Chris Jordan - Measure of Darkness

I stare at her. “So you know the whole organizational chart? You do. You have it in your head, from the big boss at the top to the part-time custodian at the bottom.”

She shrugs, admitting as much.

Typical.

I say, “My point is, whatever her title, she has the power to make things happen, and what happens when she gets here to visit her sick friend? She puts us under surveillance. Why? Are we suspects in the murder or the kidnapping?”

“No. But we’re representing the only suspect. Maybe we know things.”

“So they know about the missing laptop?”

“Possibly. Although, if so, I’d have suspected a widespread search of the area, or even a search of these premises, based on the fact that this was Shane’s last stop before he was abducted. And yet none of that happened.”

“It still could.”

“Possibly.”

“But you have another theory.”

Again with the shrug. “There’s also the possibility that we’re in the middle of a turf war,” she says.

Jack, releasing a perfect O of white smoke, chimes in. “That fits…?. That’s what I’m thinking, now that I’ve had time to, you know, actually think about it. Monica knows we were hit by some other agency. Maybe she knows who it is, maybe she doesn’t. But she wants to find out. So she puts eyes on us.”

“You know the woman,” Naomi says. “You worked for her, albeit briefly. In your estimation is that how she’d react?”

He shrugs. “All bureaucrats want more information. She has the authority to order surveillance, therefore she did.”

Naomi leans back, fingertips brushing the glass of tea. “So in your opinion the FBI has two objectives. One, to keep an eye on us. Two, to see who else is keeping an eye on us.”

“Exactly,” he says. “Hey, did you see that?”

Pointing skyward with his cigar, eyes squinting, a puzzled look on his face.

“What?”

“Like an eagle, circling.”

“An eagle?” I say. “You mean over the harbor?”

“The harbor’s too far away-my eyes aren’t that good. No, straight overhead. Whatever it was, it had a big wingspan.”

We all study the sky. Other than a TV news chopper in the vicinity of Bunker Hill, and a plane climbing out of Logan, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of birds at the moment.

“Maybe it was an osprey.”

“I know what an osprey looks like. We’ve got tons of ospreys in Gloucester. No, this was much bigger.”

“And you’re convinced it was an eagle.”

“Hell, no. Just that it was bigger than an ordinary bird.”

Naomi looks thoughtful. But then, that’s her default expression. Sensing that she has an idea or opinion, we wait for it.

“Let’s go back inside,” Naomi suggests, picking up her glass. As we enter the stairwell she says, “So tell me, Jack, is the FBI in the habit of employing surveillance drones, do you know?”

Back in the command center, Teddy looks like he’s given birth. Okay, I’m exaggerating just a teensy bit, but he does look quite pleased with himself.

“Kathleen Mancero,” he announces before we’ve had a chance to settle. “Born Kathleen O’Hara. Divorced but kept her married name. Driver’s license has her current residence as Olathe, Kansas.”

Our young computer whiz is no longer working directly from Shane’s laptop, having transferred the contents to his own workstation. Identifying the woman in the emailed video attachment turns out to have been straightforward and relatively simple, as such things go. She popped almost immediately in the facial recognition software because she had once been a suspect in the disappearance of her own daughter, a seven-year-old girl.

Young Teddy has done an amazing job of organizing available data into a concise narrative, exactly as Naomi has taught him.

“It all started five years ago in Kansas City, Missouri,” he begins, laying out the story. “Her husband was a big-time car dealer-Hummers-who dumped her for a newer model. His secretary, so no imagination there. A nasty custody battle ensues. The husband tried to make it look like his soon-to-be ex-wife was involved in kiddy porn-selling images of her own daughter over the internet-and when little Stacy goes missing, it’s assumed that Mrs. Mancero has kidnapped her own daughter to sell her to the highest bidder.”

“Damn,” says Jack. “That’s the connection. Shane.”

“Right, right,” says Teddy.

“Yeah, I remember this one,” Jack goes on. “Not the details, but I remember Shane going to KC to help some poor woman who he said was being framed. As I recall, there wasn’t a happy ending.”

Teddy’s gel-stiffened hairdo bobs in agreement. “Yup, you’re right. According to media accounts, former FBI Special Agent Randall Shane established that it was in fact the husband who had traded images of his own daughter online. The husband, Gerald ‘The Hummer Man’ Mancero, was eventually arrested on pedophile charges and the wife was proved innocent. Shane managed to prove that the images of the daughter were downloaded by one Jason Hargrove, who was a crony of the husband’s. Hargrove, scion of a wealthy family in the chemical business, confessed to kidnapping and killing seven-year-old Stacy Mancero, and disposing of her body in such a way that not much of anything was ever recovered. Dissolved the remains in a vat of acid, courtesy of the family business.”

“What a nightmare,” says Jack. “And it didn’t end there. The husband shot the guy, right? The killer? As he was being transferred for arraignment? And then, let me see, was in turn shot dead by courtroom officers. They called it ‘The Kansas City Bloodbath.’”

Watching Naomi, I get the distinct impression that she had the whole awful case in mind as soon as Teddy spoke the woman’s name, but hadn’t said so because she wanted to let him make a full presentation of the facts. Now that he has, she’s free to comment.

“There’s no doubt in your mind that Kathleen Mancero is the woman in the video clip?” she asks.

In answer, Teddy puts the image of her driver’s license up on the screen next to a still from the video and lets the pictures speak for themselves. Same eyes, same facial structure. Clearly both images are of the same woman.

“What happened next?” Naomi says, prompting him.

“After the shoot-out Mrs. Mancero had a serious breakdown. She became delusional, kept seeing her daughter in the faces of unrelated children-rushing up to families in malls, and so on-and was several times taken into protective custody. Eventually she voluntarily checked into a psychiatric hospital and was treated for six months. According to a follow-up story in the Kansas City Star, which ran a year ago, she was finally able to accept the fact that her daughter was dead, even though there was never a body to recover or bury. She also continued to have contact with Shane.”

“What kind of contact?”

“Emails. Information she forwarded about other missing children. Mostly stuff she pulled off various websites. There are, like, a zillion sites about missing kids. From the tone of the emails, Mrs. Mancero sounds obsessed with the idea that she can do something for other missing children. My sense is, she wanted to help Shane somehow, as she had attempted to do, and failed, in her own daughter’s case.”

“How sad,” says Naomi, maintaining an expression of studied indifference. “Did he encourage her?”

Teddy shakes his head. “Just the opposite. He was really nice about it, but it’s clear that Shane wanted her to stop looking into what he called ‘the abyss.’”

“The abyss?”

“He doesn’t explain it. It’s like part of a continuing discussion. Something they talked about when she was in the psychiatric hospital.”