The Other Daniel - A Camille Grisham Novella Read Online Free Page A

why the notebook had remained blank since she bought it
two weeks ago. Her flagrant indecision was another.
    Camille got the notebook after finishing a
lengthy telephone conversation with a man she had every hope of
never speaking to again. Special Agent Peter Crawley was an
instructor at the FBI Academy and one of the brightest minds in the
Behavioral Analysis Unit. He was a mentor and a friend. He was also
one of the reasons why she decided to give up her shield.
    Crawley had been the Agent-In-Charge of the
Circle Killer task force. Camille and Andrew Sheridan were the
first two field agents asked to join the effort. When Daniel Sykes
was finally apprehended three years later, the number of agents on
the task force totaled ninety. Yet in the end, Camille, Sheridan,
and Crawley were the only three there when Sykes’ terror spree came
to an end.
    Only one of them emerged with their FBI
career still intact.
    Agent Sheridan lost his life trying to
capture Daniel Sykes. Camille lost faith in herself, the agency she
had given eight years of her life to, and a world that allowed
monsters like Sykes to even breathe the same air as everyone else.
Agent Crawley lost countless hours of his existence trying to
convince her not to quit.
    But his efforts had ultimately been in vain,
just as they had been when he assured the Bureau’s top brass that
the circumstances surrounding Agent Sheridan’s death could not have
been prevented. Crawley knew the truth of what happened in that
basement. He knew that Agent Sheridan should not have died. He knew
that the two coeds whom Sykes had been holding captive for a month
should not have died. But because of his belief in Camille’s value
to the Bureau, he thought it best to omit that knowledge from his
testimony.
    The review board ultimately agreed with his
assessment and recommended that she resume active field work
immediately. Crawley recommended that she take a long vacation, pay
a visit or two to the Bureau head-shrinker, and do her best to
leave Daniel Sykes in the past.
    Camille chose the third option.
    There were plenty of reasons why she knew
she had to quit; chief among them was the inescapable fact that
every day she entered the BAU offices she would have to look
Crawley in the eye, fully aware that he knew the truth. He would
have done his best not to judge or think less of her, and for a
while he probably would have succeeded. But Camille feared that
every reminder of Agent Sheridan’s absence would make her presence
less and less tolerable, until Crawley’s decision to overlook her
failure became his biggest regret. There was no one in the Bureau
she respected more, and the idea of incurring the wrath of his
disappointment was more than her already fragile psyche could have
withstood.
    She may not have had Crawley’s blessing when
she tendered her resignation letter, but she still had his
admiration; and that admiration would remain as long as she wasn’t
there to remind him of the agent that he needlessly lost. That
assurance was one of the few things that helped her sleep at
night.
    She had barely closed her eyes in the two
weeks since he contacted her.
    Despite her recent practice of ignoring
every phone call she received from the dreaded 202 area code,
Camille took Crawley’s phone call right away. True to his
reputation as the most emotionally-barren man on the planet, he
didn’t waste a second of time with personal pleasantries.
    There were four dead
girls, he had informed her, all killed with the same pattern of
sado-sexual mutilation and all within four months of each other.
Camille could almost picture the case file in his hand as he broke
down the stats in the infamous monotone that passed for his voice.
When Crawley finally asked what her opinion was, Camille told him
that she didn’t have one. When he pressed, she answered with one
word: copycat .
    There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in his
voice when he asked her to come back. No field work, he had