The Nature of the Beast (18 page)

A small army of dogs and federal officers had turned over every rock in the valley. The helicopter had completed three separate passes over the area and come up dry. The South Dakota State Police reported nobody coming past their position other than a steady stream of law enforcement vehicles going the other way.

“Why here?” Craig asked. “Why would he get off here for food? Compared to most of the other freeway exits, this place is a wasteland. Twenty miles back he drove right by every kind of fast food in the known world. Why would he decide to stop here?”

“Maybe he doesn’t like cameras,” she said pointing upward.

Jackson Craig got to his feet. As he rose, his knees cracked like castanets. He swallowed a groan as he stretched his back and looked over the front of the café.

He checked the poles. Not a camera in sight.

“You know,” he said. “I you think may be right. He’s trying to avoid surveillance cameras.”

“That’s what I’d do,” Audrey said. Another yawn set her lower jaw to quivering. This time she covered it with both hands. “Sorry,” she said.

“It’s been a hell of a long day,” Craig acknowledged.

“What now?”

“You tell me,” Craig said.

“He’s headed home,” she said without hesitation.

“Chicago?”

“Somewhere in the vicinity. It’s the only place he knows. The only place he feels even moderately safe.”

“Is that sympathy I detect?” Craig looked amused.

Audrey thought it over. “A little, I suppose,” she said thoughtfully. “But…you know, if we’re all really products of nature and nurture, and this is
really
Colin Satterwaite we’re chasing, which I’m convinced it is, then somewhere along the line, before he ever sat down to play, this kid got dealt a really bad hand.”

“A wise man once said: ‘Just because the world hands you a dead mouse, doesn’t mean you have to carry it around in your pocket for the rest of your life.’”

“Mouse?” Audrey’s tone was incredulous. “This isn’t a mouse, it’s a moose. I mean…at the time when Harry Joyce was killed, he’s what seventeen years old? He’s been terrorized and sexually abused by a complete madman for nearly all of his life. At some point he comes home to the only place he can ever remember. It’s cordoned off. Half the block is demolished. Harry Joyce is gone, never to be seen again.” She paused. “Where does he go? What does he do? How does he survive in South Chicago? He’s got no marketable skills. No anything. How does he get by?”

Surprisingly, Craig had a ready answer. “Gilbert always said Harry must have had a back-up location. Probably more than one. Guys like Harry Joyce always set up fallback positions. It’s standard military tactics. He figured that was why ATF didn’t find anything incriminating in the rubble. He figured Harry had someplace nearby where he kept his weapons, his money, his means of procurement, some manner of keeping contact with those who required his services.” As Craig’s mind’s eye ran the movie of it, the anger disappeared from his eyes. “At this point, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d guess Gil was right and the boy went where he’d been trained to go,” he said.

“Which would explain the fifty-caliber Barrett,” she said. “He’s still got Harry Joyce’s weapons and most likely Harry’s money too. That’s probably how he survived. I mean it’s not like assassination is a highly marketable skill. You’re not going to find it in the want ads after Accountants. Predatory Abductors generally build a nest, a place where they’re able to carry out their…their…” She stopped herself. “…a place where they can work out their fantasies with a minimum chance of being detected.”

The sound of an approaching automobile grew increasingly louder.

The County Sheriff’s vehicle slid to a stop at their feet, engine whining, wipers slashing at the mist on the windshield. The window slid down. Sheriff Parsons leaned her head out. Her face was flushed, her expression grim. “Got a call from over in Collier County,” she said. “They’ve got a fresh body over there. A boy. Four to six years old. Probably of Mexican descent.” She swallowed hard. “Dead about three hours, they say.”

32

After fifteen minutes of off-loading and setting up equipment, the FBI Mobile Forensics Team began the job of taking samples and x-raying body. As the room was without proper radiation protection, only one lead-clad technician was permitted to risk his reproductive future while the x-rays were being taken.

The remaining FBI technicians and their samples had retreated to their mobile laboratory. The funeral director made himself scarce elsewhere in the building, leaving the three of them waiting for the bad news in a room so quiet you could hear dust settling to the carpet.

Jackson Craig got to his feet and began to pace the room. Seemed like seasons passed before the door at the far end of the waiting room hissed open.

The technician had shed his lead apron. He carried his laptop before him like a bouquet as he entered the room. Everyone crowded around the screen. “Nine inch titanium rod in the right leg,” he pronounced, pointing at the image on the screen. “Seven screws holding the device in place. Recent. Past ten months or so.” He looked directly at Craig. “Doesn’t square with your victim’s medical records,” he announced. “Your victim’s well documented. Had the same pediatrician all of his life. No record of any such injury or any such surgery.”

“What if his records aren’t complete,” the sheriff asked. “Lotta people don’t...you know with the kids…a lot of people…”

“There’s another problem,” the technician interrupted.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“My colleagues outside tell me that, according to the family medical records, both parents are Rh positive. The victim is Rh negative.”

“Can’t be,” Craig said.

“No it can’t,” the technician said.

Audrey felt a need to say it out loud. “So that’s not Michael Browning in there.”

“Assuming the data we’ve been provided is accurate, and I have no reason to believe it’s not, then that is definitely
not
Michael Browning in the other room.”

He gave them a minute to digest the heady information. “I took the liberty of searching local hospital records for any surgery of this nature taking place in this part of the country. There were three in the past eighteen months. Only one performed on a child. Sioux Falls Hospital. Patient: Diego Aldo Gonzales. Four years nine months at the time of the accident. Got his leg caught in a hay baler. Broke it in three places. One titanium rod, seven stainless steel screws.” He snapped the laptop closed. “The file contains an official addendum from the child’s social worker to the effect that she has her doubts about the cause of the injury and that any further instances of hospitalization should be thoroughly investigated by Child Protective Services.”

The sheriff allowed herself a low whistle, shifted her weight from one foot to the other a couple of times, cast a wistful glance in Audrey’s direction and then cleared her throat. “Seems like I better make a few calls,” she said. “The folks over in Collier County are going to want to get on this as soon as possible.”

“I’m going to leave you a uniformed squad,” Craig said. “They’ll have orders to make a final sweep of the locals. Can you provide ground transport?”

The sheriff said it would probably involve her nephew and her Dad again, but, somehow or other, she’d work it out.

“Also the helicopter. I’ll have it make one more infrared pass first thing in the a.m. and then, providing we don’t have another miracle of some sort, it can ferry the squad back to Minneapolis as soon as they’ve completed their sweep.”

Craig walked over and shook the sheriff’s hand, thanking her for her efforts and praising her professionalism. “Please be sure to thank your nephew and father for their efforts on our behalf,” Jackson Craig said finally.

Jennifer Parsons pumped his hand a couple of times, assured him she would convey the message and then hustled from the room. The door never fully closed. No sooner was the sheriff on her way when the FBI crew returned en masse and began to retrieve their equipment.

Above the clatter rising from the adjoining room, Audrey raised her voice.

“No matter what it says about me, I’m glad it’s not Michael,” she said.

“I don’t know what to feel,” Craig admitted. “I feel like I’ve been whip-sawed from pillar to post and back again.”

Audrey raised an ‘Amen’ hand.

They sat in silence for several minutes before the FBI crew shuffled back through the room carrying their gear. After the door had closed behind them and the drop dead silence had once again fallen over the room, Jackson Craig pushed himself to his feet. He stretched and rolled his neck a couple of times before pulling his Blackberry from his pocket. He checked his messages. Fifty-three of them. He stood in the middle of the room staring down at the screen and pushing buttons with his thumb.

He sighed and asked Audrey, “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“Good news, bad news? That’s outright down-home for the likes of you.”

“I’m trying to retain the common touch,” he assured.

Audrey laughed and opted for the bad news.

“No report from any surveillance sector.” His disappointment was palpable. “Our kidnapper seems to have vaporized.”

“And the good news?”

“Rebecca’s been found alive,” he announced. “They’re keeping her overnight in Flagstaff and then flying her to L.A. tomorrow afternoon.”

“Halleluiah.”

“And that woman we were looking for in Florida. Christine King as I recall…”

Audrey perked up. “What about her?”

“L.A.’s got her in custody. Apparently she’s lawyered up and is looking to cut a deal.” He pocketed the phone. “Seems she’s demanding to talk to me.”

33

He pulled the car up to the mailbox, leaned out the window and wiggled three Chicago Tribunes from the faded yellow tube.

He looked around, scanning for anything out of place. After several minutes, he concluded that the only thing different was the weather.
In the sun, what had been ice was morphing to slush.
He checked the driveway. The tracks he
’
d made on his way out were the only marks in the snow.

He wheeled into the yard through a series of narrow puddles.
He got out of the car to lock the yard gate and then swung wide left, around the house, arcing between the orchard and the barren flower beds, rolling toward the big red barn doors at the rear of the house.

He got out again and pulled both barn doors wide open. The space was the size of a high school gymnasium. While the farm equipment was long gone, the smell of heavy grease and dry straw would, no doubt, linger forever.

He veered around his new ride and pulled all the way to the back of the barn.
He left the keys in the ignition, got out and opened the back door.

The boy was naked.
His wet clothes lay heaped on the floor of the car.
He bundled the boy up in one of the blankets and then carried him out of the barn, across the yard and up the stairs into the old fashioned kitchen.

He sat the boy on the kitchen counter.
“
I
’
ll be right back,
”
he promised.
The boy wavered and then put his hands out to steady himself.
The blanket fell from around his shoulders.
The kid found a corner and pulled it across his lap.

“
Right back,
”
he said again.

Satisfied the kid wasn
’
t going to fall and break his neck, he hustled to the front of the house.
To the room the Halsey
’
s had used as an office, where he
’
d planned on keeping the kid, where he
’
d put some of the things he
’
d bought on-line, things for the kid.
”

On his way back to the kitchen, he stopped at the thermostat and raised the setting to eighty.
He set the bag on counter next to the boy, fished around inside until he found a pair of underpants. After removing the price tag and a couple of stickers, he handed them to the kid.

“
Put these on,
”
he said, grabbing him under the arms and setting him on the floor.
The boy sat down, pulling the underpants over his feet and up his legs.

He found socks and then a pair of jeans and a GI JOE pullover. Even a warm jacket.
Camouflage.
The kid was well-schooled.
He dressed himself in two minutes flat. Nicely tied shoelaces and all.

Everything was a little big. Serviceable for the time being but a bit baggy.

Michael rubbed his eyes and looked around.
“
This is your house?
”
he asked.

“
This is our house.
”

Michael
’
s face darkened.
“
Nuh-uh,
”
he said.

“
We
’
re not staying long,
”
he assured.

The kid darted for the door, grabbed the shiny metal handle and jerked hard.
And then again and again before he realized pulling wasn
’
t going to work, that his store of
‘
door
’
knowledge wasn
’
t going to apply here and that he might possibly have made the strange man angry.
Michael flattened his back against the door, his eyes wide awake and worried.

“
You want to go out?
”
the man asked.