The Vanishing Point

9

Vivian McKuras looked unimpressed with Stephanie’s description of Scarlett Higgins. But before she could pass judgement, her phone beeped. ‘I’ll be back,’ she said, heading for the door without a backward glance.

‘Abbott,’ she said once she was clear of the interview room. ‘Thanks for touching base.’

She’d kept her message to her two colleagues as low key as she could. They were both technically senior to her, but she was determined not to back down from the lead role in this investigation. The ambitious part of her had almost hoped neither would get back to her, but the decent humane part knew she’d need help with the nuts and bolts. Of the two agents stationed at the international terminal, Don Abbott had been the one she’d hoped would respond to her message about the abducted child. He was smart and keen, but most of all, he treated Vivian exactly the same as his male colleagues. ‘What do you need?’ he asked. ‘You got the Amber Alert up and running, I see. You got any leads that need chasing down?’

‘It’s not straightforward.’ It wasn’t easy for her to admit that, but at least Abbott wouldn’t use it against her in front of colleagues later. ‘They’re British. I’ve been interviewing the woman who was with the kid – she’s in the process of adopting him. And so far, she’s not given me anything you could call a motive.’

Abbott made a growling noise in his throat. ‘Pain in the ass. Your note says the kid’s birth mother was a reality TV star. What about good old-fashioned kidnap for ransom?’

‘It could be, but that’s a waiting game and we’ve heard nothing so far.’

‘Sounds like you need to get back in the interview room. See if you can get something more solid from this woman. In the meantime, do you want me to check out the CCTV footage? See if I can maybe pinpoint them leaving the terminal?’

‘That would be great. The control room are pulling it together for us, but I’d be a lot happier to have your eyes across it than theirs. The other thing I haven’t had a chance to check out – this guy must have followed them airside somehow. The easiest way is for him to have had a boarding pass for a flight going out of here sometime today. But obviously, he didn’t get on a plane. So some airline has a no-show that must be our guy.’

‘I get you. Someone who checked in and cleared security but didn’t show up at the gate. There’s always a few of those every day. Leave it with me, Vivian. I’ll see what I can chase up.’

‘Thanks, Don.’

‘No problem. When it’s a kid at stake, we all gotta run the extra mile.’

She remembered he had a child of his own. A daughter, a couple of years older than Jimmy Higgins. She imagined that made the abduction of a child the most powerful spur to action. ‘Whatever it takes,’ she said. ‘Let’s meet later and see what we got.’

‘Sure. Call me when you’re done with the interview.’

God knew when that would be, she thought. Stephanie Harker’s story was complicated, and the woman seemed determined to share every detail. Probably talking about her history with the kid made her feel like she was doing something useful towards his rescue. Vivian couldn’t blame her for that, but the fact remained that she had a job to do where time generally played a significant role. As soon as her butt hit the seat again, she was back in interrogative mode. ‘So what about Scarlett’s family?’

‘Hang on a minute,’ Stephanie protested. ‘What’s happening? That call? Was it about Jimmy? Have you any news?’ Her anxiety surfaced again, breaking through the careful containment she’d been building.

Vivian stifled an impatient sigh. ‘No news. I was just briefing a colleague who’s following another line of inquiry.’

‘What line of inquiry? Has anyone come forward? Have they seen Jimmy?’ Stephanie’s eyes sparkled with tears and she rubbed them impatiently with the back of her hand.

‘Nothing like that. My colleague is going to review the CCTV, to see if we can establish the movements of the kidnapper ahead of the kidnap itself. And if we can find out where and how they left the airport precincts. There’s a lot of practical ground to cover. For example, the kidnapper must have produced either valid ID or a damn good fake to get a boarding pass and slip through security ahead of or alongside you guys.’

Stephanie frowned, her emotions checked by the immediacy of seeing a practical problem. ‘Not necessarily,’ she said.

Vivian was startled. ‘What do you mean? Security here is tight as a drum. You can’t talk your way past the TSA without the proper paperwork.’

‘If the kidnapper knew our schedule, he wouldn’t have had to follow us. There’s more than one way to get airside in this terminal,’ Stephanie insisted. ‘I noticed it last year when I came back from visiting a friend in Madison. It struck me because in the UK we’re really strict about segregating arrivals and departures. But here, if you arrive on a domestic flight, you’re just spilled out into the main concourse, so arriving passengers mix with the departing ones. The kidnapper could have flown in from anywhere served by this terminal then changed in the toilet.’

She was on the money, Vivian thought. Why had she jumped to the wrong conclusion so quickly? Why had something they knew perfectly well not occurred to her or Abbott? The obvious answer was that their concerns were always with possible breaches of security from outside. Once you were inside, you were, by definition, secure. You’d been verified, screened and deemed acceptable. Why would there be any further cause for concern? But Stephanie Harker had looked at the system with the eyes of an outsider and she’d seen something they’d missed. Maybe the interview room was the place where this would be resolved after all. ‘I need to make a call,’ she said, pushing her chair back and dialling Abbott’s number on her way back out to the hallway. ‘We got sidetracked by the idea of somebody following the kid. We forgot about incoming passengers,’ she said as soon as he answered. ‘They come from all over the US and they walk straight out into the main concourse. You can’t tell who’s an arrival and who’s a departure. Our guy could have flown in from anywhere.’

‘Shit,’ Abbott said.

‘We’re going to have to backtrack the CCTV to see if we can figure out where the fuck he came from,’ Vivian said. ‘If he came off a flight, he could have been wearing anything. But he had to change somewhere. He must have used a bathroom, right?’

Abbott sighed. ‘We need more bodies.’

‘Check with security in the camera room. This takes priority. A kid’s life could be on the line here. I’m going back in to the interview now.’

‘OK. Good call, Vivian.’

When she sat down this time, Vivian eyed Stephanie with more respect. ‘It’s in hand,’ she said. ‘Thanks for that insight. Now, can we get back to Scarlett Higgins’ family? I’m wondering whether they might be behind all this. Were they not pissed that you ended up with the kid? And presumably the money too? I’m guessing Scarlett left her money to you? For Jimmy?’

‘Ha,’ Stephanie said. ‘I wish. They were pissed off at first. When they thought there was some money. But you couldn’t see them for dust once they realised Scarlett had left all her money to the charitable trust she set up after she discovered she had cancer. I got the kid. Not the money.’

‘Jimmy didn’t inherit? Surely she left you something to take care of him? Just to pay the bills.’

Stephanie shook her head. ‘Not a bean.’ Her smile was wry. ‘That’s totally bizarre.’

‘Tell me about it. Her rationale is that she started out with nothing and that’s what spurred her on to make something of herself. She didn’t think throwing money at kids was good for them.’

Vivian couldn’t decide whether she was impressed or appalled. ‘So her family really weren’t interested in the boy?’

Stephanie sighed. ‘Her mother’s a drunk and her sister’s a junkie who’s already had one kid taken into care. Even if they’d known Jimmy – which they didn’t – no judge in his right mind was going to let them anywhere near him.’

Vivian shook her head. ‘That doesn’t mean they didn’t want him. Blood’s thicker than water, after all.’

‘In the Higgins family, money’s thicker than water. And if there was no money in it for them, they couldn’t have cared less about Jimmy.’

‘How come you ended up with the boy? Are you trying to tell me the best friend she had in the world was her ghost writer?’ Vivian tried to keep the incredulity from her face as well as her voice, but it wasn’t easy. It was hard to imagine an emotional life so impoverished that the nearest thing you had to a bgf was the woman who’d been hired to portray you to the world in the most flattering light.

Stephanie shrugged. ‘That’s one way of putting it. The other way would be that we fell into friendship five years ago when I wrote Scarlett’s first book. Neither of us expected it. But it happened and it persisted. There was a lot more to her than met the eye. I’m not proud of the fact that the woman I portrayed to the world was not the woman I knew, but for all sorts of reasons, most of them economic, that was what worked for both of us. And when she knew she was dying, I was the person she knew she could trust with her boy.’ Stephanie blinked away more tears. ‘Looks like she couldn’t have been more wrong.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Vivian said.

Suddenly Stephanie snapped into anger. ‘Of course it was my bloody fault. He was in my care. And now he’s not. Scarlett trusted me. Jimmy trusted me. I’ve let everybody down. If anything happens to that boy, if he doesn’t come back to me alive and well . . . ’ The muscles in her face went slack as the prospect sank in.

‘We’ll find him,’ Vivian said, hating herself for the false hope. But she had to do what she could to keep Stephanie on her side. She had to keep teasing away at the details of their history in the hope she could find a reason for what had happened. ‘I accept what you’re saying about your friendship. Even though, frankly, it looks unlikely from where I’m sitting. But how was it that you got so close that she felt you were the one to entrust with Jimmy?