by Lisa Gardner
Rainie finished lacing her shoes. After a moment’s hesitation, she slid her Glock .40 into a shoulder holster. A simple black jacket covered the bulge.
Seven A.M., she picked up her notes and headed out the door. The sun glared harsh white, causing her to blink. Her tiny rental car felt like it was two hundred degrees inside. Damn, she thought. It was going to be a killer of a day.
9
Quantico, Virginia
“The first call arrived at two thirty-two P.M., Tuesday afternoon.” Back in the bowels of the earth, Quincy reported last night’s events in his crispest voice to Special Agent in Charge Chad Everett, while the SAC nodded attentively and a fluorescent bulb buzzed ominously overhead. “At ten-eighteen P.M., I personally handled a call from Miguel Sanchez. There have been more calls since; given the circumstances, I’ve been letting the machine pick up.” Quincy handed over copies of the freshly made case file to the assembled agents. They accepted the information while continuing to regard him gravely.
“Enclosed you will find a complete list of caller activity and the corrections departments currently involved in the situation,” he continued. “Eight officers checked in with me, which you will see noted. In some cases, they reported my personal information being passed along from inmate to inmate in the yard. More interesting, however, is the last two officers, who identified the source of the information as being an ad currently running in their local prison newsletters. In one newsletter, I’m a producer looking to interview inmates for an upcoming documentary on prison life. Interested parties are encouraged to contact me directly at the number listed below. In another newsletter, I’m eagerly seeking a prison pen pal, again, please contact me at the number listed below.”
Quincy smiled tightly. “I’m still waiting to hear back from a few sources, but it would appear that similar ads just appeared in at least six other newsletters, including Cellpals, Freedom Now, and my personal favorite, Prison Legal News, which has a monthly circulation of over three thousand. Then there are the Web sites, such as PrisonPenPals.com, which apparently has been paid to e-mail my ad to dozens of prisoners ‘seeking a new friend.’ Look at me. I’m a groupie.”
Quincy shut the case file and sat down grimly. All eyes were still on him, but he had nothing more to add. This was his life. Now it had been violated. Phone call after phone call, message after message promising a slow, tortured death. He could not remember the last time he had slept.
At least the Bureau was taking the situation seriously. A small case team had been assembled in Everett’s office. A younger man with a mop of sandy brown hair, Special Agent Randy Jackson, represented the Technical Services Division, in charge of wiretapping. From NCAVC were Special Agent Glenda Rodman, an older woman with a penchant for severe gray suits, and Special Agent Albert Montgomery, whose bloodshot eyes and hound-dog face already made Quincy uncomfortable. The agent had either taken a red-eye flight last night, or he’d been drinking heavily. Perhaps both. Then again, who was Quincy, with his own wan features, to judge?
“For the record, who has access to your personal telephone number?” Everett asked, while Special Agent Rodman sat up straighter and positioned her pen over her yellow legal pad of notes.
“My family,” Quincy replied immediately. “Some professionals, including fellow agents and members of law enforcement. Some friends. I’ve included as complete a list as possible in my notes. In all honesty, I’ve had that number for the past five years, and even I was surprised by how many people now have it.”
“You’ve worked over two hundred and ninety-six active cases,” Glenda spoke up.
Quincy nodded. Frankly, he was surprised the number was not higher. As profilers served a consulting role, each routinely juggled over one hundred cases at a time.
“That’s a lot of people who may feel they have the right to be unhappy with you.”
“Assuming they ever knew I was involved.” Quincy shrugged. “Be honest, Glenda. For a fair amount of our cases, we receive a request by phone, get the case file by mail, and return our report via fax or FedEx. In those incidents, I have a hard time believing the perpetrator’s focus ever leaves the local homicide detectives who actively work the case.”
“So weeding out those cases …” she prodded.
Quincy did the math in his head. “Maybe fifty-six convicted inmates.”
“What about open cases?”
Quincy shook his head. “I haven’t worked an active case in six years.”
“Last year,” she began.
He said quietly, “Henry Hawkins is dead.”
Montgomery leaned forward, his elbows resting on the knees of his rumpled pants. The fluorescent light flickered, jaundicing his jowls, and Quincy found himself pondering the agent’s presence once again. Montgomery’s expression was sullen, almost as if he was here against his will, and yet what kind of agent begrudged helping a fellow agent in trouble? That hardly boded well.
“Aren’t we putting the cart before the horse?” Montgomery grumbled. “You got a bunch of calls. Whoopdee doo.”
Special Agent in Charge Everett replied sternly, “The fact that an agent’s personal telephone number was disseminated to over twenty correctional facilities is whoopdee doo. We don’t need any more whoopdee doo than that.”
Montgomery turned to the SAC. Quincy thought the disheveled agent would quit while he was ahead; he was wrong. “Bullshit,” Montgomery snapped, making them all blink. “If this was something personal, if this was someone serious, the instigator would do more than pass along a private number to a bunch of schmucks behind bars. He’d visit the house. Or he’d arrange for someone else to visit the house. Phone calls? This is fucking child’s play.”
Everett’s face darkened. A thirty-year veteran of the Bureau, he was a throwback to the days when an FBI agent dressed, spoke, and carried himself a certain way. Agents were the good guys, the last bastion of protection against gangsters, bank robbers, and child molesters. Agents did not arrive on the job in wrinkled suits and they did not go around saying things like “fucking child’s play.”
“Special Agent Montgomery—”
“Wait a minute.” Quincy surprised them all by raising his hand and saving Montgomery from a lecture that wouldn’t be career-building. “Say that one more time.”
“Phone calls,” Montgomery drawled as if they were all daft. “The question is not who, but why phone calls.”
Glenda Rodman sat back. She was nodding her head now. Randy Jackson yawned.
“Montgomery’s right,” the techie agreed. “If it’s a hacker, guy could get your home address from the phone company just as easily as your unlisted number. If it’s just some person who happened to snag your number, they could still call information and get your street address from a reverse directory. Either way, home phone number equals home address.”
“Wonderful,” Quincy said. Somehow, he hadn’t put those pieces together, another sure sign he was not himself these days. The dull ache was back in his temples. Morning, noon, and night. Grief was like a hangover he couldn’t shake.
Why phone calls? The obvious answer was that someone was out to get him. Probably someone from an old case. Psychopaths were like sharks. They probably viewed his daughter’s death as blood in the water and now they were moving in for the kill. So why not keep it simple? Move in. Attack. Finish him off. Hell, he definitely wasn’t in any kind of shape for a fight.
Was that why he had gone to Rainie? Because he knew he was becoming too isolated? Or because he wanted to remember how to fight the good fight? Rainie never gave an inch, not even when backed into a corner. Not even when she should.
Focus, Quincy. Why phone calls?
“This is serious,” Everett pronounced. “I want an immediate follow-up with the newsletters and Web sites involved to determine the origin of these ads. Furthermore, we need to figure out just how many inmates now have this information. We ought to be able to trace something.”
Quincy closed his eyes. �
�So many grassroots newsletters,” he murmured. “Big ones, little ones, and for all we know, he placed ads in all of them, which is a lot of work. So why …” His eyes popped open. He had it. Dammit, he should’ve thought of this last night. “Cover,” he said.
“What’s that, Agent?”
“Cover,” Montgomery repeated for him, then grunted. He stared at Quincy with red-rimmed eyes that appeared reluctantly impressed. “Yeah, probably. Let’s say this guy has your home address right now—which, by the way, he probably does. He goes after you tomorrow, we can hunt him down through process of elimination. But he spreads that info to dozens of prisons where the inmates will pass it along to dozens more.… Now we gotta look at superfelons A, B, and C, their pals on the outside, and the pals of their pals on the outside. It’s like a fucking criminal spider web. We’ll be tracking down nasties for years after your funeral.”
“Why thank you,” Quincy said evenly.
“It’s true,” Glenda chimed in, though she had the courtesy to look at him with more concern than Montgomery. “If something had happened to you yesterday, standard procedure would have been to investigate personal acquaintances as well as people from prior cases. Not an easy feat, but certainly a manageable one. Now, however, entire prison populations have your personal information. You could be targeted by any neo-Nazi who hates federal agents, any gangster looking to build a rep, or any psychopath who’s simply bored. If something should happen to you now … The playing field is wide open. No matter how many agents were assigned to the task, we’d never wrap our arms around a suspect list this big. Frankly, it’s a brilliant strategy.”
“This is serious,” Everett pronounced again.
As the one who was being targeted by some unknown stalker, Quincy thought he already knew that.
Glenda flipped through the file Quincy had put together. “In the good news department,” she reported, “some of these newsletters are more reputable than others. If they ran an ad, it was because they received specs and payment by mail. If they’ve kept the original letter and envelope, we’re in luck. We can trace the postmark back to city of origin, test the envelope for DNA and fingerprints, plus test the whole package for chemical residues, dirt, debris. On the other hand …” She hesitated, glancing at Quincy apologetically. “Prison newsletters are mostly grassroots journalism. It could take us weeks simply to track down every publication carrying the ad. And even then …”
She didn’t have to say the rest. They all knew. Not all prison newsletters were really about journalism and not all were reputable. In the sixties, information was smuggled into prisons in packs of cigarettes. When the drug problem grew too big, however, correction departments across the country cracked down on all contraband by universally banning outside packages, including ones bearing tobacco products. Prisoners were allowed to receive only money, which they could then use to purchase cigarettes from the prison commissary. While it was unknown if this policy truly limited the drug problem, it did cut off the information flow.
Which brought the underground information network into the nineties and the miracles of constitutionally protected free speech. Prisons got computers, complete with desktop publishing software, and prison newsletters sprang up across the country. While some were small, many garnered national distribution. And the coded ad was born. Got some information you want to disseminate? Disguise it as a request for a pen pal, and pay five, ten, one hundred bucks to bring your message to the masses. Financially constrained? Some Web sites would now run pen pal ads and even build personal Web sites for inmates, free of charge. Just because you murdered eight people doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a voice in society. Or a pretty blond writing correspondent named Candi.
“A lot of these newsletters probably didn’t require much in the way of payment,” Quincy filled in for Glenda. “And most of them probably did destroy the original letter of request, as a matter of protocol.”
“Prison Legal News is a good one,” she offered. “We can focus our efforts there.”
“Good.” Everett nodded approvingly.
“I can call the phone company,” Jackson volunteered. “See if Verizon has had any breaches of security lately. You know, that they’ll admit to.”
Everett nodded again, looking pleased. Quincy, however, rubbed his temples. “I doubt you’ll find the original letter and envelope,” he said quietly. “And even if we do, there won’t be any DNA evidence. There won’t be fingerprints. Nobody takes the time to think of such an elaborate ruse, then forgets something as simple as fingerprints on the envelope and saliva on the seal. Whoever we’re looking for, he’s smarter than that.”
“You think it’s personal,” Glenda said.
Quincy gave her a look. “What kind of stranger would bother?”
“We got another strategy,” Montgomery spoke up. He threw out baldly, “Monitor the grave.”
“No!” Immediately, Quincy was out of his chair.
“It’s standard procedure—” Montgomery began.
“Fuck procedure!” Quincy told him coldly, the second time in as many days he’d been driven to swear. “It’s my daughter. You are not using my daughter!”
Montgomery lumbered to his feet. His eyes were small and dark in the folds of his face. They reminded Quincy of the eyes of a bird, and he suddenly wondered if this was how he, too, appeared to victims’ families. Not as a man, but as some bird of prey, swooping down after the kill.
“You said Sanchez implied he knew where your daughter was buried,” Montgomery said flatly.
“I was wrong.”
“Wrong my ass. He knew. Which means the UNSUB thought to look up where your daughter was buried, which means he’s been considering her grave for quite some time. Guy’s gotta know by now we’ll be watching your house. So if he wants to feel close to you … have a private little laugh …”
“I do not want cameras at my daughter’s grave. I do not give permission!”
But Glenda was nodding now, Jackson, as well. Quincy turned slowly toward Everett. The SAC’s face was kind, sympathetic. But he was nodding, too.
Time spun away from Quincy. He was remembering an afternoon he hadn’t thought of in years. At the state fair, Mandy and Kimberly in tow. Father-daughter day, he’d promised them, and taken them on as many rides as their young stomachs could handle. Then, right after buying them cotton candy, he’d turned and seen a man snapping photo after photo of children on the kiddy rides.
He remembered the smile fading from his face, a chill seeping into his body. He watched a pedophile capture rolls of film of laughing little children and all he could think was that his girls were only a few feet away. His sweet, beautiful, healthy little girls with their mother’s striking dark blond hair.
He had spoken to them urgently, angrily. Look at that man, he had instructed them, his heart hammering wildly in his chest. Know what he is, he had told them. And don’t be afraid to run.
Kimberly had nodded solemnly, absorbing his words with fierce concentration. Mandy, however, had started to cry. Weeks later, she still had nightmares about a man in a smelly overcoat who came with a camera to take her away.
“No,” he said hoarsely now. “I won’t allow cameras. Try and I swear I’ll move Mandy’s grave.”
The other agents were looking at him curiously. Everett said, “Maybe it’s time to think about taking a few sick days.…”
“I’m fine!” Quincy tried again, but his voice still sounded odd, not like him. He sounded desperate, he realized. He sounded like a desperate father. And then he had a strange thought. It came to him as instinct, something he understood better than truth. This is what the stalker wanted. The UNSUB had set up this first wave of attack not just to make his identity harder to pinpoint, but to have some fun. To identify Quincy’s deepest wound and rip at it savagely.
Quincy licked his lips and sought once more for control. “Listen to me. This is not about my daughter. The UNSUB could care less about my daughter. He gave out that info
rmation just to get a cheap thrill.”
“So you know who it is then?” Glenda Rodman seemed intent on pinning him down.
“No, I don’t know who it is. I’m simply theorizing based upon the company I keep.”
“In other words, you don’t know shit,” Montgomery declared.
“Agent, you are not turning my daughter’s grave into some obscene stakeout.”
“Why?” Montgomery pushed. “It’s not like it’s something you haven’t asked of other families.”
“You son of a bitch—”
“Quincy!” Everett interrupted sharply. Quincy stilled as they all drew up short. He was slightly surprised to find that his hand was raised in midair, his index finger jabbing at Montgomery as if he would do the man harm.
“I know this is difficult,” the SAC said quietly, “but you’re still a federal agent, Quincy, and breaches of security are a threat to all of us. Take a few days. The case team will monitor your house and apprise you of any new developments. In the meantime, you can make yourself comfortable in a nearby hotel or perhaps take a visit to see family.”
“Sir, listen to me—”
“Agent, how long has it been since you’ve slept?”
Quincy fell silent. He knew he had bags beneath his eyes, he knew he had lost weight. When Mandy had died, he had told himself that he was too smart to let it eat away at him. He’d lied.
The other agents were still staring at them. He could read their judgments on their faces. Quincy’s losing it. Quincy’s strung too tight. Told you he shouldn’t have returned to work so soon after the funeral.…
The FBI and animals in the wild, he thought: all culled the weak from their herd.
“I’ll … I’ll find a hotel,” he said brusquely. “I just need to pack a few things.”
