“Right. And what did he say?” She put down the paper she was holding, saying a silent prayer that the next thing out of Matthews’ mouth would be the address of the monster holding their girl.
“He ran the partial plate number together with the list of cancer patients and...”
“Yes?” She half wanted to tell him to move it along and stop keeping them in suspense, but she had only just met him, so being rude wasn’t really an option.
“He didn’t find anything,” he almost whispered.
“Damn! What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know, but I guess that gives us three options. Either our guy isn’t a cancer patient, the kid remembered the number wrong or saw a car completely irrelevant to this case, or third, and what I find most likely, our guy lives outside the defined radius.”
“You mean that the prick drove for miles and miles before finding the old barn where he dumped the notebooks?”
“I think so. Considering how thoroughly he seems to have planned her abduction, I’m guessing we’re dealing with somebody who knows better than leave any loose ends.”
“But that means he could be anywhere, out of state even, and we don’t even have the slightest idea about where to start looking.” She could hear her heart pounding a mile a minute and desperately wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening. They were losing the girl, and this time, it felt like they were losing her for good.
Yolanda stepped outside. She just couldn’t take any more of this horrible case that was starting to consume her from the inside. How in the world was she going to find that little girl now, when every lead they had just disappeared like a rabbit in one of Lily’s magic shows? Falling back on old habits, she did what she had always done in a state of complete and utter confusion—she called Joshua. She knew she shouldn’t, as they were separated and were supposed to be moving on with their lives, but she missed him. It wasn’t only because the detective from DC reminded her of him but because she still loved him. He was after all, the love of her life.
“Yoly, is that you?” Joshua answered, sounding surprised.
“Yeah, it’s me.” She paused. “Am I calling at a bad time?”
“No, not at all. What’s up?” His voice still sounded husky. She had always loved that about him. That radio voice of his made every word somehow softer and sweeter.
“I have a case. It’s a bad one,” she finally said, not completely sure how to continue and how much she could really tell him without breaking privilege. “It’s all going to shit. I don’t know what to do.” Her voice sounded more desperate than she had meant it to.
“Oh, crap, Yoly. That sounds terrible. Is there any way I can help?”
“No, I guess not. I just... I just wanted to hear your voice,” she replied, realizing how strange her words sounded as soon as they came out of her mouth.
“It’s good to hear from you too.” She thought she could hear him smiling. “I’ve been wondering—I know it might be a bit frank of me to ask but... would you perhaps like to have dinner with me this weekend? Say Saturday?”
She was so surprised by the request that the only thing she managed to get out was a stream of different queries before eventually stringing a sentence together. “Um, well, yeah. I would love to. Um...”
“I thought maybe we could go to the cozy little restaurant you love so much. What’s it called? Pri... something.”
“La Primavera,” she replied, knowing full well that his understanding of Italian wasn’t necessarily one of his strong points.
“Yeah, exactly. Look, I know it’s been almost two months since we last met, but I’ve got some things I’d like to talk to you about and... well... I’d just love to do it in person.” His voice went up an octave, as if he was trying to sound friendly and non-threatening.
Her heart took an extra beat. Last time Joshua had wanted to discuss some things with her, he had wanted them to separate, and as they had already taken care of all their shared assets, splitting things up, all the way down to the photos in the photo album, what could it be, other than that he had found somebody else? He was probably seeing someone and wanted that information to come from him first. He was polite like that, but it still burned so much to think about it.
She swallowed, careful not to let her grief be heard. “All right, that sounds good. Let’s say Saturday at seven? If something comes up with the case, I might have to cancel, but if not, then I’ll see you there.”
“See you there. And Yoly?”
“Yeah?”
“It was good to hear from you.”
She didn’t remember answering him, but now she was just standing there, holding her phone in her hands, so she had either hung up or actually said goodbye. She was utterly confused. On top of everything with the notebooks, Joshua had some news; news that was extremely likely to break her heart and send her down the road of cuddling her duvet and watching horror films until she passed out from eating too much of her mother’s cooking. For some reason, chick-flicks just didn’t do it for her. Those classic horror movies were what kept her going.
“Excuse me.” She almost jumped as she felt somebody lightly touch her shoulder. When she turned around, she saw two men and a woman dressed in black suits, and she instantly knew that the FBI had arrived—or the Men in Black including a woman, whichever—and those three meant business.
“Are you the...” she started.
“The FBI, and I’m Agent Montello,” the man who had gotten her attention replied, showing her his identification. His colleagues followed suit, all three flashing those three big powerful letters and a small badge with an eagle sitting on top.
“Are you here to crack this case and save the girl?” she tried to sound chipper, but due to the effects of the phone call, felt like she had missed the mark.
“We hope so. Agent Philips here has been incredibly resourceful when it comes to difficult cases and seeing as how she was the agent assigned to this case back in Washington, she'll be a great asset. Agent Johnson is also one of our best agents, with years of experience in kidnapping, ransom and negotiation,” Montello replied, pointing to his female and male companions.
“Goodie. Let’s get to it, then.” She attempted to storm into the station but was met by Detective Matthews on her way, almost resulting in a human traffic collision.
“We need to backtrack, we need to go back and go over everything,” he said excitedly, as if he had figured something out, not at all bothered by the near miss.
“Yes, I agree. We’ll need to read through the books again,” she replied.
“No, I don’t mean the books. I mean the whole case. We’ve been looking at it all wrong. We were always looking for somebody in Washington, somebody who had a convenient connection or would fit the bill, but we didn’t go through every single one of the cars that were from any farther away than the neighboring states. We were so very sure that he was local or at most one state over.”
“But all the traffic camera data must be long gone. It’s been so many years, and how many cameras were there really back then?”
“There were actually quite a few, but unfortunately I only copied what I felt was relevant at the time, and those were the five cameras in the vicinity of Lily’s route home from school or routes she might have taken had she decided to be a bit adventurous.”
“And you still have that?”
“I do. I was determined to solve the case and hoarded data before being forced to stop working on it. They’re in my box. We need to set up a new radius around the barn, a bigger perimeter than before and start our search again with the cancer patients. In the meantime, we also need to go over every single piece of footage of cars from the traffic cameras and look them up, trying to match them to the patients or at least to somebody in your state or neighboring states. We start the search again and change our search point from Lily’s path to here, to the old barn.”
“That sounds like
an excellent plan,” Agent Philips interjected. “Johnson will give you a hand with that. One of you guys can fill me in so I can see what options I see in this case, but one question before we start...” She looked at the both of them, her face becoming very serious. “Do you have reason to think she’s in imminent danger?”
“Yes,” they replied almost in unison and watched as the agent’s face fell grim and her teeth clenched in determination.
“Are you sure one hundred miles is going to be enough?” Yolanda asked as they developed the new strategy, watching Detective Matthews circling the old barn on a map with a bow compass. They were throwing quite a wide net, but she’d also thought that last time, and she was not going to make the same mistake twice.
“I think so… It’s hard to imagine him driving more than an hour and a half to dump the books, since that would make it a three-hour round trip,” Matthews said, looking up for just a second. He had found a gigantic map at the local bookstore that showed Alabama as well as small parts of neighboring states. It was now hanging on the wall next to the coffee machine, where they could easily access it and peer at the tiny names written all over.
“I agree,” Agent Philips said. “We need an area to search or we’ll be wandering aimlessly, and that will just be a huge waste of time. You said she’s in imminent danger, so let’s start with a hundred miles and see where that takes us. I’ll have the guys get a new list of patients together, and perhaps you could ask your computer guy to pair it to the footage you mentioned, as he seems to be quite efficient.”
“Of course,” Matthews replied.
“And you,” she nodded to Solomon, “could you help Tyne there go over the patient files for the new patients, narrowing it down as you did before?”
“Yes, sir... I mean ma’am.” Solomon was one military salute away from making a fool of himself before catching himself and stopping mid-motion.
“And me?” Yolanda asked.
“You come with us. We’re going to go visit these people, and I have a strict partner policy, so you will go with Agent Johnson. Heck, I’ll handcuff your hands together like a pissed-off kindergarten teacher if I have to. You two start at the back of the list, while Agent Montello and I will start at the front. I expect to get the full list in a few hours but for now, let’s continue with the list you already had and see where that gets us. I’d like a couple of hours to familiarize myself and the other agents with the case, but then I’d like for us to get going.”
“All right, that sounds like a plan.” Yolanda was hesitant. Something about the strategy felt off. Maybe because she and Solomon had already wasted so much time driving around the state and knocking on doors, but she sensed it was something else, something she couldn’t comprehend, let alone put into words and explain. She just didn’t have faith in what they were doing, and it had never really done her any good participating in a process that she wasn’t instinctually on board with. She didn’t know how to get these feelings across, though. All of them were much more experienced than she was, so her opinion was probably not worth much.
She sat down at her desk, contemplating whether she could possibly come up with another strategy, something that would span a larger part of the state and include suspects that lived even farther out. She didn’t want them to go below two hundred miles this time, even though it felt a bit excessive. She remembered Lily writing that Mister Whiskers built houses and in another entry stating that he was an engineer who used math in his job. She knew that he could have been lying to the girl, but these clues felt like something worth following if she could just grasp the right thread. As far as Yolanda knew, all engineers used math, but what kind of engineers built houses?
She knew that she should be discussing this idea with her new colleagues. It was completely against protocol, going behind the agents’ backs and not even telling her own team, but she didn’t want the FBI agents to shoot down her idea before she’d had the chance to explore it. She felt like she had to do something and decided she’d go about this in a different manner, looking into it as a civilian, not in a sheriff’s capacity. Without mentioning it to anybody, she did some quick online research and came up with structural engineering as the likeliest match for an engineer who built houses. She started looking up architecture and construction companies that would have structural engineers on staff. She decided she’d pretend to be looking to have some work done on her house. That way she could easily ask about the employees and their qualifications and potentially go on to look them up from there.
In order to not shirk her responsibilities and training, she was going to use her spare time for this extracurricular activity and not waste any time while at work. As she had already gone through most of Detective Matthews’ files and gotten up to speed on the rest, she now had two hours to kill while Agent Philips and the others read through the information, and she intended to use this time to the fullest, making sure to keep her personal moonlighting a secret.
Two hours seemed to fly by while she was head-deep in her unsolicited research, and soon enough Agent Philips was standing by her desk, appearing as if from thin air, asking Yolanda whether she was ready to leave the office. The sheriff was so startled that she knocked over her cup, which luckily was empty of coffee, the only reason all of her papers and documents lived to be read another day. She huffed a quick, breathy chuckle, rose from her chair and nodded at the agent. “Yes, of course. I’m good to go.”
Knocking on doors with the FBI was very different to doing so with just herself and Solomon. They just flashed their badges and invited themselves in without any hesitation. Although technically needing a warrant before entering people’s homes, they got away with it, using an effective combination of presence and determination—nobody blocked them or told them to piss off. It didn’t take her long to realize there weren’t as many cellars in the town as she had thought, which was very good news. The FBI was also relatively quick and ruthless in their search, having asked Detective Matthews’ computer guy to give them information about whether the owners had any extra property, as well as comparing each suspect to the fractional license plate number they had.
As there were still several houses left from Yolanda and Solomon’s original search that had spanned fifty miles, they started with those houses, not wanting to exclude them, even though the license number didn’t fit. There could always be other explanations for that. When the clock struck two, she had already been to eleven houses with Agent Johnson, and she was sure the other pair had clocked similar numbers. That meant it wouldn’t take them long to finish the list.
Finally feeling hopeful and excited, she went to lunch, almost contemplating giving up on her own little hunt. She decided, though, to finish her list of engineering companies while enjoying a hamburger at one of the local restaurants. She would then send the emails out after going home from work that night, expecting to get a few answers by the next day. Whether it was a wild goose chase or not, it made her feel better to explore other options rather than spending the evening watching reality TV with her mother.
Looking up to the skies through the greasy windows at the burger joint, she made a cross gesture over her chest. It didn’t come from religious faith but from respect for her own little girl. The one she’d lost that cold winter day who would never, ever come back nor be forgotten. “This world wasn’t for you, my sweet, but maybe, together, we can give the world to somebody else. To another angel, such as yourself. You’ll help me, won’t you?” she whispered to herself, and a faint smile appeared on her lips.
“I’m telling you, that guy has something to hide,” Agent Montello said as he and Agent Philips entered the office together.
“And because I have the patience of a saint, I keep answering you. For the thousandth time, we have no reason to believe he has any skeletons in his closet. I know you didn’t like his lawn décor, but you’ve seriously got to let it go,” Philips replied, obviously getting more than a bit tired of this back and forth.
&n
bsp; “I’m not saying the Confederate flag had anything to do with it. He just, he just felt off,” Montello persisted.
“But was there anything in his cellar? No, we checked. He was also very keen on allowing us to look anywhere we wanted, so I don’t see all this off-ness you speak of.”
“Well, yeah, okay. But there’s such a thing as hidden compartments, false walls and chambers of secret.”
“Of course, and his closet was probably the door to Narnia with his garage leading to Hogwarts. Let’s get on with it already. Mr. Macklemore is not our guy!”
Yolanda didn’t think it strange for Montello to be upset by the Confederate flags displayed all over the state. They were so frequent that it had been a game of hers and Joshua’s to count them all as they travelled, and the one who spotted the most would have to buy the other a beer.
She started wondering why that particular guy had registered in Montello’s mind. Not wanting to leave any stone unturned, she sat down by her computer to do her own digging, but a quick check revealed what seemed like an extremely ordinary, lonely guy who was the owner of a local store. One of those small convenience stores that still existed with one owner who worked around the clock. She wasn’t surprised that he had never quit smoking with such harsh working conditions, which had undoubtedly been the reason he’d developed cancer. It all seemed perfectly legit… perhaps it was just the flag.
She secretly checked her email on her phone and saw that she was starting to get some replies. Her evening had gone into composing and sending emails to the engineering companies. It was extremely time-consuming, as some had contact forms and others had company emails that were hidden somewhere in the About section or buried in the footer at the bottom of the page. She wondered how people could conduct business this way, forcing their clients to play digital Indiana Joneses just to find a way to contact them.
Once she knew whether this was a fool’s errand or not, she planned to let the others know what she was up to, but not just yet. With thousands of engineers in the state, it would be one hell of a lucky break if something were to come out of it. Thankfully, many of the engineers were young people just finishing their degrees, and that would aid in her search as she excluded anybody under the age of thirty-five.
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