by Jenna Kernan
At five in the afternoon, Nadine sat quietly in Tolan’s hospital room as Skogen took a seat bedside in a vinyl chair.
Nadine recognized that Linda Tolan’s rescue was a fortunate combination of data synthesis and luck. There was so much she didn’t yet know about their killer.
Sadly, Skogen now thought she was some sort of oracle and she had not been able to convince him otherwise.
Their surviving victim was a painfully thin freckled Caucasian woman with long brown hair, streaked with gray, who had been confined in an animal cage in the forest since early Thursday morning.
Her face was covered with bug bites and she was sunburned with cracked and peeling lips. Her skin showed numerous scrapes and razor-thin crisscrossing lacerations on her face, neck and arms indicating her captor had likely dragged her.
Nadine took in Tolan’s gaunt features and the dark circles beneath her bloodshot eyes. There was something vaguely familiar about this woman. The possibility sent an unwelcome prickle over her skin, as if a spider was crawling on her neck. Nadine used one hand to brush the feeling away.
Tolan was lucky. She’d survived over five days in a hog trap without food or water.
The preparation phase, Nadine thought.
In a faint and raspy voice, Linda told Skogen that she had been on assignment.
“My sister said that I drove up here on Wednesday and was staying until Sunday or until I got the summer tanager.”
“The what?” asked Skogen.
“It’s a songbird. A bright red songbird… winters in South and Central America, but it’s here now.” She paused, pressing a hand to her chest as she gasped, the air rasping as she exhaled. “Their song is wonderful.” She pinched her eyes shut, lying still as she whispered. “I’m working on a story for a national magazine. The spring migration.”
“Your sister told you this?”
“Well, I remembered the assignment. But not the drive down here or anything else until after the attack.” Her brow knit and she folded her hands across her middle. “It’s like a big fuzzy mess.”
“Where did you stay?” asked Skogen.
Tolan shook her head. “A hotel? I don’t know.”
The FBI could run her credit cards and figure out where she had been. But it was troubling that Tolan didn’t remember.
“Maybe my sister will know. She’ll be here soon. I spoke to her this morning. But I don’t remember much of our conversation.”
Tolan’s doctors described her condition as retrograde amnesia resulting from the head trauma. Whether her memory would return was anyone’s guess.
Nadine knew it would be best for Tolan if it didn’t. Some blank spots were better never filled in.
“Do you remember the capture?” Special Agent Skogen asked.
“I’m sorry. I don’t.” She rubbed the back of her head. “There’s still a lump.”
“What’s your first memory?” asked Nadine.
“Waking up in that cage!” Tolan shivered. “I was so thirsty. There were two padlocks on the door, the kind with the key. And it rained. I drank all I could, but I was shivering. Couldn’t get warm.”
“What time of day was this?” asked Skogen.
“Before sunup.”
Yesterday morning, Nadine remembered, she had awoken to rain and there was a violent storm midday. Had that cloudburst saved Tolan’s life?
But if today was her first memory, that meant Tolan had lost the memories of five days of captivity. Nadine wondered if hypnosis might offer some answers.
“And you saw your captor?” asked Skogen.
“Not at first. I woke up naked and covered with mosquitoes. I freaked then, trying to get them off me. I was bleeding from my arms and back. The doctor said it looked like he beat me.” She dragged the hospital gown down over her shoulder to show an example. “Then I saw I was in a cage. My head was splitting. I swear, it felt like my skull was fractured.”
“When did you see the man?” asked Skogen, notepad out.
“I heard someone chuckling and turned to see this guy. He was laughing at me. I knew then what was happening. That he wouldn’t help me. I could see it in his face. He was so happy to have me like that.” She dropped her gaze as her breathing accelerated.
“You’re safe, Linda,” said Nadine, keeping her voice low and calm.
“What if he comes back?”
“These sorts of predators hunt in a territory. They don’t target specific women,” said Skogen.
Vague and not completely accurate, thought Nadine, but perhaps comforting. She said nothing to contradict but made a note to speak to Skogen. Lying to her might be best in the short term, but Tolan needed to up her guard.
“We have an artist coming to help you make a sketch of your attacker. It’s very important that you try to remember all the details you can,” said Skogen.
“You know what I do remember? My sister telling me not to go alone. But I was carrying, and I thought…” Her words trailed off. “He almost killed me.”
Skogen spoke up. “Did you say you were carrying a firearm?”
“Pistol. Yes. In my camera bag.” Her hands went up and her mouth dropped open. “My cameras! Did you find my cameras?”
“No. Just you, Ms. Tolan,” said Coleman.
She was crying now. The loss of the cameras seemed to be her final blow.
Skogen redirected her.
“Do you know where that pistol is now?”
She gave him a bewildered look. Tears coursed down her cheeks. “With my lenses, I guess. It was all together in my bag. I don’t know.”
Her confusion appeared genuine and heartbreaking. Nadine glanced to Skogen, who seemed oblivious to Tolan’s obvious distress. Was he so fixed on his investigation he was indifferent to what this woman had suffered?
“Is it registered?”
“The gun? Yes. Oh, yes. I took the class and everything.”
Skogen sent one of the agents out to investigate the missing firearm.
Over the next hour, Skogen asked a series of questions, circled back a few times and came up with a vague description of a white man who wore large mirror glasses and a cap. Tolan described his clothing as the sort a hiker would wear. Light nylon shorts, athletic T-shirt and hiking boots.
In other words, not dressed as a hunter. That surprised Nadine, but then… his attire was perfect camouflage for a man hiding from other humans. He was average height, weight and size. He was male, likely white, tanned or possibly Latino, and dressed like every other hiker, kayaker and bird-watcher in the forest.
The only distinctive feature was his voice. Linda described it as feminine and higher in pitch than most men.
Nadine’s mind went immediately to the man at the adventure outfitters. The one she had felt sorry for and who had an odd high tenor to his voice. Simon Kilpatrick, the underachieving man-child who couldn’t find a job except at his parents’ business.
“Agent Skogen, could I see you outside for a moment?”
They stepped into the hospital corridor together.
“We met someone with a high, female voice.”
WEDNESDAY
Nadine spent the morning with Linda Tolan, whose memories had not returned despite hypnosis. If the part of her brain that stored memories had suffered damage from the blow, the issue was not psychological repression but brain injury. Nadine feared that they would not retrieve any more useful information from this third victim.
Skogen’s team had taken Simon Kilpatrick into custody last night. Most of his people had been at the wilderness outfitters all day executing the search warrant. She had arrived at the sheriff’s office in the afternoon in time to sit in on much of the interview of Simon. He denied any involvement with either woman but appeared confused to Nadine but was cooperative. The interview ended when the Kilpatricks’ attorney arrived just after 3 p.m.
“You get anything on the search warrant?” she asked Skogen.
“Nope. Nothing to hold him for. But he’s a very stron
g suspect. This might be our guy. I’m going to question him again tomorrow with his attorney present.”
She shook her head. “It isn’t Simon.”
“Well, forgive us if we make that determination.”
“Our guy has an above average IQ,” she said.
“What?”
“He’s smart. Capable. Clever. And Simon is an underachiever.”
“With a high voice.”
Nadine raised her voice. “Anyone can change their voice.”
He continued as if she had not spoken.
“Rita Karnowski’s boyfriend rented the tandem kayak from Big Water Marina on Saturday, March 20th. Simon put their kayaks into the water.”
She recognized the deadlock and moved on.
“Anything on Tolan’s camera equipment or that gun?”
“All still missing. We have her weapon in the database. Fingers crossed we get a hit on that firearm.”
Without it killing someone, she thought.
“I’m sorry the hypnosis didn’t offer any further details,” she said.
“Me as well. Oh, our crime techs have finished going over her vehicle,” he said.
“Any prints?”
“Yes. Too many. They are sorting them now. You’ve seen the sketch?” Skogen referred to the rendering of the unsub Tolan had worked on with their sketch artist.
She shook her head and he pulled it up on his phone.
Sunglasses covered their unsub’s eyes and brow. The cap covered much of his head. The jawline was distinctive, pointed, and his mouth was wide. This could be Simon, she thought.
Really it could be almost anyone.
“Not very helpful, I think.”
“It’s a start.” He tucked away his phone. “Heading back to the office?”
She nodded, turning to go, and then faced Skogen again.
“One more thing,” she said. “I recommend that the public be alerted to Linda Tolan’s abduction so they can take precautions.”
“Press conference scheduled in one hour. We want it on the front page.”
She fidgeted with her thumbnail.
“You will not be in attendance, Dr. Finch. Confidential, as we agreed? My secret weapon.”
Back at the office, Special Agent Coleman stopped by just after Nadine returned from the sheriff’s.
“Heading over to the press conference now, but I wanted to alert you that Tolan was discharged.”
“She won’t be alone?”
“No. Her sister is driving her home to Jacksonville and staying for a few days.”
Linda Tolan would need years of therapy, and even then, the attack and capture would change her forever. How could it not?
“Okay. See you tomorrow.”
“Oh, and the items recovered from Tolan’s vehicle are now on the file share. Have a look.”
“Will do.”
Coleman waved and headed out.
Nadine didn’t think the contents of the vehicle would have much to add to her victim profile, but she scrolled down the list of the sort of things you would find in anyone’s glove box. But one item stopped her.
A black-and-gold headband.
Her stomach pitched. She moved her mouse to open the PDF document that included photos and there it was. Her Versace headband, with a distinctive pattern of three bleach spots. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
She felt it in the ice water now circulating in her bloodstream.
How could her headband have ended up inside Linda Tolan’s vehicle?
“He knows I’m here.”
Thirteen
Nadine’s first called was to Demko.
“I’ll have the security office pull the tapes from last Wednesday night,” he said. “Where’s Skogen?”
“They’re all at the press conference.”
“Okay. I’m heading to the hotel. Meet me in the security office.”
She was glad to have Demko be the one in charge. She trusted him, while Skogen had not earned that yet.
“Could you check the security footage on my floor?”
“Absolutely.”
Before leaving the office, she left a message on Skogen’s phone.
Delayed by traffic, Nadine arrived at the hotel at five to find both parrots in their cages eating from their food dishes. Rosie welcomed her from the front desk, checked to see if it was all right to let her back to the security offices and then escorted her. En route, Nadine’s stomach gave a tremendous growl and Rosie laughed.
“Well, I’ll bring you one of the cookies we have in the afternoon for guests.”
“You have cookies?” Why was she just hearing about this now?
“Three to five every day. I mentioned them on check-in”
And there was her answer. She’d been exhausted on arrival and she never got back here until after five.
“Thanks, Rosie. I appreciate that.”
Rosie knocked on the office door and Demko let her in, introducing her to the night guard.
“We found something,” Demko said. “This is Wednesday evening, March 31st, the day you came back to the hotel with Juliette and Tina after we found the trail cam.”
She recalled the crippling migraine and her late-night visit to reception to collect policy manuals that no one wanted or, likely, ever read.
For the next twenty minutes she looked at footage of her arrival to the room and then her departure, including her toppling into her neighbor’s door the night of her migraine.
Demko glanced at her with a concerned expression and she shrugged.
“Lost my balance.”
“Why?”
“Migraine.”
Demko turned to the playback, pointing out that she was wearing the headband to reception and that the door across from hers opened when she made her initial exit. So she’d woken him twice.
The next series included her at the front desk, then waiting for the elevator, in the car and finally her exiting onto the second floor, envelope in hand.
“Why are you covering one eye?” asked Demko.
“Light sensitivity.”
The camera picked up clearly that she had dropped the envelope into the bin while righting it. The door across from hers opened again when she was fumbling with the trash bin. The headband had slipped off her head but remained in her hair as she reached the corridor.
Nadine was glad there was no audio for the bit when her female neighbor had come out to shout at her. The woman snatched Nadine’s key card and opened her door for her. She’d forgotten that part.
At this point Rosie returned with a cookie the size of a frozen potpie, distracting Nadine from the replay. She thanked Rosie and tucked into the cookie, closing her eyes at the taste of chocolate chips and brown sugar.
“There,” he pointed. “Headband just fell.”
Nadine’s eyes snapped open. There lay the headband on the floor of the hallway directly between the two opposite doors.
“Here’s the interesting part,” said Demko. “The door opens again. But you can’t see this guest. Now watch this.”
The guard slowed the recording. Nadine watched her door close and something extend from the opposite door.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Golf umbrella,” said the head of security. “We lend them to the guests. One in every closet.”
The occupant used the umbrella to drag her headband into his room. Then the door closed.
Nadine placed a hand over her pounding heart. He’d taken it.
“Avoiding the cameras,” said Demko.
“Who stayed in that room?” she asked.
“That’s the trouble,” said Demko.
“The room was vacant. No guest stayed there,” said the guard. “I’ve got to call my boss.”
“We checked the footage all the way to Sunday. No one came out of that room,” said Demko.
“We walked the exterior,” said the guard. “The window is missing and repaired with a sheet of Plexiglas and electrical tape. Whoever it
was, went in and out through the second-floor window.”
“How?” she asked.
“Ladder or from the roof with a pulley,” said Demko.
“You have this recorded?” she asked.
“No cameras facing the building,” he said. “They only show the lot. The approach must have been along the grass under the window. Outside the camera’s view.”
“It’s him,” she said.
Special Agent Jack Skogen arrived in the hotel security office with his digital forensics expert where she, Demko and the hotel’s head of security waited. Demko filled them in on the headband and what they had found on the security footage.
“We think it would be wise to move you and your people to a new location. As a precaution,” said Skogen. “In the meantime I’ve tightened security. Added undercover agents on-site and we have you and the hotel under surveillance.”
“He won’t be back. He got what he came for.”
“Still.”
She suffered through the long silence.
“The sketch artist will come by tomorrow at the field office to see you. Let me know when you two come up with a rendering.”
“I will.”
“We need a sample of hair to compare with the one found on the headband,” said Skogen, evidence bag open.
Nadine ran her fingers through her hair, coming away with several strands, dropping them into the bag.
He sealed the bag. “I’ll rush it.”
She left the men and joined Tina and Juliette in the hotel restaurant, explaining what Demko had found over their meal.
Afterward, the three took Molly out for a short walk and then escorted Nadine to her room.
She did not sleep well.
THURSDAY
Back at the office the following day, Nadine did her best with the sketch artist. She wished she had not seen Linda Tolan’s version, as it had crept into her mind and influenced her memories.
Afterward, Tina stopped in.
“They found Santander! She’s in the Glades County Detention Center.”
“Finally, some good news.”
