The Soul Collectors

68

Darby summarized her conversation with Ronald Ross as she followed Casey into another dimly lit room, this one an area of bunk beds that reminded her of an army barracks, only these beds unfolded from the walls and came with seatbelts. She trailed behind the man as he made his way down a set of stairs. Casey got off on the next floor and opened the door to a room lit by soft and elegant lighting.

The long cabin seemed as wide and as long as a football field and had both the look and feel of downtown Boston's Harvard Club — dark wood panelling on the walls, worn brown leather club chairs and small mahogany tables. A well-worn oriental rug of deep burgundy, forest green and dark brown hues covered the entire floor. Despite being inside a plane, this space was as regal and luxurious as the Four Seasons' banquet hall; only this space was being used to host the missing and the dead.

Darby gaped at all the young faces captured in black and white and colour — the faces of children, hundreds of them, each one staring at her from the photographs tacked to the wall-mounted corkboards that filled almost both sides of the plane.

The photographs had been arranged by year. To her right, a corkboard with a label at the top that read: '1945 to 1972?' Filling almost every square inch of that space were old and fraying Polaroids and black and white pictures. Each child had a name. Each one had a question mark written next to it. These kids had been abducted from Washington. The next board, this one labelled '1973 to 1975', had photographs of abducted and missing children from Oregon. The next one was dedicated to California. She read the years printed on the label: '1976 to 1981'.

The time Casey got involved, she thought. Then, on the heels of it, came another one: Washington, then Oregon and California. The West Coast.

She swung her head around to her left, to the area near the door, and saw two tall and wide corkboards filled with colour photographs of more recent victims — 2009 and 2010.

She moved forward, slowly, taking in the photographs of more missing children from the previous years and thinking, It's like the Traveler case all over again, hundreds and hundreds of photographs of missing victims spanning decades.

But Traveler had predominately hunted women. Teenagers, women in their twenties and thirties — there had even been a handful in their late forties or early fifties. The women, she had discovered later, hadn't been carefully selected; they were victims of opportunity, snatched from the streets while walking to their home or car, and each one had been killed inside Traveler's underground dungeon of horrors.

But these bulletin boards and these pictures contained pictures of young children — both boys and girls from different races and backgrounds. What had Sergey told her? In each case Casey had discovered the abducted child was the youngest member of the family. There was a careful selection process at work here, a singular reason that united all of the hundreds of gap-toothed smiling kids staring at her in this grisly shrine.

She counted the pictures underneath the boards labelled 2009 and 2010. Three victims — two boys and one girl — abducted from New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont.

In 2007 and 2008, eleven kids had been snatched from Tennessee and North and South Carolina. Before that, from 2004 to 2006, this group had focused on Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama.

Something itched in the back of her mind, something about the states, how they -

They surround each other, she thought. New Hampshire and Vermont bordered Massachusetts. In the 2007 and 2008 abductions… she could see the map of the US in her mind's eye now, the states drilled into her memory courtesy of the nuns at St Stephens School. Tennessee… the right-hand portion of the state bordered both North and South Carolina. Same with the abduction cases from 2004 to 2006: Alabama was the central state, bordering Arkansas, Mississippi and Georgia. This group (another difference between the Traveler case: there was a group of people at work here, not a pair of serial killers), this group worked in a tight cluster.

She turned to Casey, saw that he wasn't standing next to her. He was behind her, his hand gripping a doorknob.

'Clusters,' she called out to him. 'They work in a tight cluster of states.'

'I know.'

'So the state that borders all the others must work as their base of operations.'

'That's the theory,' he said, motioning for her to hurry along.

She whisked past him, through the open door, and stepped into a private conference room decorated with the same rich wood. All of the eight leather chairs arranged around the table had seatbelts.

Special Agent Sergey Martynovich sat at the far end, a phone tucked against his ear, his other hand holding the edge of a computer screen. It had been bolted down to the table so it wouldn't fall, as had the other device sitting in the table's centre — a wireless conference phone made of black and silver and shaped like some sort of sinister-looking spaceship.

He hung up and said, 'Tom Geary from Langley's calling. They're setting up the video-conference stuff on his end right now. Jack, did Darby tell you about her conversation with a Harvard professor named — she did. Okay, good. Now let me bring you both up to speed with what we have so far.'

Sergey looked at her and said, 'The recording of that person from the Rizzo house you had on your voicemail? After you left, they came and untied him. You can hear their footsteps and one of them says, Vos es tutus, custodio.' He glanced down at his notes. 'Its loose translation is "No harm will come to you, guard." The blood swab from the crater has been loaded into CODIS. We're not hoping for miracles there, just an ID. That's all I've got.'

Casey said, 'What about the GPS implants?'

'Still silent.'

'They were operating fine when I left Florida.'

'I know. It's… the technology is still somewhat new, Jack. It's not perfect.'

The silence grew in the room. Sergey glanced at her with a grim smile.

'Your friend Coop is on his way back home. First class,' he said. 'We had him booked under another name. We have an agent who will meet him at Heathrow and escort him home.'

'Thank you.'

More silence. Sergey seemed relieved when he heard a knock on the door. It opened and a woman dressed in a professional navy-blue suit came inside and with both hands placed a bulky case on the table. Big and square and made of black plastic, it looked like something used to house a power tool.

The woman undid the hinges and flipped the top open. Lying in the foam was an aluminium gun with a fine metal tip. She looked at Darby and said, 'Right or left arm?'

Sergey waved his hands. 'Sorry, I forgot to tell her. Darby, we're going to put a chip in your arm. It's very small, sits right below the skin.'

'I don't see the point,' Darby said, 'as it doesn't seem to be working.'

Sergey placed his hands together as if in prayer. 'I'd feel better if you did it. It'll only last a week and then we'll take it out.'

Darby shrugged. She took off her leather jacket and shirt, glad that she had worn a tank top underneath. A swab of alcohol and then a slight sting and it was over. The woman placed a Band-Aid on her arm, collected her stuff and left.

Casey said, 'This guy from Cryptography, you tell him what's going on with me?'

'I gave him the background stuff,' Sergey said. 'No specifics.'

'When he calls, tell him I'm not in the room. That way he won't be inclined to hold anything back. I'll listen from the corner.'

Ten minutes passed.

Darby said, 'I want to examine the USB drive.'

'We have people doing that right now,' Sergey said. 'Computer geeks. They're looking for what they called "digital fingerprints". Every computer leaves them behind, they said, so we're going to see if we can track down these people that way.'

'I want to hold it in my hands.'

Sergey thought it over for a moment, then shrugged and picked up the phone.

'Can I ask why?' he said as he punched in numbers.

'It feels… off. Wrong. The finger, the USB drive — they're risking exposure,' Darby said. 'They're too clever for that.'

The USB drive arrived ten minutes later. Darby held it, twirling it around in her fingers when the conference-room phone started ringing.