“Yes, hold on a second, we’re having problems with the Wi-Fi in the jet and I want to have Mo-bot in on this as well,” he said before the camera went haywire and then went dark.
“Who was that man?” Cherie Wise asked. “He looked like a Berkeley refugee.”
“Sci used to teach at Berkeley, actually, but now he works for me.”
I explained that Kloppenberg was the polymath criminologist and computer forensics analyst who ran Private’s lab in Los Angeles and oversaw all of the company’s labs around the world. Sci was also the driving force behind making Private’s criminology labs so state-of-the-art that they met FBI, Scotland Yard, and Interpol standards.
“Kloppenberg’s quirky, but he’s the only person I know who’s an honest-to-God genius,” I said, which provoked odd looks from both of the Wises. They obviously considered themselves somewhere high in that lofty realm.
“Who is Mo-bot?”
“Maureen Roth. She works for Sci as a technical jack-of-all-trades. She’s also one of the most well-read people I know.”
The screen flickered and returned, divided into thirds, the video of the girls in the middle, Sci on the left, and Mo-bot’s motherly face smiling on the right.
“We’ve got you,” I said. “Can you see us?”
“Yes, we’ve got it working now,” Mo-bot said.
“Apologies,” Sci said. “But we’ve both had a run at the kidnappers’ video in the last hour and come up with a few things for you.”
Kloppenberg said the video had been sent to Private Rio from an Internet café in Kuala Lumpur through a server in Pakistan.
“Got enemies in either of those places, Mr. Wise?” Mo-bot asked.
Wise thought and then said, “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Done work in those countries? Pakistan? Malaysia?”
“Both,” he said.
Sci said, “I find it telling that the video was sent to Private Rio and not to the Wises.”
“Good point,” Tavia said. “The kidnappers must have known the girls had Private Rio bodyguards. So they sent the video here first.”
“But how did the kidnappers know the guards were with Private?” Mo-bot asked. “They were in street clothes, correct?”
“Correct,” Tavia said.
Wise said, “Then someone in Private Rio talked, or my girls did.”
“The girls?” his wife said. “That’s absurd. They knew the risks. Why would they do such a thing?”
Wise cast an even gaze at her, said, “Natalie could have fallen in love again. Or Alicia could have been trying to impress someone. You know how naive, trusting, and impressionable they can be. So quick to become someone’s best friend forever or rally to some politically correct cause without doing the research necessary to justify their support. They’re just like…”
“Me?” Cherie demanded. “Why don’t you just say it?”
Her husband blinked, took off his glasses, said, “At times, yes.”
“Andy, I honestly don’t know why you stay with me.”
Wise frowned, clearly puzzled, said, “How do you make that logical jump?”
Sci cut them off, said, “We blew up some stills from the video, Jack.”
The images appeared one after another: the Wise twins in the chairs, the painting of the children kneeling in prayer, and the masks their captors wore.
Mo-bot said, “See how the painting has no frame? And there’s the suggestion of other figures to either side of the children. It’s part of a mural.”
“Why cover the rest of it?” Cherie asked.
“The mural might be recognizable,” Tavia said.
“Then why show it at all?” Wise asked. “Why not just cover up the whole thing?”
“They’re trying to play on your emotions,” I said. “Two kneeling, praying children behind your girls. What about the masks?”
Tavia said, “The feather-and-sequin mask is samba. You could find one like it in many places in Rio. But the primitive one I’ve never seen before.”
“Looks animist to me,” Sci said.
“Are there animists in Rio?” Cherie asked.
“Macumba,” Tavia said, nodding. “It came with the slaves the Portuguese brought from Africa to work on the rubber plantations. Macumba’s more widely practiced up on the northeast coast in Bahia, but it’s here in Rio too, especially in the favelas.”
“Make a note to figure out where this second mask came from,” I said. “Anything else from the video?”
“Sounds,” Mo-bot said. “Three different background noises.”
She typed. Dogs barked, one with a gruff tone, another a yapper. Then we heard a train whistle blow close by, followed by a gentle tinkling melody that changed to clanging and then died.
“What was that sound?” Cherie asked.
“High-tone chimes,” Mo-bot said. “Moving on a gust of wind.”
Chapter 21
THE WIND, DR. Castro thought. What will it be?