Hidden (Jacobs Family Series Book 1)

by Vannetta Chapman

  “What did you find?” Dana stood beside the table where Ben had set the contents of the backpack. She didn’t disturb anything, though he could tell she was mentally noting and cataloging each item. When she’d reached the end of the table, she turned her inquisitive gaze to Ben.

  He thought again of how those eyes seemed so guarded. They took in everything, but gave away very little. He wondered if she was worried or merely cautious.

  Red had plopped onto a stool, which groaned under his weight. “I do love a mystery,” he muttered, stroking his beard.

  “Great, because we have something of a puzzle.” Ben walked to the northern most end of the table.

  “I did a handheld scan on site. Once we returned, I did a computed tomography. Then I brought the list of contents to you, boss.”

  Dana shot him a look of reproach at the name, but a slight nod of her head indicated he should continue.

  “Why don’t we use a dog to sniff for explosives?” Red interrupted. “They had one over in Las Cruces.”

  Ben nodded. “We had one in my first unit overseas as well. I personally like using canines, and we can talk about going that route. The dogs we worked with had incredible accuracy, however, there are disadvantages. A dog can only work a one-hour duty cycle without a break, and he can’t communicate what type of explosive he’s detected.”

  “It’s certainly something we can discuss,” Dana said. “Both of you can write up your recommendations, and I’ll consider them.”

  Ben looked back at the table. “What you see in front of us is identical to what was on the original list. There were no surprises in content. Items are numbered in the order they came out of the pack. All of it is pretty standard for what you’d expect to find in a teenage girl’s things.”

  Ben moved down the table pointing but not touching as he spoke. Though he wore gloves to keep his fingerprints off the material, he preferred to handle items as little as possible. He knew from experience what was at risk each time a piece of evidence was physically touched. Valuable clues could be lost to a past or potential crime. For reasons he was about to explain, he now thought they were in the middle of exactly such a situation.

  Though it wasn’t necessary, he identified each item as he walked by it. “Tiger sweatshirt, iPod—with no obvious content on it—makeup bag, which appears to be filled with makeup, paperback copy of The Grapes of Wrath, and a spiral notebook.”

  He had reached the end of the table, so he stopped and looked up at Red and Dana.

  Red sat with his hands resting on his knees. Dana still stood as when she’d come in. Ben had noticed her posture was always perfect. She frowned slightly and shook her head.

  “It all looks normal to me.”

  “I thought so, too, but I tested for explosive residue anyway—per the procedure manual.” Ben picked up a handheld light, slightly larger than a security wand the FAA uses at airports. “We have several ways to do this, but I decided to use laser technology that has been effective in card readers.”

  “Cards?” Dana looked at him skeptically.

  “Fare cards, like when you take the subway. These readers are being tried in the US, but they’ve been installed across England. In order to gain access to mass transit, the passenger slips his card into a machine. The card is read to confirm he has paid, but it’s also scanned to detect any residual amount of explosives.”

  “I didn’t realize we had this technology,” Dana said.

  “The patent was only approved in 2006,” Ben explained. “The laser heats the object to a critical temperature, which is how it identifies the residue.”

  “Hold this blue light for me, Red?”

  “Sure thing.” The big man jumped off the stool, took the light, and held it over the Tiger sweatshirt.

  When Ben walked to the wall switch and turned off the overhead lights, the letters on the sweatshirt glowed as if they were being held under a black light. On his way back to the table, Ben retrieved three pairs of goggles and handed a pair to Red and Dana. The third pair he kept for himself.

  “If there was any residue burned by the laser, we’d see it with the light and these goggles,” he explained.

  Dana put them on. “What color will it be?”

  Ben smiled. “Black smudges mostly, but you shouldn’t have any trouble seeing them. They’ll look like burn spots.”

  Taking the light from Red, he began moving down the table. When he reached the end, both Dana and Red looked up at him—relief clearly etched on both their faces.

  “No spots,” Red said.

  “Ben found something else though.” It wasn’t a question. Dana’s gaze met his.

  Even through their goggles, he looked into her beautiful, amber eyes and knew she understood him. She trusted he had a good reason for taking the long route to show them what he’d found.

  “Yes, I found something else. I had a hunch something wasn’t right about this. The laser actually does two things. It reveals explosive residue, but it also reveals fingerprints. Regardless what type of explosive someone uses, it is all composed of sticky, microscopic particles. No matter how you wash your hands, it sticks to the whorls in your fingerprints. Your hands will look clean, but the residue is there nonetheless. It remains there for twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

  “How many people know this?” Dana asked.

  “Very few. I didn’t know it until last year when I began reading the patent information on this laser.”

  Dana motioned for him to continue.

  Ben walked back up to the head of the table. “Something bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out what. I had to walk up and down the table a second and then a third time. Then it came to me. Red’s right. There was no explosive residue.”

  He looked up uncertainly, as if he needed to explain what he did next. Red tugged at his beard. “Military can hone a man’s instincts.”

  “Maybe that’s what it was. I don’t know. I decided to apply an application of vapor of iodine.”

  “To reveal fingerprints,” Dana said.

  “Yes. I know I had no cause to at that point, but something kept nagging at me.” Ben turned on the blue light again. “Of course, fingerprints won’t show on cloth.”

  Both Red and Dana moved in closer.

  “All of the other items are covered with prints as you would expect. Probably whoever owns this stuff loans her things to her friends. Most everyday items have so many fingerprints on them, you can’t lift off any one clear print. For instance, a phone or a doorknob is too covered with prints to be a good source of evidence.”

  “Or an iPod,” Red said.

  “This is disgusting.” Dana leaned in until her nose was practically under the blue light. “All those swirls are fingerprints? It looks so… dirty.”

  “Yeah. Most things are dirty. They’re covered with signs we’ve handled them. Lots of people have left their DNA on these things. All except for this.”

  Ben stopped at the spiral, held the light over it, and waited for their reaction. At first, no one said anything. Then Red and Dana started talking at once.

  “Maybe it’s brand new,” Dana suggested.

  “Or she wiped it off,” Red said.

  “Or we need to turn it over,” Dana added.

  Ben looked at them both, tried to read their expressions, what was going on in their minds. It was difficult with the goggles they were wearing. He chose his next words carefully.

  “Even if the spiral were new, someone bought it. The person at the store had to stock it on a shelf. The cashier would have handled it. Mom or Dad would have brought it home. Someone put it in the backpack.”

  Dana tucked her hair behind her ear. It was the first time Ben had seen her touch her hair in any way, and he knew she was rattled. He forced his attention back to the table.

  “And if someone tried to wipe them off?” Red asked.

  “Then it would be smudged. As you can see, it’s not. This item is clean.”

  “So how is tha
t possible, Ben?”

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “My guess would be someone took this straight off an assembly line before it was touched by human hands. They used gloves as I am. Then they put it in the bottom of this pack.”

  No one spoke as they considered the scenario he painted. In the quiet and darkness, the buzz from the blue light seemed to stutter then amplify, as if it held the answers to their questions.

  Dana broke the silence by asking what they all wanted to know. “But why?”

  “I haven’t looked inside yet. I wanted to wait until you were here.”

  Dana looked up at Ben, then at Red. “All right. Well, it’s just paper. We know it won’t explode. There’s no sign it contains ricin or any other toxic agent. Are we in agreement?”

  Both Ben and Red nodded.

  “Open it.”

  Ben handed the blue light to Red, then reached forward with his gloved hand and opened the spiral.

  The three of them stared down at the page.

  No one said a word, as they each worked through what they could possibly be dealing with.

  Pasted across the first page, in two-inch letters cut from a magazine, was a single word.

  BAM!

  Seven

  “We are not going to assume this is a joke,” Dana said. “Red, I want you on the iPod. Use every program we have. I want to know if there are any more hidden messages.”

  “Wouldn’t the laser have fried the memory?”

  “Yeah, it would have,” Ben said. “I saved a back-up, though it looked blank to me. I’ll send it to you.”

  “I’m on it then. I can also get the serial number and contact iTunes. Find the retail store where it was sold.” He walked off, stroking his beard and mumbling.

  “Good work, Ben. Get the specifics of this spiral to Nina. See if she can find a plant anywhere in northern New Mexico.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  Dana picked up the phone next to Ben’s computer and punched in Clay’s extension. “Have you finished with the high school surveillance tapes?”

  Dana pulled her hair back out of her way and wondered again if she should cut it off short. “Forward what you have to my office and meet me there in two minutes.”

  Hanging up the phone she walked back to Ben. “I want you to come with me.”

  “Sure.”

  He looked surprised, but didn’t ask why. There were advantages to having a soldier under her command.

  “Ben, I want to ask your opinion about something.”

  Dana sat on the stool and let her gaze drift along the items on the table. Each new development concerned her more. The perpetrator was playing with them, had chosen the school as their point of contact. The thought infuriated her, but as usual she swallowed her anger.

  “Do you think this was a prank?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a little too well planned for my tastes.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Ben walked around the table, arms behind his back, as if he were surveying his unit. “The items on top were harmless enough. If we hadn’t been called, someone would have walked away with a sweatshirt and an iPod.”

  “Red will come up empty?”

  “I think so.”

  “Go on.” Dana tilted her head, wondering where his thinking would diverge from hers.

  “The message was for all practical purposes harmless. Again, if someone else had found it—a laugh, a rip of the page, no harm done.”

  “But we were supposed to find it.”

  “Yes, we were.”

  “And you know that because…”

  “No fingerprints. When we do a microscopic analysis on the cutout letters, it won’t reveal any particular newspaper or magazine. It’s extremely difficult to do that kind of work without leaving fingerprints.”

  Ben stopped pacing, stood in front of the blue denim backpack, and frowned. Dana realized it was the first time she’d seen the expression on him.

  “A man’s war cloaked in a child’s things. It’s an evil guise.” His words were soft, spoken more to himself than to her.

  She blinked—had to look away.

  It was as if he had reached in and read her mind.

  “Let’s go view those security tapes,” she said.

  Eight

  Clay had the wall-sized flat screen in Dana’s office on and the surveillance video prepped.

  She walked around her desk and took a seat, resisting the urge to pace. Ben stood, military stance, behind one of the chairs. Clay waited at the screen, remote control in hand. If he was surprised Ben was present, he didn’t show it.

  “Preliminary report?” she asked.

  “You’re not going to like what I found.” Clay nodded at Ben who turned off the lights.

  It occurred to Dana again that her staff was accepting Ben as one of the team, though he had been with them less than a week. Even Clay, who protected her more fiercely than a well- trained pit bull, acknowledged Ben was a good fit for them.

  “The security cam on the front of the courtyard has our best view. I’ve checked two others, but they don’t show any additional information. The time lapse you’re seeing begins the evening before at 6:00 p.m.”

  “Well before dark.” Dana leaned forward in her chair to study the teens gathered in front of the school. Looking so happy and carefree, they might as well have been from another planet. They in no way resembled what she remembered of high school.

  “What are they doing there in the evening?” she asked.

  “I checked with Principal Miller. A drama practice had released at five forty-five. If you watch the top left quadrant…” Clay used a laser pointer to indicate the persons he wanted them to notice, “…you’ll see the two chaperones.”

  Clay touched the remote, and teens began moving in a comic, fast-forward fashion. “Everyone had gone by six fifteen. As you can see, no backpack.”

  A digital clock in the bottom, right-hand corner of the screen showed the progression of the evening as Clay continued to fast-forward.

  “The surveillance runs continuously?” Ben asked.

  “It doesn’t. It can be activated in one of two ways. Motion sensors, which did not happen all evening. Or preset, periodic checks, which Miller had asked the security guard to set at hourly intervals—standard procedure during the school year. Those five-minute hourly checks are what you’re seeing now.”

  Each scene showed an empty area in front of the school. When the digital clock read 6:23 a.m., teachers began showing up. By seven fifteen there was a steady stream of students, and Dana motioned for him to slow the tape down to real time.

  “You’ve been through the entire tape?” she asked.

  “Four times.”

  “Have you pinpointed when it appeared?”

  Clay shifted from one foot to the other. “No.”

  Dana tilted her head and waited.

  “It wasn’t there at seven twenty-five, but it was at seven thirty.”

  Dana gestured for him to proceed. Both she and Ben leaned forward.

  At seven twenty-five a flurry of students arrived.

  “First bell?” Ben asked.

  Clay paused the tape. “Yes. They have a warning bell at seven twenty-five and then a tardy bell at seven thirty. That’s why you see this mad rush of activity. Everyone drops off at once.”

  On the tape it was indeed solid teenagers, with a few teachers on the fringes. The spot Clay had been pointing at was in the center of the open area in front of the school, actually in line with the flag pole. Even slowed down, it was impossible to tell when the pack had been dropped. As Clay said, it simply wasn’t there, then it was.

  They watched it twice. A wave of students pushed through, no one slowed down, the area cleared out as the tardy bell rang, and left in the wake was one denim backpack.

  Dana sat back and tapped her fingers against her desk. “So a student left it.”

  Clay shrug
ged, rewound the tape again to seven twenty-five, and then paused it.

  “Fast-forward to seven twenty-seven, Clay. Can you zoom in on this guy?” Ben stood up and walked to the screen. He pointed to a male in a blue-jean jacket, wearing a worn baseball cap. He looked no different than the other boys.

  “Why him?” Clay asked.

  “I don’t know.” Ben frowned at the screen. “He could be carrying something in his right hand. It’s impossible to tell.”

  “But so could a dozen of these other people.”

  They all stared at the screen. Dana looked at the man who had caught Ben’s attention. He looked indistinguishable from the others to her. They could see nothing but his back.

  Clay ran the tape. As they watched, he disappeared with the crowd, heading toward the front door of the school.

  Dana and Clay focused again on the area where the backpack would appear in another ten seconds.

  Ben walked to the far left of the screen. “Stop the tape, Clay.”

  Dana turned to see what had caught his attention. “What is it?”

  “This guy. The one in the blue-jean jacket. He’s our man.”

  Now Clay joined him at the corner of the screen.

  “He doesn’t go into the school.” Ben walked back to the right of the screen, demonstrating with his hands as he explained. “He walked in with the crowd—knew when we wouldn’t be able to identify him. We know he’s a planner, so he would have watched the school, known when the bell would ring, when the crowd was the thickest.”

  Ben looked to Dana for confirmation. She gave him a single nod. It was all the encouragement he needed.

  “He’s pre-planned where the backpack will go—in the center of the square, in front of the camera. He continues on with the students, but never intends to go into the school. Here.” Ben stopped and tapped the screen. “He veers off and returns to his vehicle.”

  The room was silent as they all considered the possibility of Ben’s scenario.

  “Or maybe he’s a kid who forgot something in his car,” Clay suggested.

  “Maybe,” Ben agreed. “But when you forget something, you stop, you think for a minute, then you remember you’ve forgotten something, and you turn around. Back it up and run it at regular speed, Clay. I think we’ll see our man’s escape is a little more purposeful.”