She held on. He’d given her someone to hold on to. A gift she never wanted to take for granted. She thought she’d known what darkness was, and despair and terror. Now she knew there were people who lived and worked and slept and ate who’d known far, far worse.
She hoped they had someone to hold on to.
“Okay.” She drew back, laid her hands on his face briefly. “Callaway.”
“You know the basics. Born in a small town in Pennsylvania. His father did three years military service, as a medic.” They walked back to Eve’s office as he spoke. “He worked as a physician assistant after his enlistment was up. After he married, had the son, they moved six times in as many years.”
“Interesting.”
“Mother—professional mother status. They live in rural Arkansas now. They farm. Callaway was homeschooled until the age of fourteen. They moved twice more during his teenage years. He attended three different high schools. His record is slightly above average, no particular disciplinary trouble—on record.”
“Which means?”
“I found some reports. There was concern, initially, about antisocial behavior. Not a troublemaker, but not one to join in, not one to form friendships. He did what he was told, no more. He was encouraged to participate in extracurricular activities, and finally settled on tennis.”
“No team sports.”
“Again, he was slightly better than average, but it’s noted he had a fierce sense of competition, and had to be reminded, regularly, about good sportsmanship. No fights, no violence.”
“That fits, too.”
“He attended a local college for two years, then managed to get into NYU, by the skin of his teeth. He studied marketing and business. He showed aptitude there, for ideas and big pictures. He didn’t do as well at presentations or again, team projects. Not initially. He improved, and eventually joined Stevenson and Reede. His reviews give him solid ratings on work ethic, ideas, and less stellar marks on social skills, presentations, client relations. He’s moved up, based on his work, and it’s been a slower climb than it might have been as he has no real skill in articulating the product to clients or, basically, showing them a good time.
“Just as a contrast,” Roarke continued, “Joseph Cattery’s reviews praise his client skills, and his ability to team think. While Vann may have the corner office, Cattery recently received a hefty bonus and was in line for a promotion and pay hike. The bonus was due to his work on a project he shared with Callaway. Callaway’s bonus for the project was considerably smaller.”
“Smells like motive for Cattery. But not for a bar full of people.” She paced around her board. “It’s not some twisted religion with him. It’s not about Revelation and using kids. But there’s still some elements of Red Horse. The use of women to do the dirty work, the utter disregard for innocents, and the use of the substance to mass murder. He cherry-picks. And it’s still not enough.”
“One interesting point. It’s been his habit, since college, to travel to see his parents once a year.”
“That would be duty, not affection. Right?”
“I’d say so. However, this year he’s traveled to Arkansas four times. Neither of his parents have anything on their medical to indicate an illness or condition. No particular change in their financials.”
“He’s going back for something.” Eve shoved at her hair. “Something he needs, wants, something he found, something he’s looking for. I need more on the parents.”
“I’ve done the father. He was nearly forty when he married Callaway’s mother. She was twenty-two.”
“Big age gap. Could be interesting.”
“He was doing some private nursing at that time, and came in to help her care for her father. The father had fought in the Urbans, had been wounded, and was suffering from complications of those wounds as well as depression. His wife was killed in a vehicular accident about six months before Russell Callaway met the then Audrey Hubbard. They married a few weeks after the father’s death.”
Eve went to her computer to check. “I don’t have a Hubbard on my list of kids—recovered or not.”
“I’ve just started on the mother. I’ll be able to give you more shortly.”
“What about the father’s war record?”
“He retired an army captain. He saw considerable combat, but there’s no record of him being involved in any of the Red Horse operations. I don’t know if there would be.”
“The mother’s mother.”
“Barely started there. Give me some time. I’m picking through decades here, and all matter of records.”
“And I’m holding you up. It’s good data. It fills in some blanks. Callaway’s an insular man, a loner by nature. Competitive. His mother married a much older man at a difficult point in her life and chose professional mother status, homeschooled her son. Kept him close. Lots of moving, no real chance to form outside bonds. Father’s likely the dominant. Changing jobs, uprooting the family when it suits him. Maternal grandparents dead, and he hasn’t maintained close ties with his parents as an adult. But now he goes to them several times in a few months. It’s good data to chew on. Get me more.”
“I live to serve, Lieutenant.”
She went back to it and sent Roarke’s data to Mira with a request for an eval asap. She moved through more names, let her mind circle.
On impulse she called up Callaway’s parents’ ID photos, studied them. And began the slow, painstaking process of pulling up abductee photos, aging them.
She got more coffee, considered, then rejected, a booster when the caffeine didn’t eliminate the growing fatigue.
Then …
“Wait a minute.”
“Eve.”
“Wait. Wait. I think I’ve got something.”
“So do I.”
“Look at this. Give me your take.”
He came around to study the screen and the images on it. The first he recognized now as Callaway’s mother; split-screened beside it was a computer-generated image.
“They appear to be the same woman, or very close. Different hair color and style, but the face is the same.”
“The aged image is of Karleen MacMillon, an abductee at the age of eighteen months. Never recovered. But she was recovered and raised by the Hubbards as Audrey, because there she fucking is.”
“The record of Audrey Hubbard’s live birth is fake. It’s a good one, but it’s fake.”
“Because she wasn’t born to the Hubbards. She was one of the taken. But never listed as recovered.”
“Hubbard retired from the army and moved from England to the U.S. with his wife and four-year-old daughter. His wife had a half-sister. Gina MacMillon. I’m still digging there.”
“Gina and William MacMillon, listed as Karleen’s parents, both killed in the raid where the kid was abducted. It’s the link. It links him to Menzini and Red Horse. Not enough for an arrest, but enough to put a tail on him.”
She walked to the board. “He found out his mother was an abductee, and it set something off. But how did a four-year-old kid get the formula, or have knowledge? Maybe Hubbard was in on the raid that took Menzini down, or in on interrogations. They have something—or had it—and Callaway kept going back to find it, to find everything he could, or interrogate his mother. I need to talk to her.”
“Are we going to Arkansas?”
“No, my turf. Teasdale’s got the HSO muscles to get the mother here. She told Callaway what she knows. Now she’s going to tell us.”
“You need to sleep. I’ll put the run on the half-sister on auto. We’ll both catch a few hours. You’ve done what you set out to do tonight,” he told her when she hesitated. “You’ll want to gear up for tomorrow.”
“You’re not wrong. I want to get this data to Whitney, get a couple men on Callaway tonight. I don’t want him hitting some twenty-four/seven while I’m sleeping.”
“Fair enough. Get it done, and I’ll put what I have together for your briefing tomorrow. Then we’ll go to bed.”
“That’s a deal.”
