more comfortable talking at her rather than to her. Horace Kayhill unfolded another map so he could describe the new landmarks discovered since his last trip down Route 66. “The road is always changing, you know, just like a living organism.”

  Mallory slapped one hand down on the coffee-stained map, and now she had the little man’s attention. “You’re a statistician, right?”

  “Yes. I used to work for an insurance company.”

  “Give me some odds. It’s a country of three hundred million people, and only a hundred of them have something in common. What are the odds that they meet?”

  He adjusted his glasses
, preparing to launch into another lecture. “Perhaps you’re referring to a theory of six degrees of separation—that we’re all six connections away from everyone else on the planet. Well, that really won’t apply here, not if you’re looking for a chance meeting. You see, someone has to follow the threads to force the outcome and prove the—”

  “I don’t believe in chance,” said Mallory. “I don’t believe in accident or coincidence. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Yes. The caravan parents.”

  “Not all of them, just the ones with little girls buried on Route 66.”

  “Well, before the advent of computers,” said Kayhill, “those people never would’ve met. But now you have variables that didn’t exist in the past. Today, it’s possible to cross-index every aspect of your life with the whole earth. If you have an odd tic, a rare disease, or, in my case, migraine auras without the headaches, you can find a chat room for that, a website—”

  “Or a therapy group.”

  “Exactly. I belong to lots of them.” He tapped his head to indicate a problem there. “I’m a bit on the compulsive side. But I spend most of my time compiling statistics and information on Route 66. That’s how I met the first caravan parent—Gerry Linden. An FBI agent called to tell him his child’s body had been found, and this woman gave him the location of the gravesite. But his daughter’s remains were never returned to him.”

  Mallory nodded. Last night, she had seen Gerald Linden’s daughter in Dale Berman’s Nursery. The remains had been identified by a small gold pin, a distinctive heirloom.

  “So,” said Mr. Kayhill, “Gerry Linden went to visit the burial site. He told me it was the only place he had to leave his flowers—this bit of road where his child had been found.” The Pattern Man leaned forward and smiled. “This is the part where chance comes in.”

  And perhaps now he recalled that she was not a big believer in chance, for he dropped the smile and spilled more coffee. “Let’s call it a forced link for the six-degree theory,” he said. “Mr. Linden stayed in the area for a few days—talking to the locals—and he heard a strange story about another grave forty miles down the road. You see, years ago, a man was trying to bury a dog and inadvertently dug up a child. Now that grave was across a state line, and the road was known by a different name, but it was also part of the old highway. So Mr. Linden hooked up with a lot of Route 66 websites. Well, I monitor all of them, and his name cropped up quite a few times. He wanted information on murdered children found along that road.”

  “He was the one who told you about Dr. Magritte’s therapy group?”

  “Yes, and I joined it. I collected more data from another one of Dr. Magritte’s patients. Now, two such parents with the same psychologist—well, the odds of that happening are just remarkable. That was when I realized that I was onto something huge.”

  “But you never had a child,” said Mallory, as if this might be a defect in him. “Magritte’s sessions were only for the parents of missing and murdered children.”

  “Oh, no. Where did you get that idea? The only criterion was a computer. The doctor never turned anybody away.” And now, no doubt feeling the need for immediate therapy, Horace Kayhill packed up his maps and fled.

  After flopping down in the recently vacated chair at his partner’s table, Riker handed her a cell phone. “It’s Kronewald. He’s got some news.” Riker’s own conversation with the Chicago detective had been illuminating and disheartening.

  She held the cell phone to her ear. “It’s Mallory…. Right…. No, that’s all I need.” After opening the laptop computer, she flicked the keys until she was looking at a map of the continental United States. A route was marked in a thick red line. “Got it,” she said.

  Riker could hear Kronewald’s rising voice as Mallory depressed the button that would end the call. The old man was shouting toward the end, as if he knew she was going to hang up on him.

  Charles Butler was in flight from Cadwaller’s table, and seeking sanctuary with the two detectives. He stared at Mallory’s computer screen as he pulled up a chair. “That seems a bit different from the other Route 66 maps. What happened to Santa Fe?”

  “This is a route from the sixties,” said Riker, “after the ends of the Santa Fe loop were connected.” The detective gave his partner a disingenuous smile. “I just thought I’d save you the trouble of sharing that.” Turning back to Charles, he said, “It’s a long-haul truck driver’s route from Chicago to L.A.”

  “So,” said Charles, “you think the killer is a truck driver.”

  “No, but his father was.” Riker turned to Mallory, still smiling but hardly meaning it. “And you were gonna tell me that, right?” And now he told the story of the trucker and his wife abandoning their son after the disappearance of five-year-old Mary Egram. “That’s right, Charles. Our boy didn’t start with small furry animals. He killed his own sister. But I’m sure my partner was gonna mention that—eventually.”

  Mallory turned her chair to face away from Riker.

  Oh, was his voice getting a little testy? Well, tough.

  She spoke only to Charles. “I hope you got something useful off that agent.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Riker was now an invisible man as far as she was concerned. He moved his chair around the table until he was once more in her line of sight. “Cadwaller probably bored poor Charles with his expertise on serial killers. But at least that worthless fed tries to communicate with—”

  “Cadwaller has no expertise,” said Charles. “He’s a fraud.”

  Okay, playtime with Mallory was over. Riker made a rolling motion with one hand to ask the man to continue that thought.

  “Perhaps I was harsh,” said Charles. “I’d say, at best, he’s an expert on bad psychology books written by incompetent hacks for mass consumption. But he’s not a profiler.”

  “Kronewald ran a background check,” said Riker. “Cadwaller’s got a history with Behavioral Science Unit.”

  “Sometimes,” said Charles, “history gets rewritten. I can only tell you the man is not what he seems.”

  This information came as no surprise to Mallory, and Riker had to wonder what else the brat had forgotten to share with him.

  “Well,” said Charles, “at least now you have a name for the killer.”

  Riker nodded. “For all the good it does. No pictures, no prints, no idea what name the perp’s using now. He’s good at stealing cars. That’s all we know.” He shot a glance at his partner as he corrected himself. “That’s all I know.”

  Dr. Magritte passed close to their table, and Mallory turned an accusing eye on Riker, asking, demanding, “Why isn’t that old man in custody?”

  “What? Back up,” said Riker. “Where does Magritte come in? What did he do? And what the hell did I do wrong?”

  Mallory stared at him, incredulous. “Doesn’t Agent Nahlman tell you anything?”

  16

  They met by chance—or this would be Riker’s story. He rehearsed it as he followed Agent Nahlman’s car down a side road that led him far south of Route 66. This was a part of the world where people thought nothing of driving fifty or a hundred miles to do a simple errand. In the dark, the two vehicles might be passing through any small American town of windows lighted by the glow of televisions sets.

  The FBI agent’s black sedan stopped in front of a saloon that would cater only to locals, judging by the license plates at the curb and the distance from the interstate. Riker switched off his headlights and waited in the dark until the door closed behind Christine Nahlman. He parked the Mercedes behind her car and waited a patient twenty minutes before following her inside.

  The front door opened onto a wall of smoke and sound. A jukebox wailed country-music songs of dead dogs and feckless women, but that had been expected. And it was no surprise to see Nahlman drinking alone at the bar. The lady had a small but appreciative audience of men with baseball caps and pool cues, unshaven and smiling in her direction. They were checking
her out and nodding to one another, seeing her as easy prey.

  They had no idea that the lady packed a gun and more than enough ammo to dispatch the pool players and the bartender, too, if she felt so inclined.

  Riker pulled a barstool closer to hers and sat down.

  After the first few minutes of the cop-to-cop small talk that always began, “Hell of a day, huh?” Agent Nahlman was reassured that he was not here to make a play for her, and that was the truth. He had come to her as a thief to steal whatever he could.

  He was picking up Mallory’s worst habits.

  The detective was quick to find a common ground with Nahlman: the cop and the fed both liked the same brand of cheap Scotch; this was a lie on his part, for he was a bourbon drinker. But he had hopes that this bonding ritual would lead to every field agent’s pastime, bitching about bureaucrats—like the SAC, Dale Berman. Her ability to hold her liquor was impressive, and it was his fear that she might drink him under the bar before uttering the first disparaging word.

  After the third round, he laid on a compliment. “So Mallory tells me you did a great job on the geographic profiling—and Dale took all the credit.” Riker shook his head to say, Ain’t life a bitch.

  Nahlman shrugged and slugged back her drink. “In a way—Dale Berman should get the credit. He was the one who combed every state data-base for unsolved homicides.”

  “He worked cold cases? And they didn’t even belong to the feds?”

  “He didn’t work anything,” she said. “He just collected data for dead-end homicides—zero evidence, no clues. He favored skeletons discovered years after death.”

  Riker had a store of trivia for filling awkward silences. “Did you know that most murder victims are found by drunks stopping to pee by the side of the road?”