I answered it. “Hey, Mandy.”
“Heller,” she said. “I’ve got something.”
I heard traffic noise in the background. “Where are you?”
“Southeast. Anacostia. I just talked to that old cop.”
“Mandy, I told you, I don’t want you out there—”
But she spoke right over me. “Remember the retired police detective in Southeast? This old guy who says he covered up a homicide years ago?” I remembered: the story she was investigating just before the Kayla story broke, about some big-name Washington player. “Well, you were right. And now I understand why I had to be discredited. With that phony Claflin story.”
“The homicide — who was it?”
She told me.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Hey,” she said, her voice suddenly loud and sharp. “Excuse me, what do you think you’re—?”
“Mandy, you okay?”
“Hey!” she shouted. The phone made funny jumbled, crunchy sounds, as if it was hitting the ground.
“Mandy? Hello?”
But there was no reply.
70
I called Mandy back repeatedly, but each time it went right to voice mail, as if the phone had been shut off.
Something had happened to her.
Balakian was looking at me, alarmed. “Huh?” he said. “What’s going on, Heller?”
I explained. “I’m going to need your help,” I said. “I need you to ping her phone. I don’t have the resources to do that.”
“Man,” he said. He shook his head, looked rattled. “I can do that, sure. But what if the phone’s off? Or smashed?”
“That’s possible. So at least we’ll find out where it was last located. Which tells us where she was abducted.”
“Right.”
“If we can get a fix on where she was grabbed, traffic cams or other CCTVs might have captured a license plate or a face or something.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“This is the best lead we have at the moment. But you’ve got to do it now.”
He nodded. He took out his phone and dialed a number and asked for a Detective Ryan. After identifying himself, he read off Mandy’s cell phone number. A minute later they had the name of her carrier, AT&T.
In the meantime I called Dorothy and filled her in. By the time I ended the call, Balakian had something.
“AT&T says the phone’s not active. They can’t ping it.”
“Like you said, it was probably shut off or smashed. Do you have a last known location, at least?”
“The last call — when she was talking to you — hit a tower near the Anacostia metro station. Martin Luther King Junior Avenue and Howard Road, Southeast.”
I nodded. “Good. Now, I have another number for you to ping, if possible.” I took out the metal business card.
“Whose?”
“Thomas Vogel’s,” I said. I looked at the card and dialed the phone number.
It rang four or five times. Then: “Vogel.”
“It’s Heller. Your guys have Mandy Seeger. If anything happens to her, you know what I’m capable of.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Heller.”
There was a click and the line went dead.
I thought a moment. It was possible that his guys had grabbed Mandy and hadn’t yet had the opportunity to inform the boss. But he’d hung up so quickly that I couldn’t help but wonder. If he really didn’t know what I was talking about, he would have pursued the matter. Asked me some questions. So it didn’t make sense. He had to know they’d taken Mandy.
The answer came about a minute later. Balakian was talking to his contact in the department about Vogel’s phone when I got a text message. It was a link, a URL. The sender was a phone number, not a name, and I was sure the number was spoofed. I clicked on the link, and it took me to a website called Disappearing Ink. In the middle of a blank white page was a red button that said DOWNLOAD DISAPPEARING INK. It was an app. I clicked the red button, which took me to an iTunes page and another button, and soon I’d installed it on my phone. It appeared to be an encrypted text messaging service of some kind. I signed in using my e-mail address, and the number 1 popped up on top of the Disappearing Ink button on my phone. I had a message. I clicked on it. It was from “ShepherdBoy.” I thought again of Vogel’s remark: Guys like us, we’re the shepherds. We take care of the sheep.
The message said:
We had a covenant, and you know the terms. Ms. Seeger was in violation. You stand down, including your friends, and you’ll see her again.
I stared at it. Vogel wasn’t going to admit on a phone call to having kidnapped Mandy. That could be used against him, legally. So why was he sending an incriminating text?
After about five seconds, the message disappeared, and I understood why he wanted to communicate this way. His messages were sent securely and disappeared as soon as they were read. I typed back:
Deal. Release her now or I’ll come after you.
Then I hit send. I looked at Balakian. He was still talking on the phone, shaking his head and saying, “Is there another way to try?”
Another text message appeared in the Disappearing Ink app:
MS will be released when you return home, to Boston. Not before.
I tried to take a screenshot, but that message disappeared as well. No wonder Vogel was being this explicit. Screenshots didn’t work. Even if I managed to take a picture of my iPhone’s screen, there’d be no way to pin it on him.
I looked up at Balakian. “Did you ping him?”
He shook his head. “That’s not his cell phone number.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a VOIP software-based number. Like Google Voice.”
“Not entirely following you.”
“It’s... we can only ping real cell phone numbers. This is a software-generated number.”
“But you can trace it, right?”
“Not this one. It tracks to a Tor-sponsored service.”
“Tor, the anonymous network?”
He nodded.
My understanding of Tor was pretty limited. I knew it was a network that lets you be anonymous on the Internet. Much beyond that, and I’m useless.
“He’s also using a VPN service with it, which further complicates our ability to track that number. So as far as we can tell, it’s a black box. No luck.”
“You know technology. That’s unusual for a cop.”
He shrugged modestly. “A decent basic working knowledge, that’s all. I’m no hacker, trust me. What’d you find out?”
“They have Mandy Seeger, and they’re not releasing her until I go back to Boston.”
“What? Let me see.”
“There’s nothing to show you. The texts have disappeared.”
“Disappeared.”
“We’re dealing with Tom Vogel. He’s a clever guy.” I checked the Disappearing Ink app again and found nothing. I typed out another message to Vogeclass="underline"
Got an offer for you.
I waited. A minute, a minute and a half.
Finally a reply came back:
Fold up your tent and go home, and MS gets to return to her life. Persevere, and her death will be on you.
I showed the message to Balakian. He stared at it, said, “Jesus!” and handed it back. By the time I went to look at it again, it had disappeared.
“Please keep me updated, in real time, on what you find on the traffic cameras in Anacostia,” I said. “It may be our best chance to find her.”
“Heller, I don’t know how easy you think this is, but the tower location we have is approximate. She could have been anywhere within a square mile, maybe more. That covers a lot of cameras. We don’t have that kind of manpower.”