Deep Hurt - Eva Hudson Page 0,61

you give us a description?”

“Why do you need me to do that? You know what he looks like. I can identify him no problem—just tell me when.”

The recording fell silent.

“What, what is it?” Anderson asked, the panic in her voice building. “Wait a minute. You have arrested him, right? You do have him locked up?”

“At this time, the suspect is not yet in custody.”

“Sweet Jesus. How could you let him get away?”

“Have no doubt, Miss Anderson, we will arrest him. How quickly depends in part on the detail of the description you can give us.”

Ingrid heard a muffled sob, then a louder one.

“Please, Karla. We know you’ve been through so much. But the sooner you give us the information, the faster we can get him behind bars.”

“OK. Where should I start?”

“How about height and build?”

“He’s skinny… wiry, I guess, only a few inches taller than me, I’m five-foot-six. No, wait. That’s how tall I was when I was fourteen. Maybe I grew since then.”

Ingrid heard a distant rustling of paper.

“You’re five-foot-nine.”

“I am?”

“You don’t remember the nurse measuring you during the medical exam?”

“I guess I had other things on my mind.”

“What else can you tell us about him?”

“He’s white, but tanned, like he’s spent a lot of years outside. He has tattoos on his arms, from the middle of his forearms right up almost to his shoulders. Old style ones, like you’d see on some old sailor or something. He has greased-back dark hair, going gray a little above his ears. Long sideburns.”

“Does he have an accent?”

“Southern. Couldn’t say which state, though.”

“Did he ever talk about where he came from, originally?”

“He always said he was from everywhere. Real proud of the fact he lived like a gypsy.”

“A gypsy?”

“He traveled around the country, always moving from state to state, he said. Until he came here. And decided to settle down.”

“What was he? Some sort of salesman?”

“No! He told me he managed the roller coaster at a traveling carnival.”

Dear God.

Ingrid closed her eyes. Her head started to buzz. An intense heat rose from the middle of her chest up into her neck and head. She couldn’t breathe.

A traveling carnival?

It had to be the same man who took Megan.

31

The next day Ingrid rose early. She was dressed and making her way to the officers’ mess for breakfast before seven.

The previous night she had continued to listen right to the end of the mp3 recording, then listened to the whole thing again, just to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. Then she’d called Mike Stiller, impressing upon him once again the importance of the DNA test for the third woman.

“I’m still working on it,” he’d said. “You have to trust that I’m doing everything I can here.” He’d sounded pissed that she’d interrupted the ball game he was watching.

“The more I hear about this case, the more convinced I am that this guy took my friend. Is the investigating team getting any closer to finding him?”

“They’re making some progress. That’s all they can tell me.”

By the time she’d hung up on him and laid her head on the pillow, her mind was swirling with images of carnival men, tattoos, bright lights and contorted half-smiling, half-grimacing faces. She could taste the sweetness of cotton candy at the back of her throat and hear the off-key steam organ music all jumbled up with the screams of people on the roller coaster. It hadn’t taken much to transport her back eighteen years and four thousand miles. Mike Stiller had to come through with more information for her. He just had to. The waiting and not knowing whether or not the third victim was Megan was getting harder with each day that passed.

Halfway through breakfast a Security Forces sergeant came to her table and told her Gurley was waiting for her in his office. Five minutes later she arrived at a single-story cinder block building that looked like a bunker from WWII.

She was met at the door by another uniformed sergeant, this one a woman, and led through an outer office to an interior door. The sergeant knocked twice and opened the door without waiting. As Ingrid stepped inside the inner office she saw Gurley sitting behind a wide metal desk, his back to her, his chair facing the wall. He was on the phone, but he wasn’t speaking. After a moment he swung around to face her and held up a forefinger indicating he’d be another minute. Ingrid decided to fill the time by looking at the framed