“ Secondly,” she added to her task force people, “I want a complete rundown on everyone Maureen DeCampe would have or could have come into contact with on the day of her disappearance. Add to that anyone she came into contact with on a daily basis.”
“ A judge comes into contact with a lot of people in any given day,” said George Marks, a tall, clean-shaven agent, hand-picked for his knowledge of D.C. streets and street life.
“ We're hauling in the usual suspects,” Jane Cardinal, his younger partner, added.
“ We need to focus on specific suspects. That means we don't have the luxury of interrogating useless suspects for hours on end,” she countered. “We need to zero in on someone we like for the crime or someone we catch in a lie and to quickly focus our search. We need to think clearly about what comparison points to use to narrow the field.”
“ I'm not sure I follow you,” replied the young female agent named Cardinal. She'd been selected to be on the team due to her expertise in Missing Persons cases.
“ Which of the usuals has proven violent? Which is or has been capable of abduction in the past? Twenty questions, people, will reduce the numbers. Those who forced themselves on another person reduce the pile by one-third. Which of the usuals has ever used a weapon in the commission of a crime? We know that the judge showed her assailant a. 45 but was overpowered or outgunned. This reduces the pile further. So who is left? Which of the usuals has ever threatened the judge?”
“ That just might tend to increase the pile,” said Cardinal, drawing a laugh from the others. For a moment, Jessica recognized a little of herself in the younger agent. Give her ten years, and if she continues as an agent, she might have learned something, Jessica thought.
“ Look,” began Jessica, “I know that DeCampe is relatively new to D.C. and that she didn't waste any time creating enemies here, and that she's not everyone's favorite D.C. judge, but she deserves our best effort, same as anyone else abducted off our streets. As things stand, we have zero ideas on how to proceed, people. Get me some leads; if you can do this through your snitches, it may save us more time than collaring and interrogating the array of lunatics you call the usual suspects. That's all I'm saying.”
Richard Sharpe stood to put in his say. Everyone's eyes turned to the tail, handsome Englishman. Everyone knew that he'd retired from New Scotland Yard and had come on as a consultant to the FBI. Everyone also knew that he and Jessica were seriously involved with one another. “Where I come from, the usual suspects are called the street nasties, but in either case, they're called the usual suspects for good reason, but we don't believe this is the usual case. Besides, this is D.C., and the list of perverts in this city is endless, not unlike London.”
“ So, your thinking is that we'd be wasting our time with the street nasties, as you call them?” asked Agent Marks.
Sharpe paced the room as he spoke. “Canvassing them all… well, we just don't feel the judge has that kind of time, and we fear it would be a waste of time, energy, and manpower, you see. We believe the judge's assailant knows her in some capacity, and that this is about what you Yanks call payback of some sort. Otherwise, ransom demands would have long since been made by now.” 'To that end, we're electronically canvassing court documents and records,” added Jessica.
“ In the meantime, what do we do?” asked a second female agent taller than any man present.
“ As I said, put out feelers with your usual snitches. There has to be something on the street about the case, something useful.”
“ We need to know where this rat is holed up,” added Sharpe.
“ Someone collects his rent.” Jessica paced toward Richard, and together they stood as a united front before the agents assigned to her. The usual protocol would be to put the entire team on the track of known offenders-kidnappers and rapists. But Jessica and Richard had discussed this fact and found such an exercise wanting. “So, get your noses to the pavement and get me something I can use.”
After the others left, Richard asked, “What about that pending case you were looking into, that Native American thing?”
“ All other pending cases will just have to pend longer,” she replied.
“ If it works… fix it anyway.” Richard stated the oft- repeated, unofficial motto of the division, a phrase she had shared with him one evening when he'd been asking questions about how the bureau worked or failed to work in some cases.
Jessica found a chair and fell into it, squishing the air from its cushions. “It doesn't appear to be or even feel like the judge's disappearance was a random act of violence.”
“ Agreed.” He joined her, placing a hand on her hair, stroking it. “Everything points to a premeditated plan, although the crime scene was a bit messy.”
“ A bit messy, yes, but the perpetrator collected up what he wanted.”
“ Her, yes.”
“ Her-and vanished without a trace. What does that say about him?”
“ That tells me he made exacting plans.”
“ Right. Whoever did this staked out the judge's home, her office, stalked her, knew her habits, and took her at her most vulnerable.”
“ You think he knew she was in the habit of eating in chambers and working late every second Thursday of the month? asked Richard. “Only her family knew that.”
“ And her working family,” Jessica countered, “including the parking attendant. It was no big secret, after all.”
“ Do you think the parking lot fellow had something to do with it?”
“ No, too stupid.”
“ Stupid might be why we ought to look closer at him,” countered Richard. “Sometimes you can learn a great deal from a stupid man.”
“ What's that? Shakespeare?”
“ Scotland Yard.”
“ OK, explain.”
“ Just suppose the attendant spilled some details of when and where someone might catch the judge, thinking the guy just wanted to talk to her.”
“ And suppose he took a few bills for the information? Then the judge turns up missing, possibly raped or killed…”
“ Now he's shitting his pants.”
She agreed. “He's got to be thinking it's his fault and that he's an accomplice to the crime.”
Sharpe went to a coffeepot that had been burning too long, poured himself a cup, and asked if she'd like one. She declined with a wave of the hand. He returned to her, sipped at his steaming cup. A well-proportioned man, he had an easy, rolling gait. He continued pacing the room. “We need to send a patrol car around to bring the parking attendant in for questioning.”
“ Do it.”
Sharpe made the call. After he hung up, he said to Jessica, “Maybe it's a jealous old suitor who's nabbed the judge.”
“ How old?” asked Jessica. “How old you think this suitor is, Richard?”
“ I'm not talking old as in age; I mean, an old boyfriend.”
“ Yeah, but how old? How many boyfriends do we have to go back to? Besides, the family is adamant that she was not involved with anyone who could be construed as violent or obsessive, and you met her current boyfriend. Nothing there. From everything we could turn up along those lines, we suspect that if the motive is an obsessive fixation on the judge, it's come from a source the family and likely the judge herself knew nothing of.”
“ You mean like someone who saw her in the media, maybe,” he replied.
Leaning across her desk, her hands going through her auburn hair as if to assist her thinking, Jessica said, “My suspicion is that either he knew her, so she let her guard down, or he looked harmless.”
Richard considered this for a moment, his chin propped up by his right hand and elbow on the chair where he now sat across from her in the operations room, the conference table separating them. “But no one she would have had a personal relationship with.”