Gone

  “Finally—and this is a bit more theoretical here—I think there are ample signs that the subject has at least a basic understanding of forensic science. The only handwriting used has belonged to the first victim. All letters have been printed out on plain white paper. The first letter, the only one mailed, was put inside a self-sealing envelope with a self-adhesive stamp, eliminating the need for saliva and, of course, traces of DNA. I think it’s not a coincidence the abduction happened during a severe rainstorm. I believe the subject is actively using the weather to cover his tracks—certainly, he anticipates the weather in all of his communications, protecting them in plastic, etc., etc. And the last detail to note: on both phone calls to me, the subject has used a voice-distortion machine. Again, he’s clearly put some thought into this.”

  “Research?” Kimberly asked. “Or experience?”

  “Research,” Quincy stated. “If it was experience, we’d see even more details in the notes and the phone calls. There is enough roughness around the edges to reveal someone in the infancy of his crime spree. But don’t mistake inexperience for stupidity. The subject has gone out of his way to be prepared. And, as someone who views himself as the master of the game, he’s doing everything in his power to remain one step ahead of the police.”

  Quincy took a deep breath. “All of this leads me to the following profile: We are looking for a white male in his mid-twenties to mid-thirties—the average age we see for predators beginning their crime sprees. Of above-average intelligence, he attended college, but did not graduate. He is very articulate and it’s quite possible that he’s in a stable relationship with a woman who is beautiful but submissive—this is not a man who would tolerate being challenged by a mate. The subject is of lower socioeconomic means, but holds himself above his neighbors; he may live in a trailer park, for example, but he does not consider himself trailer trash. The subject also has some connection with Rainie Conner, but I caution against using that as an investigative tool, as that connection may only exist in his head.”

  “Stalker,” Kincaid stated.

  “Exactly. The subject is very neat and well groomed. Appearances are extremely important to him. At face value, neighbors will claim him to be very smart, handsome, and upwardly mobile. Closer digging, however, will reveal a pattern of ‘never quite succeeding.’ For example, he got into college, but something happened—say, a parent died—forcing him to drop out. He had a great job, but something happened—say, the company declared bankruptcy—and he was laid off. Our brilliant subject was doing brilliantly, until something not under his control caused him to fail. The past is never his fault and the future is always an opportunity waiting to happen. Recently, there has been another one of these major life changes. Given the financial element of a ransom case, I would theorize that he lost his job. Statistically speaking, however, pregnancy, childbirth, and the end of a long-term relationship are also common predicators of criminal behavior.”

  “Sounds a little like Stanley Carpenter,” Kincaid said. “High-school educated, blue-collar job, subservient wife. Physically controlling, and maybe just a tad stressed out by the addition of his new foster child.”

  “I wouldn’t mind digging a little deeper into Stanley’s alibi,” Quincy agreed. “He’s older than I would like, however, with a steadier lifestyle—he’s held the same job, had the same wife, and lived in the same house for a long time now. The subject we’re looking for is less emotionally mature. He aspires to a lifestyle much more dazzling than Stanley Carpenter’s, while not possessing the follow-through to be able to deliver on that dream.

  “People around this man will like him, but they may not trust him. The more streetwise ones will sense in him the soul of a con man. In fact, he probably has committed a string of shady financial dealings, if not outright cons. But what this man is really about isn’t scamming money—he’s selling himself, an image of himself. He’s working very, very hard so that no one will recognize the monster he harbors inside.”

  “The notes,” Kincaid said. “He keeps claiming he’s not a monster.”

  “Exactly. Which is the most important clue in these letters. From the very beginning, the subject has gone out of his way to assert that he’s not a pervert, not a monster. He claims it’s about money. But where is money in these messages? Most kidnappers include long, detailed instructions about the ransom drop. What kind of denominations, how the bills must be packaged. They’re fantasizing about the payoff and that anticipation is conveyed in everything they do.

  “Not this subject. His communications revolve around two things—I’m not a monster, but you must obey me, or I will become a monster. I will do bad things. It will be your fault.”

  “He’s looking for a scapegoat,” Kimberly breathed.

  “He’s a psychopath,” Quincy said steadily. “He recognizes it in himself. He’s drawn to murderers such as the Fox and Nathan Leopold. I don’t think he’s killed yet—if he has, it was probably accidental. But he fantasizes about killing. He wants to feel powerful, and what is more omnipotent than taking another person’s life?”

  “Granting another person life,” Candi muttered.

  Quincy smiled faintly. “Touché. But that’s not what drives our subject. His impulses are already dark and violent. Kidnapping a woman, holding her bound and gagged, is the first step in his fantasy. Maybe he told himself it was about money. Maybe he convinced himself it really was a ransom case. But there are a lot of ways to make money. From a psychological perspective, why abduct a human being? Furthermore, why a woman? He’s going someplace else with this, even if he can’t admit it yet.”

  “You think she’s dead!” Kincaid said, stunned.

  “No. Not yet.” Quincy’s voice had dropped. He took a steadying breath. If he kept this objective, about an unnamed victim, he could function. If he at any point in time remembered she was his wife, he would collapse.

  “The subject wants us to make this easy for him,” he said quietly. “He wants us to give him an excuse, any excuse, so he can do what he really wants to do, while blaming someone else. That’s how he works. He’s always in control, but nothing is ever his fault.

  “When he calls tomorrow”—Quincy looked at Kimberly—“he’s going to give you a long list of instructions. They will be logistically complicated, nearly impossible to follow. You”—his gaze switched to Candi—“will be put in the awkward position of trying to clarify his demands while buying us more time. He will get angry very quickly. He will accuse us of breaking the rules for failing to do what he says. He will become openly hostile and threaten to kill both victims: We give him no choice.”

  Candi was no longer looking bored. “Shit.”

  “Whatever happens, you must make him believe that Kimberly is doing as he’s instructed. You must never imply that his orders are too hard, or too fast, or too inconvenient. Of course, at the same time, you will need to have him repeat things again and again, because Kimberly probably will be lost and/or confused.”

  “Can I offer him more money? You know, a reward for his patience?”

  Quincy thought about it. “No, money isn’t what he wants. It’s fame, recognition. Headlines, that’s what we need.”

  “Adam Danicic?” Kincaid asked with a frown.

  “No, the subject has already reached out to Danicic—we’re not giving him anything he can’t get on his own. We need someone bigger, maybe an investigative journalist or popular columnist for The Oregonian. Someone whose name is immediately recognizable and yet can be successfully impersonated by Lieutenant Mosley.”

  “What, you don’t want the real journalist present?” Kincaid deadpanned.

  “That will be our bait. We have a very important journalist in the room who came all the way to Bakersville to talk to the subject himself. This is the UNSUB’s big chance to get on the record. To tell everyone his story. And of course, to prove he’s not a monster by letting the journalist speak directly to both victims.”

  Kimberly started to nod.
“That might work. It gives Rainie and Dougie fresh value as hostages. He’s getting to manipulate the police, as well as garner more attention.”

  “It’s not a guarantee, of course. Remember, our subject just craves attention. He doesn’t care if it’s positive or negative.”

  “You think he would harm them with a journalist on the line?” Kincaid asked sharply.

  Quincy could only shrug. “There are serial killers out there mailing trophies from their victims to local papers. Welcome to the media age. It really is about fame, fortune, and apple pie.”

  “Coming to a reality TV show near you,” Kincaid muttered.

  “Let’s not give the TV execs any ideas.”

  Quincy gathered up his notes, sliding them all back into his legal pad. He saw the name Lucas Bensen again, but still didn’t say a word.

  “So what do we do now?” Candi asked.

  Kincaid slapped his binder shut. “Now,” the lead investigator replied, “we get some sleep.”

  29

  Tuesday, 10:43 p.m. PST

  MAC AND KIMBERLY SWUNG BY the local Wal-Mart in search of dry clothes. Unfortunately, the superstore had already closed for the day. They toured the dark streets of Bakersville one last time before finally giving up and heading for the B&B where Quincy had reserved them a room. Kimberly had wanted her father to come with them. Naturally, he’d refused.

  After their meeting with Kincaid, they had walked out to the rental car for a task force meeting of their own. The rain had slowed, becoming a dense mist none of them even noticed anymore.

  Mac had made some headway on Lucas Bensen. He found articles from Rainie’s trial, listing the victim as being survived by a son, Andrew Bensen, who was being raised by his maternal grandmother, Eleanor Chastain. Accounts of Andrew’s mother were hard to come by, but it appeared that Sandy Bensen had died before Lucas had disappeared, meaning Andrew had spent most of his life with his grandmother. Interestingly enough, neither Eleanor nor Andrew had appeared at Rainie’s trial.

  Typing Eleanor Chastain into the Google search engine had produced several phone numbers from different states, as well as maps to all of their homes, courtesy of MapQuest. The Internet remained the investigator’s favorite friend. Of course, all the perverts loved it, too.

  Mac had chosen two phone numbers, one in Eugene, Oregon, the other in Seattle, Washington. He nailed it, however, the first time out, in Eugene. Eleanor seemed pleasantly surprised to hear from an old friend of her grandson’s, trying to locate Andrew. No, she couldn’t help him. Last time she’d seen Andrew, he’d been tearing out of the driveway after stealing her stereo.

  She’d heard rumors he’d enlisted in the Army, and could only hope he was now in Baghdad. Maybe military service would finally do the boy some good. In the meantime, if Mac did find him, could he please remind Andrew that he still owed his grandma five hundred bucks? Thanks. And that had been it from Eleanor Chastain.

  Best Mac could tell, Andrew Bensen would be nearly twenty-eight years old, making him the right age for the profile. Petty theft also fit, but it didn’t sound like Bensen had bothered with college. The real question remained, was the man even in the country?

  Mac had left messages with the local recruiting offices in Portland. Chances were, however, he wouldn’t hear back until morning.

  And that was it for the family meeting. The hour was late, sleep as good an idea as any. They’d all be up with the crack of dawn, and tomorrow would be a big day.

  Kimberly tried one more time to get her father to come with them. And one more time, he declined.

  He was exhausted, Quincy said, just needed some time alone. He was going back to the house and going straight to bed.

  Kimberly didn’t believe him for a moment. Sleep? Her father? Even now, he was probably roaming from room to room, torturing himself with might-have-beens.

  Similar to what she might do, she supposed, if she didn’t have Mac beside her, his hand folded around her own as they drove to the B&B in companionable silence.

  Once inside the room—beautiful cherry furniture, hideous floral wallpaper—Kimberly went to work draping her wet clothes over the towel racks. Mac produced an old T-shirt out of his bag, and she gratefully slipped into the oversized jersey while taking a hair dryer to her dry-clean-only wardrobe. She put the blower on high, closed the bathroom door, and heated the tiny space to approximately five hundred degrees. It felt marvelous. Sweat dotting her upper lip, arms loosening into rhythmic cadence.

  She walked out of the bathroom to discover Mac sprawled on top of the queen-size bed, wearing nothing but a pair of plaid boxers and a heavy-lidded look she knew too well. In spite of the late hour and the day’s events, she felt the familiar answering tingle low in her belly. Here was the upside of a relationship where they never saw each other nearly enough; Mac merely had to walk into a room, and she was ready to take him then and there. He had yet to complain.

  Now, she crossed to the bed, aware of how his eyes were following her, lingering on her pale neck, her broad shoulders, her small rounded breasts. “Nice room,” she said.

  “If you like chintz.”

  “If memory serves, chintz has been very good to us.”

  “True.”

  She crawled on the bed, the top of the oversized T-shirt gaping low enough to reveal that she wore nothing underneath.

  “It’s been a long day,” Mac murmured.

  “It has.”

  “Upsetting.”

  “Yep.”

  “I would understand if you needed to talk.”

  “Talk? Don’t you remember? I’m my father’s daughter.” And then Kimberly was climbing on top of him.

  His chest was warm and broad. She liked the way his skin felt against the palm of her hand, the brush of her cheek. She nuzzled his neck, reveling in the scent of him. Soap, aftershave, sweat. She should shower; he should shower. They had always taken such considerations for each other; again, weekend lovers who could afford to be on their best behavior. Now, however, she didn’t want to let him go. She needed the hard planes of his body pressed against her own. She wanted to hear his heartbeat thundering against her ear. She wanted to taste the salt of his skin and feel the sharp intake of his quickly drawn breath.

  She was tired. She was sad in a place way down deep, difficult to decipher, hard to touch. So much of her life had been spent in the company of death. First sharing her father with a caseload that seemed to need him more than his own children could. Then her first forays into his office, sneaking down his homicide textbooks, looking at all the pictures. Realizing at the age of thirteen, when her own body was starting to bud and ripen, what a pair of pliers could do to the human breast. Reading at fifteen all the ways deviant sexual behavior could turn violent, sadistic, cruel.

  She inundated herself with case studies, stories of depravity, summaries of the worst horrors committed against women and children. She did not know how to bring her father into her world, so she threw herself into his. If these victims were her father’s taskmasters, then she would learn to fight for them, too.

  In time for her sister to die, for her mother to be murdered, for herself to stand in a hotel room with a madman’s gun stroking her temple. As a child, violence had taken her father from her. As an adult, that same violence gave him back.

  Now she followed in his footsteps, a fellow FBI agent, counting the days until she was qualified to do profiling, so that what? She could squander her marriage, abandon her children, become an island lost inside herself?

  She kissed Mac harder. His hands were tangled in her hair, his erection hot against her thighs. She ground herself against him. He caught her hips with his hands.

  “Shhh,” he whispered against her lips. “Shhh.”

  It took her that long to realize she was crying, that the hot warmth she felt was her own tears sliding down her cheeks, splashing across his chest. She kissed them, too, following the rain across his collarbone, catching the salt upon her tongue.

&nb
sp; Then she was on her back and he was leaning over her, his weight upon his knees, his large hands impossibly gentle as they gathered up the T-shirt, slid it over her head.

  “Now,” she commanded urgently. “Now!”

  But he wouldn’t do it. No matter how hard she tried to grab his shoulders, to twine her legs around his waist. He was the model of control, nuzzling her earlobe, whispering across her neck until her entire body bloomed with the most delicious goose bumps and she was so acutely aware of her own skin she would scream if he didn’t touch her again.

  His head was at her breast, his whiskered cheeks rasping lightly across her nipple to be followed by the soothing pressure of his lips. She had an athlete’s body, slim, narrow-hipped, flat-chested. But he made her feel voluptuous, his broad, dark hands splayed across her pale white breast, the silk of his hair tickling her belly.

  Finally he took pity on her, his hips settling between her legs, his large body rocking against her own.

  She opened her eyes at the last minute. She watched her lover, head thrown back, teeth gritted as he lost himself in the pleasure of her body. And she felt, through her ecstasy, through her sadness, a moment of unbearable tenderness. She splayed her hands across his face. She willed him to come, wanted to see the moment crashing across his features. She needed him to find release. She needed to know that she made this one person happy.

  The dam broke. The unbearable pressure building inside her spiked and shattered. She was falling down, down, down, her arms and legs still wrapped around Mac and, for a moment at least, it was enough.

  Tuesday, 11:28 p.m. PST

  “YOU KNOW, I’D TIE YOU UP if I thought it would work,” Mac said sometime later. “I’d beat my chest, engage in some quality male posturing, and count on you, as the weaker, subservient female, to do as you were told.”