Echo of War

6

Royal Oak, Maryland

An hour after leaving Washington McBride and Oliver arrived at a waterfront ranch-style house in Dames Quarter, three miles across the bay from the Root estate. Oliver pulled into the driveway and stopped behind the ERT — evidence response team — van. Standing on the porch were an elderly man and woman; beside them a chocolate lab paced back and forth, whining and sniffing the air. The man pointed his thumb up the driveway. Oliver nodded his thanks and they walked on.

At the head of the driveway they found a meadow of knee-high Broomsedge grass and wild rye; beyond that, a rickety dock surrounded by cattails. McBride caught the scent of rotting bait fish in the air. One of the ERT technicians met them at the foot of the dock while two more agents in yellow chest waders stood in the water, peering through the reeds and under the dock. The mud along the shore was as dark as coffee grounds, with a hint of red, stained by the tannin in the cypress roots. A fourth technician knelt in the mud photographing something there.

“What’ve you got, Steve?” Oliver asked.

“About an hour ago the owner called the Somerset Sheriff’s Office and reported his boat missing — a fourteen-foot Lund with a trolling motor. They called Wicomico and they called us — they figured the timing coincidence was worth a look.”

“Was it?”

The technician grinned. “There’s boot prints all over the place, Collin. Three men, I’m guessing.”

“Good enough to cast?”

“I think so. My gut reaction: They’re the same as the one’s at the Root place.”

“How about the boat?”

“Coast Guard’s looking for it, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. About a hundred yards from shore the bottom drops to a couple hundred feet.”

McBride looked around. “How about nearby roads?”

“There’s a fire road and a boat ramp about three hundred yards to the southeast. I’ve got a couple guys looking around.”

“What kind of motor did the boat have?” Oliver asked.

The technician frowned. “Uhm … electric, I think. Why?”

“They’re quiet.”

“Oh, gotchya. I’ll call you when I get the casts compared.”

“Thanks.”

Oliver and McBride walked a few feet away. Oliver plucked a cattail, brushed his index finger over the nap, tossed it away. “Smart SOBs. Odds are, they didn’t pick this boat by chance.”

McBride nodded. “Agreed. They did their homework: Steal the boat across the county line and hope the Somerset and Wicomico sheriffs aren’t big on information sharing. One thing that bothers me, though: Why scuttle the boat?”

“I was wondering the same thing.”

“They grab Amelia Root, put her in the boat, cross the bay to the fire road … Gotta figure it’s about two A.M. by then, which means they could’ve had the boat cleaned up and back here by three — long before the owner would wake up and notice anything. So whatdya think? Either they got behind schedule and had to scuttle it, or they didn’t think it through.”

“Neither makes sense,” Oliver said. “They put a lot of preparation into this. We know they were out of the house by midnight, and the trip across the bay’s only a few miles. Even with a small trolling motor it wouldn’t have taken more than an hour. Then again, who knows? Maybe they got lost in the fog.”

“Or they scuttled it to lose physical evidence.”

Like blood, McBride thought. This wouldn’t be the first time a kidnapping had gone bad right out of the gate. Blood in the boat would likely mean Amelia Root was dead; otherwise there would be no reason to hide the evidence, for if pushed during negotiations the kidnappers could provide proof she was still alive. In fact, McBride had found a little blood left at the scene tends to put the spouse or parent in a more … malleable state of mind for a ransom call.

“They don’t strike me as either sloppy or crude,” McBride said. “She’s too valuable; they wouldn’t have let anything happen to her.”

“I agree. Then what the hell is the deal with the boat?”

“I don’t know.” Something else, maybe, something we’re not seeing, McBride thought.

Twenty minutes later, the lead technician called them over to the dock. The team on the fire road had found something. With Steve in the lead, they walked across the meadow, through a copse of maple and oak, and emerged onto the fire road to where another of the technicians was kneeling in the dirt.

“Tire tracks,” he called. “A van or truck, probably. We’ll get elimination casts from the neighbors.”

“How far’s the boat ramp?” Oliver asked.

“About a hundred yards that way.”

“So, let’s put it together: They park here and split up. Three go to the dock to steal the boat, three more to the ramp to wait. They link up, do their business at the Roots’, come back to the ramp with Mrs. Root, and put her in the vehicle.”

McBride picked up the narrative. “While they’re doing that, a couple of them take the boat into the bay, scuttle it, and swim back.”

Oliver looked to the tech who’d found the tire tracks. “How soon will you know something?”

“There’s not enough to cast, but I can high-res the digital pictures. By the end of the day I should have a generic match. I’ll take grass samples, too. See how it’s crushed along here?”

“Yeah.”

“Depending on the rate of drying, I might be able to nail down the time.”

“How close?”

“No more than an hour.”

McBride whistled through his teeth. “You can do that?”

“Quamico’s got a greenhouse with over six hundred varieties of grass. If you mow it, we’ve got it. Between weather conditions, soil type, chlorophyll content, we can tell a lot.”

“Can you help me get rid of my dandelions?”

“Sorry.”

Oliver’s cell phone trilled. He answered, listened for a minute, then disconnected. “Quantico. The boot casts from the Roots’ are ready.” He turned to Steve. “How long do you need for your casts?”

“Another half hour and they’ll be ready to move.”

“We’ll meet you there.”

Three house later they were standing in one of the FBI’s laboratories at Quantico staring at a computer monitor. Displayed side-by-side on the screen were digital pictures of boot print casts taken from the Root estate, the dock in Dames Quarter, and the fire road.

“No doubt about it,” said Steve. “Same boots. We were even able to match the stride pattern and heel pivot on most of them. These are our guys.”

“Did you match them against the guards?” asked Oliver.

“Yeah, they’re all eliminated. Here’s the interesting thing: See how the tread patterns on the first five look random — chaotic?”

“Yeah.”

“They cross-hashed the soles — my guess is with a hacksaw blade. It’s gonna make identifying them a bitch.”

“You said five,” McBride replied. “What about the sixth?”

“The sixth is a whole different story. It was cross-hatched like the others, but not as heavily, and the underlying tread pattern is different. It looks new, too.”

“How new?”

“A couple weeks, I’d say.”

“And the tread pattern?”

“A gem. See the overlapping dollar sign shape to them? That’s pretty uncommon.”

Oliver said, “Uncommon enough to—”

“Yep,” Steve replied, then tapped the keyboard. A website’s homepage popped up on the screen. In the center was an animated GIF of a rotating boot. “Meet the Stone walker, gentlemen, the Cadillac of hiking boots. Starting price: three hundred bucks. Number of retailers within a hundred mile radius: twelve.”

Oliver clapped Steve on the shoulder. “Great work.”

“Now what?” McBride said.

“Now we canvass and pray our guys did their shopping locally.”