By the time they were done, Robbie had said, “Each file will have been studied by a cop and a fed.”
And, hopefully, they’d have various notes to study, and be able to narrow down the amount of paperwork on the table. They were, after all, starting with files of anyone they could link in any way with any of the victims. The second step, assuming they found no solid connection, would be to separate out the files of all adult men roughly between the ages of thirty and fifty. It was an arbitrary age range, Robbie had confessed, adding that when Luke and Sam returned, they might be able to narrow it more because they were far more experienced profilers.
Dante said, “What happens if we find nothing that raises a red flag in any of our minds in any of the files?”
“Let’s not borrow trouble,” Sarah begged. “I just want to stay busy and focused so I’m not worrying about whether that bastard is trying to worm his way into my mind again.”
“Awful as it feels,” Robbie told her, “at least we can be pretty sure now that nobody disappeared into thin air, that footprints didn’t magically vanish when photographed and car doors didn’t shut on their own. Everything was stage-managed to look more eerie and . . . otherworldly . . . than it actually was. At best a distraction for us. At worst a calculated move to further spook an already shaken town.”
Sarah let out a sigh. “It’s too late now, but in the morning, either Jonah or I need to go see Mildred Bates. The neighbor with the cast. She was watching that morning, the whole time Jonah and I were there, and while Tim was there with me. As many times as I’ve cursed those binoculars of hers, she may actually have seen something helpful.”
Robbie pursed her lips. “But it wouldn’t be anything obvious, because otherwise she would have called one of you. Right?”
Sarah nodded. “Trust me, she doesn’t hesitate to call the station if she thinks anything’s going on. Which makes me feel pretty certain that if the bastard was actually out there, he stayed out of sight in the vegetation down below the bank. Still, she might have seen something she didn’t think was important at the time, or since then.”
“Any information could help us,” Dante noted. “It’s not like we’ve got a whole hell of a lot to go on so far.”
Sarah went to get the file box Jonah had filled from Annie’s desk and brought it back to the conference table, sitting down in a chair with a fair amount of clear table space in front of her. “So we really don’t have any kind of a profile on this guy yet?”
Dante said, “If you mean the white male, age range, occupation sort of stuff that usually helps make up a profile—no, not really. Not reliably. That’s why we’re at least initially working with a really wide age range. We can guess he’s white only because all the missings are and it’s the majority demographic for Serenity. And it’s a guess, if an educated one, that he’s probably in his thirties or forties, maybe even older, because he’s been too patient and too clever to be younger.”
Robbie sat down at the conference table as well, continuing, “In a small town like this, we’re bound to have way too many overlaps when it comes to victimology: same church, same doctor, same bank, shop at the same stores, kids go to the same schools—that sort of thing. So that doesn’t really help. But he picked these people, he went out of his way and to considerable trouble to abduct these people, these particular people, for a reason, and that’s what we have to look for. Somewhere, somehow, there’s a specific connection between the missing people that will lead us to the man who abducted them.”
—
NESSA WASN’T EXACTLY sure what had happened. She’d gotten up to get a drink, she knew that. But then . . . then there was a time she didn’t remember. And now she was here.
In the dark.
Nessa had always feared the dark. Always. It was why her daddy had made sure she never had to walk through a dark house to get to the kitchen for the chilled water she usually wanted in the middle of the night. Her mama had said there was water in her bathroom, after all, and Daddy was spoiling her, but not in that voice that said she really meant it.
There were perks to being an only child.
But none of those were going to help her now, here. Wherever here was.
She was afraid of the dark, but Nessa was old enough to know there were worse things, so she made herself squash the fear, made herself not think about it. She could do that, she knew.
At least for a while.
But . . . it was really dark. It was so dark she couldn’t see so much as a sliver of light, a pinpoint of light, anywhere at all. It smelled . . . musty. Like a basement. Or a freshly dug hole in the woods. And there was something else too, a smell she recognized but couldn’t quite place.
She was beginning to feel things physically, as if her body were slowly waking, but it wasn’t awake yet. So everything she felt was sort of distant, hazy, uncertain.
She thought she was sitting in a chair. Not a comfortable chair either, not one with padding or cushions. More like a wooden kitchen chair, hard and unyielding.
What she was not, was tied to it.
Or restrained in any way she could feel.
Without trying to move, Nessa considered that almost idly. She’d thought she was tied somehow, because once before, she had nearly woken up, and had been sure she couldn’t move.
Now she thought she was a little more awake than she had been before, and she was just as sure she could move. She didn’t know how she was sure, because she hadn’t tried yet, but she was very sure she could move now.
But . . . move where? Her eyes were open, had been open awhile now, and the dark wasn’t getting any lighter the way it normally did after you were in it for a while, and kept your eyes open. It was dark and she had no idea where she was or which direction she should move in so she could escape this place.
Then Nessa heard something. An odd, soft little sound that made a chill skitter up and down her spine.
Somebody else was breathing.
Close.
She wasn’t alone here.
—
SARAH SIGHED. “WE’VE already studied the files on the missings, and even though you’re right about that overlap, nothing stands out as something connecting them. I don’t want to sound like a defeatist, but I’m afraid we’ll find the same load of nothing in these files.”
Dante said a bit tentatively, “Once we’ve cleared—as well as we can—the people closest to the missings, then concentrating on males in our wide age range makes sense. If nothing else, we should be able to get a more complete sense of what’s normal, average. That should help us to notice something that isn’t normal or average, something that might not otherwise stick out.”
Robbie was nodding. “Like you said, Sarah, we’ve gone through the files of the missings, specifically, once already, and nothing stood out. To any of us. We even had all the names run through national databases via Quantico, and everything looks normal, average. No wants, no warrants, nothing unusual. Just your average people in your average small town. So we take a few steps back to look at the larger picture. And that means going through the files on every adult male in the town of Serenity—and in outlying areas. Sarah, your people made a good start, but we’ll need them to keep canvassing, especially the outlying areas of town, pretty much at first light.”
Sarah nodded, “I’m betting Jonah already has the duty list drawn up. Everybody will be working, especially now that we know reinforcements will be here soon. And, believe me, after what happened to Annie, every officer in the department wants to be the one to find her killer.”
Dante looked a little troubled. “No offense, but we don’t want lynching parties out there.”
“No offense taken. We don’t have a huge force, but the officers we do have are well trained, observant, and rational. And Jonah was talking to them when I left to come here with Annie’s files. He’s not one to stand for hotheads, never has been. He was making it plain that if anybody draws their gun, it better be because there was no other choice. You don’t have to worry. They’ll do their job, and they’ll do it well.”