Evelyn wished she had one absolute answer for them. “There are two possibilities,” she began. “The first is that his motivation is exactly what he’s telling us in the notes—that he believes the child is being neglected. If that’s the case, he sees himself as her savior. And he has a tragedy in his own past involving an important young female. It could be a daughter, a sister or someone else he cared for deeply. He’s using that loss to justify his actions now.”
Jack jumped in. “What’s the other possibility?”
“Well, as I said, this offender is intelligent. He may be leaving the notes to throw us off track. And if that’s the case, then his true motivation is molestation.”
“Damn it,” Jack burst out. “We’ve got to go talk to Wiggins again.”
Before Evelyn could ask who Wiggins was, Carly demanded loudly, “Which do you think it is?”
“I don’t know.” It galled her, but pretending to have the answer when there wasn’t enough behavioral evidence to conclusively support either option would do more damage than admitting the truth.
Except perhaps to the stock these officers put in her profile, Evelyn thought ruefully as Jack shouted, “Isn’t it your job to know?”
The room went quiet, and Evelyn tried to pretend it didn’t bother her. “When I know more, so will you. But it’s possible both motivations are right. If the abductions are driven by molestation, the offender might have tried to convince himself as well as us that he’s saving his victims. An excuse he tries to believe to make himself feel better.”
Jack just scowled at her, but Tomas cut in. “What about the connection to the earlier abductions? You said you’d tell us if this was the same abductor.” He rubbed a hand across his temple and asked, “Is it?” as though he was afraid to hear the answer.
“Yes.”
Evelyn had expected an eruption of voices, but instead Tomas’s voice, barely above a whisper, seemed to echo as he asked, “Are you sure this isn’t a copycat?”
“Yes.” She’d gone over it again and again in her hotel room and it was the only way to explain the similarities.
“Take the notes, to start. I know there’ve been a few false confessions over the years, and those people always knew nursery rhymes were left at the scene, because that was in the papers. But the station has done a good job of keeping exactly how the nursery rhymes were changed out of the press. And these notes are too similar—in tone, content, style, everything—to be from a copycat.”
“Damn it,” she heard Tomas muttering, new stress in his voice.
“I’d like to have an expert in handwriting from the FBI give a second opinion, but the notes are our best indicator. And this perpetrator just knew too much to be a copycat.”
She frowned down at her profile, not really seeing the words, not really needing them. “The abductions are also much too similar to be a coincidence. The lack of forensic evidence and the pattern of abducting the child from her own property late in the evening or at night after stalking her first suggest a patient, determined predator.”
She surveyed the room, wanting everyone to understand why she’d concluded that they were looking for the same person. “I reviewed all the evidence from this case first, separately from the older cases. And everything about this abduction points to someone who’s done it before. It was way too savvy for a first abduction, and way too close in the details from the older cases that were never released to the public.”
“And he’s either molesting these girls or trying to ‘save’ them, whatever that means?” an officer asked.
“That’s right. Although, this time around, his motivation has definitely shifted. With this latest abduction, he’s enjoying the actual act of kidnapping more. He’s fantasizing about it beforehand and it’s part of the thrill, maybe as much as his ultimate motivation of molestation or his idea of saving them.”
“Then why did he stop for so long?” Tomas asked, his voice even wearier than it had been a few minutes earlier.
“There are a number of possibilities.” Evelyn ticked them off on her fingers. “He was jailed for another crime and recently released. He’s had an illness that prevented him from carrying out the abductions and he’s since gotten well. Or he was otherwise prevented from carrying them out for a period of time—because, for example, someone in his life would have noticed.”
It looked like Jack was going to interrupt, so she said quickly, “It’s also possible he didn’t really stop. If it’s molestation he’s after, he might have had an available victim in his life, like a family member. Or he obtained a position in the community that gave him easy access to children. He could have moved away for a while and still been abducting children without leaving the notes, so the cases weren’t connected. Or he was abducting children who wouldn’t be missed at all.”
“What, like runaways?” Tomas asked.
“Yes,” Evelyn said. “Another possibility, although unlikely, is that this offender’s precipitating stressors—whatever set him off in the first place and made him act on his fantasies—stopped and didn’t start again for eighteen years. Or that he relied on trophies to relive the experience and those satisfied him until recently.”
“Are we talking body parts here?” Carly asked tiredly.
The officers around her looked disgusted.
“No,” Evelyn said. “But this offender would keep something. A necklace or hair bow or other item the victim was wearing. The abductor keeps it as a symbol of what he’s done.” Evelyn took a deep breath and tried not to put faces to the names from the case files, tried not to think about Cassie and what could have been done to her. “Which is kidnapping and most likely killing his victims.”
The room went silent again, but everyone was staring at her tensely.
She knew what they wanted but were afraid to ask. So she just told them. “Whatever his motivation, whatever his reason for stopping and starting up again, time is crucial. I don’t know how long Brittany has. And it is possible that he’s hanging on to these girls long-term. But either way, he’s not finished. Unless we stop him, he will abduct another girl.”
“So that’s Evelyn Baine,” an unfamiliar voice was saying as Evelyn finally broke free of cops’ questions after presenting her profile.
Evelyn’s steps slowed as she headed toward the CARD command post. Whoever was talking was around the bend in the hallway of the station.
“The way you were ranting about her, I was expecting a total disaster at the profile briefing. But she seems smart.”
“Smart?”
Evelyn didn’t recognize the first voice, but she knew who the snarling response belonged to: Jack Bullock. What she didn’t know was why he felt so much animosity toward her. The last time they’d spoken at any length, she’d been twelve years old.
“She’s a liability,” Jack said dismissively. “But if her profile matches my suspect, then why the hell can’t I go harass him? Give me a few hours with him and I guarantee you I can get this bastard to confess.”
“Evelyn?”
Evelyn jumped at the voice behind her, and Jack and whoever he was talking to were instantly silent. She spun around.
Tomas stood behind her, exhaustion hanging off him like an oversize coat. “What are you doing?”
“Spying, apparently,” Jack drawled, coming around the corner, animosity in his eyes.
Next to him was a man about his age, with