It didn’t take Tessa long to realize that the sculpture of the boy and the girl was the exception, not the rule.
Most of the sculptures were completely lame-trying too hard to say too much, or so esoteric that they failed to say anything at all. In the latter case, the museum staff had placed little plaques next to the sculptures describing why the artist made them, what was going on in his or her life, and what the sculpture was supposed to mean.
How helpful was that.
But the thing is, true art, real art, needs no explanation. There’s no epilogue at the end of a novel telling you what the story was supposed to mean. No commentary at the end of a symphony explaining what the composer was trying to communicate with those specific notes. No footnotes clarifying the meaning of poems-at least not any that are worth reading. Art either stands on its own or it does not. As soon as it needs to be explained, it ceases to be art.
She didn’t say any of this to Paul, though. Probably not the ideal dad/daughter conversation, since she would undoubtedly end up dissing this whole reclusive-sculpture-guy-thing he had going on, and she didn’t want to do that.
They were still on the second floor, and the journey upstairs to Julia’s exhibit was going excruciatingly slowly since Paul was studying each sculpture for way too long.
Finally, when he paused to read the plaque beside a bronze sculpture of two gray apples with red wigs kissing each other, Tessa said, “So you never got married?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I guess I never met the right woman at the right time.”
“So for Mom, was it the wrong time or the wrong woman?”
He looked at her. “I was the wrong man. I guess.”
Not the answer she’d expected. She let his words sink in.
He led her to a large UPS box encased in glass. A sword had been driven through it, as if it were Excalibur piercing a stone.
Another explanatory plaque.
Oh, joy.
“So, no other kids?”
“No.”
“That you know about.”
The smile he’d been wearing when they first met on the steps of the Library of Congress had slowly been fading throughout the morning, and now he gazed at her curiously. Perhaps with a hint of hostility.
“I mean, you’ve made it clear that you didn’t know about me,” she explained. “But here I am. So, what I’m saying is: you mean there are no other kids that you know about.”
“There aren’t any others.”
He sounded certain, but she couldn’t believe that over the last seventeen years he’d never slept with any other women.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t have any other children, Tessa.” Something cold and uncertain had wormed its way into the space between them.
She repeated herself, speaking more slowly this time. “How do you know?”
“I had a vasectomy, Tessa.”
It was too blunt, not the kind of thing a father tells his teenage daughter. Sure, she’d pressed him, but still “Come on.” He pointed to the elevator. “I’ll show you Julia’s sculptures.”
“Okay,” she said. “And you can tell me a little more about her on the way.”
22
Nothing.
No Volvo.
But we did have footage of the guard’s car moving through the intersection at 5:53 p.m., and the GM Volt of the keeper, Sandra Reynolds, at 7:02.
I made a mental note of the times. However, the storm, traffic, any number of factors could have affected their arrival times.
Try the traffic lights south of the facility.
It would be a more circuitous route from the Metro station where Mollie had been seen last, perhaps indicating that her abductors left the city and then returned with her. And if that was the case, when I drew up the geoprofile, depending on the hot zone’s location, it might prove significant.
Home? Did they take her to their place of residence?
Questions, questions.
I needed facts.
Only seconds after I’d started the second video, Ralph nailed his finger to the screen. “Gotcha.”
At 5:32 p.m. Rusty Mahan’s ’09 Volvo passed through the intersection.
They arrived and then waited for the shift change?
Maybe.
I paused the image, backed it up to the moment the car first appeared onscreen.
Pressed play.
“That’s it,” Lien-hua said, but there was a note of disappointment in her voice. “But you can’t see the driver, too much glare from the rain.”
“Play it again,” Cheyenne said.
I did, twice, and at different speeds. But the glare obscured the driver’s face.
Ralph pulled out his cell. “The lab guys can pull some of that off-”
“No,” I mumbled. I was staring at the image. “That’s not right.”
“What?”
“Look.” I zoomed in on the license plate. “It’s a different plate. The Volvo in the parking garage had 134-UU7 for its tags; this one has IPR-OMI.”
Ralph lowered his phone. “But that is the same car.”
“Let’s make sure.” I tapped the play button again.
Lien-hua ran the second set of plates while Cheyenne, Ralph, and I reviewed the footage to the point at which the emergency vehicles passed through the intersection at 7:14 p.m. on their way to the scene. No other Volvo sedans.
“OK,” Lien-hua said. “Both sets of plates are registered to Rusty Mahan.”
“Two sets of plates for the same car?” Cheyenne turned the keyboard toward her so she could tap at the keys, bring up the case files. “You’d need someone on the inside at the Department of Motor Vehicles to pull that off.”
Ralph shook his head. “No. A driver’s license, address, and a few bucks’ll get you plates.”
“Fake ID?” Lien-hua asked.
“Sixty bucks on the street.”
I shook my head. “I could see switching plates to avoid apprehension, but why switch them if you’re just going to leave the vehicle at the scene? Especially if you use plates registered to the same owner?”
The case seemed to be skewing into a completely different direction.
“All right, let’s think about this,” Lien-hua said. “IPR-OMI. Does that mean anything to anyone?”
“IP is your Internet Protocol,” Cheyenne said. “Your computer’s address within a network. ROM has something to do with computer memory.”
“Read-only memory,” Lien-hua said.
Cheyenne tapped at the keyboard. “IPROM stands for University of Illinois Probability Modules. A software program students use in their probability courses.”
Ralph cut in, “Lien-hua, you said our guy might be a hacker?”
“Yes. But what about the I at the end?”
We were quickly sinking into the quagmire of conjecture.
He shook his head. “OMI could mean ‘oh, my.’”
“Hang on a minute,” I said. “Rather than worry about what kind of hidden message the plates might contain, let’s find the DMV clerk who filed the registration papers and see if we can get a description of the person who applied for them. See if it was Mahan or not. We can have Angela Knight or the NSA’s cryptographers work the plate angle for us.”
No arguments.
“All right, bring up the video again, Cheyenne.” Then I addressed all three of them. “Is there anything else here? Anything we’re missing?”
She played the footage again.
The traffic light.
Red. Yellow.
“The facility’s cameras…” I mumbled, “the electronics store. .. the killers know video…”
Green.
“Wait,” I said. “Replay it.”
And at last I saw it.
I couldn’t believe I’d missed it earlier.
“Here, here, here. Watch it again. The traffic lights.” I leaned close to Cheyenne. Hit play. I caught the light, sweet scent of her perfume, tried to ignore it.
As the video played, I could see from the looks on everyone’s face that none of my colleagues had any idea what I was talking about. I moved the cursor back and pressed play one last time. “The light. Notice when it changes.”
We all watched as the car approached, the light turned green, the vehicle slowed, passed through the intersection, accelerated.