Stalked

She didn’t just profile the predators, although that was in her official job description. To do it well, she also had to figure out the personalities of the other law enforcement officials on the case. Figuring them out fast made for an easier working relationship, usually a better reception to her profiles. Especially since the head detective wasn’t always the one requesting her presence. Often, that pressure came from above, such as a police chief or a mayor, and usually because of media attention.

As Evelyn tried to work an instant profile, Sophia’s steady stare broke, a wide grin stretching across her face and making all of her uneven features seem to come together. “All right. That’s enough posturing. We’re both hard-asses and we both know it. Come on. I’ll show you what we’ve got on the Haley Cooke case.”

She spun, striding down the hallway at a pace that had Evelyn jogging to keep up.

At the end of the hallway, Sophia shoved open a door and ushered Evelyn into a room the size of a janitor’s closet. It smelled like a janitor’s closet, too, as though it had been used to store cleaning products until very recently. The scent of bleach made Evelyn’s eyes water, and she blinked it away before taking in the pictures and timelines tacked to every available wall space.

Sophia pushed back a pair of chairs and a small folding table that took up most of the room. “I know. It’s a pathetic amount of space to devote to the investigation of a missing teenager. But it’s what I’ve got. So I work with it.”

Evelyn nodded, not saying this was more space than she’d expected, given that the case was a month old and the leads were nonexistent. Then again, Neville, Virginia—home to approximately ten thousand people in the summers and thirty thousand when the local university was in session—probably didn’t see very many missing-persons cases.

The BAU, on the other hand, was inundated with countless missing-persons investigations. Rarely did Evelyn consult on a case with only one victim. But every so often, one would come along where the investigation was getting nowhere, and if the perpetrator was a stranger, a profiler could change everything. A regular investigation would struggle to find a kidnapper who had no connection to the victim’s life, but a profiler could do it.

“You want me to put that in our fridge?” Sophia asked.

Evelyn glanced down at the Styrofoam take-out container still clutched in her hand, dinner she hadn’t had a chance to eat. “Thanks,” she said, handing it over as her stomach growled.

After Sophia left the room, Evelyn spun in a slow circle, studying the images thumbtacked right into the drywall. At the center of most of them was Haley Cooke. Seventeen years old, a junior at Neville High School. The media loved to refer to her as “all-American.”

Blonde, blue-eyed, with a smile on her face in every picture Evelyn had seen. People probably couldn’t help returning that smile.

Evelyn had a sudden flashback to another blond-haired girl, one who’d never had the chance to grow up. Cassie, her best friend, whose disappearance had sent Evelyn into profiling. Was this how she might have looked if she’d made it to seventeen?

Evelyn pushed the bittersweet thought aside and focused on Haley. Her routines, her relationships, her personality—they would all contribute to Evelyn’s victim profile. That would help her figure out who could have grabbed her.

“Loved by everyone” was another thing the media constantly repeated about Haley. Whether it was because her mother had cozied up to all the local news stations or because the complete lack of clues had captivated the country’s interest, Haley’s face had become very well-known.

Which made it even more unusual that no one had seen her since she’d walked into that high school a month ago. Unless she’d never come out because she’d been killed there. But if that was true, surely they’d have found a body by now.

The case was bizarre. Although the BAU specialized in bizarre, this one had given Evelyn a bad feeling from the moment she’d seen the case file. A beautiful young teenage girl goes missing without a trace. The ending wasn’t usually positive.

From the limited information in the case file a month ago, there’d been no way to give a solid profile, but her gut had screamed “stranger abduction.” Since Haley had predicted her own death, though, it seemed her gut had been wrong.

“Here,” Sophia said, and Evelyn turned to find the detective holding out a flimsy cup. The smell of overcooked coffee filled the small room.

Instead of telling Sophia she didn’t drink coffee, Evelyn smiled her thanks and took the scalding-hot cup. “Why don’t you give me the highlights? And let’s look at the note the mother found. Can we confirm Haley wrote it?”

“Haley’s mom says it’s her daughter’s handwriting.” Sophia perched on top of the folding table, making it creak loudly underneath her. “Most of what we know you’ve probably already seen on the news. It’s as though someone plucked her out of thin air. Poof. Gone. Forensics is giving us nothing at the scene.”

“Who else was around?”

“Her boyfriend drove away after he dropped her off, and the cheerleaders on the field saw him leave. Otherwise, there was a coach on the field, and some students in the library with a teacher. None of them saw her inside, and no one saw her leave the school, but when her friends went inside, they couldn’t find her.”

“What about other exits?”

“Yeah, there are others, but the way the school is situated, it’s not likely she could have left without being seen. You’ve basically got the front entrance—where Haley was dropped off—near the main road. On the right side, you’ve got the field where the cheerleaders were practicing. They can see the front entrance from there. Then, on the left, you’ve got another open field the school uses for soccer and other sports. That one butts up against a neighborhood. Some wooded area in between, but not much. Then the back—faculty parking, service entrance. Probably the least visible, but that leads out to a side street. No one saw Haley leave that way, either, though they might not have. Still, it happened fast for an abduction.”

When Sophia took a breath, Evelyn cut in. “How far were the locker rooms where she was supposed to be from the back entrance?”

“Not close. Someone would have had to know exactly where she was, gone in and grabbed her and then subdued her fast, without making noise. The library is fairly close to the locker rooms, at least close enough that they surely would have heard if Haley screamed. Then...this person would have needed to carry Haley out without anyone seeing. Doable? Maybe. But unlikely.”

“Either someone was prepared to take that kind of risk, or Haley went willingly, at least at first,” Evelyn said. “What do you make of the note?”

“Ah, the note.” Sophia swiveled on the table and pulled the evidence list out of the box. “One sentence.”

Evelyn took the list and looked at the description for the last item, the notebook. The matter-of-fact words sent pinpricks down her spine. “‘If you’re reading this, I’m already dead.’”

“Yeah. Ominous.”

“And there was nothing else in the notebook? No other information?”

“None. We even checked for indentations in case she’d written more and then torn the pages out, but there’s no indication of that.”

“Did you run the note for prints?”

“Yep. We found Haley’s prints. And Linda’s—Haley’s mom. That’s it.”

“And the mom just found it today?”

“Yes. Between the box spring and the bed frame.”

“So, you guys missed it when you checked the room?”

Sophia frowned.

“What I’m asking,” Evelyn clarified, “is could it have been put there after Haley went missing? Could it have been planted?” For a case this high profile, a month was a long time for such a key piece of evidence to go unnoticed.

“I don’t know. We checked under the mattress. Could we have missed it? Yes. I mean, it was jammed in an odd location. And we were there to learn more about Haley. We were looking for any hints of what could have happened, get a sense of her personality, her secrets. We weren’t taking everything apart—we were trying to be sensitive to the family. Could the note have been put there after we searched the room? That’s also possible. But if someone planted the note, then why?”

“Attention,” Evelyn suggested. She’d seen it before, sometimes a misguided attempt to get more manpower on a case, and sometimes just to get the victim’s family back in the limelight. “The girl’s mom has been on the news—”

“Exactly,” Sophia agreed. “Linda Varner doesn’t need a stunt to get more attention for her daughter’s case. The woman quit her job. She does nothing but try to get resources for this. But it’s all about finding Haley. She wouldn’t plant evidence that might lead us in the wrong direction.”

“You sure?”

“You’re the profiler,” Sophia said. “But speaking as a cop—and a mother myself? Linda Varner appears to be the devastated mother of a missing child. Do they sometimes do things they shouldn’t, trying to make sense of what they’re going through? Sure. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Linda knows I’m working the case. I talk to her every day.”

“Every day?” Evelyn interrupted.

“Yep. Every single day, she shows up here, regardless of how many times I tell her I’ll call if I have anything new. We might as well have a standing appointment. And anyway, Linda confirmed the note was written in the daughter’s handwriting.”

“The mom—”

“It’s not Linda’s writing,” Sophia broke in. “Could she have gotten someone else to write it? I guess so, but then we’re looking at a conspiracy.”

Evelyn nodded. Conspiracies were relatively rare. The simplest explanations were most often the real ones.

“So, even if we think someone else put it there, Haley still wrote it.”

“Which leaves us at the same place.”

“Right.” Sophia’s shoulders slumped, and Evelyn suddenly saw the dark circles underneath the detective’s heavy-handed concealer.

The dark circles weren’t all from this case, either, and Evelyn realized Sophia was older than she’d initially thought—probably nearing forty.

“She was into something she shouldn’t have been,” Sophia said, ticking off possibilities on her fingers. “Or she knew something she shouldn’t have known, saw something she shouldn’t have seen. Or she was a victim who’d decided to finally tell, and someone wanted to shut her up.” Sophia shrugged. “Whatever it is...”

“She almost certainly knew who grabbed her,” Evelyn finished.

“And if Haley’s note is right,” Sophia said softly, “that person has already killed her.”

2

Early the next morning, the door to the broom-closet-cum-office burst open, and Evelyn looked up from the Haley Cooke case file. She’d left late last night and returned early enough that she might as well have just slept at the station. She’d barely had time to swing by the BAU office first, squeezing in a quick chat with Kyle on her hands-free while she drove to the station and he headed to his physical therapy appointment.

Standing in the doorway now was Quincy Palmer, the grizzled, veteran detective Sophia had introduced her to last night. He made up for having no hair on the top of his head with a thick salt-and-pepper beard, wore his detective’s shield dangling around his neck even inside the police station and didn’t seem capable of cracking a smile. She’d also learned he had poor boundaries when it came to other people’s food in the police fridge. Her 2:00 a.m. dinner had been a candy bar from the vending machine after he’d eaten her pasta.

“You’re not going to be happy about this,” Quincy announced.

“What?” Sophia asked, barely looking up from the report she was reading.

“Morning news.” He turned and headed back the way he’d come, offering no more information.

“Shit.” Sophia dropped the report on the table and followed.

Evelyn trailed behind them, not even trying to keep up. They turned into the break room—it smelled of gunpowder and body odor—on the other side of the station. There were a handful of patrol cops inside, drinking coffee and chatting before their early morning shift started. A small TV was on in the corner, the sound low.

Quincy turned it up loud enough that the other cops scowled at him and left the room. Sophia and Quincy ignored them. Evelyn gave them rueful nods and stepped out of the way.

There, standing in front of a big white colonial in well-tailored dress pants and a bright blue sweater, was a middle-aged woman with dark blond hair and sad blue eyes. Microphones were pointed at her from all directions, as though she’d called a news conference.

“Linda Varner,” Sophia said unnecessarily. Haley’s name had been a staple on the morning news for a month, but it had been a while since Evelyn had seen her mom in front of a camera.

“Where’s the husband?” Evelyn wondered. The first few days after Haley’s disappearance, she’d gotten used to seeing Linda Varner speaking into the microphones, with Pete Varner standing slightly behind her, silently holding her hand. Always playing the part of the dutiful husband, and yet Evelyn had gotten the feeling it was for show. “What’s going on? Do they still camp out at her house or did she call them?”

Sophia shook her head, but it seemed to be at the TV rather than any response to Evelyn’s question. “Don’t do it, Linda.”

“My daughter left behind a note,” Linda said, her voice strong and clear.

“Damn it,” Sophia snapped. “What the hell is she thinking?”

“She must have called the press,” Evelyn said softly. What a disaster.

“What did the note say?” one reporter asked.

“When did you get it?” another called.

“I found the note last night,” Haley’s mother said in the same steady, even voice, almost as if she was reading from a script. “It said...” Her voice suddenly broke, and her chin dropped to her chest before she tipped her head back, looking determined. “It said she feared for her life.”

“Well, not exactly,” Sophia noted. “I can’t believe she’s doing this. She knows better.”

“It said she knew someone was coming after her.” Suddenly, Linda was staring directly, unnervingly, into the camera. The shot zoomed in close on her face. “My daughter suspected someone was stalking her. That person grabbed her. But I know she’s still out there. I know she wants to come home. So, whoever you are, know that we won’t stop looking. We’re going to find my daughter, and unless you let her go, that means we’ll find you, too.”

The camera was so close that when she stopped speaking, Evelyn could see Linda swallow, could see the shallowness of her breathing despite her calm demeanor. From a distance, she looked put together. Up close, the cracks were showing.

When Linda didn’t say any more, the reporters started yelling over one another with questions.

“That’s all I have to say.” Linda stepped back, opened the door and disappeared into her house.

Sophia lifted the remote and stabbed at a button. The TV went dark. “Unbelievable.”

“Have you talked to her about the press and—”

“Hell, yes,” Sophia said as Evelyn glanced at Quincy, who stood silently in the center of the room, arms crossed over his barrel chest, watching them.

She wondered about his role. In the short time she’d been involved, he seemed to show up a lot, and stick around for the details. “Are you involved in the investigation?”

He grunted at her. “Nope. This is a small station. Sophia and I are the only experienced detectives. Sophia’s handling this case close to full-time, and she’s a single mom with two kids at home.”

“That’s irrelevant,” Sophia snapped. “I’m not the only cop with kids.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the only detective here working all night long, while a babysitter watches your kids. Believe me, that can’t lead to anything good. When’s the last time your good-for-nothing ex...” He trailed off as Sophia’s lips tightened and she jammed her hands on her hips. “Anyway, it means I’m getting called in on nearly everything else. Just consider me an interested party.”

“We had a lot of department turnover last year,” Sophia told her, dropping her arms to her sides.

She still looked annoyed with Quincy, but Evelyn got the impression they were friends, and she seemed to shake it off fast.

“We’ve got some new detectives, but they’re not fully up to speed yet,” Sophia added.

From the loaded gaze Quincy was sending Sophia, Evelyn had a feeling there was a story there, but instead of asking, she said, “Should we talk to Haley’s mom again? At this point, the damage may already be done, but—”

“I’ll handle it,” Sophia cut her off. “Fact is, I can’t stop Linda from talking to the press. She’s doing anything she can to keep Haley’s story in the news. And honestly, if I were her, I’d probably be doing the same thing. Maybe it will even help. If she’s still alive, someone must have seen her.”

“Sure, but put too much pressure on her kidnapper and if she’s alive—”

“I know.” Sophia grimaced. “She won’t be for long. So, let’s get down to it. You’ve looked through the files. What do you think? Is she still alive?”

“I need to get a closer look at all the players before I can answer that,” Evelyn hedged, because although she was ready to give Sophia a victim profile, she had too little to go on to give a helpful perpetrator profile. “But why would Linda think the note meant her daughter had a stalker? Did anything turn up about a stalker?”

Sophia sighed, pouring herself a cup of coffee from the break room carafe as she shook her head. “No. But Linda’s convinced Haley was grabbed by a stranger. She’s thought that since the beginning. She’s talked herself into thinking a stalker set his sights on Haley the week before Haley went missing, when Linda was away at a work conference. She can’t bring herself to believe it’s someone she knows.”

“But it makes no sense for Haley to leave some cryptic note if she thought a stranger was stalking her. She’d tell someone.”

“Agreed,” Sophia said.

“Why would she leave the note at all?” Quincy spoke up. “If it was a stranger, why not tell someone she was scared right away? And if it wasn’t a stranger, and she really feared for her life—if she really believed that if anyone ever found the note, it would be too late for her—then why not write down his name? Or at least give us some details so we can figure it out. I mean, by then, if she’s right, that person can’t hurt her anymore.”

“That’s a damn good point, Quincy,” Sophia said, and looked at Evelyn. “You have a take on that? You think the whole thing could be some kind of hoax, could be planted?”

“I really doubt it,” Evelyn said. “But you’re right. It’s an odd note. We should consider the possibility that Haley had an entirely different intent, that she didn’t name anyone because there was no one to name.”

“Meaning?” Quincy asked.

“Meaning, maybe she ran away, and she left the note behind to send everyone in the wrong direction.”

“That’s what Haley’s dad is claiming.”

“Linda’s husband?” Evelyn asked, surprised.

“No. Haley’s biological dad. Bill Cooke. He went to the press, too, not long after Haley went missing. It didn’t get as much airtime because he doesn’t have Linda Varner’s presence or persistence and he isn’t the custodial parent. But he claimed Haley ran away from home because of abuse.”

Evelyn gaped at Sophia. “I didn’t see anything about that in the case file. Did you investigate that possibility?”

Sophia dumped her coffee down the sink, muttering under her breath, then said, louder, “Of course. And it is in the file. You probably haven’t gotten to Bill Cooke’s interview yet. But I haven’t found anything to substantiate his claim. If anything, I’m seeing signs Bill was abusive and that’s why the parents divorced.”

“How long ago?”

“The divorce? About three years. Right before Haley started high school.”

“Okay. What about the stepfather? Any possibility of abuse there?”

“Well, technically, Bill was blaming Pete all along,” Sophia said. “But we looked into Linda, too. And we didn’t find anything at all. Although quite frankly, I’m not so impressed with Linda’s husband. He’s—” Sophia seemed to be searching for a word, then finally settled on “—cagey. I’m not seeing evidence of abuse. Doesn’t mean there isn’t any, as I’m sure you know. But as far as Bill’s claims go, they seem to be intended to hurt Linda more than help Haley.”

Evelyn got ready to ask more, but Sophia preempted her. “Look, the divorce was ugly. Really ugly. There was a custody battle and Bill lost big-time. Haley was old enough to have a say, and she wanted nothing to do with him. Haley never went as far as to say there was abuse, at least not in the court documents I dug up, but Linda got primary custody. Bill got a few weekends a year. From what I can tell, his time was usually cut short.”

“By who?” Evelyn pressed.

“According to Linda, that was Haley’s choice. But given the animosity there...” She shrugged.

“So, this could be a custody issue,” Evelyn suggested. “Maybe Bill grabbed Haley, and he’s claiming abuse by the mother’s new husband to deflect attention.”

“It’s a possibility,” Sophia said. “But if he grabbed her, where is she? We’ve interviewed Bill Cooke, several times. He lives in a little brownstone in DC. He won’t let us in, but he’s got almost no yard. The houses there are close together. I’ve talked to his neighbors, and they can tell me what he watches on TV at night. It would be pretty hard to hide a seventeen-year-old in there, especially one who’s been on the news as much as Haley, and particularly if she didn’t want to be there. If he took her, wouldn’t he have gone into hiding?”

“Maybe he’s waiting for the search to die down before he moves her,” Evelyn said.

“That might work with a four-year-old,” Quincy spoke up.

His deep voice startled Evelyn. Even though he’d planted his large frame in the middle of the room, he’d been so quiet she’d nearly forgotten he was there.

“But hiding a seventeen-year-old is a little trickier,” he continued. “I agree—he’d have a hard time keeping her there if she didn’t want to stay.”

“I know it’s a long shot,” Evelyn said. “But we need to look into it, especially in a case where there was a hostile dispute over custody. And with Haley turning eighteen in less than a year, maybe Bill Cooke figured this was his last chance, especially if Haley was threatening to cut him out of her life entirely.”

Sophia nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s true. I don’t really like Bill Cooke for this, but honestly, I don’t really like Bill Cooke at all. I wouldn’t be surprised that if we do discover there was any abuse happening, he’s at the center of it.”

“Okay,” Evelyn said. “Let me finish reading through the case files. Because all I can give you now is about Haley.”

“A victim profile?” Sophia asked. “Tell me.”

“Well, the key thing here is that Haley is very high risk for whoever took her. And the location and timing was high risk, too. He—or she—had to be certain he could pull it off.”

Sophia nodded. “Someone close to her.”

“Someone Haley trusted,” Evelyn said. “Because either she walked out of that school with her abductor, or she let him get close enough to subdue her without screaming.”

“Maybe she expected the person,” Quincy suggested. “Or there was more than one of them and they overpowered her.”

“Both are possible,” Evelyn agreed, “but remember, no one heard her yell for help, or any kind of struggle. So as soon as I finish reading this case file, I want to meet all the people in Haley’s life. Anyone who could have grabbed her, or might have insight into why she thought her life was in danger.”

* * *

“Bill Cooke?”

The man scowling at her from behind a screen door might have had a strong resemblance to his daughter at one time. Blond hair, now receding back to the middle of his head, faded blue eyes, heavy lines alongside his mouth that suggested once he’d had reason to smile a lot. Now, from the top of his balding head to the bottom of his muddied boots, everything about him screamed “angry.”