Her voice was musical, her accent vaguely British. The moment she spoke, she captivated everyone. “The press release was our doing, it is true. We have case history to support that an informed public, an alert public, a motivated public, can and does lead to arrests. Also, although there is no apparent direct link between widespread publicity and the abrupt end to the kidnappings in the prior cities, its influence cannot be discounted. In each case, the louder the cry of the press, the quicker the kidnapper moved on.”
Daphne Matthews objected, “Moved on, yes. But that’s all.”
Flemming reminded, “It’s to our benefit if we keep this guy on the run.”
Daphne Matthews contested, “The penny flutes indicate a person intent on making a statement. We put him between twenty-five and forty. High school graduate at least. Organized-he knows what the hell he’s doing; what comes next. Most likely scenario: He never met his father, mother died before he was fifteen. He’s never known any family. If he’s using the children sexually, then he will have been arrested on similar though lesser offenses-he may or may not have served time. If he’s selling the children, then we can be fairly certain he was an only child, and that his mother either sexually abused, physically mistreated or abandoned him. We have a disturbed but rational individual who suffers no remorse. The children are either a form of company-we call it the Boo Radley Syndrome; a source of physical pleasure for him-a diddler; or a means to financial enrichment. He’s a con artist-”
“Now wait just a minute!” Flemming said, cutting her off. “This is where you and five of this agency’s best criminal behaviorists happen to disagree, Ms. Matthews.”
“Lieutenant,” she corrected.
It won a grin from Flemming, an act that seemed foreign to his face. “Irrespective of your profile, our people give great weight to the influence of publicity on the perpetrator’s behavior.”
“He’s monitoring the press,” Daphne confirmed. “I have no argument there. But allowing it to dictate his actions? He’s an organized personality, a control freak. He’s not going to let the news services, the FBI or the police run his show. There is no consistent thread linking news reporting and his abandoning a city. To the contrary, the decision seems random-designed to keep law enforcement off guard.” She paused, the silence in the room suffocating. “How thoroughly have you investigated known confidence men?”
“Con men?” Dunkin Hale asked, chiding her. “These are kidnappers.”
Flemming focused on Daphne, clearly interested.
“Our man is an actor,” she explained. “He enjoys playing roles. It’s the one consistent element to every kidnapping. A person doesn’t develop such abilities overnight. Only a con man has such talents.”
“Forget it,” Hale said rudely, his wide neck florid and bulging like a blowfish.
“What we will do,” Flemming answered her calmly, ignoring Hale and nodding toward Kalidja, “is check for releases from correctional facilities, six months and prior. The Club Feds, and state minimum security facilities.” Kalidja copied all this down.
Sheila Hill spoke up for the first time in several minutes. “We’re crossing the forty-eight-hour mark, a mark none of us wanted to see. Some of us are preciously low on sleep. We need to pull together if we’re going to be an effective task force. Judging by his history, we have another five to fifteen days before he’s back for another one. If we’re not going to work as a task force then let’s drop the charade right now, issue a joint press release and go to our corners. S-A-C Flemming?” she said, knowing that with the evidence controlled by SPD, Flemming had little choice.
Flemming looked up and said, “We’re in.”
LaMoia reviewed all this as he left the office, scrawling LUNCH onto the scheduling board between the numbers 12 and 1. He took the stairs, not the elevator, an act that had nothing to do with fitness and everything with impatience. He had never been a person to wait. His motto was, This Ain’t No Dress Rehearsal, and he lived accordingly.
The air, heavy with fog, delivered a bone-cutting chill. Every person’s face advertised their eagerness for spring. LaMoia charged through this malaise like a beam of light through darkness, grinning to himself, his long legs stretching out before him in defiant strides. To hell with those poor slobs-you either swam with them or against them, and LaMoia had made his choice a long time ago.
He jumped a bus and rode it eight blocks and walked the rest of the way to the Mayflower, a corner hotel with a lot of class. The last three digits on his pager referred to the room number. Codes. Little games. He’d been doing this for months. An unfamiliar feeling blossomed in the heart of a cynic formerly confused by easy sex and his own silver tongue. Attracting women had never been a problem for LaMoia, only staying interested in them. He rode them hard, put them away wet, and rarely returned. The first attempt at hand holding or sweet talking and LaMoia launched into his litany of excuses, only to find himself in a bar or the gym or a coffee shop working his magic all over again.
The bounce in his step had little to do with the promise of a nooner, and everything to do with a light flutter in his chest. He didn’t tire of this new woman in his life, didn’t look for ways out of their next encounter. As unlikely a match as he might have ever imagined, he nonetheless felt an attachment, a profound desire, a need, to spend increasing amounts of time with her. The hotel rendezvous was getting old; he wanted to share a bed, a sunrise, a shower, a cup of coffee. He wanted to test himself, to see how real or unreal these feelings actually were. He believed he wanted a relationship with her-an unthinkable thought given his history. He felt terrified to mention this change in himself, partly because she remained always at an arm’s length. He hoped like hell that wasn’t part of his attraction.
He rode the elevator to the seventh floor wondering if he was in control or on a leash, light headed and slightly afraid. The idea of sleeping with the teacher had always appealed to him-he had done so more than once-but his current arrangement threatened his career, not just an A in math.
He knocked sharply, already aroused by expectation. The door cracked open, and by the time he stepped inside, she was nothing more than a terry cloth robe walking away toward the bed. Then the robe fell away as LaMoia helped the door shut and threw the security bar in place. He turned to face a black teddy overflowing out the top with soft flesh, and tight and bulging where her legs met.
He hurried out of his crisply pressed jeans. Every square inch of her was darkly tanned, no bikini line whatsoever as she unsnapped the teddy in three short pops.
“Leave it,” he said. She enjoyed instruction.
“Come and get it,” she offered, “though not necessarily in that order.” She grinned behind eyes flashing with excitement.
In the bedroom, Sheila Hill put rank aside and willingly took orders.
The resulting forty minutes of athletics left the thick scent of woman in the air and a sheen on their skin, the bedding off the mattress and Sheila Hill still on all fours, her hands holding loosely to the headboard, her glistening back heaving from her panting.
“Oh, God,” she said deliciously, “you’re going to kill me if we keep this up.”
“It would be more fun if we didn’t have to leave,” he risked saying. “If we could wake up at three in the morning and go again.”
“Not this lifetime,” she quipped. “I like my job. Besides,” she added, “my bed never would have made it through that.” She let go the headboard and slouched down so that her head found the pillow but her buttocks remained hoisted high in the air.
With her he found himself in a nearly constant state of arousal. He felt seventeen again.