“ ’Fraid not,” Franklin said, grabbing Jackson’s shoulder and easing him toward the door.
“How come you’re so short staffed?” Shepherd asked.
“Beats me, half the squad didn’t show up this morning.”
“And these no-shows,” Shepherd persisted, “are they local guys?”
Jackson considered the question then shook his head. “No. As a matter of fact they’re all out of towners; all the local guys showed up.”
“Listen, Dan,” Franklin cut in, “why don’t you show me where you keep the coffee and I’ll tell you why we’re here.” He turned to Shepherd. “See if Smith has managed to dig anything new out of the Kinderman files. I’ll be right back.” Then he practically pushed Jackson out of the room.
Shepherd stood for a second, staring at the spot where they had both just stood, wondering about Franklin’s strange behavior. Then the screen flickered, drawing his attention and he sat back down, his fingers drumming the keyboard as he typed in the ID and password Agent Smith had given him earlier. A directory loaded up on the screen, different icons representing all the various databases he now had access to. Any new information Smith had found would be archived in the ghost file, listed in the directory under a Pacman ghost icon — something Smith always maintained proved the FBI did have a sense of humor. He dragged the arrow over to it but did not click on it, his eyes drawn to another icon, lower down in the directory, with MPD written beneath it — the Missing Persons Database.
Shepherd had been rehearsing this moment for the past seven years. All he had to do was click on it, type in a name, a few details, then sophisticated algorithms and search spiders would scuttle out across police networks covering more than half the world.
He clicked on the icon and a simple command box opened. It had spaces for key search data: name, DOB, age, height, weight, hair and eye color. His fingers moved over the keyboard, finding keys on their own.
Name: Melisa Erroll
Date of birth: He never knew it and she would never say
Age: She would be about thirty-six now
Height: Around five foot three
Build: Slight
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
He paused and took several deep breaths. The room smelled of sweat and fear, though that could just as easily be coming from him. The MPD had primarily been designed to locate people fast to rule them out of investigations. Consequently the search engines were programmed to trawl through death registers first. If he got a hit back quickly it would mean her name had been found among the roll call of the dead — and, even after seven years of unanswered questions, he wasn’t sure if he was prepared for that. But there was also something else that made him pause. The misuse of FBI resources for personal ends was pretty high on the list of prosecutable offenses, for obvious reasons, and every search on the MPD was logged and could be checked. Then again, he wasn’t searching for any more sensitive details, like bank accounts or passport activity. Not yet at least. But pressing the button would still be crossing a line. And despite everything that had happened in his life, he still believed in rules and obeying them.
He reread the words he had typed into the search criteria, the barest thumbnail of a human life, and wondered what Melisa would do in his situation. She would probably have instigated a search the moment she got her hands on the laptop. Melisa was passionate and impulsive, a doer.
Love is a verb—she used to say—Love is a doing word.
A single tear slid down his cheek. Then he hit return.
And the search went live.
48
O’Halloran sat in the den of his house, his eyes fixed on the old bulky TV in the corner that had once been the main family set. The American military exodus from Afghanistan was now the lead story, confirmed by several sources and the top of a lengthening list of similar military stand-downs. As well as the Chinese withdrawal from the Senkaku Islands there were now additional reports that the British were also pulling their troops out of Afghanistan, the North Koreans had pulled away from the border with the South, Israeli tanks had done the same from Palestine and government-backed troops in Syria had ceased many of the ongoing assaults on rebel-held cities, leaving artillery batteries deserted. It was as if the overriding imperial and destructive impulse of thousands of years had been cured overnight by a simple, universal human desire to return home.
In his own small way, O’Halloran had felt it too. His desire to come home had been unexpected and almost primal in its intensity. Twice now he had gone out to his car to head over to the office but both times just the thought of putting the car in gear and driving back to Quantico had filled him with such a feeling of panic that he had ended up sitting there, sweating despite the cold, the engine running and his hand resting on the gearshift. Just the few steps down the drive had made him feel as if a rope was wound around his heart, pulling tighter with each step he took. Both times he had ended up turning off the engine, getting out of the car and walking back to the house, the pressure and panic easing with each step until, by the time he crossed the threshold back into the warmth and comfort of his home, it had gone entirely.
His cell phone buzzed, cutting through the low burble of the news. He stiffened in his chair and the springs creaked as he snapped back into professional mode.
“O’Halloran.”
“Sir, it’s Squires. You anywhere near a TV?”
Squires was one of the section chiefs who lived in an office down the hall from his. He was also working from home today, O’Halloran recalled. “I’m watching the news now.”
“You watching CNN?”
“BBC World, you catching all this about troop movements?”
“Yes, but that’s not what I’m calling about, sir. Turn to CNN. You’re going to want to see this.”
O’Halloran plucked the remote from his desk and flicked quickly through the channels. On CNN a reporter was standing next to a chain-link fence and talking directly to the camera. Beyond the fence a field of white snow stretched away to a rocket-launching tower and a building complex surrounded by emergency vehicles. One of the buildings was a mass of twisted metal. The strap line read:
BREAKING NEWS — Suspected
Terrorist Attack on NASA Facility
“Guess the lid just came off this one,” Squires said.
O’Halloran took in the story. Normally a news channel breaking a story on one of his ongoing cases would send him into a quiet rage. “It was only a matter of time,” he said, surprising himself as much as Squires with his calm attitude and detached tone. “Better prepare a statement to throw some bones to the press. Confirm everything they already know and give them the Hubble information too if they haven’t got it already. And leak the names of the missing persons. Maybe if Kinderman and Douglas’s pictures are all over the news we might run them down a little faster—”
The picture cut to a shot of Agents Franklin and Shepherd sitting on a sofa in what looked like a daytime chat show.
“Earlier this afternoon,” the reporter said underneath the pictures, “two government agents confirmed rumors that the attack on the Marshall Space Center testing facility was not an isolated event.”