Predator – #3

Untold innocent children whose names we will never read in any headlines continue to be saved from the horrors of child abduction through the tireless efforts of Maureen Kanka, John Walsh, Brenda van Dam, Mark and Cindy Sconce, Kim Swartz and so many others. May the good they do for our society bring peace to their lives.

Livie tilted her head toward the late-afternoon sky and frowned, wrapping her arms around her stomach. “Missy, pul-eeze. I wanna go home. It’s gonna rain.”

“You want to go home because it’s going to rain,” Missy said without looking up from her book.

Just because she was in fourth grade and had straight A’s and was on the honor roll, Missy always corrected her words. Livie hated it, but her sister was going to be a teacher, after all, and needed to practice.

The wind came down in a gust before tapering off to a tickling breeze. “Missy, I’m cold.”

Her sister rolled her eyes and breathed that loud sigh she had when Livie was annoying her. It meant Livie was being a pest.

“Ten minutes, okay? I want to finish this chapter.”

“Fine.” Livie pouted.

She picked up her shovel again and absently played in the sand, digging and watching as the grains fell slowly to the ground. She loved the park, but not when they were the only kids there.

The swings were her favorite. Livie always pumped her legs faster and harder to see if she could go all the way around the top, but she hadn’t made it yet. Her daddy called her fearless. Missy said she was stupid. And her mother told her she’d break a leg one day and learn her lesson.

Tomorrow was Halloween. Livie was no scaredy-cat, but last week she’d watched a movie about ghosts and she didn’t want to be outside after dark. The rule was they had to be in the house five minutes after the streetlights came on, but Livie wanted to go home now. The sun had already dipped below the Pattersons’ two-story house with its pretty pink trim.

“Missy,” Livie begged.

Her sister ignored her and Livie threw down her shovel. She stood and walked over to the swings at the far side of the playground. She didn’t feel like flying today, so she swung back and forth without effort, her arms pimpled with goosebumps as the wind gusted in bursts of anger. Red, orange, and brown leaves skittered across the ground as the wind drove them away.

Livie liked spring better, when everything was green and bright and sunny. When the fog didn’t dampen every morning, sometimes not going away until lunchtime. But spring was a whole six months from now. Livie would be six next spring. She counted the months in her head. May, June, July, August, September, October… she was five and a half! Yesterday she’d turned five and a half!

She jumped off the swing and turned to run back to Missy to tell her what she had just figured out. She stopped.

Missy wasn’t alone.

A man was talking to her. He was really tall, although not as tall as Daddy, and not as old as Daddy either. He wore no coat. Didn’t he know you could catch a death of a cold in this weather if you went outside without your jacket? And he’d colored on his arm with blue marker.

Livie started toward them, a tickle in her stomach that didn’t feel quite right. Missy didn’t seem scared, but then she hadn’t watched the ghost movie last week. Livie bit her lip. She didn’t want to be a crybaby, but she wanted to go home. Right now. And if she had to cry to get her way, then she’d do it. Missy gave in when she cried.

“Missy?” she called.

The man turned and looked at her and his eyes did something funny, squinty-like. He grabbed Missy’s arm. “Come on.”

“No!” Missy shouted and tried to pull away.

Livie ran toward them. “Let my sister go! Let go!”

The man picked Missy up just as Livie reached them. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she knew strangers weren’t always nice and this man with the blue bird on his arm was holding Missy over his shoulder.

Before Livie could grab Missy, the man hit her. Livie fell to the ground and couldn’t catch her breath. Her mouth tasted funny, like when she’d lost her first tooth that summer. She tried to scream, but gagged on her spit.

She stumbled as she got up, tears blurring her vision. The man had Missy and he was running across the grass to the street. “Daddy!” Livie yelled through her sobs. “Help! Help!”

The bad man pulled open the door of a black truck and threw Missy in. When she tried to get out, he hit her with something that looked like a big stick, then ran to the driver’s side and drove off.

Missy didn’t try to get out again.

Livie cried as she ran all the way home.

“Daddy! Daddy!”

Her father yanked open the door, his face full of worry. “Olivia! What’s wrong? Where’s Melissa?”

“A m-man took her!”

Mommy screamed and Daddy grabbed Livie’s arm and pulled her into the house. He pushed her at her mommy and started running out the door. “Call the police!” he shouted as Livie sank into her mommy’s safe arms.

The brief hug ended.

It was the last hug she would ever receive from her mother.

The day Olivia St. Martin’s life turned upside down for the second time began like any other.

She inserted two slides onto the glass plate of the microscope and bent over the lens, adjusting the magnification until the minute carpet threads became clear. She recognized a match immediately, but went through all the points of commonality for her report and indicated them on the lab sheet. When she was done, she used the microscope’s built-in camera to photograph the matched fibers, removed the evidence with latex-covered hands, and preserved it in a sealed case to prevent contamination.

She signed the report, then reviewed the file to make sure her team had finished processing all evidence in the Camero murder. Everything appeared in order, though DNA hadn’t reported in yet. A foreign pubic hair had been retrieved from the victim and sent to the CODIS unit to be analyzed and run through the database. Contrary to what was implied on popular television, DNA matching was a slow, laborious process largely dependent on staff and resources.

Olivia loved her job and had been well rewarded: last year, she’d been promoted to director of Trace Evidence and Materials Analysis at the FBI’s Virginia-based laboratory.

The door opened and Olivia glanced up as Dr. Greg van Buren walked in. Her ex-husband’s grim expression surprised her: Greg was generally either amused or thoughtful, rarely depressed.

She arched her eyebrow as she closed the file folder.

“Olivia.” Greg cleared his throat. Beneath his wire-rimmed glasses, his clear blue eyes narrowed with concern. He shifted uneasily and glanced down. Something was wrong.

Her chest tightened. “What is it?”

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“Tell me.”

“C’mon, Olivia.”

Her legs weren’t completely steady when she stood, but she kept her head up as she walked down the hall with Greg. They were on the top floor of the three-story building, but took the stairs rather than the elevator to the main level.

Outside, a wave of hot, humid air washed over Olivia. She scrunched her nose. The cotton lining of her skirt instantly stuck to her legs and she resisted the urge to adjust it. She’d never get used to these sticky East Coast summers. She’d thought once Labor Day had passed, the weather would cool; no such luck. She never thought she’d miss the San Francisco peninsula’s gray mornings, but she’d trade humidity for fog any day.