Finding Claire Fletcher by Lisa Regan Page A

right?”
    “Yeah, assuming he’s a sexual predator. Most stranger abductors are,” Mitch agreed. “They generally don’t deviate from their type.”
    “So this guy is looking for a teenage girl, dark hair, probably between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. He had to have picked the spot beforehand though,” Connor said.
    Mitch crossed his arms and leaned against the hood of Connor’s car. “Yeah, probably. I mean some of these guys are really impulsive, reckless, but those are the ones who have their fun, kill the vic, and dump the body. We know this guy didn’t do that. To pull off the snatch and grab without getting caught, there’s got to be some planning.”
    “Right,” Connor said. “So he chooses this spot, which means he had to be doing some surveillance, but Strakowski said she doesn’t recall seeing a blue station wagon parked on the street before, at least not with a driver fitting this guy’s description.”
    Mitch, sensing Connor was onto something, said, “Okay, we’ll get back to that but go on.”
    “He can probably see her coming for a block or so. He doesn’t know if she’s going to keep coming this way or cross the street, turn the corner or what, but he’s betting she’ll come his way, so he gets out, comes around the side of the car and sets the trap.”
    “Man having trouble with car,” Mitch added.
    “Right. A lot of these guys use the same type of lure to get the vic close enough to grab them. So what does he say?”
    Mitch rubbed his fingers over the gray stubble that covered his chin. “Well the puppy or kitten is a popular one. Strakowski said he was down there looking under the car, right? So he sees Claire, when she gets close enough, he says, ‘Hey, I got this cute kitty under the car and she won’t come out, will you help me?’”
    “Yeah,” Connor agreed. “She gets down there next to him, right by the open door which he’s laid out for his own convenience. He knocks her out, tosses her in and drives off.”
    “Okay. We’ve got that. So what else?”
    “Well,” Connor mused, surveying the street in both directions. “He drives off in that direction, right?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Police units are here in what? Four minutes?”
    “Yeah.”
    “They set a perimeter, canvass the area, stop all the blue station wagons and drive Dinah Strakowski around the neighborhood looking for this guy right?”
    “Yeah,” Mitch repeated.
    “This is a residential area. No highways. School zone, eight o’clock in the morning. The average speed limit within the surrounding eight to ten blocks is gonna be twenty-five to thirty-five miles per hour. There’s gonna be a fair amount of traffic this time of day with kids going to school and people going to work.”
    Mitch stood up, fully erect and looked Connor in the eye. “This guy is not going to want to draw attention to himself with an unconscious minor in the backseat. If we say ten minutes to start the canvassing, how far is he really going to get? He can’t break the speed limit, can’t drive erratically. Far enough to elude the police?”
    “Exactly,” Connor said. “This fucker disappears. Totally. Him, the car, Claire. Vanish into thin air. But how? Everything in this case was done according to best-case scenario conditions and damn near perfect police response. So how did he do it?”
    “Holy shit,” Mitch said, the realization nearly exploding between them like a ball of flames. “He lives in the fucking area.”
    “Yeah. He has to, probably within a ten-block radius. He won’t want to be too close because he’ll be easily recognized but close enough to pull into a garage, close the door and act like nothing happened,” Connor said.
    “Holy shit,” Mitch said again. “But wait, they went door to door and didn’t even come up with anything suspicious.”
    Connor waved a hand dismissively. “That won’t turn up anything unless he’s got her tied up in the foyer.”
    “What about the station wagon?