One Scream Away (41 page)

Bankes’s eyes slid to the skull, then skidded back to Neil. “That’s my little sister, Jenny. You kicked her and hurt her. You have to pay.”

Bankes jerked Beth higher against him and Neil winced. Beth didn’t make a sound and Neil’s heart took a wild turn in his chest, thinking she couldn’t hold on. Then he realized that her silence indicated something else entirely. Strength, composure. That kind of control took focus and effort.

So she was still with him, and she was making things as difficult as possible for Bankes.

Good girl. Hang on.

One second. All they needed was for Beth to peel away from Bankes for
one second
, and he’d be riddled with holes. Six assault rifles were trained on him from positions on the ground. Two snipers sat in trees. A battalion of armed agents circled the area. Just one second.

“Jenny?” Neil asked, feigning confusion. “That’s Jenny?” Then he laughed. “Jesus. Is that what your mother told you in her will?”

Bankes frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Neil pretended to enjoy himself thoroughly. “Christ, you said your mother fooled everyone. I guess she really did.”

“Shut u—”

“That’s not Jenny, you stupid idiot.”

Bankes froze. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” Neil said, shrugging, “but go ahead and believe it if you want. Jeez, you’ve spent your whole adult life carrying around a skull you thought was Jenny’s? You poor stupid bastard. I almost feel sorry for you. Your mother really
was
good.”

“You’re full of shi—”

“Did Peggy never tell you about your older brother, Chevy? The one who died at birth? It took us a while to find someone who knew the story, and at first even we didn’t believe it. But now we know it’s true. Remember Ray Goodwin? He was sheriff when you were a kid.”

Bankes frowned. Yes, he remembered. Neil could see it in his eyes.

“He remembered that your mother got pregnant before you came along,” Neil continued, “and that baby didn’t make it. Most people never even knew she was pregnant; apparently your grandfather wasn’t too happy about it, kept her at home. His daughter, the one
he
liked to fuck, you know. The baby’s body was buried by the river.”

Neil stopped to let it all sink in. He could see the doubt in Bankes’s eyes.

Bankes sneered. “You’re lying. Mother said Jenny was buried there.”

“You poor shit,” Neil said. “Jenny disappeared. That wasn’t her body you dug up.”

“You didn’t even find that place until yesterday. DNA testing isn’t that fast. You couldn’t know who it was.”

“Well, forensic science is a beautiful thing, Chev. They don’t need DNA to check parentage, only blood work. And bones hold the best information on blood a coroner can get. Our guys only needed the records on file for Jenny at the hospital and a quick look-see at your grandfather’s corpse. Easy enough to tell how far from the tree the baby fell.” He paused long enough to let that sink in. “As for it being Jenny, well, you can’t tell gender from the skull, but you can from the hips.”

Doubt had taken hold. Neil pushed harder.

“For God’s sake, Chevy, if you don’t believe me, just look at the skull. Jenny was sixteen months old when she disappeared. That one you’ve been carrying around is just an infant. Can’t you tell the difference?”

“Jenny was small…”

But even as he denied it, his eyes sought out the skull lying sideways by the tape recorder. Bankes inched closer to it, shaking his head, his gun hand trembling in the hollow of Beth’s bruised throat. The tension in her body changed, and fear stabbed Neil in the chest.

Jesus, Beth, I’m getting to him. Don’t do anything stupi—

She started humming.

Bankes’s eyes widened. “Shut up!” he growled at her. Neil saw his grip tighten.

Beth sang. “Who killed Cock Robin? I, said the Sparrow, with my bow and arrow… I k-killed Cock Robin.”

It sounded thready and weak to Neil’s ears, but it was a tune nonetheless. Bankes began trembling, then covered his ear with one hand, and Beth straightened her legs and shoved. She launched the pair of them backward, wheeling past the ladder, but Bankes held on. Beth grabbed a breath and kept going, the broken, haunted tune growing louder. “Who saw him die? I, said the Fly, with my little eye…”

Bankes wagged his head, frantic, trying to shake the voice. Beth seized the chance. She went for his kneecap. He grunted, flinching, and she dropped. For one bright second, they were separated, and in the next, even brighter fraction of time, the forest exploded with gunfire and Bankes’s head splintered apart.

B
eth sat on a blanket, wrapped in another with her right shoulder bandaged. Her clothes, ripped and spattered with blood and dirt and Chevy Bankes’s brain matter, had been taken away, and a paramedic now squatted at her feet. “You couldn’t have worn shoes for this little outing, miss?” he asked, shooting her a concerned smile.

“The FBI had custody of my shoes,” she answered, looking at Neil.

He cursed. “Stubborn damned woman. You might have called me.”

“You were dead.”

Neil flushed. He felt so helpless, he couldn’t sit down, couldn’t stand still, couldn’t stop staring at her or touching her or even scolding her.

Beside the deer stand, two deputies hefted a body bag at each end. Neil watched Beth as she squinted into the morning sun, her gaze following Bankes’s body to a stretcher. She touched the fresh bandage on her temple. The cut would be tended properly this time and would heal with hardly any scarring. Neil would see to that.

He’d see to a whole lot of things. Orioles games and Hotwheels tracks for Abby, Christmases with plenty of assembly-required toys. Peaceful, slumber-filled nights. Unrestrained sex.

Lots of that. And a ring that wasn’t part of an act, one she didn’t don as part of a costume to present to the world. A ring his sister Aubrey would call a BAD ring—
big-ass diamond
.

Neil turned when he heard a motor—a white scooter with a sheriff’s logo threading between the trees. He glanced at Beth, making sure she was patched up enough not to look scary, then waved the scooter over. Behind the driver, Abby pulled off her helmet.

She ran to Beth, and twenty-five FBI agents, SWAT team snipers, and sheriff’s deputies all stood still to watch. When Abby finally pulled back, Neil joined them.

“Mommy’s crying,” Abby said, and Neil smiled.

“Look around,” he said, pointing to the collection of bold champions surrounding them. “So is everybody else.” He squatted. “You think I could get in on this?” he asked and made it a three-way hug.

A family.

“Hey, Sheridan.” It was a crime scene techie, holding up a plastic bag. “You wanted to see this?”

Neil got up, leaving Abby to examine Beth’s bandages. He took the bag containing the tiny battered skull and turned it this way and that, studying it.

That skull you’ve been carrying around for all these years is just an infant. Can’t you tell the difference?

Copeland came over. “Something wrong?” he asked.

Neil handed off the skull. “I can’t help wondering,” he said, “if this
isn’t
Jenny—”

“Then what happened to her?” Copeland finished. “We’ll find her. She’s probably buried out there not too far from this one.”

“Yeah,” Neil said, looking across the copse at Abby. Having her missing for the brief hours she was gone had just about ripped a hole in his chest.

Copeland followed the direction of his gaze. “Looks to me like there may be some changes in your life, Sheridan,” he said.

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Are you up for one more?” Neil’s brows went up, and a strange surge of excitement pulsed through his veins. “I’d like to have you on board—legitimately. That is, if you think you can learn to follow orders now and then.”

Neil smiled. “Now and then, maybe.”

“Good,” Copeland said, shaking Neil’s hand. “Now maybe Standlin will get off my back.”

“Don’t count on it.” Neil paused. “Look, I need a little time first. I’d like to go see my brother in Europe. And then I think I’ll take a nice long honeymoon.”

Copeland clapped him on the shoulder. “Another one bites the dust.”

Neil went over to Beth and Abby and crouched beside them.

“What was that about?” Beth asked. “It looked serious.”

“Copeland invited me to come back into the Bureau.”

“Oh, Neil. That’s wonderful.”

“But I told him I needed a few weeks first, that I have something to do.”

“What’s that?” Beth asked, holding Abby’s hand.

Neil reached to Abby’s hair, where a barrette had come loose. He moved it up and fastened it, then stroked Beth’s cheek. “Figure it out.”

Mazatlán, Mexico
2,035 miles away

A
bit lower,” Jennifer Rhodes said, her head cocked to the side.

The maid tucked the center rose down a little lower into the vase. Two dozen red blossoms dappled a white cloud of baby’s breath. One more day, and they’d be at their peak. That’s when Jennifer loved them most. A love she’d apparently inherited from her mother.

“
Senorita
?” Maria spun the arrangement around for approval.

“That’s fine,” Jennifer said, straining for some memory of that mother. There wasn’t one. Just the vague image of a sweet female voice, singing. Always singing.

Maria set the vase on a mahogany-based stand. “There,” she said. “You like me to turn off the radio when I go?”

“No, I think I’ll listen a little longer. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Maria shut the door behind her. Jennifer picked up the remote and spun her wheelchair toward the radio, punching up the volume. An American newscaster rolled through yet another agitated, long-winded narrative about the end of the manhunt for serial sexual predator Chevy Bankes and the little sister whose bones had yet to be found. A few moments later, the host opened the phone lines to take listeners’ calls.

Jennifer muted the voices and closed her eyes. Chevy was dead. She didn’t know whether to feel relief or sadness. Relief, because a dangerous man was no longer striking terror across a nation. Sadness, because everything he’d done—said the special agents and psychiatrists and old neighbors—he’d done for his little sister.

She slipped her hand into the pocket of her skirt, pulling out a folded piece of paper. It was splotchy and thin, like rice paper, with gold leaf on three sides and a torn, yellowed edge where it had been ripped from its binding. Years and years ago, she’d found it in a stack of discards when she and Iris were going through old photographs. Iris waved it off like it was nothing and told her to get rid of it, but something made Jennifer secret it away. Somehow, she’d always known it was important. Just as she’d always known there was more to her adoption than the story Iris told:
You were so sick, and your mother didn’t know how to take care of you, and there was no one else…

No one else. Yet, all Jennifer’s life, surrounded by Iris and the other foster kids, Jennifer had never quite believed it.

Now, she unfolded the fragile page and ran her finger down the names, touching the last three:

James Robin Bankes: b. March 14, 1976–d. March 28, 1976

Chevy David Bankes: b. Feb. 5, 1978–

Jennifer Robin Bankes: b. June 19, 1990–disap. Oct. 14, 1991

She wheeled to the end table and pulled out a pen, testing the ink on the corner of a magazine. The backs of her eyes prickling, she filled in the missing information for her brother.

Chevy David Bankes:…
d. April 25, 2009.

Camden Park, Lancaster, Maryland Saturday, September 22

W
hoops and giggles, canned music piped through speakers, the screech of balloons being bullied into bubble-necked poodles. The air smelled of soft pretzels and Belgian waffles, the sidewalks crowded with vendors and entertainers, teeming with families. Fathers walked along, poking keys on BlackBerry devices or talking into Blue-tooth earpieces; mothers juggled sippy-cups and pacifiers as they steered overpacked strollers and chatted with friends. Slightly older siblings orbited their parents like forgotten moons—lagging behind, straying too far, easily diverted by the remnants of popped poodles on the ground or the call of a snow-cone vendor.

Bait, if you were a child molester or a kidnapper. Easy pickings.

The Broker was neither. No need to grab a child from a weekend carnival, as simple as that would be. Not when there were pregnant women willing to sell newborns.
Twenty thousand dollars, cash. Prenatal visits covered, certified midwife for the birth.
And the final straw, necessary for some women but oddly, the Broker thought, not for many:
Your baby will go to a rich couple who have prayed for a child for years, will have a better life than you could ever provide…

One such woman, one of those rare ones who had required the extra dose of persuasion, stood behind a magician’s kiosk, secretly watching the Kinney family. She’d followed the Kinneys—Roger, Alana, and their four-year-old son, Austin—for more than an hour, not knowing that the Broker followed, too. At first the woman’s motives weren’t suspicious: She made no effort to speak with the Kinneys, simply followed a similar path. For a while, the Broker had even considered the possibility that she wouldn’t have to die.

But then the camera came out. The woman was taking pictures of Austin Kinney.

Stupid bitch. She’d issued her own death warrant.

The Broker kept well behind, though there was little chance of being recognized: baseball cap, sunglasses, loose nylon jacket and boots. The Kinneys moved toward the park exit, oblivious to their shadows, Austin’s face stuck in a blue cloud of cotton candy. A silver Jaguar gave a toot as the family neared, and the camera came out again.