Nina bit her lip. Yeah, if they didn’t know even the basics of criminal psychology here, she was pretty sure that she was in for a ride if she didn’t find this kid soon.
“Yeah, but it’s not supposed to be logical,” she said, letting out a small huff of frustration that she quickly tried to cover up as the other guy’s ears grew even redder. “They can’t resist. They’re either proud of getting away with it—or so they think, anyway—or they’re so nervous about getting caught that they go to the crime scene to try to get some sense of control over the police investigation. Same reason kidnappers show up at vigils or even volunteer to help look for the kid they took.”
The police officers both stared blankly back at her, looking like a pair of deer caught in the headlights.
“Look, what are your names?” she asked them with a small sigh.
“Uh, I’m Officer Barrow, and this is Officer Kurt,” the big-eared man said, gesturing at his colleague. His ears were getting slightly less tomato colored, at least.
“Have you noticed anyone suspicious or out of the ordinary? Or fitting the description from the security tapes?” Nina asked them.
Even if these men weren’t used to big cases like this, they were still police officers, and they knew their own community better than anyone. They could still have some valuable input into the community.
“There’ve been a few weirdos,” the redhead, Kurt, said, exchanging a wary look with his partner.
“Weirdos?” Nina repeated, furrowing her brow and taking a step closer to him in anticipation of his answer. “How so?”
“Guys with cameras and stuff from out of town,” he clarified, looking uneasily back at the crowd. “I think they’re some kind of true crime enthusiasts or something. Is that a thing?”
Nina sighed again. More good news.
“Yeah, it can be,” she said, and she wasn’t exactly surprised to hear about this. “High-profile cases like this, especially kidnappings and serial murders, can attract a weird crowd. Where did they come from? What were they doing? They got here pretty fast.”
It had only been about five or six hours since the kidnapping took place. Nina was mildly surprised that the crazies were already flowing in, though she wasn’t shocked. At this point in her career, she’d seen pretty much everything, though she found that whenever she thought that, something ended up surprising her after all—like a weird new zombie drug straight out of a horror film in New Orleans.
“There were a couple of guys from Durham,” Barrow said. “They were taking pictures of the crime scene and stuff. Said they had some blog. I told them to beat it, but I wrote down the name of the blog. Here.”
Barrow pulled a small notebook out of a pocket on his shirt, flipped to a page about halfway through, and tore it out to hand to Nina. The paper’s edges were worn, crinkled, and frayed from being carried around for so long. The notebook itself looked water-damaged. But Nina could read the words, so it did the trick. It was probably nothing but worth passing on to someone to look into if she didn’t have the time herself.
“Then there was this other guy. He was pretty old,” Kurt continued for his partner. “He was a real weirdo. He had a whole list of all the stranger kidnappings in the state of North Carolina. Said this was the first one we’d ever seen in Edenton.”
“Are we certain that it’s a stranger situation?” Nina asked, as her boss hadn’t told her anything definitive, just that the parents didn’t seem to know the men involved. “Nine times out of ten in these cases, it’s someone the child knows or people hired by someone the child knows.”
“They seemed like a pretty tight-knit family to me,” Barrow said, shaking his head. “I doubt anything like that was going on. Both parents had to take drugs to calm down.”
“Interesting,” Nina said. That really was unusual, that a stranger would just take a child in plain sight like that. So rare that it was almost a statistical anomaly, which was part of why such crimes gained a cult following of sorts.
“Isn’t his mom some kind of government person?” Kurt asked. “Could it be some retaliation for something she did?”
“She works for some random agency,” Nina said, shaking her head dismissively. “It’s not like she’s the mayor or governor or something. She’s just a desk worker. I doubt she gets many enemies that way. Besides, I’d expect something a little more sophisticated in a case like that.”
“That makes sense,” Kurt said, looking a little defeated.
“What about the guys from the security footage?” she asked. “Have you seen anyone fitting either of their descriptions?”
The two officers exchanged another, almost uncomfortable look.
“We haven’t actually been able to look at the footage yet,” Barrow admitted, his ears going scarlet again. “We’ve been pretty tied up here.” He gave the crowd behind him a dirty look.
“Okay, but you have their descriptions, right?” Nina asked, an edge returning to her voice. Were these guys serious? No weirdos with Internet blogs were more important than seeing a video of the actual crime taking place.
“Well, yeah, but that was pretty vague,” Kurt shrugged. “An average height guy in blue jeans and a t-shirt with brown hair? And another white guy who’s just kind of stocky? That could be anybody.”
Nina turned her attention back to the crowd with another huff. The officers’ usefulness seemed to have passed, though as she surveyed the crowd, she realized that they were right. About a third of the crowd could fit that description.
She, however, had actually seen the security footage. There were dozens of people who fit the vague description that the police officers had provided. There were none that she could see who fit the more specific description seared in her mind, though—a man with a thin, hallowed face and a
