“Call a meeting,” he said. “I want to be there.”
She nodded and walked out. As she returned to the bullpen, where everybody was working, she said, “Colby asked me to call a meeting now for everyone. We’re going into boardroom two.” She walked into the boardroom ahead of everybody, wishing she had her files from home with her.
When Colby walked in a few minutes later, he said, “We may have a problem. As this is supposed to be a team effort, I’ll tell you right now that I had Kate do this on her own, and, now that she’s found a few things, I want the team to look at what she’s found and to tear it apart,” he said. “If you can’t find holes in this and if you see the connection that she sees, we’ve got a problem on our hands. A very big problem.”
She watched the team as their expressions went from curiosity to anger at him for assigning her a private job, then back to curiosity.
Colby said, “Detective Morgan, explain, please.”
She nodded. “Sixteen days ago, we had a man walk into the station,” she said. “We all made fun of it at the time. He had information about children’s cases from his nightmares,” she said, “but he didn’t know when, where, how, why, what, who, or anything else,” she said, as she raised her hands in frustration. “As you can guess, by the end of my interview, he was deemed somewhere along the line between fanatic and psychic. I didn’t know where on the crazy list to put him. I just knew that he was on there somewhere.”
The others groaned. Andy said, “These psychics don’t know much. And what they know is never helpful.”
“True, and that’s how I felt about it too, when Colby tasked me with the job of proving that the info was full of shit.”
“Like we’ve got time for that,” muttered Owen. Except Colby looked at him; he winced and said, “Sir.”
“Oh, I get it,” Colby said. “But, every once in a while, we also have to consider the fact that sometimes, just sometimes, we are wrong, and people actually do have information.”
“So what did this guy have to say?” Lilliana said from the back of the room.
Kate replied, summarizing Simon’s visions and as much of the work that she had sorted out in her head. “I don’t have my files here,” she said. “I was working on this at home, so everything is currently up on my board there.”
“Tomorrow morning—or the next morning if shit hits the fan—but as soon as possible,” Colby said, “I want it all recreated here. On this wall. Whatever cases you found, whatever bits and pieces you’ve got, I want to know,” he said. “Tell them about the mark.”
Everybody leaned forward.
“What the hell is going on here?” Owen said. “We used to be a team.”
“Youused to be,” Kate said. “I arrived as the rejected newest member.”
He had the grace to look a little ashamed. Then he shrugged and said, “Hey, we’re all dealing with something.”
Silence.
She continued. “The mark is on Jason,” she said, “the dead little boy we found over a week ago. It’s faint, as in barely discernible faint, but, when we enlarged the images, we saw it. I’ve only got it on my phone right now.” She brought it out and showed the same one she’d shown to Colby. She passed her phone around, so they could all look at it.
One by one they shrugged and wrote it off as nothing.
“That same mark is on eight other cases, going back as far as fifteen years ago,” she said flatly.
Silence.
“What?” Lilliana cried out. “You’re serious?”
“I’m dead serious,” she said. “Unfortunately seven of those eight are dead too. One little girl remains missing. I highly suspect this pedophile has been operating a lot longer than that, and I don’t have any idea how many related cases there may be. I’ll get Reese on it now.”
A general skeptical grumbling went through the group.
“Also there’s another similarity.”
They just stared at her.
“What’s that?” Rodney asked suspiciously.
“Each of the dead children was found with a piece of clothing that wasn’t theirs,” she said gently. “Close, but not quite the same.”
“And DNA?”