Connor told her about the spot that would air on Uncovered soon, how the producer had told him about Olin’s parents, and she wished he had talked to her about that, too. Most shows like it stuck to cold cases. Uncovered was one of the few that went after crimes still actively being worked. Sure, she would have a lot of leads to follow up on after it aired, but most of them (probably all of them) would be garbage. In cold cases, that was okay. Any lead was better than no lead. But even though Connor’s case was at a dead end right now, it was still active, still being worked, and the time she spent following up on garbage leads could be better spent in other ways. Shows like Uncovered brought out a lot of crazies.
“How do you know they know each other?”
“We found a picture in my house with all of them in it. But that’s not the important part. My parents took a trip to Prague some fifteen years ago. So did his. Right about the same time. We’re thinking they might have gone together.”
“Connor—”
“I know. I’m sure they’re not the only people in New York who went to the Czech Republic around that time. But they all went, and they were all abducted. I’m not saying it has anything to do with the trip. That was a long time ago. But it seems like something to look into, doesn’t it?”
Fair point, Olivia thought. There had never been a ransom call. If the killer was abducting people who knew each other, it might be about something other than money. It was also likely the reason he hadn’t taken Connor. There was a purpose behind this. She felt a small rush of adrenaline, a renewed hope that she could solve this crime. In a normal abduction case, you worked it the best you could, but there was often not much you could do other than wait for a call. If there was a reason behind it, though, you just had to find the reason.
“Anything else?”
Connor seemed to hesitate. “No, that’s it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“All right. Thanks for filling me in. I’ll sync up with the Yorktown PD, and we’ll check this out.”
Connor thanked her as well, and she hung up.
“That took forever,” Erin whined from the backseat, stretching out the word “forever” until she ran out of breath. “Now can we get a treat?”
Olivia glanced at her daughter via the review mirror and smiled. “Sure.”
Erin could be a handful. Even plopped in front of the TV, she didn’t stay still long, so Olivia didn’t get a chance to place any more work calls until after her daughter was in bed. She left a message for the Yorktown detective, asking him to reach out to her in the morning. Then she pulled out her laptop, connected to the NYPD’s VPN, and went to work.
There wasn’t much on Roland Cooper. Just the basics, the sort of public record everyone leaves behind: birth certificate, marriage certificate, credit report (he had four cards and thirty-two thousand dollars in debt between them, not to mention loans for his car and his house). Some traffic tickets, but nothing unusual. She doubted he had anything to do with the abduction, but she would follow up with him tomorrow anyway.
In the meantime, she shifted her attention to Olin’s parents. Mark and Hillary Wilson. Married in 1992. Mark was a money manager for Fidelity. Hillary had worked a few odd jobs over the years—she had campaigned for Al Gore and Barack Obama, spent three months as a receptionist at Save the Oceans, another three months as a frontline activist (whatever that was) for Save the Rainforests—but was, by all accounts, a housewife.
They lived in an affluent Westchester neighborhood in a big house that Mark had inherited from his parents. They were both lifelong New Yorkers and both had attended Columbia University.
Olivia turned her attention to Connor’s parents. She knew a lot about them already, but only the recent stuff. As she dug further into their backgrounds, she learned that while Frank had moved to New York from Alabama when he was twenty-six, Kim had, like Mark and Hillary, grown up in New York and been a student at Columbia. The three had even graduated the same year.
And further digging did indeed reveal all four had traveled to the Czech Republic. The US Customs and Border Protection agency had records for them leaving and returning together. But there had been at least one other person with them.
Before marrying Frank, Kim had been married to a Matthew Jones. She had still been married to him on the date of the trip, and the US Customs and Border Protection agency had a record for him leaving the US on the same day as everyone else.
The only thing was, they had no record of him coming back. Ever.
That had to be a mistake, Olivia thought.
CHAPTER 30
Aden was denied bail. He hadn’t expected the hearing to go any other way.
He was transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center and put in a cell by himself on a high-security wing. He spent little time in it, though. Federal agents of all stripes questioned him for hours on end. They wanted to know the basics, of course: what his plan was, whether he was working alone.
But they also asked other questions. A lot of them.
He said not a word. Not to anyone. Not ever. Even when he was allowed out of his cell for short periods of time, he didn’t speak to the guards or other inmates.
Not until tonight, anyway. Tonight, he asked the guards if he could make a phone call.
The hacker was watching a baseball game when his cellphone rang. The Yankees versus the Bears. The score was three to one, in favor of the Yankees. Seventh inning. It seemed inevitable at this point the Yankees would win. Somehow, that
