The Vanishing Season (The Collector #4)(69)

He considers that and nods, acknowledging the point even if he doesn’t look happy about it.

“Look on the bright side, Vic. You’ve got Yvonne prepping the information. Let’s roll!”

“I’ll meet you at the cars,” I tell Ramirez, handing her my tablet.

She glances up at Vic’s office with the door still closed, and kisses my cheek.

The blinds are closed, so I knock on the door, softly in case he’s still on the phone. “It’s Eliza.”

The door swings open, framing a haggard-looking Bran. “I haven’t called them yet,” he says, his voice rough and tight.

“We’re about to head out.”

Ignoring the fact that we’re in full view of the madhouse that is currently the bullpen, he wraps his arms around me and presses a kiss against my temple. “Find that girl, Eliza. Give one family a better ending.”

I breathe him in, my lips against his jaw, and nod.

We ride with Watts, the rest of her team hustling into another SUV. Gala calls and Watts puts it through the car’s Bluetooth, the fledgling analyst’s voice tinny with speaker distortion. “Davies was arrested once for public disturbance almost forty years ago, but charges were never filed. From the report, it looks like he had a bit of a breakdown in a bar when his wife served him divorce papers. No property damage, no one was hurt, but the bar manager called the police when he wouldn’t stop howling.”

“Howling?” Kearney echoes.

“Apparently he was crying rather spectacularly? The report says he was in severe emotional distress. They held him overnight, let him go once he was calm. Aside from that, just a couple of parking tickets here and there, a speeding ticket about four years ago.”

“What can you tell us about Lisa?”

“One of the warrants got us her medical records, and St. Jude’s was eager to help. In addition to the records, they went through her original file to send the nonmedical information. At least during that time, they had the kids fill out questionnaires so the medical staff and other kids could get to know them. She said she was good at math and science and wanted to work at NASA someday. She wanted to be the first ballerina on the moon.”

Bless the dreams of children.

“The psychologist’s notes indicate she was mostly pretty calm about her treatments and prognosis. She had outbursts from time to time, when it all got too much, but for the most part she was quietly upbeat. Both her parents worked like hell through her childhood to cover all the bills and still give her some nice things, so she was used to quietly entertaining herself. She liked pink and yellow, didn’t like green. When asked what her favorite music was, she said the Irish stompy kind.”

“She sounds sweet,” murmurs Watts.

“According to her records, she never really had a sharp or sudden decline. It was a pretty steady progression of symptoms and disease that the treatments slowed but couldn’t reverse.”

I clear my throat. “Gala, can you copy over her strongest symptoms and get them to the hospital in Richmond closest to the Mercers’ neighborhood?”

From the driver’s seat, Watts gives me a curious look. “Sterling?”

“He might not have had time yet, but there’s a chance he’s already making her sick.”

“To contain her?” asks Kearney.

“No, to recreate Lisa.”

“Right,” she says, looking queasy.

“He can’t give them leukemia, he can’t take them to a hospital for treatments for a disease they don’t have, even if he gives them symptoms. This is all done at home. But Kendall’s aneurysm threw off his timeline. He lost her after one year, not two.”

“So either he’s resetting and treating this as a new beginning, or he’s going to make Brooklyn very sick very quickly to match up to where Kendall would have been on that scale,” Ramirez says.

I nod. “My guess is the latter. Part of how he’s gotten away with this is that he leaves town a couple of months after the kidnapping, in a way that everyone expects, and moves to a new town where he could come up with some sort of explanation for a sick girl if someone were to accidentally see her. His pattern has kept him safe; he has to try to stick with it.”

“So the hospital needs to be aware of what those symptoms are so they can quickly look for the things that can cause them,” Watts finishes. “Gala, have you been able to access his financials yet?”

“Yes, but nothing’s really sticking out,” she answers. “No medical supply stores or anything, and no reported thefts from hospitals or clinics that follow him from place to place.”

“Maybe not, but he’s probably got a number of purchases at home improvement stores. Gardening centers, too, maybe.”

“Yes . . . how’d you know that, Sterling?”

“Fertilizers, industrial-strength cleaners, varnishes, pesticides, rat poisons, you can buy all these things without raising any eyebrows, especially if you’re known in the area for gardening or helping out your neighbors. Depending on how far he goes to recreate the look of the treatments, you can cobble together homemade IV tubing too. To spread out over two years, the poisoning would be slow and cumulative, so he would never have to buy so much at once that it looks suspicious.”

“So . . . do you have to have a terrifying and twisted mind to succeed in the FBI, or does it just help?” Gala asks.