The Vanishing Point

by Val McDermid

  ‘Somebody kidnapped my boy,’ she said, urgency tumbling her words together. ‘You need to sound the alert. Tell the cops. Whatever it is you do when a stranger steals a kid.’

  Parton kept up the stony stare. ‘What is your name?’ he said. Stephanie recognised the tight twang of New England in his speech.

  ‘My name? Stephanie Harker. But that’s not important. What’s important—’

  ‘We decide what’s important round here.’ Parton straightened his shoulders inside his neatly ironed shirt. ‘And what’s important right now is that you are a security risk.’

  ‘That’s crazy. I’m the victim here.’

  ‘From where I’m standing, my officer is the victim here. The officer you assaulted in your attempt to escape the security screening area before you could be searched. After you had set off the metal detector.’ Behind him, Stephanie could see the woman shift from one foot to the other, as if she was uncomfortable in the moment.

  ‘I set off the metal detector because I have a metal plate and three screws in my left leg. I was in a bad car accident ten years ago. I always set off the detectors.’

  ‘And as of now we have no way of determining the truth of that. Now what we need to establish before we go any further is that you are no risk to my country or my team. We require that you submit to a thorough search.’

  Stephanie felt pressure building up inside her head, as if a blood vessel was about to burst behind her eyes. ‘This is crazy. What are my rights here?’

  ‘It’s not my job to inform you of your legal rights. It’s my job to maintain airport security.’

  ‘So why aren’t you searching for the kidnapper who stole my son? Jesus Christ.’

  ‘There’s no need for language like that. For all I know this story of a kidnap is an elaborate ruse. I’m still waiting for you to confirm you will submit to a thorough body search.’

  ‘I’m confirming nothing till you start dealing with what has happened to Jimmy, you idiot. Where’s your boss? I want to talk to someone in authority here. Get these handcuffs off me. I want a lawyer.’

  Parton’s lips compressed in a tight smile that had nothing to do with humour. ‘Non-US citizens selected for a longer interview generally do not have the right to an attorney.’ There was more than a hint of triumph in his voice.

  The woman officer cleared her throat and took a step forward. Lia Lopez, according to her name badge. ‘Randall, she’s talking about an abducted kid. She has the right to an attorney if we’re asking her about anything other than immigration status or security.’

  Parton swung his head round portentously, as if it were as heavy as a bowling ball. ‘Which, as of right now, we are not doing, Lopez.’ He held the glare for a long moment then turned back to Stephanie. ‘You need to confirm your consent,’ he repeated.

  ‘Am I legally required to submit to a search?’ It had dawned on Stephanie that if this idiot wasn’t going to listen to her, somehow she had to get in front of someone who would. And quickly.

  ‘Are you refusing to confirm?’

  ‘No, I’m seeking clarification. Am I legally obliged to submit to a search? Or can I refuse?’

  ‘You’re not helping yourself here.’ There was a pale pink flush on Parton’s cheeks, as if he’d been out in a cold wind.

  ‘I don’t know the law here. As you have already noticed, I am not a US citizen. I’m simply trying to establish what my rights are.’

  Parton’s head jutted forward, aggressive as a farmyard rooster. ‘You’re refusing to confirm your consent to a search? Right?’

  ‘Do you actually know the law? Do you actually know what my rights are? I want to talk to someone in authority, someone who knows what’s what.’

  ‘Listen, lady. You wanna play smartass, I’m not going to play your game. If you don’t give me the answers I’m looking for, the next person you’ll be talking to will be from the FBI. And that’s a whole other ball game.’ He pushed back from the table and turned to Lopez. ‘What have we got on her ID?’

  Lopez muttered something into her radio and turned away. Parton spoke again, obscuring the other conversation. ‘Like I said, you’re not helping yourself here. You assaulted one of my officers. That’s all we know. Nobody witnessed any incident. Nobody reported a child being abducted. All I know, lady, is that you just went crazy on us. Why the hell did you break out of the box? Why did you assault that officer?’

  Answering that question once had achieved nothing. There was no reason to suppose that repeating herself would take them any further forward. If she could have folded her arms across her chest, that’s what Stephanie would have done. There was no available body language for her to convey ‘enough’. She swallowed her panic, cocked her head and met his eye. ‘Am I legally obliged to answer that question?’

  Exasperated, Parton slapped his hands on the tabletop. Lopez moved forward and said, ‘She entered the US half an hour ago here in Chicago. She came in on a flight from London Heathrow.’ She cleared her throat. ‘She was accompanied by a minor child.’

  The silence expanded to fill the space available. In a voice cold with rage, Stephanie said, ‘Now can we get a real law-enforcement official in here?’

  3

  Parton’s bluster did not survive Lopez’s information. He ordered the cuffs to be removed, but couldn’t resist barking at her. ‘Keep your hands out of your pockets. And don’t use your phone.’

  ‘I don’t have my phone. It’s in a plastic box with all the other stuff that went through the X-ray machine. Which presumably includes Jimmy’s backpack. All you had to do to establish I was telling the truth was to take a look at what was sitting on the scanner belt.’ Stephanie didn’t even try to hide her disdain.

  Parton said nothing more on his way out of the room. Lopez gave her a rueful smile. ‘Is he going to get someone in here who can do something about my child being kidnapped?’ Stephanie demanded, rubbing her wrists.

  Lopez looked away as the door opened. A TSA officer brought two grey plastic trays into the room and dropped them on the floor. Stephanie could see that one contained her carry-on bag, while the other held her jacket, shoes, toiletries in clear plastic for easy examination and the assorted jumble of items from pockets. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘There should be another. With Jimmy’s backpack and his hoodie.’

  The officer shrugged one shoulder. ‘That’s all there is.’ He closed the door behind him.

  The absence of Jimmy’s possessions sent a fresh shiver of fear through Stephanie. Somehow, that spoke of chilling calculation, a targeted move rather than a spontaneous random selection. She had never been more aware of time passing. ‘Does nobody have any sense of urgency round here?’ she demanded. ‘Do you have children? Would you not be losing your mind if somebody kidnapped your child and nobody paid any attention?’

  Lopez looked uncomfortable. ‘You have to be patient. We’ve got a job to do and it’s got a very narrow focus. We’re obliged to act inside tight limits. And I shouldn’t even be talking to you.’

  Stephanie put her head in her hands. ‘Every minute that passes, Jimmy’s in danger. I promised . . . I promised . . . ’ Her voice stuck in her throat. Her fear and rage couldn’t maintain their adrenalin-fuelled level for ever. Now it was her sense of failure that choked her. She’d given her word. And it seemed her word was worthless.

  Being posted to the Chicago Field Office had felt like a promotion to Special Agent Vivian McKuras. But when they sent her out on permanent attachment to the office at the airport, she understood that she was actually being punished for the sins of her previous boss. Jeff was now serving time in a federal penitentiary for his novel methods of funding his gambling addiction. She’d known there was something off with him, but she’d thought it was to do with his marriage, not a surreptitious arrangement with the local mob. A fine detective she’d turned out to be.

  To an outsider, the airport posting might have looked like a plum job, out there on the front line against the terrorists seeki
ng to undermine the American way of life. The perfect place for an agent to redeem herself, to show she was really a class act. The reality was about as unglamorous as it could get. Most of the people pulled out of the line by the TSA were about as close to terrorists as her grandmother. On second thoughts, that wasn’t such a great analogy. Her grandmother could get pretty fired up these days about Scottish independence. Never mind that she’d left Rutherglen when she was five months old.

  The problem for Vivian McKuras was boredom. Every interview she’d carried out as the result of a TSA stop had been entirely pointless. Mostly she’d known within three minutes that the men, women and children detained for her attention were, in terms of the security of the state, entirely harmless. Disabled veterans, the incontinent elderly and the Sikh with the black plastic copy of a ceremonial dagger were not going to hijack a plane or raze the airport to the ground. And on the few occasions when she thought further investigation was merited, protocol required that she bring the Chicago office into the circle. Her potential suspect would be whisked off for questioning by officers who had fewer black marks on their record than she.

  The tedium was killing her. So many times in the past weeks she’d stood in the shower composing her letter of resignation from the Bureau. But always she came back to the practicalities. What else could she do for a living? There was a recession on. Nobody was hiring. They especially weren’t hiring people who had no vocational training. Five years in the FBI didn’t qualify you for anything except more of the same. And more of the same was precisely what she didn’t want.

  And now, just to make her day complete, Randall Parton was walking through her office door. Vivian had tried not to let the instinctive dislike she’d taken to Parton interfere with their professional relationship. But it was hard, given the perfect storm of arrogance and stupidity that had been obvious at their first encounter and at every one since.

  ‘Agent McKuras,’ he said with a sharp nod of greeting. He always managed to make it clear that the lack of respect between them was mutual.

  ‘What do you need from me today, Officer Parton?’ Vivian smiled sweetly, knowing it killed him that she was the one with the power to do anything more than prevent someone getting on a plane.

  Parton eyed the visitor chair opposite her desk, torn as always between the desire to sit down without waiting for an invitation that was never going to come and the need to tower over her. ‘We got us a crazy woman. She set off the metal detector, an officer put her in the box to wait for a female assist. We were running a little slow on the box, you know how busy it gets this time of day.’

  ‘I know,’ Vivian said, wishing she didn’t. Wishing this airport and all its internal workings were a mystery to her.

  ‘Out of nowhere, she launches herself out of the box.’ Parton sounded defensive, a man who expected to find himself in the wrong sooner or later. ‘Officers go to intercept her but she’s not ready to be stopped. Next thing is, I’ve got an officer down with a busted nose, blood everywhere and she’s still going forward, yelling something that makes no sense to any of my guys.’

  ‘She’s not speaking English?’

  Parton’s mouth quirked to one side to show his distaste. ‘She’s English all right, but nobody can make out what she’s yelling. So they taser her, like they’re supposed to when they’re met with violent resistance. She goes down but she gets right back up. Like a crazy person. So they zap her with a longer blast and this time she stays down till they cuff her. Lopez took her down to the interview room.’

  Vivian felt a moment’s relief. Lia Lopez might be Parton’s junior, but she had more sense than the rest of her shift put together. ‘Good move,’ she said.

  ‘So that’s when I get called in. And that’s where it gets complicated.’

  ‘Complicated how?’

  ‘For a start, she’s a smartass. Every time I ask her a question, she just harps on about whether she’s legally obliged. Running me around in circles. And then she starts in about how her kid’s been kidnapped. Now, we got no alert in the zone. Nobody saw any kid being abducted. The only unusual thing in my area this afternoon was this crazy-ass woman breaking out of the box. So I was disinclined to take her seriously. I thought she was trying to distract us from doing the search on her that we should be doing.’ Now his chin was up, his self-righteousness to the fore.

  ‘I can see why you might think that way.’ If you were an idiot. ‘So where are we up to now? You want me to talk to her? Get her to agree to a search?’

  Parton folded his arms across his chest. ‘It’s gotten more complicated. Lopez got her name from her passport and checked with Immigration. Turns out she did have a kid with her when she arrived at the border earlier this afternoon.’

  ‘And the kid is missing now?’ Now he had Vivian’s full attention. Whatever this was, it wasn’t the run-of-the-mill that had ground her down.

  Parton nodded. ‘Looks like it.’ His mouth did the wry twist again. ‘And here’s the thing. She’s not the mother. She brought the kid in with British court documents giving her authority to travel with him. So who knows what the fuck is going on here.’

  The sudden rush of adrenalin galvanised Vivian as nothing had for months. ‘Jeez, Parton. We’re going to have to call a Code Adam.’ She reached for the phone, wondering who she should phone first when it came to closing down the world’s busiest airport.

  Shamefaced, Parton half-turned his head away. ‘It’s too late to go to lockdown. We didn’t understand what was happening fast enough. They’ll be long gone. You can check the footage if you don’t believe me. You really don’t want to call a Code Adam unless you’re sure they’re still on the premises.’

  Vivian took his point. That would be a fast way to end her career. She gave a short, sharp sigh and hit the rarely used speed-dial button for the airport CCTV control centre. Parton, looking offended, started to speak but she held up a finger to silence him. ‘Hey,’ she said when the controller answered. ‘This is Special Agent McKuras in the FBI office. I need you to send me the feed for the last hour from—’

  ‘Security area two, terminal three.’ Parton was eager now, sensing that Vivian’s actions might get him off an awkward hook.

  Vivian repeated the details and reminded the controller of her computer ID. She hung up and attacked her keyboard, fingers deft and fast. Strictly speaking, she should bring in one of her colleagues to watch the footage with her. But the two men she shared the airport posting with inhabited a cubbyhole office in the international terminal. She didn’t want to wait for one of them to drag himself over. If there had been a kidnap, every minute counted, especially since they’d been too slow off the mark to call a Code Adam. Besides, she had a ready-made witness in the room, however low her opinion of him. She looked up at Parton. ‘We’ll have a better idea of what we’re dealing with now. Why don’t you bring the chair round where you can see my screen? Two pairs of eyes are better than one.’

  Parton grabbed the chair and angled it by the corner of the desk so he could see the screen. He sat down, stretching his long legs out and folding his arms across his chest. A whiff of laundry detergent and fried meat caught her throat and without thinking she drew away from him. He caught her movement and grunted, tucking his legs under the chair to take up less space. ‘It’s a great system,’ he said. ‘When it works.’

  ‘Let’s hope this is one of those days,’ Vivian muttered, clicking her mouse button to open up a new window. She was offered a choice of three cameras that covered the security area. ‘Which one?’

  Parton leaned forward, a long bony finger extended. ‘That one. The middle one.’

  Vivian checked her watch. ‘How long ago did this happen?’

  ‘About twenty minutes ago.’

  She pulled up the camera feed and scrolled back twenty-five minutes then set it running. They watched in silence for a couple of minutes. Then a woman and child walked into shot, filling the plastic trays on the far side of the metal detector. ‘
That’s her,’ Parton said.

  ‘And that boy is definitely with her.’ Vivian paused the recording and studied the pair. The woman looked taller than average. Around five nine, maybe. Mid-brown hair in an untidy jaw-length bob. Striking looks, with high cheekbones, a square chin, a wide mouth caught in a smile as she looked at the boy. She looked like she had that English-rose colouring, all pink and white. The kid had a thick mop of black hair, olive skin, cheeks like apricots. He was all arms and legs, wiry and clumsy like a foal in one of those sentimental race-horse movies. He didn’t look like he’d sprung from her genes. And yet there was no denying it. ‘They’re together, Parton.’

  ‘Shit.’

  They watched the boy move through the metal detector and over to the far side of the X-ray machine where their possessions would reappear on the delivery belt. He looked over his shoulder towards the woman, who smiled and gave him the thumbs-up sign as she entered the box to wait for a female officer to pat her down. So far, so good. Vivian realised she was holding her breath, as if she was watching a thriller.

  A few seconds passed. The boy shuffled from one foot to the other; the woman watched him. Then a man dressed in what appeared to be a TSA uniform shirt and black trousers appeared from the concourse and approached the boy. Just before he reached him, Vivian paused the video. ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’

  ‘He’s wearing a ball cap,’ Parton said without hesitation. ‘That’s not uniform issue. We don’t wear headgear.’

  ‘And he’s wearing the one kind of headgear guaranteed to obscure your face when you’re dealing with overhead cameras.’ Vivian set the video running again.

  ‘He’s not one of my team. No way.’ Parton unfolded his arms and clenched his fists.

  The man walked straight up to the boy and put a hand on his back. The boy looked up and nodded. The man in the TSA uniform picked up a backpack from one of the plastic boxes then ushered the boy away from the belt and towards the concourse. The effect on the woman was electrifying. As soon as the man put a hand on the boy, she started moving. They’d barely cleared the end of the scanner conveyor belt when she was out of the plastic box.