The Abduction (13 page)

“Yes, sir.” She frowned. “But you’re still going to make her take a polygraph?”

“Absolutely. If FBI resources are committed to a case, we do it by the book— and the book says to polygraph the parents. But I ask. I don’t order. Works just as well.” He gestured at Jorgenson’s file. “Find out who she worked for at Justice. I know some people over there.”

“I did. Her immediate supervisor was named James Kelly.”

“Jimmy?”

“You knew him?”

“Yeah, we came up through the Academy together. He went to law school at night then moved over to Justice. He was out in L.A. last I heard … What do you mean,
knew
him?”

“He’s dead. Hit and run, three years ago.”

“Damn. He was a good guy.” Devereaux sighed. “The good die young. What else you got?”

Jorgenson opened another brown folder. “The grandfather, he’s a retired Army colonel—West Point, Vietnam. Apparently he was some kind of war hero.”

“No kidding?” Devereaux waited for her to continue. She didn’t. “And …?”

She shrugged. “And nothing, sir. He’s classified.”

Devereaux put on his reading glasses and motioned for the folder. She held it out to him; he took it and flipped open the brown folder labeled BRICE, BEN, and scanned the text.

“Full colonel. Green Beret. Seven tours in Vietnam. Six Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, eight Purple Hearts, two Soldier’s Medals, Distinguished Service Cross, Legion of Merit, the Medal of Honor. Yeah, I’d say he was some kind of hero.”

“Why’s he classified?”

“Green Beret, he was probably in Cambodia and Laos when Johnson and Nixon were swearing on TV we weren’t there.”

“The presidents lied about the war?”

He chuckled. “How old are you, Jorgenson?”

“Twenty-six.”

He shook his head. “I can’t even remember twenty-six. Yeah, Jorgenson, presidents lied about the war, the generals, too. I was ROTC, signed up for the tuition plan. Got a hell of an education in Nam. I went over there just hoping to survive my tour. Guys like Brice, they went over there to free the oppressed, just like the Green Beret motto says. They believed it. All they got for their efforts was spit on when they came home.” Devereaux removed his reading glasses and scratched his chin with the earpiece. “Ben Brice … that name sticks in my head for some reason. Get what you can from the Army and run a database search on all public records on him.”

“You think there might be some connection with Gracie’s abduction?”

“You never know what’s connected.” Jorgenson stood to leave. “I want you at the vigil tonight. Our boy might show.”

“Yes, sir. Oh, the coach is here to look at the blow-ups.”

“Bring him in, don’t call me sir, and have someone find Colonel Brice.”

He carries Gracie through the woods to this location. He’s in a hurry, worried someone will discover she’s missing and come looking, or perhaps has and is. His accomplice is waiting twenty meters away in a vehicle leaking oil. But he stops, removes her clothes, and rapes her right here? With so many people in the park, possibly searchers already in the woods? With Gracie kicking and screaming and putting up one hell of a fight? She’s a strong girl and afraid of no one—the only way she wouldn’t have fought is if she were unconscious or dead. Did he rape an unconscious or dead victim? Did he kill her here?

No.

Gracie Ann Brice did not die here. Ben Brice had been in the killing fields, knee deep in death; death would forever be a part of him—he had seen death, he had heard death, he could touch, taste, smell, and feel death. But not here.

Gracie had left here alive.

But why did the abductor leave her shorts behind? Ben closed his eyes and remembered working in the shop with her. She had been carving her name into her rocking chair when she paused and said, “Ben, why do you always know when I’m in trouble, when I need you?”

“I don’t know, doll. There’s something in our lives that binds us together. I don’t know what and I don’t know why, but there is a reason.”

God had bonded them together. Ben Brice knew that as well as he knew how to build a rocking chair or kill a man. And he knew that if she came to him, their bond was unbroken. And she was still alive.

Gracie, show me the way. I will come for you.

“Colonel Brice!”

Ben opened his eyes. He was sitting cross-legged inside the crime-scene tape where Gracie’s shorts and shoe had been found. A young FBI agent was jogging through the woods toward him. He arrived out of breath and said, “Colonel Brice, Agent Devereaux needs you back at the command post!”

Jan Jorgenson had been born five years after the Vietnam War ended. Twenty-four years later, she had graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.S. in Education—the only degree her parents would pay for—and a Masters in Criminal Psychology. She had told her parents that school boards across the country considered crim psych the most relevant degree for a teaching career in America’s public schools. They had bought it. Immediately upon graduation, she had applied with the Bureau. Her parents wanted her to be a teacher; she wanted to be Clarice Starling.

So Jan Jorgenson had left the family farm outside Owatonna, Minnesota, driven to Quantico, Virginia, and entered the FBI Academy. She wanted to be a profiler, interviewing and compiling detailed psychological traits of imprisoned serial killers, psychopaths, and sexual predators, and constructing scientific profiles of suspects in pending investigations. But upon graduation from the Academy, she had been assigned to the Dallas field office, where for the last eleven months she had tracked down and interviewed young Arab men who fit the Islamic terrorist profile.

In fact, this was as close as she had ever come to anyone in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, sitting next to the parents and across the Brice kitchen table from two real live FBI profilers, Agents Baxter and Brumley. They looked like partners in an accounting firm.

“Strangers abduct children for sex.”

Agent Brumley had thus opened this meeting with the family. He could have worked up to that, Jan thought. The mother obviously thought the same; her eyes were now drilling holes in Brumley’s bald head. Oblivious, he forged ahead.

“This perpetrator has a long history of sex offenses, I guarantee it.”

The victim’s father looked like he was going to throw up; he abruptly stood and almost ran out of the kitchen just as Colonel Brice walked in and leaned against the wall.

“We’ve constructed a profile,” Agent Baxter said, “a personality print, if you will, like a fingerprint.” He passed out copies to everyone at the table and then read from his copy. “We believe that the timing of the abduction was relevant to a significant stressor in the perpetrator’s life, perhaps the loss of his job or some other personal rejection. And that the abductor is a loner, over thirty and single, immature for his age, has no friends, is unable to maintain a relationship with a female his own age, probably employed in a job involving children, lacks social skills, abuses alcohol or drugs, reacts violently when angered, handles stress poorly, is selfish, paranoid, and impulsive, possesses an inflated self-esteem that cannot handle rejection, and harbors antisocial tendencies.” He looked up. “We’ll release this profile to the media. Hopefully, a citizen can identify someone they know with these traits.”

The mother abruptly stood. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I can.” She held up her copy. “Immaturity, no social skills, selfishness, paranoia, inflated self-esteem, can’t handle rejection—I can identify every one of those traits to someone I know.”

Agent Baxter was almost out of his chair with excitement.

“Who’s that, Mrs. Brice?”

“Every partner in my law firm.”

Agent Baxter exhaled and sat back down, realizing he’d been had. The mother tossed her copy of the profile on the table.

“Look, Agent Baxter,” she said, “cut the psychobabble bullshit. The guy’s a pervert who likes to fuck little girls!”

The mother stormed out of the room. Agent Baxter was visibly taken aback. After an awkwardly long silent moment, Colonel Brice spoke in a quiet voice.

“He wasn’t alone. There were two men, probably the two men on the videotape.”

“Mr. Brice,” Agent Brumley said, “sexual predators work alone, that’s proven. They’re what we call ‘loner deviants.’ ”

“I was at the park,” the colonel said, “retracing Gracie’s steps. He grabbed her behind the concession stand and took her through the woods to an accomplice waiting for him in a vehicle leaking oil. He didn’t work alone.”

“Then why did he leave her shorts in the woods?” Agent Baxter asked.

“Because he wanted them found.”

Agent Baxter frowned. “
Why?
”

“So you’d do just what you’re doing—hunting for a sexual predator.”

“Are you okay, Mrs. Brice?”

Elizabeth was sitting in her formal living room—now the FBI’s command post—and staring across the table at Agent Devereaux.

“No, I’m not okay. My daughter’s been abducted.”

“Mrs. Brice, I can still get a psychologist in here.”

“No.”

She had gained control of her emotions again. Her mind was alert and angry again. She had a plan. And it required a banker, not a psychologist.

“Let me know if you change your mind. Now, Mrs. Brice, what kind of kid is Gracie? See, with these guys, it’s all about control. They like to intimidate their victims, make the victim feel helpless and cornered so they feel powerful. What would Gracie do if she was cornered?”

“She’d fight.”

“Good. That’s the key to her survival.”

“She will survive.”

Agent Devereaux nodded. “Yes, ma’am. So, Mrs. Brice, you used to work our side of the street?”

“Yes.”

A little smile. “What made you go over to the dark side?”

She paused. “Life took me there.”

The agent frowned, then he said, “Well, then you understand why I need polygraphs.”

“You said it wasn’t random, that she was targeted. Now you think one of us did it?”

“No, ma’am. All I’m saying is, the Bureau is committing extensive resources to finding your daughter and the man who took her. But we’ve been burned before— you remember the Susan Smith case, said she was carjacked, her kids abducted? Turned out she drowned them herself. We must eliminate any family involvement.”

Elizabeth glared at Agent Devereaux, the rage making a move to escape the darkness. “I just left your two brilliant profilers in my kitchen. I listened to them telling me that a predator abducted my little girl for sex.” She slammed her fist down on the table. “Goddamnit! And now you’re telling me you want polygraphs of me and my husband?”

Agent Devereaux nodded. “Yes, ma’am. And Colonel Brice and his wife, and the household staff. Mrs. Brice, I know it’s an intrusion, but from our standpoint, it’s always a possibility. Fact is, only a couple hundred children each year are abducted by strangers. The rest are family related.”

He reached across the table and took her clenched fists in his hands. She refused to allow the tears to come.

“Look, Mrs. Brice, this isn’t a family abduction, I know that. But Washington doesn’t. And I just got off the phone with my superiors, requesting authorization for additional staffing—ten more agents to help find Gracie. So this ends well. Do this, Mrs. Brice, so the Bureau will give me more people to find your daughter. Do it for Gracie.”

“I’ll do it.”

The voice came from behind them. Elizabeth pulled her hands free of Agent Devereaux’s and turned. Her father-in-law was standing in the door. She started to object just because Ben Brice was a drunk and she hated him. But something in his eyes made her hold her tongue. She turned back to Agent Devereaux.

“I want it done here. I don’t want us on TV being marched into the police station.”

Agent Devereaux said, “We’re setting up in the library.”

Ben entered the library to a young FBI agent holding his hand out to him. “Mr. Brice, I'm Agent Randall.”

Randall was thirty, glasses, an accountant trying hard to be sociable. He was holding a rubber tube.

“If you’ll remove your shirt, Mr. Brice, I’ll strap the pneumograph tube around your chest.” Agent Randall moved around behind Ben, continuing his friendly chatter. “Nothing to be nervous about. A polygraph machine measures your breathing rate, your blood pressure—”

Ben unsnapped the cuffs of his shirt and then the front snaps.

—“your pulse rate, and your skin’s reflex to an electrical flow. See, the idea is, when someone’s lying they—”

Ben slipped the shirt off his back.

“
Jesus!
”

Ben felt Agent Randall’s eyes on his back; his chatter had been cut short. After a moment, Randall reached around Ben from behind to connect the tube; his hands were trembling.

“Is that, uh, is that too tight, Mr. Brice? It doesn’t hurt this … these … your back?”

“No.”

Agent Randall returned to Ben’s view. “Okay, where was I? Oh, you can sit down, Mr. Brice.”