Pied Piper

CHAPTER 29

Theresa Russo worked freelance out of a sprawling ranch home that overlooked Puget Sound and the white-capped Olympics. Boldt had met her through Liz, whose bank had arranged a nine-million-dollar loan for the woman to expand a multimedia software start-up. Russo had paid back the loan in eleven months, took the company public a year later and retired to entrepreneurial work, reportedly twenty million dollars richer. With Russo well outside of law enforcement, Boldt had sworn her to secrecy, making no mention of Sarah’s name or her relationship. She was a missing child. Russo probed no further.

An African American with boot-polish black skin and straightened hair she kept pulled back tightly, she wore blue jeans, a green cotton sweater, and green Converse All-Star high-tops. She was twenty-seven years old and single. Russo worked from a padded leather throne on a forty-inch monitor mounted in the wall using a wireless keyboard and pointing device. For all the stunning views, her office shades were drawn to restrict sunlight.

Boldt was anxious to be shown whatever it was this woman deemed worthy. He had not told her the child on the CD-ROM he had received was his and Liz’s daughter, only that the analysis could not be done in-house for reasons of security. Russo had a strong handshake and bright green eyes. For Boldt, the challenge was to keep all mention of Sarah out of their conversation.

Russo spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, her attention on the huge monitor. She worked the keyboard and trackball with a dexterity reserved for those who spent eighteen hours a day behind their machines.

She said, “First of all, let me answer a couple of questions you raised when you asked me to take a look at this. The CD-ROM is not unique. Many thousands of home users have CD-Rs and can burn their own disks. The disk itself is encoded with a manufacturer’s batch number, but it won’t get you anywhere in terms of tracking down its sale. Unfortunately, the disk is unremarkable, but it’s a clever way to deliver such a message. E-mail would have left a far better trail. She’s done a good job, for what it’s worth-”

“She?”

“We’ll get to that.”

Boldt’s mind raced: the Pied Piper a woman! He was hooked. He tried to keep from interrupting.

“We know she has a working knowledge of home computers and can read a computer manual. No big deal. I’m sorry it isn’t better news.”

Boldt put his pen to work. The contrast of pen and paper to the media in front of him was inescapable.

She said, “I called you because I came across some interesting stuff early on.”

The image of Sarah moved on the screen. Her voice, amplified by surround-sound, screamed, “Daddy,” and Boldt felt his bowels loosen. “A couple of details that may be relevant. It’s true that video imaging on PCs has made leaps and bounds in the last few years. The home market software is good, but not up to the capabilities of the commercial players. What we have here is strictly home market-an off-the-shelf package. The result is a fairly low-resolution image. In order to give it a palatable look, you need to box the video in a pretty small screen.”

Boldt felt a spring of tension in his neck. He couldn’t lose her earlier reference to a woman. Millie Wiggins, who ran Sarah’s day care, had mentioned a pair of uniformed cops, a man and a woman. This was a possible confirmation. He kept his mouth shut, Russo had her own way of doing things.

“The point being that I can size the screen however I like. Larger is typically less resolution, though as it happens,” she grinned, “my equipment is a little better than average.” She dragged the corner of the viewing box that contained Sarah’s image so that it enlarged on her screen. “I use a res-enhancement program that we created ourselves.”

The images enlarged. Russo replayed the video several times. “Do you see it?”

Boldt saw only his little girl. Try as he might to pull his eyes away from her, it was impossible. “Tell me.”

“Here,” she indicated with the computer’s small white arrow. As the image replayed, Boldt forced himself to focus away from Sarah and onto the room’s window, where Russo pointed. “In the smaller format, at regular speed, all we picked up was a slight change of color. But res-enhanced and enlarged it’s actually a blurred image. If we slow down the playback,” she said, working her magic, “we get an altogether different look at it.”

The video advanced slowly like a replay in a sporting event. During the first playback, Boldt, once again, could not take his eyes off his daughter: Her head swiveled in tight jerky motions; the whites of her eyes showed. For the second playback he focused on the window behind and to his daughter’s right. A stream of purple bled from right to left. She glanced at him, testing him, then replayed the image for a third time. She advised, “Try squinting your eyes.” Boldt still could not make it out.

“Traffic of some sort,” Boldt guessed.

“Let me slow it some more.”

The images advanced in a series of a freeze-frames. Tiny moments of time strung together like beads on a necklace. “Orange and blue.”

“Warmer,” she said. “Let me isolate it.” She dramatically enlarged just the window, creating an abstract maze of colorful dots. “This takes some creative vision, mind you,” she warned. “This is a different kind of detective work.”

Boldt watched it several times. “If I let my imagination go, I’m not sure what that is. But logic says it’s a window, and movement behind a window implies a road, and color on a road suggests a truck.”

“Exactly.”

“But I’m not actually seeing the truck. Not per se.”

“I understand. You’re doing great. Now watch the blue and the orange you pointed out. It’s coming up.” She inched the video forward frame by frame. The colors froze and then blurred together. The blue formed the letter F. The orange framed an E.

Boldt saw it. “FedEx. It’s a FedEx truck!”

She beamed at him and then fixed her attention on the computer and returned the image to its original contents, though still enlarged. “Yes. A FedEx truck. Good. That is part one. Watch closely please.” She enlarged an area behind and to Sarah’s left that contained the room’s television. “You were given a date stamp, as I’m sure you’re aware of. To confirm her condition. Intentionally or not, she gave us a time stamp as well, by nature of the program. That anchor team goes on at 10:00 A.M. our time. I’m a CNN junkie,” she said. “CNN Atlanta will be able to tell you the precise time-down to the fraction of a second.”

Boldt’s tired brain began to assimilate the information. He found the excitement in her voice contagious. “The FedEx system is computerized,” he mumbled, knowing where she was headed. “The routes and the scheduling of every truck are a matter of record.” He cautioned her, and himself as well, “There are a couple of hundred trucks on the road on any given day. Granted, we may be able to approximate the location of those hundreds of trucks at the time of the video-and it’s great stuff, don’t get me wrong-but it’s too much for us. We don’t have that kind of manpower.” He was a department of one.

“That’s true, if we’re talking Seattle,” she said, baiting him. She advanced the image of the television to the last few frames before the video went dark. Reducing the size, the resolution tightened, and although tiny, the result was clear: A small blue band crept across the television screen from right to left. “Did you see it?” she tested. Boldt said yes.

“Bear with me.” She enlarged the area around the television set, behind and to Sarah’s left. Then she enlarged the television itself. When the blue weather warning appeared on the bottom of the screen, she told him, “Local cable carriers have the authority to superimpose weather warnings, news bulletins or natural disasters. They shrink the satellite feed and insert their own moving band of text. I haven’t had the time to do the legwork, but I guarantee you each and every cable system can tell you if they posted a weather bulletin on this particular date at this particular time. Given the limited number of cable companies left anymore, it’s a matter of a half dozen phone calls or so.” Sensing his impatience, Russo said, “We’re not finished. I’ve saved the best for last.”

“The woman,” Boldt guessed.

She smiled. “If you think you needed your imagination for the FedEx truck, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I haven’t had any time to work with this image, and I do have a few tricks still up my sleeve-some really nice high-speed res-enhancement engines and pixel predictors, some work we did for NASA-it’s graphics software that uses AI, to make best-guess image correction on degraded data. I need more time to complete that work. But I want to show you what I’ve got, so far. Watch the little girl’s legs,” she said, directing his attention to the lower section of the small video image. She replayed the video. Sarah’s knees appeared, then her feet. Boldt knew those shoes. He had helped her into them that day. His throat tightened. Russo explained, “For whatever reason, the person running the camera zooms back on the image. Presumably, to show the girl’s entire body, that she wasn’t harmed in any way. The zoom continues to the end of segment. In the process, it gives us a look over here,” she said, pointing with a pink painted fingernail to the very edge of the frame. She played the video again, and light winked from where she had pointed. “Did you see that?”

“Yes.”

“If I enlarge it,” she said, quickly doing it, “and I separate it out, I get only this.” From top to bottom, it was nothing but a band of light, followed by a band of dark. It appeared slightly curved. “Now I warned you this requires imagination, and I do want to run some enhancement and see if we can clean it up, but …” She drew her short fingernail the length of the fuzzy image. “You see this tiny square of light right here? I think we’re looking at something hanging on the wall, a painting maybe. A photograph.”

Boldt saw the square of light. “A mirror?” he asked.

“You do see.” She nodded. “Why not? Yes, the edge of a mirror, I think, and it’s reflecting back at us. Okay? I know it’s hard to see. But if it is a mirror, then what image is likely to be caught in it?” she asked rhetorically. “The camera person,” she answered. She indicated a bump, a curving shape that ran top to bottom. Boldt had focused on that same image but couldn’t identify it. She hinted, “That shape moves in the mirror, winking light at us.” She waited for him to see it, but her impatience won out and she sat up straight, heaving out her chest, and saying simultaneously, “It’s a silhouette of her chest.” Running her hand down her shirt and over her breast, she announced proudly, “This video was shot by a woman.”