“So how did you find him?”
“As we hoped, Jacob started communicating more. Especially via e-mail. Which allowed us to start tracking his progress across the southern states. By fourteen months in, we were sure he had to be a truck driver, delivery man, something of that nature. The bulk of the e-mails were from Internet cafés, some truck stops, all located near major interstates. So we shored up state police patrols of those areas, faxed Flora’s photo to all the major truck stops. We wanted to apply pressure, but not too much.”
“You didn’t want him to panic, dispose of her.”
“Exactly. But mostly we focused on the Internet cafés. Four hundred and seventy-one days later, he sent an e-mail we could trace back to a cybercafe at a truck stop he’d used once before. I personally drove out to the truck stop to interview the staff. All those postcards, e-mails, outreaches later, Jacob had revealed more of himself than he realized. Sure enough, the moment I started to describe the kind of man we were looking for, the manager ID’d him. Jacob was a regular. Stopped by at least once a month, if not more, on his route. The manager didn’t know Jacob’s last name, but he could describe his rig; we connected the remaining dots from there.
“Jacob Ness. A registered sex offender who’d already served time for molesting a fourteen-year-old girl. Suspected of several more sex assaults. Currently working as an independent contractor for several major delivery firms, driving a big rig.
“In a matter of hours, a state trooper discovered Jacob’s transport parked outside a motel just off the interstate. I mobilized SWAT and we got serious.”
D.D. didn’t need the FBI agent to say anything more. She could already picture it perfectly in her head. The adrenaline rush of such moments. At the cusp of breaking a major case. Do everything right, you get to save the girl, catch the bad guy. But one wrong move . . . girl winds up killed, bad guy escapes, and a life, a family, your career is over.
Yeah, she could picture it.
“What’d you do?” she asked.
“We confirmed with hotel management which room Jacob was in, and that he’d entered with a female companion. The room was an end unit with no rear door. That was the good news. Now, for the bad news: We had reason to believe Jacob was in possession of at least one firearm, if not more. Also, our profiler, McCarthy, believed that if cornered, Jacob would be most likely to shoot Flora, then himself, rather than surrender.”
“Suicide by cop?”
“Possible, but only after killing Flora. McCarthy felt at this stage of their relationship, Jacob felt a strong attachment to Flora. The nature of his taunts, his need to torment the family. She was his, and he wouldn’t give her up without a fight.”
“Relationship.” D.D. had to think about this. She was familiar with Stockholm syndrome, though more from movie plots than real-life experience. That syndrome, made famous by the Patty Hearst case, described how a victim bonded with her attacker over time, feeling empathy, even loyalty, for the very person who had caused her harm. But D.D. had never considered such a process in reverse. That by virtue of time and total dominance, a kidnapper might develop a certain affection for his captive. Jacob Ness had been a long-haul trucker. Meaning for years he’d been traveling alone, living in isolation, until the day he’d snatched Flora Dane and brought her along with him.
Four hundred and seventy-two days of companionship later . . . D.D. could see why he’d be loath to give her up.
“Did you worry about Stockholm syndrome?” she asked Kimberly now. “That Flora might not welcome your rescue efforts?”
On the other end of the phone, D.D. could hear the agent’s hesitation. “We were prepared for anything,” Kimberly said at last, which D.D. took to be a yes.
“So you have an armed subject holed up in a hotel room with a victim who’s suffered severe long-term trauma. What did you do?”
“Let SWAT lead the charge,” Kimberly said bluntly. “They fired in half a dozen canisters of tear gas through the room’s front window. Then they took down the door.”
The federal agent paused. “They found Jacob sprawled on the ground, clearly incapacitated by the gas. Next to him was a damp hand towel. Apparently, he’d noticed the officers mobilizing outside, had made some effort to prepare for their charge. But he hadn’t been fast enough.”
“And Flora?”
“She sat on the floor beside him. She had a wet towel tied around her mouth and nose. She also had a gun.”
D.D.’s eyes widened. Of all the things . . . “She had Jacob’s gun.”
“Yeah.”
“Did she point it at the SWAT team?”
“No. She had the gun on her lap. She was . . . stroking Jacob’s face. She was wiping the tears from his eyes.”
“Oh.” D.D. didn’t know why, but somehow that image was worse.
“Jacob was conscious when I entered the room. Whispering to Flora. The gas was already starting to dissipate, we needed to move quickly, but no one wanted to rush Flora as long as she had the gun. We were afraid if we spooked her . . .”
“She might open fire.”
“It was a strange sight. He was begging her. Jacob Ness was sprawled on the floor, begging Flora to kill him.”
D.D. didn’t have words for that.
“I tried to get her attention. I called her name, tried to get her to look at me. But she wouldn’t respond. Not to me, not to any of the officers. Her attention was solely for Jacob, stroking his hair, rubbing the tears from his cheeks. She seemed not just attentive to him but . . . tender.”
D.D. knew tear gas. It didn’t just inflame the eyes. It turned the subject’s nose, everything, to a giant, streaming mucusy mess. Jacob Ness would’ve been in a great deal of discomfort. Desperate for water to flush his eyes, tissue to blow his nose. But he hadn’t surrendered. Instead, the man who’d been taunting his victim’s family and investigators for more than a year had pulled himself together for one last move.
“What did he do?”
“He kept talking to Flora. Talking, talking, talking. And then, just when we thought we’d have to make our move one way or another, Flora suddenly leaned over and whispered something in his ear.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Flora’s never said. But she told him something. And the expression on his face . . . Jacob Ness looked scared out of his mind. Then Flora grabbed the gun off her lap and pulled the trigger. Forty-five Magnum to the top of the skull. It got the job done.
“Flora dropped the gun. SWAT took her down. And that was that.”
D.D. couldn’t speak.
“You know about trauma bonding, right?” the agent asked abruptly. “Forget kidnapping victims, you see it all the time with battered women. They’re isolated, at the mercy of their dominating spouse, going through intense spells of abject terror followed by even more emotionally draining periods of soul-wrenching apologies. The trauma itself creates a powerful bonding element. The things these two have gone through together, how could anyone else ever understand? It becomes one more thing that makes a woman stay, even after her husband has beat the crap out of her again.”
“I know trauma bonding.”
“I expected to see it with Flora Dane. How could you not? Four hundred and seventy-two days later, I couldn’t even get her to respond to her own name. Instead, she identified herself as Molly, the name Jacob had given to her.”
“Okay.”
“Trauma bonding is most likely to occur in situations where the victim is isolated and the perpetrator appears all-powerful. We found in the rear of Jacob’s cab a wooden coffin bearing a padlock. It bore traces of Flora’s hair as well as DNA.”
D.D. closed her eyes. “That’s isolating,” she agreed.
“Jacob put her in the box. But Jacob was also the one who took her out. Jacob starved her for long periods of time. But he was also the one who gave her food.”