Rebecca Knockman was standing on the sidewalk in front of her house with Burrell. Suzie ran to her mother, and they embraced. Looking for missing kids didn’t always have happy endings, and I probably should have been celebrating, only I was in no mood for that. Sara Long was still being held captive by a couple of sociopaths, and I needed to rescue her. Burrell came down the sidewalk toward me.
“I need to take Suzie and her mother to headquarters and get statements from them,” Burrell said. “Follow me, and I’ll get the unit started on your request.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
I pulled my keys out of my pocket. My heart was pounding the way it did when I was working a case, my radar on full alert. I was ready to slay the dragon. Burrell placed her hand on my arm.
“Hold on a second,” she said.
I gazed into her eyes. Their expression was one of concern.
“I don’t want us to be at odds, Jack,” she said.
“Nothing wrong with an argument between friends,” I said.
“It was more than that.”
I looked deeply into Burrell’s slate-blue eyes. I had hurt her. She was one of the best friends I had, and there was no excuse for that.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Burrell crossed her arms in front of her chest and waited me out. I didn’t know what else to do, so I gave her a hug. She didn’t seem to mind that I was covered in sweat, and hugged me right back.
“That’s more like it,” she said.
I followed Burrell to police headquarters on Andrews Avenue. She got me a visitor’s pass at the front desk and took me upstairs to the War Room, which was used as a strategy center during emergencies like wildfires and hurricanes.
“I need to get the Knockmans squared away,” Burrell said. “Stay here, and I’ll send over the other detectives from Missing Persons so you can get started.”
Burrell left before I could thank her. I went to the window and looked out on the vast parking lot. It occurred to me that I hadn’t told Burrell what I was searching for. Nor had I mentioned that I had proof that Sara Long and Naomi Dunn’s abductions were linked. Burrell needed to know these things, and soon. Otherwise, our friendship would take another major hit.
A noise turned my head. My old unit had silently entered the War Room and lined up behind me. Their names were Tom Manning, Jillian Webster, Rich Dugger, Shane James, and Roy Wadding. I had trained each one of them to find missing people, and it made me proud to know they were still at it.
“You’re back,” Manning said.
“Just for a little while,” I replied. “I don’t know how much Burrell told you. I need for you to make phone calls to police departments around the state.”
“What are we looking for?” Webster asked.
“Missing young women who were nursing students,” I said.
“Over what period of time?” Manning asked.
“The past eighteen years. So far, we have two victims, both of whom were tall and athletic. I’m guessing this will hold true for the others.”
“How do you know there are more victims?” Webster asked.
I hesitated. Experience came from practice, and practice made perfect. Mouse and the giant had done this many times before-that was why I was having such a hard time catching them. There were more victims, and they were hiding in musty police files across Florida.
“Trust me,” I said. “There are more.”
The War Room was outfitted with sixteen phone lines, and my old unit was soon talking to their brothers-in-arms around the state. They didn’t need me looking over their shoulders while they worked, and I crossed the room and stood at the windows.
I stared at the mind-boggling sprawl, the cookie-cutter developments and cloned shopping centers stretching as far as my eyes could see. Growing up, two hundred thousand people had lived in the county; now it was almost two million. The past was gone, and I could not look at what had replaced it without feeling regret.
“I’ve got a hit,” Manning called out ten minutes later.
I went to Manning’s desk. The detective sat with his necktie undone and a phone pressed to his ear. He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece before speaking.
“I’m talking to a detective in Alachua County,” Manning said. “Guy’s going to retire in two weeks, so he pulled out a stack of cold case files to give to the guy replacing him. He was reading them the other day, and found a case from twelve years ago where a college girl disappeared. She’d been in the nursing program at the University of Florida in Alachua.”
My hands gripped the back of Manning’s chair. “Can you get this guy to e-mail you the file?”
“He doesn’t know how to operate a scanner, so he’s going to fax the report to me.”
I went to where the fax machine sat and made sure there was paper in the tray. Sixty seconds later I grabbed the sheets as they were printed. The typeface was faint, and I held them up to the light as I read. The missing girl’s name was Cindee Hartman, and she’d been twenty when she’d vanished. Cindee hailed from Orlando, was tall and comely, and played on the women’s field hockey team. Cindee’s apartment had been ransacked during her abduction, the furniture all but destroyed. The abduction had taken place over a holiday weekend, and there had been no witnesses. The report referenced the fact that Cindee’s complex was where Danny “The Gainesville Ripper” Rolling had butchered three students in 1990. Although the complex’s security had been updated since the killings, Cindee’s abductor had still managed to avoid detection.
My hands started to tremble. Two similar abductions could be written off as a coincidence, but not three. Cindee Hartman had proven my case.
“Find what you were looking for?” Manning called out from across the room.
“Yeah,” I said.
I ran down the police station stairs and outside to my car. Buster danced on the upholstery as I hopped in and grabbed the Naomi Dunn file from where I’d stuck it between the seats. I got out of the car and shut the door, and he howled disapprovingly. Buster didn’t like to be left alone, and was letting me know it in no uncertain terms.
His barking grew louder. I saw people pop their heads out of their cars and from windows inside the building. Buster was going to stir the whole place up if I didn’t do something. I opened the driver’s door, and my dog happily scrambled out.
I locked my car up, and dragged Buster inside by the collar. The desk sergeant was yakking on the phone, and I got onto an empty elevator without being spotted.
Next stop was the War Room. I made Buster lie down in the corner, where he promptly fell asleep. Then I got to work.
In the room’s center was an oval table covered with empty coffee cups. Sweeping them into the trash, I pulled a photograph of Naomi Dunn from her file and placed it on the table. To the right of Dunn’s photo, I placed a photo of Cindee Hartman from her file, and to the right of that, the photo of Sara Long I’d been carrying around. Then I found a yellow legal pad, and ripped away three sheets.
I placed one sheet beneath each of the photos. Using a black Magic Marker, I wrote down the date of each woman’s abduction, and beneath that, the things that linked them-age, athleticism, and the fact that they were all nursing students.
I stepped back to stare at the information. One thing immediately jumped out at me. Cindee Hartman had been abducted four years after Naomi Dunn. Then there was a sixteen-year jump to Sara Long’s abduction. That was a long time. Serial abductors were similar to serial killers in that they tended to abduct in cycles. I didn’t see a cycle here, and kept studying the women’s photographs.
A hand touched my arm. I was too absorbed to turn around. Webster shouldered up beside me. Webster had worked Vice before joining Missing Persons, and had seen her share of ugly. The expression on her face was particularly grim.
“Something wrong?” I said.
“We just found two more victims,” Webster said.