“You saw it? What did you see?”
“The newspaper. It was opened to the story about that guy who was kidnapping girls off the street. I looked at him. He knew that I saw the newspaper. When our eyes met, we both knew. I freaked.”
“Did he strike you? Or try to detain you?”
“No. But when I saw that I couldn’t get out I started yelling my ass off.”
They had checked the interior of the Acura. The inside handle on the passenger’s door had been removed. Jessica made a few notes. She put a hand on the young girl’s shoulder. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to contact your parents. You know that, right?”
The girl nodded. Fresh tears followed.
A few minutes later a K-9 officer arrived with his dog. The officer ran the dog—a German shepherd tracking dog named Oliver—through the driver’s side of the Acura, and then around the perimeter of the car. He then walked the dog over to the tree line across the street. Almost instantly the dog alerted to a path. The two disappeared into the trees, followed by Josh Bontrager, Dre Curtis, and a pair of uniformed officers.
Jessica glanced at her watch. If this was their killer, he had a pretty good lead. But she had worked with the K-9 Unit many times. If their man was still in the area, they would find him.
FIFTY-EIGHT
THERE WERE sirens everywhere. Swann had doubled back, circling through the trees near Greenwood Cemetery. He found a row of three unoccupied porta-potties near a construction site.
Once inside, even though the quarters were tight, he worked quickly. He unzipped his bag, put the foam rubber around his waist. He put on a gray wig already tied into a ponytail. He slipped buck teeth over his own. He stepped into a dark blue jumpsuit with the city’s water-department logo on the back.
In less than thirty seconds he had gained forty pounds, aged fifteen years, and changed into an outfit as different from the man they sought as could be. He stuffed his old clothes down into the toilet, along with the young officer’s weapon. There was probably a wealth of forensic evidence to be found on his discards, but he couldn’t think about that now.
He emerged from the portable toilet and made his way south. When he reached the circle at Castor and Wyoming, two sector cars came flashing by.
Moments later Swann flagged a cab. He hated to lose the car, but it was all right. He had four other vehicles.
FIFTY-NINE
THEY MET IN the duty room. A suspect sketch was being run off at that moment, and would be distributed to every sector car in the division on the next shift. They would not be releasing it to the media for a while, but that did not mean it wouldn’t leak.
The K-9 officer and his dog had tracked to a bank of portable toilets. There, in one of the stalls, they found a pile of men’s clothing stuck into the holding tank, along with what appeared to be the young officer’s service weapon. A CSU team was en route to the site to begin the unenviable task of collecting evidence.
AT JUST AFTER NOON, a detective walked into the unit. It was Tony Park. Park was in his late forties, one of only a handful of Korean-American detectives in the department. There were few people better with a database or spreadsheet. No one was better on the Internet.
“I’ve been running missing persons of an age along with unidentified DOAs. The DOA data was slim, but, as you might imagine, the missing-person files were huge. Why do so many kids want to come to Philly? Why not New York?”
“Got to be the cheesesteaks,” someone said. Then, as expected, from around the room:
“Which means John’s Roast Pork.”
“Which means Sonny’s Famous.”
“Which means Tony Luke’s.”
Park shook his head. “Every friggin’ time, the same argument,” he said. “Anyway, one of the files jumped high. Last December, a sixteen-year-old girl from Chicago went missing. Her name was Elise Beausoleil. Elise told one of her friends that she was coming to Philadelphia. Her father, who owns a multinational company called Sunshine Technologies—and also happens to be golfing buddies with the governor of Illinois—makes a call to the governor, who in turn calls his friend, the governor of our fair commonwealth, who in turn puts pressure on the mayor and the commissioner to turn over every rock and bucket to find this kid. You guys remember this case, don’t you?”
The homicide detectives look at each other, shrugged. The truth was, homicide was a fairly insulated unit. If it wasn’t a dead body, you pretty much didn’t see it.
“Anyway, detectives in East division discovered that Elise got a part-time job doing door-to-door surveys for some human-rights group. They interviewed the director and some of the people who worked there. They remembered Elise. They turned up a route she worked. They said that after New Year’s Day she never showed up again. They all just figured she went home. Her father put on some private detectives, but they turned up zilch.”
“Philly guys?” Byrne asked.
“Two from Philly, two from Chicago.”
“When did he call them in?”
“Around March.”
“Was she on the FBI site?”
“Oh, yeah.” Park reached into the folder, pulled out a photograph. “This is her.”
He put the picture on the desk. The girl was a beauty—almond-shaped eyes, cropped dark hair, a long swanlike neck.
The detectives looked at the route Elise had taken on her surveys.
“How deep was the canvass?” Jessica asked.
“Like the Mariana Trench. I think they hit six hundred doors.”
“I take it there were no leads.”
“Not a one.”
The Collector, Jessica thought, a little dismayed that the nickname had seeped into her consciousness. She looked at Elise Beausoleil’s beautiful dark eyes, wondering if the last person this girl had seen was the man they so desperately sought.
SIXTY
SWANN SAT AT his kitchen table. He was still dressed in his disguise.
On the way back to the house he saw the FedEx truck three blocks over. He was waiting for a delivery, a set of antique bronze drawer pulls he had all but stolen on eBay.
A few minutes earlier he had seen on TV the sketch of the man wanted for the attempted abduction of a girl near Tacony Park. It looked no more like him than did the man in the moon. The media was referring to him as “the Collector.” He was pleased with both developments.
He hoped the young officer did not have nightmares.
Now that he was so close to the end, to his grand finale, he found his mind drifting back to the place where it all began. It was the same time of day, as he recalled, this lilac-hued hour between the time when he arrived home and his first aperitif. He recalled that he had just watched The Magic Bricks in the attic, when the doorbell rang. He thought about Elise sitting at this very table, one leg curled beneath her, the background seeming to dissolve away. She was so bright, so alive, a pixie with a gamine body and close-cropped hair.
She had come from money, of that he was sure. The quality of her boots and jewelry spoke of it; her manner and vocabulary all but confirmed it. She had about her an air of aristocracy, but it was not something by birthright. She was new money. She wore it like a mantle of pride.
Elise had strolled the great room that day, picking up a few of his objets d’art on the way. She had seemed particularly interested in the Tiffany crystal and brass carriage clock. It was one of his favorites. This moved him. She also liked—
The doorbell rang. It was FedEx.
Swann crossed the foyer, peered through curtains. It was not the FedEx delivery man after all. Instead it was a very attractive woman. She had silken shoulder-length hair, wore a smart navy suit, white blouse.