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  Delaney hopped up and took off. Scooter stayed by their table, hands in his pockets, following her with his eyes.

  Just a diligent manager, or was there something a bit creepy about him?

  Or was Pepper just jealous?

  Chapter Ten

  Saturday was a perfect July day on Cape Cod—temperatures in the high seventies with just a hint of a breeze. The kind of day that the Visitors Bureau would film for its TV commercials. Perfect beach weather. Pepper knew the New Albion shore would be towel to towel with sunbathers.

  Pepper would not be on the sand with them. He arrived at the police station around nine-thirty, depressed to be spending such a perfect weekend day at a desk in a cramped converted drunk tank.

  He was also pissed that he’d had to call Brad St. John and say he couldn’t make today’s Brad and the Pitts band rehearsal. Brad had been obnoxious about it, questioning his commitment to rock-and-roll and his bandmates. Pepper had bitten his tongue and taken it.

  Pepper ran into Officer Randy Larch in the coffee room.

  “Working on a Saturday!” said Larch. “You going for employee of the month?”

  “Busy times,” answered Pepper, not wanting to get into it. His dad had ordered him to work today as punishment for disappearing yesterday. “You still helping Sweeney with the Snatcher case? How’s it going?”

  Yes, Larch was still helping, and he was more than happy to dish the latest dirt to Pepper.

  The most exciting development was that the Eastham police had used the “find my phone” feature to locate Emma Bailey’s cell phone. They found it on a grass island next to a muffler shop at the edge of New Albion. About fifteen minutes from Eastham.

  “So the theory is, the kidnapper drove in our direction, then disposed of her phone. Of course, he could have left it there to throw us off and doubled back somewhere else.”

  So the kidnapper had headed this way after grabbing the girl. Was he a New Albion local, like Casper Yelle? Food for thought…

  “Anything else?” asked Pepper.

  Larch had nothing else to share. Basically, the case against Casper Yelle had stalled. They’d found nothing at his apartment or in his Jeep to show a connection between him and Emma Bailey. And his ankle monitor hadn’t shown he was in her neighborhood when the snatching happened.

  Larch explained about the Faraday cage in Yelle’s apartment and how the man could sit in the cage while he tampered with or removed his ankle monitor without setting off the alert. The Faraday cage theoretically would prevent a signal from going to the parole office’s monitoring service.

  “So Yelle could have deactivated his ankle bracelet? Or taken it off?”

  Larch nodded. “He used to be a tech guy for a home alarm company, before he went to prison. He could spoof a GSP signal to look like he was at home and everything was fine, when he could be anywhere.”

  “Can we prove that?” asked Pepper.

  “Nope, it’s all guesses so far. His P.O. couldn’t tell if he tampered with it. In the meantime, we’re looking for Yelle’s white van. He says someone stole it. If we find it, possibly there’ll be some DNA to prove Emma Bailey was in it.”

  Unless Yelle got rid of the van permanently…

  “Are we still holding him?” Pepper asked.

  “No, Sweeney cut Yelle loose last night. He hadn’t technically violated his terms of parole, and we didn’t have cause to hold him. But your dad still thinks he’s our number one suspect.”

  “What do you think?” Pepper wanted to know more. He wanted to know everything about the investigation. He couldn’t help it—the hunt must be zeroing in on the Snatcher. Now it was just a matter of getting a break, grabbing the guy and hopefully finding Emma Bailey alive and well.

  Larch sighed. “Every shop on Cape Cod is checking out their sex offenders and plenty of other suspects too. But your dad’s a smart cop with a lot more experience than I have. I wouldn’t bet against him being right. If it’s Yelle, we’ll get him. I hope it’s not too late. The search parties have been a complete bust.”

  That reminded Pepper about seeing Fester Timmins on the bar television at Sandy’s Restaurant. “I saw your buddy Fester on TV talking about the Greenhead Snatcher. I couldn’t hear what he said, but the reporter was eating it up.”

  Larch laughed. “My buddy? That guy’s a real character. He’d give his left nut to be a cop. He’s applied to every law enforcement agency on the Cape in the last couple of years. No bites yet!”

  Back in his miserable little drunk tank office, Pepper tried to focus on his database work for way over thirty minutes…practically forty minutes. But it was impossibly boring and irrelevant to what really was going on this week.

  Pepper opened a new case screen in the database, titled it Bailey and populated it with metadata for the Greenhead Snatcher case. All the usual fields of info, but this time for a living, breathing case.

  Then he went further, inputting a chronological list of all information he’d learned since Emma Bailey’s abduction. Sticking to raw facts, like in the other case files in the database. The timeline of events, the names and the locations. It took half an hour to input everything he knew about the Emma Bailey case.

  Then, just for fun, he ran some queries against all the other files in his partially filled database. Kidnapping. Van. White van. Green hat. All the metadata he’d identified to include in his own mock file for the Bailey case.

  The search results included a handful of cases. None of which seemed to have anything to do with the Emma Bailey case. So, a total swing and a miss.

  Strike one.

  Garbage in, garbage out, right? He couldn’t conduct meaningful searches because he didn’t know enough about the Emma Bailey investigation.

  But, Pepper realized, maybe he had a way to fix that. And he’d promised Delaney he’d get her a picture of Casper Yelle, for her own safety.

  He had to try.

  Pepper knocked lightly and opened the door to his dad’s office slowly. The door groaned on its hinges—it’d had a bad squeak for years.

  The light was off and no one was there.

  Perfect.

  Pepper closed the door and hurried to his dad’s desk. His idea was to check his dad’s computer for more details about the Bailey investigation, so he could get a photo of Casper Yelle for Delaney and, as a bonus, be able to flesh out his own mock case file.

  What was the harm, right? And maybe there’d be some connection between the Bailey case and one of the older cases in Pepper’s database…possibly a connection which wasn’t in the department’s active databases.

  If he found a connection, he’d show it to his dad. Maybe partially redeem himself.

  Pepper knew his dad required everyone in the department to change their passwords every ninety days and that his dad couldn’t ever remember his own password. He kept it on a sticky note under his desk.

  He retrieved the sticky note and logged in as his dad. He realized he was breathing faster. A bit nervous.

  Pepper clicked through the department files. He was looking for Bailey case info and had to resist being distracted by other stuff. Such as the payroll file. No, he felt guilty enough to be sneaking into the system for the Bailey info…

  But unfortunately, he found nothing. He couldn’t see the detectives’ active case files using his dad’s access. Another whiff.

  Strike two.

  Pepper logged out of the computer, hoping he hadn’t left an electronic trail which would get him in trouble. He didn’t need to move any higher on his dad’s shit list—he was already floating near the top.

  He was about to leave his dad’s office when he had another idea. His dad was a bit of a dinosaur and still preferred paper files over computer files. Had he assembled a paper file in connection with the task force meeting in Eastham he’d gone to yesterday evening? If yes, had his dad come back to the office and filed it away in his battered gray filing cabinet?

  Pepper found the key to the metal filing c
abinet where he had seen his dad keep it for over a decade—on his bookcase under the hollow base of a ceramic tiger Jake had made in elementary school.

  He quickly unlocked his dad’s filing cabinet and found a manila folder labeled “Bailey.” It was a lot thicker than he’d expected.

  He opened the folder and read the top document. His pulse began to race.

  Chapter Eleven

  Pepper’s phone buzzed loudly enough to wake up the entire Lower Cape, interrupting him as he began reading the file. He quickly fished his phone out of his pocket and silenced it, then got back to his spy work in his dad’s closed office.

  The top document was a typed two-page summary of the investigation’s progress, with small notes written in the margin in his dad’s sloppy half-script and half-print.

  It began with a recap of the facts of seventeen-year-old Emma Bailey’s abduction, as related by the only witness, Emma’s seven-year-old brother, Mason.

  The boy had been looking out the window, waiting for his sister to get home because his front tooth had finally fallen out and he wanted to surprise her with his new smile. It was shortly before 9:00 PM on Thursday. Mason saw a white van parked on the street between their house and the neighbor’s house to the west, but couldn’t identify its make or model.

  Pepper wondered why the Snatcher parked the van in that spot at that specific time. Was he stalking Emma, or just looking for opportunities and saw her?

  No, Pepper’s guess was the guy had to have been there waiting for Emma. It just made sense to him.

  The report said the boy saw Emma’s friend Katelyn Jaansen’s car pull over on the far side of the street and Emma got out. She waved goodbye as Katelyn’s car drove away. She crossed the street to the sidewalk in front of their residence. Pepper’s dad had written JOL? In the margin. Pepper figured that meant “junior operator license” but didn’t get why it would matter.

  A man had approached Emma at the curb and asked her a question, which Emma seemed to answer without stopping walking. As Emma passed the man, he ran at her and tackled her from behind. They wrestled for a few seconds, then he grabbed her and she collapsed.

  Pepper’s dad had added the note “taser?” in the margin.

  Mason had stayed at the window and saw the man pick up Emma over his shoulder and put her in the back of the white van. Then the kidnapper looked right at the boy, who became even more scared. He ran to the kitchen and called 911.

  A transcript of the 911 call was attached, but it didn’t contain any other helpful information. The boy was very upset and only communicated the basic info while crying.

  The 911 tape showed the boy’s call was at 8:46 PM.

  An Eastham police detail arrived at the house at 8:58.

  Eastham police issued a BOLO for the white van at 8:58 and initiated an amber alert at 9:06.

  The next section of the memo was titled “Investigation Status” and listed in bare details the roadblocks which had been set up, the numbers of tips received and followed up, the number of areas searched by police and civilian volunteers, and other basic facts.

  It summarized the number of registered sex offenders on Cape Cod and the number of felons with records for kidnapping or other violent crimes. Detailed lists were attached.

  Pepper heard footsteps outside the office and in one lightning move swept the file closed and tucked himself under his dad’s desk.

  The door opened with a sharp groan from its hinges.

  The entire world paused except Pepper’s heartbeat, which was definitely loud enough to give him away.

  After an eternity—five seconds?—the door closed. The footsteps faded away.

  Pepper sighed in relief and climbed back up to the chair. He reopened the Bailey file, flipping deeper into the stack of papers to the profiles of potential suspects or persons of interest. All men. Each man’s summary was only two pages long—one two-sided piece of paper. In the top right corner of each summary was a small black-and-white picture of the man.

  Should Pepper feed those men’s names into his database and see if anything hit? Or would that just be redundant to what the police had already done through the live computer systems?

  The first record was for Luis P. Ortega, of West Barnstable. He was a level-two sex offender with convictions for indecent exposure and assault five years prior. Pepper knew level-two sex offenders were classified as moderately dangerous with a moderate risk of re-offending.

  The second was Emilio “Leo” Flammia, from New Albion. He had two convictions for indecent assault and battery on a person aged 14 or older and was also registered as a level-two sex offender.

  The third was Casper Yelle, also from New Albion. His dad’s number one suspect! As Pepper recalled, Yelle had a felony conviction for assault with intent to commit rape and for open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior. He was registered as a level-three sex offender.

  On this sheet, his dad had written and circled: also priors—stalking/witness intimidation.

  There were several other notes at the bottom of this sheet.

  Lied in interview—why?

  High I.Q.?

  Ankle monitor—Faraday?

  Home on Thurs. nite?

  Pepper took a close-up picture of Yelle’s photo for Delaney. Then he took a picture of the full page.

  He would have to think more about his dad’s notes later, in a less compromising position.

  Pepper thumbed forward in the file, looking at other potential suspects. The stack of records had to be half an inch thick. He stopped at random on the records of a man named Kyle Lee Jeffries. The man had been convicted of a long list of felonies, including kidnapping and aggravated assault. And he lived very close too—in Orleans. How did someone commit that many felonies, then end up back on the street?

  Of course, it was very possible the Snatcher wasn’t even in that pile of past offenders. He could be from another area and had recently arrived on the Cape to commit this crime. Or he could have been living nearby all his life with no criminal record.

  Using his cell phone, Pepper took a picture of the first page of each other person’s record, like he’d done with Yelle’s. He didn’t have time to copy the entire pile, but he at least wanted their names and addresses. He would add them to his mock file because it seemed productive, even if, deep down, he knew it was probably a waste of time.

  Pepper finished and put the file back in the filing cabinet. He was locking the drawer when his dad opened his office door.

  Strike three!

  “Pepper, damn it!” yelled his dad, about as loud as Pepper had ever heard him yell. A new record.

  Shit ensued. And more shit.

  For a few minutes Pepper thought his dad would either kill him or die of a burst blood vessel, whichever came first.

  The only good thing was his dad had jumped to the conclusion that Pepper was unlocking the filing cabinet and hadn’t actually intruded on the files yet.

  He didn’t tell him otherwise. He couldn’t get a word in anyway—his dad was ranting and yelling and swearing in an amazing stream of anger. He sat there and took it, deserving all of it, and hoping to weather it alive.

  A knock at the open door cut off his dad mid-curse.

  It was Detective Sweeney.

  His dad gave Sweeney a glare which should have sent him running but didn’t.

  “Sorry, Chief. Sorry, I know you’re—” He paused. “I knew you’d want to know right away. Another girl was just kidnapped—this time here in New Albion!”

  Chapter Twelve

  One hour earlier, the man in the white van parked on the side of Red Cedar Road to wait for another girl named Emma. Just like his Emma Bailey, but a year younger at sixteen and a half. And maybe not quite as beautiful in the same way? But still more than pretty enough. This new Emma’s last name was Addison, for now.

  He knew his target was scheduled to work as a hostess at Sandy’s Seafood Restaurant this afternoon. He knew her silver Volkswagen Beetle was havin
g engine troubles and so she had walked to work the last two days. Barely half a mile, with sidewalks the whole way. So she should walk, unless the media shitshow about the Emma Bailey kidnapping had freaked out her parents and they would drive her to work today?

  He hoped not.

  And he hoped he’d get lucky with traffic. Saturdays on Cape Cod could be a real clusterfuck. Sunburned, exhausted families vacating rental homes and heading home. Stressed-out, hyperactive families arriving for their week in paradise, if they could find the street of their rental house. Traffic was heavier than usual even on back streets. Yep, he’d have to get lucky…

  The man in the van hadn’t slept for two days. So he didn’t feel so great today. Kinda sluggish and confused. He was sitting in the back of the van, peeping through a small slit in the paper which covered the rear windows, when all of that changed. When he saw her!

  His blood quickening, he watched her approach. She was small for sixteen years old. Long blonde hair. And a nose stud which would definitely have to go. She looked dark and childlike, walking closer and closer. But her skin color was tanned a light caramel. He couldn’t see her big eyes—she had sunglasses on. But he knew it was her.

  He checked his digital watch. 3:33 PM. What a sweet coincidence! Like time was a cosmic slot machine, and he’d just hit the freaking jackpot: 3-3-3. It gave him an extra burst of confidence.

  He was so excited now. His body tensed, poised for action. He could hear the blood flooding his ears, making them ring and tingle.

  Two cars with bicycles hanging from their trunks drove past in the other direction and quickly were gone. No other vehicles were in sight at the moment…

  When the teen reached the van, the man burst out the back. And Emma Addison froze right there, her eyes like saucers, like it was damn fate.

  He grabbed her golden hair and gave her a love zap with his stun gun—just enough to lock up her muscles and knock her down. He carefully lifted her into the back of the van. Climbed in and closed the doors.