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June 16, 2004
Baldwin

Jessamine Sparrow was sorely misnamed. Baldwin thought she should have been called bulldog—her tenacity was one of the things that he was most impressed with when he hired her. So when she said, “Hey, boss. Come take a look at this,” with an indefinable note of curiosity in her voice, he dropped his files and mentally crossed his fingers.

Baldwin stretched and stood, shaking away the cobwebs. He’d been staring at evidence files for the better part of two hours and his head was aching with all the tiny print. He didn’t need glasses, not yet anyway, but the words were swimming before his eyes, refracting in the harsh fluorescent light of the conference room.

Sparrow couldn’t have felt much better. She’d been cruising the online world for nearly twenty hours.

Her computer screen was a mess, with open windows of every conceivable size, shape and color. She clicked one of the windows on the top left, made it fill the screen. It was an obituary notice from The Washington Post, dated January 12, 2004. A small face smiled sadly at him, a little girl, maybe eight, nine years old. She had no hair—his first thought was cancer.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Her name is Evie Kilmeade. Nine years old. She died this past January after a battle with leukemia.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” Sparrow spoke without the conviction many women would have given the statement. Though only in her late twenties, Sparrow was unmarried, with no real prospects, and no burning desire to populate her life with either a man or a baby anytime soon. She could still look at children and their suffering with a dispassionate eye. Baldwin had wondered if she was gay, then pushed it out of his mind. Her sexual orientation had absolutely no bearing on her ability to kick ass at her job, and Sparrow was one of the best hires he’d made in a long time.

“So what’s the catch?”

“Well, the name sounded familiar. Kilmeade isn’t terribly common, and when we did interviews with Arlen’s neighbors, it stood out to me. Then I see this, and when I put it all together, I found her address. Guess where little Evie lived?” She glanced over her shoulder to make sure he was watching, then popped it up on the screen.

Baldwin read it three times in disbelief. “You’re kidding,” he said finally, mind whirling.

“Nope. She spent her last days on this earth living across the street from the big bad wolf.”

Baldwin thought back, grabbed a mental image of the house across the street from Arlen’s. That’s right. He’d talked to them briefly two days earlier. The Kilmeades had been an open, friendly, caring couple, with two young boys. They’d never mentioned a little girl, and they were the only people who showed any sort of empathy toward their perverted neighbor. Kilmeade was some kind of psychologist, and he worked with prisoners.

“What color was her hair?” Baldwin asked.

“Funny you should ask. After some serious prodding and a probable-cause warrant, Sears sent over all the negatives from every one of Arlen’s shoots. You can thank Butler for that later. Evie Kilmeade has a file with them. When she still had hair, it was blond.”

“Let me see.”

Sparrow clicked her mouse a couple of times, and a full-color photograph came up. It was the same girl, though in this picture, she was healthy and happy, with long, cascading blond hair.

“So she physically fits the victim profile, she lived across the street from our main suspect and she’s dead. But there’s no evidence of murder—she died from leukemia complications, right?”

“Yes, she did. Six months ago.”

“The connection, Sparrow? I need something more.”

“I looked back through the online obituary guest book. There was a note from Arlen. I’ve printed it out for you.”

She handed him a piece of paper. He got chills when he read the words.

“Son of a bitch. Your Harry? In his own words, he’s admitting a relationship. Sparrow, you know what this means, right? He had personal and physical contact with a minor. That’s breaking his probation. At the very least, Fairfax County can pick him up for that. We can sweat him ourselves if need be.”

Sparrow nodded. “On the surface, at least, it looks like Evie and Arlen were friends. I’m thinking her death might have been the trigger. He loses Evie, then starts to re-create her, acting out all the horrible fantasies he’s been having about her all this time. Finally, the fantasies weren’t enough, and he started to kill.”

Baldwin turned back to the image on the computer, traced his finger over the little girl’s sharp chin. Of course. If Arlen had found a compatriot, a little girl he could act out with, and she betrayed him by dying on her own…well, that could easily have caused the break that got him started. If Arlen was their suspect, they had a good basis for motive. Baldwin ran his hands through his hair like he was pushing all the thoughts back in, and breathed a deep sigh.

“Nice work, Sparrow. That most certainly could be the case. Now let’s go talk to her parents, find out just how close their daughter was to the local pedophile. Where’s Charlotte?”

Sparrow didn’t look at him, just started shutting down all the windows on her computer. “She’s at the crime lab, I think. Something about double-checking one of the evidence tags.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Sorry, boss, I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“It’s no problem.”

They started from the room. Baldwin held the door for her, let her go out before him.

“Hey, boss?” Sparrow’s wide, clunky heels clacked on the linoleum floor.

“Yeah?” Baldwin answered, distracted. Could this be it? Could they have found that little link that explains everything?

“Speaking of Charlotte?”

That brought him back to the conversation. He warily answered, “Yes?”

Sparrow bit her lip, then dropped his gaze and shook her head. “Nothing. It’s nothing, boss. Never mind.” She walked out ahead of him, and Baldwin felt all the breath go from his body. They knew. They probably all knew. Son of a bitch.

And that little bit of uncertainty from Sparrow was all he needed to help him make his decision. He knew what he had to do. He must put the team first. They were in his charge in more ways than one.