INSOMNIAC: ALAN SMITH #2 (Alan Smith series) (27 page)

‘Yes, it persists on this sort of Chinese phone.’

‘Yeah I know’

Ryan played through the keypad and went straight to the settings, the message inbox was empty so were the other files. There was no images (of course there would be none, the camera was beyond pathetic) there was no songs, no music player, nothing. There were a few flash games, which he ignored.

Then he opened the contacts and browsed through all the names, most of the names were of the NY Times building, and his wife’s number was also there. When he was satisfied that there was no other name, he moved towards the logs and clicked on - all calls. And there was a number. There was no name only the number. Then he scrolled the page until the very end and he found that the Vic called that number at least once, everyday in the past week.

Ryan then, let them have the phone; he said ‘This was the last number that he called’

The logs page was open as Alan took a quick glance at it.

‘Okay if this is the last number he called then we need to know whose number it is’ Alan said keeping the phone back on the table.

‘When was the last time he dialled this number?’ asked Alicia.

‘At 9 Sunday night’

‘That’s before when he was murdered’

‘Yes he was murdered that very morning’ said Alan ‘This call is important to us. We need to trace the number and find out where this call went to’

‘Yes I think we can do that’ said Ryan and pulled out the back cover for the second time. ‘Okay it’s a MTNL Sim, I hope we can trace the server, and pick up the location’

Ryan reopened their database, entered his IP address and then typed the number in a box. Alan sat down and stared at the screen. He pressed the enter key after rechecking the number. A buffering sign came in the middle and the page froze itself.

‘Huh, it’s loading. We can only hope that it would come up with a result’

‘How much time will it take?’

‘Not more than ten minutes, I guess’

‘Okay then’ said Alan and went outside in the lawn. He realised that he haven’t ate anything till now .Alan went to the coffee machine and filled up a plastic cup with cold coffee. Alicia also went there and did the same. Alan hardly eats anything when working on a case. People usually think fast with an empty stomach than a filled one, at least when working on something that involves murder, or so the studies suggest.

‘So what do you think?’ Alicia gazed at Alan and felt that she should keep a conversation going in the middle or she might feel uncomfortable.

‘About what?’ asked Alan sipping the coffee.

‘The case, the recent findings’ said Alicia holding her cup not sure if she should take the sip or not, as she plugged her brownish peanut coloured hair over her ear. She wore a casual pair of jeans and a white shirt , the condition of the clothes were not so good as she also wore it on the other days of the week but still she looked beautiful anyway.

‘Alan?’ she said this because she found Alan blankly staring at her saying nothing.

‘Uh yes’ Alan took another sip ‘I think we will get to know more soon as we have a few leads in our hand’

Alicia liked the way Alan referred as ‘we’ which suggests that he might be leading the case but he’s considering everyone here.

Alicia quickly changed the topic as she saw that the topic ends there. ‘So I heard that you were in Washington last year’

‘Yes I was’ he said and felt the urge to add another sentence. ‘Someone got murdered that’s why’

‘But why do you need to go to Washington to solve a murder, isn’t there enough murder already going on in the streets of New York?’

‘There is for sure, but I needed to go because that particular murder involved the NYPD too. That’s why. It was actually a lot more complicated than it sounds’

‘I see...so that case got solved?’

‘Yes, it’s solved’ Alan failed to find, what more there was to say.

Alicia then shifted her attention to the coffee and took the first sip. Alan copied her.

‘Well...’ Alicia went on but Ryan’s voice interjected in the middle. ‘Hey guys come one here, just found the result’

Alicia kept the half-finished cup on the machine and hurried inside without saying anything more, Alan finished the last drop and went in behind her.

‘Tell me you got the location’ said Alicia as she joined Ryan.

‘Positive’ said Ryan and scrolled to the second page. ‘The server traced a cell tower near the place. The tracking system suggests that the location is the East 56
th
street. Someone uses this number, there’

‘Do we know whose phone is this?’

‘No, the server does not provide any personal data’

‘So we don’t know who he called that night?’ said Kevin.

‘Apparently not’ said Ryan, flatly this time and sat back in the chair keeping his hands over his head and looking at everyone, if someone could invent a method to find the user.

‘And’ Ryan sat upright again. ‘If we really wanna know whose number is this then we'd have to pay a visit to the destination and make a thorough investigation to find out who uses this phone’

‘That’ll be tough’ said Alicia.

‘And awkward’ added Kevin.

‘And impossible’ said Alan. ‘We have to find another way to find this man’

‘What other way is there?’ said Kevin. ‘We should go there and see what we can do’

Alicia made a face but kept quiet; she was not sure about what to do. Then she suddenly remembered something and said ‘Hey Ryan, what about the pen drive you got?’

‘Oh right, forgot about that completely’ Ryan said and opened the drawer of the table to take it out. It wasn’t there in the first drawer so he opened the other chamber and got it this time.

He held it and said ‘Here it is’

‘Check it out’

‘Right’ Ryan clicked the red area, and the metal came out, he plugged it to one of the USB ports in the CPU and after a minute, a new window opened in the home page of the desktop.

He clicked the left button of the mouse and opened the folder and a bunch of more folders came into view. He opened one and found a bunch of .doc files. He also tried checking another one and found another bunch but this time of .pdf files.

He again returned to the main folder region and studied the options carefully. He knew the documents file would be useless, at least to them.

‘Okay so there are some pictures here’ said Kevin.

‘Where?’ Ryan didn’t notice it. Kevin pointed it out and said ‘Check this folder’

Ryan clicked another time, moving the cursor, and the images came into view. He opened the first image with image opener and found a picture of a politician giving an intense speech about something. He checked other images, some were of natures some were of politics some were of personal documents, scanned documents. There was a last folder, titled ‘IMPORTANT’. He found out that it was also an image folder.

‘What’s this?’ said Alicia.

‘Something ‘IMPORTANT’. Let’s see how important it is to us’. He opened the folder. It contained only one photo, other than that there was nothing.

‘Only one’

‘The important one must be’

‘Let’s see’ He pressed the mouse button and the enlarged version of the picture came into view. Everyone looked at it with high anticipation, but the photo itself looked like a normal one. But it wasn’t one.

The picture showed an adolescent boy looking back at someone with cold eyes. He had blonde hair and a terrified face. His eyes told everything. He wore a red coloured T shirt with designs and logos and three quarter pants with stripes of white on both sides. In the middle, in the background was a faded picture of another man, but it was hard to see.

The boy who was looking at the man held the T shirt of the boy quite roughly, the collar portion, although there was no collar. The man wore a leather jacket, seemed to be on his late thirties, and was strongly built, but only one-half of his face was visible. Most of the backside of the man was facing the camera. At the left side, a car could be seen, but hardly, they could see one door of the car was open and the colour of the car was grey. They could not make out anything else about the car.

Ryan after checking all this himself, turned back to look at everyone and see their reaction after seeing the picture.

But their face showed nothing except confusion.

So he said ‘Well?’

Alan stooped a little to get a better view of the picture. ‘This is interesting’ Alan said.

‘What?’ Ryan didn’t understood anything from this picture so he was eager to know that did someone else find out anything from the picture. ‘Did you make out something?’

‘I don’t know’ said Alan. ‘Yet’

‘Well who’s the child?’ asked Alicia.

‘Never seen him’

‘Wait a minute’ said Alan rather cautiously. ‘This picture means something; yes...yes it certainly means something. It’s hidden. We have to find out the meaning of the picture. The purpose of taking the picture’

‘What’s that?’ asked Kevin.

Alan’s head went blank suddenly, so he shook his head and his brain became full again. ‘A man holding the T Shirt of a child’ Alan pointed out and shrugged. ‘And look at his grip.’ He pointed out the portion again where the man held the boy’s shirt. ‘The grip is hard. Very hard. There’s no tenderness in it’

‘Alan is right’ Alicia joined in. ‘The man must be trying to push the boy inside the car, this grey coloured car to the left side. And check out his face...the boy’s face, it’s a terrified look...’

‘By which we can understand’ Alan took hold of the sentence. ‘That the man is a stranger to the boy. The boy didn’t know this man’

The boy had blue eyes and soft white skin that was glowing. He was looking at the man who was pulling or maybe pushing him, with a pleading face.

‘Is there a time set in it?’ asked Kevin

‘Yes there is’ said Ryan. ‘Uh..the picture was taken at 4:30 , Saturday afternoon’

‘Okay’ said Alicia and examined the photo with a little more focus.

Alan said to himself. ‘Saturday...one day before the murder..’

‘Do you think this has got something to do with the murder?’ asked Ryan.

‘I don’t know...’ Alan mumbled.

‘But my question is that’ Kevin went on ‘Why would an unknown man suddenly come and try to pull a teenage boy in a car?’

‘That’s my question too...and I’m sure that, at that time our victim Paul Brown was there too, otherwise who took this photo?’

‘Good point’ said Alan. ‘Our second victim witnessed this happen. Fortunately, he had a camera with him at that time and he took the picture. But why would he so suddenly take a picture if the scene had nothing interesting in it?’

‘Oh...oh...stupid ..stupid...’ Alan had a wide smile in his face. ‘This only suggest one thing’

‘What?’

‘Paul Brown witnessed an abduction’

Everyone looked surprised absorbing the new piece of information, and considering it.

‘Yes, you’re correct. This is abduction’ said Ryan. ‘Otherwise who the hell would push a teenage kid in a car that too so roughly and so abruptly? Give this picture and the facts to anyone and he will say that this is an abduction’

Alicia shrugged. ‘If this is an abduction then why is it not reported to us? This picture was taken on Saturday and today is what? Wednesday?’

‘Thursday’

‘Thursday, right. So the parents should have reported that their child is missing’

‘True, they should have’ said Ryan quietly.

‘But they didn’t, and that’s the main thing’ said Alan. ‘But why will they not? Got to be a reason behind this’

Kevin was more irritated hearing all those thing. ‘Look man, I don’t know what kind of bloody suckers are his parents, but one thing is clear that this child is abducted’

‘You shouldn’t just talk like that’ said Alicia. ‘We need to be sure of all this first’

Kevin grunted.

‘Okay, calm down’ said Alan. ‘Abducted of not, the first thing now that we should do is that dig out all the information available about this boy, after that it will be all clear. Then we’ll try and see if we can trace the boy and his abductors if there’s any’

‘Right’

Alan made everything clear then turned his attention to the picture again. He thought he saw someone, or something. The picture was not so clear. The focus was the boy and the man pushing him. He said ‘Just look at the background’ Alan turned to others ‘where do you think is this picture taken?’

‘The background is more or less, green type’ said Kevin. ‘Some garden maybe’

‘No, people don’t usually keep cars in a garden’

‘Then, a park maybe?’ said Ryan.

‘Yes, park...okay so which park?’

‘Linkin Park?’  said Kevin.

‘Shut up, which park?’

‘Central Park?’ said Ryan.

‘Yes’

Alan was now satisfied with the last answer of Ryan. ‘Yes, that’s what I had in mind’