Lawman

“I didn’t mind.” He checked his watch. “But I have to go back to my office. We’re working on a murder. A child. I have some more calls to make.”

She stiffened. “Do you have any leads?”

He shook his head. “It’s early times. She was apparently taken right out of her bedroom, with her parents asleep next door and kept for several days. A hiker tripped over her body behind a church.” His face hardened. “She was ten years old, and all her immediate family members have alibis. She was assaulted. What the hell kind of human being feels attracted to little girls?”

She was breathing uneasily, her arms folded tight over her chest. “Inadequate men,” she bit off, “who want control.”

Her reply surprised him. He glanced at her. “Excuse me?”

“Men who can’t make it with grown-up women,” she said tautly. “And they hate women because of it. So they victimize the most helpless sort of females.”

“You’re good,” he murmured with a faint smile.

“Yes, that’s my take on the case, too.” His eyes were still on the road. “You’ve got potential. Ever think of law enforcement for a career?”

“I hate guns.”

He laughed. “You don’t have to have a gun. We employ civilians at the Bureau,” he added. “Information specialists, engineers, linguists…”

“Linguists?”

He nodded. “In the old days, you had to be an agent to work for the Bureau. But now we’re more laidback.”

She smiled in spite of herself. “You’re not laidback, Mr. Grier,” she returned.

He glanced at her curiously. “How old are you?”

Her eyebrows lifted.

“Tell me,” he persisted.

“Twenty-four.”

He smiled. “I’m thirty-six. That doesn’t qualify me for a rocking chair. You can call me Garon.”

She gave him a long look. “That’s a name I’ve never heard before.”

“My mother had four children, all boys. My father says she used to sit on the porch and go through baby name books for hours. At that, my name isn’t quite as bad as Cash’s.”

“Cash isn’t all that unusual,” she pointed out.

“His real name is Cassius,” he replied with a smile.

“My gosh!”

“That’s why he uses ‘Cash,’” he chuckled.

“Are the two of you close?”

He shook his head. “We’ve had some family problems since my mother’s death. We’re in the process of getting to know each other. Cash went off to military school when he was about eight or nine years old. Until this past year, we didn’t really speak.”

“That’s sad, to have a family and not speak.”

He wondered about her parents, but it was too soon to start asking personal questions. He didn’t want any more contact with her than necessary. He was married to his job. On the other hand, he’d just talked to her about his work, and that was something he’d never done before. She had an empathy about her that was hard to resist. He felt at home with her. That was dangerous, and he wasn’t going to let anything develop between them.

GARON DROPPED GRACE OFF and went back to work. Marquez’s captain had called and the senior ASAC called Garon into his office and authorized the Bureau’s assistance. Garon would head up the task force as they searched for a murderer who killed little girls. Nobody was saying it out loud, but it was very possible that they had a serial killer on their hands. At least four cases shared the same basic pattern of death.

“I’ll get started, then,” Garon told him.

“Marquez’s captain said the case needs to be solved as soon as possible,” ASAC Bentley remarked. He was older than Grier, near retirement and had asked for assignment to San Antonio, where he had relatives. He was a kindly man, with a good heart, and he was a superior agent. Garon respected him. “The captain has an open mind, but Marquez’s lieutenant doesn’t. He thinks it’s all coincidence.”

“I don’t. The cases are too similar,” Garon said doggedly.

The ASAC smiled. He’d known Garon a long time. He knew how determined the agent could be. “That would be my gut feeling, too. Stay out of trouble.”

“I’ll try,” he replied. The grin gave him away.

HE PHONED MARQUEZ and they met at a local diner. Marquez looked tired. There were dark circles under his eyes.

“You look like you’ve been burning the midnight oil,” Garon remarked.

He laughed, a little hollowly. “I take these homicides seriously. I phoned the Oklahoma P.D. where the other red ribbon murder occurred. That was an eleven-year-old girl. They found her facedown in a patch of brown-eyed Susans near a cemetery.”

“Assaulted?” Garon asked.

Marquez nodded curtly. “Yes. Strangled, as well. And then stabbed about twenty-five times. Just like this one we’re working on. Too similar to be unrelated.”

Garon’s lips made a thin line. “A very personal attack.”

“Exactly my feeling. The perp hated the child, or what she represented. It was overkill, plain and simple. Something else—there was another victim, same basic MO, over near Del Rio, about ten years ago, killed with a knife and left in a field. I was looking for similar cases and happened to run into one of our older investigators who remembered it. It wasn’t even fed into a database, it was so old. I e-mailed the police department over there and asked them to fax me the details.” He ran a hand through his thick, straight black hair. “Little girls. Innocent little girls. And this monster may have been doing it since the nineties, at intervals, without getting caught. I’d give blood to get this guy,” Marquez added. He paused long enough to give the waitress his order and wait until she could pour coffee in his cup before he spoke again. “He’s got to be a repeat sex offender. He’s too good at what he does for a sloppy amateur. It takes a wily so-and-so to take a child right out of her own bedroom with her family in the house. And he does it over a period of years, if the cases do match, without getting caught or even seen.”

“That piece of red ribbon?” Garon murmured, sipping coffee, “must have something to do with a fantasy he’s acting out.”

“That’s what I thought,” the younger man said. “The detective who told me about the Del Rio case also remembered hearing of a similar cold case, from twelve or more years back, but he couldn’t recall where it happened. He thinks it happened in south Texas.”

“Did you look in the database for that case?”

“Yes, but the Del Rio case wasn’t there. God knows how many others aren’t, either, especially if they happened in small, rural towns.” He smiled. “I told my lieutenant about that Del Rio cold case, and about the other two children in Oklahoma who were taken from their homes and found dead. I said we needed to get the FBI involved so you guys could do a profile of the killer for us, and he laughed. He said the deaths had no connection. So I went to the captain, and he called your ASAC. Thanks.”

“No problem,” Garon mused. “Most veteran cops hate paperwork and complications. Nobody wants to be looking for a serial killer. But we might catch this one, if we’re stubborn enough.”

Marquez pursed his lips. “I asked one of your squad members about you,” he said. “He says that you’ll chase people to the gates of hell.”

Garon shrugged. “I don’t like letting criminals get away.”

“Neither do I. This guy’s a serial killer. I need you to help me prove it.”

Garon paused while their steaks were served. “What sort of similarities are we talking about, with that cold case in Del Rio?”