I
called Mandy back repeatedly, but each time it went right to voice mail, as if the phone had been shut off.
Something had happened to her.
Balakian was looking at me, alarmed. “Huh?” he said. “What’s going on, Heller?”
I explained. “I’m going to need your help,” I said. “I need you to ping her phone. I don’t have the resources to do that.”
“Man,” he said. He shook his head, looked rattled. “I can do that, sure. But what if the phone’s off? Or smashed?”
“That’s possible. So at least we’ll find out where it was last located. Which tells us where she was abducted.”
“Right.”
“If we can get a fix on where she was grabbed, traffic cams or other CCTVs might have captured a license plate or a face or something.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“This is the best lead we have at the moment. But you’ve got to do it now.”
He nodded. He took out his phone and dialed a number and asked
for a Detective Ryan. After identifying himself, he read off Mandy’s cell phone number. A minute later they had the name of her carrier, AT&T.
In the meantime I called Dorothy and filled her in. By the time I ended the call, Balakian had something.
“AT&T says the phone’s not active. They can’t ping it.”
“Like you said, it was probably shut off or smashed. Do you have a last known location, at least?”
“The last call—when she was talking to you—hit a tower near the Anacostia metro station. Martin Luther King Junior Avenue and Howard Road, Southeast.”
I nodded. “Good. Now, I have another number for you to ping, if possible.” I took out the metal business card.
“Whose?”
“Thomas Vogel’s,” I said. I looked at the card and dialed the phone number.
It rang four or five times. Then: “Vogel.”
“It’s Heller. Your guys have Mandy Seeger. If anything happens to her, you know what I’m capable of.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Heller.”
There was a click and the line went dead.
I thought a moment. It was possible that his guys had grabbed Mandy and hadn’t yet had the opportunity to inform the boss. But he’d hung up so quickly that I couldn’t help but wonder. If he really didn’t know what I was talking about, he would have pursued the matter. Asked me some questions. So it didn’t make sense. He had to know they’d taken Mandy.
The answer came about a minute later. Balakian was talking to his contact in the department about Vogel’s phone when I got a text message. It was a link, a URL. The sender was a phone number, not a name, and I was sure the number was spoofed. I clicked on the link, and it took
me to a website called Disappearing Ink. In the middle of a blank white page was a red button that said
DOWNLOAD DISAPPEARING INK.
It was an app. I clicked the red button, which took me to an iTunes page and another button, and soon I’d installed it on my phone. It appeared to be an encrypted text messaging service of some kind. I signed in using my e-mail address, and the number
1
popped up on top of the Disappearing Ink button on my phone. I had a message. I clicked on it. It was from “ShepherdBoy.” I thought again of Vogel’s remark:
Guys like us, we’re the shepherds. We take care of the sheep
.
The message said:
We had a covenant, and you know the terms. Ms. Seeger was in violation. You stand down, including your friends, and you’ll see her again.
I stared at it. Vogel wasn’t going to admit on a phone call to having kidnapped Mandy. That could be used against him, legally. So why was he sending an incriminating text?
After about five seconds, the message disappeared, and I understood why he wanted to communicate this way. His messages were sent securely and disappeared as soon as they were read. I typed back:
Deal. Release her now or I’ll come after you.
Then I hit send. I looked at Balakian. He was still talking on the phone, shaking his head and saying, “Is there another way to try?”
Another text message appeared in the Disappearing Ink app:
MS will be released when you return home, to Boston. Not before.
I tried to take a screenshot, but that message disappeared as well. No wonder Vogel was being this explicit. Screenshots didn’t work. Even if I managed to take a picture of my iPhone’s screen, there’d be no way to pin it on him.
I looked up at Balakian. “Did you ping him?”
He shook his head. “That’s not his cell phone number.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a VOIP software-based number. Like Google Voice.”
“Not entirely following you.”
“It’s . . . we can only ping real cell phone numbers. This is a software-generated number.”
“But you can trace it, right?”
“Not this one. It tracks to a Tor-sponsored service.”
“Tor, the anonymous network?”
He nodded.
My understanding of Tor was pretty limited. I knew it was a network that lets you be anonymous on the Internet. Much beyond that, and I’m useless.
“He’s also using a VPN service with it, which further complicates our ability to track that number. So as far as we can tell, it’s a black box. No luck.”
“You know technology. That’s unusual for a cop.”
He shrugged modestly. “A decent basic working knowledge, that’s all. I’m no hacker, trust me. What’d you find out?”
“They have Mandy Seeger, and they’re not releasing her until I go back to Boston.”
“
What?
Let me see.”
“There’s nothing to show you. The texts have disappeared.”
“Disappeared.”
“We’re dealing with Tom Vogel. He’s a clever guy.” I checked the
Disappearing Ink app again and found nothing. I typed out another message to Vogel:
Got an offer for you.
I waited. A minute, a minute and a half.
Finally a reply came back:
Fold up your tent and go home, and MS gets to return to her life. Persevere, and her death will be on you.
I showed the message to Balakian. He stared at it, said, “Jesus!” and handed it back. By the time I went to look at it again, it had disappeared.
“Please keep me updated, in real time, on what you find on the traffic cameras in Anacostia,” I said. “It may be our best chance to find her.”
“Heller, I don’t know how easy you think this is, but the tower location we have is approximate. She could have been anywhere within a square mile, maybe more. That covers a lot of cameras. We don’t have that kind of manpower.”
“Or time. Look, just start with the traffic cams. I need to get going.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in touch. I have an idea.”
W
alter McGeorge, a.k.a. Merlin, was doing a sweeping job at a law firm in Alexandria when I reached him. He called me back an hour later, when I’d returned to the hotel.
“I thought you were never going to talk to me again,” he said.
For a moment I’d forgotten what he was so sheepish about. Then I remembered about the burning paper in the strong room at the law firm, and the file he left behind. It felt like months ago.
“Come on. Screwing up is part of the job. Keeps it interesting.”
“I feel terrible about what happened. I’m really sorry.”
“Well, now’s your chance to make it up to me.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to need a bunch of gear. A miniature tracker.” I explained. “Any hunting stores near you? I need a tranquilizer rifle or pistol and maybe ten darts. A kit’ll cost you a couple thousand bucks—do you have the cash?”
“I can charge it on my credit card as long as you pay me back soon.”
“No problem. Now, this’ll be the hard part. A couple sticks of dynamite.”
“
Dynamite?
”
“Either that or ammonium nitrate.”
“It’s getting really hard to buy ammonium nitrate. I don’t know, man. They’re both hard. Dynamite or ammonium nitrate, this is going to take me a couple of days.”
“We don’t have that.”
“When do you need it by?”
“Noon tomorrow at the latest.”
“Impossible.”
“Okay,” I said, ignoring him. “And a couple of electric blasting caps.”
“
Blasting
caps?”
“Electric. And zip ties. The heavy duty kind.”
“Okay.”
“A couple of five-gallon cans of gasoline.”
“This is a goddamn Nick Heller scavenger hunt.”
“And a weapon. Semiautomatic pistol, if you’ve got one to spare.” Like the others in my Special Forces team—operational detachment Alpha, as the lingo has it—Merlin was comfortable around weapons and kept some in his home, though in reality I’m sure he never had call to use one.
“You care what caliber?”
“No.”
“How about a Ruger Mark II twenty-two LR?”
I smiled. That was what we used in the field. Same for Mossad. There’s a general misconception about the twenty-two-caliber pistol, that it’s not a serious weapon, that it’s only good for plinking. Wrong. The truth is, both Special Forces operators and Navy SEALs use twenty-twos when they need to kill someone reliably and quietly. For subsistence hunting or sentry elimination. With a well-aimed head shot using twenty-two long rifle hollow-point rounds, the brain will explode.
“And LR hollow-points,” I said.
“Okay.”
“And some kind of piece for yourself.”
“Why do I need one?”
“I’ll explain when you meet me at my hotel. As soon as you can. Can you be here in two hours?”
“Not if I need to pick up all this crap, too.”
“Okay. We’ve got tomorrow morning, too. Be here inside two hours. But one of the items I’m going to need for sure tonight.”
“Which one?”
—
An hour and a half later, when I still hadn’t heard from Kombucha, I called him.
“You know how many traffic cams the MPD has in DC?” he said. “I mean, total, everywhere?”
“No idea.”
“Forty-eight. Total. In southeast, a grand total of seven.”
“Shit.”
“The closest one to the Anacostia metro stop is at Suitland Parkway and Firth Sterling, about half a block away. And I didn’t find anything on that one.
Nada
.”
“We need other cameras in the area. Banks and liquor stores and supermarkets and convenience stores and gas stations.”
“Well, we’ve got an intel analyst unit now. Twenty-four-seven. I filled out a request. They’ll search the area for known CCTVs and pull the footage and burn it onto a DVD for us if they find anything.”
“How fast can they work?”
“I don’t know, Nick. It’s a laborious search. It’ll take a while.”
“I see.”
“But there’s good news. I have an arrest warrant for Richard Rasmussen. I haven’t entered it into NCIC yet—I’m holding onto it, keeping it out of the computer for now.”
“Oh, shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t arrest the guy yet.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t you want to get the ringleader? Give me a little time and you’ll have Vogel, too.”
Balakian expelled a mouthful of air. “Not the way I want to play it. Once I have Rasmussen, he’ll give me Vogel. Or we’ll serve a search warrant on him and maybe get the connection that way.”
“Just . . . give me twenty-four hours.”
“Give . . .
you
? Dude, you’re not running this show.”
I spoke quietly, but he could hear the banked fury in my voice. “You arrest Rasmussen now and Vogel has no more reason to make a deal. Which means he’ll have his guys kill Mandy Seeger. She’ll only be a witness against him. She’ll have no more strategic use.”
A long silence, then he said, “I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t do it. You arrest Rasmussen, you’re killing Mandy. I mean it.”
By the time I hung up I felt fairly certain I’d gotten through to him. He agreed to hold off on arresting Rasmussen for the murder of Kayla Pitts.
That was a relief, but his news about the cameras was a big disappointment. That had been my Plan A. Now it seemed dubious. It was time for Plan B.
I turned to Dorothy, who’d been listening to my end of the conversation while munching on mixed nuts from the minibar. “Now it’s crucial we find Vogel’s home address.”
“I’m on it, Nick, but it’s not looking good.”
“There’s always a way. No one’s entirely off the grid.”
“This guy seems to be. Everything goes to his post office box in Thurmont, Maryland.”
“The guy has electricity. And Internet. That’s two utilities right there that require a service address. Time for a little social engineering.”
She paused, shrugged. “Worth a try.”
“Do me a favor and get me the customer service phone numbers for the biggest Internet providers in and around Thurmont, Maryland. Time Warner Cable, Comcast, DirecTV—let’s start with the biggest ones. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” I glanced at my watch. “Where the hell is Merlin? He should be here by now.”
“Okay. What else you need?”
“Pull up all the pizza places in and around Thurmont. Can’t be that many.”
“
Pizza
places?”
“Yep.”
“Pizza places, huh. Okay. What else you need?”
“Phone number for Southern Maryland Electric.”
“That it?”
“Oh, and go down to the concierge desk and see if they have an express mail envelope.”
“FedEx okay?”
“No, not FedEx. Got to be US Postal Service express mail. If not, see if they can find us one.”
“How big?”
“Just a regular flat-rate envelope. But if Merlin’s not here in the next half hour, we’re going to miss the cutoff. But maybe I won’t need it. Maybe we’ll get a hit from the electric company.”
“That it?”
“And order us some coffee from room service, okay?”
“Got it. You’re moving into high gear.”
“So are you.”
“Nick,” she said, and she seemed to hesitate.
“Yeah?”
“Can we talk?”
“Make it quick, sure.”
Now she fixed me with a fierce look. “Do what he says.”
“Who?”
“Vogel. He says he’ll let Mandy go if you just go back to Boston? Go back to Boston.”
“You don’t think I’ve thought about it?” I said. “But I know people like Vogel. The things that trigger him, the small irritants you can’t predict. Thing is, Mandy will never be safe. My nephew—a target, too, anytime the wind blows east and Vogel has a change of heart. I can’t have these people walking around with a target on their backs. The sooner I move against him, the safer Mandy is.”
She kept looking at me for a few seconds longer. Then, softly, relenting, she said, “Okay. I get it.”
On my first phone call I got lucky, which only set me up for eventual disappointment. Thomas Vogel indeed had an account with Comcast for his Internet and his cable TV. I told them I was having trouble with my service. They asked for “my” date of birth, which I provided—I’d gotten it from Art Garvin—and then I asked, “What address do you have?”
This normally works. You give them enough information that identifies yourself and they tend to get loose with the information. People like to help. But she said, “What’s your password, sir?”
“Password?”
“Your account has an extra security feature. We’re not allowed to give out any personal information, including the address, unless we’re given a password.”
“Ohh—I’ve forgotten it, I’m sorry. But I gave you my name and my date of birth.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I’m still going to need a password.”
Vogel was smart. He’d taken precautions that ninety-nine percent of people wouldn’t bother with. I hung up and called back, hoping to reach another customer service representative who wouldn’t be as scrupulous.
But no matter how many times I called, I came to the same stopping point. They required a password before they’d give out the home address.
I was no more fortunate with the electric company. They, too, required a password before they’d divulge the home address.
Then came the pizza places. I called the first one, giving my name as Thomas Vogel, and said, “You have the address, I assume.”
“No, sir. Can you give it to me, please?”
Normally this trick works. Pizza places, take-out places, restaurants that deliver—if you’re a regular customer, and you order takeout from them a lot, they’ll store your information in their databases. But I struck out with all five pizza places.
Either Vogel didn’t have pizza delivered to his home—he picked it up or he just didn’t eat pizza—or he didn’t live in Thurmont. It was possible that he had his mail delivered to a post office that wasn’t in his hometown but nearby. If so, he was even craftier than I’d figured.
Half an hour of this, and nothing. No luck finding his home address. Room service arrived with coffee, and then Dorothy came back with an express mail envelope from the concierge downstairs and the form that goes with it.
“For Thurmont, Maryland,” she said, “they don’t guarantee delivery until noon.”
“So noon it’ll have to be.”
Then came a knock at the door. It was Merlin, holding a shopping bag.
“Hey, man.”
“Thanks for coming. You got it?”
“I brought two, just in case you need a second one.”
“I shouldn’t, but I appreciate the thought. All right, hold on.”
Merlin said hello to Dorothy while I called Ellen Wiley.
“I never heard back from you,” she said. “I thought things might have gone sideways.”
“Worked out okay. But I need one more favor from you.”
“Whatever the hell you want, sweetie,” she said.
When I’d finished talking to Ellen, I tried Mandy’s cell phone one more time, but once again there was no answer.
Everything depended on one complicated plan with a lot of moving parts. With any number of ways it could go wrong.