Sam Owens was the biggest reminder of them all. She got to him, the way she handled herself, her grace in the face of the abyss. She hadn’t let herself be sucked in, and damn it all, he wouldn’t, either.
God, what was he going to do when he was homicide lieutenant? He was turning into a full-blown mother hen. Maybe that’s why Armstrong had tapped him. He knew things had changed and Fletcher was going to be a little more attentive to those around him.
Traffic was terrible—the Redskins had a preseason game—but he barreled through, his spinning light and wailing siren forcing cars to the side of the street. He finally made it up Pennsylvania Avenue, parked and rushed into the Hoover Building just in time for his second briefing of the day on the missing girl.
Agent Blake met him in the lobby, clearly excited. She hurried him through the check-in process but wouldn’t tell him what was going on, just said there was a development.
The word hung heavy in the air. He knew the tiniest bit of intelligence could alter the direction of an investigation, and hoped this was good news.
The conference room she took him to this time was on another floor, and it wasn’t quiet and calm, but frenetic. There were several screens on the walls—aerial topographic maps, what he thought must be video camera footage from the snatch site. A close-up shot of a footprint in cement and a cigarette butt. A large photograph of Rachel Stevens on her last birthday, the most recent full-frontal shot her parents had. Agents and techs flowed in and out of the room. They were in constant contact with Thurber, who, despite John Baldwin’s dictate, was back on the case and parked at the Stevens house.
They sat Fletcher at the table and shoved a stack of photographs in front of him. Blake crossed her arms and said, “Detective Fletcher, do you recognize this man?”
He flipped through them. The photos weren’t the highest quality, and he had to squint to make out the man who was circled in red. He was a male Caucasian with a broad face, buzz-cut blond hair and light eyes. He wasn’t fully facing the camera, but Fletcher didn’t recognize him, said so. Blake plopped another photo down.
“You sure?”
This one was clearer, face-front. It was black-and-white, clearly taken many years earlier. The picture gave a sense of the man’s stature—he was big. Really big.
Something tickled the back of Fletcher’s brain. “Wait a minute. He does look familiar. I think I questioned this guy years ago. He was loitering around the homeless down by Whitehurst. There’d been some disappearances, and we were watching the area closely. He seemed to be around a lot. Homeless said he was a high school kid who brought them food and blankets, but I thought he was shifty. Is this our suspect? Who is he?”
“Your file says his name is Adrian Zamyatin.”
“Another one of the names in Matcliff’s will.”
“Right you are. He also seems to be a rather prolific serial killer who’s managed to stay under the radar for a very, very long time. Detective Davidson sent this—” She set a picture from a home security camera in front of him, time-stamped the previous afternoon. “It’s from Ellie Scarron’s house. They believe he was her attacker. We ran it through the NGI facial recognition system, and it spit out a match. When we entered his name into our national crimes database, we found your old case file.”
“Lucky I took good notes back then.”
“No kidding.” Jordan swooped her hair back from her face into a ponytail. The formal attitude relaxed. “So we’ve put everything into ViCAP, right? Nothing pops. Then we started adding in the other geographical areas where the Eden NRM settled over the years. Bam. The computer pegged a very troubling scenario that matches our earlier assumptions. Not only is there a girl missing from each of these towns, but there’s a series of unsolved murders in each, as well.”
“Nice job. How many are we talking?”
“We’ve managed to tie twenty together so far, and those are just the cities who’ve entered their case data into ViCAP. There could be more.”
Fletcher let that sink in, whistled softly. “Seems our Adrian Zamyatin gets around. Have you told Dr. Baldwin about this?”
“Oh, yes. He called a bit ago. We’ve confirmed this man was a part of Eden. An integral part.”
“How did you confirm this?”
“Your friend Sam’s been entertaining Kaylie Rousch for the past hour.”
Fletcher sat back in his chair. “Man, I miss all the fun. When’d she show up?”
And why hadn’t Sam called him? Why had she gone straight to John Baldwin, profiler extraordinaire?
Oh, shut up, Fletch. You’re being a jealous old hag. There’s plenty of room on this case for everyone.
“Apparently she broke into Dr. Owens’s house. Mr. Whitfield called Dr. Baldwin. They felt the girl needed a psychological exam as much as questioning.”
Figures. He felt his blood pressure rise despite his mental chiding. Damn it. That woman was going to get herself killed one of these days, thinking she could handle everything. “She should have called the police.”