Lawman

The detective heard his footsteps and turned. He had black eyes and an olive complexion, and a worried expression.

“I’m Marquez,” he introduced himself, shaking hands. “You’d be Special Agent Grier, I assume?”

“If I’m not, I don’t have to look at all that paperwork piled on my desk,” Garon replied dryly. “Have a seat. Like a cup of coffee?” he added, then grimaced.

“We’ll have to go get it ourselves, of course, because my secretary is a liberated woman!” he raised his voice as she went past the door.

“The computer is about to eat your six-page letter to the attorney general about your proposed new legislation,” she called merrily. “Sorry, but I’m sure you can draft a new one…”

“If you ever get married, I’ll give you away!”

“If I ever get married, I’ll give you away,” she retorted and kept walking.

He sat down behind his desk with a rough sound in his throat. “She and my housekeeper must be sisters,” he told the visitor. “I hired them and they tell me what to do.”

Marquez only smiled. “I was told that you head a squad that deals with violent crimes against children,” he said.

Garon leaned back in his chair, and all the humor went out of his face. “Technically I head a squad that deals with violent crime, up to and including serial murder. I’ve never worked child murders.”

Marquez frowned. “Then who does?”

“Special Agent Trent Jones was our crimes against children specialist,” he replied. “But he just got transferred back to Quantico to work on a high profile case. We haven’t had time to replace him.” He frowned. “I thought Joceline said you had a missing person case?”

Marquez nodded. He looked as solemn as Garon did. “It started out as a missing person case. Now it’s a homicide; a ten-year-old girl,” he said quietly. “We’ve checked out everyone close to her, including both parents, and we can’t turn a perpetrator. Now we think it might have been a stranger.”

This was serious business. The news had been full of abducted children who were murdered by convicted sex offenders, all over the country. The case was, sadly, not that unique.

“Do you have any leads?”

Marquez shook his head. “We only found the body yesterday. That’s why I’m here. I found a similar case. I think it’s a serial crime. That means I can ask you for help.”

Garon leaned back in his chair. “When was she abducted?”

“Three days ago,” Marquez said quietly.

“Any latents at the scene?” Garon asked.

“No, and we had the criminologists on their hands and knees all over her bedroom with blue lights. Nothing. Not a single latent fingerprint.”

“He took her out of her bedroom?” he asked, surprised.

“In the middle of the night, and nobody heard anything,” Marquez replied.

“Footprints, tire tracks…?”

Marquez shook his head. “Either this guy is very lucky, or…”

“…or he’s done this before,” Garon finished for him.

Marquez drew in a long breath. “Exactly. Of course, my lieutenant doesn’t buy that. He thinks we’ve got a pedophile who carried the kid away and killed her. I told him that this is the second case of bedroom abduction we’ve seen in the past two years. The last one was over in Palo Verde, and the child was murdered in a similar manner. I found it listed on VICAP, the FBI’s violent criminal apprehension program. I showed it to the lieutenant. He told me I was chasing ghosts.”

Garon’s eyebrow lifted. “Did you check for other unsolved child homicides?”

“I did,” Marquez said somberly. “I found two in Oklahoma eight years ago. They happened about a year apart, and the children were abducted from their homes, but in daylight. I showed the cases to my lieutenant. He said it was coincidence, that there were no real similarities except the kids were strangled and stabbed.”

“The victims,” Garon replied. “How old were they?”

Marquez pulled out a BlackBerry and brought up a screen. “Between ten and twelve years of age. They were raped, strangled and then stabbed.”

“God!” Garon burst out. “What kind of animal would do that to a child?”

“A really nasty one.”

“I’d hoped that the red ribbon would show up in those VICAP postings that matched this homicide. But I had no luck.” Marquez looked up from the BlackBerry. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an evidence bag. He handed it to Garon.

Garon opened it and looked inside. “A red silk ribbon?”

“The murder weapon,” Marquez said. “The first officers on the scene were San Antonio P.D. They found it tied tight around the neck of the ten-year-old girl. Her body was found in behind a little country church north of here yesterday. We transported the body here to our medical examiner for processing. We haven’t released that bit about the red ribbon to the press.”

Garon could guess why. All homicide detectives tried to hold back one or two pieces of evidence so that they could weed out potential suspects who were lying about their involvement in the murder. Every police department had at least one mental case who tried to confess to any violent crime, for reasons best left to a psychiatrist.

He touched the ribbon. “It might have something to do with his fantasy,” Garon mused, having participated in seminars by the FBI’s behavioral science department, observing profilers at work. Modus operandi was the method used to kill. Signature was a feature linking all victims of a serial killer in a way that was important only to the killer, and it never changed. Some left victims posed in obscene ways, some used a particular marking of victims, but a number of serial killers left something that identified them as the suspect.

Garon glanced at the detective. “Have you checked the database for similar ribbons at other crime scenes?”

“First thing I did, when I saw the ribbon,” he replied. “But no luck. If there was such a ribbon, maybe it was overlooked or held back from the file. I’ve tried to contact the police department in West Texas, at Palo Verde, where the last homicide occurred, but they don’t answer phone calls or e-mails. It’s a tiny little jurisdiction.”

“Good idea. What do you want from us?”

“A profile would be a good start,” he said. “My lieutenant won’t like it, but I’ll talk to our captain and see if he’ll make a formal request for assistance. He mentioned the profiling to me himself.”

Garon smiled. “I’ll fill in one of our ASACs, so that he’ll expect it.”

“Not the SAC?”

“Our special agent in charge is in Washington, trying to appropriate funds for a new project we’re trying to get started, partnering with the local middle schools to discourage kids from using drugs.”

“He might need to ask somebody with more money than our government seems to have,” came the dry reply. “On a local level, our own budget is cut to the bone already. I had to buy a digital camera out of my pocket so that I could get my own crime scene photos.”

Garon laughed shortly. “I know that feeling.”

“Is it true, that a lot of cases never get listed on VICAP?” Marquez said.

“Yes. The forms are shorter than they once were, but it takes about an hour to fill them out. Some police departments just don’t have the time. If you could find a second case with a red ribbon involved, I might be able to help you convince your lieutenant that there’s a serial killer loose. Before he kills again,” he added somberly.

“Can you spare us an agent, if we put together a task force to hunt this guy?”

“We can spare me. The rest of my squad is trying to run down a mob of bank robbers who use automatic weapons in holdups. I’m not essential personnel to them. My assistant can run the squad in my absence. I’ve worked serial murder cases, and I know agents in the Behavioral Science Unit I can call on for help. I’ll be glad to work with you.”