Hidden ( CSI Reilly Steel #3) (22 page)

‘Do you think so? Rory told me about Jennifer Hutchinson. I hope it doesn’t lead to a dead end.’

Reilly put a hand on her arm. ‘
That’s just the nature of these cases – for every promising lead there are a hundred dead ends, you know that.’

‘
I know that.  I just feel for all these people…waiting, wondering …’

Reilly looked at her closely.

‘Of course you do. For us it’s professional – usually. For them it’s personal, as personal as it can get. You too, because of your own experience.’

‘A loved one, a child
missing…’ Lucy said croakily. ‘How do people cope with that?’

‘People do what they have to do,’ Reilly replied, trying not to sound trite. ‘Just like your own family did.’

Lucy looked away, tears in her eyes.

Reilly reached across the desk, grabbed a box of tissues and slid the
m towards her.  The younger girl grabbed one and dabbed at her eyes. ‘It’s the first time I’ve cried about it in years,’ she said.

‘Well, maybe it’s about time.’

Lucy sniffed,
and continued to pat her eyes.  ‘It just feels so hopeless, Reilly. But at the same time, you can’t help but feel that they must be out there somewhere. I scan faces when I’m out shopping, wondering if I’d still even recognize Grace if I saw her.’

Reilly said nothing,
just allowed Lucy the chance to say the things that must have been playing on her mind for years.

‘
I know firsthand how busy the authorities are – we are,’ she continued, ‘how little time there is for missing person cases. I mean, unless there is evidence of foul play, unless there is a reason to think they have been killed or abducted, there are just too many of them, aren’t there?  And just no time to investigate them all properly…’

She
looked up at Reilly, her eyes red.

‘
Are you talking specifically about Grace now, or all these other cases?’

‘
Both,’ admitted Lucy. ‘I’ve never been able to look at Grace’s case file; my father won’t allow it. But I can’t help but wonder…’

Reilly could see the
question in her face. She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll take a look at it if you want…’ she offered.

Lucy’s face brightened.
‘Seriously?’

‘
I can make no promises about what we might find,’ she continued, ‘but I will promise to have a look and see if anything stands out.’

But as she encircled the girl in a reassuring hug, Reilly felt a sinking sense of dread about what she might be getting herself into.

Chapter 22

Kennedy’s reaction to
the suggestion of consulting Reuben Knight had been predictable.

‘
What do we need that gobshite for?’ he grumbled when the team assembled in a conference room the following morning. ‘It’s a bit late in the day now, seeing as we have Conn, the dead angels – I mean swans – and potentially some DNA from another attempted abduction. What the hell can he add?’

‘
I still think it would be helpful and O’Brien agrees,’ Reilly pointed out. ‘We’re only starting to build up enough of a profile of the abductor, and based on what we know, Reuben can help us move forward.’

‘
Well, don’t expect me to talk to him …’ said Kennedy.

‘D
eny him your famous insights, you mean?’ Chris mocked. ‘You know how much he values what you have to say.’

Kennedy’s response was considerably less polite.

Fortunately, O’Brien was willing to sanction such an expense to help them move forwards on the case – but only to the point of a telephone conversation rather than bringing the profiler in on the ground.

In any event,
Knight was away working on a case in Italy.

‘Italy!’ said Kennedy as they sat around the conference table. ‘All right for some.’

Reilly looked at him while
they waited for the conference call to go through. ‘I thought you didn’t want to be here for this?’

‘
Couldn’t trust you two not to screw it up,’ he told her with a grin. ‘We need someone with a bit of maturity in the room.’

‘
OK, we’re connected,’ Chris announced. ‘Reuben, I’m going to put you on speakerphone.’

There was a moment’s silence, a quiet click, then Reuben’s nasal voice filled the room.
‘Hello all! So who’s there?  Detective Delaney, of course. And the lovely Reilly?’

‘
Hi, Reuben.’

‘
Always so wonderful to hear your voice. What are you wearing today?  I hear the weather has turned cool – not that lovely dark blue McQueen?’

‘
It’s none of your business,’ Reilly replied with a smile. She wasn’t about to let him know he had guessed correctly.

‘
As I thought, the McQueen. And is Detective Dinosaur there, too? Oh I do hope so …’

‘
Let’s get down to bloody work,’ Kennedy growled.

‘
I heard that guttural rumbling in the background, so I’ll take that as a yes.’ Reuben paused.  ‘I won’t even begin to imagine what
he’s
wearing; it will quite take away my appetite for lunch and I’m planning on feasting on a good baccala. So, on to our agenda…’

There was a quiet rustling of papers.

‘I’ve read through the information you sent. Fascinating…’ Somehow he made the word last several seconds.  ‘I do so love it when people confuse myths and legends with everyday life. And, Detective Delaney, seems you got to show off your ability to speak Irish?  I bet
that
impressed the lovely Reilly …’

‘
Reuben,’ said Reilly somewhat impatiently, ‘can we move forwards?’

‘Oh? Am I detecting an atmosphere there?’ he added excitedly. ‘Has something finally happened in the ongoing will they/won’t they saga?
Do tell all…’

Chris clenched his jaw. ‘For Christ sake…’

The profiler sighed. ‘Well, I do hope you allow more foreplay when—’

‘
Reuben
…’

‘
OK, so what do we know?’ he said, suddenly all business. ‘Our man seems to be fixated on pale, red-haired children. He kidnaps them, keeps them at some unspecified location, tattoos them. Anything else that we actually know?’

‘
The two girls seem to have escaped the location, or perhaps even left of their own accord,’ Reilly pointed out. ‘The boy, Conn, it seems that he was made to leave.’

‘
Yes, that’s rather interesting, isn’t it?’

The room was filled with a strange clicking noise –
Reilly could picture Reuben, tapping his beloved Mont Blanc pen against his teeth. ‘So first of all, why is he taking them?’

‘
Could he be replacing someone?’ Reilly said, thinking of Lucy’s suggestion. ‘Maybe trying to recreate a family that he lost?’

‘Darling,
when you do decide to lift your head up from those test tubes and microscopes of yours, you’re really quite bright.  Yes, based on the boy’s interview, and multiple mentions of family, I thought that too.  So let’s assume for a moment that our kidnapper has lost a family.’

‘
Lost can mean lots of things,’ Kennedy pointed out. ‘They could be dead, or it could be a divorce and the wife’s taken them.’

‘
Correct indeed, Detective Dinosaur.  But it still might be worth checking people who have suddenly lost entire families in an accident – a car crash, something of that nature. Perhaps he has found a way of successfully isolating himself from reality, from the world.’

‘
What about the boy?’ Chris asked. ‘What do you make of that?’

‘
You said in your case notes that what seemed to make him sad was not what happened in Tír na nÓg, but the fact that he was expelled, that he was no longer there.’

‘No doubt about that.  I’m sure if he was given the chance to go back he would jump at it.’

‘
So that could suggest very strong brainwashing.’

Reilly thought
for a moment. ‘Of course, it could be that he has, indeed, created a paradise on earth.’

‘
Ah, Miss Reilly. A little too simplistic, I fear.’

‘
What do you mean?’

‘
You imply that the boy must have really loved it there, so
ipso facto
, the place must be really delightful.’

‘
Right.’

‘
But you ignore the role of persuasion, of manipulating the mind to create that feeling,’ Reuben pointed out.

‘
Enlighten me.’

‘Of course.’ He gave a little cough, preparing to go into lecturer mode. ‘I’m not suggesting that you can make something out of nothing,’ he began. ‘As the alchemists finally discovered, gold cannot be created from base metals. However, what you can do is build on something that already exists, make it so large in the mind that it excludes all other things.’

‘And
in this case?’

‘
So in this case, Detective Delaney, our man has obviously created an environment that is safe and nurturing for these children, one that allows him to play out his fantasy of the family he lost – or maybe never had which is another option.  But he has not actually created paradise. The only place you can create paradise is in the mind.’

‘
Cut the mumbo jumbo,’ growled Kennedy. ‘What are you actually saying here?’

‘
Ah, Detective Dinosaur has once again awakened from his slumber. What I’m saying, my dear man, is that while these children may indeed live somewhere that is peaceful, delightful, idyllic even, to create somewhere that looms so large in the mind of a child that two years later he still wants to go back there comes not just from the physical surroundings, but from the mental real estate his captor has created.

‘
Your man has clearly spent a considerable effort persuading these children that they live in an earthly paradise, that it is the most wonderful place they could possibly be, and that the outside world is a dangerous and dissolute place.

‘
He has taken what is already there – the place they are living – and blown it up so large in their minds that they struggle, conceptually, to look beyond its walls.’

Kennedy thought about this for a mome
nt. ‘All right, clever clogs.  So if this place is so wonderful, why did the girls leave – or escape or otherwise?’

‘
Why indeed?’ replied Reuben. ‘That is the mystery at the heart of this particular enigma, isn’t it?’

‘
One of them was pregnant,’ Reilly reminded him. ‘So she had presumably found forbidden fruit that tasted sweet.’

‘What a perfect
metaphor. Forbidden fruit indeed.’

Chris reached for his coffee
and swirled the dregs around in the bottom of the cup.  ‘But what about the cold case? 
She
wasn’t pregnant.  She froze to death on a lonely hillside…’

‘
Any type of brainwashing of this sort is going to be an uneven process,’ Reuben pointed out. ‘And it may well be that she was the first … the experiment even.’

‘
I worked on a case in North Carolina. We found the same thing there,’ said Reilly. ‘The level of acceptance was uneven, even among devotees who believed in the basic dogma.’

‘
But,’ Reuben added, ‘the fact that you’ve only discovered two potential runaways in over ten years, and that the boy, Conn, would go back now if he were permitted to do so, suggests that our unsub is something of a master manipulator.’

‘
Which brings us back to one of the unanswered questions,’ Reilly reminded him. ‘Why was Conn expelled from paradise?’

‘
One could speculate endlessly…’

‘
Isn’t that your job?’ Kennedy said.

Reuben
ignored him. ‘However, it is my
experience
,’
he emphasized the word strongly, ‘that in cases like this, boys are much less pliable than girls.  My guess is that the young boy was too rebellious, that he rocked the boat. And when you are creating a powerful fantasy, something that you have to sustain amongst several people across many years, you cannot afford a disruptive influence. If you pushed me,’ he concluded, ‘I would have to guess that Conn was expelled solely for being male…’

They were all silent for a moment.

‘What about the pregnant girl, Sarah?’ said Kennedy belligerently. ‘You make this sound like a paradise, but if she was pregnant, maybe he’s responsible for it? Maybe he is abusing them ....’