The Kill (26 page)

“I can explain.”

“You’d better start talking. When I came here this morning and found out that
Agent
St. Martin had been a vital part of this investigation, I couldn’t imagine it was you. ‘Olivia St. Martin?’ I asked. Chief Pierson sang your praises and told me you were in Redwood City interviewing Brian Hall!”

“I didn’t—I told Zack about Missy. I told him I couldn’t be in the room with Hall, he probably wouldn’t take my presence very well, and I didn’t want to jeopardize the case.”

“Jeopardize the case! Hell, Olivia, you’re not an agent! You’ve already jeopardized the case.”

“Like hell I have!” Olivia swallowed, surprised at her outburst. “Quinn,” she said, trying to remain calm, but her frustration and anger were closer to the surface than she thought. “I went through the proper channels. I went to Rick Stockton and showed him what I’d put together on these cases. Yes, I knew it was circumstantial, but there was so much of it! I couldn’t just not do anything! And when he said his hands were tied, there was nothing he could do, he couldn’t send a team out to help, I didn’t have a choice.”

“You’ve always had a choice. You could have called
me
. You know I would bend over backward to help you. Anytime, anyplace.”

She took a deep breath, her heart tight. “I know. I know you would have. But don’t you understand? My testimony put an innocent man behind bars.”

“You don’t know Hall wasn’t involved.”

“No, I don’t
know
, but I believe he wasn’t. Zack and I talked it through and neither of us thinks Driscoll has a partner. The attacks are too personal, too intimate.” She paused. “And Hall is too stupid.”

“Olivia—”

“Hear me out. I
had
to do something. I had to get the information about Driscoll’s killing spree in the right hands. I had to talk to someone on the case, walk them through the evidence. They wouldn’t have listened to me; I’m a lab scientist!”

“This is serious, Olivia. You could get fired.”

“Don’t you think I know it’s serious? Do you think I care about getting fired?” Olivia clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking. “I put an innocent man in prison, leaving a killer free to prey on little girls. He’s killed at least thirty children. Because of me.
Me
! There was no way I could sit back and not do something—I know him. I know the way he works. I spent weeks studying every similar crime in the country. There are two men sitting in prison right now who I think are innocent because they were framed for Driscoll’s crimes. This guy is smart. Wily. Methodical. Disciplined.” She took a deep breath.

“He has control most of the time,” she continued. “He preys on the innocent. Waits until they’re alone before going in for the kill. And when things get too hot, when the police start to close in, he sets someone else up or just walks away. Leaves the jurisdiction. Controls his sick urges just long enough to establish a home base somewhere else. Then he starts all over again.”

“Liv, it’s not your fault. You were five years old when Missy died,” Quinn said.

“It’s not just about Missy. It’s about all the other children. It’s about Chris Driscoll and the families he has destroyed. I don’t care if I get fired as long as we catch him. You think my job is that important to me?” She shook her head.

“Dammit, Olivia.” Quinn ran a hand through his hair and paced the conference room. He stared at the white board, recognizing Olivia’s small, perfect printing. He read the timeline, looked at the photos, saw the time and effort and dedication she had put into the case. “Who knows the truth?”

“No one. No one here. Greg knows.”

“Greg,” he repeated, shaking his head.

“Quinn, please. Please let me stay. I have to see this through.”

The door opened and Zack Travis filled the opening. “Abby Vail is here with her parents. Ready?”

Olivia looked at Quinn. “I am,” she said.

“Let’s go,” Quinn said, turning away from Olivia’s stare.

She breathed an inaudible sigh of relief.

For now, she was okay.

Thank you, Quinn.

Olivia, Quinn, and Zack went into another conference room to speak with Abby Vail, the ten-year-old neighbor and friend of Nina.
The victim
.

What was going to happen to Abby if Nina died? Would she feel guilty for the rest of her life? That she didn’t, couldn’t, do anything to stop the bad man from taking her friend? Would the memory of Nina being abducted haunt her forever?

Abby Vail was small for a ten-year-old, skinny with short blonde hair, big brown eyes, and dimples that deepened when she talked.

“Did you find Nina?” she asked as soon as they walked through the door.

“Everyone is looking for her,” Zack said. He nodded to the parents. “Thank you for bringing Abby down. I’m Detective Travis, this is Special Agent Quinn Peterson and Olivia St. Martin with the FBI.”

The mother, a larger version of Abby, nodded, her eyes red and swollen. “Anything we can do. It—it could have been—” she didn’t finish her thought, but glanced at her husband over Abby’s head, her chin quivering. Her husband reached around Abby’s back and squeezed his wife’s shoulder, while his free hand grasped Abby’s.

Zack began. “Abby, I know you talked to the police officer who came to your house, but if it’s okay with you, I’d like you to start at the beginning and tell me everything you saw or heard.”

Abby nodded and took a deep breath. “Nina lives down the street from me and I was waiting for her to get home.” She paused.

“Were you going to get together and play?” Zack prompted.

Abby looked sheepish. “Not exactly. We had an argument yesterday and we were both still mad. Well, I wasn’t really mad anymore, but I didn’t want to say sorry first. I thought that maybe if I went outside when she was coming home, we could just sort of, I don’t know, forget about the fight.”

Olivia didn’t know she was nodding until Abby looked at her and shrugged. “It sounds stupid, but it always works,” Abby said. “So I was looking for her and saw her come around the corner on her bike. I went outside.”

Quinn spoke. “Abby, where were you exactly when you first saw Nina?”

“Looking out the kitchen window.”

“Did you see the white truck?”

Abby scrunched up her nose. “I didn’t notice it. I didn’t notice it until that man put Nina in it.”

“I did!” Mrs. Vail started sobbing. “It’s my fault. I saw the truck, but didn’t think anything of it.”

“Mrs. Vail,” Zack said, his voice calm and gentle, a complete contradiction to his hard exterior. “Don’t blame yourself. When did you first notice the truck?”

“When I left for the grocery store, about four thirty, a little later. The truck was there, but no one was inside. I would have noticed if someone was just sitting there.” She paused. “At least, I think I would have noticed.”

“The truck probably looked like it was supposed to be in the neighborhood,” Quinn suggested. “Clean? Newer?”

Mrs. Vail nodded. “It looked fine. I just didn’t think about it.”

Abby’s lip quivered. “The fight was so stupid. Mr. Benjamin picked Nina to be on the advanced team. I was so jealous. I really wanted to be on the advanced team, and I’m as good as Nina, but she’s so good at the parallel bars, really good, and—” Suddenly, tears streamed down her face. “I’m next in line, but I don’t want it. I don’t want it like this.” She turned and buried her face in her father’s chest.

Olivia’s chest heaved and Zack caught her eye. He stared at her, sharing his strength again, while Abby’s father murmured reassurances into his daughter’s hair.

She nodded, unable to smile but wanting him to know that his presence both comforted and emboldened her. She didn’t care what happened to her after they caught Chris Driscoll. She’d probably lose her job, might cost Greg his career, and her friends might very well never speak to her again. But for the first time, she believed she had the stamina to see this investigation through.

Please God, listen to me for once. Protect Nina. Let us find her abductor and allow justice to finally be served.

She tore her eyes from Zack’s and rested her hands on the table in front of her. Her movement caught Abby’s eye and the child looked at her, sniffling.

“Hi, Abby. You can call me Olivia, okay? Do you think you can finish telling us what you saw? If you need more time, that’s okay, but you know that it is really important we know everything if we’re going to find Nina, right?”

Abby nodded and swallowed, her chin quivering. “I’m sorry.”

Olivia shook her head. “Don’t be sorry. Nothing that happened is your fault. Okay? This bad man has been hurting girls for a long time and you have nothing to do with that. Only he is responsible.”

Abby nodded and wiped her face with the back of her hand. Her father handed her a crumpled tissue from his pocket and she took it, tearing it in her fingers.

“You left your house to meet Nina as she was riding her bike up the street. Then what happened?”

“She was still way down the block. I sat on my front porch with a book so she wouldn’t think I was waiting for her, but I wasn’t reading. Then a man just stepped out in front of her and she swerved her bike to avoid hitting him, and rode into the bushes.”

“Where was the man before he stood in front of Nina’s bike?”

Abby frowned. “Gosh, I don’t really know,” she said as she closed her eyes. Olivia gave her time. “It wasn’t the street,” Abby said. “The mailbox. The mailbox!” She opened her eyes. “That’s it! He was at the mailbox and then stepped in front of Nina. She swerved, into the bushes behind the mailbox.”

“Then what happened?” Olivia prompted.

“He leaned over to help her up. At least, that’s what I thought. But she didn’t take his hand, and stumbled over her bike, trying to get up. I started to go over to see if she was hurt.”

“Dear Lord,” Mrs. Vail said, stifling a sob.

Abby bit her lip. “I—I didn’t think anything bad was going to happen, really. I mean, nothing bad happens on our street.”

“It’s okay, Abby. Then what happened?”

“He picked her up and she started kicking and I yelled at him to put her down. I think I yelled for help, too. I—I sort of don’t remember.”

Mr. Vail squeezed her hand. “You did, honey. You did the right thing. I was working in my home office when I heard Abby cry for help. I ran outside and saw Nina’s next-door neighbor, Henry Jorge, running down the street. I didn’t know what I was thinking, except maybe the teenager up the street who just got his license had hit one of the younger kids. We’d talked to his mother twice about his fast driving.” Mr. Vail shook his head. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Olivia said, too familiar with the urge to think and act like everything was normal.

“Abby, what do you remember about the man who took Nina?” Quinn asked.

“I told the policeman who came.”

“I know, but I’d like you to tell us, too.”

“He was tall.”

“Taller than your father?”

Abby shook her head. “No.”

“How tall are you, Mr. Vail?”

“Six foot two.”

“What else did you notice?” Quinn prompted.

“He was kinda old.”

“How old?”

Abby shrugged. All adults seemed old to kids.

“What specifically made you think he was old?”

“He didn’t have a lot of hair.”

“Bald?”

She shook her head, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. “Short, like a buzz cut, but there was a shiny spot in the back. Grandpa cuts his hair really short because it’s falling out and it doesn’t make him look so old.”

“Could you tell what color?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t really know, there wasn’t a lot of hair. It wasn’t dark, like black or brown, though.”

“What was he wearing?”

She thought. “Jeans. White T-shirt.”

Olivia’s heart pounded. “Did you see anything else that seemed different to you?”

Abby shook her head.

“What about his arms? Were they bare?”

“Yeah, but he had on—” she stopped. “No, it wasn’t a shirt. He had some weird blue thing on his arm.”

“A tattoo?” Olivia asked, hitting herself for leading the girl, but unable to help herself.

“Yeah, it could have been, but it was like smudged.”

“Old tattoos can look that way.”

Olivia’s hands trembled and she put them in her lap. Any doubt that Chris Driscoll was Nina’s abductor vanished.

“Do you know who this man is?” Mr. Vail asked.

Zack and Quinn exchanged looks. Quinn spoke, “We have a couple of good leads.”

“Which means what?”

“Mr. Vail, I’d like to tell you everything we have,” Quinn said, “but in the interest of safety, we can’t say. I will tell you that we have a suspect and between the FBI and Seattle PD, we’re doing everything humanly possible to track him down.”

“Abby, would you be able to describe what you saw to an artist?” Zack asked. “Someone who’ll draw a picture of what you say, so you can help us get a good idea of what he looks like.”

“I don’t remember much.”

“But Mr. Jorge remembers some, and you remember some. Together, I think we’ll have a good idea of what this man looks like.”

“I’ll try.”

“Thank you, Abby.”

Zack stood. “The artist will be in momentarily. Can I get you water? Soda?”

The Vails shook their heads. “Just find Nina. Lydia’s world revolves around her.”

A foul smell awakened her.

Nina coughed, her voice sounding far away, then tasted a mixture of car fumes and dirt. A low, steady hum surrounded her, lulling her as she drifted between sleep and alert, but a sudden
ping-ping
beneath her jolted her awake.

Something was wrong.

Nina’s entire head felt thick, like when her mother woke her in the middle of the night last year to tell her that Grandma had died. But this was different. It hurt. She shivered in the cold, goosebumps rising on her skin.

Go to sleep. You’re dreaming.

No, it wasn’t a dream. Nina tried to open her eyes, but something held them shut. Like a blindfold. She tried to touch the sore lump on the back of her head, but she couldn’t move her arms. She squirmed. Her hands were bound behind her as she lay on her side.