The Doll

by Taylor Stevens

  The address came by text and Bradford swung a right to accommodate it. The building wasn’t the one they’d originally targeted but the one next door, of the same height and with access to the same garage.

  He found her exactly as he’d expected: holed up in a room the size of a large walk-in closet, surrounded by closed-circuit monitors, and with two guys in uniform trying, and failing, to avoid staring at her chest. When he stepped through the door, the room fell silent.

  She waved a cursory greeting in his direction and leaned across the desk to control one of the machines. Jeremy Justin, according to his ID, slid out of her way, just enough to avoid appearing rude but not enough to avoid her brushing against him.

  Walker, oblivious, said to Bradford, “You’ve gotta see this.”

  Her fingers flew across the machine’s controls to rewind a recording, her explanation a staccato faster than the grainy video, until she froze the process, leaving on the screen the image of a late-model Impala.

  The face of the driver was blurry and he wore sunglasses, but the license plates were clear. “I’ve been running time stamps,” she said. “Searched for ins and outs based on our estimates. We know he was holed up before ten but have no idea when he got here. Better, we know when it happened. I figure our guy would want to get out as fast as possible. He’d be an idiot to stay on foot, so for now I’ve focused on parking. For most of these buildings, free visitor parking has a time limit, and”—Walker paused, and in an instant personality shift, smiled kindly at Justin, whose face reddened at the attention—“Jeremy here tells me visitor parking is patrolled hourly and violators towed. This garage is gated and vehicles need a pass card. No cards reported lost or stolen, so …”

  She scanned backward, running the machine at high speed, and pounded the stop with a force that made Justin twitch. “There,” she said. “Tailgating into the garage. One other car did this in the same time period, so I ran through the interior cameras. There’s not a lot we can use, nothing that takes this guy up to the roof, but look by the elevators.” She hit the stop again.

  “The time stamps coordinate, the tie and pattern on the shirt match the person in the first car. Briefcase,” she said. “Check the size of that thing.”

  Bradford leaned in closer. “Can you zoom in on his face?”

  Walker stepped back and to Justin sweetly cooed, “Can you zoom?”

  Justin leaned forward and handled the controls, maneuvering the image to capture as much of the face as possible. “That’s the best resolution we can get,” he said.

  There were similarities between this face and the one they’d captured on Logan’s surveillance disk. Walker reached for the control again, brushing her hand over Justin’s in the process, and went back to the original image of the driver in the Impala. “Check the time stamp on the exit.”

  The driver had headed down the ramp and out toward the street at the same time Bradford had run for the office door.

  Justin said, “What about the briefcase?”

  Walker smiled. “It’s awesome, isn’t it?”

  Bradford said, “You have the plates?”

  Walker handed him a piece of paper.

  “How many sites did you visit?”

  “Three so far.”

  “It’s good work,” he said. “I’ll get Jack on these, but let’s assume we missed something, okay? Keep looking.”

  Walker nodded.

  Justin said, “What about the briefcase?”

  Bradford headed to the door, and behind him, Walker, full of sugar, said, “I want one for my birthday.”

  FROM THE VISITORS’ parking area, Bradford called Jahan with the plate numbers and then dialed the first of several contacts within the Dallas Police Department. If this request didn’t stick, there were other possibilities. Favors begat favors, and Bradford, in this world of walking the gray lines of the law, had done many. A return back-scratch like this was easy to put out, and if there were prints, if the police had any suspects or leads, he’d eventually get the details, although not nearly soon enough.

  It was a seven-minute drive to the office, and when Bradford got there, he knew Jahan had worked his magic. Leaning back with his palms behind his head and grinning like an idiot, Jahan swiveled his chair. When Bradford stepped into the war room, Jahan said, “Plates go to Enterprise rental, and I’ve traced the ambulance.”

  Bradford paused midstep, then continued to the board. This was good. This was progress. But it had also been five hours since Munroe was taken, and if his and Walker’s earlier conclusion was correct, if the entire ruse was only intended to be a temporary distraction, then Munroe and Logan could be anywhere by now and every piece the team uncovered might come too little, too late.

  Bradford studied the Michael diagram, mentally placing the surveillance footage of the parking garage.

  The chair squeaked.

  Bradford said, “Talk.”

  “You were right about the out-of-service depot. Getting into the GPS system was easier than pinpointing the ambulance, but no question, that’s where it came from and where it returned. I’ve yanked chains to see what we could flush, but far as I can tell, everything we’re looking at there is low-level: misplaced paperwork, dubious signatures—hallmark signs of a few well-placed Ben Franklins—no masterminds or anything.”

  Bradford turned. “The paramedics?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So the ambulance is a dead end.”

  “We could go digging,” Jahan said, “but I don’t think it’s worth our time. Not if we’ve got the plates on that rental.”

  “We could be wrong on the rental.”

  “Could be,” Jahan said. “But the way Sam tells it, it’s pretty convincing, and she’s bringing over the footage for me to analyze. Where there’s a rental, there are credit cards.”

  “Can you get them?”

  “Yeah, eventually.”

  “I guess that’s our focus.” Bradford paused. “Where did the ambulance go between Michael and the depot?”

  “There’s an unexplained four-minute stop,” Jahan said. “Then Medical City, then back to the roost.” He fiddled with the keyboard and pointed to the screen on his right. “X marks the spot. What do you have on latents?”

  “I’ve got calls in,” Bradford said, and walked to the street map. Stared. The stop was a parking lot, of all things, as if the fuckers didn’t even care if they were observed.

  Jahan followed Bradford’s line of sight. “You’ve gotta admire their balls.”

  Bradford turned just enough to glower at him.

  “Or not.”

  “Zoom this thing out,” Bradford said, and when Jahan had enlarged the surface area of the map, Bradford studied it for a long while, processing. He had the what and he had the when. If he could trace the how or even the why, he could find the who and take this fight to a whole new level. Finally he straightened and swore under his breath. “The airport,” he said.

  He reached for the phone and dialed Walker. “What’ve you got?”

  “So far, that parking-garage footage is the best lead we have. I could go further on the search, take it to fifteen hundred yards, but I dunno.” She paused. “To make a hit like that from that kind of distance …” She let the sentence fade.

  “You did good,” Bradford said. “Come on in, I need you.”

  SIX HOURS SINCE Munroe’s take-down, and with the critical time window to manage a speedy find-and-rescue fast closing, the airport was another hunch that might just be more misdirection. But it also made perfect sense. If the shooter had been prepared, then Addison Airport was, quite literally, the fastest route out of town. A small head start would have been enough.

  Bradford pulled to a stop outside the administration building.

  The bulk of the complex lay in the tarmac of the seventy-two-hundred-foot runway and its smaller twin. Straddling these sister strips were more than one hundred fifty hangars in a range of sizes, hundreds of thousands of square feet of office-rel
ated facilities, an FAA tower, and a lot of open field.

  He stepped from the vehicle and tossed Walker the keys. What he hoped for were flight records to point him in the right direction—everything and anything that had departed out of Addison since ten that morning, more specifically between eleven and one, but if the shooter hadn’t wanted to be traced, pulling these records would mean throwing around a lot more weight than a phone call or two, which was once again why he’d brought Walker.

  The main office was quiet, most of the staff already gone for the day, and Bradford waited a full ten minutes before a well-kept woman, who introduced herself as Beth Evans, operations manager, greeted him. He handed over a private investigator badge, opted for a simplified version of the truth, and when he had satisfied Evans’s questions, she offered to take him into the hangar area as soon as she’d finished what she was doing.

  Walker was waiting when they stepped outside, leaning against the hood of the Explorer, the same position she’d been in when they’d convened outside the hospital. She held a sheet of paper.

  Bradford introduced the two, then to Walker said, “What’d you get?”

  “Not much,” she said. “Most of what comes in and out are prop planes. Little. And most are private. I figure we’re looking for something a bit bigger, a little more charterable.” She handed Bradford the page. “Within that range, eight flights left between ten and three. I think we should start with the larger hangars.”

  They rode with Evans in her car and she took them to where the lights were brightest and the highest number of employees congregated, but even with her guidance, it took showing Munroe’s and Logan’s pictures to the employees of three hangars before they scored a hit.

  One of the ground crew picked up Munroe’s photograph, and Evans kept by the car while Walker and Bradford moved in closer.

  Like Evans, the man hovered close to either side of fifty, balding and heavy around the middle, and he lit up in Walker’s presence. “I think I saw her,” he said. Paused to catch Walker’s eye and then skimmed over her chest to stare at the photo again. “Yeah, I guess that was her. Hard to say, really, because she was sick or asleep or something. She was in a wheelchair.”

  From a few feet away, his workmate put down a wrench and wiped his hands on a rag. “That was the wheelchair flight?” he said. “Let me see that.”

  Walker handed him the photograph. He smiled at her and she smiled back.

  He glanced at the picture for a moment and returned it. “I guess that was them.”

  “Were there men with her?” Bradford said.

  The first guy said, “Just one. Clean-cut, dark hair, about your height, maybe. Young.”

  “Did he have a briefcase?” Walker asked.

  “Yeah, a big one. Almost looked like a suitcase.”

  “What about other luggage?”

  “I think they had a couple of carry-ons. I wasn’t really paying attention, you know, so I can’t say for sure.”

  “Any idea where they were headed? Tail number, maybe?”

  “Bahamas, I think. Not sure about the tail number, but it shouldn’t be too hard to get from the office. Was a G550; don’t get as many of those passing through.”

  Bradford peeled off a hundred and shook the guy’s hand. Not five feet away, heading toward the car, Walker said, “That’s our plane.”

  “Yeah,” Bradford said. “I want you back here first thing in the morning. If they’re flying international, then it’s possible they dealt with immigration, which means they’ve got a passport for Michael. I want names—especially what she’s traveling under. And there’s no mention of Logan,” he said. “What’s that tell you?”

  “The condition he’s in? He’s still here.”

  THE WAR ROOM was empty when Bradford and Walker returned, but on the desk were two copies of the transaction record for the credit card that had been used for the rental car.

  Walker picked one up, looked through it, and said, “Nice.”

  At the end of the hall a toilet flushed.

  Bradford picked up the second copy, got to the first page, and stared, stunned. Fought for air. And for the first time since he’d shoved it away this afternoon, he felt the fear. He had no words, no voice, and struggled to remain standing.

  Walker paused from leafing through the pages, turned to him, and then seeing his face, retreated a step. “Miles?” she said.

  He held up a finger and closed his eyes. Pushed the panic back, stomped on it, shoved it away to where it couldn’t touch him and he could think again, rationalize again. He drew a breath and felt the cold.

  Jahan entered the room and stopped midstep. He looked first to Bradford, then to Walker, and back again. “What?” he said.

  Bradford tapped the pages, and the words came mechanically. “I know this name,” he said. “This company.” He turned toward the window, stared out at the darkening sky, and after a long moment turned back. “Fuck!”

  He moved toward the doorway and then his office, where he turned a slow circle, trying to decide where to start. Walked to the fireproof cabinet in the far corner and dug for the key on his key chain. Unlocked it. Flipped through the hanging folders until he found a manila envelope and pulled it out.

  He straightened.

  Jahan and Walker blocked his exit.

  “War room,” Bradford said, and wordlessly, they turned, Jahan following Walker, Bradford following Jahan.

  Bradford opened the envelope, took out the documents, and tossed the contents onto Jahan’s desk. Searched through the stack of papers until he found what he was looking for, a spreadsheet and an old newspaper article, and shifted both of them to face Walker and Jahan.

  “This is who we’re hunting,” he said. “This is our shooter.”

  The collected papers from the envelope were over an inch thick: bank records, company records, notes, and threads that detailed a web of evil that wound out of Europe and across the globe. After a moment of flipping through them and scanning the data, Jahan paused and stared at Bradford. “Where did these come from?”

  Bradford tapped the pages in his hand. “About two years ago,” he said, “Michael took a missing-person job in Central Africa. Was the first time I’d worked with her and the case took us places we had no idea we’d go. These came out of the aftermath.”

  “You were dealing with this?”

  “No, I discovered these at the end, here in the U.S. in the safe of a guy who died.”

  Walker said, “If this had nothing to do with Michael, why would people like this come after her and Logan?”

  Bradford moved to the door. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I know where to dig.”

  ZAGREB, CROATIA

  The only source of light was a sliver beneath the door, but that was enough to make the headache worse. Vanessa Michael Munroe shut her eyes against the pounding beat and returned to darkness, to the words and sounds that echoed along the walls.

  Not real speech, a recording. She could tell that even from this drug-induced haze. She stretched fingertips to the wall and heard from touch the same story told by the smell of this place. Dank. Damp. Buried.

  Her leg was stiff and tender, her shoulder badly bruised. Mental nudges took her toward the last thing that she remembered: The tollway. The bike. The hit to her thigh. Falling into darkness and into pain.

  Beyond the door came footsteps. Voices, real voices—occasionally screaming—while the steady pattern of language played on and on, masking and muting the sounds of the world beyond the walls and providing a strange sense of continuity in this dungeon of a place.

  Munroe breathed a slow, deep in-and-out, and sank fully into the mattress with its stench of mold and grime and human sweat, floated in the vibration of the language, drowned in it until the lock clanked metal against metal and the door slid to the side and the room went blinding white.

  The pain returned with the light and she squinted at the shadow that stooped and filled the doorway. The intruder was followed by
another, and the two kept a cautious distance until they were joined by a third, who moved in closer. “You are awake now,” he said, and there was a familiarity to his voice, as if she’d dreamed him or this was déjà vu. “That is good,” he said. “You eat, then you come with us.”

  His English was accented and clearly enunciated—perhaps from an education in England or even in Canada; he wasn’t a native speaker. But he’d stopped talking and Munroe’s mind, still numb from the drugs, worked too slowly to capture what she should have known. Knowledge was there on the edge and then it vanished, and she sighed and let go again, into the peace.

  The shadowed voice spoke to the two behind him, words that fractured and spun inside her head. Meaning, but not exact, a language familiar, although not perfectly so.

  “Let her sleep some more,” he’d said. “She’s not ready.”

  Yes, that was the meaning. And then they were gone and she was left with the silence and the voices, always the voices, and the darkness, and the passage of time.

  Then awareness.

  Her eyes snapped open to blackness, her mind fully awake.

  Munroe flipped to her stomach and into a crouch.

  The sliver of light was gone and the Hungarian recording still intruded into the silence.

  She slid from mattress to floor, followed the wall to a corner, taking minutes to explore through touch what sight would have told her in seconds, tracing along the perimeter of a cell that she guessed at seven feet by about six, with a ceiling so low it occasionally snagged her hair.

  Near the door she knocked into a metal tray, paused in reaction to hunger, then continued past because nourishment wasn’t worth the risk of being drugged again. Returned to the mattress, and there, seated with her back to the cold stone, she let her mind meander in slow soft circles—puzzle unfolding, questions forming—timed to the rhythm of voices that imitated the language immersion she would put herself through before entering a new country or new assignment—as if they—whoever they were—knew; knew of the inexplicable ability that had been with her since childhood, the ability to assimilate language with nearly the same speed others processed what they saw, a poisonous gift that had defined every moment of her life and brought her to the place that had created what she now was.