by Debra Webb
Harold’s posture stiffened. One day the man would learn to play nice with Jess.
“I hate to disagree with the two of you,” Jess said, as she divided her attention between them, “but I sincerely doubt either of those scenarios.”
Silence expanded in the room. Just like old times. What was a briefing without a standoff between Jess and Harold? Or Jess and everyone else in the room, for that matter? How that made him love her all the more was a mystery.
“Well,” Harold said, waving his hand in invitation, “I’m quite certain we’d all like to hear your analysis, Chief Harris.”
“Since I had little time to review the case, my impressions are based primarily on what I’ve heard here today.” Jess adjusted her glasses and surveyed the case board. “If these abductions, only one each year over a two-decade span, are indeed the work of a single perpetrator, then he is incredibly disciplined. He has likely led a normal life within the community. Married with kids and grandchildren.” She shrugged. “He has shown no desire to draw attention to his work in the past. If all the cases are indeed connected to him and he’s still alive—”
“They are all connected to him,” Harold interrupted.
“By date alone?” Jess challenged. “How many other children went missing during those same years? Children of the same age group,” she pressed, “and with no clues left behind as to why they were taken? Timing alone is a skimpy link, Chief.”
“Your points carry merit,” Harold agreed, his back still ramrod straight and his expression no less skeptical of Jess’s opinion.
Dan waited for the other shoe to drop.
“But only one child in a one-hundred-mile radius around this city went missing precisely on the night of the harvest moon each and every one of those years. Coincidence?” He held his hands out, palms up. “Perhaps.”
Jess acknowledged his move with a dip of her head. “Then again, after the third or fourth year, the media made a big to-do about the harvest moon connection. Copycats love to capitalize on that kind of attention.” She looked around the table, confident in her assessment. “Whatever we think we know, it’s our job to dig deeper and find the elements that connect the victims to the person or persons who chose that date to do his dirty little deeds. Bottom line, we need a motive. Was he lonely? Satisfying sadistic sexual urges? Are we dealing with one perpetrator or several? Can we adequately connect all of those cases? We have a lot of questions and not nearly enough answers.”
While Jess and Harold continued their debate, Harper slipped out of the room. Dan’s instincts went on point. He hoped the detective was seeking privacy for an update from the forensic techs. They could damn sure use a break about now. So far they had three decades of nothing except missing little girls and no clues.
“Who’s lead on this case?” Pratt demanded, evidently weary of the back-and-forth between the deputy chiefs. He glared at Dan. “We need forward momentum, not this pointless rehashing and butting of heads.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” Dan had intended to discuss this with Harold in private. So much for keeping the peace in the department. Since all eyes shifted to Dan, there was no getting around making that announcement here and now.
The door opened and Harper returned. He walked straight to Dan and passed a note before taking his seat.
As he read the words Harper had scrawled on the page, Dan’s throat went dry.
He’d read the words twice before the silence in the room dragged him from the haze of disbelief. “The forensic techs have been analyzing and dissecting the packaging used for delivering the remains to Channel Six. The perp left us a note by circling letters and words on the pages of the newspapers.”
Reluctance and more of that frustration coiled deep in his gut. “Hello, Jess.” Dan’s gaze connected with hers. “We’re all waiting for you to find us.”
The pain on Jess’s face ripped open his chest a little wider. How the hell could this happen? Another killer wanted to play games with her?
“How do you intend to proceed, Chief Harris?” Pratt demanded. “Obviously the decision as to who will be lead on this case has been made. This monster wants you to find him and his victims.”
“This year’s harvest moon will be on September nineteenth,” Detective Wells offered when no one else in the room seemed able to find their voice.
Before Jess could answer, Tara Morgan cracked the door open and stuck her head in the room. Dan motioned for her to come on in as the debate between Harold and Jess reignited, a little hotter this time. Tara lingered near the door rather than coming to the table, the signal loud and clear. She had news to relay that she didn’t want the others to hear. Dan didn’t bother excusing himself from the table. He doubted anyone would notice.
As soon as he reached her, Tara leaned close and whispered, “Chief, there are…” she chewed her lip a second before she said the rest “… people in the lobby demanding to see you. I told them you were in a briefing, but they won’t take no for an answer.”
“People?” Confusion jumped into the mix of frustration and worry churning inside him. “Reporters?”
Tara shook her head. “Parents of some of the—” she nodded toward the case board “—children.”
A press briefing was tentatively scheduled for six. Nothing about this investigation was supposed to be released to the public until then. A wave of fury gave his gut a twist. “How many, Tara? How many parents are we talking about?”
“Four.” She gave him the names.
“Okay. Show them to my office.” His cell vibrated. Bloody hell. If there was more news like this he could do without it. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he assured her.
To tell them what?
The cell phone in his pocket started that damned vibrating again. He checked the screen. Gina. She’d better have one hell of an excuse for this breach of trust.
It was one thing to hold a press briefing to inform the public that remains from a cold case had been discovered and to assure the citizens that the BPD was on top of the matter. It was entirely another to inform the parents of victims before remains were properly identified. Gina had given her word that she wouldn’t release a word until he gave her the go-ahead.
Now he would have to deliver the heartbreaking news that they had nothing… except the promise of more anguish to come.
City Records, 5:30 p.m.
Here we go.” Lori rolled the library-style ladder to the row of upper shelves where she’d spotted the boxes marked with the case number corresponding to the Man in the Moon investigation.
Jess counted off the number of boxes involved. Holy cow! “We may need a truck or at least a couple more strong backs.” Since the case was officially hers, she wanted all the background material she could get her hands on.
Lori lowered the first box to her. “Only twenty more to go.”
Jess started a stack on the floor. “Do you remember watching these cases play out in the media?” Jess vividly recalled the disappearances that happened while she was in grade school and junior high. She didn’t remember the first one at all. Her parents had just died in a car crash and she and Lil were stuck living with their aunt Wanda. Between grieving for their parents, the men coming and going at all hours, and finding Wanda passed out on the floor every morning when they readied for school, it wasn’t exactly a charmed childhood.
Later Jess had wondered if the little girls who went away with the Man in the Moon were happy. Sometimes, during their stay at one foster home or another, she’d wished she and Lily could just disappear like that. She shuddered. Those little girls needed to be found. A big breath filled her lungs. We’re all waiting for you to find us. She could not let them down.
“I remember my mom being terrified whenever September rolled around,” Lori said, “especially after my dad died. She didn’t let me and my sister out of her sight. The disappearances stopped when I was twelve. Eventually, it seemed everyone forgot about the Man in the Moon.”
Exce
pt the parents of the missing children. Poor Dan was dealing with some of them right now. That was the hardest part of a case like this.
“Are you worried he’ll try to get close to you? Like Spears?” Lori asked, her voice heavy with concern.
Jess had thought about that the past couple of hours. “I suppose he already has, in a way. He’s been watching me, apparently.”
One of the things she tried to do, for her own sanity, was to avoid thinking about how the evil out there looked at her. “He can watch me all he wants and get as close as he dares, as long as he doesn’t start obsessing on little girls again.”
That was the critical aspect of this new case. The Man in the Moon hadn’t suddenly reemerged for no reason. He had an agenda. It was the prospect of where that agenda went from here that scared her to death.
A few more boxes made their way to the stack on the floor before Lori asked the question Jess had been expecting for the past two days.
“Do you think Spears is here?”
That was another million-dollar question. Despite having considered that scenario at length, thinking about it now had knots twisting in her belly. “I can’t say for sure.” She settled another box on the floor. “What I can say with absolute certainty is that he has someone watching me and the people closest to me.” She held Lori’s gaze as she reached for the next box. “Don’t let your guard down, Lori. Not for a minute.”
“Don’t worry,” she promised. “I have no intention of letting that bastard or one of his followers get close to me again. Once was more than enough.”
With the final box on the floor, Lori climbed down the ladder. Jess surveyed the stack. “We need Cook and Harper and a hand truck to get these over to SPU.”
Lori slid her phone from her pocket. “I’ll tell them to grab any warm bodies they can find and get over here.”
Jess searched for the boxes containing the most recent files. The perp had started with the last case. She lifted the lid from the Dorie Myers investigation.
“The guys are heading this way.”
“Great. Thanks.” Jess thumbed through the reports. The Bureau had provided a profile on the unknown subject. That should be interesting. The official BPD reports were signed off on by Deputy Chief Black. Some were completed by… Buddy Corlew, former BPD detective.
“Well, well,” Jess noted, mostly to herself. “My old friend Corlew was involved in this case.” The guy who tried to use her to get back at Dan back then and who had just recently stuck his nose into the Five case. The same old friend who, since his fall from grace with the Birmingham Police Department, appeared determined to make the BPD look bad. Or maybe he just wanted to annoy Dan now that Jess was back in town.
“That should make things interesting,” Lori noted.
Just last week Corlew had insisted BPD had fallen down on the job twelve years ago when investigating the death of a young man named Lenny Porter. The idea that the truth Jess uncovered had lent some credibility to Corlew’s charges had done nothing but inflate his already oversized ego.
If he got wind of the reopening of this case, and he would, he’d be right back on that anti-BPD bandwagon again.
“Let’s just hope no one has to die before he cooperates with us this time.”
9911 Conroy Road, 11:05 p.m.
Two boxes emptied of their contents sat on the floor in front of the sofa. A few feet away piles of timeworn folders surrounded Jess. Her legs ached from sitting cross-legged for better than two hours, and she was far from finished.
She hadn’t brought all the files from the Man in the Moon investigation home, just the meat from the most recent cases. Interviews with family and friends. Forensic reports. Photos of the children and their bedrooms, which was the last place each little girl was seen the night they disappeared. Exterior photos of the bedroom windows and other access points for each family home.
If one perpetrator was indeed responsible for the twenty abductions attributed to the Man in the Moon, he hadn’t screwed up even once, it seemed. Each child was taken in the middle of the night. For those who had them, family dogs never sounded an alarm. Neighbors hadn’t witnessed a single thing. No sign of forced entry.
“Just like Peter Pan.” The visitor came, and the children appeared to have left with him of their own free will. Just unlocked the window and flew off with the Man in the Moon. The way she and Lil as kids had dreamed of escaping.
Only those sweet little girls hadn’t escaped… they had been taken by an evil not a soul had seen coming.
She needed more coffee.
Groaning, Jess pushed her aching body off the floor. There was a time when her body wouldn’t have grumbled so at being abused this way. Evidently that time had passed. These days she felt every ache and pain of getting the job done. She cut herself some slack—she’d had almost no sleep in the past forty-eight hours. She and Lori had hefted old case file boxes until they were ready to drop. Mainly… she was just weary of running in circles to stop Spears, and now this case that had baffled BPD for three decades was active again.
No use whining. What she needed was coffee. At the counter she twirled the nifty display rack until she decided on a blend of coffee, then she popped it into her single-cup brewer. She stretched her back and shoulders and promptly changed her mind. What she really needed was a long, hot bath and then a serious massage. A hot, sweat-inspiring series of images flashed through her weary brain. Dan making love to her… showering together… more lovemaking.
Her achy body, along with her sluggish pulse, reacted instantly.
The way she felt tonight, they wouldn’t even have to take their clothes off. A good neck rub would work just fine for sending her over the moon—no pun intended.
That was the problem. Whenever she and Dan spent too much time alone—and she was weak, considering this insanity with Spears—they ended up breaking the rules of their working relationship. She was happy with where she’d landed careerwise. Dan had made her a good offer—one she hadn’t been able to refuse. But that made him her boss. For propriety’s sake rules were essential. Their personal relationship could not interfere with work. And until they worked out where exactly that relationship was going, flaunting it publicly was a huge no-no. The last thing either of them needed was for anyone in the department to latch on to the idea that she’d gotten the job because of their personal relationship or that she got any sort of preferential treatment ever.
Case in point: his incessant need to protect her. She was a big girl. A deputy chief, for heaven’s sake. She could protect herself just like all his other deputy chiefs. Still, she was no fool. Eric Spears represented a serious threat. Just last week, she’d gotten a state-of-the-art security system installed along with nifty little motion sensors on the stairs leading up to her door. Add to that the top-of-the-line deadbolt and the Glock she kept under her pillow, and no one was getting near, much less into, her apartment without her knowing it and their regretting it.
God, how could her life be such a hot mess? Her lover was her boss. Her biggest nightmare was some malignant narcissistic freak who got off on torturing and murdering women, and now she’d gotten another admirer pretty much just like Spears, only this one targeted helpless children.
And that didn’t even count the stone-cold reality that she was days late on her period—which was the reason she was having coffee instead of wine—or the scary-as-hell fact that her sister was suffering from some weird health issue the doctors couldn’t yet diagnose.
With all that going on, how in the world could she be standing here fantasizing about neck rubs from her boss/lover? Not to mention if she was pregnant—she cringed—that would mean Dan was a father.
“Oh God.” She rubbed at her skull with her fingers to relax the tense muscles there.
Everything was out of control.
The decadent smell of a gourmet dark blend called caramel drizzle helped put those unpleasant thoughts out of her head. The warm mug felt good in her hands. There wasn’t
time right now to worry about personal problems. She had a very old, damned cold case to solve.
“If we’re lucky it’ll stay cold,” she grumbled.
Feet shuffling across the wood floor, she refused to consider the other option. If something had roused this killer’s evil urges, he could be planning to strike again.
“One month.” The thought made her stomach roil. Thirty or so days from now there would be a harvest moon. Finding him before that was imperative.
An alarm chime, set to go off when someone started up the stairs toward her apartment door, jarred Jess from the troubling thought and sent a spike of fear right through her chest. Heart pumping, she almost dropped her mug of coffee getting to the small monitor that showed the landing outside her door. No matter that a cop was watching her apartment above a kindly old man’s garage and that she had the fancy new high-tech security system, the reality was Spears had walked right up to the car of one of her former Bureau colleagues and slit his throat.
She had a new motto where safety was concerned: always be smart and never underestimate pure evil.
Harper.
A couple of deep steadying breaths were required before she got her fingers working well enough to release the locks. The instant her door was open he visually sized her up as if he’d feared the worst, just because she couldn’t get the door open the first time he knocked. God, they were all on edge.
Pull it together. Smile. That she was barefoot and sported lounge pants and a baggy tee was no reason to feel embarrassed with Harper. “Sergeant. What brings you out at this hour?”
“May I come inside, ma’am?”
Anticipation had her pulse picking up speed again. “Is everything all right?” She backed up to allow him inside.
He waited until the door was closed and locked behind him. “I did what you asked.”
