Echo of War

8

Royal Oak

It had become something of a morbid tradition for Joe McBride, this watching of the clock as the forty-eighth hour passed and a case tipped down the slippery statistical slope. He’d started the practice ten years before in Minneapolis as a desperate mother and father waited for a ransom call that had never come.

Now he sat beside Jonathan Root at the kitchen table as the wall clicked over to 11:58. Root wasn’t watching it, but was staring into space as he’d been doing for the better part of two days. His hands were wrapped around a long-cold cup of coffee.

Statistically, most ransom-driven kidnappers make contact within a few hours of the abduction. The wilier and/or cruder the perpetrator, the longer they wait, but after twenty-four hours the likelihood of contact begins to drop until the forty-eight-hour point, at which time the odds plummet. In the history of kidnapping, ransom demands made outside the “golden forty-eight” are rare.

Having learned the hard way to never lie to a client — even to save them some heartache — McBride had given Jonathan Root the statistics, but he’d also added a caveat: “Rules are made to be broken. Nothing is set in stone.”

Root had simply stared at McBride, then nodded blankly, said, “Sure, sure,” and turned away.

The former DCI and Washington powerhouse was withdrawing into himself, McBride could see, and he imagined the nature of Root’s profession was working against him. As a spook, it had been his job to envision worst-case scenarios and come up with contingency plans. Problem was, there was no contingency plan for this, no manual or committee Root could consult if the worst came to pass and his wife was found dead — or never found at all. Root had seen the worst of humanity: images of atrocities in Rwanda; suicide bombings in Haifa; public executions of captured American soldiers in Afghanistan … It was all there in his memory, a sieve through which his hope was being filtered.

Unbidden, McBride felt his mind switching gears. If the worst happens, he’s going to need help. He won’t ask for it. He’ll have to be pushed into it — coaxed back into life. Left alone, he’ll sit here alone in the dark and let himself die.

After parting company with Oliver at Quantico, McBride had driven back to the Root estate to walk the grounds. As much for Root as for himself, he’d guided the former DCI through the event again, trying to pick out a thread of something useful. Together they walked through the house, Root giving him a running monologue of the sights, smells, and sounds of that night. Occasionally Root would stop beside a knickknack or a photo and relate its story to McBride. Without exception, Amelia Root was the main player in each tale. She was the nexus of Root’s life, McBride realized.

Root picked up a picture of him and Amelia standing in a fishing boat, smiling. His arm was around her waist as she struggled to hold aloft a Coho salmon. “She was so proud of that thing,” Root murmured, tears in his eyes. “She wouldn’t let anyone help her — she even netted it herself. You know, just the other day she was …” Root trailed off, blinked a few times as though coming back to reality, then walked on.

There had been one positive sign, though. Earlier in the day Root had accepted a lunch invitation from his next-door neighbors, Raymond Crohn and his wife — the people that had sounded the alarm after the kidnapping. Root had been reluctant, but then agreed at McBride’s urging. When Root returned, McBride could see some of the tension had melted from his face.

The clock began bonging. As if on cue, McBride’s cell phone trilled. He walked into the living room and answered. It was Oliver: “We’ve got something, a hit on the hiking boot.”

“Where are you?”

“Salisbury. We rousted the store owner; he’s going to meet us.”

McBride copied down the address, said, “I’ll meet you,” then hung up.

“What is it, Joe?” Root said from the doorway. “Did you find her?” he whispered.

McBride walked over and laid a hand on his shoulder. “No, but we’ve got a lead. We’ve got our foot in the door. Try to get some sleep. I’ll call you the second I know something.”

The town of Salisbury, population 23,000, was nine miles from the Root estate. Twenty-five minutes after leaving, McBride pulled into a parking space in front of Norwich Camping Outfitters. Ten minutes after that Oliver pulled in beside him. A man in pajama bottoms, slippers, and a red sweatshirt emblazoned with “Salisbury State University” got out of the passenger seat and hurried to the store’s front door.

McBride asked Oliver, “What’s up?”

“The company that makes the Stonewalker asks its retailers to send in the names of customers. They use it for direct mail promotions, customer satisfaction surveys — that sort of thing.”

After obtaining a copy of the list, Oliver sorted it by state and time frame, taking only those purchases made within the last month in D.C., Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. He then filtered the list through the FBI’s database. Of the sixty-seven Stonewalkers sold in the last month, two were bought with credit cards that had been reported stolen; of these, one report turned out to be a case of misplacement, the other genuine theft.

As Oliver’s team went to work on the lead, the report on the footprints found on the Dames Quarter road came in. The tires were identified as Bridgestone 225/75R14s, standard equipment for 1999 Ford Econoline vans. A regional check showed theft reports on fourteen Econolines, none more recent than two months ago. All the vans in question had either been recovered or had been identified as having been disassembled at chop shops.

“Rental?” McBride guessed.

“Right,” said Oliver. “However good these guys were with the kidnapping, they got sloppy with their logistics. We checked rental agencies that handle Econolines. Two days ago a Hertz office in Ellicott City outside Baltimore reported one of theirs overdue. The credit card used was reported stolen later that day.”

“Stolen how?”

“That’s the interesting part. Both cards were lifted by pickpockets.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“The Baltimore and Ellicott City police are looking for the van. We’re working on getting the credit slip from Hertz.”

“So what now?”

“Now we hope our luck holds and we get a match on the signatures. Fingerprints would be better, but … Well, hell, if we get prints, I’ll start going to church regularly.”

McBride understood. The chances were good that Amelia Root’s kidnappers had arrest records. Generally, kidnapping is a learned behavior, not something your average law-abiding citizen dives into on a whim. If this lead turned up a suspect’s name, they’d be back in the race. “Jesus, could we be that lucky?”

“A little good luck on our part, a little stupidity on their part … Who knows.”

A minute later the store owner poked his head out the door and waved at them. They went inside. The owner had turned on the lights; lying on the glass counter was a credit card receipt.

“I only touched the edges like you said,” the owner offered.

Oliver pulled a clear plastic evidence bag from his coat pocket, laid it flat on the counter, and nudged the receipt inside. He looked at McBride. “Follow me back.”

The agent from Elucott City arrived at Quantum twenty minutes behind McBride and Oliver, who sat together in a conference room, sipping coffee and staring at the walls as technicians from both Latent Prints and Questioned Documents processed the receipts. Shortly after two A.M. the conference room door opened and the techs walked in. The man from QD laid the two evidence bags on the table and slid them across to Oliver.

“You’re golden,” the tech announced. “Both signatures were forged by the same person. I make him male, right handed, early to mid-twenties — I can give you more once I get it into the computer.”

“And the prints?”

“Eight point match on each,” the Latent man replied. “Same person handled both slips.”

Oliver slapped his palm on the table and whooped. “Hot damn! Did you—”

“Already fed it into IAFIS,” the Latent tech replied, referring to the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, pronounced “ay-fis.” The Latent Print Unit and IAFIS — which contains over 38 million individual fingerprints — form the FBI’s Disaster Squad, which responds to both man-made and natural disasters to help local and federal authorities identify victims. “If he’s in the database, we should have a hit by mid-morning.”

“Thanks, guys, you’ve made our day.”

They talked for a few more minutes and then everyone left except for Oliver and McBride.

Joe glanced over at his adopted partner. “So, what’s your denomination?”

Oliver laughed. “You name it, I’m joining it.”