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The headiness that accompanied the now very public manhunt for Jack soon evaporated for the VCTF team as the days passed and nothing new transpired.
Jack was in the wind again, and even the newfound knowledge that he was a doctor with a degree from Savannah Medical College earned sometime in the 1970s didn’t seem to help their search. Despite George’s deep dives into yearbooks, alumnae lists, donor lists, and reunion web pages over the last week, they still had an enormous pool of people to examine and whittle down. Grace didn’t envy George the task.
The feeling of celebration that came with being allowed back into their own homes after a week locked up in the VCTF was transitory at best. When Grace arrived home every night, it was to find Morgan and Foxy behind triple locked doors and an alarm system, every light in the house blazing. The anger and fear grew in Morgan’s eyes every night she came home with no word on Jack’s whereabouts.
“We’re going to get him,” she promised her husband. “We are.”
But it was increasingly hard for her to believe it.
***
“Grace, you up for a little field work?”
Her head snapped up from the microscope where she was examining trace from their latest scene to find John standing in the doorway, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, clearly amped up.
Normally she would have pretended not to notice him standing there, because it pissed him off when he wasn’t the center of attention, but she wasn’t going to risk missing her chance at going out with the team. Instead she gave him a sly smile.
“You know I love going out in the field. Where are you taking me?”
“Jack’s lair at the convent. We’re going to poke around, see what’s left of value.”
“I thought you guys went back earlier in the week.”
“We did… but we want you with us now.”
Grace felt almost absurdly touched by that.
“Yeah?”
“Can’t hurt to have a fresh set of eyes, right? You might find something we missed.” John gave her his trademark smirk, the one that always preceded a smartass remark. “I mean, it’s not likely, but you never know.”
“You are such an ass,” she said, rolling her eyes and grinning. He never really meant what he said.
She shrugged out of her lab coat and stretched her back. “Give me ten minutes, okay?”
“I’m setting a timer.” He made a show of punching in some numbers on his digital watch.
“Get out of here. I’ll meet you in the Command Center in ten.”
“9:55…9:54…9:53…” he said with a wink as he sailed out the door.
Wasting not a movement or a step, Grace grabbed one of her pre-packed field kits stocked with a camera, gloves, evidence bags, swabs, envelopes, and every bit of paraphernalia she might need to process a crime scene and gather evidence. She slid on a jacket, looped her credentials around her neck, and grabbed her keys.
She stopped for a moment in front of her desk, considering whether she really needed the item resting in the top drawer, then decided that it was better to be safe than sorry where Jack was concerned.
Despite the fact she’d be surrounded by armed (and, in Bailey’s case, overprotective) FBI agents, she slipped the Kershaw tactical knife in her side pocket, picked up her kit, and headed for the command center.
***
George had given her the knife a week ago.
Nothing could have surprised her more than that gift from that giver. They gave each other gifts regularly, both on special occasions and for no reason at all … in fact, some of the most thoughtful gifts that she’d ever received had come from George. She would never have expected a knife from him, though.
It wasn’t that George was averse to weaponry. He’d attended the training sessions at the Academy just as she had. They both knew how to shoot and had taken the defensive tactics course. But George’s job largely took place in the command center or in the surveillance van … he had no reason to go around armed.
Until Jack.
George was the one who had picked up the phone in the command center on the night Jack had broken into her house and attacked Morgan and Foxy. He remained on the line with her while he sent a phalanx of agents to her house, urging her to tell him everything she could recall about the last ten minutes, asking her question after question to get the entire event while it was fresh. He stayed with her until Bailey arrived and took the phone from her unresisting hands.
Later that night, after Morgan and Rich were both sleeping in their respective offices, after the team had quickly met and just as quickly disbanded with no plan agreed upon, George pulled Grace into a quiet corner and wrapped her up in a tight embrace. No words were necessary. His love for her, his anxiety about her safety, his fear for what Jack’s terrible scheming might mean for all of them was clear in the way he pulled her close and held her hard, one hand on the back of her neck under her fall of curls, the other on the small of her back.
For long fraught moments she stayed wrapped up in her best friend’s arms. No one else made her feel so safe … not Morgan, not Bailey, not John. Only George.
But she couldn’t stay there all night, no matter how good it might feel, so she finally took a deep breath and stepped back. Before George let go of her, though, he pressed an object into her hand.
“What’s this?”
“If something happens,” George said, his voice pitched low. “If Jack ever gets his hands on you, use it.”
It was a tactical knife with a folding four-inch blade. Grace recognized it immediately; one of her instructors at the FBI Academy had talked about it at one of their DT classes. There were lots of tactical knives on the market, he informed them, but they weren’t all created equal … and he had devoted a class period to discussing the best ones. She hadn’t particularly enjoyed that lesson, but she was grateful to be able to recognize a quality knife when she saw it.
It floored her that George had it though. She’d expect John to carry around a tactical knife, or Nathan, certainly not her gentle best friend.
“I can’t.” She tried to hand it back to him, but he resisted her attempts to push the knife back into his hands.
“You can.”
“I can’t stab someone!”
“You use blades every day.”
“Yeah, scalpels to open up dead bodies. That’s not the same thing as stabbing a living human being.”
“Gracie, if Jack ever lays a hand on you, you’re going to be glad you have this.” George squeezed her fingers which were still clenched around the knife. “Please take it. Even if you never use it, just keep it with you. I’ll feel better knowing you have it.”
Grace nodded and pocketed the knife.
***
She didn’t consider the knife to be a charm or a talisman or anything like that. She was pragmatic enough to understand that what George had said was true … if Jack ever got his hands on her, she’d want that knife, and she would probably be desperate enough to use it on him. She didn’t anticipate that she would need it at Jack’s lair … Bailey and John wouldn’t let her out of their sight … but she felt more secure having it on her.
She arrived in the command center with 2 minutes to spare and she shot John a cocky grin. He returned it.
“Ready to get down and dirty?” At her “seriously, frat boy?” look, he added, “Jack’s lair ended up trashed from the acid and the falling walls … you’re going to be knee deep in plaster. You got work gloves?”
“Do YOU?” she retorted.
“They’re in the SUV.” He caught sight of Bailey striding toward them. “He looks pissed.”
“Jack’s slipped the noose again. I’d be pissed too.”
“Let’s get going,” Bailey said. In a rare move, he’d traded his suit for dark wash jeans, a t-shirt, and a leather jacket. He favored her with a smile. “Ready, Gracie?”
“All set.”
“Let’s see what else we can learn about Jack.”
***
Until Jack had made his home there, the convent in the middle of Atlanta had gone relatively unnoticed. The building had seen better days, clearly, but the grounds were beautiful … rose bushes bloomed in great profusion all over the yard and up the walkway leading to the foyer.
“Good morning, Sister,” Bailey greeted the black garbed nun who met them in the lobby.
“Good morning, Agent Malone, Agent Grant.” She smiled at Grace. “And good morning to you, Agent …”
“Doctor Alvarez,” Grace said, shaking the nun’s hand.
“Oh, doctor. I beg your pardon. Are you also with the FBI?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m here to look at the room where Mr. Carruthers lived.”
“Well, Agents Malone and Grant certainly know the way at this point. Please call me if you need anything.”
“Thank you, Sister,” John said, before pointing up the staircase.
Grace followed John, taking note of how many steps up they went. Bailey was close behind her.
The door to room 11 was open, but roped off with crime scene tape, as was room 12 next to it, though its door was shut. They ducked under the tape and stepped into room 11, which looked in perfect order except for the layer of plaster dust coating everything. The wall between the two rooms had been pulverized as thoroughly as if the Hulk had smashed through it. A coat rack and a chair, the implements John and Bailey had used to bash through the old plaster, lay on the floor.
Room 12 was another story … it was in shambles. Runnels of paint, plaster, and lord only knew what else had dried on the wall in drips and smears as the acid ate away the walls. There was still a strong chemical odor in the air that mingled with the smells of plaster, dust, and floor wax.
“How the hell do you rig a room to drip acid down the walls?” Grace asked. “That’s something out of a James Bond movie.”
“No idea,” John said. “But Sam said he’s a genius.”
“He’s a bored genius,” Bailey added. “Which means he has plenty of time to dream up little death traps like this one. Once we release the scene and the demolition starts on this room, we can get a closer look at the pipes. I’d like to know how he managed that particular trick.”
He stepped over the rubble of the wall separating room 11 from room 12, then held out a hand to Grace. Once she was standing beside him, he said, “Tell me what you see.”
“You want me to describe the scene?”
“Yes. Everything in the room.”
“You’ve been through it already.”
“We have. But I want fresh eyes on it for anything we might have missed. You have an eye for fine and minute details; you can interpret a scene in a way John, Sam, and I can’t.”
“Am I looking for anything in particular?”
“Anything that will give us some insight into Jack.”
Grace nodded. She had an idea that this might be an informal test and she wanted to do well. She handed off her kit to John, who set it down on the floor in room 11 and then watched her attentively.
“Where should I start?” she asked.
“Start with what’s right in front of you,” Bailey suggested.
Grace scanned the ruined wall in front of her, took a deep breath, and began speaking.
“Everything is spare. Monastic. The walls are navy blue and too dark, especially compared to the white walls of the room next door, which means he painted them that color on purpose. They’re bare except for the one over the desk in the corner. There are no overhead lighting fixtures, just lamps. It’s a cold utilitarian room. All function. No frills.” She stopped and glanced at Bailey. “Is this what you want?”
“It’s exactly what I want.” Bailey had a small notebook in his hand and was taking notes as she talked. “Keep going.”
Grace pivoted slowly and keep talking.
“The door has deadbolts on the inside and the outside. Jack’s clearly a guy who values his privacy.” She stepped toward the dresser, then drew up short. “John, pass me some gloves.”
He obliged, watching as she snapped the gloves on and then opened the dresser drawer. It contained tidy rows of navy blue t-shirts, socks, and jeans. The closet, she was sure, would contain neat rows of shirts and pants as well. To test the theory, she asked John to open it. Sure enough, neat rows of clothes all spaced the same distance apart, all facing the same direction. Nothing amiss. Nothing askew.
“He’s neat. Careful. Controlled.”
Grace let her eyes wander to the wall over the desk that wasn’t barren and stepped toward the sheaves of pictures pasted helter-skelter on top of one another. Pictures of Sam … so many pictures of Sam! Of Chloe. Of Angel. Bailey. John. Nathan. George. Nick Cooper. She was there, shot from a distance at a crime scene, her kit in her hands.
“Careful and controlled,” she repeated, “until he isn’t.”
There was chaos in this area above the desk. Pictures everywhere on the wall. Scrapbooks. Scissors. Glue. Tape. A rotary phone—who had one of THOSE anymore?! A jar of Cheetos. A jar of rose petals. Unopened packages of cigarettes. A blank square of space showed the place where Jack’s medical degree—the one that Sam saved from the acid—had been. The other photos were ruined by drips of acid, holes burned through them, ink and paper faded and splotched and warped.
“He’s controlled …until he isn’t. He’s neat … until he isn’t. There’s a name for that …” She searched her memory; she’d read it in a book about profiling.
“Mixed presentation,” Bailey supplied. He was watching her with a satisfied smile. “It’s when an offender presents as both organized in some aspects of his crime and disorganized in others.”
“The rest of the room is sterile in comparison to this,” Grace said. “But this …is this what Jack’s mind is really like?”
“We don’t have any way of knowing definitively,” Bailey said.
He asked her a question then that she knew damn good and well he had an answer to. Maybe this had been a test for her after all.
“What drives him into disorganization, Grace? What’s his trigger?”
“Sam.”
***
They had her dust every surface in the room that might potentially have Jack’s prints on it, concentrating specifically on the desk. John disappeared down the hall to check out the other unused rooms on the wing to see if Jack had secondary lairs while Bailey watched Grace process.
“The CSI team didn’t do this?” Grace asked, completing another tape lift.
“They did. But I trust you more than I do them.”
She felt a warm flush of pride when he said that, and the heat rose into her face when he added, “You’d make one hell of a profiler, Grace.”
“Thank you.”
“You could take a course, you know.”
“With my copious amount of free time? The tyrant I work for keeps my nose to the grindstone.”
She grinned as Bailey’s laugh boomed out.
“If you wanted to, I’d arrange for it. You could spend a few weeks at the Academy.”
“Oh, I don’t think Morgan would appreciate that.”
She labeled the print card of smudges and partials she’d pulled from the telephone and slid them into the envelope with all the rest, none of which contained a viable fingerprint.
“How is he doing?” Bailey asked. “After … all of it?”
She paused, considering how she wanted to answer that.
“Grace?” Bailey prompted, a note of concern in his voice.
“He’s struggling,” she admitted. “We both are.”
“How so?”
“The sense of violation, mostly. Even with alarm systems and triple locks and every sort of security measure we could have, he’s still scared it’s going to happen again.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
That drew him up short for a moment. His startled eyes flashed to hers. “We can protect you--” Bailey started.
“Can you?” She straightened from the desk and met his eyes. “Can you really, Bailey? It doesn’t look like you can, not from where I’m sitting.”
“George has our network locked back down again.”
“Which helps us with what? Jack already knows where I live! He knows who my husband is, where he works, what car he drives. Jack KNOWS my house, Bailey, just like he knows John’s cabin and your house and the firehouse.”
She tossed the print brush and powder aside and began to pace.
“He thinks he’s a god, right? Well, if one measure of a god is omnipotence, then he’s not far off on that one. How am I supposed to sleep at night knowing that Jack can get at me and Morgan again because he’s already gotten to us once?”
The look on Bailey’s face clearly communicated that he hadn’t previously considered any of what she’d just said, and that made the anger that had lain dormant for a week erupt out of her.
“You’re so busy worrying about Sam’s security that you’ve forgotten the rest of us.”
Bailey looked like she’d slapped him. “That is NOT true.”
“When your cavalier answer to Morgan and Rich’s concern about letting their lives be dictated by Jack’s actions is that you can arrange for a new identity for them, it tells me you’ve lost sight of what’s really at stake here for the rest of us. Sam isn’t the only one impacted by Jack. But you either can’t or won’t see that.”
She wondered for a moment if she’d gone too far. Bailey’s face was thunderous. But she wasn’t planning on backing down, so she waited, tense, for what he would say.
“Does George feel this way too?”
“That’s for George to say,” she replied. “I’m not going to put words in his mouth.”
“But if I were to ask him how things are going for him and Rich, I might get a similar answer?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
Bailey looked simultaneously amused and annoyed. “Maybe I will.”
“Maybe you should!”
Since she had sounded like a ten-year-old with that last retort, Grace walked her temper back. “I’ve always been straight with you, Bailey, from the minute I walked through the door. I understand the risks that come with actively chasing serial killers. But Jack feels like something else entirely. He’s not a Manson or a Bundy or a BTK; he’s worse. Sam isn’t the only one who’s scared. I need you to know that.”
“What can I do?”
Grace sighed, deeply weary of the whole fraught conversation. “When it comes to Jack? Shoot first and ask questions later.”
And just like that Bailey’s laugh was booming again and this time she laughed along with him, relief that she hadn’t just gotten herself fired with her brutal honesty making the laughter a touch wild.
“Gracie. What can I really do to help?”
“I don’t know. I think that’s the worst part. I wish I could give you five things that you could do that would make me feel better about being on a serial killer’s hit list, but I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Do you need a weapon?”
Grace pulled the Kershaw knife out of her pocket and thumbed the button that would send the blade snicking out of the haft.
“May I see it?”
She handed it to him carefully, and watched him as he studied it, tested its balance and its heft.
“Did Morgan give it to you?”
“George.”
His eyebrows shot up. “George had this knife? I’ll be damned.”
“There’s more to him than you think.”
“I have no doubt of that. I just know he likes his handgun.”
“He wants me safe.”
“I want that too.” Bailey closed the blade and returned the knife to her. “Do you carry it everywhere?”
“This is the first time I’ve taken it with me. It’s been in my desk drawer.”
“Keep it on you until we catch Jack. Unless you want to start wearing a firearm.”
John had taken her and George out to the range at Quantico and given them shooting lessons. She’d enjoyed learning how to shoot the Sig Sauer P220 far more than she would have anticipated. But she didn’t want to carry the gun with her whenever she left the lab.
“No, the knife is fine.” She looked around the room again, stepping away from the desk and moving over to the window which looked down on the rose garden. “I’m not ready to start walking around armed. I’m a doctor first. My job is to do no harm.”
“Unless it’s Jack?” Bailey ventured.
“Unless it’s Jack.”
She blew out a hard breath, the tension leaving her shoulders now that the anger she’d been bottling up had diminished. Bailey put a warm hand on her back.
“You’ve been holding on to that for a while.”
“I told Sam that Jack’s not her fault. And he isn’t, I know that. But if I’d known that I was going to be working closely with someone who was on Jack’s radar, I might have made a different choice a year ago.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.” Bailey was staring at her with an intensity that made her blush. “And I meant what I said about the profiling course. I’ll sponsor you at the Academy if you want.”
“I’ll think about it,” she lied, knowing full well she wasn’t going to do it, at least not any time soon. She didn’t want to delve further into Jack’s disordered brain. That was Sam’s department.
She looked at the chaotic mess of photos and acid on the wall and let her hand drift to the reassuring weight of the Kershaw knife in her pocket.
Bailey noticed where her hand went. “Why don’t we go to the indoor range when we get back? It never hurts to practice. You’ve got a re-qualifier to take in six months.”
Grace considered it, then nodded. He was right … it wouldn’t hurt. It might make for some peace of mind, even.
“George too,” she added.
“Absolutely George too.” Bailey looked around the room one final time. “Anything else that you see?”
Grace took in the ruined walls, the mess of photos, the too neat closet, the darkness that Jack lived in, then answered his question with one of her own.
“If you get the chance… will you kill him?”
Bailey didn’t hesitate. “If he comes near any of you again, he’s a dead man.” He picked through the rubble on the floor, took her hand to steady her. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
John was waiting for them in the hall. Grace wondered how much of their conversation he’d overheard. When he gave her shoulder a quick squeeze, she knew he’d heard most of it.
“You want a little training on that knife?” he asked quietly as they headed down the stairs.
“You know how to survive a knife fight?”
He gave her his normal cocky grin. “I know how to survive most any fight.”
“As long as you go easy on me.”
“Oh, where’s the fun in that?” he teased, before sobering. “You saw me play live bait. It’s not a situation I want to be in again. If anything I can teach you keeps you from ending up tied to a chair, I’ll do it.”
Thinking about it made her stomach crawl with acid. She swallowed hard. “Sounds good, John.”
“Hey.” He opened the door to the SUV for her, slid in the back with her. “You’re smart as hell, gutsy, and fierce. If Jack tries to take you on, he’s the one who’ll be hurting, not you. I guarantee it.”
“You guys ready?” Bailey asked from behind the wheel.
“Let’s hit it,” John replied, settling in beside Grace.
“Gracie, you good?”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice strong. “Let’s head home.”
END.
(Or possibly there’s a part 2. Not sure yet.)