Chris Mooney - The Missing

'Are they monitoring our phone calls?' Darby asked.

'When it comes to the feds, I don't take any chances. Tell me what you found.'

'We found a skull. I had it partially dug up when the feds showed up and took over. Coop told me the feds got a hit on CODIS.'

'I wonder if that's what triggered all of this.'

'CODIS will give them a name and a last known address, but I have a way we can find Carol Cran-more.' Darby filled him in on the paint chip.

'Aston Martin Lagonda,' Banville said. 'That's a very select market.'

'The cars brought into the U.S. should be easy to track down since they had such a small production run. We'll concentrate our search on anyone living in or around New England. Traveler isn't flying into Boston, he's rooted somewhere close. What he does with these women requires privacy. We'll look for owners with isolated houses.'

'Manning told us they couldn't identify the paint chip.'

'So?'

'Maybe they were lying to us,' Banville said. 'Maybe they're already trying to track Traveler down through the paint chip.'

'Or maybe Manning was telling the truth. Maybe their lab couldn't ID the paint chip and they're planning on tracking down Traveler through the map.'

'I'm not following.'

'The map was printed from a website,' Darby said. 'The website's URL was printed at the bottom of the page. They'll track Traveler down through an IP address.'

'I have no idea what an IP address is. The computer stuff is way over my head.'

'All the feds need to do is to identify the people who accessed this particular section of the map. They'll go to the company and have them print off a log of IP addresses – it's a unique string of numbers assigned to your computer every time you log on to the internet through your ISP – your internet service provider. Those IP addresses can be tracked down to an individual computer.'

'So these IP addresses, they're like a digital fingerprint.'

'Not only is it like a digital fingerprint, the IP address acts as an individual map which will lead the feds directly to Traveler's home. The feds will get a list of IP addresses and start targeting anyone living in and around New England. That's going to take some time. Tracking Traveler down through the make of the car will be quicker.'

'Okay. Give me your notes again on the paint chip.'

'Tell me where to meet you. It will be quicker.'

'You need to go to the Boston office before you get into any more trouble.'

'I want to help you. You're going to need people you can trust.'

'It's not a matter of trust, Darby. The feds can't hurt me. I'm set to retire at the end of next year, but if they find out you're still investigating this case, they'll make your life difficult. I've seen it happen before. Too many times. Go downtown. I'll call and keep you up to date, I promise.'

'If you want the notes, then I'm coming along for the ride.'

'Getting involved in this could cost you your career. You may want to give that some thought.'

'I want to find Carol Cranmore and bring her home. What do you want?'

Banville didn't answer. Darby spoke into the silence.

'We're wasting time. Carol may still be alive. We need to jump on this now.'

'You said you're parked at a liquor store.'

'Joseph's Discount Liquors on Palisades,' Darby said. 'I'm parked out back, in the delivery area.'

'I still have one of the surveillance vans. We can run the investigation from there. Give me twenty minutes.'

At 1300 hours, the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team boarded a private business jet at the Quantico airstrip. They were coming from a debriefing on the Traveler case. This was what they knew:

In late 1992, nine Hispanic and African American women disappeared in and around Denver, Colorado. The lead suspect in the case, John Smith, had packed up and moved by the time police located his address.

Smith's home had been thoroughly cleaned, but forensics technicians for the Denver police recovered a partial boot print that matched a footwear impression found in the dirt next to the abandoned vehicle belonging to one of the missing women. An empty trash can sprayed with Luminol revealed a small area of blood. Analysis yielded two different DNA samples.

The first sample matched the genetic profile of one of the missing Denver women. The DNA profile was entered into CODIS, the FBI's Combined DNA Indexing System.

The second blood sample was also listed on CODIS, but the identity of the person was not made available to law enforcement agencies or forensic laboratories. The sample belonged to Earl Slavick, a member of the Hand of the Lord, a paramilitary white supremacist group whose ethnic cleansing agenda included the overthrow of the U.S. government. The group, it was believed, had played a role in the Oklahoma City bombing, although no firm link had ever been established.

Slavick was also a high-level FBI informant.

Slavick had been given early parole in the beating of a Hispanic woman in exchange for providing the FBI with detailed information of the group's activities at its secluded training headquarters in the Arkansas hills, not far from the Oklahoma border. As a member of the group, Slavick had been undergoing firearms training and bomb making when, in early 1990, he tried to abduct a Hispanic woman at gunpoint. Slavick dragged the woman, Eva Ortiz, into the woods. When Slavick tripped and fell, Ortiz ran away.

The woman had failed to pick Slavick out of a lineup. He was let go by local police.

When word of his botched abduction attempt finally reached the FBI, Slavick was already on his way to Colorado, under the alias John Smith, to start his own racial cleansing movement.

Given the highly sensitive nature of the case, all of Slavick's files were classified. His fingerprints and DNA profile were left on the computer databases. If a match was ever found, the FBI would be alerted to Slavick's whereabouts, while the reporting law enforcement agency or forensic laboratory would only see the code name the FBI had given to the case: Traveler.

Slavick's next stop after Denver was Las Vegas. Twelve women and three men vanished over a nine-month period. A footwear impression matched the one recovered in Denver.

When Slavick moved on to Atlanta in 1998, Special Agent Evan Manning was asked to help assist in the investigation of three missing women. Slavick, posing as a gas station attendant, had attacked Manning, who managed to crawl away before passing out. Like his many victims, Slavick vanished into thin air.

That changed this morning, at 0800, when CODIS matched the blood found at the home of an abducted Massachusetts teenager to the DNA profile of Earl Slavick.

As the jet lifted off, nobody talked. HRT knew they were flying to Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. From there, a Black Hawk attack helicopter would take them to the command post set up in Lewiston.

Team commander Colin Cunney took off his headset. He took a few minutes to review his notes before standing up to address his crew.

'Okay, boys, listen up. The computer-printed map found early this morning was identified by our lab as having come from an online website specifically geared to hikers. Here's where we got lucky. Two weeks ago, the map was accessed by a man living in twelve Cedar Road in Lewiston, New Hampshire. Crisis Management is already on the ground. They did a visual sweep of the house. It's our boy Slavick.'

'Hopefully he'll stay put this time,' Sammy DiBattista said.

Nervous laughter echoed inside the cabin.

'A Black Hawk, courtesy of our friends at the Pease Air Force Base, made a run about an hour ago and got us a few aerial shots of the house,' Cunney said. 'The area's thickly settled with woods, so we can use that to our advantage. There are three buildings: the house, a good-sized garage where he keeps a number of vehicles – so far they've spotted two vans – and a bunker. The entire area is surrounded with fences covered with razor wire, security cameras, infrared trip alarms, you name it.'