The Abduction

by James Grippando

  Before heading to the airport, Allison decided to go into her office for an hour of secluded thought. Whenever she really wanted to get away from the world’s distractions, she did her best thinking in the tiny loft between the sixth and fifth floors of the Justice Building.

  The loft was sparsely furnished with a recliner chair, a small bureau and mirror, a window air conditioner, and a daybed that allowed the attorney general to sleep over in times of crisis. It was accessible from a hidden staircase just off a small sitting room in the attorney general’s office suite. It was also near a private elevator that ran all the way to the basement. President Kennedy had made use of the elevator when his brother Robert was attorney general. He and Marilyn Monroe could steal away to the attorney general’s loft, entering through the basement without being noticed.

  Allison thought with bitter irony that in this very room the happily married president had romped naked with the world’s most famous sex symbol. Americans could apparently overlook that in a man, but a trumped-up adultery scandal had been enough to send Allison into a political death spiral.

  She started in her chair, emerging from her thoughts. All this cogitation on adultery had her thinking of Mitch O’Brien and the scarlet letter photograph, and it suddenly occurred to her that she’d heard nothing more about either of them from Harley Abrams. She assumed he was still in Nashville, so she picked up the phone and dialed his mobile number.

  “Harley, it’s me. A loose end just jumped out at me. Any progress on finding Mitch O’Brien, my ex-fiancé?”

  Harley was just getting into his car, parked outside the Nashville field office. “Nothing concrete. In fact, it’s just getting stranger. He appears to have left Miami, but wherever he went, he’s leaving no trails. There’s been no activity on his credit cards or cellular phone for over two weeks.”

  “I want to get to the bottom of this. If there’s any kind of connection between the adultery accusations and Kristen’s kidnapping, he’s our best lead. And I still think he might be able to tell us something about Emily’s abduction.”

  Harley sighed-it was almost a groan. “Allison, I can understand your hoping for a connection between Kristen and Emily. But after last night’s conversation with Tanya Howe, I truly believe that our best theory is that someone kidnapped Kristen to help Lincoln Howe get elected. And if that’s the case, it doesn’t seem likely that there’s any connection at all to what happened to you eight years ago. That may be hard for you to accept, but you can’t let wishful thinking steer you off course.”

  “I’m not sailing off course. I’m just fishing with a bigger net. We can’t write off Mitch as a possible suspect just because Lincoln Howe turns out to be a racist who doesn’t love his granddaughter. We have no physical evidence whatsoever to incriminate Lincoln Howe or his supporters. All we have is motive. And you want to talk motive, then I say you have to look at Mitch O’Brien. For all we know, Mitch has been on a mission to destroy me ever since I broke off our engagement eight years ago. He took it very hard when I broke off the engagement, and he was frankly a little paranoid when I started dating Peter. He was the guy who kept me talking on the phone while someone was sneaking into my house to steal Emily. Coincidence? Maybe. But isn’t it also possible that he was intentionally distracting me? You yourself said that Emily’s taking was unusual-that whoever did it didn’t just want a baby. They wanted to hurt me.”

  “And eight years later he’s still mad as hell?” His question was laden with doubt.

  “Yes. I saw him, I know he’s still mad. He was sweet the first time, when he had a drink at the hotel. But when he showed up at that gala in Washington he was downright scary. Maybe he put a bug in the Republicans’ ear, implying that something sordid had happened between us that night in Miami, implying that I’d been unfaithful to Peter just to get back at me. When the fallout from the adultery controversy didn’t completely knock me out of the race, maybe he got desperate and hired somebody to abduct Howe’s granddaughter. Mitch was a criminal defense lawyer back in Chicago. He met some pretty unsavory characters.”

  Harley started his car and turned on the heat. “It’s plausible, I guess. But why would a guy hire somebody to take your baby, virtually disappear from your life, then reappear eight years later only to destroy you all over again?”

  “It could have been smoldering inside him all along. Only when he saw me on television every day running for president did it trigger something inside him. Like that guy who killed John Lennon. What’s his name?”

  “Mark David Chapman.”

  “Right, Chapman. He was just a regular guy when Lennon went into relative obscurity. But as soon as his idol starts to make a big comeback, Chapman snaps and shoots him in the back.”

  “Chapman had psychological problems that we can’t assume about Mitch. All we know for sure about your ex-fiancé is that he got drunk and cursed you out at a black-tie event.”

  “What about the photograph-the scarlet letter message?”

  “We don’t know that he sent it.”

  “Who else could it be?”

  “The lab is analyzing it. Maybe they can tell us. I should be getting a report soon.”

  “What are the forensic experts telling you?”

  He scoffed with sarcasm. “Unfortunately, I’ve been playing in a golf tournament all week. I haven’t had time to talk to them.”

  “Get them on the phone. This is important. I want to talk to them now.”

  “Allison-”

  “Just get them on the phone. I don’t have time to wait around for a typed and bound report in triplicate.”

  “Hold on,” he said with a sigh. Allison drummed her fingers, waiting. After thirty seconds, the line clicked for the conference call.

  “Allison Leahy,” said Harley, “I have Dr. Gus Eversol on the line, from our lab at headquarters.”

  “Good morning, Doctor.”

  “Good morning,” he replied. “Abrams tells me you would like a preliminary report.”

  “Yes. A preliminary report. I suppose that’s an appropriate label. Or as my dear old mentor used to say, tell me what the hell you’ve figured out so far.”

  Eversol stuttered, then spoke in the stilted voice of a scientist. “I have two preliminary findings at this time. The first shall come as no surprise to you. The active ingredient in the red substance used to create the message on the photograph is octyl methoxycinnamate. It also includes lesser quantities of petrolatum, polybutene, microcrystalline wax, castor oil, lanolin, and propylene carbonate. But, as I say, that comes as no surprise.”

  Allison said, “Are you trying to say it’s lipstick, as we suspected all along?”

  “Uh, yes. Lipstick.”

  “What kind?”

  “That’s something I haven’t narrowed down as yet. They’re all very similar, so pinpointing an exact brand is not as easy as you might think. In any event, you may find it more interesting to know that, in addition to the traditional ingredients of lipstick, I have isolated one definite foreign substance.”

  “What kind of foreign substance?” asked Harley.

  “Human saliva.”

  Allison winced with disbelief. “Doctor, are you saying that somebody scrawled that message on the photograph with a tube of used lipstick?”

  “Precisely,” he replied.

  The line went silent. Finally Allison spoke. “Can you tell anything as yet about the person who may have used this particular lipstick?”

  “Not really. In an hour or so I should have a blood type, and I should know whether the person is a secretor or a nonsecretor. The genetic testing will take a little longer, but I will positively determine the sex. In the meantime, if you wanted to play the odds, I suppose you might go ahead and assume it’s a woman.”

  Allison said, “I’d like to identify her, if possible. Do you have enough saliva to do DNA testing?”

  “Certainly. Just bring me a sample to compare it with. Blood, hair. Whatever you can get from your suspect
.”

  “That’s very helpful,” said Allison. “Thank you, Doctor. We’ll be in touch. Harley, stay on the line.” She waited for Eversol’s line to click, then continued. “Harley, do you have any female suspects?”

  “Not really.”

  “What about that woman who was shot in her apartment in Philadelphia?”

  “Yeah, Diane Combs, but that’s a long shot. My original theory was that the stolen Camaro with the Tennessee tags found outside her apartment had been used to transport Kristen, but we scoured the entire vehicle and didn’t find a single hair or fiber from Kristen. Whoever stole it doesn’t have a criminal record, either, since none of the fingerprints in the car or in the apartment turned up a match. I guess what I’m saying is that we’re making a double inference here. We’re assuming the photo is connected to the kidnapping, and we’re assuming that Combs was connected to the kidnappers.”

  She kneaded her brow, thinking. “What can it hurt? Call the morgue and get a tissue sample.”

  “Will do. But I’d still like to broaden the search. Maybe pursue some other suspects simultaneously.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t have any other female suspects.”

  “True. But we could just proceed by process of elimination.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that we assume everything is connected, like you say. Or let’s at least assume that the scarlet letter photo you received last month is connected to Kristen’s abduction. We start by eliminating the women with a direct connection to Emily, to the photo, or to Kristen.”

  “Harley, I didn’t send the damn photo to myself.”

  “Okay, that eliminates one mother. There’s still another.”

  Allison shook her head. “No way Tanya Howe’s dirty. I’d bet my life on that.”

  “I agree. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of a grandmother than a mother.”

  Allison sank in her chair. “You mean Natalie Howe?”

  The line crackled with Harley’s sigh, as if he were thinking very hard before he spoke. “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Not in my lifetime,” she scoffed.

  “I’m right here in Nashville. Are you saying you don’t want me to check it out?”

  She bit her lip, weighing it. “I’m saying you’d better be discreet.”

  33

  Harley had slept only four hours since arriving in Nashville last night, having risen well before the Saturday morning sun. At 8:00 A.M. he’d held a case briefing for the Metro Nashville Police, Davidson County Sheriff’s Department and various other local law enforcement agencies involved in the multi-jurisdictional task force. He’d spent another hour with his key people at the local command center-the lead room manager, the hot-line operators and investigators, and their local supervisors. The system was apparently working well. Each agency was using uniform lead sheets and hot-line intake forms, uniform summary reports and tracking forms, uniform statement forms and consent forms. Follow-up appeared to be good as well. All information was properly collected, entered into the computer database, analyzed, and compared. As far as Harley could tell, there was just one problem. No Kristen.

  The unexpected phone call from Allison hadn’t really changed his plans, though it was mid-afternoon before he was able to set aside a block of time to visit Tanya Howe’s residence in Enchanted Hills. The most positive thing to come out of last night’s meeting, in Harley’s view, was that Allison had secured Tanya’s agreement to allow the FBI back inside to monitor her phones. The technical agents had arrived early Saturday and should have been fully operational by now. Harley was stopping by not so much to check on their work-those guys knew what they were doing-but to let Tanya know that she had the ear of someone in the FBI with authority. And to take a closer look at Natalie Howe-discreetly.

  Natalie greeted him at the door, pleasant and presentable. Some mothers and even grandmothers neglected their appearance in times like these. Not Natalie Howe. Hair looked good, makeup was in place.

  She wore lipstick, too. Red.

  “Come in, please,” she said.

  Harley nodded appreciatively as she took his coat and led him down the hall to the family room.

  “Can I get you anything, Mr. Abrams? Coffee? Tea?”

  How about a hair sample? he thought. “Nothing, thank you.”

  The technical agents had transformed the family room into a small-scale nerve center. The ivory leather couch had been pushed into the corner. In its place was a rectangular worktable loaded with state-of-the-art track and trace equipment. A thick power supply cable snaked across the carpet, feeding to a tower computer terminal under the table and a backup desk terminal. Two relatively young agents were busy behind the worktable. They talked their techie lingo while adjusting the color monitor and double-checking the phone line connection.

  Tanya was seated on a bar stool at the kitchen counter. She was deep in conversation with an agent Harley had called up from the Atlanta office, Pat Collins, a black woman about Tanya’s age who had worked as a family counselor before joining the FBI.

  “Is everything okay here?” Harley interrupted.

  Tanya looked up. Her eyes were dark, vacuous pools, as if life itself had been slowly seeping away since the moment she’d lost her precious reason for living. “Nothing is okay.”

  Harley merely blinked. Over the years, grieving parents had snapped at him, screamed at him, even punched him. Never did he take it personally.

  Agent Collins said, “We’ve covered everything at least once, some of it twice. I was just giving Tanya some tips on how to control her emotions on the line. When the call comes, she’ll be ready.”

  The phone rang. Harley and his colleague exchanged glances, as if it were almost too weird. The technical agents jumped into action, throwing on headphones, adjusting their tracking and recording devices.

  “It’s cellular,” one of them said urgently. “A clone. It bypassed the central office computer cutoff-just like the call to the AG’s house.”

  A second ring pierced the tension.

  Harley nodded to Tanya, confirming this was probably the real thing. “Remember to stretch. We need time to pinpoint the call.”

  A third ring. Tanya breathed deeply, standing beside the phone, unable to sit down. She looked at her mother for support, then answered on the fourth ring. “Hello.”

  “Tanya Howe?”

  The distorted message came across deep and mechanical, just like yesterday’s call. But it somehow sounded different-like a different person. Tanya shuddered, confused and creeped out by the voice. “Yes, it’s me.”

  On the other end of the line, Repo adjusted the bulky extension on the mouthpiece. He was behind the steering wheel in a parked car, speaking through a voice-altering device. “I’m calling to tell you your daughter is safe.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Stay calm. I’m keeping her with me until after the election. Someone wants her dead. I’m not going to let that happen.”

  “Let me talk to her-please.”

  Repo ripped off the voice-altering equipment and tossed it on the dashboard, then shot a stern look at Kristen. “You have twenty seconds. No more.”

  She nodded, then eagerly snatched the phone. Repo leaned across the console and kept a close ear, listening in.

  “Mom?”

  “Kristen!” Her heart swelled with joy and pain. She was pacing, suddenly oblivious to everyone else in the room.

  “I’m okay, Mom.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, thank God. Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “It’s so cold outside. Are you warm enough?”

  “Fine, yeah.”

  “Are they feeding you?”

  “Yes. Froot Loops and stuff.”

  “Do you know where you are? You don’t have to tell me where. Just, do you know?”

  Repo shot Kristen a look, shaking his head.

  “I can’t answer that, Mom. But everything’s okay. Reall
y. Please, don’t worry.”

  Repo pointed at his watch, signaling the time.

  “Mom, I have to hang up now.”

  “No!” She struggled not to lose it, but her thoughts scattered. Tears began to flow. Through misty eyes she watched the agents busy at their computers.

  Blinking coordinates dotted the bright blue screen. She knew vaguely that they were tracking radio signals from cellular transmission towers, calculating angles and points of intersection, but the flashy high-tech gadgets only added to her confusion. Abrams shot her an urgent look, as if a few more seconds would do it.

  “Kristen, I love you,” her voice cracked.

  “Mom, please don’t cry.”

  Repo grimaced, feeling for her mother. He checked his watch again. Forty seconds. Way too long. “Say good-bye,” he whispered frantically.

  “I love you, too, Mom. I’ll be home soon. I promise.”

  The line disconnected. Abrams looked at Tanya, then at the agents, bursting with anticipation. The computer screen blinked as two yellow dots intersected. It blinked again, superimposing a grid map over the coordinates. Data scrolled in a separate window, rolling like a slot machine. It stopped suddenly and flashed a range of possible addresses.

  The techies leaped from their chairs, shouting in unison, “Got it!”

  “Where?” asked Harley.

  “Right here! Nashville.”

  Harley snatched the phone and dialed headquarters.

  34

  “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!” Repo pounded the steering wheel as he spoke, his breath steaming inside the chilly parked car. Steady traffic cruised by in both directions on the wide city street, though no one could see in through the tinted windows.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have put you on the line. You talked so long even Barney Fife could have traced that call.”

  Kristen sank in the passenger seat, near tears, but she acted tough. “So sorry,” she snapped. “But my mom was crying. I couldn’t just hang up on her.”