The Big Bad Wolf

MAYBE IT WAS GUILT churned up by my confrontation with Gordon Nooney that made me work late in my cube on the lower level of the dining hall building where Behavioral Science had its offices. The low ceilings, bad fluorescent lighting, and cinder-block walls kind of made me feel as if I were back at my precinct. But the depth of the back files and research available to FBI agents was astonishing. The Bureau's resources were better than anything I'd ever seen in the D.C. police department. It took me a couple of hours to go through less than a quarter of the white-slave-trade files, and those were just cases in the U.S. One abduction in particular caught my attention. It involved a female D.C. attorney named Ruth Morgenstern. She had last been seen at approximately 9:30 P.M. on August 20. A friend had dropped her off near her apartment in Foggy Bottom. Ms. Morgenstern was twenty-six years old, 111 pounds, with blue eyes and shoulder-length blond hair. On August 28, one of her identification cards was found near the north gate of the Anacostia Naval Station. Two days later, her government access card was found on a city street. But Ruth Morgenstern was still missing. Her file included the notation Most likely dead. I wondered: Was Ruth Morgenstern dead? How about Mrs. Elizabeth Connolly? Around ten, just as I was starting to do some serious yawning, I came across another case that snapped my mind to attention. I read the report once, then a second time. It involved the abduction eleven months earlier of a woman named Jilly Lopez in Houston. The kidnapping had occurred at the Houstonian Hotel. A team - two males - had been seen loitering near the victim's SUV in the parking garage. Mrs. Lopez was described as "very attractive." Minutes later, I was speaking to the officer in Houston who had handled the case. Detective Steve Bowen was curious about my interest in the abduction, but he was cooperative. He said that Mrs. Lopez hadn't been found or heard from since she disappeared. No ransom was ever requested. "She was a real good lady. Just about everybody I talked to loved her." I'd heard the same thing about Elizabeth Connolly when I was in Atlanta. I already hated this case, but I couldn't get it out of my skull. White Girl. The women who'd been taken were all lovable, weren't they? It was the thing they had in common. Maybe it was the kidnappers' pattern. Lovable victims. How awful was that?