Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(72)
“Flora’s brother created a whole Facebook page for this phase, plastered with personal photos of Flora as well as snapshots from her daily life, the farm, the woods around it, a fox playing in the backyard. He also sat with his mom and generated lists of Facebook posts, one for each day, covering everything from Flora’s favorite book to local events, family anniversaries she was now missing. We invited friends and neighbors to contribute as well. Anything to remind the UNSUB over and over again of who Flora truly was, a young woman deeply missed by family and friends.”
“He issued communications to break her down. You built her back up.”
“We needed him to make contact. If countering his message drove him to send more and more postcards, e-mails, videos, all the better for us.”
“He sent videos?”
“Provoking him into further outreach remained our best strategy for catching him.”
“Did you design this strategy?” D.D. asked.
“Yes.”
“According to Rosa, Jacob’s stupidity is what got him caught—he sent one too many messages and you nailed him. But, talking to you, that was the plan. You weren’t waiting for him to randomly e-mail. You were baiting him into further communications.”
“This kind of strategy . . . It’s hard on the family.” Kimberly sighed. “The investigative team might have been the general, sitting in a back room, strategizing away, but Rosa, Darwin, they were our foot soldiers. They had to sit down every day and beg for Flora’s life. They had to suffer through degrading postcards, audio recordings, and then that video . . . We advised both of them not to watch. But of course, they were so desperate for some sign, some connection to their loved one. The brother vomited. Twice. And Rosa . . . She went blank. We ended up calling for medical. I thought she’d broken, and we’d never get her back.
“I understand the family has a different perspective on things. Of course they do. At the end of the day, they were the best tool we had to get Flora back. We used them shamelessly. And it worked.”
“So how did you find him?”
“As we hoped, Jacob started communicating more. Especially via e-mail. Which allowed us to start tracking his progress across the southern states. By fourteen months in, we were sure he had to be a truck driver, delivery man, something of that nature. The bulk of the e-mails were from Internet cafés, some truck stops, all located near major interstates. So we shored up state police patrols of those areas, faxed Flora’s photo to all the major truck stops. We wanted to apply pressure, but not too much.”
“You didn’t want him to panic, dispose of her.”
“Exactly. But mostly we focused on the Internet cafés. Four hundred and seventy-one days later, he sent an e-mail we could trace back to a cybercafe at a truck stop he’d used once before. I personally drove out to the truck stop to interview the staff. All those postcards, e-mails, outreaches later, Jacob had revealed more of himself than he realized. Sure enough, the moment I started to describe the kind of man we were looking for, the manager ID’d him. Jacob was a regular. Stopped by at least once a month, if not more, on his route. The manager didn’t know Jacob’s last name, but he could describe his rig; we connected the remaining dots from there.
“Jacob Ness. A registered sex offender who’d already served time for molesting a fourteen-year-old girl. Suspected of several more sex assaults. Currently working as an independent contractor for several major delivery firms, driving a big rig.
“In a matter of hours, a state trooper discovered Jacob’s transport parked outside a motel just off the interstate. I mobilized SWAT and we got serious.”
D.D. didn’t need the FBI agent to say anything more. She could already picture it perfectly in her head. The adrenaline rush of such moments. At the cusp of breaking a major case. Do everything right, you get to save the girl, catch the bad guy. But one wrong move . . . girl winds up killed, bad guy escapes, and a life, a family, your career is over.
Yeah, she could picture it.
“What’d you do?” she asked.
“We confirmed with hotel management which room Jacob was in, and that he’d entered with a female companion. The room was an end unit with no rear door. That was the good news. Now, for the bad news: We had reason to believe Jacob was in possession of at least one firearm, if not more. Also, our profiler, McCarthy, believed that if cornered, Jacob would be most likely to shoot Flora, then himself, rather than surrender.”
“Suicide by cop?”
“Possible, but only after killing Flora. McCarthy felt at this stage of their relationship, Jacob felt a strong attachment to Flora. The nature of his taunts, his need to torment the family. She was his, and he wouldn’t give her up without a fight.”
“Relationship.” D.D. had to think about this. She was familiar with Stockholm syndrome, though more from movie plots than real-life experience. That syndrome, made famous by the Patty Hearst case, described how a victim bonded with her attacker over time, feeling empathy, even loyalty, for the very person who had caused her harm. But D.D. had never considered such a process in reverse. That by virtue of time and total dominance, a kidnapper might develop a certain affection for his captive. Jacob Ness had been a long-haul trucker. Meaning for years he’d been traveling alone, living in isolation, until the day he’d snatched Flora Dane and brought her along with him.