The Czech Republic’s international airport was located in Prague, the country’s capital. She figured it made sense to start with the police there and fan out to smaller cities if she needed to. Since the Czech Republic was five hours ahead of New York, she could start placing her calls now.
She looked the force up online. The first listing she came across was Policie České republiky. It sounded promising.
Olivia dialed the number, then spent half an hour getting routed through officers who spoke varying degrees of English until she finally ended up with Oldrich Kozar. From what she could gather, he had been on the force for some thirty years and, as luck would have it, spoke English well.
“I think I remember this Matthew Jones,” he said. “Hold on while I check something.”
That sounded promising. Olivia was glad she hadn’t waited to speak with the US Customs and Border Protection agency first.
“Yes,” he said. “Here it is. Matthew Jones. Arrested and charged with . . . How you call it? First degree murder, correct?”
Of all the things Oldrich could have told her, she would have never guessed this. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes. Very sure. I remember this case. Matthew Jones killed a woman . . . What was her name?” Olivia heard the detective flipping through pieces of paper. “Heather Callahan.”
“Related to Frank Callahan?”
More flipping pages. “She was his wife.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Detective Forbes, I can assure you we have our facts correct.”
“I’m sorry. I hadn’t meant—”
“It’s okay.”
“Do you know why he killed her?”
“It says here they were having an affair. She wanted to break it off, and he did not. This is . . . common.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, sometimes, these things . . . they happen.”
“What things happen?”
“Things.”
“Murder?”
“Not usually. But, you know, things.”
Olivia suspected he meant assault, and unfortunately things like that did sometimes happen when couples broke up. “Is he still in jail?”
“But yes. Tell me, why are you calling all the way from America about this old case?”
Olivia filled him in on the abductions and subsequent murders.
He grunted. “That’s quite a thing.”
“I know it’s a long shot, but could you review your case files? See if there’s anything in them that might help us figure out what’s happening now?”
“Why do you think that case has anything to do with this?”
Olivia was still in her robe, propped up on the bed, legs crossed. “I’m not sure it does.” She looked at the clock. It was almost six now. Erin would get up soon. “But something ties these abductions together.”
“Okay. I will look. But—how you say?—don’t get your hopes high.”
CHAPTER 33
Like Olivia, Connor woke up almost every hour on the hour. Was he actually at a dead end? Certainly there was something he could do, some clue he had missed. There had to be.
Well, there was one thing.
Dylan.
He could still talk to her, he thought, staring up at the ceiling. He didn’t expect it to bring him any insight. But at least it would focus his mind. “Action is action,” he’d heard someone say once. He hadn’t understood it then. He sure did now. Besides, Dylan knew something about his real father. And maybe his mother. Hoping it might have anything to do with their kidnapping seemed like a stretch, but he should still find out what it was.
But how? After the encounter with Dylan’s father, he couldn’t exactly walk right up to the front door and ask to speak with her.
He would have to do it somewhere else.
That would mean following her. Waking up early (done), driving to her house, trailing her until she was alone. But that all sounded like a terrible idea.
Maybe there was a better way.
Connor sat down at the small mahogany desk in the bedroom and opened his laptop. He didn’t bother to turn on the lamp. He knew his way around a computer almost well enough to work it blindfolded, and the screen cast enough light for him to see the keyboard on the rare occasion he needed to look.
He got the IP address from Dylan’s email (the same IP address he had used earlier to find her house) and employed a technique called banner grabbing to search for open ports. From there, it was just a matter of exploiting the applications that used those ports to find a way in. It took a while. Hacking his way into a stranger’s machine always did. Soon enough, though, he found himself looking at Dylan’s computer just as if he were actually in her bedroom.
He checked her Outlook calendar, hoping for a list of appointments, and found it blank. He wasn’t surprised. That was a long shot anyway. Then he had a better idea, and a little bit of Googling confirmed his suspicion.
When he was done doing what he’d logged in to do, he closed down his computer and slid it back into the bag beside the desk.
Olin would want to be a part of this, Connor thought. He no doubt needed the distraction, as well. But Connor wasn’t going to call. It was too early. Besides, this was the kind of information that should be delivered in person. He had no reason to think the police were listening to every call he made. They might not be listening to any at all. But they had installed software on his phone that would let them.
Sure, they had told him he would have to activate the application if he wanted them to hear the call. And at the time, he had taken that statement at face value. But now he had his doubts. For all he knew, they considered him a suspect in
