Finishing School

by Max Allan Collins

  Hotchner said nothing.

  Rossi told his old friend, ‘‘Generous of you. You do know we haven’t eaten since breakfast?’’

  With no apparent recognition that he was being kidded, Hotchner said, ‘‘There’s food in the vending machine in the break room.’’

  Rossi chuckled and shook his head. Garue was looking at Morgan, with an expression that asked, Is your boss for real? But Morgan offered no help.

  Hotchner filled them in on the identity of the Davison girl and what they knew about that case, so far.

  Rossi, dead serious now, said, ‘‘Georgia’s a long way from Minnesota.’’

  ‘‘It’s a long way coming or going,’’ Morgan said. ‘‘Was the Davison girl registered in school anywhere around here?’’

  Hotchner shook his head. ‘‘Not that we know, but it’s early on that score. We haven’t had time to put together a digital aging photo.’’

  Such a photo would show what the victim might look like today.

  ‘‘And,’’ Hotchner continued, ‘‘we’ll get a forensics sculptor to do a 3-D representation, but the truth is, that’s going to take a while.’’

  ‘‘So,’’ Rossi said, ‘‘what’s next?’’

  Before Hotchner could answer, JJ came into the room in a rush.

  ‘‘Victim number two has been identified,’’ she said. ‘‘Lee Ann Clark, kidnapped from a park near her family’s residence in Heflin, Alabama.’’

  ‘‘When?’’ Hotchner asked.

  ‘‘Ten years ago,’’ JJ said, ‘‘within just two weeks of Heather Davison.’’

  ‘‘Nice work. How did you manage it?’’

  ‘‘Credit Garcia—she just got notified there was another DNA hit.’’

  Hotchner swung his attention toward Reid. ‘‘Let’s get Garcia on the linkup and find out more.’’

  In a few seconds, Reid had made that happen.

  ‘‘Garcia,’’ Hotchner said.

  ‘‘Sir?’’

  ‘‘What have you found out about our second victim?’’

  ‘‘She was three and a half at the time of her abduction—which was less than two weeks after the kidnapping of Heather Davison. Lee Ann Clark was playing in a park not even three blocks from her house when the abduction went down.’’

  ‘‘Certainly a child that age hadn’t been left alone . . . ?’’

  ‘‘No, both her parents and a slightly older brother were there. They were distracted for just a moment and when they turned back, Lee Ann was gone.’’

  Hotchner frowned. ‘‘Distracted by what?’’

  ‘‘The brother, five at the time, was on the monkey bars. He slipped and both Mom and Dad turned when they heard him yell in pain. That was all it took.’’

  Reid asked, ‘‘And no one else on the scene saw anything?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  Hotchner said, ‘‘No surprise. People in a park tend to be focused on their own activities. . . . Keep digging.’’

  ‘‘Will do.’’

  ‘‘And, Garcia—see what progress has been made on the third victim. Plus, start running down missing blonde girls from the South who disappeared around ten years ago.’’

  ‘‘Yes, sir.’’

  ‘‘And expand your search to the corridor between Bemidji and Atlanta.’’

  ‘‘Right,’’ Garcia said, then disappeared to do her work.

  Rossi asked, ‘‘You’re thinking the UnSub may have lived in the Atlanta area?’’

  Hotchner said, ‘‘I’m thinking it’s a place to start. Both girls disappeared from a hundred-square-mile area, so I’m guessing our UnSub spent some time there. There’s one sure way to find out.’’

  Rossi, ahead of him, said, ‘‘You really want to split the team up like that?’’

  Hotchner said, ‘‘You’ll be as close as the nearest phone or laptop.’’

  Frowning, Prentiss asked, ‘‘What I am missing?’’

  Hotchner said to her, ‘‘You and Rossi take the jet to the Atlanta field office and see what you can find out at that end. The rest of us will work the case from here.’’

  Prentiss said to Rossi, ‘‘How did you know us going to Atlanta was what Hotch was thinking?’’

  Deadpan, Rossi said to her, ‘‘Haven’t you heard? I’m a profiler.’’

  Atlanta, Georgia

  David Rossi was well and truly used to not waking up in his own bed.

  Life on the road was part of not only his BAU job, but his role as writer and lecturer, which kept him frequently away from home as well. Waking up in his second city on one case, however, was not the norm. Still, he wouldn’t miss the Arctic Circle temperatures of Minnesota, and had no problem with waking in the more temperate climes of Atlanta.

  The flight into Hartsfield International Airport had been both uneventful and late. He and Prentiss had not left until the afternoon, which meant the pair didn’t land at Hartsfield until nearly ten p.m. local time. Having skipped lunch and losing an hour entering the eastern time zone, Rossi was starving by the time they landed.

  He and Prentiss had shared a late dinner in the hotel restaurant, a typically mediocre dining experience, and he relished every forkful. Scotty Carlyle, the rangy African-American agent who’d picked them up at the airport, kept them company, not joining them, just sipping on a Diet Coke.

  Built like a linebacker, Carlyle had close-clipped hair, wide, clear brown eyes, and a mellow baritone touched with a Southern accent.

  Carlyle asked, ‘‘What brings you to Atlanta to investigate a ten-year-old kidnapping?’’

  Rossi and Prentiss brought the agent up to speed on their case.

  ‘‘Hell of a thing,’’ Carlyle said. ‘‘You think you have a serial killer, operating undetected over a long period like this? Is that unusual?’’

  ‘‘I wish it were,’’ Rossi said. ‘‘This is probably the worst kind of serial killer to identify and track—on the move, striking periodically.’’

  ‘‘Even in these days of computers and DNA?’’

  ‘‘Less tough, sure, but yeah. Even the most sophisticated computer systems provide cracks a killer like this can fall through.’’

  Carlyle shook his head, sipped his Diet Coke. ‘‘So . . . what do you have in mind for tomorrow?’’

  Rossi told him.

  Now, having slept, showered and shaved—and after a light breakfast with Prentiss—Rossi felt ready to face the day and find out what connected Bemidji, Minnesota, to Summerville, Georgia, and Heflin, Alabama.

  Prentiss—in gray slacks, a navy blue blouse, and dark shoes, her weapon on her hip under a gray jacket—stepped out into the sunshine at the hotel’s entrance. Rossi—as usual in jeans, with a blue work shirt and a red tie full of geometric shapes under a navy sport coat, his gun on his right hip—enjoyed the warmth, lifting his face toward the sky.

  Prentiss smiled at him. ‘‘Not so terrible, trading this in for Minnesota.’’

  ‘‘Doesn’t suck,’’ he admitted.

  Carlyle pulled up in a black Tahoe. When they commented on the lovely day, he didn’t seem to know what they were talking about, clearly not nearly as impressed with the local weather as the visitors were.

  With Rossi in the front seat and Prentiss in back, Carlyle drove them north on I-75, getting off at the Adairsville exit. From there it was two-lane roads, state 140 and U.S. 27 through the edge of the Chattahoochee National Forest and onto the east side of Summerville in Chattooga County, only a few miles from the Alabama border.

  A sleepy little berg, home to around five thousand, Summerville had no police department and a handful of stoplights. The sheriff’s office—a small one-story building—was just off Commerce Street, the main drag, at 35 W Washington.

  The front door was off to the right, the remainder of the building’s facade a huge picture window. As with many small-town departments, this was not the most secure building in the world. They entered, Rossi in the lead, followed by Prentiss and Carlyle.

 
The waist-high wall ran the width of the lobby, a single deputy behind it on a chair-back stool. The broad-shouldered young deputy—with the kind of crew cut you saw mostly on military bases—greeted them with a professional smile. ‘‘May I help you?’’

  Rossi flashed his credentials, introduced himself and the others, as the deputy got to his feet and regarded them, agape.

  ‘‘Truth is,’’ the deputy said with a Barney Fife- worthy grin, ‘‘I never met an FBI agent before.’’

  ‘‘And now you have,’’ Rossi said pleasantly. ‘‘Is the sheriff in?’’

  ‘‘Sheriff Burke?’’

  Rossi felt he was showing considerable restraint by not asking if this county had more than one sheriff. ‘‘Yes, thanks. Sheriff Burke will be fine.’’

  The deputy signaled for them to pass through the gate and they did, and led them to a glass-enclosed office in the left-rear corner behind the bull pen area. He knocked and the sheriff—at his desk, on the phone—glanced up and waved him inside.

  Rossi took the liberty of following the deputy in, and so did Prentiss and Carlyle.

  The sheriff said, ‘‘There’s some folks here, Sam—I’ll talk at ya later.’’

  He cradled the phone and rose, a man about Rossi’s height and weight, and maybe five years younger. His hair was a short mop of curly brown and he was summer-tanned in November.

  The deputy said, ‘‘These folks are from the FBI.’’

  Unhesitatingly sticking out his hand, the sheriff said, ‘‘Ted Burke.’’

  ‘‘Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi.’’ The profiler displayed his credentials with one hand and shook hands using the other, then introduced Prentiss and Carlyle, who also shook hands with the friendly, no-nonsense sheriff.

  ‘‘Bring us in another chair, will you, son?’’

  ‘‘Yes, sir,’’ the deputy said, and went out.

  The office wasn’t spacious but they weren’t particularly crowded, three visitors and the sheriff. A big blond desk dominated with an oxblood-colored leather chair behind it. File cabinets lined a side wall, and a table stacked with circulars and other paper was opposite. Behind the sheriff was a window with drawn blinds and, all around it, framed diplomas and citations.

  Rossi and Prentiss took the two visitor chairs and then the deputy was back with another chair for Carlyle.

  Rossi said, ‘‘We understand we’re going back a few years. But we’d like to talk to you about the Heather Davison disappearance.’’

  Burke’s friendly expression darkened. ‘‘What a terrible, sad deal that was.’’

  ‘‘You were sheriff then?’’

  ‘‘No,’’ Burke said, ‘‘but I was here, all right—a deputy back then.’’

  ‘‘Did you work the case?’’

  ‘‘I did. I was lead investigator, in fact.’’

  That was a nice break, Rossi thought.

  ‘‘We haven’t told the parents yet,’’ Rossi said, sitting forward. ‘‘But we’ve identified Heather Davison’s remains from a grave near Bemidji, Minnesota.’’

  Burke closed his eyes. Several seconds passed; then the sheriff said, ‘‘I was afraid of that when I was asked to pass along those DNA samples. Been waitin’ for the shoe to drop, ever since.’’

  Rossi asked, ‘‘Do her parents still live locally?’’

  ‘‘Yeah—Davison family’s been here since the place was called Selma, back in the 1830s.’’

  ‘‘Before we inform them,’’ Rossi said, ‘‘we’d appreciate it if you’d tell us about the case.’’

  The sheriff’s smile was melancholy. ‘‘No fun, bein’ the messenger of such news, huh? You folks wouldn’t be stallin’, would you?’’

  ‘‘Well, this is information we need,’’ Rossi said. ‘‘But you may be right—I’ve had to tell too many parents that their child is never coming home.’’

  ‘‘I hear that,’’ he said, and sighed. ‘‘Davisons are good people. I’ve known their families since we were all just little kids. Jim manages a warehouse down in Rome, and Kelly is a stay-at-home mom . . . least she was back then. Those two doted on that little girl. They had a lot of trouble havin’ a child.’’

  Rossi cocked his head. ‘‘You were close enough to know something that intimate?’’

  ‘‘Hell, Agent Rossi—it’s a small town and everybody knows everybody else’s business.’’

  ‘‘I understand,’’ Rossi said, but he didn’t really, never having lived in a hamlet like this one.

  ‘‘Anyway,’’ the sheriff was saying, ‘‘everybody thought it was a blessing when little Heather showed up, after Jim and Kelly tried so hard for so long. Then to have this tragedy happen . . .’’

  ‘‘What can you tell us about the investigation?’’

  Sheriff Burke leaned back in his chair and mulled that for a while. Rossi could tell the man had his own pace, and prodding him would be useless.

  Finally the sheriff said, ‘‘As investigations go, it was by-the-numbers, every step of the way. We even had some of your FBI boys down here, helping out. . . .’’

  The sheriff’s accent made that sound like ‘‘hepping.’’

  ‘‘But it was like that little girl, she just wandered to the edge of the planet and fell off. If you’d come here today to tell me you had proof she’d been abducted by aliens, I don’t know that I wouldn’t have believed you.’’

  ‘‘No physical evidence?’’

  ‘‘All we had was one small piece of a taillight on a muddy shoulder in front of the house—that was all she wrote. Bastard—pardon my French, ma’am—must’ve backed into the tree near the street. Nobody saw a damned thing that day, though.’’

  Prentiss asked, ‘‘No one saw anything suspicious at all?’’

  Burke shook his head. ‘‘One minute that precious child was in the yard, next she was gone. My gut always told me it was someone from out of town, some predator just swung through trollin’ . . . but, like I say, there were no clues, beyond that piece of taillight, the size of a quarter.’’

  Prentiss asked, ‘‘What makes you think it was someone from out of town?’’

  ‘‘Again, you know everybody in a town this size. That means you also know the ones that are goddamn child molesters, too. . . . Again, pardon my French. . . .’’

  ‘‘It’s okay,’’ Prentiss said with a smile. ‘‘I speak the language.’’

  The sheriff liked that and smiled back at her; but then he grew serious again as he said, ‘‘There’s a couple of those types in town, and I knew them as well then as I do now. If they’da done it . . . well, let’s just say we’d have found out.’’

  Rossi watched as Prentiss’s face went from perplexed to disapproving. He shot her a look and she wiped her expression clean.

  But Burke had caught it. ‘‘You have to understand, ma’am, down here? There’s legal, and then there’s justice—especially when it comes to crimes against children.’’

  ‘‘I understand,’’ Prentiss said.

  Rossi nodded at her and gave her a small smile—she didn’t have to condone the sheriff’s point of view to fathom it. And this man seemed helpful, so slack would be cut. . . .

  ‘‘That little girl coulda become any darn thing when she grew up,’’ Burke said, and his voice caught for a moment. ‘‘Pretty little thing might’ve been Miss Georgia, and she was a smart little thing, too—maybe she woulda been the doctor cured cancer, or president someday, only this evil son of a bitch took any kind of possibility away from her.’’

  Carefully, Rossi said, ‘‘You took this personally.’’

  ‘‘Hell, man, we all did. Town like this, she’s not just another little girl. I don’t mean to suggest she’s just a statistic to you people. I know you do good work and you try to help out, but when you’ve investigated a hundred kidnappings, the kids tend to blur together—that’s understandable; that’s human nature. Here, though, something like a little girl getting kidnapped just doesn’t happen, only when it does, that o
ne girl becomes a very big damn deal. So, no offense, but other than being the ones to tell those nice people they’re never going to see their daughter again? I’m not sure how much you can help.’’

  ‘‘I understand where you’re coming from, Sheriff,’’ Rossi said. ‘‘But we’re part of a small unit of investigators who make a point of getting to know the victims. They are in no way statistics to us.’’

  ‘‘I said I meant no offense. It’s just, this has to be one damn cold case at this point. . . .’’

  ‘‘It’s warming up, sir, or we wouldn’t be here.’’

  ‘‘Well, that is a point, isn’t it?’’

  ‘‘Yes, it is. And here’s another point—something that goes along with investigating hundreds of kidnappings—we are also really, really good at this.’’

  Burke nodded, but whether he was convinced remained a mystery.

  ‘‘We’ll help you here,’’ Rossi said. ‘‘There wasn’t much to go on back then, but we’ve got more now.’’

  ‘‘I’ll take any help I can get,’’ Burke said, ‘‘but after all this time, I just don’t know what there is to do.’’

  Prentiss leaned forward. ‘‘Let’s start with your notion that the perpetrator had to be someone from outside Summerville. That has to come from more than just you knowing who the local sex offenders are.’’

  The sheriff shifted in his chair. ‘‘Well, no one in the neighborhood saw out-of-state plates around the time Heather was abducted. Around here, out-of-state plates stick out like sore thumbs. If somebody saw a car they didn’t recognize, or was from somewhere’s else? They woulda said something, after Heather went missing.’’

  Rossi nodded and asked, ‘‘What about out-of-county plates?’’

  ‘‘That mighta slipped by, especially if it was a county on the plate that looks similar to Chatooga—Chattahoochee and Catoosa counties don’t look all that much different, if you only catch ’em for a second, or from a distance. Chattahoochee is down south by Columbus.’’

  Rossi looked at Carlyle.

  ‘‘Southwest of Atlanta,’’ the big agent said.

  Burke said, ‘‘On the other hand, Catoosa County is right up by Chattanooga. That’s not far away at all.’’