The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  Blocking out the sound of that thrice damned laughter, he returned his attention to the report.

  It was a missing persons from a county just west of Charleston, involving a fourteen-year-old girl who’d run away from her third foster home just last month. The story was pretty unremarkable – kids ran away from bad home situations all the time, and an unfortunately high number of them were never heard from again. In this case, the girl had an older sister – pregnant and living in a state-run home – who told the police that her sister was trying to make it to their cousin in Florida.

  She never arrived.

  And the case would have gone very cold, very fast, if it weren’t for the fact that an on-the-ball service station attendant had noticed a girl matching the teen’s description sleeping in the back seat of a late model BMW. Apparently the car had blown a tire and pulled into the station’s lot to change the spare. The driver of the BMW – a large, muscular blond man between approximately thirty and forty years of age – had politely refused offers of help, explaining that he was trying to get the whole thing taken care of as quietly as possible so as not to disturb his sleeping daughter.

  The attendant bought the story and didn’t give the matter a second thought.

  Days later, when the local authorities had gotten around to making some inquiries about the missing girl, the attendant put two and two together and gave them the lead. No BMW matching the description had surfaced, but it at least gave the authorities a place to start.

  And Sheriff Callahan, smart man that he was, remembered that case after Casey was reported missing. He’d gotten a copy of the report, as well as any others involving missing girls in the Charleston area, after Clay told the deputies that he believed that they were dealing with an experienced offender. Clay now had a stack of files about six inches thick, entailing over twenty young women who’d gone missing over the past six months.

  Clay was sure a couple of the cases involved family abductions, and a few more were simply disgruntled teens running off with the boyfriend of the month, but there were several that struck him as warranting further attention.

  There was no proof of foul play involving any of the girls, and without a body or a crime scene it was difficult for Clay to learn much about an offender’s behavior. But by studying the victimology – supposing the missing young teens were victims – he was beginning to glean an overall pattern.

  And the pattern reminded him of a conversation he’d had the previous week.

  On a hunch, he retrieved his cell phone from his pocket and put in a call to Kim O’Connell. Kim was an agent with the Atlanta field office, as well as one of Clay’s best friends. She’d been struggling with a nasty case involving young girls who disappeared, reappearing on some very bad porn sites on the web, or in one case as a murdered truck stop prostitute. But it was the snuff film her team had gotten their hands on that came to Clay’s mind. She’d called him to pick his brain about some of the behavioral idiosyncrasies, and a couple of the points they’d discussed sounded disturbingly familiar.

  The phone rang four times before it was answered by an out of breath woman.

  “O’Connell.”

  “Did I catch you in the middle of something?”

  “Ha!” Kim exclaimed when she recognized Clay’s voice. “You caught me running to catch the elevator, but I failed to make it there in time. And of course the team of defense lawyers who just piled onto it weren’t about to hold it for me, considering I gave the testimony that drove the final nail into their client’s coffin. But enough about us lowly working stiffs. How’s life treating you in the Big Easy?”

  “I’m in Charleston, Red. The Big Easy is New Orleans.”

  Kim snorted. “Honey, anyplace that’s not here is the Big Easy in my book. So are you gloriously drunk and half naked on some lounge chair? Hold the phone up so I can hear the sound of the waves. A little vicarious relaxation is better than none.”

  Clay chuckled mirthlessly, cursing the headache he had brewing. “Actually, I’m sitting in the Bentonville, South Carolina sheriff’s office, entangled in the search for a missing girl.”

  “What? How on earth did you get involved in something like that? You’re supposed to be sipping drinks that come with little umbrellas and ogling hordes of bikini-clad babes.”

  Clay indulged himself in that image for a moment or two, but the only bikini-clad babe he could envision was Tate.

  “It’s a long story,” he summed up, knowing that if he mentioned Tate and Max and the carnival he’d be answering Kim’s questions for an hour. “But anyway, I was wondering if you could do me a favor. I’d like to get a look at the film we discussed last week.”

  After a couple beats of silence, Kim said “You think there’s a connection between my snuff film and your missing girl?”

  “I don’t know. I started thinking about our conversation, and the perp in this case seems to be a mid-thirties male with a body builder’s physique –”

  “And my perp was also a mid-thirties male with a body builder’s physique.”

  “Yes, well, you know that putting two and two together doesn’t necessarily make four. But I got a look at him last night, and I want to compare what I saw to your footage. It’s likely nothing, but I’d still like to check it out for myself. Do you think you could e-mail it to me?”

  “You got a look at him? Where?”

  “At a carnival. But anyway –”

  “You went to a carnival last night?”

  Clay sighed, rubbing the tension that had shifted to the back of his neck. “As I said, it’s a long story. How long do you think it will be before you can get me that footage?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” she answered after only a moment of hesitation.

  Clay’s shoulders slumped, disappointment running a brief course through his veins. “Is that the best you can do?” Kim was busy, he understood, and this case wasn’t her priority, but he’d hoped to get this taken care of today. He either wanted to rule out a possible connection so that he could rethink the emerging pattern, or make the connection and offer both the Bureau and the sheriff’s department a promising lead.

  “I’m afraid so. I have to wrap things up here, and it will take me at least six hours to get there. That would put me in Charleston too late to do any good today. But I’ll be raring and ready to go first thing in the morning.”

  “Wait a minute.” Clay shook his head, trying to figure out where they’d gone off course. “I asked you to e-mail the footage, not hand-deliver it.”

  “I realize that. But I’m all finished with this trial, and if there’s a break, I want to be in on it. I’ll bring the disc and the autopsy report from our dead vic, and my notes pertaining to the case.”

  “Kim, that’s really not necessary. I don’t want you to come all this way based on what’s little more than a hunch.”

  “My ass,” Kim disagreed. “Your hunches are usually better than someone else’s smoking gun. Is this sheriff that you’re working with territorial?”

  “No,” Clay assured her. “That’s why he asked me to come in on this so early.”

  “Good. Then he won’t have any problem with my participation in the investigation. That way you can back out and get on with the drinking and lying on the beach. This case isn’t really ISU fodder anyway. These guys do what they do for the almighty dollar. That’s more my area of expertise than yours.”

  It was true, Clay silently acknowledged, although he felt there was more to the man he’d seen last night than just your run-of-the-mill felon.

  “Okay,” he finally agreed. “I’ll spend the rest of the afternoon weeding things out and trying to make sense of this from my end, and when you get here tomorrow morning give me a call. We’ll compare notes, watch the footage, and if there’s a connection, I’ll gladly dump this thing in your capable hands.”

  JOSH Harding angled the sketch toward Tate, and watched as she chewed the inside of her cheek. “The jaw line,” she said hesitantly. “I t
hink it should be a little more… square.” Josh deftly wielded the pencil, a new face emerging from the strokes.

  She sat back in her chair.

  “You’re really very good. I had no idea that I’d noticed that much detail. And for you to be able to put it on paper…” her voice trailed off, and she lifted her gaze to his. “That’s amazing.”

  Josh felt his cheeks suffuse with color. He wasn’t sure what it was about this particular woman that made him regress to seventh grade, but his palms began to sweat. “Thanks.” It was a rather uninspired comeback. What he really wanted to say was you’re amazing, too. Would you consider bearing my children?

  Needless to say, that didn’t come out. He wasn’t entirely certain what the deal was between her and Agent Copeland, and quite frankly, he didn’t want to piss the guy off. He came across as all amiable and polite, but Josh had seen him glancing over in his and Tate’s direction a time or two with murder in his eyes.

  While Josh was no wimp, and could well take care of himself, he didn’t want FBI, spelled out in bullet holes, decorating his ass.

  So he’d bide his time, and wait until the guy cleared out.

  As if thinking of the devil could conjure him, Copeland chose that moment to open the door. He leaned in, smiling warmly at Tate.

  “It’s after one, and I was thinking you must be hungry.”

  “Oh.” Tate looked at her watch. “Now that you mention it, I guess I am.”

  “Sheriff Callahan says there’s a sandwich shop next door. What do you say we grab a bite?”

  “Sounds great,” Tate agreed, and then shifted her gaze toward Josh. “Would you like to come along, Deputy Harding?”

  Josh, who understood the male psyche far better than Tate, weighed the pleasure of dining with the lovely woman against the pain of having his face ground into the dirt. For despite the pleasant smile, Copeland’s eyes said join us and die.

  Being fond of his life, and having no great desire to eat dirt, Josh wisely opted to bow out. And gathering his sketchpad and laptop, excused himself from the room.

  THE S&K Sandwich Shop was a throwback to simpler times, the wares advertised on a backlit plastic board in black removable letters. The selection was pretty basic southern fare and the air so redolent of oil from the deep fryer that they decided to dine al fresco. The patio was dwarfed by a large live oak whose graceful limbs cast welcome shade, and compared to the heat and grease of the restaurant’s interior, felt almost balmy by comparison.

  Clay nodded toward a picnic table on the far side of the oak, brushing aside an errant piece of Spanish moss before offering Tate a seat. As he unwrapped his sandwich from the wax paper casing, Tate eyed him across their trays.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to help them find Casey?”

  He took a bite of barbeque. Tate knew there was a lot of stuff happening that he wasn’t at liberty to discuss, and he was clearly considering his response.

  “Finding Casey, while obviously urgent, isn’t the reason they asked me to come in. My role as a ‘profiler’ isn’t to locate missing persons or apprehend perpetrators, but to try and help the police understand the whys of the situation. Why was Casey selected? Why does the man who took her feel the need to do what he does? And by understanding both the victim and the victimizer, they will have a better chance of locating their man by predicting his behavioral pattern and thereby preventing him from striking again. I’m trying to help lead them to their man, which, in a perfect world, will also lead them to Casey. But I want you to be prepared for the fact that they may not find her in time.”

  Tate chewed on a piece of Texas toast while she considered Clay’s grim prediction. He had to have an iron will to be able to separate the fact that a young girl’s life was at stake, and concentrate on the task of studying her abductor. That cool professionalism, so different from the warm and engaging man she’d come to know, intrigued her on an entirely different level. It took tremendous strength of character to do what he did, and she found her admiration deepening.

  Whatever came – or didn’t come – out of her acquaintanceship with Clay Copeland, she’d walk away from this whole thing with a lot of respect for him as a person.

  And she also remembered that just two nights ago he’d claimed to be a guy on vacation, trying to pretend like his real life didn’t exist.

  And yet here he was, working.

  Because he’d been nice enough to take her and Max to that carnival and got sucked into what he’d come to Charleston to avoid.

  “I’m sorry,” she said suddenly, and he looked up at her, surprised. “I just realized that if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be stuck working on your vacation.”

  Clay ripped one of the paper towels off the roll in the middle of the table so that he could wipe barbeque sauce from his mouth. “Don’t be ridiculous. If it weren’t for you, it might have been hours before anyone knew Casey was missing, and the sheriff almost certainly wouldn’t have given her disappearance the high priority it has right now. Doing your part to help that little girl last night, and to help ID Casey’s possible abductor today… that’s nothing for which you need to feel regret. Trust me, when I signed on with the ISU, I realized that interruptions and inconveniences to the regularly scheduled program were part and parcel of the life.”

  When he put it that way, Tate realized how insignificant a missed day of vacation was when compared with a young girl’s life. But still, everyone was entitled to a break now and then, and there was something about Clay’s demeanor over the past couple of days that suggested the break was sorely needed. She remembered how he’d shied away from Max that first day on the beach.

  “I don’t mean to pry, and I know it’s none of my business, but…” Tate hesitated, wondering how to best phrase the question. “Did something bad happen on one of your cases before you came here?”

  “Something bad has happened on every one of my cases. People generally don’t call me in when a guy sends his girlfriend flowers.”

  Tate frowned at the flippant remark. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just that you seemed… I don’t know, a little gun shy when you first met Max. Like you’d had a bad experience or something. At first I thought you simply didn’t like kids, but that’s obviously not the case. You’re really, really great with Max. He adores you.”

  Clay took a sip of iced tea. Cleared his throat. “I, uh… Don’t know what to say to that. Thank you. Max makes it pretty easy to be, you know, great.”

  Tate smiled, dredging a fry through ketchup. “You know, you didn’t really answer the question.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head.

  A bead of sweat rolled off Clay’s temple and he wiped it with the back of his hand. “It’s really hot out here. Do you want to finish our lunch at the station?”

  “If it’s something you can’t or don’t want to talk about, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “The heat’s making me uncomfortable.”

  Her bland look had him sighing in acknowledgement. “Okay. You’re right.” He pushed his tray to the side and leaned back. “A few weeks ago, I was in Kansas working a case. The specifics aren’t important, but my profile helped lead the locals to the right man. The guy had a wife, a kid – five-year-old boy, cute as a button – that he used as target practice when he wasn’t out assaulting his victims. When the police cornered him, he took his family hostage. Anyway, long story short, I got pressed into trying to negotiate. I failed. Completely. The guy blew himself and his family away before I could even say boo.”

  “Oh, Clay.” Tate reached for his hand across the table. “And yet you volunteered to spend the entire day yesterday with Max. How difficult that must have been.”

  “Actually,” he squeezed her hand. “It was remarkably easy. Yet another reason to knock the guilt block off your shoulder. Being at that carnival with Max was good for me. I’d been avoiding the issue ever since it happened, first throwing myself back into work, then thr
owing myself into vacation. Because I was… afraid. Afraid of admitting that I felt like a failure. That if I’d been a little bit smarter, a little bit better, a little bit faster, that child might still be alive. But last night I realized that I’d done the best I could.

  “And besides, if I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have gotten a look at the perp, and you and I probably wouldn’t be sitting here enjoying our daily dose of indigestion.”

  Tate smiled, although she suspected he was changing the subject on purpose. Humor was obviously his default coping mechanism, as he’d managed to find the comedic side of almost every lousy situation they’d found themselves in.

  “So how’d the sketch turn out?” he inquired, clearly wanting to close the door on the previous topic. “I meant to look it over to compare it against my own observations, but Deputy Harding hotfooted it out of the interview room before I had a chance to ask.”

  “The sketch looks great. I might not have described the guy exactly, but it seems to be much closer than I would have thought possible. Josh is really a fantastic artist.”

  Clay muttered something under his breath.

  Tate’s head popped up. “What?”

  “I said Deputy Harding seems like a nice guy.”

  “He is nice,” she agreed, although she was sure that was not what he’d muttered. “Actually, it’s kind of surprising. Given my experience, men who look like that can’t see past their own reflection.”

  When he was quiet, Tate looked up to find his warm brown eyes sharp with comprehension. “Max’s dad?”

  She didn’t want to talk about… the jerk… not ever, but after the way Clay had bared himself, she didn’t feel it was fair to shut him out.

  “Yes.” It was a simple answer to his question, but she could tell by the look on his face that he was waiting for the story. Maybe it would help him to understand why she’d called a halt to their physical relationship, as well as to remind herself why she didn’t do casual flings.