Malik held his gaze for a long, tense moment. Then he shrugged, winking at Althea. “My bad.”
Chapter 23
When Damien and Althea returned to the office, the fax they had been waiting for was lying on her desk. Before Althea could pick it up, Damien reached around her and snatched it away.
“Hey!” she protested. “That was addressed to me!”
In the cubicle beside her, another agent—a young Hispanic man named Anival Gonzalez—was talking quietly on the phone. He shot Althea a dirty look and put his finger to his lips.
“Sorry, Ani,” Althea muttered, following Damien down the aisle to his cubicle on the opposite end of the bull pen. “That was my fax, Wade.”
Without breaking stride, Damien said, “My case. My fax.”
“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Reaching his cubicle—seniority had afforded him one of the largest cubicles of the twelve agents assigned to the VCMO squad—Damien sat at his cluttered desk and grabbed the phone receiver to check his voice mail messages.
When Althea tried to grab the printout from his hand, he held it out of her reach. Scowling, she plunked down in the visitor chair, impatiently folded her arms, and glared daggers into him.
Winking at her, Damien slid his chair all the way back against the far wall of the cubicle and stretched out one leg, a negligent pose that masked the tension and anger that had been running through his veins ever since they left the fire hall.
Something had come over him when he stumbled upon Althea and Malik Toomer in the vending area. Damien had been searching all over the building for her and had even started to worry until a police officer tapped him on the shoulder and told him that Althea had taken Malik Toomer into the back to get away from reporters. As Damien neared the vending area, he’d overheard the basketball star promising to fly Althea to exotic locales aboard his private jet. Althea had laughingly turned him down, citing her involvement in the kidnapping investigation. But Damien had heard a note of something in her voice—temptation, regret—that made his gut clench. When he reached them and found Toomer holding her hand, he’d been seized by a vicious urge to march across the room and slam his fist into the other man’s face, felling him like a tree. It didn’t matter that Toomer had a good three inches on him. Growing up in one of the roughest neighborhoods in East Baltimore, Damien had spent his childhood fighting kids who were bigger and stronger, and he’d held his own. Toomer, who was skinny, would be no match for Damien, especially with so much rage fueling him.
The thought of Althea having dinner with her old boyfriend—let alone boarding a private jet with him for a romantic getaway—struck Damien hard, awakening feelings of jealousy and protectiveness he would have denied possessing just a week earlier. He’d never felt this territorial over any woman before, not even his own wife, and with her wild, partying ways, Angelique had given him plenty of reasons to be jealous. But not even the fury he’d felt when he suspected her of cheating could compare to the turbulent emotions roiling through him now. His possessiveness toward Althea was totally out of proportion to the short amount of time he’d known her, yet he couldn’t seem to rein it in.
Althea had spent the ride back to the office making calls on her cell phone, leaving Damien to stew in his own juices, a potent blend of anger and confusion.
He’d taken perverse satisfaction in making her angry when he snatched the fax off her desk. Which was part of the reason he’d done it. To get back at her a little, petty though it was.
While he listened to a series of voice mail messages, he watched her. She was beautiful, innocently provocative as she tugged her lush bottom lip between her teeth and crossed her long, shapely legs covered in stretch denim. Even the way she was glaring at him through those dark, sultry eyes turned him on.
And he couldn’t have her—except in his dreams.
Damien scowled to himself.
Maybe Angelique was right. Maybe he was pathetic.
Ruthlessly shoving the thought aside, he finished listening to his voice mail messages and hung up the phone.
Althea pounced. “What was that crack you made about ‘My case. My fax’? I thought you told me you don’t play power games.”
Damien shrugged. “So I lied.” He grabbed a pen and stood with the printout in his hand. “Come on. Let’s grab the conference room, and we can go over the transcripts together.”
She muttered something unintelligible under her breath as she followed him out of the cubicle.
Once inside the conference room, they sat at the table and divided the pages. Damien took the messages sent by James Odem, while Althea took Claire’s messages. To make the task easier, they decided to read aloud to each other, in chronological order.
As Odem had stated during the interrogation, Claire made the first contact on Sunday, September 7, leaving a friendly comment on his profile page about how much she’d enjoyed learning about John Coltrane and sampling his music. Odem had promptly responded, thanking her for the feedback and encouraging her to visit the page often for updates and new music downloads.
“Innocent enough,” Althea remarked when they’d finished reading the first message exchange.
Damien grunted noncommittally.
But as they continued reading, it became apparent that James Odem had been telling the truth about the way his online relationship with Claire had unfolded. They spoke about music, their favorite places and restaurants in Baltimore, and the most interesting countries they had ever visited, both delighted to discover how well traveled the other person was. Claire talked about her classes and shared her goal of becoming a doctor, and Odem offered a wealth of advice about preparing for medical school and choosing a specialty. All perfectly harmless. Innocent.
Until Claire began to divulge more personal information about herself. And then the conversations took on a slightly different tone. Flirtatious, edgy.
Althea read aloud, “‘I’m not embarrassed to tell people I’ve had my boobs done. I think the surgeons did an amazing job. I wonder if you’d be impressed with their work. You know, professionally speaking.’”
Damien said, “Odem wrote back: ‘Don’t tempt me. LOL.’”
“‘Are you tempted?’”
“‘I’d have to be crazy not to be.’”
“‘Hmm. What else tempts you?’”
“‘Nothing I should be telling a seventeen-year-old girl. LOL.’”
“‘LOL. I’ve been thinking how much I would enjoy a tour of the new surgery wing at Mercy Harbor. Maybe that would help me decide on a specialty. Do you give tours, Dr. Odem?’”
“‘Of course. I squeeze in as many as I can between surgeries.’”
“‘Sorry. Guess that was a dumb question.’”
“‘The first one you’ve asked so far. LOL. But, seriously, your dad has donated a boatload of money to the hospital. I’m sure he could arrange a private tour for you.’”
The next day, Claire responded: “‘LMIRL.’”
“‘I’m going to show my age here, Claire. What did your last message mean?’”
“‘LOL. Sorry. I said let’s meet in real life. I think you’re a really nice guy and cool to talk to. I thought it would be great if we got together sometime.’”
Damien read Odem’s response: “‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.’”
“‘Okay. Forget it. Sorry I asked.’”
“‘I hope you’re not mad. I didn’t mean to offend you.’”
“‘It’s cool. We don’t have to meet.’”
Two days passed with no e-mail communication. And then on September 17, Odem sent a message. But there must have been a glitch on the server, because the content was scrambled.
Althea glanced up from her printout, frowning at Damien. “What do you mean ‘scrambled’?”
Damien slid the sheet over for her inspection. Her frown deepened as she studied the message. “It looks like gibberish. The JavaScript must have gotten corrupted or something.”
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Damien flipped through the remaining pages. “None of the other messages are like that.”
Althea quickly checked her printout. “Neither are mine.” Again she frowned. “It looks like they didn’t correspond too much after that. They exchanged, what, four or five messages after that. I see where she responded to his message about the Coltrane song ‘Equinox.’ She downloaded it, as he recommended, and wrote back to tell him she really liked it. Over the next two weeks, they reverted back to sharing generalities and making small talk.” She glanced up at Damien. “Do you think that’s because Claire’s feelings were hurt because he turned down her invitation to meet in person?”
Damien shook his head, bent over the scrambled message. “No, I think it’s because they were already e-mailing each other through a different account.”
“What did he say to her on that last message? The one he sent on October 2—the day before she disappeared?”
Damien glanced at the last page and muttered distractedly, “‘Hope you enjoy the program at Johns Hopkins. Hope it’s very informative.’”
Althea hummed a thoughtful note, turning possibilities over in her mind.
But Damien had returned his attention to the scrambled message. As he scrutinized the jumbled script, his nerve endings tightened and his skin prickled the way it did whenever he sensed he was onto something.
And suddenly he knew why.
“It’s a code,” he announced, his voice shattering the silence of the room.
Althea stared at him. “What?”
“He sent her an encrypted message. You’ve heard of e-mail cryptography, right?”
“Yeah. That’s where you send encrypted messages to specific users.”
“Right. Most e-mail cryptography uses a digital certificate system where a computer generates two keys—a public key and a private key. Either of these can be used to scramble information. The keys are opposite; anything scrambled with a public key can only be unscrambled with a private key, and vice versa. When you set up e-mail crypto, you have your computer generate a public and private key. You can give out the public key to anyone you want, say through your Web site, but you keep the private key and protect it with a strong password. So if you want to send me a message, and you want to make sure only I can read it, you use my public key to scramble the message.”
Althea nodded slowly, her lips pursed. “I’m following you.”
Damien continued, “Social networking sites like MyDomain aren’t set up to support cryptography programs, for safety reasons. So Odem had to basically mimic the technology by creating his own scrambled message to Claire. To the naked eye it just looks like corrupted JavaScript, like what you might see in a spam e-mail. But if you look closely, you see that there’s a keystroke pattern. Six symbols followed by three numbers and then a letter, and so on. A bit amateurish, but my guess is that he kept it simple enough for Claire to understand, but maybe not her father if he was snooping through her messages.”
Looking intrigued, Althea slid her chair closer, pulling up beside Damien. He laid the page on the table between them, reached for his pen, and began circling all the letters contained in the message.
When he’d finished, a note emerged: Open a private e-mail account so we can talk more freely. I’m at [email protected].
“Son of a bitch,” Althea breathed. “So that’s how he did it.”
Damien nodded, his lips curved in a grim parody of a smile. “I don’t know whether to be amused or insulted that while he assumed a seventeen-year-old girl would be able to solve his little riddle, he didn’t think we could. He obviously doesn’t have a very high opinion of those in law enforcement.”
Althea gave a wry laugh. “He’s a brain surgeon. He probably doesn’t have a very high opinion of anyone. But this time the joke’s on him. We’ve got him dead to rights on knowingly and willfully making a false statement to police. He lied to you about not exchanging e-mail addresses with Claire. What else is he lying about?”
“That’s a damn good question.” Damien shoved back his chair and surged to his feet. “I’m calling Mayhew right now. I think it’s time we make a little trip to Mercy Harbor to get reacquainted with the good doctor.”
After Damien left to meet Detective Mayhew at the police station, Althea returned to her desk and got on the Internet. She pulled up the Web site for the U.S. Senate, a site she’d already bookmarked, and accessed the home page for Republican Senator Rich Horton. Typical of most senators’ sites, there were links for constituent services, congressional issues relevant to the senator, news and press releases, a biography page, and a page dedicated to highlighting his home state of Tennessee. Althea went to the photo gallery and scrolled through images of the white-haired senator posing with the president and various foreign dignitaries and prominent businessmen until she found what she was looking for. A photo of Horton flanked by his congressional aides on the steps of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. Althea didn’t need the caption below the picture to identify Courtney Reese; she was the only female in the group.
Althea studied her for a moment, surprised to realize that Courtney was biracial, with pale honey-toned skin, large hazel eyes, generous lips and dark, shoulder-length hair that had the telltale wavy thickness of a person of African-American descent. She looked smart and successful in a pinstriped navy skirt suit and Dolce & Gabbana peep-toe pumps.
Why, Althea wondered idly, had Claire asked Courtney Reese about being with a black man when it was clear that at least one of Courtney’s parents was black? Why hadn’t Courtney been offended by the question?
Just because she may be half-black doesn’t mean she dates black men, Althea reminded herself.
She returned to the home page and jotted down the phone number to Senator Horton’s office. She’d decided to call Courtney Reese in lieu of showing up on Capitol Hill unannounced. It would take Althea more than an hour to reach the District, and with her busy schedule, she didn’t want to take a chance on driving all the way out there, only to be told that Courtney was in meetings all day.
When a secretary answered the phone, Althea asked for Courtney Reese and was told that the congressional aide was unavailable at the moment.
“This is Special Agent Althea Pritchard, with the FBI. It’s very important that I speak to Ms. Reese.”
The secretary hesitated. “Please hold.”
Althea was transferred to another line. A moment later a young woman answered in brisk, cultured tones, “This is Courtney Reese.”
Althea suddenly realized she hadn’t finalized what she was going to say to Courtney. She’d have to wing it. “Hello, Ms. Reese. My name is Althea Pritchard, and I’m with—”
“I know who you are. You’re Senator Pritchard’s niece.”
“Yes.” Althea paused, wondering if she’d only imagined the note of cool reserve in the other woman’s voice. “Do you know my uncle?”
“I’ve worked with him on different legislation, and I’ve heard him speak very fondly of you before. What can I do for you, Ms. Pritchard?”
“I’m investigating Claire Thorndike’s abduction, and I wanted to ask you a few questions. I understand that you and Claire were friends?”
“That’s right. I met her through her mother, Madison Thorndike. Claire’s a wonderful girl. I was very sorry to hear what happened to her. We’re all praying for her safe return.”
“We’re doing everything we can to find her,” Althea said. “Which is why I’m calling you. I was hoping you might be able to tell me what you know about Claire’s relationship with James Odem.”
“The man she met online?”
“Yes. Through MyDomain.”
“Do you think he kidnapped her?”
“We’re considering all possibilities,” Althea said neutrally.
On the other end, Courtney expelled a long, shaky breath. “I knew it was a bad idea for her to meet that guy. She sent me a text message a couple of weeks ago, then called me later to
fill me in on the details. I didn’t like the way she was sneaking around to talk to him. He had her open a new e-mail account so they could ‘talk dirty to each other’ as much as they wanted.”
“Is that what he said or she said?”
“That’s what he said to her. He wouldn’t let her e-mail or IM him from home, and he absolutely refused to give her his home or cell phone number. It didn’t sound right to me. It sounded suspicious. I kept asking her if he was married, but she said no.”
“You said she was sneaking around to talk to him. Did she tell you where she was e-mailing him?”
“She went to the public library.”
“Which one?” Althea demanded, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice. She had to call Damien.
“The one closest to her home, I believe. She goes there pretty often to check out books for school projects. But she told me that whenever she went to the library to e-mail that doctor, she’d wear a baseball cap and dark sunglasses, sometimes even a wig, just so the librarians wouldn’t recognize her.” Courtney sounded angry and exasperated. “All that cloak-and-dagger nonsense was exciting to her, like she was having one big adventure. I half jokingly told her that was the problem with spoiled, white, rich kids living out in the boonies—too much damn time on their hands to get into trouble. Anyway, I made it clear to Claire that I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to meet that guy, but she insisted it was okay. She kept saying how nice he was, how smart and successful. And he passed the background check, so that put her mind at ease.”
“When was the last time you spoke to Claire?”
“Wednesday. October 1. I called to ask her whether she still planned to go through with the date. She said yes and told me not to worry, that she would be okay.” Courtney gave a short, bitter laugh. “Little did she know.”
Althea said quietly, “Did she tell you whether they were planning to go out anywhere?”
“No. They were having dinner at the house. She had a very romantic evening planned.”
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