“Nearly everybody we look at is going to have one of your ‘markers,’ ” Kaminsky objected. Charlie didn’t see her roll her eyes, but from the agent’s tone she figured Kaminsky probably did just that.
“Possibly, but I doubt very many in your pool will have more than one or possibly two of them,” Charlie replied, glancing around at Kaminsky. She and Crane were once again riding in the back, while in the third seat, the bench seat in the very back of the vehicle, sprawled out with his boots between the bucket seats occupied by Kaminsky and Crane, sat Garland. He had his eyes closed, his arms folded across his chest, and looked like he was enjoying a nap. Not that Charlie thought he was (did spirits even sleep?), but at least he was silent—silence on his part was the best she could hope for until he disappeared for good, she figured. “By itself, each marker doesn’t mean all that much. It’s when they’re present in multiples that it sets off alarms. When we find the man we’re looking for, he’ll have a long list of markers in his background, I promise you.”
“Just think of yourself as a kind of human metal detector,” Crane said to Kaminsky. “You come across enough hidden treasure, and your alarm should go off.”
“The best lead we’ve got right now is the band—Kornucopia—and everyone and everything connected with it,” Bartoli said. “We need to look at the musicians, the technicians, the roadies, and anyone else who travels with the band. Kaminsky, while you’re compiling that list you also need to screen every name you identify as a possible suspect for their whereabouts on the nights of the murders, then cross-check them with the twenty-five remaining individuals you came up with who’ve been off the grid for fifteen years. Not that being off the grid is a deal-breaker, because it’s possible we’re dealing with a copycat, so keep that in mind. Crane, you do the background checks and evaluate every viable lead with an eye to the markers Dr. Stone has suggested. Anybody that overlaps gets put on the hit parade—bring that list to me pronto. And we have to be discreet, because if this guy stays true to his pattern, the girl is still alive and we don’t want to cause him to kill her faster than he planned.”
“So, who’s the human metal detector now?” Kaminsky asked Crane, sotto voce.
“Beep-beep-beep.” Crane approximated the sound of an alarm under his breath.
“Let’s try to stay focused, guys.” Bartoli frowned at them in the mirror. “Clock’s ticking.”
“Got it, boss,” Crane said. “Background checks and markers.”
“I don’t suppose you want me to go around asking this possibly very large pool of potential suspects where they were on the nights of the murders?” Kaminsky’s voice was dry.
“That’d be a little obvious, don’t you think?” Bartoli looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Try checking work records, phone records, credit card records, that type of thing first. If we find the guy, we don’t want him to know it until we’re sure where the girl is.”
“You can’t just arrest him?” Charlie asked. Never having been involved in an investigation of this sort from the law enforcement angle, she’d thought that swooping up the bad guy just as soon as they knew his identity would be the way to go.
Bartoli shook his head. “The smart ones never say a word. They lawyer up. They depend on the legal system to protect them.”
“Even if we arrest him, we don’t have any way of making the unsub tell us where he’s got the girl stashed,” Crane explained.
“See, for us, waterboarding’s out,” Kaminsky said. “All we can do is say ‘Pretty please tell us.’ ”
Bartoli gave Kaminsky another of those looks in the mirror, then spoke to Charlie. “We play this wrong, we could catch the perp, absolutely get the right guy, put a halt to this particular murder spree—and still not be able to save the girl. What we want to do is identify him and watch him until something he says or does leads us to Bayley Evans. Then we move in.”
Just thinking of the girl made Charlie’s heart thump. Quickly she tried to disassociate her mind from visions of the terrified, brutalized girl that threatened to take possession of it. We’re coming, was the thought she sent winging toward Bayley, before wrenching her brain back into the cool, impersonal mode that she knew would best serve the girl.
“So you got a murder spree and a missing girl,” Garland drawled. “I’d ask you to fill me in on the details, but I’m not that interested.”
Charlie tensed, but didn’t otherwise react. She’d known his silence was too good to last. His presence in her life was something she had no choice but to deal with until he vanished—or until she figured out how to get rid of him for good. That being the case, she concluded, she might as well see if she could make use of him.
The idea that had been taking root in her mind grew ten feet tall and shot out flowers.
“Do you think we could stop by the crime scene on the way back?” she asked. “There’s something in the boy’s room I’d like to check out.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“That’s a fucking kid,” Garland said. He fixed Charlie with a flinty gaze that, once upon a time (like when he was alive) would have been intimidating. “I don’t mess with kids.”
The kid he was talking about was Trevor Mead. The blond eleven-year-old was curled up in the tan corduroy chair in the corner of his room, playing his flying dragon video game as if it were the most important thing in his world. As if horror and violence had never touched him or his family. As if he were still alive.
“I need you to talk to him,” Charlie whispered. Not that she thought Trevor Mead could hear her, because she was almost entirely positive that he could no more hear or see her than most people could hear or see him. She kept her voice low because she didn’t want to be overheard by any of the living human beings outside the closed door. The Meads’ house had been locked up tight and was still sealed off with crime scene tape when they had arrived. Neither the FBI agents nor the two cops in the lone patrol car that had been left sitting in the driveway to guard the place had had a key, which meant Bartoli had to call the local police headquarters for access. Haney had shown up, along with another detective, whom he introduced as his partner, Gary Simon, and two more beat cops in a patrol car. All had come inside. Now Haney waited in the upstairs hallway along with Bartoli and Crane, Kaminsky having been dropped off at Command Central to get cracking on the various things they needed to get cracking on. Meanwhile, Charlie, who had told Bartoli that she needed to be alone in the room to try to get into the mind of the assailant, got ready to do what she’d come there to do.
Which was get Garland to see if he could glean any new information from Trevor Mead.
“What’s in it for me?” Garland growled.
“Seriously?”
“You better believe it.”
“You narcissistic, opportunistic jackass.”
“Nice vocabulary, Doc. Still ain’t happening.”
Charlie’s lips compressed. “What do you want?”
“I want you to figure out a way to keep me here. That whole vanishing-in-five-days thing? Make it go away.”
“Sorry, nothing I can do.”
Garland shrugged and folded his arms over his chest. “Same here, then.”
Charlie felt her temper start to sizzle. “Fine. I’ll try.”
On a cold day in your final destination.
He shook his head.
“Don’t lie to me, Doc. Think I can’t tell? I want your word.” Garland’s face was set and hard. He was speaking in a hushed tone, too, although his voice was gravelly with intransigence.
“You have my word I’ll try.”
Garland looked at her measuringly.
Charlie made an exasperated sound. “If I said I could definitely do it, I would be lying. What’s more, you’d know it. Anyway, maybe it won’t happen. Maybe you’ll be an exception. Maybe you’ll be one of those spirits that hang around forever, like … like Abe Lincoln in the White House.”