“She said… said it felt like someone was there in the darkness when they were sitting in the car. With all the trees around the house, she assumed it was Doris—that’s her mom. Or me.”
“And it wasn’t?”
“No. I’m as protective as the next father. But we were young once, we knew the kids needed some time to themselves… and, anyway, we trusted Benny. Hewas a good kid, too. We liked him. I’m pretty sure Addie loved him, though she hadn’t told us that.” He looked at Tovar. “You’re a parent, Detective. You understand.”
Tovar nodded gravely. “It’s a balancing act between trying to protect them and letting go.”
“Yes,” Andrews said, and swallowed. “I should have protected her more. Did I screw up?”
Rossi said, “No, sir. No…”
“Should I have taken what Addie said more seriously, about someone watching her? I screwed up, didn’t I?”
Gently, Rossi touched the father’s sleeve. “No. You didn’t. Let go of that thought. It’s no good.”
Andrews swallowed again, and nodded. “But I can’t help but blame myself, Mr. Rossi.”
“We’re going to find the one to blame, Mr. Andrews,” Rossi said firmly. “And it’s not you.”
As the four men stood in a loose semicircle, a short, heavyset woman in a blue T-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes emerged from around the house. The blue T-shirt was emblazoned with a white cross next to which the words St. Vincent’s Parents Association were printed. The woman’s blonde hair was trimmed short.
Reid could easily see the resemblance between mother and deceased daughter.
“This is Doris,” Andrews said. “My wife.”
She gave them a wan smile. She still seemed shell-shocked from the loss of her daughter, even though months had passed.
Reid also knew that the haunted look would probably never go away, not entirely. He had seen it far too many times in his relatively short tenure with the BAU. Parents never got over the loss of a child. Not really.
They asked her the same questions they had posed to her husband. She, too, shook her head when asked if she had seen anyone watching the neighborhood; she, too, commented that her daughter had accused her parents of watching her and Benny.
Frustrated, Reid turned to Rossi who shrugged. They would get the police to canvass the neighborhood again, but so much time had passed that they would be incredibly lucky if anyone remembered anything.
“I’m sorry,” Andrews said. “It looks like we’ve let you down. And if we’ve let youdown, we’ve let Addie down.”
Rossi jumped in. “I know it’s natural to blame yourselves. You have to understand, you didn’t have anything to do with what happened to your daughter.”
Andrews nodded, but it was clear he didn’t believe Rossi. His wife merely appeared dazed.
Reid looked at Rossi and wondered what had gotten into the longtime profiler. Those supportive words were what Reid would have expected from the compassionate Jason Gideon, not the more professionally impersonal David Rossi.
The three of them were about to climb into the SUV and leave what was left of this family to their grief when Mrs. Andrews said, as if to herself, “What about the gray car?”
They all turned to her.
“Pardon?” Rossi asked.
“The gray car,” she said. “I remember seeing it last spring, before the… before what happened. I thought we were getting a new neighbor, I saw that gray car so much. I saw it around the neighborhood and in the park, oh, three or four times.”
“What kind of car?” Tovar asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know cars. Four doors, boxy, gray. That’s all I remember.”
Rossi asked, “When did you see it last?”
“After what happened… the car stopped coming around. I just never saw it again. Or at least I didn’t notice it.”
Rossi turned to Tovar. “Let’s see if we can get tape from any security camera within a five-mile radius. Go back to a month before the crime.”
“That’s going to be a lot of security video,” Tovar said.
“I hope so,” Rossi said. “The more video we have, the better chance that someone caught this car on screen.”
Mrs. Andrews, vaguely apologetic, said, “It might not be anything.”
Rossi nodded. “That’s true. Or, you might have seen the assailant stalking the neighborhood.”
Mrs. Andrews looked stricken. “You mean… I could have savedher.…”
“No! You had no way to know. What’s suspicious about a gray car? And that’s the way he wanted it. This is a predator we’re dealing with. He’s made it his job to blend in… and he’s good at it.”
The mother and father did not appear terribly reassured by Rossi’s words.
The profiler seemed to sense it. “Hey, it’s our job to catch this guy,” Rossi said. “We’re good at that, too.”
Andrews gave Rossi a stricken look. “But what if he’s better than you?”
Rossi gave the man a crooked smile that Reid had previously seen the older man flash only on talk shows.
“Trust me,” Rossi said, “he’s not.”
Chapter Three
July 28 Wauconda, Illinois
Nearing five o’clock that afternoon, as Rand Road turned into Main Street to curve around Bangs Lake, Supervisory Special Agent Jennifer Jareau could see, between the buildings, boats and jet skis tearing across the middle of the lake. She could also see, within section areas nearer the beach, swimmers and sunbathers.
Hotchner had the wheel while Lorenzon navigated them through the town of twelve and a half thousand souls. As they eased around to the three hundred block, Lorenzon said, “Over there, on the right. You can park in front.”
Hotchner heeled the Tahoe to the curb in front of a one-story, flat-roofed brick building with a big window on either side of the door, a sign proclaiming it the Wauconda Police Department. They got out of the SUV, then made their way toward the building, Hotchner in the lead and Lorenzon pausing in gentlemanly fashion to allow Jareau to go in front of him.
The Midwest,she thought. Gotta love it.…
When they walked in, Jareau thought the place looked more like a renovated post office than a modern day police station, noting in particular the long black counter dividing the room: most other departments across the country had erected bulletproof glass to separate the police from the populace. This memo had not reached Wauconda.
Behind the counter, several desks were spread out in open bullpen fashion, some with uniformed cops sitting at them, some not. Occasional doors around the perimeter of the bullpen indicated offices, though others obviously led to other parts of the building.
A diminutive brunette wearing a Wauconda PD uniform rose from a desk and approached the counter, planting herself opposite Jareau. The officer, whose name tag read JAMES, asked, “May I help you?” The woman, younger even than Jareau, had her hair tied up and regarded them skeptically with big brown doe eyes that dominated her face.
Jareau flashed her credentials. “I’m SSA Jennifer Jareau with the FBI’s behavioral unit. This is Supervisory Special Agent In Charge Hotchner, and that’s Detective Lorenzon from Chicago PD.”
“The murders,” Officer James said, and while her voice had a typical cop matter-of-factness, something hushed was in there, too.
“That’s right,” Jareau said, keeping it friendly. “How did you know that’s why we were here?”
“I’ve been on the job in Wauconda for over two years, Agent Jareau, and I’ve never so much as sniffed the FBI. Two girls die, and now I’m looking at two agents and a Chicago PD detective, no less. I don’t need a gold shield to do the math on that equation. You’ll want Denson.”
“Denson?” Jareau asked.
“Jake Denson. He’s the lead detective and crime scene analyst on the case.”
“He does both jobs?”