Freezing

She broke off when the sound of a sob traveled back from the front of the building and then motioned with her head that she’d be in the lab. Jayne went into her office through the hall door and was relieved that the double French doors to Reception were closed; Carol’s doing, no doubt. She didn’t want to interrupt what the doors’ mottled glass panels allowed her to make out. Carol, in full grief-counselor mode, had sat down next to the visitor. The crying, which had started as though a dam had burst, was subsiding, but Jayne sensed that the force of the tears had been only dammed up again, not spent. And was it ever?

It was possible that the visitor wouldn’t stay for an interview on the first visit. Sometimes it was enough for family members to come in the front door and deal with what that represented. They’d reached the stage where they were considering the possibility that their missing relative had been found, but found dead. They returned when they felt stronger.

A darkening across the room made her look up. The visitor was leaving. A knock on the door a moment later was Carol.

‘That was Solana,’ she said, sitting in the chair opposite the desk. ‘Here about her son Roberto, missing for six months. She was referred by the Alstons in Pasadena.’

‘Some referral. We haven’t been able to find their daughter.’

‘Well, you’ll be interested in what Solana said, then. She started working for the Alstons as a housekeeper a few months ago. At some point, they asked her to live in. She said she couldn’t and then broke down. They were busy reassuring her that she wouldn’t lose her job but then she explained about Roberto and how she didn’t want to be away from home for any twenty-four hour period in case he came back and she wasn’t there.’

Jayne nodded.

‘That’s when they told her about how Kate had disappeared and how the Agency had helped them focus their energies and given them hope of some sort of answer. She agreed to pay us a visit but, as you would have heard, it took a lot out of her.’

‘Do you think she’ll come back?’

Carol considered this as she stood up. ‘I don’t know. It’s taken her weeks just to come inside, having driven past a few times. But I gave her one of our brochures to take home.’

Jayne could hear her humming quietly as she returned to her desk.

Scott walked into the office he and Eric shared on the fourth floor of the FBI building and saw his partner on the phone. He wondered if information was coming in from a law enforcement officer who’d seen their Be On the Look Out notice for a van matching the description of the one hit by the drunk on the 101 Freeway. He set one of the cups he was carrying down on Eric’s desk.

Eric hung up the phone and turned to face him. ‘That was Detective Schrader over in LAPD Robbery Homicide.’

‘He call you?’ Scott winced as he scalded the roof of his mouth on the coffee.

‘She, and I called ’cause I got to thinking: we’ve got the BOLO out for the van but if the perp’s decided to stop so he can disguise it, we don’t just have to wait for a hit on the BOLO. We can go out and track him down.’

‘Body shops?’

‘The right body shops.’

‘Did the D give you their watch list?’

‘Yeah. She gave me eighteen shops that have come to their attention for handling stolen vehicles.’

‘What radius from the body parts?’

‘I asked for a five-mile radius from the nearest freeway exit to the north, which was . . . uh, Van Nuys Boulevard. We can expand it if we have to.’

‘Chances are the perp wasn’t driving too far once he realized he lost his load out the back door.’ Scott was already getting up and he grinned at Eric, who was trying to get some coffee down and fast. ‘You ready?’

Eric swallowed. ‘Just remember whose brilliant idea this was.’

‘You want a gold star? I’ll give you one if we get a lead on the van.’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard that before,’ Eric grumbled but he was getting up with alacrity and the two agents left the office.

Steelie didn’t leave the lab all afternoon. Carol did crossword puzzles at her desk until 4 p.m. when she watered Fitzgerald and then made tea for everyone else. Jayne pulled together the material they’d take to the FBI office: biometric forms, sliding calipers, rulers. Then she checked the Agency email account.

There were seven new messages in the Inbox since she’d last checked: three were spam, two were lurid spam, one was from the server warning account-holders that old messages would be deleted, and one was from a family looking for a missing relative they believed was alive.

The last email was of a type that the Agency received with regularity: relatives of missing persons had learned about 32/1’s forensic profiles, saw no point in having coroners’ freezers scoured for their relatives, but still got in contact for any scrap of information that might lead them down a new path to find that relative.

The standard Agency response would include a list of resources and links for organizations like People Search and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. No mention would be made of the Doe Network or coroners’ Internet bulletin boards with photos of unidentified bodies. Jayne typed the response, thinking that it was time to simply write a template for responses sent to these particular inquiries. She pulled a 32/1 brochure from a drawer and drew a couple of phrases from it for the conclusion of the message.

If you don’t find the answers you’re looking for at any of these sources, don’t forget there are other places you can look. Agency 32/1 exists to help identify all unidentified people, including living people who can’t identify themselves due to trauma or disease. A visit to the Agency means a chance for you to talk about your daughter as you know her: a vibrant, living person. We do the rest. If she has been found, she will be counting on you to tell her story.

Carol came to the doorway. ‘It’s just going on five, so I’ll take your cup and then I’ll be going.’

‘Thanks, Carol. See you tomorrow.’

Jayne did a quick Internet news search about the missing girl’s case before she hit Send. There were five articles from The Birch Herald, the paper local to the girl’s neighborhood in Wisconsin. The first three were dated just after she disappeared while walking home from her summer job at the Dairy Queen. She was fifteen and her name was Amy Ledbetter. One quote from her mother read, ‘If she’d worked at that Golden Clog Tourist Center on the highway, I might have been worried. But this was right here in town.’ The other two articles were dated a year apart, one for each anniversary of the girl’s disappearance. It looked like the Herald was about due for a third one. Jayne sent the message to the Ledbetters and the Inbox refreshed.

There was a new message and she smiled as she read it. She went to the lab where she found Steelie hunched over her keyboard.

‘You won’t believe who just sent us an email.’

Steelie’s eyes didn’t leave the screen. ‘Who?’

‘Gene.’

‘As in, India Tango One?’

‘His call sign was India Tango Five, as you well know.’

‘But he was Number One in his own mind. Probably still is.’

‘Well, you’ll have a chance to see for yourself because he’s flying into LA and suggested we all get together for dinner.’

‘I’ll be busy.’

‘You don’t even know what day it’s going to be!’

‘If it involves Gene and dinner . . .’

‘He’s not with the FBI anymore,’ Jayne offered.

Steelie looked at her. ‘Oh? What’s he doing now?’

‘Didn’t say.’

‘Well, whatever it is, I’m sure he’s still Number One.’ Steelie turned back to the computer.

Jayne looked over her shoulder at the screen. ‘How’s it going?’

‘I posted the ACB on to the network and it’s reading fine. Now we just need a reply from someone.’

All the electrical equipment hummed, faded, and came back to life as another brownout swept over the