The Schwarzschild Radius (6 page)

The man entered Home Depot and went to aisle five. He tossed a pair of gauntlet rubber gloves into his cart, then had ten feet of chain cut to length. This was followed by a propane torch, four large D-clamps and fifteen feet of rope. Next was the paint department where he gathered a plastic drop cloth, vinyl floor knife, and telescoping paint handle. In the tool aisle, he found a heavy duty drill. Two huge Rubbermaid storage bins with covers completed the purchase.

Next he had to pick up more insulin for the other kid or she’d croak before she made him any money. The Webmaster was riding high, money was rolling in. He had a trip lined up for Thailand after delivering the final downloads for these two girls. Of course, he had to keep mining for more kids.

When he got back he logged in to his Yahoo Messenger.

Hi, u there?
wrote thirteen-year-old Alice.

Waiting for you
, wrote the Webmaster.

hat’s a remarkable story,” said Detective John McKenna.

“Would you like some coffee, detective?” asked Ed Wallen.

“No thanks, sir. What else can you tell me about Olivia’s sister―Achara?”

“She’s a stranger to us,” said Elizabeth.

“All we know is that she was adopted by a well-to-do family from―Norway, I think,” said Ed. “That’s what we were told.”

McKenna noticed how Ed Wallen had to complete that thought for his wife, who was clearly falling apart.

“And Olivia wanted to bring her to America?”

“First, we would have to get her out of the place where―”

“The brothel,” said Rachel, interrupting her mother.

“I’m not a rich man,” said Ed Wallen. “We don’t even know where she is. In Chiang Mai somewhere. There’s a brothel on every street corner in that country. We just couldn’t help her.”

“How did Olivia plan to help? You mentioned she was waiting for a passport?” asked the detective.

“That’s right,” said Rachel. “I didn’t want to start from scratch or she would know I wasn’t Olivia.”

“Why did you pretend you were Olivia? Once you realized who she was, why not just tell her you’re Olivia’s sister? She might know that Olivia had planned to meet someone or go somewhere.”

“I didn’t know who she was at first, then after, it would have been like I was lying to her. She might have cut me off right there. She’s very suspicious, and she doesn’t need the news that her twin sister, and only hope in life just disappeared.”

“There’s nothing new on your end, detective?” asked Ed.

McKenna figured the father was waiting for him to volunteer this. He regretted not bringing it up first. “We’ve gone through all her emails and know that Olivia was corresponding with several men throughout the country. She was a member of a sort of mail-order bride site. A site where American and European men meet Asian women. Local police have questioned all these men and so far we have no reason to believe any of them were involved in her disappearance.”

“And how old are these men?” asked Ed.

“Thirties to mid-forties.”

“Isn’t it sick for these old guys to be chatting with a sixteen-year-old?”

“In all the correspondence, Olivia was posing as an eighteen-year-old. They might be dirty old men, but it’s not illegal.”

“Why on earth would she be doing that?”

“Maybe Olivia was trying to get someone to fall in love with her sister by posing as her. Then
he
might get her out.”

“Possible,” said McKenna. He wrote that one down in his notebook. McKenna was a prolific note-taker. He observed the interior decoration, the CD’s people owned, if there was dust in the air vents. Ninety percent of it was useless, but occasionally a valuable clue was buried in things he had written down months before.

One time, he was working a cold case of a murdered woman. The husband was distraught throughout the initial investigation. Cooperated fully with the police, appealed to the public. Inconsolable. Police got nowhere. Two years later, McKenna was reviewing his notes on the case. He had observed that a golf club was found in the garage. The head had been cut off and replaced with a magnet. McKenna figured at the time that it was for picking up metallic parts like screws that had fallen into tight places. Sometime after that, he had watched the Discovery Channel where they called it a meteorite stick, used to test rocks for their magnetic properties. You need three things for meteorite hunting: a metal detector, a meteorite stick, and a pickaxe. The metal detector and meteorite stick were in his notes, but no pickaxe. McKenna figured that was buried in the back yard. Long story short, there it was. The murder weapon. Case closed.

“When did Olivia first tell you that she had found her sister?” asked the detective.

“About four months ago,” said Elizabeth, who was staring into empty space.

“How did she react when you were reluctant to bring her here?”

“We argued. It flared up on several occasions,” said Ed. “We just couldn’t talk about it in a civil way. I tried explaining that getting her out of there was going to be next to impossible. You have to bribe people every step of the way in that country. We’d have to go there and get the local law to help us, the same law that protects the brothels. And even if I could do this without getting killed, we don’t have the money for that kind of a fight. I’ve got two daughters starting college.”

“Did she ever threaten to leave?”

He shook his head. “She became distant. I know she was resentful, but my mind was made up. You can’t save the whole world.”

“Before the issue of her sister came up, did you notice any change in her behavior?”

“I always thought she had too much on her plate. Academics, fencing, cello, volunteering. But she always pulled a victory out of it. Champion fencer―who knew? So I never told her to pull back. I was amazed by how much she could do. It was so much more than I ever did.”

“And she never mentioned anything that was bothering her, besides Achara?”

“Olivia was never the kind of girl to express her feelings openly,” said Elizabeth. “Opinions, yes. Feelings, no. She would say things like ‘I love you,’ but she never talked about herself. So you never really knew what was going on inside her.”

“Have you gotten any tips from the Amber Alert, Detective?” asked Ed.

“All dead ends so far. It seems she had to be hiding something if she said she was going to attend a lecture when there were no lectures that day. Unless she was mistaken about the date. Is that likely?”

“She never went anywhere without getting online first and doing a MapQuest and finding out everything before setting out,” said Rachel. “She hated having her time wasted. Olivia wouldn’t have left the house without being certain that there was a lecture. And the lecture she described wasn’t even scheduled, so it’s not like she was just mistaken about the date. There was no lecture on Atlantis at the Museum of Natural History.”

So she
was
hiding something
, thought McKenna.

“According to everyone at her school, she was an extremely popular girl. And you’re sure she had no boyfriend? Would you know if she did?”

“She never talked about it to me,” said Rachel.

McKenna noticed the blank faces on the others. Not a lot of communication in this family, if they didn’t know that. He should talk.

“Is it possible she joined a cult of some kind? That’s common.”

“That doesn’t sound like Olivia,” said Ed. “She wasn’t exactly a regular Catholic, but neither are we. And she was just too sharp for that. She could see through people.”

“Mind if I look through her room again?”

The detective went right for the bookcases, scanning the titles. No Hare Krishna material, no Scientology stuff, no Church of the Cosmic Consciousness, etc. Lots of science fiction, SAT practice books, chick lit, The Castles of Europe, Wuthering Heights―he’d seen the movie, never read the book. Photos of her in her fencing outfit and medals were all over the walls.

The pictures reminded him of his own daughter, Brittany. She was seventeen now, and living with her mother, but vanished from his life.

Olivia’s cello case leaned against the wall. A complete person. And completely missing. No sign of any dissatisfaction strong enough to make her leave home and abandon a brilliant future. He didn’t have a good feeling about this.

“I’ll keep you posted,” he said on his way out. “It’s good that you were on the news yesterday. Every chance you get to appear on TV is valuable in keeping the case before the public and getting Olivia’s face out there.”

“It worked in the Elizabeth Smart case,” said Rachel. The detective didn’t add to that.

After McKenna had left, Rachel went to her room and called him on his cell.

“There’s something else I didn’t want to say in front of my parents, and you can’t tell them either. I went to Transcendence House yesterday and spent the night there as a runaway.”

“Go on.”

“One of the boys there told me that Olivia had been a prostitute. A ‘stone ho,’ he said.”

“Who told you this?”

“His name is Brother Horace. He’s a runaway there. And I believe him.”

“Rachel, don’t do that again. Stay home and give your parents support. Anything else?”

“Yes. The priest who runs that place. Father Massey―he said that when they went on a retreat with the staff of Transcendence House, that Olivia had separated from the group. That he found her a half mile away sitting in a stream with her street clothes on. That can’t be. Olivia went camping with us when she was ten and we were playing in a river. She went out too far and got caught in a whirlpool that sucked her under. She was drowning in five feet of water. It took my father and five other men to pull her out, the suction was so strong. From that day on, she never went near water again.”