“I think I missed it,” Meg said softly. “All I hear in your story is a young woman doing whatever she needed to do to survive. What was so stupid that you didn’t want to tell us?”
The eyes that turned on her held the devastated disappointment of years of being beaten down. “That I fell for his offer. That I might be worthy of his love and would do anything for it and for attention. In the end, I wasn’t.”
“Emma, I want you to listen to me.” Van Cleave leaned across the table, both palms pressed flat to the surface. “You are worthy of affection and attention. Clearly, you were too worthy for his. And you’re going to be the strong person who shows him that, when we track him down and put him away. You have my word on it. Will you help us get started on it tonight? Will you show us the house?”
The rocking stopped. “You want to start now?”
“Why not? You have something better to do?”
“I thought you would—you know, go home to your wife or something.”
“This is something better to do. My wife understands what I need to do and fully supports it. You need me tonight more than she does.” He glanced at Meg. “Can you and Hawk come?”
“Sure. I hope you can drive because my SUV is somewhere across town.”
“Sure.” Van Cleave pushed back from his desk. “We have a few hours of daylight left. It’s more than enough time to bring this son of a bitch down.”
CHAPTER 14
Catching Feature: A visible, obvious landmark which can be used to navigate to another remote, unseen location.
Sunday, July 23, 7:49 PM
West 48th Street
Norfolk, Virginia
Meg had no words. Van Cleave did, most of them blue.
They stood on what was left of West 48th Street, having had to park Van Cleave’s sedan four blocks away and hike in to the site through what was left of the Larchmont-Edgewater neighborhood. Situated behind the Norfolk Southern Lambert’s Point Docks and a cluster of apartment buildings, this was an older neighborhood. The house Emma led them to was at the end of the street, a redbrick bungalow, sheltered on three sides by overgrown oak, ash, and pine trees. The other side of the property opened onto the waters of Hampton Roads Harbor.
At least that’s what Meg’s phone showed them through Google Street View. Now, the trees were felled, splintered, or washed away. The house itself was simply gone.
“It got swept out to sea?” Emma’s voice was full of shock. “All of it?”
“Looks like it.” Meg stepped onto the property, wading through sand layered over the grass a full six inches deep. “Hawk, with me.” She still had him on his leash, but she scanned the area to see if there was cause to let him off lead to search, if there was any hint of life remaining. Hawk had his nose in the air, scenting the winds, but he looked up at her and whined.
Nothing.
She turned to Van Cleave. “This would have been a bad area for the storm tide. We’re at the mouth of the Elizabeth River here. The water would have come in like a wall, stories high, pulverizing anything in its path, and then either driving it inland, or, more likely, washing it back out to sea. There’s nothing. And Hawk is telling me there are no survivors.”
Van Cleave had left his suit jacket in his car, so he paced over the sand in his shirtsleeves, his hands jammed deep in his pockets. “I really hoped we’d have a good chance at finding something.” He turned to Emma, who stood staring at the footprint of the house’s foundation, scoured practically clean. “You okay?”
“It’s like it never existed. Like the storm just came in and wiped it clean away.” A smile unevenly tilted one side of her lips. “It seems right somehow. It was an evil place.”
Meg walked to her, Hawk at her side, to rub a hand over her back. “I’m sorry you lost your things.”
Emma’s shrug was pure indifference. “They were just things. Now I have nothing from my years here. Nothing to take with me.”
“Maybe it’s easier to make a fresh start that way?”
“Maybe.” She turned to Van Cleave. “Now you don’t have anything. Sorry.”
“Hardly your fault.” Van Cleave picked his way over the sand and around debris to her. “And I do have something. I have you. There’s a lot more you know we haven’t gone over. Locations, men, other girls in the house. And more about John. He’s my focus to start. He leads back to everything else.”
“You think he’s a connection to the wider circle?” Meg asked as Emma dropped to her knees to pet Hawk, something Meg suspected was more for her comfort than the dog’s.
“I do. These small groups rarely function in isolation. They’re often part of a larger organization. So ‘John,’ or whatever his name might be, is the key to our going deeper. To pulling down the whole house of cards.” He stopped, his gaze locked on Emma, who was stifling a huge yawn behind her hand. “But not tonight. We’ve done enough for today. Let’s regroup in the morning.”
Emma looked up, suddenly unsure. “Where will I go until then?”
“Don’t worry, I have the perfect place. It’s a shelter run by a friend of mine.” When Emma shot to her feet, her eyes wide, he held up a hand. “Not that kind of shelter. You won’t have to go to classes or attend Bible lessons. This is a place for runaways who are just looking for a safe roof over their heads. My friend Lily runs it and takes in anyone I bring to her. She’s kind and she won’t ask any questions. You’ll have food and clean sheets and privacy for maybe the first time in a long time. Meg and Hawk and I will take you there tonight and make sure you’re safely settled, then I’ll come get you tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay.” She sank down next to Hawk again, running her hands over his fur.
Van Cleave turned to Meg. “Can you meet us tomorrow at the Norfolk field office? I want to work with Emma to do a profile on John, and then I want her to look at mug shots. He went through reentry, so he has to be in the system. If on the slim chance we can’t find his photo, I have a really talented sketch artist on hand who can take a vague recollection from a witness and turn it into an amazingly realistic sketch. If we need to, we’ll go wide on network TV with it. But I bet we’ll track him down from a profile and mug shot.”
“I’ll have my vehicle back by then, so that will work fine. What time do you want to start?”
“Nine too early for you?”
“Not at all. My team will already be out searching by then.” She crouched down next to Emma. “By the time you get to the field office, I’ll be there and so will Hawk, okay? You can hang out with Hawk the whole time you’re there. Will that make it easier?”
Emma nodded, but seemed too overwhelmed to speak.
“You’ve taken a huge step today. Tomorrow, we’re going to start the search for that man who hurt you. And then we’ll make him pay.”
CHAPTER 15
Last Known Position: The last known location of a subject, based upon physical evidence.
Monday, July 24, 8:55 AM
FBI Field Office
Norfolk, Virginia
Meg walked into an office as familiar as any of the handful of other field offices she’d visited over the years—the cluttered corridors, clusters of desks, forests of monitors all bearing a desktop image of the FBI logo, and the surrounding glass-fronted offices that lined the perimeter. It gave her an instant feeling of comfort.
It clearly had the opposite effect on the young woman at her side. Emma walked stiffly, her movements jerky and her eyes shifting from side to side, as if expecting an attack to come from any direction. A fish out of water in the worst possible way.
In a late-night phone call to Van Cleave, Meg had offered to pick Emma up on her way into the field office. She had her SUV back from Webb, and thought picking Emma up would get the girl back with Hawk sooner, and it would save Van Cleave a trip. He’d been happy to oblige.
She’d spent the night with the team and Webb again, at the same community center, so she’d been able to hear about what she’d missed. When she’d ap
ologized for being sidetracked, Brian, Lauren, and Scott had been unanimous in their opinion that she needed to be on the human trafficking case.
“To tell you the truth,” Lauren said. “I’m a little jealous. I’m getting worried about Rocco. He’s not taking the lack of live rescues well, and hiding live volunteers gets less and less convincing when you keep doing it day in and day out.” She turned to Craig. “What’s our time line on this?”
“Tomorrow is our last day.” Craig put his mug of lethal black coffee down on the dog crate they were using as a table in the middle of their circle of chairs. “Randolph and his team of cadaver dogs are coming in on Tuesday, so we’ll head back to D.C. tomorrow night. Except for you,” he said to Meg.
“And I have no idea how long I’ll be,” she said. She turned to Webb, beside her nursing his own coffee. “What about you?”
“I’ve been asked to stay on for a few more days. They don’t really need me as a paramedic anymore, but they have requested that a few of us from DCFEMS hang around for a few more days in the role of firefighter to help with recovery operations, and admin cleared it for the lot of us. They offered to put me up at one of the firehouses, but I told them I had a place for tonight anyway.” He raised his mug, toasting the team. “I’ll head there tomorrow with the rest of my guys. And maybe we’ll end up going home together in a few days.”
“You’re awfully optimistic about my case. Granted, Emma will need me for only so long, so we’ll see.”
Now looking at Emma, Meg was again unsure how long she’d be needed here, and it gnawed at her. She knew this was important, but in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but feel that it was a waste of Hawk’s talents.
Let’s get the show on the road and see how fast we move along.
Meg extended Hawk’s leash to Emma. “Hey, can you hold on to Hawk for a minute while I find out where Van is?” Without waiting, she pushed the leash into Emma’s hands and then wove through the maze of desks to a young man at a computer. She glanced back; as she hoped, Emma was too busy talking to Hawk to concentrate on her surroundings.
She stood by the young man’s desk, and when he didn’t look up, she cleared her throat to get his attention. “Excuse me, I’m looking for SAC Van Cleave.”
The young agent didn’t even look away from his screen. “Far end of the office, second door from the left. His nameplate is on his window.”
“Thanks.” Meg made her way back to Emma and took Hawk’s leash. “Follow me.” They wound through the maze of desks to the far end of the room. Van Cleave sat behind his glass office wall, his name and rank on a brass plaque affixed next to the door. Meg rapped her knuckles on the open door. “Good morning.”
Van Cleave raised his head from the document he was reading and put it and his pen down. He stood, smiling warmly at them. “Good morning. How was your night?”
“I was at a community center, so it was loud and bright, but I was with my team, so it was all good,” Meg said.
“Your friend is nice,” Emma said. She brushed a hand over the T-shirt and jeans she wore. “She gave me these clothes and a place to sleep and made sure I got breakfast this morning.”
“And if I know Lily, she didn’t ask any questions. She’s a firm believer in letting kids talk when they’re ready and that pushing only makes them clam up. If you ever want to talk to someone, she’d be a good ear and could offer some sage, nonjudgmental advice. She was an addict once, and out on the streets herself. If anyone understands the pressures a lot of kids are under, it’s Lily.” He indicated the two chairs opposite his desk. “Have a seat.” He closed his office door and then sat behind his desk again. “Emma, you’re still willing to help us?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, we’re going to start with the basics. To find John, we need to identify him. You met him in reentry. My money is on the fact that someone who traffics in young girls is not a sterling model citizen, so he’ll likely have multiple hits in the system. Do you know what a mug shot is?”
“You mean the pictures taken of a person when they get arrested?”
Van Cleave jabbed an index finger at her. “Right on. Now, we don’t use those big books anymore that you used to see in crime shows. All photos are digitized. As you can imagine, there are a lot of them, but we can enter search parameters to narrow down the number of pictures. Let’s look at some basic details.” He pushed back from his desk and stood. “Was he taller or shorter than me? How about his weight? Fatter? Skinnier?” He flexed his biceps. “Remember, I spend my day behind a desk, so he’s probably more muscular?”
Emma studied him for a second, then stood, stepped over Hawk, who lay at her feet, and circled the desk to stand in front of Van Cleave. She looked up at him. “A little shorter. Maybe an inch or two, but no more. Bigger than you, but not fat, definitely more muscular. John liked to work out with weights.” Her lips tightened. “He once knocked one of the girls unconscious with a single punch.”
“Good information.” Van Cleave sat back down again while Emma returned to her chair. “I’ll make the height range a little wider to make sure we don’t miss him, so I’ll say my six-foot-one down to five-foot-ten. Weight range . . . let’s say one-ninety to two-twenty.” He two-finger typed details into some of the search fields on his computer. “Age?”
Emma flopped back in her chair, her hand dropping to find Hawk below. “That’s harder.”
“Don’t say ‘old,’ because at your age that’s everything thirty and up.” He looked at Meg and gave an exaggerated wince. “That makes you old too.”
“And you, ancient,” Meg retorted, trying to match his attempt to keep things light for Emma.
“Don’t I know it. Some mornings it’s hard to drag these dusty old bones out of bed. Emma, anything besides old?”
“I’m probably going to be off. He looked worn. Tired out. I bet he’s younger than he looks.”
“Take that in account and do your best to compensate for it. How old do you think he might have been? Twenty? Forty?”
“Definitely not forty. Not twenty either.” She gave Van Cleave a wobbly half-smile. “Maybe twenty-five to thirty?”
“That works for me.” He entered more data. “Skin color?”
“White.”
“Eye color?”
“Blue.”
“Hair?”
“Sort of a sandy blond. Kind of messy, like he always needed a haircut.”
“Good. Good. Any distinguishing marks?”
Emma cocked her head to one side. “Like a mole or a scar?”
“Sure. Or a tattoo.”
Emma sat up straighter, looking energized for the first time since entering the field office. “He has a tattoo on his left forearm. It’s kind of tribal and the guy who did it made it look 3-D, like it’s actually carved into his skin. John’s an asshole, but his tattoo is super cool.”
“And you said you didn’t know much.” Van Cleave’s grin was pure triumph. “An individual mark like that is gold for making an identification. You said it’s a tribal mark. Could you draw it?” He rummaged in his desk and pulled out a yellow legal pad and a pencil and offered them to Emma.
Emma laid the pad in her lap and tentatively started to sketch. “I’m not a great artist, but I’ll do my best.”
“I can’t draw stick people,” Meg said. “You’re already doing way better than I ever could.”
For a few minutes, there was only the scratch of pencil on paper as she drew, with the occasional mumbled curse accompanied by mad erasing. Finally, she put the pencil down, stared at the sketch, her head bobbing as if satisfied. “This is as close as I can make it.” She turned around the pad of paper so Meg and Van Cleave could see her work.
The drawing showed a number of swirling lines crossing and curling over each other, each one ending in curving thorny points. Each line was shaded as if three dimensional, the background dark, as if the flesh was excised from those spots.
“That’s fantastic.” Van Cleave to
ok the pad of paper. “As long as he had that tattoo when he was arrested, I think you just nailed him to the wall. And if he didn’t, it’s still going to be the single identifying factor that brings him in. Well done. Can you think of any other distinguishing physical traits?”
“No.”
“Good enough. I’ll run the physical characteristics and we’ll leave the tattoo as confirmation, as he might not have had it at the time of booking.” Van Cleave hit the enter key with a flourish and then leaned back in his chair. “We’ll leave that to think for a few minutes.” He laughed at his own joke. “We may want to get lunch, it can sometimes take so long. Or how about just a coffee? Or a soda?”
“How bad is the coffee here?” Meg asked. “Remember? Ex-cop? I know all about cop coffee, even when it’s at the Bureau. It’s all cop coffee.”
“Aha! Got you there. I splurged last year and bought one of those pod coffeemakers for the office. Everyone chips in ten bucks a month, and one of the admin assistants keeps the pods stocked. She’s also a rabid recycler, so if she finds one of those plastic pods in the trash, she’ll hunt down whoever did it. So, we get decent coffee and we save the environment. Emma, would you like something? I can also make you a hot chocolate.”
Storm Rising Page 14
