The Abduction

DAY FIVE

Lieutenant Ben Brice carries a black XM21 sniper rifle fitted with a Starlight Scope and a Sionics suppressor. Twenty ammo magazines, six high-explosive and two white-phosphorous grenades, a. 45-caliber handgun, C-4 explosive, a claymore mine, and morphine are packed in his web gear. An Uzi, his backup weapon, is secured to his rucksack. An eleven-inch Bowie knife is strapped to his right calf. He carries the tools of killing because he is a professional killer, an Army Green Beret special operations soldier. We Kill for Peace reads the tattoo on his left arm. Seventeen days in-country and Ben Brice has already seen enough killing for a lifetime. But he knows the killing has only just begun.

And after this night, he will never know peace.

He is walking through smoke and ashes thick like gray confetti and out of the smoldering hamlet in the Quang Tri province of South Vietnam, leaving the china doll and his soul behind.

He stops.

He is standing above an irrigation ditch; down below is a tangled mass of pale bodies. The stench of death hangs in the humid air like a thick fog. The sounds of death rise from below, the last gasps and groans of the dying.

He drops his rifle and jumps down into the ditch. He checks each body for life, frantic now, trying to find life, any sign of life. But there is no life to be found. There is only death. He counts forty-one-old men, women, and children.

His boots are soaked in blood. His hands are dripping with blood. The china doll’s blood and brains cling to his fatigues like souvenirs of death.

He is drenched in death.

He extends his bloody hands to the heavens and screams into the still night: “Why, God?”

He feels faint and his body sways. He closes his eyes. He falls forward, down onto that white blanket of death.

But he is not falling.

He is floating.

He opens his eyes. Below him, the pale bodies are now bright white-a blinding white world as far as he can see. Above him, his parachute is deployed, but he doesn’t remember the violent jerk when the chute caught air.

He’s sailing now, skimming the surface, almost able to reach out and touch the white, as pure as the driven… snow. Pure white snow. A white world of deep heavenly snow. Sailing faster and faster, higher and higher above the snow.

Dark objects down below come into view. Trees. Tall thick trees of timber country. And among the trees, curled up and shivering and wrapped in a blanket of snow like a present under a Christmas tree, is God’s little creature.

He floats down to the creature and lands on both feet. He unbuckles the parachute harness and lets it drop and disappear into the deep snow that he walks through without effort to the cold and shivering creature. He’s now wearing his dress uniform and the green beret and all the medals pinned to the jacket and the Medal of Honor around his neck. He removes his jacket, squats, and wraps the coat around the creature; he gently lifts it from the snow, takes it into his arms, and holds it close, warming God’s little creature. He brushes the snow from the creature’s face and through his tears he sees her, his saving Grace.

“Ben, wake up! They got him!”

And then she is gone. Ben opened his eyes to Kate leaning over him.

“Got who?”

“The man who took Gracie.”

“Might be him. I’m just not sure.”

Coach Wally Fagan was staring through the two-way mirror at the sad young man in the white jail uniform sitting at a metal table in the bare interrogation room; his cuffed hands were spread flat on the table, and he appeared dazed and confused. He had blond hair and blue eyes, but he didn’t seem nearly as big as the man who had asked for Gracie after the game. He seemed different.

“Look, Coach,” the police chief said, “the guy’s a convicted sex offender and we found child pornography and Gracie’s jersey in his truck-where do you think he got that from?”

“Well, yeah, then I guess it’s him.”

Still, there was something about him that didn’t fit. Wally just couldn’t put his finger on it.

Ben sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his bare arms and chest, trying to suppress the shakes.

“Gracie wasn’t with him, was she?” he said to Kate.

“How’d you know?”

“Angelina was right. Gracie’s cold. They’ve taken her up north.”

“They who? ”

Ben rubbed his face. “The abductors.”

Kate punched the power button on the small television. The screen flashed on to a video of a police team using a two-man battering ram to knock down an apartment door early that Tuesday morning. They shouted “Police!” and stormed the place with weapons drawn; minutes later, they led a sleepy young man out of the apartment and into the bright lights of the media. He appeared anything but dangerous in red plaid pajamas with his hands cuffed behind his back and escorted by cops who towered over him. He looked like a skinny kid. Trailing behind him was a distraught young pregnant woman wearing a robe. The early morning arrest had been a made-for-TV event. Kate pointed at the screen.

“But he’s the abductor!”

He doesn’t look like a pervert, John thought as he stared at the suspect through the interrogation room window. He didn’t look anything like the Army bullies; he wasn’t coarse, thick, hairy, dirty, or ugly. But then, what’s a pervert supposed to look like? The mug shots of sex offenders in the paper were always of unshaven miscreants with greasy hair and acne scars and missing teeth. This guy was clean and clean-cut. In fact, his face seemed vaguely familiar, like the kids just out of college who worked at BriceWare. com; but then, his was a face John saw every day in the high-tech world-young, white, male, and pale.

John knew now that he would never see Gracie again. Never hold her again or talk to her again or admire her swell face again. This guy had taken her away. Forever. John wanted to get mad, but he couldn’t muster any anger. He could barely muster the strength in his wobbly legs to remain standing. So he leaned forward and rested his weight against the window. Tears came into his eyes. At least her pain had stopped. And he found himself envying her again: his pain would never stop.

The abductor had nothing to put on the bargaining table.

He couldn’t close the deal.

Her deal was dead.

Elizabeth was also standing at the window staring in at the abductor, so close to him she could reach out and strangle the son of a bitch if they were not separated by the glass, and wondering if she could make it inside the interrogation room and choke the life out of him before Chief Ryan and Agent Devereaux could react. She turned to John; he was leaning into the glass, his forehead plastered against the pane, his arms hanging at his side, staring at the abductor like a kid looking in at the gorilla exhibit at the zoo.

Elizabeth turned back to the abductor, imagining him on top of her daughter while she lie motionless, silent tears streaming down her face, wondering why God had forsaken her. Heat spread across Elizabeth’s body; her fists clenched. Her entire body ached to strangle the bastard.

She glanced over at Ryan and Devereaux, standing a few steps behind her, engrossed in conversation, paying no attention to the victim’s distraught mother over by the interrogation room. She inched toward the door. Her pulse raced with anticipation.

“We got an anonymous tip,” Chief Ryan said to FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux.

“You should’ve got a warrant,” Devereaux said. “Paul, your man conducted an illegal search-under a floor mat and a bed cover ain’t in plain view. That picture and the jersey, they won’t ever see the inside of a courtroom. What else you got?”

“The coach ID’d him.”

“Positive?”

“Pretty much.”

Devereaux raised an eyebrow. “Pretty much ain’t much in a courtroom. Any other tangible evidence?”

“Well, nothing at this time.”

“Nothing in his apartment?”

“No.”

“Nothing else in his truck?”

“No… but your people are on it, checking for DNA.”

“Well, they damn sure better find some, Paul, ’cause we can’t take what we got to a grand jury.”

Ryan almost laughed. “The hell we can’t. Our county grand jury will indict a goddamned Greyhound bus if we tell ’em to!”

“Chief!”

A police officer came running up the corridor toward them.

“Chief,” the officer said when he arrived, “we got his cell phone records. Nine calls last week to the Brice residence.”

Elizabeth had worked her way almost to the interrogation room door when the police officer’s words jolted her. She turned to him but pointed sharply at the abductor behind the glass.

“He called my house?”

“Not any of your numbers, ma’am,” the officer said. “He called Gracie’s phone number. It’s listed in the book.”

“ He stalked my daughter? ”

That did it. A sudden surge of rage propelled Elizabeth to the door and inside the interrogation room before the others could react. The abductor recoiled as she lunged across the table at him and landed in his lap. They toppled over backwards in his chair onto the cement floor. He couldn’t break the fall with his hands and feet shackled. Elizabeth fell on his chest, knees first, knocking the air out of him. His mouth gaped and he sucked for air as she punched him in the face, again and again, trying to drive her fist through his face, the adrenaline and rage giving her strength she had never known, spit spewing out of her mouth along with her words.

“Where’s my daughter, goddamnit?”

She tried her absolute best to break his nose with the knuckles of her fist. He groaned.

“You killed her, didn’t you?”

She extended her right leg, as if she were doing her tight buns exercise, then drove her knee into his groin, hoping to drive his balls into his brain. His eyes rolled back and he screamed in pain.

“You’re not on top now, you sorry fuck!”

She grabbed his neck and commenced choking the bastard that took her daughter.

“You fucking pervert!”

Thick black arms suddenly wrapped around her midsection from behind, and she was lifted off the abductor until she was dangling in midair-but her strong hands remained locked around the pervert’s scrawny neck. She held on for as long as she could, but her grip finally gave way. She got in one last good kick, a Nike cross-trainer right in his ribs, which produced a low groan from the bastard.

“Mrs. Brice, control yourself!”

Devereaux’s arms were wrapped around the mother’s torso, and he was trying to back out of the interrogation room with her kicking and screaming and spitting at the suspect. She was no longer just halfway to nuts-she was all the way there! He got her to the door, but she grabbed hold of both sides of the doorjamb and held on for dear life, still screaming profanities at the suspect, her eyes blazing with feral rage.

“You’re gonna die, you sick bastard! You’re gonna die and go to hell!”

Christ, she was incredibly strong for her size! Devereaux was trying to pry the mother’s fingers loose while holding her with one arm. He could feel her rock-hard midsection expanding and contracting rapidly; her adrenaline was pumping big time.

“I’ll inject the poison myself, you fucking pervert! You killed my baby! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

Devereaux outweighed the mother by at least a hundred pounds, but he’d be damned if he could get this woman out of the room. And choke-holding a victim’s mother was entirely out of the question. He decided to lean backwards slightly to see if she could hang on with his big self pulling against her. She hung on. Damn. It must be the adrenaline, giving her this kind of strength. He looked to Chief Ryan for help.

But the chief was trying to get the suspect, who was bleeding profusely from his nose and mouth, bound by leg and wrist irons, and cupping his genitals with both hands, up off the floor and back into his chair. The suspect struggled to his knees; Ryan stood behind him and yanked up on the iron belt shackled to his waist, practically lifting him off his feet. The suspect stood. Then he puked.

The mother screamed: “Choke on it, you sonofabitch!”

Once Ryan had the suspect in place, he hurried over and pried the mother’s fingers loose one by one, first her right hand-the mother craned her head around Ryan and got in one final “Fuck you!” at the suspect-and then her left hand. Devereaux almost fell backwards into the corridor with her in his arms. Chief Ryan shut the door to the interrogation room behind them.

“Put me down, goddamnit!” the mother demanded.

Devereaux released her. She pushed his arms away and straightened her clothes. She was wearing a black-and-white nylon sweat suit over a black tee shirt; her face was red and shiny with sweat; her chest was heaving with each gasped breath. She cleared her face of tears, saliva, and snot with one swipe of her sleeve.

“I want to know what he did with her!”

“So do we, Mrs. Brice, but he’s in police custody and you can’t beat it out of him!”

“Then you beat it out of him!”

“Mrs. Brice!”

FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux had never before yelled at a mother of an abducted child. But then, he had never met a mother like Elizabeth Brice. Most mothers fell apart: some started smoking again, some drinking, some didn’t get out of bed, some ended up in the psych ward with nervous breakdowns. Elizabeth Brice beat the hell out of the prime suspect. Devereaux was glad she wasn’t his wife, but she was an impressive woman nonetheless.

She was now pacing around like a caged animal, allowing her adrenaline to ease and examining the traces of blood on her raw knuckles; she stuck her knuckles in her mouth and sucked the blood clean.

“Now everyone just calm down!” Chief Ryan said. To several uniforms who had come running to see what the commotion was about, he said, “Get someone in there to clean that mess up… and a paramedic for the suspect.” Then, satisfied that the mother was under control, he turned to the young officer who brought the news of the phone records. “That it? The phone calls?”

“No, sir. He works for Mr. Brice.”

“ What? ”

“Yeah, Chief, the guy works at BriceWare.”

The chief turned to the father: “You don’t know him?”

Most victims’ fathers begged Devereaux for five minutes alone with the abductor. But this victim’s father had maintained his position at the window throughout the mother’s attack on the suspect. Mr. Brice shook his head.

“No.”

“Chief,” the officer said, “the phone company can identify the cell tower nearest the call’s origination. There’s a tower next to the BriceWare building.”

Chief Ryan gave Devereaux an I-told-you-so shrug. As the new information slowly sank in, all eyes turned and fixed on the young man bleeding and sobbing at the table in the interrogation room. The mother turned to Devereaux and pointed a finger at him.

“Find out what he did with my daughter.”

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney prior to questioning and to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, you have the right to have one appointed for you prior to any questioning.”

Chief of Police Paul Ryan looked up from his Miranda card at the prime suspect. “Gary, do you understand your rights as I have explained them to you?”

The interrogation room reeked of the cleaning solvent used to disinfect the floor and table where Jennings had vomited. Ryan was sitting with his back to the two-way mirror; Agent Devereaux sat at one end of the rectangular metal table, and Jennings sat across the table. His nose was swollen and his lips were fat; the area under his left eye was already turning purple. It looked to be one hell of a shiner. He nodded at Ryan.

“Son, you gotta state your answer for the tape recorder.”

A recorder sat in the middle of the table. They had decided to audiotape rather than videotape; Jennings’s battered face would give his lawyer ammunition to claim any confession was coerced. A judge was not likely to believe that while in police custody the victim’s mother beat up the prime suspect.

“Yes,” Jennings said.

“Yes, you understand your constitutional rights?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re waiving your right to have an attorney present during questioning?”

“Yes.”

Once a lawyer enters the room, any hope of a confession exits. Obtaining a quick confession was particularly urgent in this case because the evidence collected from Jennings’s truck would likely be inadmissible in court-but mostly because a confession got the story off the evening news and the mayor off Ryan’s back. So Paul Ryan put the Miranda card in his shirt pocket, folded his hands on the table, and said in a soft voice, one of disappointment in a teenage son who had taken the family car without permission, “Gary, why’d you take Gracie?”

“I didn’t take her!”

“Mr. Brice said she went to the BriceWare office over the Christmas holidays, nearly every day. Is that when you first became acquainted with Gracie?”

“Yes… I mean, no! We weren’t acquainted.”

“What were you?”

“We were… nothing! I work for Mr. Brice, that’s all!”

“But you saw her in the office?”

“Yeah. She delivered mail, on rollerblades.”

“And you knew she was Mr. Brice’s daughter?”

“Sure, we all did.”

“Has Mr. Brice been a good employer to you?”

“Yeah, it’s a great place to work.”

“Good pay, good benefits?”

“Yeah.”

“Stock options?”

“Yeah.”

Ryan threw a thumb at the two-way mirror behind him. “Gary, Mr. Brice is standing on the other side of that mirror, looking at you, listening to everything you’re saying.” Jennings looked up at the mirror. “For God’s sake, son, at least tell him where his daughter’s body is, so he can bury her properly. Don’t just leave her out there in some field, buzzards picking over her.”

“I don’t know where she’s at!” Jennings tried to stand but the leg irons restrained him. To the mirror, he said, “Mr. Brice, I swear to God, I didn’t take her!”

He looked like he might start crying again.

“But you’ve done this sort of thing before.”

Jennings fell back into the chair. “No, no, no, that was in college, a frat party, we were drunk… How was I supposed to know she was only sixteen?”

Agent Devereaux gestured to Ryan for Jennings’s file. Ryan slid it down the length of the table to Devereaux, who thumbed through it while Ryan continued his questioning.

“The law doesn’t require that you know, only that the victim be under the age of seventeen when you had sex with her.”

“The victim? She was putting out for a bunch of guys at a frat party the next weekend-I saw her!”

Ryan shrugged. “You’re required to register with the police department when you move into town. You didn’t do that, Gary.”

“Yeah, and have my photo plastered across the newspaper again with ‘sex offender’ in big print. I’m branded a sex offender for life and she’s married to a doctor.”

“Why didn’t you register?”

“Because I didn’t want my wife to find out. I wanted a clean start.” Tears welled up in Jennings’s eyes. “I just got drunk at a frat party. I was five days too old for her.”

An exception to the Texas statutory rape statute states that if the defendant is less than three years older than the victim, there is no crime. Jennings was nineteen years, ten months, and twenty-seven days old at the time of the sexual act; the girl was sixteen years, ten months, and twenty-two days old. Five days difference made him a sex offender for life.

“You’re not a child molester?”

“No!”

Ryan reached over to the file and removed the plastic-wrapped picture of the naked adolescent female found in Jennings’s truck. He pushed it in front of Jennings.

“Well, son, why do you look at pictures like this?”

Jennings glanced at the picture and recoiled.

“I’ve never seen that picture before!”

“It was in your truck, under the floor mat.”

“In my truck?”

“Yes, son, in your truck. Possession of child pornography is a federal crime, Gary-that picture alone can put you in prison for most of your adult life.”

“I don’t know how it got in my truck.”

“Well, what about her jersey? How’d that get in your truck?”

“What jersey?”

“Gracie’s soccer jersey. It was in the back of your truck, under the bed cover.”

“Her jersey was in my truck?”

“Yes.”

“This has gotta be a joke, a big mistake!”

“What about the nine phone calls you made to Gracie last week, are those a big mistake?”

“I never called her!”

“We traced the calls to your cell phone.”

“ My cell phone? I don’t know… I leave the phone in my truck. I never lock it.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s no crime out here, just like the mayor says! Do you lock your car? Maybe someone used my cell phone while I was at work.”

“Oh, okay, someone’s framing you?”

“Yes!”

Ryan leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and studied Gary Jennings. Twenty-eight years old with a boyish face and frame, he didn’t look like your typical sexual predator; in fact, he looked like Ryan’s son-in-law, a proctologist in Dallas. And most predators weren’t nearly so convincing in their claims of innocence-the boy was good. But he had made a prior trip through the system, so he knew to deny, deny, deny; juries liked that when they listened to the interrogation tape. Ryan decided to ratchet up the pressure, give the boy something to think about.

“Okay, Gary, let’s summarize your defense for the jury: a sexual predator premeditates his abduction of Gracie weeks in advance. He searches the state’s sex offender database and finds you, a convicted sex offender who just happens to fit his description to a T, who just happens to live three miles from the park, and who just happens to work for Gracie’s father. Then, during the week prior to the abduction, he goes to your place of employment, finds your truck unlocked, plants child pornography in it and uses your cell phone to place nine calls to Gracie. Then, after he abducts Gracie and rapes her and kills her in the woods behind the park, he dumps her body and drives over to your apartment and tosses her jersey in your truck to frame you.” Ryan turned his hands up. “Gary, you’re a smart fella. Do you really expect a jury of adults to believe that?”

Jennings was shaking his head slowly, as if in disbelief. “No… I mean, yes! I guess he could’ve done that, I don’t know. But I didn’t do it!”

“Gary, who’s the jury gonna believe when Gracie’s coach takes the stand and points his finger at you”-which Ryan was now doing-“and says, ‘He’s the man that took Gracie’?”

“I didn’t take her!”

“Okay, Gary. One last question: what else are we gonna find in your truck? FBI’s best people are examining every square inch of that vehicle-are they gonna find Gracie’s fingerprints, her hair, her blood?”

“No! She’s never been in my truck!”

Ryan stood and walked to the door, then turned back to deliver the clincher that would surely have this boy making a tearful confession later today.

“I hope you’re right, son, ’cause if they find her DNA in your truck, that puts her in your vehicle and you on death row.”

Ben had arrived while Agent Devereaux and Chief Ryan were interrogating the suspect. The boy’s face seemed familiar. After a moment, Ben placed him: he was the young man with the pregnant wife who had come up to John at the candlelight vigil Sunday night and offered his sympathy. Ben was standing at the window to the interrogation room when Devereaux and Ryan emerged.

“Drunken sex?” Agent Devereaux said to the chief. “That’s his only prior offense? He and a girl get drunk at a frat party, have sex, she regrets it the next morning and files charges? Jennings pleads out because he’s nineteen and she’s one month from legal and gets probation? That makes him a sexual predator?”

Chief Ryan shrugged. “No defense to stat rape. Besides, he pleaded guilty.”

“To indecency with a child, Paul, so he didn’t spend the next twenty years in prison! This boy hasn’t had a speeding ticket in eight years, all of a sudden he decides to abduct and kill a child?”

Ben stepped forward. “He doesn’t fit the profile. He’s not a loner deviant. He’s married, his wife’s pregnant, he’s about to make a lot of money. No bad news in this boy’s life to trigger the abduction, like your profiler said.” Ben held up the flier with the composite sketch of the suspect that had been distributed to the media immediately after the abduction. “He doesn’t look anything like this guy. And the coach put the abductor at six foot, two hundred pounds. What’s this boy, five-ten, one-fifty?”

“He probably looked taller in the black cap,” Chief Ryan said. “Look, Colonel, we got the bad guy, okay? The coach identified him, he had child porn and Gracie’s jersey in his truck, and he called Gracie nine times last week.” He threw his hands up. “What more do you want?”

“The truth.”

“Sorry. The law only gives you a conviction.”

“We’ve got to follow the book or a federal judge will overturn a death penalty.”

Not an hour after the Jennings interrogation, the local mayor and police chief had stood on the front steps of the town hall and proclaimed Gary Jennings guilty of the abduction and murder of Gracie Ann Brice. The locals were always desperate to close a child abduction case-bad for property values; but FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux had refused to participate. He was troubled by Jennings’s demeanor; it wasn’t the demeanor of a sexual predator. Was Jennings that good of a liar? Maybe. But Devereaux decided to wait for the Evidence Response Team’s report before making any judgments about Gary Jennings; he would wait to see if Gracie’s DNA was found in Jennings’s truck. DNA never lied.

But the mayor’s proclamation had brought the family into the command post; Devereaux was now standing on the other side of his desk from Gracie’s parents and grandparents.

“The court’s got to appoint a lawyer to represent Jennings, one with experience in death cases, because the appeals courts will order a retrial if the trial lawyer didn’t know what he was doing. So then we go through another trial all over again, three years down the road.”

“But we’ve got to find Grace!” the mother said.

This was the part that Devereaux always hated. “Mrs. Brice, if Jennings is the abductor, Gracie wasn’t with him. Which means-”

“She’s dead,” the mother said.

“Yes, ma’am. If Jennings is the guy.”

“At least he can tell us where she’s at.”

“Yes, ma’am. If he knows.”

“You’re not sure he’s the abductor, are you?” Colonel Brice asked. “Things don’t fit.”

“No, sir, things don’t fit.”

“Make him take a polygraph,” the colonel said.

“If we administer a polygraph before his lawyer is appointed and he fails, we know he’s guilty but anything we learn from the polygraph may not be admissible.”

“And if he passes?”

“We cut him loose. Polygraphs aren’t admissible in court, but they’re 95 percent reliable, which is a helluva lot better than a jury.”

“What about the other man from the game tape?”

“Colonel, I don’t know. Maybe they weren’t together. Maybe Jennings didn’t know the other man like he says.”

“So what’s the time frame,” the mother asked.

“Several days. The court will appoint a lawyer today, he’ll be arraigned tomorrow. It takes longer to do it right, but if we screw this up, his conviction will be overturned and we’ll never execute Gary Jennings for the murder of your daughter.”

“Well, Eddie, you fucked up the jersey,” the chief said. “Plain sight? In the back of a truck under a bed cover? What, you got X-ray vision?”

Patrol Officer Eddie Yates was sweating. Chief Ryan had called him at home and asked him to come in early before shift change and see him in his office. That had never happened before. Eddie had figured the chief wanted to congratulate him on a job well done. He had figured wrong.

“And the porn picture, now that’s kind of interesting, Eddie, ’cause the only fingerprints they could find on the damn thing were yours. How you figure that?”

The pores on Eddie’s forehead were popping sweat beads like popcorn.

“Chief, I-”

“You entered his truck, searched it, looked under the mat, picked the picture up, and put it back under? How stupid is that?”

“Shit, Chief, I thought I rubbed off my prints.”

“Eddie, you ain’t supposed to tell your chief that, goddamnit!” The chief shook his head. “Damnit, Eddie, that son of a bitch could walk ’cause of you! You’d better pray the FBI boys find her DNA in his truck.”

Barney Fife done screwed up and Sheriff Andy was pissed.

“I’m real sorry, Chief.”

“Did you jimmy the hatch?”

“Oh, no, Chief, I swear I didn’t! It was unlocked, the door, too.”

“Where was the cell phone?”

“In the console. Is that stupid or what? I mean, no one locks their cars in this place, but leaving a cell phone in there? I could’ve taken it, sat in the parking lot, and run out his air time without him knowing it till he got the bill.”

Eddie laughed; the chief didn’t. Instead, he waved Eddie out of his office. Eddie walked to the door then thought of something. He wasn’t sure this was the best time to ask, but he couldn’t wait.

“Uh, Chief…”

The chief looked up.

“Any way I get some of that reward money?”

The chief blinked hard and said, “You’re shittin’ me?”

Eddie took that for a no. He walked out just as the chief’s secretary stuck her head in and said, “Jennings’s wife is here.”

She was just a kid, really.

Ryan had left the door to his office open so his secretary could see and hear them, him and Jennings’s wife. Debbie Jennings had come in to plead her husband’s innocence. He had reminded her that she could not be compelled to testify against her husband; she said they had nothing to hide. She was twenty-five and seven months’ pregnant. They had married two years ago. She knew nothing of his college conviction.

“That doesn’t mean he’s a child molester,” she said. “Gary would never do anything like that.”

She looked like she hadn’t slept since the arrest. She took deep breaths.

“You okay?” She nodded, but Ryan wasn’t so sure. “Mrs. Jennings, where was Gary Friday night?”

“With me. He got home a little after five, we took our walk-the doctor wants me to walk every day-we ate dinner, watched TV. And we picked out names for the baby. It’s a girl.”

“Did you decide?”

“Decide what?”

“Her name.”

“Sarah.”

“Nice name.” Paul Ryan wanted a grandchild, but his son-in-law the proctologist wanted a Porsche. “Gary never left the apartment that night?”

“No.”

“And you never left the apartment?”

“No.”

“Are there any other witnesses?”

“We usually don’t have sleepovers, Chief. Can anyone other than your wife confirm where you were last night?”

She had a point.

“And your cops found nothing when they ransacked our apartment-they went through my underwear drawer, for God’s sake!”

“Mrs. Jennings, do you know anything about Gracie’s jersey, how it might have gotten into Gary’s truck?”

“No. I’ve told him a hundred times to lock his truck, but he always says that’s why we moved out of the city, because there’s no crime out here. Anyone could have put it in his truck.”

“Not anyone, Mrs. Jennings. Only the abductor. Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about the phone calls?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did Gary ever talk about Gracie?”

“No. The only time he’s ever spoken to Mr. Brice was at the vigil.”

“What about when he hired on?”

She shook her head. “Gary’s only been there six months. Mr. Brice has been in New York most of the time, on the IPO.”

“Why’d Gary go to the vigil?”

“She was his boss’s daughter. The whole town went.”

“Has Gary’s behavior changed in any way since Friday night?”

“Yes, at two this morning when the police kicked our door down and pointed guns at us. He freaked.”

“Did he dispose of any clothing recently?”

“No.”

“Did he clean his truck over the weekend?”

“No.”

“Has Gary ever displayed an unusual interest in children?”

“No. Kids drive him nuts.”

“Has he ever referred to children as ‘pure’ or ‘innocent’?”

“No. He thinks my sister’s kids were sent by Satan. Chief, where are you getting these questions, out of a child molester manual?”

He was, in fact.

“Does he have any friends you would describe as deviants or weird?”

“Have you been to his workplace? People there have rings in their ears, noses, tongues, navels, nipples, and genitals. That’s weird.”

He had to agree with her.

“Mrs. Jennings, do you and Gary have a, uh, normal marital relationship?”

“Do we have sex?”

He nodded.

“Yes, Chief, we have sex. Gary likes sex with his wife, not little girls.”

Ryan hesitated. He wasn’t getting very far with her. Of course, he hadn’t told her about the child pornography. He debated whether he should, but he decided that it would come out at trial anyway, probably sooner. So it wasn’t as if he would be intentionally upsetting her. And maybe she would then realize that her husband was guilty and she could pressure him into confessing. Paul Ryan needed a confession to keep his job. So he retrieved the picture from the desk drawer and held it in his lap.

“Mrs. Jennings, does your husband practice pornography?”

“Oh, no, he’s never asked me to do anything like that… well, one time he asked me to put it in my mouth, but I told him that was sinful. He’s never asked again.”

“No, uh, I mean, does he have pornography around the apartment, you know, magazines or movies?”

“No, he doesn’t even get Playboy since he accepted God into his life.”

“Has he ever possessed child pornography?”

“No!”

“Mrs. Jennings, we found this in Gary’s truck.”

Ryan placed the picture on the desk and slowly pushed it toward her. Her eyes locked on the image, her mouth came open, as if she was about to speak, but no words came out. She looked up at Ryan then back at the picture. Finally, she spoke.

“This was in Gary’s truck?”

“Yes, ma’am, it was.”

Her face went pale. She put her palms on the desk and pushed herself up out of the chair. Halfway up, she suddenly groaned and grabbed at her round belly, down low. She bent over and cried out in pain. She collapsed.

Jesus Christ!

Ryan vaulted to her side of the desk. Blood was on her bare legs.

“Call the paramedics!” he yelled to his secretary.

A risk level 3 offender is defined as an offender for whom there is no basis for concern that the person poses a serious danger to the community or will continue to engage in criminal sexual conduct.

Gary Jennings was a risk level 3 offender.

Elizabeth had logged onto the Texas Department of Public Safety’s online Sex Offender Database. She entered Jennings, Gary in the search box and clicked. Jennings’s photo came up along with his record.

JENNINGS, GARY MICHAEL

DPS NO.: 156870021

DOB: 3/10/78

RISK LEVEL: 3

SEX: male

RACE: white

HT: 510

WT: 155

EYE COLOR: blu

HAIR COLOR: bln

SHOE SIZE: 085

ALIAS NAMES: Jennings, Gary

CURRENT ADDRESS

1100 Interstate 45

Oakville Apartments

Apt. 121

Post Oak, Texas 78901

OFFENSE DATA

OFFENSE: Indecency w/child sexual contact

COUNTS: 1

VICTIM’S SEX: Female

VICTIM’S AGE: 16.11

DISPOSITION DATE: 07/08/1998

TIME: 1Y PROBATED

STATUS: DISCHARGED

Forty-two thousand registered sex offenders resided in the State of Texas. And one of them had abducted and murdered her daughter.

BriceWare. com Incorporated occupied an abandoned grocery store in a nondescript strip shopping center across the interstate from the affluence of Briarwyck Farms. FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux followed the father through the automatic sliding-glass doors and into the store along with Agents Stevens and Jorgenson. They had come to check Gary Jennings’s workspace and personnel records.

Inside, the cavernous space was, in fact, an empty grocery store. Big neon signs-DAIRY… MEATS… BAKERY… PHARMACY… VIDEOS… PRODUCE-still lit up the walls. Hanging from the ceiling were grocery store fluorescent lights and grocery store aisle markers with product listings. But where the aisles of groceries used to stand were now aisles of low cubicles; heads bobbed up and down. Young men and women, boys and girls really, glided by on rollerblades or personal scooters, headphones wrapped around their skulls, their ears and noses adorned with rings, their arms and ankles with tattoos, their hair representing all the colors of the rainbow; some pushed grocery carts filled with mail or boxes; they were dressed like they were at a rock concert instead of a business. If there was anyone over the age of twenty-five, Devereaux had yet to see him or her. The workplace of this high-tech company looked more like the cafeteria during lunch at his daughter’s high school. And the father looked more like a skinny teenager than the chief executive officer of a company worth billions.

At the CUSTOMER SERVICE desk a young receptionist with purple hair and narrow black-framed glasses stood abruptly when she saw the father; her neon-red shirt did not cover her navel, which was pierced with a silver ring. She stepped to the father and put her head in his chest, then she wrapped her arms around him. The father patted her stiffly.

“Oh, Kahuna,” she said softly. She released the father and wiped her eyes. “How could he hurt her? He seemed like a righteous dude. I mean, he was here yesterday, like he hadn’t done anything.” She shook her head. “The real world is too random.” She bit her pierced lower lip. “I’ll really miss her.”

The father nodded and said in almost a whisper, “Terri, tell everyone the IPO will go forward tomorrow. They deserve it.”

Terri nodded. “Okay, Boss. But just so you know-the IPO’s cool and all, but we’re here because of you. You’re the man.”

The father sighed and stared off into space for a moment. Then he said, “Yeah… I’m the man. Where’s Jennings’s cube?”

The young woman checked her computer screen. “Cookies and Crackers, cube twenty-three.”

Devereaux and his agents followed the father toward the PHARMACY sign and past the VIDEO section where a collection of foosball, air hockey tables, and road racing simulators stood, an exercise room, a coffee stand, an open area with a regulation basketball hoop, and a dozen soda and snack machines standing along the wall like suspects in a lineup. A young Hispanic male with platinum-blond hair was banging on the side of a Red Bull vending machine. The father stopped so they stopped.

“The dang thing stole my money again!” He glanced up at the father. “Oh, sorry, Boss. I mean, not about this, but, uh, you know, about…”

The father eyed the young man, then he stared down the machine like Devereaux’s daughter stared down the goal before attempting a free throw. Then he suddenly swung his right foot up in some kind of karate kick and drove the heel of his shoe into the side of the machine: BAMM! The machine rocked back and forth, settled, and spat out two cans of Red Bull.

The Hispanic man grinned broadly, grabbed the two cans, and said, “Cool. A freebie.” Then to the father: “You da man.”

He held his fist out to the father. They bumped fists like the pro athletes do, then the Hispanic man walked off in one direction and they walked off in the opposite direction. They turned up an aisle marked Cookies and Crackers. Chairs in the cubicles swiveled away from computer screens as they walked past; behind them, heads poked out from the cubicles.

They arrived at cubicle twenty-three, a small crowded space, maybe six feet by six feet; two adults could not occupy the cubicle simultaneously because most of the space was taken up by a computer perched on a slim table, a few drawers, and boxes stacked on the floor. The walls of the cubicle were covered with yellow stickums, company memos, and pictures of Jennings and his wife smiling, kissing, and hugging-and one of Jennings patting her swollen belly. He did not appear to be a psychological time bomb. He was wearing a black baseball cap in one photo.

“Stevens,” Devereaux said, “you take the cubicle. Find out if Jennings contacted Gracie through his computer or accessed child porn sites from here, then box up his personal belongings.” To the father: “Personnel files.”

The father silently led Devereaux and Jorgenson toward the DAIRY section of the company.

Elizabeth pointed the remote at the TV and increased the volume. The reporter was saying, “A convicted sex offender sits in jail this Tuesday night, arrested in the early morning hours for the abduction of Gracie Ann Brice last Friday. Gary Jennings worked for the victim’s father, where he apparently became acquainted with Gracie. He made nine calls to Gracie in the week preceding her abduction. Gracie’s jersey was found in his truck, along with child pornography. Although not confirmed, sources tell us that traces of blood were also found in his truck. DNA tests are underway to determine if it is in fact Gracie’s. Jennings will be charged with kidnapping, murder, and possession of child pornography. While this community holds out hope, authorities concede privately that Gracie Ann Brice is presumed dead.”

She’s alive.

Their bond was unbroken.

She had come to him. She was showing him the way. She’s up north, where it’s cold. Where there’s snow on the ground. Where the trees stand tall.

But where up north?

Ben had found the weather channel on the pool house TV. The entire northern part of the country was under a blanket of snow from a late spring snowstorm. Was Gracie in Washington or Montana or Minnesota or Michigan or Maine? He didn’t have time to cover three thousand miles. He needed to be pointed in the right direction.

Ben was hoping the FBI’s computer printout of leads would do just that. After returning from the police station, he had spent the rest of the day reading 3,316 lead sheets for sightings of blonde girls. None sounded promising. All were in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and New and Old Mexico, where there was no snow on the ground in early April and nowhere near timber country. Ben turned the page to sighting number 3,317: Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Clayton Lee Tucker had just about gotten the wheel bearings back in when the phone rang. Well, it was just going to have to ring. It did. Ten, fifteen, twenty times-whoever it was, they weren’t going away.

He was working late, as usual. Since the wife had died, he didn’t have much else to do. The phone kept ringing. Hell, some old lady might be broken down somewhere. Clayton Lee Tucker had never failed to help a little old lady broken down in his part of Idaho.

Clayton slowly pushed his seventy-five-year-old body up off the cold concrete floor, looked around for a rag, gave up, and wiped his greasy hands on the legs of his insulated overalls. He limped the twenty feet from the repair bay to the desk inside the shop; his arthritis was inflamed by the cold. He picked up the phone.

“Gas station.”

“Is Clayton Lee Tucker available?”

“You got him.”

“Mr. Tucker, I’m calling about the girl.”

“Hold on a minute, let me wipe some of this grease off.”

Clayton set the phone down on the desk and stepped over to the wash bin. He squirted the industrial-strength cleaner on his cracked hands and washed them under the running water. After fifty years of fixing cars, his hands looked like road maps; the black grease filled every wrinkle line. They would never come clean. He wiped his hands dry and picked up the phone again.

“Sorry about that. You with the FBI?”

“No, sir. I’m the girl’s grandfather. Ben Brice.”

“Got three grandkids of my own, that’s why I called the FBI number.”

“You saw the girl Sunday, with two men?”

“Yep, they come dragging in here, maybe eight, eight-thirty, leaking oil like a busted pipeline. I’m the only fool open on Sunday night. Got nothing better to do, I guess.”

“Can you describe her?”

“Yellow hair, ratty, short-thought she was a boy at first, but she was too pretty to be a boy. And she was wearing pink.”

“Why do you think it was her?”

“Seen her picture, online.”

“Did you call because of the reward?”

“I don’t want your money, Ben. I called ’cause the girl looked like the picture and ’cause she looked scared and cold.”

“What’s your weather like?”

“Colder’n a well-digger’s ass. Up in the panhandle, they got upwards of three foot of snow.”

“What kind of vehicle were they driving?”

“Blazer, ’90 model, four-wheel drive, 350 V-8, white, dirty. They were on the road a while, said they was heading north. They were in a big hurry, wanted me to work through the night. I told ’em, you can’t hurry a ring job. Finished up last night, Monday, about nine, got it running pretty good. I ain’t got no help, so that’s the best I could do. Big man, he picked it up first thing this morning. Paid cash. After they left, I was checking my Schwab account and I saw an Amber Alert on my homepage, with her picture. That’s when I called.”

“Can you describe the two men?”

“Didn’t get a good look at the driver. He stayed in the car with the girl.”

“The other man, what about him?”

“Looked like that California governor, Arnold Schwarzenberger, real muscled-up fella. Crew cut, fatigues, Army boots, short gray hair. We see them types every now and then, militia boys wanna play GI Joe.”

“Did you get a license number?”

“No. But they was Idaho plates.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, I ain’t much at reading lips, but I’d swear she said help me.”

“Mr. Tucker, do they grow Christmas trees in northern Idaho?”

“Biggest industry up there.”

“Mr. Tucker, I appreciate your time… How did you know the second man was muscled-up?”

Clayton chuckled. “Hell, it’s about fifteen degrees outside, and he ain’t wearing nothin’ but a black tee shirt.”

“His arms were bare?”

“Yep… had the damnedest tattoo I’ve ever seen.”

John was eating dinner with a spoon: a dozen Oreo cookies crushed in milk. It was his favorite meal, but he didn’t taste anything.

Because he was no longer living. He was just going through the motions of life, like one of those creations in the MIT Humanoid Robotics Laboratory. All day, he had engaged in what appeared to be human activities-eating, walking, taking the FBI to the office-but they weren’t. There was no conscious human thought behind his actions.

His only thoughts were of Gracie.

He spat a mouthful of the mushy Oreos into the kitchen sink, a black blob of nothing. Like his life.

“You want refried beans with that?”

Coach Wally was working the late Tuesday shift in the drive-through window at the Taco House out on the interstate. He stood in the small booth, taking orders from motorists hungry for a quick burrito, chalupa, or taco, bagging the orders, making change, and asking each customer the same question: You want refried beans with that?

Over the intercom: “No!”

Into the intercom: “That’ll be seven-twenty-three. Please drive up to the window.”

Wally Fagan clicked off the intercom’s transmit button, grabbed a bag, and went back to the kitchen.

“Hey, Wally, you da mon, mon!” Juaquin Jaramillo, the night cook, said. “Puttin’ that kid fucker in jail, that’s real good, mon.”

Juaquin gestured at Wally with a large spoon dripping refried beans on the cement floor.

“Mon, some mu’fucka wanna try an’ stick his dick in one a my girls …”

Juaquin continued his nonstop rant, which came out in a kind of rap rhythm, as he scooped refried beans onto two flour tortillas, dropped a handful of grated cheddar cheese on top of each, folded the bottoms, rolled them into neat burritos, then wrapped them in the Taco House trademark serving paper.

“… make a fuckin’ burrito outta it, pour some chili over it, feed it to my dog, mon.”

Juaquin thought that was real funny.

“Ya understan’ what I’m sayin’, mon?”

Wally nodded at Juaquin, then he filled the bag with the two bean-and-cheese burritos, chips and salsa, and two Dr Peppers. He returned to the drive-through booth and reached out the window for the customer’s money; he handed the change back to the customers, a man at the wheel and a woman passenger leaning over and looking up at him.

“You’re Gracie’s coach, right?”

Wally nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good job, getting that pervert off our streets,” she said.

The man gave him a thumbs up.

Wally held out their bag of food. They took it, waved, and drove off; they had taped Gracie’s missing-child flier to the rear window. Wally gave them a weak wave. He felt slightly nauseous and not because he had eaten three of Juaquin’s burritos for dinner-because his gut was stewing with doubt. Something wasn’t right about Gary Jennings. He just couldn’t put his finger on it.

Wally had played and replayed Friday night in his head, trying to figure out why his ID of Jennings didn’t feel right: He’s standing with the team at the concession stand after the game, getting down on his cherry snow cone… Gracie comes running past, heading around back

… The man, blond hair, blue eyes, black cap, plaid shirt, walks up and says, “I’m Gracie’s uncle. Her mother, my sister, sent me to get her. Her grandma had a stroke. Where’s she at?” Wally answers, “Around back.” “That way?” the man says, and he points with his right hand, his fingers…

The intercom buzzed with another drive-through customer. Wally extended his right arm and with his right index finger he flicked on the transmit button and said, “You want refried beans with that?”

And he froze.

“That’s it!”

Vic Neal, a sixth-year associate recently relocated to the Dallas office of Crane McWhorter, a prestigious 1,900-lawyer Wall Street firm, gazed upon his newest client curled up in a fetal position on the cot in the jail cell and facing the concrete wall.

“Jennings,” the guard said. “Your lawyer’s here.”

Jennings didn’t move. The guard shrugged, opened the cell door, allowed Vic entry, and then closed and locked the door behind him. Vic pulled the metal chair over near the cot, sat down, placed his briefcase in his lap, opened it, and removed a yellow pad and a pen. He closed the briefcase and wrote at the top of the pad: Gary Jennings/State of Texas v. Gary Jennings/99999.9909. The client’s name, the client matter, and the client billing number, in this case the firm’s marketing number. It was a habit ingrained from his first day at the firm; a Crane McWhorter lawyer didn’t take a crap without writing down a client billing number first.

Of course, this client would never get a bill. The firm had taken this case pro bono: for the good. For the good of Crane McWhorter’s marketing program, that is. A high-profile death penalty case guaranteed invaluable publicity for the firm and the lawyer handling the case. As Old Man McWhorter had said on more than one occasion, “Clients can’t hire you unless they know you.” And as the number of lawyers trolling for clients from D.C. to L.A. had reached three-million-plus, the need to get known had reached epidemic proportions among the learned members of the bar.

So now you can’t turn around and not bump into a lawyer trying to get known. In the name of marketing, lawyers insinuate themselves into and onto every city council, county commission, civic committee, charity, church, club, conflict, crisis, controversy, commotion, corridor of power, or cause celebre. Vic Neal had chosen causes celebres, in particular, death penalty cases; he had recently transferred to the Dallas office because Texas was executing prisoners faster than Saddam Hussein in his heyday. When the call had come tonight, he had jumped at the opportunity to represent a sexual predator facing death by lethal injection.

Crane McWhorter, on the advice of its marketing consultant, had begun accepting death penalty cases a year after Vic had joined the firm. At first, the firm took only appeals, the sanitized version of the crime. Reading the transcript of a gruesome murder trial was considerably less painful than reading a legal thriller, and the firm’s Ivy League-educated lawyers didn’t have to personally meet face-to-face with a stone-cold killer. Appeals courts address only legal technicalities, not whether the defendants were actually guilty, which of course they always were. But, to the firm’s dismay, appeals cases generated minimal publicity, not all that surprising since the cases were argued a year or two after the verdict, long after the victim had faded from the public’s short attention span. The time to reap the full publicity value of a vicious murder was at trial, when emotions and media interest ran the highest. So the firm began taking cases at the trial stage.

Vic had tried his first death penalty case four years ago and his sixth last summer, a black man accused of raping and murdering a white woman in Marfa, Texas-in godforsaken West Texas. The trial had lasted ten days: ten days of hundred-degree heat, ten days of popping Tums after Tex-Mex and chicken-fried lunches, ten days of media briefings on the Presidio County Courthouse steps after each day’s testimony, dozens of reporters and TV cameras-even the BBC-all focused on Vic Neal, defender of the oppressed.

He had especially enjoyed the BBC reports, whose correspondent had always said something like: “Ian Smythe reporting from Marfa, Texas, a desolate spot in a vast desert frontier known as West Texas, a dusty locale whose only claim to fame is that Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson filmed the American movie Giant here in 1955. Now, fifty years later, another American drama is being played out here in a Presidio County courtroom, starring a dashing young American lawyer from New York, Vic Neal, fighting to prevent the State of Texas from executing yet another impoverished black man…” That case had made Vic Neal a “prominent” trial lawyer. The defendant- what was his name? — had been convicted and executed last year. Which was surely the fate of this defendant.

“Gary.” No response. “Gary, I’m Vic Neal, your lawyer. The court appointed me.”

Jennings slowly rolled over and sat up.

“Shit, what happened to your face? The cops beat you up?”

Jennings shook his head.

“The FBI? That’s even better.”

Another shake of his head. “The mother,” he said.

“The mother? Elizabeth Brice kicked your… did that to you?”

A nod of the head. “She kneed me in the balls, too.”

“Ouch.”

Vic knew of Elizabeth Brice-white-collar defense, tough as nails, foul-mouthed, great body. Criminal defense was man’s work and she fit right in.

“Well, guess we can’t make anything of that.” Vic thumbed through his notes. “Did you really have stock options worth a million bucks?”

Jennings nodded.

“And you threw that away to have sex with your boss’s ten-year-old daughter? Well, I suppose we could plead insanity.”

A little gallows humor to break the ice. Vic chuckled; Jennings didn’t.

“Our goal, Gary, is to keep you off death row. To do that you must show remorse. Juries like that. And you can start showing some remorse by telling the police what you did with the girl’s body.”

“I didn’t take the girl!”

Vic leaned back in the chair and sighed. How many times had he heard that? Every death penalty defendant he had represented was utterly and completely innocent- I was framed! — right up to the moment they strapped him to the gurney and inserted the needle, then he’s begging God to forgive him for brutally killing a family of four because he wanted a new stereo.

“You know, Gary, if you lie to your lawyer, I can’t help you. Understand, this case isn’t a question of acquittal or conviction, it’s a question of life or death. Your life or your death. Life without parole would be a great victory, given the overwhelming evidence against you.”

“I want a lie-detector test!”

“Well, yeah, Gary, you could do that. And when you fail and the D.A. tells the world you failed, you will absolutely get the death penalty because every juror will know you’re guilty before the trial even starts. We won’t have a chance for any sympathy from even one juror to get you a life sentence.”

“But I didn’t do it! I was framed! Why don’t you find who put that picture in my truck, and her jersey, and made those calls? I’m innocent!”

“Her blood in your truck, but you’re innocent?”

“Gracie’s blood?”

Vic nodded. “FBI confirmed it’s hers with DNA tests. Media’s already got hold of it, but it’ll be officially announced tomorrow morning, right before your arraignment. So don’t even think about bail. This is home sweet home, pal.”

“But how did Gracie’s blood get in my truck?”

What an innocent face this guy could put on! Vic couldn’t help but laugh.

“Save the O.J. imitation for trial, Gary. Nobody planted blood in the white Bronco and nobody planted blood in your black truck.”

Vic checked his watch and stood.

“Look, I gotta go, I’ll see you at the arraignment. I’m gonna be on Nightline, railing against the death penalty. Time I’m through, I’ll have that McFadden broad crying like a baby wanting a bottle.”

Network television that night was like election night, all focused on one subject: Grace Ann Brice. Strangers abduct children for sex. A child abducted by a stranger has a life expectancy of three hours. Grace’s blood in Jennings’s truck. Presumed dead. Every channel, the same words, over and over again. Elizabeth was in bed crying when John walked into the master suite. She muted the TV and quickly wiped her face.

John disappeared into his bathroom without saying a word. She hit the volume and switched channels. She stopped again on Nightline. Jennings’s court-appointed lawyer wasn’t claiming his client was innocent, only that the death penalty was barbaric. How can he represent a guilty pedophile? Her guilty clients had only stolen money, not a child’s life.

Fifteen minutes later, John reappeared in plaid pajamas; his hair was wet and combed back. With the black glasses, he looked like a skinny Clark Kent. She again muted the TV. He walked to the bed and paused as if he wanted to say something, then decided against it and continued to the door.

He had slept in Grace’s room the first two nights; Elizabeth had thrown him out of their bedroom last night and the remote control at him. The rage. Now she was scared and alone and her child was presumed dead- God, her blood in his truck — and she needed someone to hold her, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask her husband, not after what she had done to him. What the rage had done to him.

If she asked, he would come and hold her. He would say he loved her. He would forgive her. He always forgave her. If she could ever let go of the past- Let go? If she could ever escape the past — perhaps she could love John as he loved her. He wanted her love, and she often found herself wanting to love him. There was something inside John R. Brice, something beneath the brainy geek facade. Something worth loving. But she could not love him as long as she hated herself. Her past wouldn’t allow it.

John stopped at the door, turned back, and said. “She was my daughter, too. I loved her just as much as you did.” He walked out and shut the door behind him.

Ben stood at the door to the command post. Agent Devereaux was gone, as were most of the agents. The young female FBI agent he had met-Jorgenson, he thought-sat at one computer station, telephone headset on, talking and typing. But the intensity level of the command post had noticeably decreased, as if the battle were over.

Ben laid the lead sheet on Devereaux’s desk, sighting number 3,317, Idaho Falls, Idaho, and wrote in the margin: Spoke to this Clayton Lee Tucker. Said he saw a blonde girl with two men, one with a tattoo, muscular, wearing a black tee shirt, at his gas station Sunday evening. If that was Gracie, you’ve got the wrong man in jail.

The wrong man was in jail and Gracie was in Idaho, where it was cold and where the trees stood tall and where snow covered the ground-a white blanket of snow. Not that the FBI would release Jennings on the basis of Ben’s dream. But once Clayton Tucker positively identified the men or the tattoo or Gracie from the FBI’s photos, they would. And if not then, surely after Jennings got a lawyer and passed a polygraph.

Ben Brice had spent six months in a POW camp; he figured one night in the town jail wouldn’t kill the boy.

“Jesus, boy, she sure kicked your ass!”

Jim Bob Basham, the night-shift jail guard, looked in through the steel bars at the sicko pervert. He was slumped on his cot in his cell, his head was buried in his hands, and he was crying. The mother’s attack on Jennings had made the rounds at town hall.

“How’s your nuts? Don’t that make you wanna just puke your guts up, getting kneed in the nuts? Shit, makes me wanna puke just thinking about it.”

No response from the pervert. Jim Bob figured, fuck being nice to him.

“Jennings, if I was you, I’d be praying they give me the death penalty, that’s a fact.”

The pervert raised his head.

“Yeah, see, that way they put you on death row, segregate you from the general population. You get life, you’re in with the rest of the inmates-the gangbangers, the Aryans, the Latinos, the brothers. Nothing they’d like more than to wear your ass out, and I don’t mean what the mother did to you.”

A confused expression from Jennings; the dumb ass didn’t understand what Jim Bob was saying. Jim Bob figured he’d put it in plain English, maybe the pervert could understand that.

“Those dudes gonna butt-fuck you five times a day, girlfriend. Time they get through with you, your asshole’s gonna be the size of a water main.”

Jim Bob cackled as he walked down the empty cell corridor. Water main, that was a good one.

“Yep,” he shouted back to the pervert, “they just love child molesters.”

Minutes later, Gary Jennings was alone, standing in the jail cell, in near darkness, only a dim red glow from the emergency exit lights.

It had taken him eight years, his father’s death, moving to another city, marrying Debbie, and getting a job to get over that college incident. Or so he had thought. He now knew he would never get over it. And he would never get over this.

In the morning he would be marched into the courthouse through a gauntlet of cameras to be formally charged with abducting, raping, and killing Gracie Ann Brice. His face would be on national TV again: Gary Jennings, child molester, sexual predator, murderer. And Debbie-poor, sweet Debbie, she didn’t deserve this. But they’d stick the cameras in her face just the same and identify her as the wife of the child molester, sexual predator, and murderer, pregnant with their child who would forever be identified as the daughter of the child molester, sexual predator, and murderer. She’d be like Lee Harvey Oswald’s daughter.

He had never told Debbie about his college conviction-what was she thinking of her wonderful husband now? And what would his daughter think of her father when she learned all this? There would be no education trust for her. No vested stock options worth a million dollars. No house for Debbie. No company of his own. No future. He would be forever shamed. As Debbie would be. More like devastated. They would have to move to yet another city- if Debbie believed him. If he was acquitted.

But how would he be? Gracie’s blood in his truck. Child pornography and her jersey. Calls from his cell phone. The coach pointing at him in court. Overwhelming evidence, the lawyer had said. Who would believe Gary Jennings, Fuckup?

Gary’s only prior experience with the law eight years ago had taught him that the American criminal justice system was about everything but truth and justice. Which was why he had agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge and receive probation, on his lawyer’s recommendation.

“Gary,” his lawyer had told him, “if you’re willing to put your life in the hands of twelve citizens who ain’t even smart enough to get out of jury duty in the first place and who’d rather be catching the Early Bird specials at the Wal-Mart instead of sitting in that jury box deciding your fate in the second place, then we need to change your plea to not guilty by reason of insanity because you’re fucking nuts!”

Gary Jennings would surely be convicted. Then what? Death row, waiting a decade to die by lethal injection? Or life without parole, waiting for the next inmate to enter his cell and rape him, eventually contracting AIDS and dying a long, slow, painful death? Debbie would divorce him and his daughter would never know him or want to. His parents were dead, he had no siblings, he soon would have no one. He was destined to die a lonely fuckup.

Darkness enveloped his mind as hot tears ran down his face. He felt so alone, so empty, so without faith, hope, or a future. His life was over. That he was still breathing was just a technicality. He looked up. There was only one thing to do.

Gary Jennings unzipped his white jail pants.