by Ben Miller
The other two bloggers did not have any identifiable markers on their blogs, at least not that Amanda could find. She called one of her colleagues in CASMIRC’s internet crime division, a skilled IT specialist named Matt. She either couldn’t remember his last name, or had never actually learned it. Or he had only one name—one could never know with some of these hackers who spent more time in virtual reality than in reality reality. Matt promised her that he would carve out a few minutes later in the afternoon to take a look at her request.
Not long after Amanda had hung up with Matt, Lonny White called back. After speaking with nearly everyone at Peter Gabriel’s management team and his publishing company, including Mr. Gabriel himself, he could confirm that they had not received anything suspicious. Amanda thanked him for his efforts and reminded him to call back if anything arose.
64
Vicki studied her husband’s face, taking in all the information he had just shared. “You think this is about you.” It clearly came out as a declaration, not a question.
Jack looked back at her. “Yeah,” he admitted. They had put Jonah to bed a little bit ago. As she often did—and did well—Vicki offered to serve as a sounding board for Jack as he worked through various angles and theories on a case. Also as per usual, after an especially stressful day, they each had a bottle of beer in hand. “I mean, is there any other way to see it?”
Vicki sat back in her dinette chair. After a pensive moment, she set her beer down on the dinette in front of her so she could count on her hands. Her right index finger pushed on the pad of her left pinky. “The foreign language messages, meant to get FBI—and CASMIRC—involved…” Her pointer finger moved over to depress her left ring finger. “…Involving a public figure from your biggest case…” Her left middle finger. “…The personal phone call to you, with another message…” Index finger, followed by a pause. “…What else?”
“The song,” Jack answered. “It’s kind of an obscure song, but it’s a song that I knew.”
“How could this guy possibly know that?”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t know. I know it doesn’t entirely make sense.”
“Did you recently buy the CD, or download it, or something? Maybe this guy hacked into your computer at some point to find your MP3s?”
“No. It’s an old song. I’m pretty sure I don’t even have a digital copy of that song. I haven’t heard it in…forever. Fifteen, twenty years.”
They sat silently for several minutes, each mulling over the facts and circumstances. “Poor Melissa Hollows,” Vicki sighed. “As if that poor woman hadn’t been through enough.”
Jack nodded. Vicki didn’t know half of the real story. Jack could not expend the mental or emotional energy to deal with his guilt at this time, so he let this pass quickly. Luckily Vicki changed the subject for him. “What did Philip say when you canceled the meeting? Was he upset?”
Jack shook his head as he took a swig of his beer. “I didn’t give him a chance to be the first time. I just told him I had to postpone our meeting then kind of hung up.” He had felt the carbonation from the beer accumulate in his stomach until it bubbled up and he let it out in a silent burp. “I called him back later this afternoon to tell him a little more, without going into too much detail. He seemed a little… disappointed that I was working on an active case, even after I explained to him that I got pulled into it unexpectedly. But he did love that I had a meeting with The President. We’re going to try to meet again tomorrow afternoon.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, each looking down at the beers in their hands. Vicki began peeling back the top label, a habit that had stuck with her since she first started drinking beer in college. Her thumb worked at the tiny balls of adhesive that remained on the tinted glass, slowly stripping them away into a larger conglomeration of glue. “How does it feel?”
Her voice nearly startled Jack, who had settled comfortably into their moment of silence. He looked up at her. “How does what feel?”
She examined his face, trying to find the answer to her question in his countenance. Like a soothsayer and her crystal ball, Vicki thought she knew her husband well enough to discern sufficient information from looking deeply into his eyes. Even though she thought she knew the answer, she elucidated her original question. “This. Being a lawman. Not a politician.”
“Well, I wouldn’t call myself a politician yet,” Jack responded in an attempt to avoid the question.
“OK, fine. But you haven’t been this involved in an investigation in… what?... a year?”
Jack nodded.
“So how does it feel? Are you making the right choice by leaving the Bureau for politics?”
Jack scratched his head. So caught up in the happenings of the day, he hadn’t stopped to think about that at all. Thank God for Vicki, who helped keep him grounded and offered him these avenues to reflect, avenues he would have trouble finding on his own. After a moment, he answered, “Stressful.”
Vicki tilted her head; “stressful” was not the answer she had expected, not the answer she had read in his eyes. But she chose not to call him on it, at least not right now. “Then maybe we should get to bed and get you some rest.” Jack nodded. They each swallowed down the last drops of beer, took turns rinsing out the bottles in the sink before placing them in the recycling bin in the cabinet underneath, and went upstairs.
65
Caleb Goodnight, buzzing with excitement, walked down the brightly lit hallway toward his office. He had just come out of the production meeting for tonight’s show: a chat with George Lucas, the auteur of the Star Wars film saga. Caleb’s ever-calm demeanor belied his enthusiasm for doing his show; he still got butterflies in his stomach almost every night. He felt a special twinge of delight to speak with a filmmaker who revolutionized digital effects and forever changed the landscape of science fiction.
As he approached the office door, his cell phone vibrated in his breast pocket. He looked at the display— Unknown number. He had received a call from an unknown number on Friday night too, right around the same time. He had let that one go to voice mail, but the caller had not left a message. He thought about answering this time, but again decided against it. He noted the time: 9:18 pm. After six vibratory surges, his phone stopped. He stood there in the hallway, staring at the display, waiting to see if the voice mail icon appeared on his screen. After over a minute, it did not appear. Again apparently the mystery caller did not feel the necessity to leave a message.
Caleb entered his office, lay the phone down face-up on his desk—where it would remain for the duration of his show, as always— and sat down. If he got another call from the unknown number, he thought he might answer it next time. For now, he reassured himself that it couldn’t be too important if the caller waited three days between attempts and chose not to leave a message either time. He turned his focus back to his notes for tonight’s show, and the titillation over interviewing an icon returned.
66
Jack lay in bed on his side, his eyes open. The bathroom door ajar, a slim triangle of light spread across the floor beside the bed. The fine buzz of Vicki’s electric toothbrush emanated from inside the bathroom. Though his thoughts remained with the Playground Predator case, he could feel his focus fading, less sharp than earlier. Still baffled by the case, but even more fatigued by it, he hoped sleep could soon creep in. Vicki’s toothbrush stopped with a final soft pair of beeps. After gargling with mouthwash and turning off the bathroom light, she walked around the bed to her traditional side and crawled under the covers. She hugged Jack from behind and kissed his ear.
“Are you feeling tired? Do you think you’re going to be able to get some sleep?” she whispered.
“Yeah, I think so.” He rolled onto his back and kissed her lips. She then rolled away and laid her head on her own pillow. Jack stayed on his back, looking up at the ceiling, an all-too familiar vista on many previous sleepless nights. Fortunately, his eyes felt heavy. He let them close.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Vicki said, a little too loudly given the quiet ambience in the room. She rolled toward Jack. “I scheduled a session with that photographer for Thursday afternoon, from four to five. Is that OK?”
“What photographer?” Jack asked. “For what, now?” He hadn’t yet fallen asleep, but the question seemed so out-of-left-field that she might as well have asked it straight from a deep dream at 3:00 am.
“That photographer in the strip mall beside Dr. Franklin’s office. We talked about this last week, remember?”
Jack’s mind worked backwards, back to their conversation in the kitchen days earlier. He remembered the conversation with Vicki. A vision of the photographer’s brochure came into his head. He looked at Vicki wide-eyed and slowly sat straight up in bed. “What’s the name of that place?” he asked her deliberately. He knew that he already knew the answer; he needed confirmation.
The name initially eluded her. She thought about it for a second, and after a few seconds she remembered. “Family Snapshot,” she said. “Why?”
“The song. That’s the title of the song,” Jack replied in monotone. His mind tried to work fast, but it still needed to shake off the previously imminent sleep.
“What?!” Vicki said in a whispered shout. “That… do you think that’s a coincidence?”
“I don’t know.” Jack’s voice still lacked any inflection. He looked at his wife, both sharing an expression of disbelief. “It can’t be, can it?”
DAY NINE:
TUESDAY
67
Faint drops of rain settled onto the windshield, much lighter than the downpour that had lasted most of the last twelve hours. The temperature had begun to warm up, but it still seemed like an especially wet spring so far. Thanks to a recent waxing, small beads of water formed on the hood, sometimes coalescing into a larger pool. Once the pools on the far sides of the hood got large enough, they slipped off onto the parking lot below.
Jack looked at the storefront in the strip mall about thirty yards away. He had parked in the middle of the lot, close enough to keep an eye on the front door of the photography studio, but far enough away that passersby going to other businesses wouldn’t pay much heed to the man sitting in the front seat of his car for the last forty-five minutes. He looked down at his watch. 11:54. The brochure said that Family Snapshot opened at noon on Tuesdays, or sooner by appointment. He had tried calling several times earlier this morning, but no one answered.
He had spent the morning at the office, but he hadn’t said a word to anyone about his suspicion over the photography studio. It still seemed like too much of a coincidence to have much significance. The rest of the office had enough going on without this distraction, anyway. Mr. and Mrs. Vance Cottrell, Amy and Carl Coulter, and Jennifer and Mario Cugino had all appeared on Good Morning America to talk about their daughters’ deaths and to plead with anyone to offer information. Harringer had received advanced notice of this from GMA’s producers—along with an invitation to appear for an interview himself. While he declined the interview—and purposefully failed to offer it to anyone else, knowing full well that Heath Reilly would have jumped at the chance—he did offer to help staff a tip line that GMA could disperse to the general public. The phones actually rang in a call center in another building in their complex in Quantico, staffed by FBI employees. Harringer had assigned Reilly and Lundquist to supervise and delve further into any tips that had merit.
So Jack he had spent his time at his computer, going through public records and FBI databases to learn more about the proprietor of Family Snapshot. According to the lease, the business belonged to Shawn Toussant, a thirty-five year-old married father of two. He lived in a modest home less than ten minutes from the photography studio. (Jack had driven by there on his way here but saw no activity. This did not disappoint him, as he would rather visit him at his place of business.) Toussant had bought the house eight months ago, around the same time that he got the lease on the studio. He had a mortgage on the house, but otherwise no significant debt. He paid his bills on time. He had no criminal record. He did not fit any criminal profile, let alone that of a serial killer of children. Yet Jack could not shake the feeling that Toussant somehow played a role in this.
Something flashed out of the corner of Jack’s eye. He looked back at the storefront, concentrating. The sign in the front window had been flipped; it now read “OPEN.” Jack got out of the car and trotted briskly to the sidewalk, jumping over several puddles in the parking lot along the way. He acted casually as he peered through the large plate glass window into the store. Other than two large easels displaying a variety of professional photographs—weddings, landscapes, high school senior pictures—he couldn’t see much, only that no one stood within a few feet of the door. He walked up to the front door and entered.
He did not notice the small black plexi-glass bubble embedded in the ceiling, concealing a security camera inside, its focus on the front door.
68
Heath Reilly stood, arms folded, in the corner of the call-center room. He had the strong and strange urge to bite his nails, a habit in which he had never previously partaken. He couldn’t understand it, it bothered him, and he couldn’t shake it.
The phones rang consistently, such that the three FBI employees manning the phones stayed relatively busy. They took copious notes on laptops as they spoke on the phone with citizens calling in tips. When they finished and the call ended, they automatically sent the notes to Amanda Lundquist’s computer. Sitting at a table right in front of Reilly, she scanned each note, looking for anything that seemed helpful. If she found a hit, she would notify Reilly right away, as he knew much more about the case and should serve as the final gatekeeper before the team acted on any tip.
Reilly’s iPhone vibrated on his hip. He took it out of its clip: Corinne. He hadn’t spoken to her since Sunday, since the case seemed to have blown up. He immediately felt guilty, felt that he had kept a secret from her. He quickly contemplated not answering, but, he knew that he wanted to speak with her. He stepped out of the room into the adjacent hallway and answered his phone. “Hey,” he said with an air of familiarity that surprised even him.
“Hey, it’s Corinne,” she said on the other end.
He liked hearing her voice. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Our story is blowing up, that’s what’s up. Way up,” she replied.
“Really?” Now he truly was surprised. “You mean because of the Good Morning America piece?”
“Yeah. It’s all over CNN. All of the major networks are planning stories tonight for the evening news. I think Nancy Grace is having the Coulters on her show tonight.”
“Wow. How do you know all this?”
“I’m a reporter,” she answered, with more than a hint of “duh!” in her voice. “It’s kind of what I do.”
“Right,” Reilly said.
“So… any news for me?” Corinne asked.
Reilly, feeling torn, paused. Discerning which facts to share with the media and which to withhold still did not come naturally to him. In addition, he recognized that he might be in the early stages of developing feelings for Corinne, and this added pressure to disclose things to her. Even though no one stood within earshot, he lowered his voice. “We might be in the middle of a big break,” he whispered.
“No shit!” Corinne reflexively whispered too, even though she sat in the relatively private comforts of her cubicle at work. “What?”
“It’s too soon and too… cloudy… to say yet,” Reilly answered.
Corinne didn’t respond.
Several seconds of silence elapsed. Reilly sensed that she waited for him to say more, but he decided he wouldn’t cave. “I will let you know when things become clearer,” he said. He would wait until later to cave.
Corinne sighed, her last ditched effort to induce guilt. “OK. Call me later then, OK?”
“Will do,” Reilly said, preparing to hang up.
“Now I have a
proposal for you,” she announced.
Reilly’s face lit up. “Oh, yeah? I like the sound of that.”
“The Today Show called me. They want me to come on tomorrow morning to talk about The Playground Predator.”
“Oh. Good for you.” Reilly could sense the excitement in her voice.
“Why don’t you come on with me?” Corinne offered.
Reilly’s heart raced, stoked by such an opportunity. He could make the world—or at least Dylan Harringer and the muckety-mucks in the Bureau—forget about Jackson Byrne sooner than they otherwise would. He could be their new Golden Boy, the media darling from CASMIRC. But he knew he had to exercise caution; he couldn’t break the chain of command. He would need Harringer’s blessing, which would require some cajoling. “I need to talk to my superior first,” he finally responded, trying to hide the excitement in his voice. “Let me call you a little later and we’ll talk about all of this.”
“Sounds good,” Corinne said with a smile. “Talk to you then.”
They hung up. Reilly decided to take some time to think about the correct wording of his proposition before going straight to Harringer.
69
Shawn Toussant stood behind a chest-high counter on the right side of the room. Dozens of framed photographs peppered the ecru-colored walls. Jack pretended to gaze at them in appreciation as he worked his way toward the counter.