The Night Monster by James Swain

By doing that, you’ve covered your ass.”
    Burrell dipped her chin and shut her eyes. I thought I saw her lips move. The detective who’d interviewed me came to the front door of the house, and called to her.
    “All right, Jack. I’ll do it.” She banged twice on the hood of my car and went inside.
    I got on 595 and headed east. I had lived with Naomi Dunn’s abduction for so long, it had eaten an invisible hole in me. I could only imagine what Sara Long’s disappearance was going to do to my psyche if I didn’t find her.
    Soon I was driving south on I-95, my destination the FBI’s Miami field office in North Miami Beach. The office handled criminal activity stretching from Vero Beach to Key West, as well as Central America and Mexico, and was a hotbed of activity, with over seven hundred special agents and support personnel housed in a single facility.
    One of those agents was Special Agent Ken Linderman. Linderman ran the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Unit, and was responsible for investigating nonparental abductions of kids in Florida. As a rule, the FBI didn’t work with private investigators, and Linderman was no exception. But he did work with me. We had a history, and Linderman never failed to take my phone calls, or see me if I asked for an appointment.
    The afternoon skies were darkening as I drove up to the guard booth. A man in uniform came out, and glanced suspiciously at me and Buster.
    “What can I do for you?” the guard asked.
    I handed him my driver’s license. “My name’s Jack Carpenter. I’m here to see Special Agent Linderman. He runs the CARD unit.”
    “Hold on.”
    The guard called into the building. I popped my trunk in anticipation of being searched. The guard came out and did a quick inspection.
    “Have a nice day,” he said.
    I did my usual hunt for a parking place. Finding one with shade, I rolled down my windows. Buster curled up on the passenger seat and went to sleep.
    Soon I was sitting in Linderman’s office. The office had a nice ocean view, only Linderman chose to sit at his desk with his back to the window. Nearing fifty, he was thin and compact, his gun-metal gray hair cropped short like a Marine’s, his eyes as hard as stones. Before coming to Miami, he’d run the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Division, where he’d profiled the nation’s worst serial killers and mass murderers. Then, five years ago, his daughter Danielle had vanished while jogging at the University of Miami. He’d been looking for her ever since, and had taken the CARD job to continue his search.
    We’d met a year ago. We didn’t have much in common except a shared passion for our work. In that regard, we were like brothers. I’d helped Linderman chase down many leads. We had traipsed through mosquito-infested swamps together, and searched abandoned scrap yards. I had seen him break down when we’d found a bone in a shallow hole, only to later discover that it belonged to a dead animal. I’ve heard it said that a person who loses a child dies every day. If that was true, then I’d seen Linderman die many times.
    “I need your help,” I told Linderman.
    He hit his intercom, and told his secretary to hold his calls.
    “I’m listening,” Linderman said.
    “Eighteen years ago I got called to an apartment complex where a coed named Naomi Dunn was being assaulted. I got knocked down by the attacker, and he left with Dunn slung over his shoulder. The case was never solved.
    “Last night, a Florida State female basketball player named Sara Long was abducted from her motel. It was the same guy who abducted Naomi Dunn. I tried to stop him, and he put me in the hospital.”
    “Did you get a good look at him?”
    “The abductor was this huge guy, and incredibly strong. I spenttoday running down leads and looking at evidence. This guy has a partner, and I’ve decided that they’re a pair of serial abductors who specialize in abducting athletic young women. I need the FBI to help me find