James Grippando - The Abduction

“No. But you do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We verified the brand of lipstick that was used to scrawl that letter A on your forehead. It’s Chanel.”

“That’s my brand.”

“I figured. I want you to get a DNA sample to the lab. I’m willing to bet the saliva on the lipstick is yours.”

“Which means what? I sent the marked-up photograph to myself? We’ve been down this road before, Harley. You’re going in circles.”

“Don’t you see? It’s one more link to O’Brien. He probably swiped a tube of lipstick from your purse when he saw you at the hotel in Miami Beach, or maybe at that gala in Washington.”

Allison fell silent.

“Allison?” he asked. “You’ll get us that DNA sample over to the lab, right?”

She didn’t respond.

“Allison?”

“Sure, Harley. I’ll get it to you. Just as soon as I can.”

“This is very important.”

“You have no idea,” she said flatly. “I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up, staring blankly into the middle distance. Harley definitely had her thinking. She dug into the box of tapes on the floor-the tapes she’d already viewed. There was one thing, in particular, she needed to see again.

Now that her eyes had been opened.

Warm Florida sunshine glistened on the blue-green chop of Biscayne Bay. Sailboats skimmed by the Port of Miami, whose berths were emptied of cruise ships that had set out to sea. To the south, Miami’s glass and granite skyline towered above the bay and river. To the north and east, the island of Miami Beach stretched between the Atlantic Ocean and the mainland. In between lay some of world’s most expensive real estate-a string of small residential islands, connected by bridges, dotting the bay like huge stepping-stones. It was here that many of Miami’s well-to-do called home, a veritable showcase for more Mediterranean-style mansions than the Mediterranean itself boasted. Many were merely winter homes that sat empty until Thanksgiving. Every so often, Marine Patrol would check the docks behind vacant houses for illegally moored boats.

On Monday morning, they found one of interest to the FBI.

Special Agent Manny Trujillo of the FBI’s Miami field office answered the call with his partner and a team of forensic experts. Trujillo was the South Florida supervisor of a search that stretched from Key West to Palm Beach. The discovery of Mitch O’Brien’s sailboat was the hard-earned payoff of an exhaustive multi-agency effort.

Marine Patrol had already confirmed that the boat was empty before the FBI arrived. Trujillo secured the boat and dock as a crime scene. The forensic team spent the rest of the morning checking for fingerprints and collecting evidence that might lead to Mitch O’Brien. After lunch, he called Harley Abrams from the boat with an update.

“Any signs of foul play?” asked Harley.

“Nothing obvious. To be honest, I approached the boat expecting to smell rotting flesh, but there was nothing. Marine Patrol said it was pretty stuffy when they opened the cabin, as if it had been closed up for a quite a while. We scoured the galley and sleeping quarters. No sign of struggle. The whole place has a very sterile feel to it. It’s almost too clean. Smells like industrial-strength cleaning solvent in a few spots.”

“Doesn’t sound like O’Brien is living there, hiding out. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“You think someone whacked him and sanitized the place?”

“Can’t say for sure. Boat owners use all kinds of concoctions to clean off the salty residue. It’s conceivable that O’Brien is just one of those neatnik sailors who keeps his boat spic-and-span. Maybe he was hiding out here after he heard the FBI was looking for him, then just abandoned ship when we started closing in.”

Harley tapped a pencil eraser on his desktop, thinking. “I need a quick answer on this, Manny. Try a chemical reagent wherever you detected that cleaning solvent odor. See if you pick up any traces of blood.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. I’ll hold.”

Trujillo tucked the portable phone under his chin and called over his forensic expert, Linda Carson. “Abrams wants to try the Luminol. Will it work in this environment?”

“Not outdoors. Too sunny.”

“What about below, where we smelled the cleaning solvent?”

“Should be dark enough below if we pull the drapes. I’ve got some in my bag. Let me get it.” She jumped from the deck to dry land, pulled a spray bottle of Luminol from her duffel bag, then jumped back on board and ducked into the cabin.

Trujillo followed. “How reliable is this stuff?”

“Luminol? As good as any of the reagents on the market. Picks up blood residue even where the quantities are too small for lab analysis. If there was any blood down here at all, we should see a pale blue glow wherever I squirt it.”

The cabin was four steps down, half below and half above the deck. A small cooking galley and dining table were on the left. A long bench-seat that converted into a sleeping bunk was on the right. Toward the bow were the head and main sleeping quarters.

Carson pulled the drapes shut. The cabin darkened, save for the shaft of sunlight streaming in through the companionway door behind Trujillo. She crouched on the floor beside the dining table, where they had detected the strongest odor of cleaning solvent.

“Ready?” asked Trujillo.

She aimed the squirt bottle at a section of the floor, then nodded. Trujillo closed the door. The cabin went completely dark.

The sound of three quick pumps of the squirt bottle hissed in the darkness. Almost instantaneously, a bright pale blue smear glowed on the floor.

“Bingo,” said Carson.

She squirted another area. Another explosion of blue light. She squirted the table. Same result. The wall. More traces of blood. She kept spraying. The cabin was aglow with a pale blue horror story.

Trujillo drew a deep breath, then brought the phone to his mouth. “Harley, you still there?”

“Yeah. What did you find?”

He was staring in disbelief, sweating in the hot, stale air. “I think we may have figured out what happened to O’Brien.”

Allison stared at the television in quiet disbelief. The realization had come to her slowly, perhaps even subconsciously at first.

She clicked the rewind button on the VCR remote control. She hated to bring Harley back into this, but she needed a second opinion-someone to tell her she wasn’t misreading the videotapes. Or, hopefully, someone to tell her she was. She called him from the conference room.

“It’s me,” she said.

Harley hesitated. “How weird. I was just about to call you. We found O’Brien’s boat. Doesn’t look good. Bloodstains in the cabin.”

Her eyes closed in sorrow. “Poor Mitch,” she said, fearing the worst. “But that’s exactly where my thinking was headed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Up until a few hours ago, I was nearly convinced that General Howe was behind Kristen’s kidnapping, figuring he’d do anything to win. Then you shifted my focus, with your suggestion that Mitch was bitter about our breakup. Bitter about the way I’d rebuffed him in Miami. Possibly even bitter enough to send me the marked-up photograph a couple months ago with my own lipstick.”

“It seemed plausible.”

“On the surface, yes. But the more I thought about it, the more contrived it seemed. Mitch had problems when he drank, that’s for sure. But even dead drunk he was too smart and too afraid of jail to send threatening mail to the attorney general. It was as if someone were trying really hard to make it look like Mitch. And that’s when it hit me.”