by Glen Robins
“I get it. But we’ll keep tabs on her. She won’t suspect a thing. These guys will go completely unnoticed. Trust me.”
“You really think it’s that necessary?”
“Based on what you just told me? Yes, I do. In fact, I think we need to get a team in place right away for her safety. When was the last time you spoke to her.”
“We studied for a physics test together yesterday.”
“What time was that?”
“We had dinner together at her apartment, then she went to the robotics lab to work on her project.”
“Have you talked with her today?”
“No, not yet.”
“OK. Don’t tell her what’s going on but see if you can meet her on campus in an hour.”
“OK. I guess.”
“That way the two of you are in a public place where there are lots of people and it gives me and my team time to hide a couple of cameras in the area around her place. Got it?”
“Yeah.” Lukas pulled out his cell phone and tapped the screen a few times until he heard Theresa’s phone ringing. He put it to his ear, turned away from Mahoney, and walked out into the empty reception area of his utilitarian office. She didn’t answer, so he dialed again. Still, no response. He switched to text and waited, pounding his thigh with his fist as he paced a circle around the glass-topped coffee table.
Mahoney appeared in the doorway. “Not answering, eh?”
“Yeah, it goes straight to voicemail, which is not all that unusual. We try to respect each other’s boundaries. Study time is precious, so neither one of us will allow the phone to interrupt when we’re in the groove. But if I text her and ask if we can meet when she’s done, she’ll usually text back the thumbs up emoji and give me a timeframe.”
“That’ll work.”
“Yeah, but she hasn’t responded yet.” Lukas didn’t wait for a response. He opened another app and waited for it to do its thing. “My locator says she’s at her apartment. Maybe she’s in the shower or something.”
“Why don’t you go over there and check on her. Then take her up to campus. Then text me. I’ll need you to keep her occupied for an hour so we can get things in place. No one will ever suspect a thing. We do this all the time.”
The implications of Mahoney’s last comment rippled through Lukas’s innards like a boulder being dropped in a pond.
Chapter Nine
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
End of Senior Year
By the time Lukas arrived at Theresa’s apartment he was a nervous wreck. He had tried calling again, three times. Straight to voicemail every time. Nor had she responded to his texts. Surely, she would be out of the shower by now, he thought. He knocked on her door. No answer. He tried calling one of her roommates, the nicer one, Alex. No answer.
Something didn’t feel right. He looked through the living room window. The blinds were closed, but he could just make things out enough to know there was no activity inside. The TV was off. No music playing in the background. He couldn’t hear water flowing or voices talking. It was ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. She should have answered or responded.
Because of his conversation with Mahoney, Lukas’s mind went to the darkest imaginable place and refused to be moved from it. He stopped himself fretting and enforced calm so that he could think through possibilities. Maybe she went for a run. But without her phone? That didn’t make sense. Could she be studying on campus? Again, why wouldn’t she have her phone with her?
Lukas decided to try to get a better look through another window. Fortunately, Theresa’s bedroom was on the ground floor, so peering into her room, if the blinds were open, wouldn’t be a problem. Her bedroom was around the corner, at the side of the house, and although he felt creepy, the situation called for him to check in on her. Seeing that the shades were drawn, giving him no visibility inside, he rapped his knuckles on the glass, hoping she was just sleeping. He tried again, more urgently and a little louder. Still no response.
Lukas whipped out his phone and texted Mahoney.
Mahoney responded with, “Have you tried getting inside?”
“No.”
“Do it.”
Theresa shared a recently renovated three-bedroom, two-story townhome with two other girls. It was nothing fancy, but it was cute and clean and only a few blocks from campus. The little townhome had a closed-in back patio with a sliding glass door into the kitchen. The curtains were open, but it was obvious the place was not occupied. He needed to get inside, but he had no idea how to jimmy the glass door open.
Lukas was nothing if not resourceful, especially when the pressure was turned up. He looked at the situation and asked himself what his boyhood hero, MacGyver, would do. It took him eight and a half minutes to run back to his apartment, get a flathead screwdriver, and run back to Theresa’s house. He wedged the flat end of the blade between the door and the jamb and slid it gently until he felt it make contact with the latch. He then wiggled and pressed downward until the latch hook released from the keeper. A flawed design, he thought as he slid the door open.
As soon as he stepped through the long hanging blinds, his stomach dropped. The sliding door opened right into the kitchen/breakfast nook. The counter and sink were on the left, the refrigerator almost straight ahead, and a small table and chairs on the right. The scene before him looked like something out of a cop show.
The apartment smelled clean, but everything was amiss. Theresa, an obsessively neat and organized person, never left things out of place for long. Yet, the kitchen was in a shambles. A half-eaten bowl of yogurt and granola upside down on the kitchen table with most of its contents splattered around. A trail of the milky white culture lay sprayed on the overturned chair. A spoon lay on the floor six feet away.
The knot in Lukas’s stomach tightened.
He could feel the blood draining from his face, so he leaned his hands against his knees and took three deep breaths.
The realization that he was looking at a crime scene hit him like the wind of a polar vortex. Despite his initial emotional response, the logical side of him took control.
Careful not to touch or disturb anything, Lukas stepped over the chair and eased himself down the corridor leading to the living room, the coat closet on the left and the staircase on the right. Theresa’s bedroom door was on his right, just past the bottom step. The door was ajar. He pushed it open with his elbow and poked his head inside. Nothing seemed out of place. The aroma of Theresa’s shower gel hung heavy in the room; the bathroom door having been left open to the bedroom. Thick, humid air laden with the rosy scent greeted him as he entered her bathroom. Water droplets clung to the glass door of the shower and her towel had been neatly draped over the towel rod.
Lukas retraced his steps to the kitchen. As he approached the overturned chair, he saw Theresa’s pink phone case on the floor beneath the table. He retrieved it and noticed his four missed calls and half dozen texts.
The icy wind hit him again as he thought through the ramifications.
Exerting all his energy to remain focused and calm, Lukas fired off another quick text to Mahoney who told him to wipe down anything he had touched, then vacate the premises immediately and without being seen. He advised him to stick around somewhere out of sight and wait for a roommate to return. “Wait a few minutes after she goes in, then go to the door as if you were just arriving. Let the roommate be the one to call the local police.”
Lukas obeyed without hesitation. He used his shirt to wipe his prints from the phone case and the screen, then replaced it exactly how he found it on the floor. Double checking that nothing else had been disturbed, Lukas exited the way he had entered, rubbing his prints off the handle and door frame.
As nonchalant as possible, he closed the gate behind him, checking both ways to see if anyone was watching. They weren’t, so he quickly rounded the corner toward the front door. Still glancing behind him, he was nearly barreled over by Theresa’s roommate, who was bound
ing full-speed down the alley toward their home from the opposite direction. The tight yoga pants and form-fitting athletic shirt with a streak of sweat around the neck, as well as the brightly colored running shoes and the sheen of perspiration on her face, explained where she had been.
“Oh, hey Lukas,” she said between gasps of air. “She expecting you?”
“If she would look at her phone, she would be. I’ve been trying to reach her all morning. Do you know where she is?”
“Last I knew, she was in the shower. She did her run real early this morning, way before I was up.” Alexandra, Alex for short, had the sweet, lilty accent of a true southern bell. She was always pleasant and had a million-dollar smile to match her physique. “She was in there half an hour ago when I left.”
“Hmm,” replied Lukas, trying to act like he knew nothing. “Wonder why she’s not picking up. Maybe she’s sick of me.”
Alex’s countenance lit up as a smile spread across her face. “Yeah, right. That girl is so smitten with you. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Alex fumbled a key from a hidden pocket on the side of her thigh and inserted it in the lock. “Come on in. I’m sure she won’t mind.” As Alex pushed the door open, she called out, “Anyone one home? If so, you’d better get your clothes on. We have a man in the house.”
At her bidding, Lukas followed Alex into the front room. It was just as he’d left it two minutes earlier. Theresa’s bedroom door was still opened slightly, and the faint smell of the shower still permeated the ground floor.
Alex bounced down the corridor and into the kitchen. “Oh my!” she blurted out, her voice two octaves higher and several decibels louder than it had been just a moment before. “Lukas, come in here, would you please?” Alex stood with her hands over her mouth, her eyes taking in everything.
Lukas feigned shock as he beheld anew the scene. His mouth dropped open, his eyes went wide, and his words caught in his mouth. As he surveyed the scene for the second time, he was much more aware of some of the details, like a smudge of something, perhaps yogurt, on the wall near the closet door and a small streak of blood on the carpet, running near the wall below the staircase. “Listen, Alex. Don’t touch anything. We need to call the police.”
It took Lukas a minute to get Alex calm enough to speak. With her hands out, palms to the ground, she twisted her neck to one side, then the other, as if to reduce the tension. “Ok. I get it. I watch CSI all the time. I know a potential crime scene when I see one. I ain’t touching nothing,” Her voice was almost back to its normal pitch, except for the lingering quaver.
“Good. We need to stay calm and let the police handle this. I’m sure they’ll be able to help.”
Alex fished her phone out of her bra and dialed 9-1-1. As she reported what she beheld and what she thought had happened her voice grew frantic again. “I think it’s that creepy Asian guy,” she added at the end.
Hearing those words sent another ice-cold wave of fear through Lukas’s system. After Alex ended the call, he asked, “What Asian guy are you talking about?”
“She said he was a friend of yours—someone you know from some club or something.” Alex said the words, but her mind was clearly someplace else.
“Has he been here often?”
“Not real often, but probably three or four times in the past week. Often enough, I guess, to qualify as a low-key stalker.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“I’m sure she didn’t want you to worry or be mad.”
Chapter Ten
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
End of Senior Year
Lukas and Alex patiently answered all of the Cambridge police detectives’ questions over the course of two hours. When the crime scene investigators arrived, they took photos of every square inch of the main floor and several of the outside of the building. They looked at footprints in the back courtyard and dusted for fingerprints everywhere. Lukas and Alex gave detailed statements, answering dozens of questions each. The third roommate arrived around noon and told the police she had not been home since the prior morning, having spent the day on campus and the night with “a friend.” She had alibis and would gladly provide them. Her reaction was genuine, so the police did not bother probing for more details from her.
Lukas had his suspicions about what had happened but kept them to himself. He wasn’t about to reveal his involvement with the NSA or his spying on Penh, knowing either of those details could send the police on a goose chase. The extra activity and questioning would only serve to alert Penh, who was like a cobra. Noise and commotion in the distance would send him underground, but close contact would cause him to strike. The most likely recipient of such a lethal strike at this moment would be Theresa, since she was almost certainly the closest in proximity. Lukas knew he had to stay calm and figure out a tactical approach.
The hours the investigators took to inspect the scene and interview Lukas and Theresa’s two roommates were excruciating. He couldn’t leave and couldn’t make a phone call or send a text for fear of having to answer more questions about it. But the need to talk to Mahoney and start working on tracking down Penh were burning a hole in him. The nervous energy made him antsy. As he sat waiting for them to finish, he exerted a conscious effort to stop his legs from bobbing up and down and to prevent his hands from pounding the sofa. Too much of that kind of anxiety would make him seem guilty.
When the police finally wrapped up their crime scene investigation and told Lukas he was free to go, he barely remembered to say goodbye to Alex and Beth. Rushing out the door and down the street, he looked for a place where he could talk to Mahoney without anyone hearing him. He headed to Dana Park a few blocks away. There, he dialed Mahoney on his secure cell number. “She’s gone. I don’t know where, but I would bet she’s with Penh. The roommate just informed me that he’s been stopping by a lot this last week and creeping them out.”
“We’re way ahead of you, Lukas.”
“What? How?”
“Nothing to worry about. We’ve just been monitoring the police radio communication, so we know they’re treating this as a missing person’s case. We know they’ve been talking to you and the two other girls. And they suspect Penh is involved, as do we.”
“OK. That’s … interesting. What are you going to do about it?”
“Well, that’s where our abilities are a bit hampered. Penh, as you know, is a wily guy. He’s smart, he’s cautious nearly to the point of paranoia, and he’s got money. That’s a dangerous combination. He covers his tracks well and slips past surveillance like a pro.”
“Surveillance? You’ve had him under surveillance? How long?”
“A long time, Lukas. We’ve had an eye on this guy for a long time.”
“So, if you’re watching him, how could he have gotten to Theresa?”
“Like I said, he’s crafty. Besides, I don’t have the budget to have people on him 24/7, you know. We monitor his movements as best we can with the resources we have, like you. But nothing’s foolproof, especially with a guy as security conscious as him. We know he left his apartment early this morning, went to the computer lab, went out to breakfast, and went back to the lab. Seemed pretty normal and innocuous. We never saw him leave the lab, but when all this activity erupted at Theresa’s apartment, we sent someone in. He was gone. No trace of him anywhere.”
Lukas put his hand to his forehead as he sat at a picnic bench under a canopy. “So, he just disappeared?”
“I guess you could say that, yes.”
“He could be anywhere in the Boston area and there’s no way to trace him or track him, is there?”
“Nope. He doesn’t own a cell phone. He uses burners.”
“And without her phone, we have no way to trace Theresa’s location, either.” Lukas was growing more and more nervous. His heart was both racing and sinking at the same time. His whole body felt heavy, yet he was energized like never before.
“What can the NSA do in a situation like t
his? What sort of resources do you have to protect her?”
“Lukas, you need to understand that our primary goal is to detect and protect against terrorist attacks. Our resources are related to terrorist activities, not crime investigation or traditional detective work, including your typical stake out type surveillance. That’s the FBI’s area of expertise. We can turn this over to them, but…”
“But what? You sound like you don’t want to do that.”
“No, I don’t. Not that the FBI isn’t capable, but because Penh is so paranoid. Agents in suits and with badges asking questions and snooping around won’t help us—or her—at this point. Plus, it’ll take too long to get them involved.”
“Then what can we do?”
“We are monitoring all of his known communication channels. We know of several blind email accounts and discussion boards that he uses. If anything pops up on any of those, we’ll be on it.”
“But what good will that do? That won’t help us find Theresa or rescue her from whatever he’s got planned.”
“I’m afraid you’re right. Finding someone as clever as him when he doesn’t want to be found is nearly impossible. We can only look for clues and hope those clues lead us to his lair. Short of that, we’re in the dark despite all of our technological tools and tactics.”
Chapter Eleven
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Graduation Day
Graduation day had arrived, but Lukas was in no mood to celebrate. In fact, he was tempted to skip the whole thing and spend the day wallowing in misery. Not knowing where Theresa was or what was happening to her was unbearable. It pained every nerve ending and deadened every cause for joy. He felt guilty and responsible for her disappearance and for whatever horrors she might be experiencing. Despite the clear blue June sky outside, dark clouds of turmoil and anguish gathered in Lukas’s heart and mind.
Five days had passed since anyone had seen or heard from her. Due to the length of time she had been missing and the high probability that she had been taken out of the state, the FBI had been summoned and now led the investigation. Theresa’s parents had arrived, too. The worry and fear on their faces only added to Lukas’s despair. Theresa’s picture was broadcast on the evening news. A website and a toll-free number were set up to disperse information about the case and collect any available clues, sightings, or suspicions.