Джозеф Файндер - Vanished

For the first time, I knew that for sure. But where he was right now, or even whether he was still alive, I had no idea. The mystery I’d stepped into – or been dragged into – had suddenly gotten a whole lot more baffling.

And probably a lot more dangerous.

“That him?” Garvin said.

“That’s him.”

“I owe you an apology,” he said.

“I’ll take it. But for what?”

“You were right about this being an abduction.”

“Was I?”

“Your brother wasn’t acting on his own volition. That’s pretty clear.”

“Based on what?”

“Watch. Check this out. I think I know how to do it.” He double-clicked the mouse, shifting the frame to the left. Then he clicked some more, centering in on the figure next to my brother.

It was a guy in a hooded sweatshirt, back turned to the camera. Lieutenant Garvin touched the screen with his index finger, drawing my attention to what looked an awful lot like a gun.

“You get the guy’s face?”

“Nope. The whole transaction lasted a minute ten seconds. Seven frames. And you don’t see the guy’s face on any of them. Not even a partial.”

“I’d like to see all of them, if you don’t mind.”

Garvin nodded. I expected at least a sigh of frustration, but his attitude toward me seemed to have softened a bit. I was no longer the annoying brother of the victim, or the intrusive, competing investigator. Now I was almost a colleague helping him solve a problem.

He clicked the mouse and advanced frame by frame, from the beginning. This time we were viewing just the left half of the image, the part that had earlier been outside the frame. You could see the hooded figure very close to Roger, his back always to the camera. He never raised his weapon. He kept it at his side, pointed at Roger.

“Did Wachovia security say if there was another camera?” I asked.

“This is the only one.”

“Where’s the ATM?”

“Georgetown. M Street, near the Key Bridge.”

I nodded. “Couple blocks from where they were attacked. So whoever grabbed him just wanted cash? Sorry – I still find that hard to believe.”

He shrugged. “They got four thousand nine hundred bucks. His account allowed him to withdraw up to five thousand a day, turns out. That ain’t chump change.”

“Granted. But I doubt money was the primary motivation.”

“Five thousand bucks is plenty of motivation.”

“Sure. But that’s not it.”

“Got a theory you like better?”

“Well, it’s not plain-vanilla kidnapping. Not without a ransom demand.”

“Yet.”

“It’s been long enough. No. You just called it an abduction, and I think you’re right. That I get.”

“How come?”

“Because Roger was expecting an attack of some kind.”

“You know this how?”

“What he said to his wife that night. He said, ‘I love you.’ ”

“So?”

“That’s not like him.”

“Not like him to tell his wife he loves her? Real sweetheart, huh?”

“You don’t want to go there. Point is, he knew he was going to be grabbed. He knew he might not ever see her again. He was saying good-bye.”

“Maybe.” He sounded dubious.

“And then, when he saw they’d grabbed Lauren, he said, ‘Why her?’ ”

“Huh. Like, ‘take me instead.’ ”

“Right.”

“Doesn’t mean he knew them, though.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t.”

“No blood, no trace evidence, no ransom demands. Your theory still doesn’t get us any closer.”

I paused for a moment. One of my abiding principles is never to tell anyone anything he doesn’t need to know. Loose lips and all that. But Garvin and I were, in a sense, partners by then. The only thing that counted was finding my brother, and the more Garvin knew, the more helpful he could be.

So I told him about what looked like an attempted break-in at Roger’s house. And about the InCaseOfDeath.net e-mail.

“He was being threatened,” I said. “Which is why he arranged that e-mail. Because he was afraid they’d try to make it look like he killed himself.”

Garvin sneezed while I was talking, blew his nose loudly. I was beginning to wonder whether it wasn’t just a cold but maybe Ebola virus.

“Can I see a copy of this e-mail?” he said.

“It’s gone,” I said, and I explained.

“Well, there’s got to be a copy somewhere.”

I shook my head.

“Gotta be some high-priced computer geeks in your high-priced firm who can bring it back.”

“I can ask.”

“You say he was ‘threatened.’ Over what?”

I shook my head. “Don’t know. Maybe to force something out of him.”

“Like what?”

“My guess? He had some information someone wanted. Or he wasn’t supposed to have. Something business-related. Like a big project he was financing.”

“That’s pretty vague.”

“Like I said, it’s just a guess. I don’t actually know. But he tried to delete everything on his laptop at home.”

“To get rid of evidence?”

“Or to protect his family.”

“How so?”

“Cover his trail. Let’s say he’d been collecting information on his laptop, and he didn’t want these guys to know he had it.”

“You got the laptop?”

“Yeah,” I said vaguely. I had other plans for it. “I think so. I’ll look around.”

“Okay. So now I think I get it.”

“Get what?”

He began tidying things on his desk, moving folders into piles. “I asked our Homeland Security division to check on all flights out of the country. Told them to flag your brother’s passport. That was when I was thinking fugitive, not abduction.”

“And?”

“Turns out your brother’s on the No Fly List.”

“No Fly List?”

“Yep. You know, that new TSDB watch list.”

“TSDB?” I said, but I remembered the new acronym just before he said it.

“Terrorist Screening Database.”

“My brother wasn’t a terrorist,” I said.

“Neither are most of the people on the list,” he said.

I grunted. Like most people who’ve come into contact with the sharp end of the U.S. government since September 11, 2001, I’d seen more than my share of abuses of law enforcement. Things like the USA PATRIOT Act were used to justify all kinds of invasions of privacy.

“You know what bycatch is?” Garvin said.

I shook my head.

“It’s like when commercial fisheries go trawling for tuna, and they end up catching other stuff in their nets, like sea turtles and dolphins. The bycatch.”

“Dirty fishing,” I said. “Isn’t that what it’s called?”

“Right.”

“But that implies catching something you don’t intend to catch,” I pointed out. “You don’t put someone’s name on the No Fly List by accident.”

“Okay,” Garvin conceded. “So maybe it’s no accident. Maybe you’re right. Maybe your brother made some enemies. Maybe whatever he was doing, he got into some kinda stuff he shouldn’t have. National security stuff, maybe.”

“He does finance at a construction company.”

“Gifford Industries is a construction company? Like Home Depot is the corner hardware store. Maybe there’s something about him you’re not telling me.”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Then maybe there’s something about him you don’t know,” Garvin said.

Actually, there was plenty about my brother I didn’t know.

Like how his mind worked.

Just because we were brothers didn’t mean that we shared anything but a strange upbringing and fifty percent of our DNA. We couldn’t have been more different.

Still, for a long stretch of our childhood – right up until the day Dad left – we were best friends.