Guilty Minds

He shook his head. “I know how it sounds. Paranoid or something. But… here’s the thing. Somewhere between the lab and evidence control at the property division, the evidence got ‘misplaced.’”

“The shards of glass?”

“Right.” He opened both his hands, turned them up. “No one can locate it.”

“How often does that happen-that crucial evidence gets ‘lost’?”

“Once in a while.”

“Not very often, I expect. Does that screw the case?”

“It’s a problem, but not devastating. The shards were photographed on the scene and the fingerprints were recovered and kept separately. If it goes to court, the defense will probably raise a stink, but it shouldn’t make a difference.”

“So why are you still pushing? Didn’t you get the memo? The case is closed. It was a suicide.”

He shrugged, shook his head. “It’s not right.”

“You know the name Thomas Vogel?”

“Of course. The Centurions.”

My phone vibrated again. I took it out. It was Mandy. “Do you mind?”

“Go ahead.”

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: