After Cooper leaves, I give James the job of gathering copies of everything Cooper needs. He accepts this task amiably enough, for James.
“The spatial-distance angle is interesting,” he allows. “As is the linkage with the theory of symphorophilia.”
“Interesting,” I agree. “Now let’s turn it into something we can use. Callie, you help James with this. Alan, please give Leo a call and find out where he’s at with the LAPD.” I glance at my watch. “I’m going to bring the AD up to date.”
Not just on this, I think. I need to talk to him about the other thing. It’s time to let someone in on the secret, now that I know the changes the future will bring.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AD Jones regards the ceiling of his office, pondering everything I’ve just told him.
“So you think he was telling the truth?” he asks. “You think he has more victims stashed?”
“I think it’s likely, sir, if we operate on the theory that it’s a financial model. No victims, no money.”
“Probably not a shitload, though,” he muses. “He wouldn’t want to risk drawing too much attention.”
“Perhaps,” I agree. “Then again, there’s kind of a mutual code of silence. He probably records and keeps copies of everything that goes on between him and his ‘clients’ in case something goes wrong.”
“A dead man’s switch.”
“Sure. That and the whole I’ll-ruin-your-life-if-you-renege thing. Douglas Hollister tried to screw our perp, so he got buried. That’s a pretty convincing deterrent.”
“How’s Heather Hollister?”
“Not good. Some part of me wants to say she’s better off than Dana, or Jeremy Abbott, but I don’t know.”
“She’s better off.” He says it flatly. “You should know that better than most. If she’s tough enough, she’ll pull back from the edge. If she’s not, she won’t. At least she’s got the chance.”
“You’re right,” I say, “I guess it just creeps me out. My two biggest fears as a kid were getting locked in the dark forever and going crazy but not knowing I’d gone crazy.”
He smiles. “Maybe you’re already crazy now, and you just don’t know it.” He indicates his office with a sweep of his hand. “Maybe none of this exists, and you’re sitting in a padded room somewhere in a straitjacket, imagining it all.”
I give him a withering glare. “Not funny, sir.”
His grin tells me he feels otherwise. “And the other boy?”
“He’s alive. He’ll probably be turned over to social services, until and if Heather comes out of her funk enough to claim him.”
“So what’s the plan of attack?” he asks.
“Maybe Earl Cooper will help, but at the moment I think our best leads are the Internet aspect and the car crashes.”
“I assume you’re planning a sting on the Internet end of things?”
“I’m considering it, sir. I’ll know better when Leo gets back.”
“And the crashes?”
“If James is right and it’s a sexual need, he probably won’t have been able to limit himself to feeding it only when he’s performing an abduction. There should be other instances. I think it’s important. In most ways this offender appears to be incredibly disciplined and careful. The paraphilia is a deviation from that. It could be one of the places where he makes mistakes.” I shrug. “It’s a stretch, but it’s what we have.”
He thinks about it. “Good,” he agrees. “You should also look into Internet communities on the car-crash angle.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every fetish and weirdo perversion out there probably has a community of some kind connected to it. Pedos do. Places to share photos and experiences. If Cooper is right and he records his exploits, maybe he shares them too.”
I blink, surprised. “That’s a good idea.”
“I still have a few. Your current plan of attack sounds good. I agree with assuming that his motivation is money. It might not be the only reason, but Hollister’s testimony and everything else we know supports the concept. Proceed as planned.” He leans back in his chair and laces his fingers over his stomach, gazing at me. “Now, tell me why you’re really here.”
“Sorry?” He’s right, but I resist being readable as a reflex action.
“Come on, Smoky. I know you. I can tell when you’re distracted. You had something else on your mind the whole time you were briefing me.”
I meet his gaze with a miniature defiance, then I look away and sigh. “I told Director Rathbun I’d take the job.”
“I know. I think it was a good decision.”
I still am not looking at him. “I think so too. But there’s a complication. Well, I don’t know if
“If I can help, I will. What kind of variable?”
I feel myself shiver inside, a mix of nervousness and fear along with a yearning. It’s a secret. I’ve felt that way about it from the first. I’m not sure why I felt that way, but it was too visceral an emotion to ignore.
I force myself to meet his gaze again, and then I force myself to say the words, the words I haven’t said to anyone yet, not even Tommy.
“I’m about two months pregnant, sir.”
He stares at me. He says nothing for almost a half minute. I can’t tell if he’s shocked or just thinking. His fingers remain laced on his chest, his hands still relaxed, unmoving.
“Well,” he finally says. “Are congratulations in order?”
There’s a cautiousness to the question that I appreciate. Maybe this is one of the reasons I wanted to talk to AD Jones about this first, because I knew he’d have the exact kind of empathy that I needed.
It’s the question I’ve been asking myself since the middle-of-the-night pee test and have continued to ask since the blood test confirmed it.
Is this a good thing? Am I happy about it?
“They should be,” I say. “But I don’t know.”
“Why?”
I study my mentor and wonder about answering that question. AD Jones has known me longer than anyone in the FBI world. He watched me come up, and he was there when my life burned down and blew away. He’s seen a lot, but there are things he hasn’t seen, because of the type of relationship we have.
AD Jones has never seen me cry. He hasn’t had to hold me while I screamed. His support has been absolute, but it has been either silent or spoken gruffly. And I’ve been grateful for it.
“I was pregnant,” I tell him. “Before Matt and Alexa were killed.”
“Okay,” he says.
Not
“No one knew. I was still turning it over in my mind, you know? Trying to decide how I felt about it before telling Matt. Then … what happened, happened. When I was lying in that hospital bed, I decided I was going to go home, get my affairs in order, and kill myself. The thing is, I knew I couldn’t pull the trigger if I still had that baby in my stomach. Twisted, I know.” I swallow, ashamed. “So I ended up aborting the baby.” I sneak a look at him, afraid of what I’ll see, but all I see is patience. “Later, when I decided I was going to live, I had so much regret about that decision. So much … I can’t …” I shrug, defeated in my search for an adequate phrase to encompass that feeling of
