Vendetta (7 page)

Five minutes later, Nikki headed to the visitor center's parking lot where Jack and Gwen had parked the team's twenty-foot mobile command post. She'd resolved to stay for now, at least until she could determine what was going on.

Jack stepped out of the passenger side of the newly purchased vehicle that had given them the ability to be at the location of an incident while providing them with state-of-the-art, on-site communications, a conference room, and a place to mobilize volunteers.

Jack sneezed as he walked toward her.

“You okay, Jack?” Nikki stopped short of the vehicle. “You look—”

“It's just hemlock.” He tried to wave her concern away, eyes watering, nose as red as Rudolph's.

“Hemlock? You look awful.” Nikki frowned. “Your eyes are bloodshot, your nose is red, and that . . . what's that on your neck?”

“I was hoping you wouldn't notice.” Jack shot her one of his
familiar goofy smiles. “This is the primary reason I try never to venture into the great outdoors.”

Nikki's eyes widened. “No camping or hiking?”

“Summer camp when I was eleven.” Jack sneezed again. “My mom dropped me off and promised me it would be a week I'd never forget. And believe me, I still haven't forgotten. Hay fever . . . poison ivy . . . swollen mosquito bites. The next year my mom listened to me and sent me to computer camp, where I finally found my calling.”

“You're in the parking lot of the visitor center.” Nikki laughed, shaking her head. “You're not exactly roughing it yet, Jack.”

“He's just allergic to the great outdoors,” Gwen said, coming around the front of the vehicle. “That, and he got stung by a yellow jacket at the last rest stop.”

“There's nothing wrong with preferring a good sci-fi movie over a day in the pollen-filled, polluted air,” Jack countered, pulling down the foldout steps beneath the side door of the command post. “Especially considering I'm like a magnet to anything that stings, bites, or hisses.”

“Do you need to take some kind of allergy pill?” Nikki's amusement was quickly changing to concern.

“Nurse Gwen here has already doped me up with enough Benadryl and Tylenol for a dozen bee stings. And no, you don't have to worry about me going into anaphylactic shock.” Jack sneezed. “You'll just have to listen to that all day.”

“You're lucky,” Gwen said. “My brother has to carry an EpiPen with him everywhere he goes.”

“Lucky? Yeah, I'm really feeling lucky today,” he said as they started setting up the command center.

Ten minutes later, they were ready to brief everyone involved. Nikki made the introductions between the different agencies beneath the vehicle's rolled-out roof awning. For the moment, they were looking at a joint search between the local park rang
ers and the Gatlinburg Police Department, with their task force leading the investigation.

Nikki shoved aside the personal memories and held up the photo that had been bagged into evidence. “We've got a possible new lead on our abductor. This Polaroid is the same MO as that of the Angel Abductor, who terrorized East Tennessee in the early 2000s.”

“Wait a minute. Your sister's case?” Gwen's gaze narrowed.

Nikki nodded.

“Couldn't it just be a coincidence?” Jack asked. “I thought he hadn't struck for at least a decade.”

“He hasn't and, yes, it's possible that this is just a copycat. But if it's not . . .” Nikki ran her fingers across the photo. Part of her wanted to believe that this was simply a coincidence. That whoever had taken Bridget was simply playing the role of a copycat. But the other part of her longed for a chance to bring her sister's abductor to justice. Whatever that took.

“Care to fill the rest of us in?” Anderson clutched the brim of his ranger hat between his fingers.

“Of course.” Nikki ignored the knot in her stomach as she attached the photo to the dry-erase cabinet front on the outside of the truck. “Ten years ago, my sister went missing after school in a Nashville suburb. The police tied her disappearance to a serial abductor in East Tennessee who took at least six girls between 2002 and 2005. The media named him the Angel Abductor.”

“I remember reading about that case.” Anderson stepped in front of the photo. “What do you know about him?”

“Pretty much anything you want to know.” She drew in a short breath. “I've memorized case files and spent the past ten years trying to track this man down.”

“Well then, it's a good thing the boss put you in as the lead in this case,” Jack said.

Simpson, another park ranger, held up his pen. “Why did they call him the Angel Abductor?”

“His victims were all young girls with blond hair.” Nikki spit out the details matter-of-factly. All she had to do was keep to the facts and leave her personal connection aside. “He left Polaroids of them—like this one—at the crime scenes. So while Jack might be right that we're only looking at a simple coincidence, or even a copycat, we can't ignore the similarities in the cases.”

Jack nodded. “I agree. When is the last time he struck?”

“Almost ten years ago. The authorities never caught him.”

“It wouldn't be the first time a serial killer showed up out of nowhere years later and decided to strike again,” Gwen said. “He could have been sick, in prison, or simply lying low.”

“If it
is
him, that typically means something had to have set him off,” Tyler said. “Did they ever discover some kind of common stress trigger connecting the different victims? Something that set him off?”

Nikki thought through the question. “Nothing that specific. What I do know is that he was extremely meticulous and planned every abduction, presumably stalking his victims first. No DNA was ever found. Nothing that ever allowed police to make a positive ID. But as far as the man's personal life or habits . . . there's never been enough to make those kinds of conclusions.”

“What about a description?” Anderson asked.

She didn't have to close her eyes to see the police sketch that had been circulated around the time of Sarah's disappearance. But even with the description, they'd never come up with a name beyond the one the media had circulated.

“Witnesses connected to each of the disappearances gave similar descriptions of a man, late twenties, reddish-blond beard, and small loop earring in his right ear, but no arrests were ever made and only four bodies were ever found. His MO was to stalk the girls and leave a Polaroid photo of each one at
the crime scene. He took them from schools or deserted locations, killed them, then buried their bodies.”

“So today, if this is our guy,” Simpson said, “he'd be, what . . . in his late thirties? Maybe early forties now?”

“I've got the original sketch the police artist came up with right here.” Jack stepped out of the truck where he'd just finished printing out the sketch, then added it to the whiteboard. “Given time, we can come up with a computerized sketch of what he might look like now.”

Nikki stared at the familiar black-and-white sketch. He could have changed drastically, but at least it was a place to start.

“Here's something else that doesn't line up in my mind,” Anderson said. “Technology has changed tremendously in the past ten years. I read the initial report that said Bridget's abductor used GPS technology to track her. That's a far cry from a camera even ten years ago, let alone a Polaroid camera that would have already been considered vintage by then.”

“Yes, but there's no reason to believe he didn't keep up with technology.”

“But the Polaroid photo?” Gwen asked.

“An added touch. A bit of nostalgia for him? That's what we need to find out.” They could sit here all day asking questions, but every minute they spent discussing the whys was a minute they could be looking for Bridget. “All his victims were ages twelve to sixteen, white females.”

“And where were they taken from?” Gwen asked.

“All six girls lived within a hundred-mile radius of Nashville. The four bodies that were found were discovered farther east. One as far as Morgan County.” Nikki glanced at the map Gwen had hung on the whiteboard beside the sketch. “Many abductors don't run with their victims. Most are kept within fifty miles of the abduction location, often held in the home of the suspect. Those statistics didn't hold true in these cases.”

“And he didn't stick to that pattern if he brought Bridget here.”

“We need to get out there, now, and find her. Tyler, since you're here, we could use your input as well, especially with your psychological experience. A fresh pair of eyes always helps. Jack can ensure you have access to all case files currently available on the Angel Abductor. Look for anything that might give us a better picture of who this guy is.”

Nikki turned to the rest of the officers. “Anderson, you and your rangers—along with those here from the Gatlinburg police—will be in charge of coordinating the search within the park. My team and I will continue handling the logistics of the investigation, as well as coordinating our efforts on the state level and with the FBI.”

“What about the brother?” Jack asked.

“Kyle's driving in now and should be here within the hour. I've already had him establish himself as the link with the media, including coordinating with them all updates on the case after going through us. Gwen, I want a list of every outgoing and incoming call on Bridget's phone as well as a printout of all texts over the last two months. See if you can find anything that stands out. Jack, I want you to continue searching through her Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram, and whatever else she was on. Go through her conversations to look for clues. They used social media to connect. Which means if this guy made a mistake and slipped up, that's where we're going to find it.”

Nikki tried to ignore the wave of fatigue passing through her as the group split up. She moved in front of the whiteboard to tape up a recent photo of Bridget. “When Kyle gets here, I want him to help us reconstruct a detailed timeline of Bridget's last forty-eight hours. Someone had to have seen something.”

She started to turn away, then stopped to study the sketch of the Angel Abductor. When the police had released the picture
to the public, they'd admitted that not only was the description too vague but the sketch was also too generic. While she might not exactly know what he looked like, she did know the basic drive of the man they were looking for. Someone able to compartmentalize his feelings to the point where he felt no empathy. Someone with an abusive background. Someone wanting to be in control and call the shots.

Nikki felt the familiar wave of grief—mixed with a measure of panic—wash through her. She drew in a slow breath. She'd come to learn that she couldn't predict when or in what form grief might arrive. And that as much as she wanted it, she simply didn't have control over everything that happened around her.

“Nikki?” Jack's voice pulled her back to the present.

“Sorry.” She followed him inside the command post, then sat down at the workstation beside him.

“I was actually going through some of this on my way here,” he said. “Here's something you're going to want to see. Apparently Bridget had multiple Instagram accounts on her phone, and this one here shows a far different persona online than what her friends described.”

“You're sure this is her?” Nikki asked.

“Yes.” Jack scooted back to give her a closer look, then pointed to the screen. “Look at this one. Her screen name is Cat, but we're not talking about the furry kind.”

“Then what are we talking about?”

“It's connected to cutting or self-harm, and look at these hashtags—#alone . . . #suicidal . . . #depression . . .”

Nikki scrolled slowly through the photos on the girl's account. Anorexic girls, protruding collarbones, and thigh gaps. Dark rooms and faces, and dozens of poems Bridget had written about death and loss.

“What do you think?” Jack asked, looking up at her.

“I think things are never as simple as they seem. Now we
possibly know why she agreed to meet with him. She was struggling with who she was, and a guy showed up claiming to love her. She bought into the lie, making her an easy mark.”

Jack tapped his fingers against the desktop. “Maybe I'm missing something, but I saw her other accounts. How does a popular girl get involved in this?”

Nikki pointed to a photo of Bridget. “That was Bridget on the outside. You just found the one on the inside. The one underneath the smile.”

“So where . . . ?” Jack sneezed twice. “Sorry. Where does this lead us?”

“I don't know, but it's a clue into her life and what she was struggling with.” Nikki glanced at her watch. “Do me a favor. Find out if Chloe and Mia have made it back to Nashville. I'd like to set up a Skype call with them as soon as possible and see if they knew about any of this.”