The Abduction

40

Driving toward Georgetown, Harley Abrams considered a variety of clever and surreptitious ways to reach Allison’s townhouse without being noticed by the media. Certainly an early Sunday morning meeting between the lead investigator and the recently suspended attorney general would raise questions. But if he tried to keep it secret and was nonetheless detected, a “secret rendezvous” would make even better headlines. He decided against the furtive approach. Short of a sex change and digging a tunnel, nothing was foolproof anyway.

He parked his car two blocks from Allison’s townhouse, the closest spot he could find. He walked briskly down the shady, colder side of the street. Most of the reporters were on the sunny and warmer side, a fair indication that the media weren’t complete idiots. He was a half block from Allison’s doorstop before he was recognized.
“Mr. Abrams!” someone shouted from the across the street.
Harley kept walking, same pace. Media crews jumped into action, dashing into the street like unruly Mardi Gras revelers. In seconds he was surrounded. The first question hit him like hot shrapnel. “Do you agree with Ms. Leahy’s suspension?” Others fired queries to the same effect.
Harley never broke stride. Reporters fought with each other for strategic position, trampling plants and statuettes on neighbors’ doorsteps. They lumbered down the sidewalk in one cohesive mass, a ravenous species of carnivores unto themselves. Harley stopped at the iron gate outside Allison’s townhouse. He rang the bell and waited.
Another reporter shouted, “Is this meeting business or personal?” Others picked up on the same theme, each one trying to outshout the next.
The buzzer rang and the gate unlocked electronically. Harley opened the latch and stepped inside the small, secured courtyard. The mob surged forward. He turned and spoke firmly but civilly. “You’re on private property. Please stay behind the gate.”
They backed off, cameras rolling. Harley closed the gate and headed for the front door. It opened before he could knock. The housekeeper rushed him inside and quickly shut the door.
“This way,” she said. She took his coat and led him to the family room in the back of the house. Allison was dressed sharply in a blue suit, ready for her morning news conference.
Harley did a double take, surprised. “You look—good.”
She managed a meager smile. “What were you expecting? Tattered robe, fuzzy slippers, and a fistful of cyanide tablets?”
He blushed with embarrassment. “I don’t know what I was expecting, really. Anyway, I did want to tell you I think it’s wrong the way they’re treating you.”
“Worse things have happened to me.”
He blinked, knowing how true that was. “I also wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me? For what?”
“For the way you stood up for me last night. I saw the statement you gave to the press at the airport. You could easily have pointed the finger at me for the botched arrest. Instead, you took responsibility.”
“I just hate to see the media trashing good people. There’s a big difference between incompetence and a talented FBI agent who’s hamstrung by outsiders who keep manipulating the investigation for their own political benefit.”
“Still, what you did took guts.”
She smiled faintly. “It took guts for you to come over here, too. I appreciate the gesture. But if you stay here much longer, we’ll only be making more problems for each other.”
“I suppose that’s true. But there is one problem I’d like to solve before I go. How do you and I stay in touch?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know—how do I keep you informed?”
“Harley, I’ve been suspended.”
“All that means is you’re no longer my boss. But I’m still in charge of the investigation, and I still haven’t ruled out the possibility of a link between Kristen’s kidnapping and your daughter’s abduction. To that extent alone, I need your input. Layer on top of that the fact that you and your husband have agreed to pay Kristen’s ransom and I’d say you’re an indispensable player—suspension or no suspension.”
“Harley, my suspension is a direct order from the president of the United States. You’re jeopardizing your career.”
“Not much of a career, is it, if I just stand by and let someone else take the fall for my mistake? I know there’s nothing I can do to make the president reverse the suspension. But there’s plenty we can do to make sure this investigation runs the way it should.”
“How intriguing, Mr. Abrams. I’ve never seen your devilish side.”
He blushed again. She seemed to have a knack for making him do that. “Twenty-two years with the FBI, I didn’t know I had one.”
Her smile faded as she turned more serious. “Peter and I were actually talking about this whole situation earlier. Do you think the kidnappers are still after a ransom?”
“Hard to say. Our voice analysts are positive that the man who called yesterday and let Tanya talk to Kristen is definitely not the man who called you and Tanya on Friday. The guy said he would keep Kristen safe until after the election, but with all the media hoopla about yesterday’s botched arrest, he might not be feeling so protective.”
“What’s your best guess as to what’s going on?”
“The confusion suggests a pretty volatile situation, which heightens the risk of harm to the child. I see two likely scenarios, both bad. One, Kristen’s already dead and we’ll never hear from either of those two callers again. Or two, they’ll keep her alive at least until tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, when the guy who called on Friday said he would call you for the ransom. We hope it’s the second. If they make contact for the ransom, we at least have a shot at catching them before they kill her. If they don’t make contact—well, you get the picture.”
“It doesn’t sound like you think there’s much chance they’ll let her go, even if we pay.”
He sighed, unsure. “Paying the ransom at least buys a little time, maybe gives us a chance to stall. I’d say the twenty-four-hour period between Monday at eight A.M. and the opening of the polls on Tuesday morning is Kristen’s primary danger zone. If they’re going to kill her, they’ll want to maximize the impact on the election, probably dump her body on the Justice Department steps or some other dramatic setting. If you wanted to narrow the time frame even further, I’d say between eight A.M. and six P.M. Monday, in time for her murder to be the lead story on the evening news on election eve and the headline story in every election-day newspaper in the country.”
“So, you’re saying that even if we pay, we’ve got at most thirty-six hours to find her.”
“Basically, that’s it.”
“And if we don’t pay?”
“She’s dead for sure in twenty-four.”
Allison looked away, thinking how little progress she’d made toward finding Emily in more than eight years of effort. “Thirty-six hours,” she said softly, her eyes drifting back toward Harley. “God help us.”


Allison didn’t watch Harley leave. She knew, without watching, that he was walking into a First Amendment frenzy outside her townhouse. Reporters started shouting the minute the front door cracked open. Closing it barely muffled their cries. Allison refilled her coffee cup at the kitchen counter, dreading the thought of venturing outside.
The phone rang, startling her. It was her personal private line, which narrowed the possible callers to a handful—even less than a handful, since Peter was upstairs and Harley was right outside being drawn and quartered by a pack of hungry coyotes. She answered with a mixture of curiosity and concern.
“Hello.”
“Ms. Leahy, this is Tanya Howe.”
Allison felt relief, then embarrassment—she really should have called Tanya. “I’m glad you called. I was meaning to call you.”
“You told me to call if I ever needed anything. Well, I’m in need of some answers.”
Allison settled onto the bar stool at the counter. The edge to Tanya’s voice was alarming. “You mean about last night?”
“No, I mean this morning. I found an FBI agent in my bathroom plucking a hair sample from my mother’s brush, rummaging through her cosmetic bag.”
Allison closed her eyes, like a woman with a migraine. So much for being discreet, Harley, she thought. “Tanya, please. I can explain.”
In minutes, she told her about the scarlet letter photograph, the message scrawled in red lipstick, the traces of saliva found at the lab, the need for a DNA sample to test for a match. She skirted around the ever-elusive Mitch O’Brien, focusing instead on the two female suspects they’d identified so far—one of whom was her mother.
Allison braced herself for a loyal daughter’s fury, but Tanya’s response was slow in coming. Finally she simply said, “You should have told me what you were doing.”
Her tone was surprisingly reasonable, putting Allison somewhat at ease. “I’m sorry,” said Allison. “Honestly, I thought the chances of your mother being involved were so remote that I didn’t want to alarm you.”
“You’re right. My mother would never do that. And even if your DNA test confirms that the lipstick was hers, that doesn’t mean my mother was involved.”
“DNA tests are very reliable.”
“I’m sure they are. But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that someone took my mother’s lipstick and scrawled the message, without her knowledge. Someone like my father.”
Allison paused. Suddenly the chances of a DNA match seemed much greater. “That sounds more plausible to me.”
Tanya was silent, as if thinking something over. “Or,” she said quietly, “I suppose someone could have scrawled the message with her knowledge.”
“Is there something in particular that makes you say that?”
“Not a big thing, but big enough. My father came by this morning to see if I knew anything about the FBI looking into the death of Kristen’s father. My mom arranged the meeting, which doesn’t sound bad in itself. She just did it in a very surreptitious way. She obviously knew that my father wanted to grill me about Mark, but she never even gave me a clue about the purpose of his visit. In fact, she led me to believe it was going to be another attempt at father-daughter reconciliation. I never would have thought she’d mislead me like that, especially while my daughter is kidnapped. I guess my father has more control over her than I thought.”
Allison drummed her nails on the countertop, thinking. “Tanya, I don’t like to ask you to play spy, but is there any possible way you could get your mother and father together and just watch them? See how they act toward one another, listen to what they say to each other about Kristen’s kidnapping?”
“It would be hard. My father is campaigning full blast now.”
“He has to sleep somewhere tonight. Maybe he could spend the night with your mother in the spare bedroom. Tell your mother you’d like to have the family pull together as the crisis comes to a head.”
“He and I had a pretty big blowup before he left this morning. I don’t know that he’ll ever come back, even if my mother and I both ask him.”
“He’ll come back. If nothing else, I’m sure the image of family togetherness is something that appeals to his campaign instincts. To be honest with you, it wouldn’t hurt for the kidnappers to at least think that you’re pulling together. It might make them think they have an even greater chance of collecting a ransom.”
“Is this really necessary?”
“We’ve reached the point where we have to do everything we possibly can, as quickly as we can. If anywhere in your heart you feel there’s even a remote possibility that your father is in any way involved in that scarlet letter photograph I received or in the kidnapping of your daughter, then I’d say it’s absolutely necessary for you to get him in a position where you can watch him, at least for a little while. I hate to scare you, Tanya. But Harley and I both think we’re running out of time.”
“Don’t worry about scaring me,” she said. “I’m beyond scared.”
“I know you are. Just don’t let it paralyze you.”
She sighed deeply. “I’ll take care of it,” she said in a shaky voice. “Somehow I’ll get the general back here tonight.”