“Yes, something’s happened. Damn it. Something terrible has happened.” Diane struggled to keep tears out of her eyes.
Please, no emotions right now.
She had to deal with this. She took a breath. “I’m going to the crime lab. I’ll explain there.”
Her hand shook as she started the elevator back up and used her key to override any call from the second floor. They rode in silence. Liam stared at her, fear in his eyes, but he didn’t push.
On the third floor they got out and Diane rushed to the west wing, waving away anyone who tried to catch her attention. When she entered the crime lab they all were there—David, Izzy, Neva, and Jin. Her team. People she trusted. They all looked grim. They had seen the e-mail attachment.
“I’ve already started trying to identify the background sounds,” said David. He shook his head. “So far . . . white noise. Someone’s effort to stop me from doing what I’m trying to do.”
“What’s going on?” said Liam.
“Show him the video,” said Diane.
They all crowded around the monitor in one of the glassed-in workstations. The video was already on the screen. David played it again. Diane grabbed his hand as it came on. David squeezed back.
On the screen was Andie, her arms and legs bound to a chair with duct tape, sitting in front of a blue-white background that looked to be a sheet. Her
Vitruvian Man
T-shirt and jeans were drenched in blood . . . her head back . . . her neck glistening in deep red.
Liam sucked in his breath. “Andie. God, no. Please, no.” He sank to the chair.
As if instructed by someone out of sight, Andie lifted her head and stared into the camera. It was a recreation of the other murders. Designed to terrify, it had succeeded.
The screen went blank for a moment and came back with Andie holding a piece of paper. She was shaking and dropped it. The screen went blank again. When it came back moments later she was holding the paper again. She read from the paper in a shaky voice, one that was hoarse . . . on the verge of tears. She stumbled several times in the reading, her eyes darting to her captor, terror on her face. Diane’s heart ached.
“ ‘I want the diary, or this will be real,’ ” her shaky voice said. “ ‘I know you have it. Don’t go to the police. I will know. I will contact you when it suits me. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. Right now, I want to have fun. Don’t fuck with me.’ ”
“Oh, God, this is my fault,” said Liam. “This wouldn’t have happened if I’d kept my date with her. Now she’s . . .”
“Don’t go there,” said David. “We don’t have time.”
Diane turned to David. “Is he smart?” she asked.
“Yes, but not real smart,” he said.
“What does that mean?” said Liam, almost angrily.
“He wants to set Diane up psychologically so she won’t have any choice but to do what he says. That’s why the opening scene—Diane’s seen the real thing. And that’s why the waiting game and the threat. He—or she, I suppose—wants to put Diane in a position of such anxiety that she’ll do anything to get Andie back.”
“It’s working,” said Liam. “Where’s the part where he’s not real smart?”
“He’s giving us time,” said David.
“What are we going to do?” said Liam.
“I’ve already started. You heard the white noise in the background? It kind of sounds like wind?”
They nodded.
“It’s not really white. It’s in the pink range—meaning that it’s a higher frequency. It’s probably being generated by a device for helping you sleep, giving you a pleasant sound. White noise isn’t pleasant. What I’m doing now is working on blocking that frequency in the video to hear any other sounds in the background. I’m also analyzing Andie’s voice to see what kind of space she might be held in. The computer is doing that right now. Also, I’m trying to backtrack where the e-mail originated from.”
That was quick. Diane knew that as soon as David saw the video he would start to work. She loved him for that. He was the best.
“He’s going to want a diary,” said Diane. “The diaries don’t have the location of the gold mine—I’m assuming that’s what he’s after. We have to get Andie before we give him the diary or he’ll have no reason to let her go. But in the event he sees the diary, he needs to think it contains what he wants.”
“How are you going to do that?” asked Liam.
“I’m going to see that it says what we need it to,” said Diane.
“But how can you do that?” asked Liam.
“She runs a museum and a crime lab,” said Neva. “We can create documents. We can salt a mine if we need to.”
Diane and the others looked over at Neva. “Damn good thinking, girl,” said Jin. “We can do that. Yeah.”
“That can help us control the situation,” said David. “Off the top of my head, I can think of several scenarios where we’re in control.”
“That’s the challenge,” said Diane, “taking control and keeping it when he’s the one with the most valuable treasure—Andie.”
“I’ll call Mike,” said Neva.
Diane nodded. “We need to pick a cave.” She paused and looked at Neva and Izzy.
“You two are more officially with the police department than I am, and we’re not going by the book,” said Diane. “If you have any qualms . . .”
“Forget it,” said Izzy. “I’m not going to be a tight-ass with little Andie’s life.” He shook his head. “I know her and her parents. Count me in.”
“Me too,” said Neva.
“I want to be part of whatever you do,” said Liam.
“I’m counting on your skills,” said Diane. “They should be considerable.”
“In certain areas,” he said. “I can’t analyze frequencies, but I am very good at kicking ass, and I have a stealth mode.”
Liam sounded better, almost optimistic. For all David’s paranoia and pessimism, he had a knack for building confidence in those around him—because he was so competent. Diane smiled at Liam.
Good.
Neva called Mike and told him to hurry as fast as he could and tell no one where he was going. Diane could imagine what he thought. Neva let him in the secured door when he knocked. Mike came in with his hands in his pockets. He grinned.
“What the heck’s up?” he said. He looked around at the grim faces and frowned. “What’s going on?”
“Mike, you have to promise to keep this completely confidential,” said Diane.
“You know me, Doc,” said Mike.
“Andie’s been kidnapped. We believe it’s by the person who killed the people in Rendell County.”
“What? No. Andie? No.” His gaze darted to each of them, as if he were hoping Diane was telling some terrible joke.
“We are going to get her back,” said Diane. “We have part of a plan and need your help.”
“All right. Just tell me what to do,” said Mike.
“The kidnapper wants a diary I have. He thinks it will lead him to a lost gold mine. It won’t, but we’re going to make it so it does. If we can get control over where this plays out, I think we’ll have the best chance of saving Andie. We want to salt a mine with gold. You and I need to pick a cave that will work.”
“Doc, we don’t have a lot of gold, but we do have pyrite. I can get quite a bit of it that looks like gold to the untrained eye. Do you think this person knows what real gold looks like?”
“I don’t know,” said Diane. “I was looking at the pyrite in the exhibit. Some of it looks more like gold than others. The cubes of pyrite don’t.”
“I have a lot for the reference collection, plus a lot of quartz with pyrite inclusions. I can make up a sample that looks real. How much do you need?”
“I don’t know that either. You’re the geologist; you tell me. Whatever will look real in a cave. I thought we would spread it on the floor and draw a picture in the diary to fit what we do.”
“Okay, that’ll work as long as he’s not a geologist,” said Mike.
“If it’s not a good idea, tell us,” said Diane.
“It is. Yes,” said Mike. “I can make it work. What you could do is fix a small piece of real gold in the diary somehow.”
“Yeah,” said Neva. “Use yellowed tape. This will work.”
While they figured out the logistics, David worked with the computer in one of the other workstations where he had acoustic software. Diane saw the intensity on his face and she knew what he was feeling. They hadn’t been able to save their loved ones from the massacre. They would save Andie from this killer.
Diane called Korey, her head conservator at the museum, and asked him to come to the crime lab. She sat down with Mike to work on a map, as soon as they could decide on a cave that they could use. Liam sat down with them, along with Izzy.
“What you need,” said Liam, “is a place that is a little harder to get into, kind of like that cave where Larken and Bruce were found. He’ll expect it to be hard and hidden, or somebody would have found it by now. It should also be one that is easy at first, but has a place where we can hide—if that turns out to be the plan.”
“King Cave. It fits the bill,” said Mike. “It’s not in Rendell County, but it’s just over the county line. Slim entrance. Starts easy and gets harder. It’s got a nice little cavern that would be good to salt.”
“Okay, can you draw a map?” said Diane.
“Sure,” said Mike.
Diane extended her arm to hand him the pen. That was when she noticed the sparkle on her sweater sleeve.
The stuff gets everywhere,
she thought to herself.
Neva let Korey in when he knocked.
“Hey, Dr. F,” he said. “What’s going on in the Dark Side?”
Diane told him what she needed. “It has to look real—just like the other pages. I’m hoping there are blank pages in some of the older diaries that you can remove and use. You’ll have to take it apart and rebind it, and it needs to be done in a couple of hours. Neva will help with the drawing. So will Mike.”
Korey looked at her. “The diaries that belong with the arrowheads?” he said. “You’re changing them?”
Desecration, to a conservator, thought Diane.
“I know what I’m asking, Korey. I need you to do it and not ask questions and not tell anyone,” said Diane. “It’s a matter of life and death.”
“Someone in Archives said that they can’t find Andie. Is that what this is about?” he asked.
Tears blurred Diane’s eyes and threatened to overflow.
“I can’t say, Korey. Please do this,” she said.
Korey frowned. “Sure, Dr. F. I can do it so it would take an expert to discover it.”
“Thank you, Korey,” said Diane.
Mike and Neva went with Korey to Conservation. When the door closed, Diane heard the ping of the computer.
Another message had come in.
Chapter 54
Diane shook as she called up the message.
Get control of yourself, damn it.
She had to calm down.
“Do you know where they’re coming from?” she asked David, a little too sharply.
“Internet café,” he said. “The first one.”
“Where?” said Diane.
“Rockwood,” he said, but she barely heard him as the video started.
The image again was of Andie. She was sitting in what appeared to be the same location as before. Her forearms were bound to the arms of the chair with duct tape. Her shirt was off. From the waist up she was dressed in only her red-stained bra. She squirmed in her seat. She had a note in her hand.
She shook and tears rolled down her cheeks as she read. Starting and stopping, looking at her tormentor, sobbing.
“ ‘I’m still having too much fun to stop right now, so be patient. Andie was a sweet little thing in her T-shirt. She said it’s something called the
Vitruvian Man
. What is that? Is that stupid or what? Don’t forget the diary. I’ll be tired of her little titties and cunt soon, and after that I want my diary, or—well, you know.’ ”
Andie sobbed after she finished.
“He’s a dead man,” said Liam, curling his lip and gripping the back of the chair. “If it’s the last thing I do, he’s dead.”
Then he fell into the silence that the rest were in—Diane, Izzy, Jin, and David.
“He hasn’t been raping her,” said David. “Her jeans are on. I doubt he would let her partially re-dress. He would want to see her. This is show.”
Liam turned on David. “How the hell do you know, damn it? How the fucking hell do you know?”
Diane could almost see the frustration pouring over him. She felt it too. Fear and frustration.
But David was bent over, staring closely at the still image of the stopped video. “Because,” he said, “everything is exactly the same as the last video, except for the T-shirt. He’s staging this. I’m willing to bet he’s already made the messages Diane will be receiving, and he’s moving from one Internet café to another, sending them to Diane.”
David stood up and turned to Liam. “If we are to save her, we have to do what it takes, even if that means to chill. We don’t have time for self-indulgence.”
Liam looked at him for a moment before he nodded. “You’re right. I know that. I know that,” he whispered almost to himself.
“Jin,” said David, “help me with the acoustic program while I trace this last message.”
“Don’t worry, boss, we’ll get Andie back,” said Jin before he went into the workstation with David.
“What can I do?” said Izzy.
“You and Liam work on a plan. All we have is parts of one. We need a real plan.”
The two of them nodded. No one could take their eyes off Andie, yet none of them wanted to look at her. Diane felt so sick she couldn’t think.
“It should be what I’m good at,” said Liam. “I know I didn’t do right by Andie. But from the first I cared and wanted to see where we went with each other.”
“Like Jin said,” said Izzy, “we’ll get her back.”
“I called Frank,” Diane told Izzy.
Izzy bobbed his head up and down. “That’s good. Frank’s got a good brain. Between all of you guys’ smarts and my comic relief, we’ll solve this.” He reached out and touched her shoulder and squeezed. Diane put a hand on his.