WARNING: This chapter deals with some unpleasant topics. The rating has been changed accordingly.
JAG Headquarters
0800 hours
San Antonio, Texas
"I've been getting… notes… threats, I guess, for a few months now," Meg said. She couldn't see any reason to keep it a secret any longer. "I got this with my messages this morning," she added, handing Harm the note she had clutched in her hand since reading it almost two hours before.
Harm took the note from Meg's shaking fingers and unfolded it carefully.
I know you know what I did to those kids, Lieutenant Commander Austin, and I know you know there are other victims that the FBI hasn't connected to me yet. Tell anyone what you know and I do the same to your daughter.
It was pretty standard, as far as death threats go, but the fact that the threat was against an innocent little girl made him want to put his fist through a wall. Or through the face of the author of the note. Either would suffice, though the latter held more appeal.
"Do you know who sent this?" Harm asked.
Meg nodded. "Three years ago I investigated a case that involved an eight year old girl who was… mutilated is the only way to describe what was done to her, and even that falls short. She was the granddaughter of a three star General who was awarded more medals after Vietnam than his chest can hold. Her father was a Naval Captain who was deployed on a carrier at the time. Her mother was the aid to a Senator and she spent a lot of time in and out of Washington. The girl, Sylvie Cotton, was raised by a nanny until she got old enough to go to an elite boarding school in England. She was home for summer break… she was playing in the park with her dog… and she attacked her," she said softly, her eyes filling with tears.
"Who?" Harm pressed gently.
"It was never proven for sure, but our prime suspect was a dishonourably discharged Lieutenant who had been a father in the Navy and a mother who died when she was only a few months old. Her father had sent her to boarding school year round so that he could stay in the Navy and not worry about her all the time," Meg said. "I worked with the FBI's Violent Crimes Unit because, apparently, Sylvie Cotton wasn't the first child who was killed by the same person. Ten girls between the ages of five and ten over the course of six years."
"How did they know that it's the same person?" Harm asked.
Meg took a breath and motioned to Harm's hand that still held the most recent threat. "The notes. For several months before each murder the killer sent notes to the parents saying that she was going to kill their daughter to protect her from growing up like she had," Meg said.
"I contacted the agents that I worked with on the case and they sent me copies of all the files related to Sylvie's murder three years ago. There's not much to go on, really, and the killer is… good."
"Good? How?" Harm asked. He knew Meg was too close to the whole thing to be objective, and he was pretty sure that she was too deeply into her own problems to worry about the investigation that so far had been getting them nowhere, but, until he could address his concerns with someone other than Meg, he decided to keep them to himself.
"All the murders have taken place in public areas in broad daylight. Usually at a park or a school. no DNA or fingerprint evidence is left behind. The mutilation takes place in about twenty minutes, and the child dies about halfway through when the knife that the killer uses is slid into the heart and twisted," Meg said shakily.
Harm wanted to throw up.
JAG Headquarters
0810 hours
San Antonio, Texas
Since she didn't think shecould afford the time to bother trying to find Harm and Meg, Mac gathered up the files and ran up to the Commanding Officer's office. His yeoman stopped her before she could rush in.
"Excuse me, ma'am, but the Admiral is busy, you'll have to come back later," the Petty Officer said firmly.
"This can't wait," Mac said. "Let him know that Colonel MacKenzie is here with new evidence on the death of Ryan Wade."
The Petty Officer did just that and was surprised when the Admiral yelled at him for not letting her in right away.
"You can go on in," the Petty Officer said, looking properly chagrined.
"Thank you," Mac said before pushing the thick wooden door open.
Admiral Bradley's office was much like Admiral Chegwidden's was back in Washington, only Bradley had a more Spartan decorating style.
"At ease, Colonel," Bradley said before Mac could even come through the door completely. "Where are Austin and Rabb?" he asked as Mac started sorting files on a long table that ran along the side of the room.
"They are working on another angle at the moment, sir, but I think that I may have found the missing link in this whole mess," Mac said. "These are Ryan Wade's school files, as well as his medical files."
"What am I supposed to be seeing?" Bradley asked as he started skimming over the files that were laid out in chronological order in front of him.
"The comments by the school's on-site doctor, a Dr. Alex Wyldes," Mac said. "According to the notes Wyldes made, Ryan was constantly coming to school with bruises, cuts, broken bones or sprained wrists or ankles. His parents said that he was an active kid, played a lot of football. But when I spoke to Ryan's friends they all told me that he would never play football with them, that he would only play baseball, which is not exactly a contact sport."
"Especially not in that age group," Bradley agreed.
"Exactly," Mac said. "And Wyldes commented that the cuts didn't look like they were normal injuries. They were too straight, like Ryan was being cut by a blade. He thought razorblade, but apparently the marks that razors make didn't match with the wounds on his body that were inspected during his time in a coma and in his post-mortem."
Bradley sighed heavily. "You're thinking child abuse," he said.
"I think that this would constitute torture, but, yes, I believe the parents are involved. At least, it's one of my theories," Mac agreed. "The predominant one, admittedly, but there are other options that I feel need to be explored before any further action is taken."
"Well then, this makes more sense now," Bradley said, going over to his desk and picking up an envelope that held an evidence bag. "This was sent to me this morning, anonymously. I had the lab check for fingerprints, DNA, trace… anything and everything that they could get off the bag and it's contents."
"Did they find anything?" Mac asked, not entirely sure she wanted to know the answer.
Bradley nodded. "Fingerprints and blood evidence. The prints matched up to a phantom print that was found at the scene of numerous murders of young children in the last ten years. There's no ID on the print in any database," he said. "There's also blood all over the…" he said, trailing off.
"Blood all over the what?" Mac asked gently. It was obvious that this was affecting the Admiral and that made her nervous.
"There's blood all over the blade," the Admiral said gravely.
He looked into Mac's eyes directly. She could see his hands shaking, though whether it was with anger or something else she couldn't tell.
"It belongs to Ryan Wade," Bradley said softly.
JAG Headquarters
0840 hours
San Antonio, Texas
"What do you plan on doing?" he asked. "Are you going to bring her home?"
"I wasn't. Not yet, at least," Meg said. "She's got friends at school, something she doesn't have here, and I still don't want her to see my mother like she is now." She looked down at her hands. "But maybe… maybe I should start thinking about brining her home… I mean, with you and Mac here… she might be safer."
"I think so," Harm agreed.
"The thing is, though, maybe she won't be safer here. All the other kids… they were fine, and then their parents brought them home or they came home for a school break or something and… that's when they were killed," Meg said.
Harm's shoulders slumped.
He hadn't thought about that.
"I mean, if I could know for sure she'd be safe here, I'd call the school right now and tell them that I'm on my way to get her," Meg continued. "But I think Lily might be in more danger when she's around me than she is away from me."
Harm reached out and put his hand over hers. "I'm not going to let anything happen to your daughter, Meg. I promise," he said.
Meg smiled slightly. "You've never broken a promise to me yet," she said, his promise increasing her confidence a little.
"Let me think about this for a while," Harm said. "There might be some other options that we haven't thought about yet."
"Like what?" Meg asked.
"I don't know, I haven't thought about them yet," Harm said, hoping to get more than a forced smile out of his former partner.
It worked.
She laughed, genuinely laughed, if only for a few seconds.
"Thank you," Meg said after regaining her composure.
Harm smiled tightly and then said, "This note… it says 'tell anyone what you know'. What do you know that this person doesn't want let out?"
Meg shook her head. "I can't, Harm. I can't risk my daughter's life like that," she said, her smile gone, her world pitch black once again.
"Meg, unless you stop playing the killer's game your daughter is going to end up a victim just like the other children," Harm snapped.
"No, it's when I stop playing the killer's game that my daughter ends up like the others," Meg snapped back. She pushed herself away from her desk and headed for the door. "I was stupid to have thought that you could help me," she said before walking out into the hall and heading for the stairs.
Harm sat still for a few minutes, mentally running over the conversation again in his mind. He could pinpoint the exact second where he had screwed everything up, and his silent self-flagellation hadn't been so bad since he had been fooled by the man posing as a detective who had stolen the book with his father's potential whereabouts in it while he and Mac were on a case on the USS Hornet.
The ringing of Meg's phone shook Harm out of his mental self-abuse.
"Lieutenant Commander Austin's office," he said, though why he hadn't just let it go to voicemail he wasn't entirely sure.
"Harm, where's Meg?" Mac asked.
"She… just left," Harm said. "What's up?"
"I'm in Admiral Bradley's office," Mac said. She took a slow breath. "There's something you need to see," she said before hanging up.
Harm stared at the phone for a second before replacing it in its cradle and heading for the elevator without a second thought.
The note was still in his hand.
I hope this chapter made some sense to you guys... It wasn't written all at once like I usually work, which made for less flow that I'm used to writing with.
Coming up next:
- Mac and the Admiral fill Harm in.
- Harm shows Mac the note.
- Admiral Chegwidden fights for his people back in Washington.