The Worst Kind Of Victims

The following Monday morning Jess and Nicole went back to work. Jess stopped in Thomas's office to tell him the news, so she could let him know that she wouldn't be there during most of December.

When she came out Nicole was waiting to hear how good or bad her time in Indiana was.

"There you are," Nicole said, "tell me everything."

She held out her hand showing the ring.

Nicole was silent while she put her thoughts in order to make sure they came out as inoffensively as possible. She was ninety-nine percent sure whatever she was seeing was the evidence of a huge mistake. "Jess, what in the world?"

"I'm getting married."

She crossed her arms. "Uh-huh, and I don't suppose this husband-to-be is Colin is it?"

"His name is Nathan. We grew up together. I haven't seen him in seven years."

"And now you're engaged to him. That makes sense."

As they walked to their desks Jess explained the whole story.

"All I'm saying," Nicole said as she sat behind her desk, "is don't do this in a couple of weeks. Take some time to think about it."

xxxx

After that first day back Jess went home. It was the first time she had time alone in weeks, and with Joseph in Indiana and nothing else to do she had time to think about her plans with Nathan. She told herself all the reasons she should marry Nathan and all the reasons why maybe she shouldn't.

Am I rushing into something I will regret?

No. You love Nathan. If all these bizarre things hadn't happened to your life these past four years you would have ended up with him long ago.

But is marriage something I am ready to handle right now? I already have to adjust to being a mother. Can I learn to be a wife at the same time?

Adjusting to being a new mother will be easier when I have someone here to help me. Nathan loves Joe, and he must really love me to make this kind of commitment. And isn't that what this whole thing is about—love? If I really love him and he really loves me isn't that all that matters? Isn't that enough to make this work even if it's hard?

I think it is.

She went to bed that night secure in the belief she was making a good choice.

xxxx

Nicole wasn't pleased when she heard Jess was planning on marrying Nathan. She never thought she would do something that rash. It was so unlike her. They continued their work together for three weeks, all the while Nicole tried to convince Jess to use better judgment, but Jess would hear no reason. She was going to marry Nathan.

As unhappy as she was and as much as she disapproved Nicole did what any real friend would do. She would be right by her friend's side when she was married, even if she did think it was the set up for a disaster.

They were in the back of the church. The ceremony would begin in minutes. Jess was almost ready to walk down the aisle.

"Are you ready?" Nicole asked—she meant emotionally.

"…Yes. I am ready."

"You don't sound without doubt. It's not too late to postpone this," she thought her remark was innocuous, but her tone revealed her true feelings.

"I'm not gonna do that."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

"Okay. Let's do this."

The ceremony went off without a hitch. The reception was beautiful and after everything was over Jess and Nathan said goodbye to their family, friends, and son and headed off for their two week long vacation in Barbados. They would be back to celebrate Christmas with their family and then after New Years they would go back to D.C. and try to find a home for the three of them.

xxxx

Nicole and Antonio left the reception and went back to their hotel room. That was when unlucky Antonio got to hear all his girlfriend's grievances. She kept her mouth shut all day and was ready to unload.

"The moment I first saw him I got bad vibes."

"Vibes?" Antonio laughed.

"This isn't funny, Antonio."

"It really kinda is. Look, Nicole, you were ready to hate this guy before you even met him. I know you think she made a mistake and rushed into this, but it's her life. You just have to live with it."

"Did you see that ring? And what about that car he drives. How does someone in talk radio afford that?"

"I don't know, but-"

"I don't trust him."

xxxx

"We've been married for a whole day," Nathan said as they toasted their glasses together over dinner.

"It's been one of the best days of my life."

"Just wait till we get home. We'll get a house and start living the family life. You, me, and Joe." He sipped his wine. "So where do you want to live, Virginia or Maryland?"

"I have no preference. We'll look in both and wherever the house we like the most is that's where we'll live."

"That won't work, babe. We need to settle on a state. I have business plans I have to make soon, and I need to know where I'll be living to make them."

"Okay, then Maryland. I've seen some of the towns there when Nicole was looking at houses. It's a beautiful state."

"Maryland it is."

xxxx

Like every year after the chaotic holiday season the team returned to resume their regular duties in early January. Nicole, Antonio, and Jess were sitting around talking about their holidays when Kemyss came in to give them their assignment.

"How was everyone's Christmas?" he asked.

"Not as good as Jess's," Nicole said about her partner who was still glowing.

"Congratulations," Kemyss said, "now back to the not so wonderful part of life. Come with me. You have to see the whole board to understand this one."

On the board, next to a truck load of information were five pictures of a caucasian family. There was a middle-aged woman with dark brown hair: Margaret Evans (38), a stout middle-aged man: Arnold Evans (46), and a young girl with dark hair: Marissa Evans (8). And the picture in the middle was marked: Missing. It was an angry looking teenage boy with a black tee shirt and a ring through his nose:Travis Evans (15).

The other two pictures were gruesome. Margaret was lying on the bed next to Arnold. There was blood covering the sheets. Arnold's eyes were closed, but Margaret's were opened. In the next photo Marissa was sprawled on the white carpeted stairs in a pink robe. The front of the robe was dark red.

"Last night," Thomas explained, "Travis stabbed his parents to death. His father was his first victim. He was stabbed forty-three times. Then his mother was stabbed forty-two. His sister was last. She was shot with Arnold's thirty-eight caliber once in the chest. She died six minutes later."

"And the boy's missing?" Jess asked.

"After he slaughtered his family he took off. He's a minor, so he's not a fugitive, he's a missing child."

"He's both," Nicole was quick to reply.

"Not to us. Our only job is to bring this boy home safely. We treat this like any other missing kid case—we do our best and don't allow our personal feelings to get in the way of our work or visions." He knew personal feelings about victims did affect Jess's visions and that it could be particularly hard to summon a vision when the person marked: victim wasn't such a victim.

"This one's a little out of our jurisdiction, but the agents believe he is armed and extremely dangerous, so you guys are going to Chicago."

xxxx

They were on the jet to Illinois discussing their latest case.

"So why'd he stab his parents and shoot his sister?" Nicole asked.

"He's a sociopath," Jess said. "He has a record of violence dating back to preschool."

"No. I mean why'd he choose to kill his parents and his sister differently?"

"Stabbing hurts a lot more than a shot in the heart. He must have wanted his parents to suffer and his sister to go quickly. I don't know why?"

Nicole took one last look at the photos in the file before shaking her head in a disapproving manner and closing it.

Jess opened the news paper and started reading the classifieds under housing.

"So what is Nathan going to do now?" Antonio asked her.

"He said he was going to look into some companies that do whatever it was he studied in college. I don't remember what that was."

"You don't know what your husband is going to be doing for a living?" Nicole said without thinking. If she had edited that she wouldn't have said anything at all.

"Nicole," Antonio said in a warning tone. He didn't want her to step in something she couldn't get out of.

"Well," Jess replied, "he left in a hurry this morning."

"So, you're still looking at houses, huh?" Antonio was happy when he thought of something to change the subject with. "What are you looking for?"

"Something with one story. I don't want to be walking up and down stairs all the time."

"The woman across the street from us is selling her home. That's a single story. Do you want me to get you the number?"

"Yes. I love that neighborhood."

xxxx

An hour and a half later Antonio was in the Evans' home and Jess and Nicole were on the porch of one of the neighbors.

Jess knocked on the door. An elderly black woman opened it.

After the introductions Jess and Nicole asked her about her neighbors.

"And that boy is a terrible child. I guess he must not get any discipline at all."

"What does he do?" Nicole asked her.

"He plays music all hours of the night. I hear him curing at his parents. He uses the most horrible profanity I have ever heard."

"What about the little girl," Jess asked her, "did he fight with her?"

"If he did I never heard it. I never saw him talk to her at all."

"Thank you, Ma'am."

While they were walking back across the street to the Evans' home Jess had a vision. "It was a blur," she told Nicole, "but I heard a train coming. I heard the bells that you hear the crossings and then I heard the horn."

"Maybe Travis is going to hop on a freight train…or get hit by one. I'm not sure which I'm hoping for."

"Nicole."

"I'm just kidding."

xxxx

At Travis's house Nicole, Antonio, and Jess went through his room. They found unbelievably offensive drawings and pictures of mutilated animals that fell victim to a very sick child. But nothing to tell them where he might have gone.

"All of his pictures that involved killing his family," Jess said, "always involved his parents, never his sister. Why did he shoot her?"

"That is what I wanted to know," Nicole replied, "where's our next stop?"

"Arnold's only remaining relative is a sister in prison. We should talk to her. She spent a lot of time around here before she was convicted."

"Of?"

"She killed her daughter's father. She got life and the nine-year-old is in foster care."

"Why didn't her daughter come live here?"

"It doesn't say, but I guess it's a good thing she didn't."

xxxx

Antonio went to the Chicago field office. Nicole and Jess went to the prison to talk to Denise Evans.

"There must be a mistake," Denise said, "Travis would never do those things."

She didn't react the way a normal person would if they were just informed that their nephew killed his family and was missing. She seemed indifferent, but she defended him nonetheless.

"He definitely did," Nicole said, "and now he's gone and we have to find him."

"So why are you here?"

"Can you tell us where he went….where he might have gone?"

"I wouldn't know. Ask Julie."

"Who's Julie?"

"My daughter. Travis babysat her. They spent a lot of time together…more time than I thought was normal."

"Then why did you allow it?" Nicole didn't bother to try to hide her anger. She thought it was abnormal for a fifteen-year-old to want to hang out with a nine-year-old too.

"Julie wanted to be with him. He used to buy her things. And with her out of the house I was free to go out."

They were surprised by her honesty, but not impressed. Their next job was to get permission from Child Welfare to talk to Julie.

xxxx

When they finally got the attention of a social worker they were able to get the information they needed.

"Ah, here it is," the social worker scrolled down her computer, "Julie Evans foster parents are Nancy and Robert Conley. They are at this address." She wrote the address down and gave it to Jess.

"Thank you," she told the social worker.

xxxx

"And you know," Nicole said as she put the car in park in front of the Conleys, "that no fifteen-year-old wants to spend time with and buy things for a nine-year-old unless he is getting something in return."

"I guess our killer is a child molester too. How are we going to go about this? Do we ask her what he did or just where he went?"

"If he was abusing her he would have taken her someplace remote. That's probably where he is now. We don't need to know what he did. We just need to know where he went."

"Be sure to tell her that. It might make her more likely to talk."

Before they got to the car they were met by a woman they assumed was Nancy Conley. She was an overweight woman in her fifties. Her expression wasn't welcoming.

"Nancy Conley?" Nicole asked.

"Who's asking?"

"Nicole Scott, F.B.I."

"What do you guys want with me?"

"Nothing. We need to talk to your foster child Julie Evans."

Nancy stepped on the porch. She opened the door and called Julie. After there was no reply she left the agents to go find her.

While she waited Nicole's eyes wondered until she set her sights on the sandbox in the backyard. A child was playing with a yellow toy dump truck. The first thing that caught his eye was the light blue cast on his left arm. The second thing she noticed was his face that—once she realized wasn't distorted from the distance, it was who she thought it was—took her breath away.

"What," Jess asked startled by her friend's gasp.

Nicole didn't respond. She left her partner and headed to the backyard. Jess never found out what Nicole saw because Julie came out right then.

"Hi," Jess said friendly, "are you Julie?"

The girl nodded.

While Jess was doing that Nicole was at the sandbox.

"Aunt Nicole," Ethan exclaimed. He quickly got up and wrapped his arms around her.

"What are you doing here?" she tried to sound calm, like she wasn't fuming that her nephew was in a foster home, like she wasn't mad at her sister for doing whatever it was she did that brought him there—judging from the cast she figured abuse.

"Mommy went to jail."

Damn it, Kelly, she thought. "Do you know how long she will be there for?"

Ethan shrugged.

"What happened here?" she asked holding his cast covered arm.

"I fell out of a tree I was climbing."

"Honey, go inside. Get all your stuff together. You're coming with me."

Ethan walked to the front of the home with Nicole in tow. He had to pass Jess and Julie to get to the door. "Hi, Jess." He waved as he passed by.

Jess's attention was taken away from the girl she was talking to—who wasn't talking back—to Ethan and then Nicole. "Julie, stay here. I will be right back."

Jess went over to Nicole. "What the hell was that?"

"That's what I'd like to know. Apparently Kelly is in jail. I need you to do me a favor. I need you and Antonio to take Ethan back to D.C. I'll finish up here and then I have to go see Kelly."

"Can we do that, take him out of the state?"

"I'll go to the Child Welfare office and sign everything I have to sign on my way back."

"What is Ethan doing?" Nancy came out to the porch. "He said you told him to pack his stuff."

"He's my nephew."

"You can't just take him."

"Watch me."

Jess took Ethan and Nicole stayed behind to finish with Julie.

"When Travis picked you up where did he take you?" she asked for the tenth time.

"By the trains," Julie finally said.

"The trains?"

"The ones by the fort. That's where we go."

xxxx

"Cortez,"Antonio answered his cell.

"How's Ethan?" Nicole asked.

"He loves this jet."

"I need you to find railroad tracks in the area of Travis's home."

Antonio looked on his laptop. "There's only one in a thirty mile radius."

"Give me the street."

xxxx

The tracks were at the end of a quiet main street. There was a crossing, but it was basically unnecessary because beyond the railroad was an old cabin-like fort probably built by kids decades ago and some woods.

Nicole parked her car on the side of the road and went to the fort. Armed (just in case Travis still had the gun) she opened the door.

Travis was sitting in the corner. His shirt was covered in blood. The gun and knife were right beside him.

Nicole pointed the gun at him. "Put your hands up."

He refused without saying a word.

"Put your hands up," she said more insistently.

When he still wouldn't move she took her chances and approached him carefully. She kicked the weapons away and got him in the cuffs, still he didn't blink.

It was going to be a long ride back to the Chicago office. It wasn't her job to find out why people do the things they do. She was only supposed to find them and if there were other crimes involved, hand the perp over to the people in charge of dealing with those crimes. But that case was particularly hard on both her and Jess—Nicole because she had spent the day dealing with people who were living the life she lived and had been trying to run away from for years, Jess because since motherhood she had found it more painful to see children being hurt.—and Nicole thought they at least deserved to know why some of it happened.

"Why'd you kill Marissa?"

He looked her in the eye through the rear-view mirror.

"She wasn't in any of your drawings. No one ever saw you fight with her, so why did you shoot her?"

"She was supposed to be across the street at her friend's house…but she came home and she saw."

"What you did to your parents?"

"She ran away and I grabbed the gun and shot her while she was coming down the stairs. I didn't want to use the knife on her.

xxxx

Travis was turned over to the Chicago agents and Nicole went to the jail to see Kelly.

"How did you know I was here?" Kelly asked her.

"A case I was working on brought me to you son's foster home. How could you do this? We always swore if we had kids they would never end up in one of those hell holes."

"I haven't bought a drug in five years, but I started using marijuana a couple of months ago. A cop busted me and the next thing I know I'm here for the next four to six months."

"You're here for buying drugs?" Nicole sounded oddly relieved.

"What did you think?"

"I thought you broke his arm."

"I didn't…Does he have a broken arm?"

"Nevermind. I'll take care of everything. I'm going to keep him with me in Maryland until you get out. Why didn't you call me when this happened?"

"I didn't want you to know."

"I thought you got passed all this."

"That's why I didn't want you to know."

"Fine. I'll call you later this evening so you can talk to Ethan. I have to get back. I imagine he is bored out of his mind in my office.

xxxx

"I'm bored," Ethan complained to Jess.

"I'm done here. You want to take a ride?"

"Yeah! Where are we going?"

"I'm going to look at a house that's across the street from your Aunt Nicole's."

xxxx

After she found Travis Nicole had called the D.C. office to tell them what she found. She gave them all the details, so by the time she got back everyone but Antonio was out of the office. He stayed behind because he was anxiously waiting for her to tell him what was going on with Ethan.

"Hi," Nicole surprised him, "where's Ethan?"

"Jess took him to go look at that house. He was getting restless. What's going on, Nicole?"

"Kelly is in jail and I have to keep him with me for the next four to six months. I'm tired and irritable and I don't want to argue about this."

"I wouldn't argue about this. I know how much you love him."

"I'm sorry…I'm just drained."

xxxx

That night Nicole was abruptly awoken by a reoccurring nightmare she had about one of her experiences in the foster circuit. Worrying Ethan may have lived the same nightmare she did sparked a dream she hadn't had in years.

Nicole sat up and the movement woke the man sleeping next to her.

"What's going on?" He turned on the lamp.

"I'm going to go check on him," she said.

xxxx

She adjusted Ethan's covers. She wasn't trying to, but when she touched his face she woke him up.

"It's time to get up?" he asked.

"No, baby, it's not. I just wanted to see if you were all right."

"I am."

It wasn't the ideal time. It wasn't what she planned, but she couldn't stand not knowing one minute longer. "…Ethan, were Nancy and Robert nice to you?"

"When I was a good boy they were all right."

"And when you weren't good?"

"Sometimes they hit me."

"Is that what happened to your arm, it broke when one of them was hurting you?"

He nodded.

Nicole made him get up so she could examine him for any other injuries. Besides a few scratches (which very easily could have happened when that sever-year-old boy was just being a seven-year-old boy) she didn't find anything else. She tucked him back in and waited for him to fall asleep.

When she got back to her and Antonio's bedroom he was waiting for her. "Is he okay?"

"He's going to be fine."

"What about you?"

"Me?" she tried to act like she didn't know what he meant. When that didn't work—like it never did—she tried the truth. "I had another one of those dreams."

"We know what brought that on. You want to tell me-"

Before he even finished that sentence she gave him a look that answered him. "Okay," he remembered what he learned on Thanksgiving about letting things go. "Goodnight."

xxxx

"He's still awake," Nathan said about Joseph. He had just been in the nursery—which doubled as their room also—trying to get the baby to sleep.

"If we just leave him alone and not go in there for a while he'll go to sleep."

"We have to get a bigger place."

"I saw a house today actually. You have an appointment with the realtor tomorrow. If you like it I think we should get it."

"What's it like?"

"You wouldn't think a single story home would be that spacious. It has three regular bedrooms, a master bedroom, a living room, a family room, a den, it even has a lower level rec room."

"I thought you said no stairs."

"It's only three stairs down. It will be a good playroom for Joe soon."

"Did you like the neighborhood?"

"Very child-friendly, but it's still quiet. I know you wanted quiet."

"It sounds perfect. Make an offer."

"Don't you want to see it?"

"I trust your judgment, besides I have to work tomorrow."

"You got a job?"

"I did. There is a spot open for K 93."

"That's talk radio. I thought you were done with that."

"It's only temporary. I've got other things going on."

"What other things?

"You keep asking me that."

"Because you won't tell me."

"We'll talk about it eventually. It's not the right time. Trust me."

She did. "All right."

Over the next two weeks Nathan and Jess moved to Maryland and Ethan adjusted to living with Nicole and Antonio. In the mornings on her way to work Nicole would drop him off at a private school she enrolled him in. In the afternoons Teresa would pick him up and he would stay across the street with her and Joseph until Nicole and/or Antonio came home. That way Nicole and Jess could stay in the office as late as seven.

Nicole filed a complaint against Robert and Nancy Conley. She had to take Ethan to Chicago so that Child Welfare could interview him. They found his accusations had gravity and started an investigation, but the last time Nicole checked the Conleys were still foster parents.