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“And those fairy tales that the three of us have been reading,” Cheryl said, “allow us to rummage through the twisted mind of Bobby Dodd. And if he did have an accomplice, I would think you’d want to know about it as much as we do.”

McMaster exhaled hard. “You’re right,” he said. “My priorities have been a little screwed up. A few days ago I was positive that this kidnapping was a career-ender for me. But Erin wants me to stay on. I’ve been so desperate to get this nightmare behind me that I stopped thinking like a cop and started acting like a man with a business to save and a reputation to protect. I’m really sorry. Tell me what I can do to help.”

“For starters, can you find out where Erin was on June third?” Kylie asked.

“I can tell you where she was every day for the past couple of years. June third is the day before her birthday. What’s the significance?”

“Dodd says he was with Erin that day. Which probably means that wherever she was, he was close enough to watch her. If we know where Erin was, we can figure out where Dodd was, and with any luck we might be able to find out if he was alone or with someone.”

“Give me a sec.” He pulled an iPad out of his briefcase and began tapping on it. His face screwed up in a scowl. “Shit. It was one of her WAN days.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning every now and then, she puts on the standard celebrity disguise—sunglasses, baseball cap, baggy sweats—and she goes out into the real world to WAN, ‘walk around normal.’ I’m not allowed to follow.”

“But knowing you,” Kylie said, “you have.”

He grinned. “Not me, and don’t ever repeat this, but a couple of years ago I hired someone she’d never met to tail her on those days. The first time, she took a cab to the Cloisters museum up at Fort Tryon Park. The next time, it was the Bronx botanical gardens. She really was walking around normal . I don’t like it, but I get it. The poor woman has spent most of her life in a goldfish bowl. Sometimes she just needs to totally escape and be by herself. Bottom line: I have no idea where she was on June third.”

“We could ask her. Will she remember?”

He shook his head. “After what she’s been through? I seriously doubt it.”

“What about the GPS chip?” I said. “The one that Bobby cut out of her arm. The one that was supposed to keep tabs on her whereabouts.”

“The Korean company’s LyfeTracker,” McMaster said. “Good call, Zach—if it was working. But like I told you, it crapped out about a month ago. Middle of May or so. They’re still trying to figure out how to fix the problem.”

“I’m not an engineer,” I said, “but a better battery might do the trick.”

“It doesn’t take a battery,” McMaster said. “The chip runs on kinetic energy, like a self-winding watch. The more you move, the more juice it produces. When it stopped working I spoke to one of the engineers in Korea. He said maybe Erin wasn’t active enough to get it charged. I said bullshit. The woman is a human dynamo. A week later he calls me back and tells me I’m right. It’s a product flaw. Erin generates plenty of energy. The damn chip was just not storing enough to transmit the data. It’s like having a GPS in your car, but it won’t tell you where you are.”

“But …” Kylie said, working the thought out in her head as she was talking. “But just because your car doesn’t tell you where you are doesn’t mean it doesn’t know where you’ve been.”

“You lost me,” McMaster said.

“Something was sapping the energy from the LyfeTracker, which kept it from transmitting Erin’s whereabouts,” Kylie said. “But did it at least have enough juice in it to record and store the data?”

“I have no idea,” McMaster said. “It was just another one of Erin’s crazy product endorsements. I didn’t really ask the engineer too many questions.”

“Well, I’ve got a few questions for you,” Kylie said.

“Go for it,” McMaster said.

“What’s the engineer’s phone number, and what time is it in Korea?”

CHAPTER 75

MCMASTER LOOKED AT his watch. “It’s one in the morning in Seoul. Nobody at Kinjo Technology is going to pick up the phone for at least six more hours.”

“Do you have a home number for the engineer?” I said.

“No, but I’ll bet Peter Woon has it. He’s the head of their New York office. At least, he was when he came to see me last week.”

“He came to see you? Why?”

“To apologize on behalf of Kinjo. They signed one of the most recognizable people on the planet to be the spokeswoman for their new product. She did a commercial saying, ‘With LyfeTracker, you can find me anywhere.’ Then she goes missing, and nobody can find her. Zach, the man was embarrassed beyond belief, but to his credit, he took full responsibility for the product failure.”

“And you think he’s going to be the fall guy?”

“Let me put it this way. Kinjo had big plans to roll LyfeTracker out around the world. Now it’s in the scrap heap, and the only thing that’s going to roll are heads. The smart money is on Peter’s. Corporate culture is a bitch.”

Thirty minutes later we were in a conference room in Kinjo’s Fifth Avenue office sitting around a massive rosewood table with six men in suits. On an eight-foot screen that dominated the far wall was Kang Woo Ki, sitting in front of a laptop in his home seven thousand miles and thirteen time zones away. His eyes were bleary, his hair looked like he’d combed it with an eggbeater, and he was definitely not wearing a suit. He was in close-up, so for all I knew, he was sitting in his boxer shorts. Clearly, he was trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

Woon opened the session by exchanging a few remarks with Mr. Kang. It was in Korean, so I could only guess what was said. Woon might have simply been explaining why the man had been dragged out of bed. Or, since Kang was the company’s senior engineer, the two of them might have been making plans to get stinking drunk after their first trip to the unemployment line.

Introductions were made, and finally, Kang, speaking in perfect English, said, “How can I help you, Detectives?”

“The chip that Ms. Easton was wearing stopped transmitting data over a month ago,” I said.

He winced and gave a slight head bow.

“The question is, was it still recording her movements?”

He pondered that briefly. “In theory. The satellite connection was flawless. The problem was that the elements we used for the transmitter—”

I had no time for a science lesson or a mea culpa. “Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “You are saying that in theory , the chip was gathering data. If that’s true, then her whereabouts—even after the transmitter failed—would be embedded in the LyfeTracker.”

“Forget in theory ,” he said, his voice stronger as he cleared the cobwebs from his head. “Most definitely.”

Magic words. Kylie and McMaster sat forward in their chairs.

“How do we retrieve it?” I said.

“I’m afraid you can’t do that.”

Kylie dropped the flat of her fist onto the table and blew the exasperation from her lungs.

And then …

“Correction,” Kang said. “You could retrieve the information, but not without Ms. Easton’s permission.”

“Why do we need her permission?” Kylie called out to the giant screen.

“The chip is in her body,” Kang said. “You can’t just rip it out of the woman. It’s a violation of her—”

“It’s already been ripped,” Kylie said, standing up. “I have it right here.”

She held up the evidence bag that we’d picked up before we left the precinct. A loud, long “Ohhhh” came from the men around the table. We hadn’t told anybody, them included, that Dodd had cut the chip out of Erin’s arm.