Free Cold Jade by Dan Ames

been tortured. There were burn marks over most of her body, obviously done in a systematic pattern. And she had died of strangulation.
    The ten-year-old boy had been beaten to death. A vicious and thorough punishment that had occurred in a matter of minutes.
    The other victim, a seven-year-old girl, had been stabbed to death in a wild frenzy of violence. Nearly all of the wounds had been inflicted post-mortem.
    Aside from the cruelty, and the unimaginable pain the victims must have gone through, Mack kept going back to one conclusion, and it was what troubled him so much, knowing what he was up against.
    He was certain that all three children had been murdered by different killers.

34
    T he next morning at Denver FBI headquarters, Mack let SAC Kunzelman begin the meeting with the latest.
    “We put a rush on all of the forensics and got a lot of hits. The first victim’s identity is Chris Velasquez from Miami, Florida.”
    Other agents were rapidly pinning information to the victim charts placed around the room.
    Victim number two is Emily Lu from San Francisco. Chinatown, to be exact.”
    “Last seen?” Mack said.
    “A sporting goods store.”
    “Are we getting copies of everything, the detective’s reports, witness interviews?” Mack asked.
    “It’s all on the way,” Kunzelman said. “We’ve also put out a message to all law enforcement agencies, asking about possible recent abductions/missing persons cases.”
    “There has to be a link somewhere between these kids,” Mack said. “There has to be.”
    “I agree. There has to be a pattern, a reason these kids were selected,” Kunzelman said.
    Mack looked at the photographs on the wall. He had them seared into his memory, as well as the police reports on the abductions.
    “You know, it’s interesting,” he said, as several random thoughts clicked into place.
    “What is?” Kunzelman said.
    “Stereotypes.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “If you told me a kid was abducted in Miami, what ethnicity would I think the kid was, based on general statistics?”
    Kunzelman thought about it. “Well, I believe Latinos are the majority in Miami, right? So that would be my guess.”
    “And if a young girl was abducted from a mall in Iowa, what ethnicity would you guess she was?”
    “Again, if you were playing the odds, you would say a white girl, a farmer’s daughter.”
    Mack nodded.
    “We all know that these days just about every ethnicity is present in every city across the country. But at first, I thought, well, it makes sense that a Latino was taken in Miami, a white girl was taken in Iowa, because statistically, those are the best odds, right?”
    Kunzelman nodded. “Statistically speaking, yes.”
    “Sure, even though I’m sure Des Moines has its ethnic neighborhoods, just like Miami has upscale white neighborhoods, the victims are members of the majority population,” Mack said. “Statistically, they would be the ones most likely taken.”
    Kunzelman waited for the other shoe to drop.
    “But what if it’s the other way around?” Mack asked.
    “What do you mean?” Kunzelman asked as the room fell silent.
    Mack gestured at the reports on the wall.
    “What if the perp needed a young Latino, so they went to Miami? And then a young Asian girl so they went to Chinatown. And finally, they needed a purebred white girl of solid Midwestern stock, so they went to Des Moines?”
    Kunzelman thought about it.
    “Someone would have to be giving specific orders to fill. Like car thieves do,” he said.
    “Exactly,” Mack answered. “And the person who took Rebecca Spencer in Des Moines, if her case is related to this one, was a woman. And women are rarely serial killers,” Mack said. “Poisoning has usually been their method of dispatch. Or they’re prostitutes killing their johns.”
    Kunzelman nodded.
    Mack looked over all of the police reports, the surveillance photos, all of the data compiled and on display at the war room in Denver FBI