I found a pair of long cargo shorts with a rope-tie belt. It looked to be about my size. I was browsing through a rack of button-down shirts when the guy with cornrows appeared right in front of me.
“Hey, bro,” he said, “you have like a skin condition or something?”
“Something like that,” I replied.
“Oh, hey, you know I was just messing. If I’d known, I would’na said Jack. I’m totally into affirmative toleration, y’know?”
“You always insult new customers?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” he said.
“Make a lot of sales that way?”
“People come in here expect a little crazy,” he said. “I’m Mike the Mad Monk, man.”
“You have a gift for alliteration,” I said. I held up a black shirt decorated with electric blue stick figures. “You have this in a 3XL?”
“Big dude, huh?” he asked. His eyes widened as if he hadn’t really looked at me before this moment. “Whoa, you are a big dude.” He took the shirt. “Back in a flash.”
Mad Monk Mike returned moments later with a different shirt. It had a lot of black in it, but the collar, tails, and sleeves all bled from black to a kind of vibrant sea green. “So, dude, the one you got is XL only. But this one is 3X; thought it would look better on ya’ anyway. The green’ll make you look less shockingly pale, y’know?”
“You’ve really got this sales approach down,” I said, taking the shirt.
“Hey, thanks, bro,” he said. “That’s mighty white of you.” He burst out laughing. “Hey, hey, sorry, man. Couldn’t resist.”
I rolled my eyes and strode to the nearest dressing room. The shorts and shirt fit well, and I found a pair of rugged-looking sandals. I paid Mad Monk Mike with more of the assassin’s money and went back to the car. The temperature had gone up twenty degrees in the last half hour. The car’s interior was baking, so I was grateful to have something substantial between flesh and upholstery.
The cell phone had charged up two bars, and again, the missed call symbol blinked on the display. “This is getting ridiculous,” I muttered, checking the number. It was Rez. I dialed.
“Special Agent Rezvani,” she answered, her tone professional and disinterested. Before I could say anything, she said, “One moment please.” I heard her cover the phone with her hand. A few moments later, she asked, “Ghost, where are you?”
“I’m in town,” I said. “As directed.”
She ignored the jab. “We’ve got a name on the second victim,” she said. “Pamela Katherine Kearney. We found her folks. They still live in Anchorage, Alaska. They took her when she was four. Four years old, Ghost.”
I couldn’t find words. But I smoldered plenty. It was a reality that I could not escape. Evidence that another little girl had been torn away from her family and then kept captive like an animal for more than fifteen years. I thought about the myriad terrors she must have felt, the screaming ache for her parents…for someone to come rescue her. Only no one did. Smiling Jack and his accomplice murdered her.
“Ghost?”
“I’m here.”
“Shreveport and Anchorage,” she muttered. “Not exactly sister cities.”
“Smiling Jack went mobile,” I thought aloud. “That’s an angle we’ll need to explore. What else you got?”
“The doc at Panama City Beach Hospital—”
“Doc Shepherd?”
“No,” she said, “an abortion doc off the list Doctor Shepherd gave me, the list of Cain’s Daggers still known to exist. I visited Dr. August Garrett Malcolm.”
“But he’s not Smiling Jack?”
“But he’s not Smiling Jack. He all but rolled out the red carpet for our forensic team. They tested the implement every way possible.”
“Maybe that’s part of his con,” I said, grasping at straws. “Just like he was putting those videos up for years, rubbing it in the face of FBI and everyone else.”
“I wondered the same thing,” Rez said. “But he’s got an airtight alibi. He lectured at a local college, went out with colleagues for cigars and drinks until 3:00 a.m. It all checks.”
I slammed my fist on the steering wheel. “He’s here, Rez,” I growled. “Smiling Jack and his accomplice are here in town somewhere! We’ve got all the photos. We’ve got the camera. We’ve got the video clips. We know the murder weapon. We’ve got two bodies. Why are the killers still alive?”
“You mean free, don’t you? Why are the killers still free?”
I didn’t answer. “You’ll let me know if the Bureau gets closer…if you find out anything new?”
She took too long to answer. “I’m talking to you right now, aren’t I?”
“I’ve…I’ve got to go,” I said. “I need to clear my mind. I need to think.”
We hung up. My focus on the conversation had led me to drive unconsciously. I obeyed all the traffic signs and signals, but I had no idea where I was driving or why. I’d left Front Beach Road behind, that much was clear. Suburban homes sprung up all around me. One street sign told me to slow down. Another street sign told me there was a playground near.
I pulled up close to a rounded corner and put the car in park in the shadow of a huge weeping willow tree. Across the street, a little horde of children chased each other through a sprinkler designed to look like an inverted octopus. Even sixty yards away, I could hear the kids giggling. The average person put in my position would wonder what kind of monster could take a child, hold a child captive, torture, and murder a child? But I don’t wonder.
I know such monsters…all too well. Over a great many years, I have found myself repulsed and shocked, mentally and emotionally wrecked by the savagery of mankind. Unimaginable horrors are possible when there is no concept of how rare and matchless each human life is. And unlike some teenagers desensitized by ultra-violent, photorealistic video games, I never get used to it.
Even now, I can feel the Smiling Jack murders gnawing at my mind, shredding the fringes, and threatening far worse if I don’t wash them away. I crushed my eyes shut, remembering my silver case hidden away in Forneus Felriven’s sepulchral halls. One way or the other, I would finish this mission, and then I would have to face Forneus and his soulcleaving blade. If I did not, if I resolved myself to flee, and resigned myself to live with the images I’d seen and would see…I’m not sure what would happen to me. My greatest fear was that my mind would fracture to such a point that…I would become like the monsters I pursued.
But I would not flee. It was not in my nature. So, I watched the children play and thought. Smiling Jack and his accomplice had taken the young women when they were children, five and four respectively. If the pattern fit their approach to all of their victims, how had they done it? While it was tragically true that children are taken every day, at least half the time the perpetrators are caught, usually within a very short time of the taking. So how did Smiling Jack get away with it?
Sure he was clever…and diabolically patient. By taking the young women as children and not performing the murders until they were adults, he’d had the FBI chasing ghosts. In fact, Smiling Jack had outwitted the FBI at every turn. But still, sooner or later, the law of averages would have caught up with Smiling Jack.
I watched the scene in front of me. The little blond girl in pigtails had picked up the octopus sprinkler and was giving her friends a good soaking. Then, I saw a face appear in the screen window several feet above the playful children. The face disappeared. Moments later, a woman appeared bearing an armful of towels. She wrapped the dark haired girl about the shoulders and kissed her cheek. Then she gave her a gentle shove toward the backyard. The women dropped a towel on top of the towheaded boy and gave his head a good rumpling. While she dried him off, she glanced up and glared at me.
She’d seen me sitting here in the car. She’d wondered why a man would sit in a hot car parked so close to where her children played. Her protective instinct had taken over. And she’d
come for her kids. Smiling Jack might have outwitted the FBI, but there was no way he could have totally outperformed parents’ protective instincts, again and again, without ever been seen. Unless he was seen. Unless he was known.
Statistically, the kidnapper is most often someone the kid knew: a disgruntled spouse, ex, or step parent. Maybe that’s how Smiling Jack did it. No, but that didn’t make sense. Shreveport, Louisiana and Anchorage, Alaska? And what about all the other victims from the photos. They could be all over the country, maybe all over the world. Smiling Jack couldn’t know each all of them personally…could he?
I watched as the woman herded the last of the three children into the back yard. She gave me a withering glance as she shut the gate. I put the car in gear and proceeded slowly down the road. I drove exactly the speed limit, but due more to my distracted mind than to propriety. If Smiling Jack and his accomplice did not know the children or their families, all it would have taken to get the killers caught was one child’s scream…one nosy neighbor. As if on cue, I passed an old guy pushing a lawn mower. He had a very round pot belly and a floppy fishing hat with a beer logo. He watched me drive by. He didn’t wave or smile, but he did raise an eyebrow.
I passed a small park nestled protectively beneath a canopy of broadleaf trees. Kids bobbed up and down on the seesaw. I watched a child clamber up a sliding board and then whoosh back down. The swings were occupied by kids as well. But for every clump of children, there were adults watching. Some wandering aimlessly over the chipped wood path; some in animated conversation on park benches; others just standing and staring—maybe lost in the magnificence of childhood—but all of them were watching. If I set foot in that park without a child of my own, every adult in the area would scan me up and down. They’d begin questioning my motives. Some would have their cell phones at the ready.
The park in my rearview mirror, I drove on. I passed a mailbox, a fire hydrant, and a couple of kids hard at work drinking the lemonade from their own stand. Sure enough, a parent sat on the front stoop. I felt like I had just a few more pieces to find to complete a large complicated puzzle, but the person who put the puzzle away last lost the very piece I needed. I knew the sort of piece to look for; I knew its general shape and the types of sockets it had to fill. But it just didn’t seem to be there.
The clock on the dash read 12:40. Still hours before Doc Shepherd might be free. I drove on, planning to exit the neighborhood by the next through street. Then, I heard a familiar jingling tune. I slowed and pulled to the curb, waiting. The chiming tune grew louder; it was a springy version of “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” A white truck pulled around the corner. Kids trailed behind it at a safe distance. A few moments after the truck came to a stop, a large side window slid open, and a man with a fuzzy grey mustache leaned out.
The Ice Cream Man.
No, I thought. But it seemed to fit the puzzle. The driver of an ice cream truck wasn’t someone parents knew as a general rule, but the appearance of an ice cream truck was as accepted as a thunderstorm. Sometimes it came; sometimes it didn’t. Either way, no one really cared, except for the kids. And kids really did care…a lot.
All it took was a few distant jingly notes, and kids from all over the neighborhood would burst from their doors at mach speed. They’d leap fences, cut through yards, and even dodge traffic to get to that white truck. And then, they’d wave cash at the driver. They were doing it right now. Right in front of me.
Smiles everywhere. Smiles from the kids. Smiles from the parents. Smiles from the Ice Cream Man as he handed frozen goodies to the kids. It fit. Kids in every state would throw caution to the wind for the Ice Cream Man. They might even follow the Ice Cream Man into the back of his truck. I grabbed the cell phone, scrolled down to Rez’s number, and almost pushed send.
Almost.
The thought scratching at the backdoor of my mind hadn’t quite coalesced just yet. Half-conscious of what I was doing, I put the car in drive and made a slow u-turn. I glanced at the crowd still gathered around the Ice Cream Man. It was a good puzzle piece. The colors on the fringes matched, and it seemed to have the right shape. But it didn’t quite fit. Smiling Jack and his accomplice might have used the guise of an ice cream truck vendor to bring the kids running. But, if they did, they would also bring witnesses.
I drove back the way I came, passing the lemonade stand, the fire hydrant, and mailbox. I passed the park, now less populated, due to the Ice Cream Man no doubt. When the bells of an ice cream truck rang, lots of people came. Little kids, sure. But also, there were teenagers and even parents. Lots of people liked ice cream.
If little Susie disappeared and the last time anyone saw little Susie was around the ice cream truck, it wouldn’t take long for someone to go ask the Ice Cream Man a few pointed questions. Parents would remember their kids blasting out the door. Heck, most of the time that was preceded by kids begging their parents for money to buy ice cream. No, the Ice Cream Man puzzle piece didn’t quite fit.
There was something about the little group of kids playing at the sprinkler. Something I had seen but still missed. I knew they wouldn’t be there when I returned. The wary mom had tucked them into the backyard and out of sight. But still, I needed to revisit, to see if even the tiniest strand remained for me to grasp. I rolled to a stop at the curb directly across the street from the yard where the children had played.
As I suspected, the sprawling Bermuda grass lawn was empty. I left the car running, scanned the yard, and let my thoughts meander. I figured I had about five minutes before the eagle-eyed parent noticed me again and got nervous enough to call the local police.
“Big family,” I muttered, recalling the children bobbing in and out of the sprinkler. A redhead, a couple of brunettes, a blond, a towhead, a…a diverse family. That thought arrived, and it felt like a strand, so I pulled. Come to think of it, the woman who came out to keep the kids safe didn’t really look much like any of the kids. Maybe the brunette girl. She and the woman had the same long, coltish limbs. But I didn’t notice any overt similarities in the rest of the kids. Most of them looked about the same age too. So maybe not a family? Then…then it smacked me in the forehead.
I knew it before I read the little sign in the front yard.
“Little Miracles Family Daycare.”
I jammed the car in gear and had the phone dialing Rez in an instant.
She picked up. “Agent Rezva—”
“Daycare,” I said. “That’s how he did it.”
“What?”
“Smiling Jack,” I said. “That’s how he’s done it all these years. He runs a daycare.”
“Ghost, that’s insane,” she said.
“Go back and look at Erica Graziano’s file,” I said. “She was snatched from a daycare.”
“I remember that,” she said, “But she was taken from the daycare not by the daycare.”
“You sure about that?” I asked. “Did you crosscheck with the Kearney girl? She was four when she was taken, not quite school age, but perfect—”
“Perfect for daycare.” Rez was silent a few tics. “Okay, I’ll check it out. But think about this: most daycares are run by women. Sexist as it is, a lot of moms wouldn’t trust their kids in a daycare run by men.”
Chapter 32
I threw the assassin’s car into park while it was still moving, so it jerked to a stop at the curb. I knew Agent Rezvani would find a way to get the FBI’s trillion gigahertz engines to work, but I couldn’t leave it just to them. I returned to the Internet cafe where Mr. Scratch had appeared with the butterfly clue. I ducked out of the car, realizing I hadn’t noted the cafe’s name when I’d come the first time. No small wonder as I was severely diminished by a lengthy travel.
The Bean Machine. Not very clever, but I guess it didn’t matter when their coffee was that good and their data transmission rates were that fast. I was grateful to find Melanie again behind the counter. Her lively eyes brightened when she saw me.
&nb
sp; “Hey, mister,” she said. “You aren’t going to slosh the restroom again are you?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied. “Listen, I need a code and more of that incredible coffee you brought me last time? Same deal work for you?” I slid a hundred dollar bill across the counter. My last one. After breakfast, the surf shop, and this, I was officially broke again.
“You got it,” she said, blinking and shaking her head. “You just paid for my Econ book next semester.”
I sat at the same computer and typed in the access code Melanie had provided. My fingers flew over the keyboard. I searched both the Graziano and the Kearney abductions. And I searched out the most recent Smiling Jack photographs. I found the original article on Erica Graziano and scanned down the page. There it was.
Erica had been playing in the yard at Small Favor’s Daycare Center when she’d been taken. The daycare’s owner, Martina Palmer, had been quoted as saying, “I’d just called all the children in for lunch. It was grilled cheese, Erica’s favorite, so I wondered when she didn’t come running.”
I finished the article, noting once again the photo of little Erica and her parents. But there was no picture of Martina Palmer or the daycare center. Then, I clicked and browsed a dozen articles on Kearney’s abduction. Two years and more than four-thousand miles away, and the two articles were nearly identical in content. Pamela Kearney had also been taken while under the not-so-watchful eye of a daycare provider. This time, her name was Elizabeth Borden of Little Eskimo’s Family Daycare. The article’s author described Ms. Borden as heartbroken and visibly disturbed by the loss. In fact, Ms. Borden had closed the daycare in order to seek psychiatric help.
As Rez had suggested, both of the daycares were run by women. But on a whim, I searched Little Eskimo’s Family Daycare and Borden. Then I clicked on the images search filter. There were several photos: an Easter Egg hunt, a birthday party, a grand opening. One of them showed Elizabeth Borden straight on. She had long hair, pulled back tightly, distant darkish eyes—I couldn’t tell the color—and a grim smile. She also looked very familiar to me.