“Look, Coach,” the police chief said, “the guy’s a convicted sex offender and we found child pornography and Gracie’s jersey in his truck-where do you think he got that from?”
“Well, yeah, then I guess it’s him.”
Still, there was something about him that didn’t fit. Wally just couldn’t put his finger on it.
Ben sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his bare arms and chest, trying to suppress the shakes.
“Gracie wasn’t with him, was she?” he said to Kate.
“How’d you know?”
“Angelina was right. Gracie’s cold. They’ve taken her up north.”
“They who? ”
Ben rubbed his face. “The abductors.”
Kate punched the power button on the small television. The screen flashed on to a video of a police team using a two-man battering ram to knock down an apartment door early that Tuesday morning. They shouted “Police!” and stormed the place with weapons drawn; minutes later, they led a sleepy young man out of the apartment and into the bright lights of the media. He appeared anything but dangerous in red plaid pajamas with his hands cuffed behind his back and escorted by cops who towered over him. He looked like a skinny kid. Trailing behind him was a distraught young pregnant woman wearing a robe. The early morning arrest had been a made- for-TV event. Kate pointed at the screen.
“But he’s the abductor!”
He doesn’t look like a pervert, John thought as he stared at the suspect through the interrogation room window. He didn’t look anything like the Army bullies; he wasn’t coarse, thick, hairy, dirty, or ugly. But then, what’s a pervert supposed to look like? The mug shots of sex offenders in the paper were always of unshaven miscreants with greasy hair and acne scars and missing teeth. This guy was clean and clean-cut. In fact, his face seemed vaguely familiar, like the kids just out of college who worked at BriceWare. com; but then, his was a face John saw every day in the high-tech world-young, white, male, and pale.
John knew now that he would never see Gracie again. Never hold her again or talk to her again or admire her swell face again. This guy had taken her away. Forever. John wanted to get mad, but he couldn’t muster any anger. He could barely muster the strength in his wobbly legs to remain standing. So he leaned forward and rested his weight against the window. Tears came into his eyes. At least her pain had stopped. And he found himself envying her again: his pain would never stop.
The abductor had nothing to put on the bargaining table.
He couldn’t close the deal.
Her deal was dead.
Elizabeth was also standing at the window staring in at the abductor, so close to him she could reach out and strangle the son of a bitch if they were not separated by the glass, and wondering if she could make it inside the interrogation room and choke the life out of him before Chief Ryan and Agent Devereaux could react. She turned to John; he was leaning into the glass, his forehead plastered against the pane, his arms hanging at his side, staring at the abductor like a kid looking in at the gorilla exhibit at the zoo.
Elizabeth turned back to the abductor, imagining him on top of her daughter while she lie motionless, silent tears streaming down her face, wondering why God had forsaken her. Heat spread across Elizabeth’s body; her fists clenched. Her entire body ached to strangle the bastard.
She glanced over at Ryan and Devereaux, standing a few steps behind her, engrossed in conversation, paying no attention to the victim’s distraught mother over by the interrogation room. She inched toward the door. Her pulse raced with anticipation.
“We got an anonymous tip,” Chief Ryan said to FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux.
“You should’ve got a warrant,” Devereaux said. “Paul, your man conducted an illegal search-under a floor mat and a bed cover ain’t in plain view. That picture and the jersey, they won’t ever see the inside of a courtroom. What else you got?”
“The coach ID’d him.”
“Positive?”
“Pretty much.”
Devereaux raised an eyebrow. “Pretty much ain’t much in a courtroom. Any other tangible evidence?”
“Well, nothing at this time.”
“Nothing in his apartment?”
“No.”
“Nothing else in his truck?”
“No… but your people are on it, checking for DNA.”
“Well, they damn sure better find some, Paul, ’cause we can’t take what we got to a grand jury.”
Ryan almost laughed. “The hell we can’t. Our county grand jury will indict a goddamned Greyhound bus if we tell ’em to!”
“Chief!”
A police officer came running up the corridor toward them.
“Chief,” the officer said when he arrived, “we got his cell phone records. Nine calls last week to the Brice residence.”
Elizabeth had worked her way almost to the interrogation room door when the police officer’s words jolted her. She turned to him but pointed sharply at the abductor behind the glass.
“He called my house?”
“Not any of your numbers, ma’am,” the officer said. “He called Gracie’s phone number. It’s listed in the book.”
“ He stalked my daughter? ”
That did it. A sudden surge of rage propelled Elizabeth to the door and inside the interrogation room before the others could react. The abductor recoiled as she lunged across the table at him and landed in his lap. They toppled over backwards in his chair onto the cement floor. He couldn’t break the fall with his hands and feet shackled. Elizabeth fell on his chest, knees first, knocking the air out of him. His mouth gaped and he sucked for air as she punched him in the face, again and again, trying to drive her fist through his face, the adrenaline and rage giving her strength she had never known, spit spewing out of her mouth along with her words.
“Where’s my daughter, goddamnit?”
She tried her absolute best to break his nose with the knuckles of her fist. He groaned.
“You killed her, didn’t you?”
She extended her right leg, as if she were doing her tight buns exercise, then drove her knee into his groin, hoping to drive his balls into his brain. His eyes rolled back and he screamed in pain.
“You’re not on top now, you sorry fuck!”
She grabbed his neck and commenced choking the bastard that took her daughter.
“You fucking pervert!”
Thick black arms suddenly wrapped around her midsection from behind, and she was lifted off the abductor until she was dangling in midair-but her strong hands remained locked around the pervert’s scrawny neck. She held on for as long as she could, but her grip finally gave way. She got in one last good kick, a Nike cross-trainer right in his ribs, which produced a low groan from the bastard.
“Mrs. Brice, control yourself!”
Devereaux’s arms were wrapped around the mother’s torso, and he was trying to back out of the interrogation room with her kicking and screaming and spitting at the suspect. She was no longer just halfway to nuts-she was all the way there! He got her to the door, but she grabbed hold of both sides of the doorjamb and held on for dear life, still screaming profanities at the suspect, her eyes blazing with feral rage.
“You’re gonna die, you sick bastard! You’re gonna die and go to hell!”
Christ, she was incredibly strong for her size! Devereaux was trying to pry the mother’s fingers loose while holding her with one arm. He could feel her rock-hard midsection expanding and contracting rapidly; her adrenaline was pumping big time.
