The Short Drop (5 page)

“Did they get anywhere with it? The feds, I mean.”

“No, WR8TH was a dead end. The FBI made it public, as you know, but nothing ever came of it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Vaughn said. “Internet relay chat is purposefully anonymous. No chat logs. Someone could choose a new username at each log-in. When I was getting into computers, IRC was what I used to trade tricks and strategies and code. Everyone was paranoid that the FBI had snitches lurking around in chat.”

“They did,” Abe said.

“So I had like twenty different usernames that I cycled through. If WR8TH was careful, it would be almost impossible to track him back to a source.”

“And that’s exactly what happened. Despite thousands of tips,” Jenn said. “Not one of them led to the person or persons behind WR8TH. Ironically, it wasn’t that the FBI couldn’t find any mention of WR8TH on the Internet; quite the opposite. It turned out to be an incredibly common username online. There are hundreds of variations of it in online gaming alone.”

Jenn went on to the FBI’s speculative and relatively generic profile of Suzanne’s abductor. Speculative because, apart from the fragments of chat recovered from Suzanne’s computer, they had nothing to go on other than the circumstances of the crime.

“The assumption was, and still is, that the perp was highly organized and probably between thirty and fifty. He was too smooth, confident, and thorough to be a novice. Young offenders are impulsive and stupid. This one was patient and cunning. Most likely, he was an experienced predator with a long history—Suzanne would not have been his first.”

“How did they reach that conclusion?”

“The perp was able to pass himself off convincingly as a teenage boy, which suggested he was extremely empathetic and skilled in social situations. It’s not easy to fool a teenager. The FBI doubted he had ever been arrested because pedophiles rarely vary their methods once they find one that works. Just to be sure, they scoured cold cases for his MO—nothing.

“WR8TH also knew his way around computers and how to avoid leaving a trail for law enforcement. His home, likely a freestanding house, afforded him some privacy, which also suggested he had a job and was able to function normally in public without drawing suspicion to himself.

“When the investigation went cold two years later, the prevailing theory was that the perp hadn’t known who Suzanne Lombard really was. There was nothing to indicate that she had revealed her identity to him online, and it was the FBI’s belief that the perp had panicked when he realized who he had abducted. There is a high probability that he killed her, dumped the body, and moved on to less dangerous quarry.”

Vaughn was staring at her. Those green eyes burning right through her.

“Where’s the bathroom?” he asked, standing and leaving before anyone could answer. The conference room door swung closed behind him.

“Smooth, Charles,” Hendricks said and dropped his pen on the table for effect.

“Fuck you, Dan. I didn’t know he was going to be such a girl about it.”

Rilling got busy typing something on his computer. George cleared his throat, and they both fell silent. Hendricks laughed. She looked at him, expecting to be reprimanded. Instead, her boss was smiling at her.

“He cares about Suzanne. Even more than I’d hoped. That’s good.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But how about we go easy on it from here on out.”

Vaughn came back but not all the way into the room. He stood in the doorway, one foot in, one foot out. He’d splashed water on his face sloppily and the front of his shirt looked wet.

“Look, George,” he said. “I appreciate the job offer, but if you expected me to see something and tell you who WR8TH is, I’m sorry. I hadn’t seen Suzanne in a while. I wish I could help. Believe me. But I’m not going to see anything the FBI missed. I’m sorry,” he said again, and looked it. “You can have your money back. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

Abe smiled. “No, Gibson. We don’t expect anything of the kind.”

“Then what?”

“Jenn?” Abe said.

Vaughn’s eyes leapt to her.

“WR8TH has made contact,” she said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Fred Tinsley slowly spun his scotch glass on the bar and cast a malevolent eye toward his cell phone. He was waiting for a call. He didn’t know when it would come or who would be calling, but none of that concerned him. Whether the call came now or four hours from now made no difference. He wasn’t sure anymore that there
was
a difference.

His wristwatch claimed he had been waiting at the bar for three hours and twenty-seven minutes. Tinsley took it on faith that was the case. It was an expensive watch, purchased precisely for its world-renowned accuracy. And he relied on it, because he had long ago lost his ability to perceive the passage of time. A minute, an hour, a year—it all felt the same to him. Time is, so the great man had said, relative. Tinsley agreed wholeheartedly. Measuring one’s life in terms of days was purposeless. He could still feel his heartbeat in his chest, still taste the breath from his lungs. He yet lived, and that was the only measure of time that truly mattered.

The bar was one of those upscale establishments that had more scotches than beers. The barstools didn’t even wobble. Classy. Tinsley didn’t care for the kind of people it attracted—busy, nattering people who congregated like flies on the stiffening corpse of their day—but he appreciated the comprehensive selection of fine scotch.

Lately, he’d become enamored of Oban 14 year—a thick, peaty scotch. Although he’d never tasted it, Tinsley liked the way the smoky flavor clung to his nostrils. It smelled like the earth. He didn’t drink, but if he was required to wait in a bar, then he preferred to order something he could respect. The original distillery had been built in 1794, and to Tinsley it showed. It took patience and a painstaking attention to detail to perfect a skill. But most of all it took time.

Tinsley admired such dedication to a craft. His craft required mastery of many skills, but above all else it demanded an appreciation of time. Tinsley had made a lifetime study of the way time affected people. The way it toyed with their good judgment and perspective. Made them impatient or rash. Made them take irrational risks. Time was the great leveler, and neither money nor power held sway over its relentless march. That was precisely what made Tinsley so good at his work. Most people didn’t understand that—what really went into being a sniper. The shot wasn’t the hard part. The shot was ten thousand hours of practice, tens of thousands of rounds, and an encyclopedic knowledge of the environment’s effect on ballistics. No, the shot was the easy part. It simply required time, and the will to spend it. The hard part was the waiting.

Time did not affect Fred Tinsley as it did most people. Most people were overawed by time. They allowed time to bully them, fearing that it was passing too fast or too slowly, sometimes both simultaneously. But not Tinsley. He was indifferent to the passage of time, and it flowed around him effortlessly.

Inside his arid, primeval brain—and Tinsley thought of himself as almost prehistoric, something unspoiled by the softening influence of progress—he could look out at the world, blink, and in the time it took for his eyes to reopen, weeks could pass. It made him immune to boredom, to doubt or need; the privations that drove ordinary men mad did not concern him. But most of all it made him a patient, cunning predator.

When he was a young man and still plied his trade with a rifle, Tinsley once spent twenty-six days in a sewer drain in Sarajevo. It was during the height of the siege. The city and the country were in chaos despite the United Nations’s best efforts. His target, a particularly nihilistic lieutenant of Slobodan Milošević’s, had earned a nasty reputation that stood out even among the nasty reputations of that despicable war. The string of atrocities of which his target was accused was enough to earn a “kill not capture” order and a bounty that had drawn the interests of professionals across Europe.

Unfortunately for them, the target had proven resilient and difficult to kill. Dozens of attempts on his life only served to make him extraordinarily careful and paranoid, shuttling between safe houses and constantly revising his plans. This made it impossible to predict his movements or to find a pattern, and no one had been able to get close enough to claim the bounty.

From Tinsley’s perspective, his rivals had gone about hunting this man the wrong way. Why try to anticipate a man who was purposefully trying to be unpredictable? It was foolish. Instead, Tinsley had crawled through the vile sewage of the Sarajevo sewer system, eventually taking a position in a storm drain that gave him an unobstructed view of a compromised safe house that had sat empty for eighteen months. Things had gotten very hot for the target as more and more of his sanctuaries were compromised. Tinsley’s stakeout wasn’t based on actionable intelligence, but instead on the assumption that eventually, given enough time, the target would believe the safe house forgotten and risk using it again. Eventually, as the UN closed in on him, as the pressure built, Tinsley’s target would mistake the passing of time for the passing of memory.

Tinsley lay in a burbling stream of human waste, waiting for a shot that might not ever come. The smell was the smell of death and a city unmade by war. He’d brought food and water for two months, but found it hard to keep down and lost more than twenty-five pounds during the stakeout. Unwilling to risk giving away his position, he hadn’t moved from his spot and had slept with his chin resting on his balled-up fists so he didn’t drown in the filth.

The conditions in the sewer were inhuman, or so the advance team that swept the area ahead of the target’s arrival had assumed. It never occurred to them to look where no human could exist. But Tinsley had endured. Endured in that subterranean hell by switching himself off and going into something akin to a fugue state. Aware only of the building a hundred yards away, he allowed the time to pass in an instant, patiently waiting for his prey to pass in front of his nest.

The shot itself had been routine by comparison. A clear, bright night with only a slight breeze from the south-southwest—an amateur hunter could have made it. Tinsley was already slinking away into the darkness before the splinters of skull and viscera had settled like a fatal sleet on the face of the startled bodyguard.

Tinsley had long since moved on from the rifle. Not that he was ungrateful. The rifle had taught him his identity. Taught him there was a purpose for his particular gifts. But it was a blunt tool and drew too much attention. Attention being the true purpose of the rifle. The rifle was intended to deliver a message, a warning, its target merely an envelope to be opened. These days, there simply wasn’t much call for blowing someone’s head off from a thousand yards. Statement kills were no longer in vogue, outside of organized crime and parts of the world that couldn’t afford him. And in any case, sniping was a young man’s game. Instead, Tinsley had evolved into a highly specialized killer. One who rarely left any indication that a crime had even occurred. It required a deft touch. Most of his hits had been closed by local law enforcement either as accidental deaths or suicides. The rest were chalked up to unsolved violent crimes such as burglaries or stickups. He probably had twenty in this area alone. There was always work to be had in the nation’s capital.

His phone vibrated with a text message—a series of six letters and numbers. Tinsley paid his tab and walked outside, blinking in the bright sunshine. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves while he looked for a license plate that matched the text message. A black sedan rolled to a stop beside the curb, and he got in back. The divider was up, and he sat alone. The car pulled back into traffic.

Beside him, a thick manila folder lay alongside a much thinner folder. He picked up the thicker of the two and thumbed through the file. He read slowly and carefully, cataloguing every detail in his mind. It took several hours, and the car drove patiently through the city while he worked. When he was done, Tinsley went back and lingered over the five photographs. Four men and a woman. Jennifer Auden Charles. Gibson Peyton Vaughn. Michael Rilling. Daniel Patrick Hendricks. George Leyasu Abe. Only Abe and Charles would pose any difficulty, and only if they knew he was coming. They never did.

His orders called for no immediate action. Abe’s crew was hunting someone, and Tinsley was only to move if they located their target. Until then his instructions were to watch and wait.

He put it aside and opened the second folder. A familiar face greeted him. One he had not seen in many years, but it may as well have been an hour. It would be good to see her again.

Well, well . . .
He hadn’t expected this.

He worked his way through the second file. It didn’t take long by comparison. A woman in her sixties wouldn’t pose any difficulty, and the orders gave no reason to wait before attending to her. He took the monogrammed envelope as he’d been instructed, but even though the envelope had been left unsealed he gave no thought to reading its contents. It wasn’t that it didn’t interest him; it was that it never occurred to him that it should.

Tinsley knocked on the divider to signal he was finished and put the folder back on the seat. The car pulled over to the curb and let him out. Tinsley dropped his gloves in a nearby trash can and drifted along with the evening commuters.

CHAPTER NINE

“What do you mean he’s been in contact?” Gibson asked.

“We believe we have been contacted by the person or persons known as WR8TH,” Jenn said.

“How?” he asked, taking his seat back at the table. “When?”

“Sir?” Jenn turned to her boss.

“I’ll take it from here. Thank you,” Abe said. “Several months ago an old friend, a producer at CNN, asked me to be interviewed for a segment she was putting together on Suzanne’s disappearance. A tenth-anniversary retrospective. People have been chasing my interview for years.”

“You never talked to the press? Even after you were fired?”

“No, and in truth, I had no intention of breaking my silence now. I’d already turned down five or six requests from other programs. I simply saw no benefit in reopening old wounds. Out of respect for the family.”

“I thought you and Lombard were finished.”

“We are. However, despite his grandstanding, Benjamin is not Suzanne’s only parent.”

Gibson realized the truth of that statement. Grace Lombard had been a tireless advocate for missing children in the years since her daughter had disappeared. But she preferred to work quietly behind the scenes and leave the limelight to her husband. An arrangement that more than suited Benjamin Lombard. In the end, it was always about Benjamin Lombard.

“But then the hotline began to see an uptick in traffic.”

“You still have a hotline? After all this time?”

“Calista absolutely insisted,” Abe said.

“Calista?”

“Ah, yes, I apologize. Calista Dauplaise.”

Gibson recognized the name now. She had been a regular cast member of Lombard’s political theater, but in his childhood memory she was simply one of the many grown-ups that his father mentioned from time to time. He doubted that he’d spoken to her other than to say hello and good-bye.

“Calista was . . .” Abe paused and corrected himself. “. . .
is
Suzanne’s godmother. An old family friend of the Lombards. She is also an investor in my company. Among other things, Abe Consulting administers and maintains the hotline on her behalf. She knew your father well.”

“And she’s involved in this how?”

“The reward. That was her doing. When Suzanne disappeared, Calista was distraught. She put up the ten million. She hoped it would make a big enough public splash to tempt someone to come forward.”

“But no one ever did.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Half the free world came forward. The hotline got tips, theories, and sightings that took years to sift through. It’s been an incredible sinkhole of man-hours over the years.”

“Obviously it’s a long shot at this point,” Jenn said. “The website stopped getting heavy traffic after year four, but you never know in cases like this. The perp might develop a conscience, can’t deal with the guilt anymore. Or wind up in jail for something unrelated and brag about it to a cellmate. The chances are remote, but it happens.”

“So how much traffic are we talking about?” Gibson asked.

Mike Rilling sat forward, anxious to contribute something. “Over the previous five years, the eight hundred number averaged one point eight calls per month. Discounting spam, we were seeing four point six e-mails per month. And the website was getting four hundred sixty-seven hits per month. We monitor traffic to the website and back check IP addresses on the off chance the perp gets curious and/or stupid.”

“Smart. And recently?”

“Thirty-eight calls per month. Two hundred forty-eight e-mails. Thirty-thousand-plus hits to the website.”

“All crap, of course,” Hendricks said.

“It only takes one,” Abe reminded him.

“Have you thought about doing a website redesign?” Gibson asked.

Mike shook his head.

“Well, if it was me, I’d give some thought to updating it. Old websites look . . . well, they look old. They look forgotten. If you’re hoping to lure him in, then you need it to look like an ongoing investigation.”

“That’s a good thought,” Abe said. “Michael, get that ball rolling on Monday.”

“And while you’re at it, the FBI documents in this folder? Put some of those up too.”

“Wait. Why tip our hand?” Jenn asked.

“To bait the hook. Give your guy a reason to visit the site. Don’t these serial-killer types have a thing for reading about themselves? Don’t they get off on that shit? Or is that just in the movies?”

Jenn nodded thoughtfully. “No, that’s not just the movies.” She turned to Abe. “We’d have to clear it with the Bureau. But it’s a possibility.”

“Agreed.” Abe made a note on a legal pad with his fountain pen. “I’ll call Phillip in the morning.”

“I’m happy to talk website design all day, but are we getting to the part where WR8TH contacted you?”

“Getting there, yes,” Abe said. “The increased traffic to the website was what made me decide to do the CNN interview. My condition for doing the interview was that it would mention the website and hotline, and our info would be in the crawler as well as linked on CNN’s website. In the end, it was pretty perfunctory stuff. I was hoping to get into some depth, but they only used about three minutes. Still, I was able to confirm that the reward was still available for a credible lead that led to Suzanne. And that was it. Exchanged some pleasantries and went back to the office. Didn’t even bother to watch the broadcast. But the day after it aired, we were e-mailed this. Mike?”

A new photograph appeared on the screen. A pink Hello Kitty backpack sat on a wooden table. Off the edge of the table, Gibson could see dirty linoleum tile and the base of a kitchen cabinet. The backpack showed the wear and tear of a well-loved possession. The photograph itself was old or was staged that way—the resolution wasn’t as clear as modern digital cameras, but that was simple enough to fake. Clearly, the backpack was meant to be the one from the infamous Breezewood footage. If genuine, it was an astonishing lead.

“Was there a message?” Gibson asked.

Abe nodded. A blowup of an e-mail appeared on screen.

Nice interview, George. Very moving. You should have kept her safe. How much for the backpack?

Gibson winced and shot a quick glance at Abe, who sat stoically. It was a cruel taunt, but Abe kept whatever he felt about it well hidden.

“What about the e-mail address?” Gibson asked.

“[email protected]. We traced it to a privately hosted server in the Ukraine,” Mike replied. “The domain was registered to a ‘V. Airy Nycetri’ for an added screw-you.”

Gibson rolled his eyes. No real surprise, though. The fringes of the Internet were often hosted in places like Eastern Europe, where governments had more pressing concerns than shady web hosts. Spammers, illegal gambling sites, child pornography traffickers, and hackers all used remote server farms to grant themselves a layer of anonymity. Chances were good that whoever had sent the e-mail had never been within a thousand miles of the server that generated it.

“What do you think?” Abe asked.

“Of the backpack? Not much. I could probably find three dozen on eBay before lunch. Probably just someone trolling you because they saw you on TV.”

Abe nodded. “That’s what we thought too.”

“I assume you replied?”

Abe gestured to Rilling. A new e-mail appeared.

For a photograph of a backpack? Nothing. However, our investigators are very interested in talking to anyone with evidence in the case.

“And?”

“A day later, this.”

Another photograph appeared on the screen. This time, Gibson rose from his seat, his mind reeling as it fought to acknowledge what it saw: the same photograph, only larger. The first image had been cropped from this one, and this photo just might be worth ten million dollars.

Suzanne Lombard.

Still the child she’d been when she ran away, sitting at an old kitchen table. The backpack sat at her left elbow. She was cupping a glass of what looked like milk and giving the camera a weary half smile. A Phillies baseball cap was pushed back high on her head.

Gibson stared dumbly at Bear.

“We all had the same reaction,” Abe said.

“And you think . . .” Gibson trailed off, not knowing how to finish his thought.

“We do.”

Gibson looked back and forth between George and the photo. It was unbelievable.

“We believe it’s authentic,” Abe said. “Likely taken the night she disappeared in Breezewood. And I would very much like to speak to the person who took it.”

Gibson nodded, fury stoking itself back to life inside him. That was a conversation he very much wanted in on. Whoever this guy was, he was playing games. Playing games and using Bear as a pawn. He realized now why he was here.

“But you can’t. Can you?”

Abe nodded thoughtfully.

“Let me guess. You tried to hack the e-mail server.”

“Yes.”

“But you fumbled it. Spooked him, and he went to ground.”

Mike began to protest, but Abe cut him off. “Yes.”

“And you think I’m going to find him for you.”

“Can you?”

“No. I can’t. It doesn’t work like that, George. You burned the only lead with that e-mail stunt. If he’s clever enough to have covered his tracks all this time, then how are we even going to . . . ?” Gibson drifted into silence, lost in thought. Something was wrong here.

“What is it?”

Gibson held up a hand for quiet. What was he missing? He shut his eyes to block everyone and everything out. He stood there until the answer appeared. It was exactly what he would have done. Exactly what he’d advised Abe to do.

Bait the hook.

“You ever ask yourself why he sent that first picture?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” asked Jenn.

Gibson turned to each of them in turn, grinning at the realization.

“Oh, he’s clever, isn’t he? Folks, I do believe you’ve been played.”