Criss Cross

Chapter 22

Four hours later, Mahoney and I pulled into the driveway of a beautiful home in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

Diane Jenkins, a forty-two-year-old mother of two, had vanished thirty-seven hours before. Her husband, Melvin, owner of a string of home-nursing companies, said his wife had failed to pick up their daughters after school. The girls and their father had tried to reach Mrs. Jenkins for hours but their calls went straight to voice mail.

Jenkins went to the Shaker Heights police to file a missing-person report on his wife that same evening. The police said they had to wait to investigate until Mrs. Jenkins had been out of contact for a minimum of twenty-four hours.

Finally, Jenkins remembered his wife had an active OnStar membership for her Cadillac. Diane’s vehicle was located outside a low-income housing project fifteen miles from home, a place his wife had no reason to be. When Jenkins drove to North Royalton, Ohio, he found the car had been stripped.

Then Jenkins received a call from someone using a voice-distorting device. The caller demanded five million dollars in a cryptocurrency called Ethereum in exchange for the safe return of his wife. Jenkins had forty-eight hours to pay it.

Despite being warned not to by the kidnapper, Jenkins called the FBI. He’d managed to record the ransom conversation. A transcript of the recording had made its way to Mahoney’s desk, which was why we were knocking on the Jenkins’s front door.

A Cleveland-based FBI agent named Andrea Rowe let us in.

We found Melvin Jenkins, a wiry marathon runner in his late forties, looking emotionally exhausted. Mentally, however, the man was sharp, alert, and direct.

His wife had last been seen eating lunch in downtown Shaker Heights with a friend who was having a hard time after her husband’s recent death in a car crash. They’d parted with plans to meet again the following week.

“She said Diane was going to the library, where she serves on the board, and then to pick up the girls,” Jenkins said. “She never made it to the library.”

“Do we know what time her phone was turned off?” I asked.

Special Agent Rowe said, “Two thirty-two p.m., approximately forty minutes after she left the restaurant.”

“Where did it go dead?” Mahoney asked.

“Near the Brecksville Reservation,” Jenkins said. “It’s a forested hiking area not far from where her car was found.”

“She go there a lot?” Mahoney asked.

“A lot? No. I mean, she’d been there,” Jenkins said. “We’ve all been there.”

“But she hadn’t mentioned plans to go there?”

“No.”

“Could we hear the ransom demand?”

Jenkins nodded and fished his phone out of his pocket. He thumbed the screen, and an androgynous, digitally altered voice came on.

“I am the only one keeping your wife alive, Melvin,” the voice said.

“Who are you?” Jenkins demanded.

There was a pause before the voice said, “If it helps, you can call me M.”