Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(70)

She got lucky on her first try.

“Quincy,” the FBI agent answered.

“Morning. Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren from Boston PD. We spoke once before. Couple of years ago. Charlene Grant. You handled her friend’s murder in Atlanta.”

“Oh yeah. Hey, good job on that one. Honestly didn’t think Charlie would survive the twenty-first.”

“Well, every now and then this job is actually gratifying. So, I’m working a new case and your name has come up.” D.D. filled in the agent on Flora Dane’s recent activities leading up to her disappearance. “I understand you’re the agent who finally located Jacob Ness.”

“True.” The agent’s voice had grown quieter, somber. Some cases left a mark. D.D. already suspected Flora’s case, the raid to rescue her, was one of them. “What do you know of Flora’s kidnapping seven years ago?”

“Not much. Boston wasn’t involved, as she disappeared down in Florida.”

“Yes. Pretty typical setup. College girl on spring break out drinking with friends. She needed to use the restrooms, they let her go alone, and just like that, she was gone.”

“I’m working something similar right now,” D.D. said, wondering already if that’s why Flora had responded so strongly to Stacey Summers’s abduction.

“Unfortunately, the case was a slow starter. Drunk friends don’t make the best reporters. Not to mention they got it in their heads that Flora had headed home—and I don’t mean their hotel room. I mean sometime in the middle of the rum-soaked club scene, she’d decided to return up North, so they didn’t exactly comb the beaches looking for her.”

“Oh jeez.”

“Eventually one of the girls thought to call Flora’s mom up in Maine. Now, the mom’s a smart, tough woman. Ruth? Rachel?”

“Rosa.”

“Rosa. That’s it. She filed the missing persons report and got the ball rolling, but at that point the trail was already forty-eight, fifty-six hours old. Local PD did a little digging, came up with nothing.”

D.D. nodded her head, not surprised. Missing persons was always a race against the clock. In this case, Flora had never stood a chance.

“How’d the FBI get involved?” D.D. asked.

“Postcard. I can’t remember all the particulars, but a matter of weeks, maybe a month later, Rosa received a postcard from her daughter. It was postmarked Jacksonville. Looked like her daughter’s handwriting. But the content raised some red flags.”

“How so?”

“I can e-mail you a copy, but . . . the tone was almost manic. Having the best time, Mom! Met the cutest guy! You should see where I’m staying. Perfect room! Couldn’t be happier. And the sex is fantastic. Give Chili my love.”

“What?” D.D. asked, genuinely startled.

“Yeah. Not exactly the kind of note most girls send home to their moms. Rosa Dane got a little upset, to say the least. Now, the reference to Chili—that was Flora’s first dog, long deceased. The BAU profiler who assisted with the case believed Jacob made her include that detail to authenticate the note—it couldn’t have been sent by a random stranger who read about her disappearance in the paper. The UNSUB wanted Rosa, all of us, to know this was the real deal.”

“I’m sure you also analyzed the handwriting?”

“Yes. But that analysis was actually less than a slam dunk. Certain letters were deemed a match. But the letters were smaller, crunched, and shaky, which muddled the findings.”

D.D. had to think about it. “Because Flora was writing it under duress? Or because she herself had changed? Terrified? Abused? Starving?”

“All possibilities considered at the time. The most important takeaway was the overall message. Flora was having the best time ever. With some cute guy, having fantastic sex. No hey, Mom, sorry I took off while on spring break, but you don’t need to worry, I’m with some friends. In other words, the UNSUB wasn’t interested in covering up Flora’s disappearance. He solely wanted to taunt the mom with the obvious message that Flora had been kidnapped.”

“Is this the part where the profiler claims the evil UNSUB was potty trained at gunpoint?”

“Oh, our profiler had even more opinions than that. But we were still assembling information back then. We had a first message and a postmark. The Jacksonville police traced the postcard to a single post office located off a busy interstate. No video cameras on the outside boxes, however, so that became a dead end.”

“But there was more.”

“Yes. Three months later a second card arrived. The first had been of a beach sunset. This one was a Georgia peach, and postmarked Atlanta.”

“Ah, and now you join the hunt,” D.D. filled in.

“And now I join the hunt,” Kimberly agreed. “Contents of this postcard were similar. Amazing time. Best guy ever. The sex is even more incredible, and good news, I’ve finally lost those last ten pounds.”

“She’d lost weight?” D.D. had to think about it. “Did Flora Dane need to lose ten pounds?”

“No. She was an active outdoorsy girl. According to her mom, she didn’t have ten pounds to spare.”

“Oh my God.” For the first time, D.D. got the pattern behind the messages. It left her feeling queasy. “He was starving her. That’s the taunt. Everything he says . . . The cute guy, that’s her ugly-ass kidnapper. The amazing sex, that’s the endless nights of sexual assault. And losing ten pounds . . . What a . . .” D.D. didn’t have a strong enough word for Jacob Ness. It was a good thing he was already dead, or she would’ve felt a need to track him down and kill him all over again.