Vanishing Point

by Lisa Harris

  “She’s a great little guard dog, but I know that my neighbor’s always complaining about how much she barks.”

  “Actually, we don’t respond to complaints about barking dogs.”

  “Oh . . . I guess I assumed that’s why you’re here.” She shifted her gaze to the neighbor’s house. “And why I thought I should talk to you. I don’t want things getting out of hand over a dog, but a couple days ago, Mickey—my neighbor—threatened to go to the police.”

  “This is what we’re here for, actually.” Garrett held out his phone so she could see the screen. “We need to know if you know this man.”

  “Of course. That’s my brother, Bobby Wilcox. Wait . . .” She looked up from the photo. “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  Jordan glanced at Garrett. “He’s your brother?”

  “Half brother, actually. We have different last names and grew up in separate foster homes. We’ve never been extremely close, but I do hear from him every once in a while.”

  Maggie stepped out onto the porch and handed Rose a mug of coffee.

  “That’s all for now, Maggie. Thank you.”

  “But, Rose . . .”

  “I’m fine, Maggie.”

  “So you knew he was in prison?” Jordan asked.

  “Of course. He told me he’d been arrested for embezzlement, but that he was innocent. The last time I spoke with him, he was working with a lawyer on an appeal, but far as I know, nothing he’s done has worked. Though I don’t remember the last time I heard from him. I know it’s been a year . . . maybe two.”

  “Did you know he escaped from prison?” Jordan asked. She caught the surprise on Rose’s face as she asked the question.

  “What?”

  “About two years ago,” Garrett said.

  “Like I said, we weren’t particularly close, but no. I had no idea.” Rose took another sip of her coffee and set it on the armrest. “Though maybe that makes sense.”

  “What do you mean?” Jordan asked.

  “The last time I spoke with him, his words were so . . . cryptic.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me not to worry. That I might not hear from him for a while. When I asked him why, he just said that it was better I didn’t know. That I’d be safer not knowing.” She caught Jordan’s gaze. “But there’s something else, isn’t there? Something you’re not telling me.”

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” Jordan said. “But about a year ago, your brother was found murdered in a back alley in Memphis.”

  Rose’s hand shook, spilling the drink across the side of the swing and onto the floor.

  Jordan leaned forward. “Rose?”

  Rose shook her head. “I shouldn’t be that upset. I mean, we weren’t really close, but still. He was always nice to me. How did he die?”

  “He was stabbed,” Garrett said.

  “And did they catch his murderer?”

  “Not yet. I’m sorry.”

  Her hands gripped the handle of the cup. “I wondered why I hadn’t heard from him, but I never expected something like this.”

  “Do you know if he had friends in Memphis?” Garrett asked.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t say that I know any of his friends.”

  “We appreciate your time.” Jordan glanced at Garrett, then stood up. “Though there is one more question. Do you think your brother was capable of murder?”

  “Murder? Why would you ask that?” Rose frowned. “Bobby went to prison for stealing money, not for killing someone.”

  Jordan studied the woman’s reaction and caught genuine surprise on her face.

  “Why would you ask that?” Rose asked again.

  “He confessed some additional crimes to a fellow prisoner,” Jordan said.

  “What kind of crimes?”

  “There are rumors that he abducted and killed a number of girls before he went to prison,” Garrett said.

  “Bobby? No way.” Rose stood up. “He made some mistakes, but he’d never hurt anyone.”

  “Thank you again for talking to us, and again, we’re sorry for your loss.” Jordan started down the steps with Garrett, then stopped. “By the way. Do you own this house?”

  Rose shook her head. “It belongs to Bobby. Or at least it did when he was alive. He wanted someone living in it while he was in prison, and I needed a place to stay, so he let me live here.”

  “Well, thank you for speaking with us.” Jordan handed her a business card. “Will you call me if you think of anything else that might help?”

  Rose nodded as she took the card. “Of course.”

  As soon as they got into the car, Garrett asked, “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. On the surface, she seemed open and genuine. She even told us the truth about the house. And the news about her half brother seemed to come truly as a surprise, though I can’t help but wonder if she was lying about her relationship with Bobby. Part of me felt as if she knew more than she was telling us, or at the very least that she had a closer relationship with him than she implied.”

  “What about Maggie?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb and headed out of the neighborhood.

  “I think we should look into her a bit more as well.”

  “I agree,” he said. “She might be nothing more than an overly concerned caregiver, but on the other hand, she certainly didn’t seem happy about us being there. At all.”

  She glanced at him. “I’m glad you decided to come on board with this case.”

  “Honestly, I came pretty close to not showing up this morning.”

  “I know it couldn’t have been an easy decision, but no one blames you for what happened with Marissa. They never did.”

  “That didn’t stop me from blaming myself.” He drew in a sharp breath. “There’s something I never told you before that might help you understand my decision.”

  “What’s that?”

  Garrett’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “When my grandfather became senator, he owned a huge piece of land over in Lawrence County. There was over a hundred acres of forests for hunting, a spring-fed creek, and even a stocked pond for fishing.”

  “Sounds like a young man’s dream. You must have loved it.”

  “I did. Growing up, I spent as much time there as possible. Between my grandmother’s homemade sweet potato pie and a pond full of bass and bluegill up for grabs, you can imagine how much I hated it when it was time to go back to school.”

  She sat quiet beside him. Giving him the time he needed to continue.

  “It was a Saturday morning, and I had a brand-new St. Croix rod my grandfather had gotten me for my twelfth birthday. I decided to head out to the pond and do some fishing.”

  He paused for a minute as he got onto the freeway and merged into traffic. “I was about a hundred yards from the pond, when I heard someone screaming. I ran toward the clearing. And that’s when I saw her. She was lying at the edge of the pond, her feet in the water. Someone had slit her throat.”

  She heard the pain in his voice as he spoke. “Oh, Garrett. It’s one thing having to deal with death as law enforcement, but as a twelve-year-old?”

  “I dropped my rod and bent down over her. She was still breathing, just rattling gasps of air.” Garrett stared straight ahead. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I started to run for help, but she must’ve known she wasn’t going to make it. She grabbed on to my hand and wouldn’t let go. I had no idea what to do. I’d never known anyone close to me who’d died, let alone watched someone die. I told her it was going to be okay. That I’d call for help and get her to a hospital. That she wasn’t going to die. But she did. Right there in front of me.”

  Jordan studied his profile. “And you blamed yourself.”

  “I forgot my bait that morning and had to run back to the house to get it. I spent the following weeks and months wondering what might have happened if I’d gotten there sooner. Would I have been able to help her?” />
  “There’s no way you could know. You might have been killed as well.”

  “That never mattered. What mattered was that she died and I didn’t save her. And maybe it’s crazy, but those feelings of guilt have never completely gone away.”

  “Did you ever find out who she was?”

  “Amy Phelps. She was a local girl. They eventually found the man who killed her. An ex-boyfriend named Jimmie Prime.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me this before?”

  “I haven’t talked about that day to anyone since that summer.”

  “After we found Marissa’s body—if I’d have known what was driving your anger . . . things might have ended differently.” Maybe things would have ended differently between us as well.

  “Sometimes I think I live my life wondering,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I always wonder what might have happened. If I’d never heard that girl scream in the woods that morning. If I’d never walked away from my father’s law firm. If I had dug deeper on Jason Fisher instead of quitting the force.”

  Jordan couldn’t help but add another what-if . . . If you’d never let me walk away. If you’d have asked me to stay instead of joining the FBI. She sighed. “Sometimes you have to stop looking back and simply look forward.”

  She studied his face. The familiar curve of his jawline . . . his chocolate-brown eyes . . . his cleft chin. She’d never forgotten the details. Not even after all these years. Suddenly she realized how much she’d missed him. A decade had flown by, and he still looked just as appealing as the first day she’d met him.

  Her phone rang, and she grabbed it out of her pocket.

  “Sam? What’s up?”

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “On our way back from Rose Winter’s house. What’s wrong?”

  “I need you to head downtown now. I’m sending you the location. 911 just got a frantic call about an attempted kidnapping and a missing girl they believe is connected with the Angel Abductor. We need to find this girl now.”

  26

  1:28 p.m.

  Nashville

  Jordan punched the GPS coordinates into her phone as Garrett took a sharp right and headed south toward downtown.

  “Sam also patched the audio file of the 911 call through to my phone,” she said, pulling up the file and pushing play after making sure it was on speaker.

  “Nine-one-one operator. What is your emergency?”

  “I—I need help. Someone grabbed me. He shoved me into a car . . . took my picture . . . he was crazy. Kept going on and on about how I looked like an angel. I managed to get out of the car and run, but now I’m lost and afraid he’s going to find me again.”

  “Can you tell me where you are?”

  “I’m somewhere in downtown Nashville. There are so many people. I think I lost him, but I’m not sure.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Zoe . . . Zoe Granger.”

  “Zoe, I’m tracking the GPS on your phone and sending officers to help you. I’m hearing a lot of noise. Can you tell me where you are?”

  “There are a bunch of restaurants, and live music outside. It’s so loud I’m having trouble hearing you.”

  “Zoe, I need you to listen carefully. I want you to go into the closest restaurant right now. Tell the manager what happened and wait there. I’m going to send an officer to get you, but stop worrying—you’ll be safe.”

  “Okay . . . There’s a restaurant ahead . . . Kade’s Bar & Grill. I guess I could go in there, but how long until they get here? I’m afraid he’s still following me.”

  “I’m going to stay on the line with you until the officers arrive. It will just be a few minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you describe the person who was after you?”

  “He was wearing a dark-blue hoodie.”

  “And what about you, Zoe? Can you tell me what you’re wearing, so the officers know who to look for?”

  “Yeah . . . jeans and a . . . a gray bomber jacket and a gray-and-pink backpack, but—”

  The audio went dead.

  “Sounds like she got cut off,” Jordan said, switching back to her call with Sam. “Sam, what happened to the audio?”

  “We’re not sure. The 911 operator lost her and hasn’t been able to get her back.”

  “How long ago since the call went through?” she asked.

  “About fifteen minutes. They patched it through to Missing Persons as soon as they got the call.”

  “Someone was on their toes.” Though she wasn’t surprised. The recent murder of yet another girl had the city on high alert again.

  “How long before you can be there?” Sam asked.

  “We’re on the freeway now,” she said, glancing out the window at the heavy traffic. “I’m hoping five . . . ten minutes tops, unless we get stuck in traffic.”

  “Metro police has been called in as well, but the streets are crowded and so far they haven’t been able to find her.”

  “I thought she went into a restaurant?” Jordan asked.

  “They’re checking now, but they’re afraid she might have panicked and run.”

  “So what’s your theory at this point?” Garrett asked, as soon as she’d hung up. “Copycat or accomplice?”

  “I don’t know.” She moved her head in a slow circle, trying to release some of the tension in her neck. “There are so many variables entering the equation, it’s hard to come up with a legitimate behavioral pattern.”

  Over a decade between the last two murders.

  Their only suspect had been murdered.

  And now two more abductions in less than forty-eight hours.

  “All I know is that whoever’s out there doing this has to be stopped,” she said.

  Leave it to bad luck to have them hit downtown Nashville when the one-block section they needed to get to was closed to traffic due to some kind of open-air concert. Jordan let out a huff as they exited Garrett’s car and started walking the extra blocks to get to the location the victim had last been heard from. Not that she believed in luck, but still. The streets were crowded with hundreds of people, listening to the music and eating.

  It was the perfect place to hide. Right in the middle of a crowd.

  Maybe that’s what Zoe wanted. A place where she felt safe, lost in the crowd. A band played on a stage in the midst of countless bars, restaurants, and a large crowd of people. The smell of BBQ wafted through the air. On any other day, Jordan wouldn’t have minded indulging in the festive atmosphere the city was known for.

  “Just got a text from Michaels,” Garrett said. “He and Sam are almost here.”

  Jordan searched the crowd for a sign of Zoe and her pink backpack. The sidewalks were filled with families with their children, older couples, and groups of teens. How in the world were they supposed to find her?

  “What are you thinking?” Garrett asked.

  “Something seems . . . off. I just can’t put my finger on it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She slipped her hands into her pockets, wishing she’d brought her scarf. Now that the sun had dropped, so had the temperature. “This isn’t how he works. Even if she did escape, what in the world was he doing here in the middle of downtown? Would he really be confident enough to grab her out here? In the middle of all these people?”

  “Then you’re thinking this is looking more like the work of a copycat.”

  “Yes. And I’m thinking that the rules have changed, and there’s no way we can know what his next step is.”

  Which was exactly what had her worried.

  Cars were parked along the crowded streets until the point where the road was blocked off. Then the road swelled with people. The music was getting louder as they got closer to the stage.

  “There’s Kade’s Bar & Grill,” Jordan said. “Let’s try there first.”

  A perky hostess approached them inside. “Table for two?”

&n
bsp; “No.” Jordan held up her badge. “We’re looking for a young woman wearing a bomber jacket and carrying a gray-and-pink backpack.”

  “Sorry,” the hostess said above the noise. “I already told the other officers that came in here that I haven’t noticed anyone like that. But as you can see, it’s crazy busy.”

  “We’d still like to look around.”

  “Fine,” she said, stepping aside.

  Jordan and Garrett split up and started through the crowded floor that was packed with tables and customers and waiters delivering food. She studied the crowd, searching for the girl. Nothing.

  She headed back to the bathrooms, then stepped inside the women’s and searched the stalls, but the room was empty.

  Zoe wasn’t here.

  “Anything?” Garrett asked as she exited the restroom.

  Jordan shook her head. “The hostess was right. Either she left, or she never made it here.”

  Jordan’s phone rang as they stepped out of the restaurant into the busy crowd. “What have you got, Sam?”

  “The dispatcher is working with the cell service provider and has been able to track the phone. I’m sending you her GPS coordinates now.”

  Jordan brought the coordinates up on her phone, then quickened her pace next to Garrett through the crowd. She looked for a flash of pink from Zoe’s backpack and wished they had more to go by than simply what she was wearing.

  “Do you have a photo of the girl yet?” she asked Sam.

  “No, but I’ll make sure you get one as soon as I do,” he said. “How close are you?”

  “She’s got to be right here.”

  Jordan searched the face of every person they passed. Every young girl walking down the sidewalk. But none of them fit the description. No one seemed upset.

  “Jordan . . .”

  Garrett was picking up a cell phone from under the lit-up window of a shop. He clicked on the screen, and a shot of a blonde girl stared up at her.

  “This has got to be her phone, but what’s it doing here?” she asked.

  He checked the call log. “I don’t know, but the last call was made to 911.”

  Jordan scanned the crowd. “She has to be nearby, but she wouldn’t have just ditched her phone on purpose.”