The Big Bad Wolf

I SKIPPED A CLASS on "Arrest Techniques" that morning. I figured I probably knew more on the subject than the teacher. I called Monnie Donnelley instead and told her I needed whatever she had on the white slave trade, particularly recent activity in the U.S., that might relate to the White Girl case. Most of the Bureau's crime analysts were housed ten miles away at CIRG, but Monnie had an office at Quantico. Less than an hour later, she was at the doorway of my no-frills cubicle. She held out two disks, looking proud of herself. "This should keep you busy for a while. I concentrated on white women only. Attractive. Recent abductions. I also have a lot on the crime scene in Atlanta. I expanded the circle to get a read on the mall, owner, employees, the neighborhood in Buckhead. I have copies for you of the police and the Bureau's investigative reports. All the things you asked for. You do your homework, don't you?" "I'm a student of the game. I prepare as best I can. Is that so unusual? Here at Quantico?" "Actually, it is for agents who come to us from police departments or the armed forces. They seem to like to work out in the field." "I like field work too," I admitted to Monnie, "but not until I've narrowed it some. Thank you for this, all of this." "Do you know what they say about you, Dr. Cross?" "No. What do they say?" "That you're close to psychic. Very imaginative. Maybe even gifted. You can think like a killer. That's why they put you on White Girl right away." She remained in the doorway. "Listen. Some unasked-for advice, if I may. You shouldn't piss off Gordo Nooney. He takes his little orientation games seriously. He's also basically a bad guy. And he's connected." "I'll remember that." I nodded. "So there are good guys too?" "Absolutely. You'll see that most of the agents are real solid. Good people, the best. All right, well, happy hunting," Monnie said. Then she left me to my reading, lots and lots of reading. Too much. I started off with a couple of abductions - both in Texas - that I thought could be related to the one in Atlanta. Just reading the accounts got my blood boiling again, though. Marianne Norman, twenty, had disappeared in Houston on August 6, 2001. She'd been staying with her college sweetheart in a condo owned by his grandparents. Marianne and Dennis Turcos were going to be seniors at Texas Christian that fall and had planned to be married in the spring of '02. Everybody said they were the nicest kids in the world. Marianne was never seen or heard from after that night in August. On December 30 of that year, Dennis Turcos had put a revolver to his head and killed himself. He said he couldn't live without Marianne, that his life had ended when she disappeared. The second case involved a fifteen year-old runaway from Childress, Texas. Adrianne Tuletti had been snatched from an apartment in San Antonio where three girls said to be involved in prostitution lived. Neighbors in the complex reported having seen two suspicious looking people, a male and a female, entering the building on the day that Adrianne disappeared. One neighbor thought they might have been the girl's parents coming to bring their daughter home, but the girl was never seen or heard from again. I looked at her picture for a long moment - she was a pretty blonde and looked as if she could have been one of Elizabeth Connolly's daughters. Her parents were elementary school teachers back in Childress. That afternoon, I got more bad news. The worst kind. A fashion designer named Audrey Meek had been abducted from the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania. Her two young children had witnessed the kidnapping. That piece of information stunned me. The children had told the police that the abductors were a man and a woman. I started to get ready to travel to Pennsylvania. I called Nana and she was supportive for a change. Then I got a message from Nooney's office. I wasn't going to Pennsylvania. I was expected at my classes. The decision had obviously come from the top, and I didn't understand what was happening. Maybe I wasn't supposed to. Maybe all of this was a test?