‘Takes you landside,’ Parton confirmed. ‘You’d be kerbside inside a minute. Then you could be anywhere.’
Vivian paused the video again. ‘Looks like the lady was telling the truth,’ she said, her voice as bleak as her heart. A child had been snatched and the bureaucracy of airport security had handed the kidnapper a head start. ‘Christ, Parton. How come nobody listened to this woman?’ She was already reaching for the phone again.
‘Nobody could understand her at first,’ he said. ‘I swear to God.’
‘I’m sure that’s going to cover your back when the lawsuits come down. But as of now, I need you to get me a list of everyone who was on duty this afternoon. We’re going to have to interview them all. Find out who saw what.’
Parton didn’t move. He seemed fascinated by the hand holding the phone. ‘Parton,’ Vivian said impatiently. ‘Get me that list of names.’
His eyes met hers. He seemed dazed. ‘He’ll be OK, right? The kid? You’ll find him, right?’
He didn’t deserve the effort of lies. ‘Alive? Probably not. Now go.’ She watched him stumble over the chair on his way out. Then Vivian took a deep breath and composed herself. She pressed the speed-dial number for her boss. The number rang out, signalling the end of her autonomy on the case of the kidnapped child.
4
The urge to get up and pace was almost overwhelming. Stephanie had already tried to stand up, only to have Lopez insist sharply that she stay seated. ‘Don’t make me have to cuff you again,’ she’d warned.
‘Don’t I get a phone call or something?’ Stephanie asked. ‘I thought you Americans made a big deal out of people’s right to legal representation?’
Lopez gave a mirthless laugh. ‘You never heard of Guantanamo Bay? We’re not so keen on human rights when it comes to the kind of people who want to blow us off the planet.’
‘But I’m not a terrorist. I’m obviously not a terrorist. I’m a woman whose child was kidnapped in front of her eyes and you’re treating me like I’m the criminal. When is someone going to start taking me seriously?’ In spite of her determination to stay calm, Stephanie couldn’t help her voice rising. She felt nauseous and sweaty, sick with fear and worry. But she had to keep it together. For Jimmy’s sake. For the sake of the promises she’d made.
They should never have come on this holiday. But she’d allowed herself to be seduced by the idea of California. Beaches and surf, Disneyland and Universal Studios, sunshine and Yosemite. Ever since she’d heard that Joni Mitchell song, the city of swimming pools had held her imagination close. She wanted to know what the waves at Malibu sounded like. Jimmy needing a holiday had just been an excuse to indulge herself.
Stupid.
They should have gone to Spain. Taken the car on a ferry to Santander and driven across to the Costa Brava. Or dawdled up the French Atlantic Coast to Brittany. Something that didn’t involve metal detectors and separation. Something that didn’t hand Jimmy on a plate to whoever wanted to steal him away.
And who would do that anyway? Who would have the nerve and the brains to abduct him in the middle of a busy airport, under the watchful gaze of CCTV and some of the most stringent security arrangements on the planet? It was beyond belief.
It was hard to believe it was a random abduction, a spur-of-the- moment snatch. Someone had planned this. Obviously it hadn’t been a real TSA officer who had walked off with Jimmy, otherwise Parton or Lopez would have known about it. That meant it was an impostor. But you couldn’t just hang around indefinitely in a lookalike uniform without attracting attention from the real security people. It was hard to resist the conclusion that Jimmy had been a very specific target. And that meant a kidnapper who knew his tragic history. Not to mention their travel plans.
Please God, let him be OK. She couldn’t bear the thought of Jimmy suffering any more. He’d already gone through more than any five-year-old should have to endure. Sometimes when he snuggled into her at bedtime, she imagined herself soaking up his pain, taking it up into her body like lymph nodes absorbing toxins, restoring him to some magical default state where he hadn’t been hurt beyond bearing. What sort of bastard would be willing to add to that burden of pain and fear?
Stephanie pushed the thought away, refusing to acknowledge that she knew anyone who could contemplate such cruelty. But the rogue notion wouldn’t be hushed.
She needed to do something that would shift her focus. ‘Isn’t there some sort of system for sending out an alarm about kidnapped children? I’m sure I saw a TV programme about it. You signal to drivers on the motorways or something?’
‘You’re thinking about the Amber Alert,’ Lopez said. ‘When there’s a child abduction, they put messages up on the gantries on the highway. But it goes a lot wider than that. They broadcast it on the radio, they put a ticker on the TV news stations. A lot of people subscribe to SMS messages too. It’s been real effective in a lot of cases.’
‘They should be doing that for Jimmy.’ Stephanie grabbed her hair on either side of her head and clung to it. ‘They should be doing it now.’
‘Officer Parton has the matter in hand.’ Lopez didn’t sound too convinced.
‘You’ve got a radio there. Can’t you find out what’s going on? Please?’
Lopez looked embarrassed. ‘There’s nothing I can do. Believe me, the wheels are turning now.’
‘But not fast enough,’ Stephanie said savagely. ‘There’s a little boy out there who’s growing more and more scared the longer he’s away from me. I hope you can live with that, Officer Lopez. Because when I get out of here, yours will be one of the names in the headlines. I have media contacts that would make your eyes water. And I will be putting them to good use.’
‘I don’t think threats are the way to go right now, ma’am.’
‘From my perspective, threats are the only way to go. Because appealing to you people’s humanity isn’t working, is it? Maybe I need to start appealing to your self-interest. Do you want a future in this career, Officer Lopez? Or do you want to come out of this as one of the good guys?’
Lopez took a step towards her. Stephanie expected anger or fear, but what she got was something completely different. Lopez laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m going to pretend you never said any of that. You’re scared. I get that. But my advice is to dial back on the threats till you get some place you can act on them. This organisation doesn’t need much excuse to hold people incommunicado.’
On the surface, it sounded like gentle reason. To Stephanie, it seemed a more chilling threat than anything she could have come up with.
Vivian McKuras put the phone down gently, as if she didn’t want to startle it into biting her. She’d expected her boss to rip the kidnapping case from her grasp and assign her to going through passenger lists or something equally mindless. Instead, she’d interrupted what sounded like a major alert. He’d gabbled – gabbled! – that they’d intercepted a credible suicide bomber threat to an imminent political rally featuring the First Family. Every available body – except hers, obviously – was out there trying to close down the risk before it spiralled beyond control. Normally, she’d have been unsettled by such a display from a man who had apparently adopted cool as his watchword in high school and hadn’t veered from it since. But today, she welcomed it. Because today it meant she had control of her first major case. Twenty-seven years old and she had her own major case. Never mind that her boss had told her to bring in her airport colleagues to run things with her. She preferred to think of that as a suggestion rather than an instruction. This was her case. This was where she got the chance to turn things round for herself.
The first thing she had to do was to set up the Amber Alert. She needed a description of the child and a recent photograph. Luckily, all that was at her fingertips. Literally. Vivian opened her email and sent an urgent message to her opposite number at ICE HSI, the catchily named Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations.
