Live Bait

by David Archer

  Roland McCabe met them in the foyer of the house. He was a short, stocky man, but there was a sense of power and presence about him that even Sam could feel. He shook hands with Sam and Steve, but obviously noticed that Walter did not extend a hand.

  “Good to meet you, Mr. McCabe,” Sam said. “I’m Sam Prichard and these are my associates, Steve Beck and Walter Rawlings.”

  “Mr. Prichard,” the businessman said, “I’m so glad you could make it. This thing has got me so torn up I have trouble just thinking.”

  Sam smiled. “Not a problem, Mr. McCabe. Is there someplace we can talk privately?”

  “Yes, certainly,” McCabe said. “Come on into the kitchen. I have coffee, if you’d like some.”

  “Coffee would be great,” Sam said. Steve echoed him, but Walter shook his head politely.

  They sat at the kitchen table and McCabe personally poured coffee for the two men before taking his own seat.

  “I really do appreciate you coming,” he said. “They said if I involve the police, they’ll kill her immediately.”

  “No problem,” Sam said. “I understand your daughter disappeared right out of her room?”

  McCabe nodded. “Yes. She went to bed around eleven, and everything seemed perfectly fine. Then, a few minutes after four o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by the sound of her phone ringing. It rang several times without her answering, so I got up to check on her and she was gone. Her phone was still ringing, so I answered it. There was some guy on the line, telling me that he had Amber and what he wanted me to do.”

  “Mr. McCabe, what can you tell me about the person who called?” Sam asked. “I don’t suppose the call was recorded, was it?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. I probably should record all of her calls and my own, since Georgia is a one party consent state, but it never occurred to me before.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “Okay, the guy who called. He had a deep voice, and he had an accent, but it wasn’t what I would consider Ethiopian. More like a French accent, to be honest. He started talking as soon as I answered her phone, said that he had Amber, and if I want her back, I need to cooperate with the Ethio Electronics deal. He said if the partnership isn’t well on the way to being finished within five days, that she’ll be killed, and that if I contact the police, she would be killed immediately. He put her on the phone for couple of seconds, long enough for me to hear her crying and begging me to do whatever it took to bring her home, and then he snatched the phone away. He said to remember I had only five days, and to make sure I got it done.”

  “Okay, what about background noise? Did you hear anything in the call you can remember?”

  McCabe screwed up his face in concentration. “There was a beeping sound,” he said. “It sounded a lot like the backup alarm on our forklifts. You know, beep, beep, like that.”

  “Okay, that’s good. Anything else?”

  He continued thinking for a moment, then shook his head. “That’s all I can remember.”

  Sam looked at him. “Five days,” he said. “That seems like an unusual time allowance. How long will it actually take to put this partnership together?”

  “It would take at least three days,” McCabe said. “Naturally, I went ahead and started the process yesterday, just in case they were watching to see if I did, but it won’t actually begin until sometime today. There are documents that have to be literally flown back and forth between here and Addis Ababa, where Ethio is located. This is not a partnership I wanted anything to do with, because it will force me to manufacture a number of my most popular products in Ethiopia, products that are banned from export to certain African and Middle Eastern countries. If I let them start making those products, I won’t have any control over shipment and delivery. If any of those products start turning up in those countries, the government could shut me down.”

  “I understand,” Sam said. “It would put you in a very difficult position. Tell me this, until this point, have you had any kind of pressure from anyone in Ethiopia, any effort made to push you into this deal?”

  McCabe shrugged. “There’s always some pressure,” he said. “The Ethiopian government has threatened tariffs against some of my products, and while it isn’t the biggest market I’ve got, we’d definitely feel it on the bottom line if our products stop selling over there. With the kind of tariffs they’re talking about, my products would become so expensive that almost no one would buy them.”

  “And yet you were willing to risk that, to avoid getting into this partnership?”

  McCabe nodded. “Yes, if I had to. It’s not something I want to see happen, though. The problem is that giving into this demand means the potential for proscribed electronic technology to get into countries around Ethiopia where it’s not allowed, under U.S. law. The last thing in the world I need is the government thinking I’m supplying any type of restricted technology to countries that are on the proscribed list. That would be a disaster, and really could put me out of business completely.”

  “All right,” Sam said, “I see the problem. Were there any kind of threats made to try to coerce you into it, before this happened?”

  “Other than economic threats, no. I'll be honest, Mr. Prichard, I never would have believed these people could resort to something this terrible. If I had, I would’ve hired plenty of security, believe you me.”

  “I’m sure you would have,” Sam said. “I understand your housekeeper was the last one to see Amber that night?”

  McCabe nodded. “Yes,” he said. “She’s here, would you like to speak with her?” Without waiting for Sam to answer, he got up and walked to the kitchen door. “Carla? Would you come in here for a moment, please?”

  The housekeeper entered as McCabe took his chair again. “You called me, sir?”

  “Carla, this is Mr. Prichard, Mr. Beck and Mr. Rawlings. They’re from the company I hired to try to find Amber and bring her home, and they wanted to speak with you.”

  Carla looked at Sam, smiling nervously. “Yes, sir?”

  “Carla, Mr. McCabe says you were the last one to see Amber before she was abducted. Did you notice anything unusual or strange in the way she was acting?”

  Carla looked into his eyes for a moment, then shook her head. “Not really, sir,” she said. “She said she was getting tired and wanted to go to bed, and I did think that was a little strange. She usually stays up watching TV until after midnight, but she went to bed about eleven.”

  “But she didn’t act like she was afraid, or like she had any kind of big secret?”

  “Oh, no. She told me she was tired, and then she asked me if she could invite her friend Julie to come over and use the pool the next day, and I said that would be no problem. We talked a bit about what to have for dinner when Julie came, but she decided on pizza, like she always does. After that, she went in her room and I went to mine. I didn’t have any idea she was missing until Mr. McCabe woke me at four thirty.”

  “Has anything in Amber’s room been disturbed since then?” Sam asked. “Have you done any kind of cleaning in there or anything?”

  The housekeeper shook her head. “No, nothing. I watch enough TV to know that you shouldn’t ever disturb anything in a crime scene.”

  Sam grinned. “That’s very true,” he said. He turned back to McCabe. “Now, Walter, here, is our crime scene expert. I’d like him to take a look at your daughter’s room. I understand your security system didn’t record anything happening when she disappeared? Is that correct?”

  “Nothing,” McCabe replied. “According to the system, no doors were opened, no windows were opened, she just vanished right through the walls. That’s impossible, of course, so I’m getting a whole new system put in today, and this time I’m adding the video cameras, inside and outside. If I’d only had them before, maybe…”

  “Probably a good idea,” Sam said. “It sounds like somebody hacked into your system and disabled it during the time the abduction took place. Is it okay if Walter looks around her room?�
��

  “Yes, of course,” McCabe said. “Upstairs, second door on the left.”

  “Come on, Walter,” he said. “Time to work your magic.”

  “It’s not magic,” Walter said. “It’s detailed observation and deduction.”

  Steve nodded, grinning back at Sam. “To you,” he said. “To the rest of us, trust me, Walter, it’s magic.”

  They all followed McCabe up the stairs. Walter paused when they got close to her door and heard a loud creak each time one of them stepped out on one particular spot that was too wide to avoid.

  McCabe looked at him sheepishly. “Been meaning to get that fixed,” he said.

  Walter bounced on the spot for a moment and listened, then let McCabe lead them on to the girl’s bedroom. McCabe started to enter first, but Sam put a hand on his arm when he started to lead them inside.

  “Why don’t we let them do this?” he asked. “Walter is the absolute best at this sort of thing, he really is.” McCabe looked at Steve and Walter and nodded, and the two of them stepped through the door.

  Steve stopped just inside the door and watched as Walter walked around, looking at everything. He kept his hands in his pockets as he moved around the room, making sure that he didn’t touch anything.

  Amber’s room was large, with its own private bathroom. Having a wealthy father was undoubtedly a benefit to any teenage girl, and it appeared that Amber knew exactly how to take advantage of it. A large canopy bed occupied center stage, part of a matching bedroom suite that included two large dressers, a chest of drawers, nightstands and a vanity table. There were a couple of bookshelves on one wall, but most of the shelves held knickknacks and photos, rather than books. A desk and chair occupied a corner, with a laptop computer sitting open.

  Walter went from one item of furniture to another, then got down on his knees and looked under the bed. He looked under the dressers and desk, then got back to his feet and walked into the bathroom. He stayed there for nearly two minutes, then came back into the bedroom and began looking at the windows.

  The room was on the corner, and there were three windows. Walter looked each of them over carefully, paying special attention to the contacts on the security wiring. Two of the windows were on the back wall of the house, while the third was on the side that faced to the north. At that one, which was right beside the bed, Walter looked more closely and then opened the window and leaned outside.

  The window had a screen on it, but it had been cut on both sides and the bottom. He leaned out and looked down the outer wall, then to both sides before turning over and leaning backward through the window so that he could look up the wall. He stayed in that precarious position for a moment, then came back into the room.

  “I need to go upstairs,” he said. “The room right above this one.”

  “Upstairs?” McCain asked. “That’s just the attic. It’s all one big room, we just use it for storage.”

  “She was taken up the outside wall,” Walter said, “and there’s a window directly above hers. I think she went in that window, but we need to go look to be sure.”

  McCabe’s eyes were wide. “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Houses get dirty,” Walter said. “Something brushed against the wall above her window recently and wiped away some of the dirt. The dirt on the wall below the window hasn’t been disturbed. He probably did that because he knew about the loud boards on this floor. He didn’t want to take the chance you might come to see who was walking around on it.”

  McCabe stared a second longer, but then he turned and led them back down the hall, past the creaky spot, to another doorway that was next to the stairs leading down. When he opened it, there were stairs leading up to the attic, and he stood back to let Walter and Steve go first. The rest of them followed afterward.

  The attic was a single room that spanned the entire length and width of the large house. Sam, Steve and McCabe watched as Walter went directly to the window he had mentioned. On the floor beside the window was a metal frame with a rope ladder attached, and Walter pointed at it.

  “Somebody was in here,” he said. “They hung this out the window and went down to her room and then brought her up the same way. She must have left her window open, so all he had to do was cut through the screen.”

  “She always sleeps with the window open in the summertime,” McCabe said. He stared at the frame and ladder. “That was a fire escape,” he said. “It used to be mounted on one of Amber’s windows so she could get out if there was a fire. We took it out while we were remodeling a couple years ago and it just got thrown up here. I always meant to put it back, but never got around to it.”

  Walter studied the floor around the window for a moment, then started walking back toward the stairs that led down. “There was one set of footprints that came in, a man wearing about size 11 shoes. He probably weighs about one eighty, and I would say he’s probably around 6 feet tall. He walked in, went to the window and put the frame in it, then climbed over and went down the ladder. When he came back up, he was heavier. There’s only one set of footprints going out, the same size shoes, but he probably weighed about two seventy-five at that point.”

  Walter looked up at Sam. “The girl was drugged, unconscious. The kidnapper had her strapped onto his back. All he had to do was carry her down the stairs and out the front door.”

  McCabe looked at Sam. “How can he tell all that?”

  Sam was looking down at the footprints in the dust on the hardwood floor. “Look at the footprints that lead inward,” he said. “The guy was wearing sneakers, soft rubber soles. You can see how much contact they made by where they break the dust on the floor, right? Now, look at the ones leading outward, back toward the stairs. They are a little bit wider, and the soles make more contact, which means he weighed more. Walter has seen enough of these types of footprints to be able to make a guess about the weight of the person who made them, and the distance between the footprints tells him about how tall the man must be.”

  “He had been in the house before,” Walter said. “There are footprints just like his in the carpet in the second floor hallway. They look like they might be a few days old.”

  McCabe squinted in confusion, but then his eyes went wide. “The insurance guy,” he said. “A couple days ago, Carla said a man came by from the insurance company and needed to do a walk-through in the house. She showed them around, and then he left. I thought it was kind of strange that they would send somebody out, but I never thought to call and ask about it.”

  Walter was already headed down the stairs, so the rest of them followed quickly. He went straight down to the main floor and to the front door, then stepped outside and began looking at the front porch and the ground around the steps. He looked around for half a minute, then suddenly lay on the ground and looked across its surface.

  He pointed south, across the yard. “He carried her that way,” he said. He got back to his feet and started following the trail that only he seemed able to see, although Sam did notice a few spots where it appeared a bit of grass or a dandelion was crushed.

  A couple of times, Walter got back on the ground and looked across the surface again, then got up and kept walking. They came to the edge of the yard, where a large hedge bordered it. Walter went directly to a spot where someone had cut out a few of the lower branches.

  “He got down and crawled through there,” he said. “Her feet were dragging as he did so.”

  Walter got on his hands and knees and crawled through the gap in the bush. He stopped halfway through, then backed out and got to his feet again.

  “There’s a road on the other side, and he had a car waiting there. It was parked with one tire on the dirt on the side of the road, so I could see the tire print. Firestone Champion, so it was probably an Enterprise rental car. That’s the most popular tire they use.”

  McCabe was staring, his eyes wider than ever. “He can tell what kind of tire it was?”

  Steve grinned. “Among his other ta
lents, Walter has an eidetic memory. He knows the tread pattern of almost every tire sold in the United States.”

  Walter was looking around on the ground again, and lay down once more to look across its surface. “He came through here earlier than that,” he said. “He went straight to the front door, and apparently could open it without making a sound. He probably had a key, because he was able to get in quickly. The footprints going in don’t look to be more than an hour older than the ones coming out.” He looked up at McCabe. “Older footprints show the grass a little bit more recovered than newer ones.”

  “He had a key?” McCabe asked, incredulous. “How could he have gotten a key?”

  “He could have gotten hold of one,” Sam said, “possibly even yours. If he could take an impression of it, or slip away with it for any length of time, it wouldn’t be hard to make a duplicate. Who else might have a key to your house?”

  McCabe seemed confused for a moment, then put a hand to his forehead. “The security company,” he said. “The same one that installed the alarm system. They have patrol cars that cruise around their clients, and they had a key.”

  “That’s not unusual,” Sam said. “I’ll put a couple of my people onto looking at them. Since the security system was disabled and they had a key, there seems to be a connection.”

  McCabe nodded. “They’re called Dark Horse Security, and they’ve only been around about a year or so. I’d heard some good things, so I hired them. Now I wish I’d stuck with ADT.”

  “That gives us a couple of leads, anyway,” Sam said. “We’ll check them out, and we can find out what Enterprise cars were rented around here over the last few days, and who got them. It’s not much, but it’s a start.”

  They went back to the house and spoke with Carla again, asking about the insurance man who had come by earlier in the week.

  “Yes, I remember,” she said. “He seemed legitimate, so I let him look around.”