A Darkening Stain. Robert Thomas Wilson
seventeen-year-old girl last seen walking into her high school had gone missing, no signs of foul play. The BAU had passed the police file around the room, but there hadn’t been enough to go on to give a solid profile, and they hadn’t been able to spare a profiler for more in-depth involvement.
“Did they find her?” Evelyn asked.
“Would I be calling you if they had?” Dan snapped, then said, “Sorry. Look, we told the police department this was probably a stranger abduction since no body had turned up, and the noncustodial parent hadn’t run. But now they have a note, suggesting the kidnapper was someone in the girl’s life, after all.”
“Okay,” Evelyn said slowly as Kyle unthreaded his hand from hers and walked over to the waiter. Undoubtedly he was ordering food to go, knowing their evening had just ended.
“So, if it’s someone in her life, shouldn’t—”
“Yeah, normally that would make it more of a straightforward police matter. But we can spare a profiler for a week or so, and the note was disturbing. The girl left it herself. She predicted her own death.”
Evelyn let the words sink in. “They have a body?”
“No. Still no sign of the girl. But the mom is hysterical, and she’s gotten close with the local news stations. The police need help getting in front of this.”
“If she predicted her death, there’s more to the case than it seemed.”
“You got it,” Dan agreed. “Detective Sophia Lopez is expecting you.” He hung up, as details of Haley Cooke’s missing-persons case came back to Evelyn.
“Nice talking to you, too,” Evelyn muttered. Her boss was usually terse—at least with her—but lately he’d been abrupt with everyone. She tucked her phone into her jacket as Kyle returned with to-go bags of food.
“Duty calls?” Kyle guessed, glancing around the still-empty restaurant. “I guess our big debut night on the town will have to wait.”
She nodded ruefully. Apparently they weren’t the only ones who had been hiding something from the people around them.
So had Haley Cooke, the seventeen-year-old girl whose background had revealed a popular, straight-A student whose most dangerous pastime seemed to be standing on top of a cheerleading pyramid.
What had she gotten involved in that she thought would get her killed?
* * *
The Neville, Virginia, police station looked interchangeable with hundreds of other stations Evelyn had been to in her BAU tenure. But the detective standing in front of her in figure-hugging blue jeans and an elbow-length red blazer better suited to an afternoon luncheon than hiding the Glock at her hip definitely didn’t resemble the average police officer.
“Detective Sophia Lopez.” The woman held out her hand, complete with deep red polish, and stared expectantly at Evelyn. She was already tall—topping Evelyn’s petite five-foot-two by at least eight inches—but a pair of high-heeled boots gave her an extra boost. Her long, dark hair dangled in a loose ponytail that seemed impractical for crime scenes, and her bright red lipstick looked out of place in a police station. But her intense stare was 100 percent cop.
“Special Agent Evelyn Baine,” she replied, shaking firmly.
To the mostly male officers around them, they probably seemed to have a lot in common. Two women in law enforcement—one biracial and the other Latina—giving the typical first-impression handshake. Hard, so the other person would know they weren’t to be messed with. Matched with solid eye contact, projecting seriousness.
But if Sophia’s clothes were similar to a clerk at a trendy boutique, Evelyn dressed more like the male officers, in a baggy, solid-black pantsuit. Her heels were always under two inches; enough to give her a little extra height, but not so high she couldn’t run in them. While Sophia seemed to want to stand out, Evelyn liked to blend in—hide in the background where she could watch and analyze everyone.
She studied the detective in charge of the Haley Cooke case, taking in the incongruities, trying to decipher her from just a greeting.
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.