Got the Look (17 page)

Peering through night-vision goggles, Andie locked onto an old ranch-style house. No interior lights were visible through the windows, but a yellow bug light cast an eerie amber pall across the front porch. The house was nestled in a wooded area of northern Palm Beach County, surrounded by mature olive trees and Australian pines. Not a single blade of grass graced the twenty-five-yard stretch from the street to the front door, but the soft blanket of fallen pine needles would ensure a stealthy approach for the SWAT team.

Andie gestured toward the loudspeaker on the ground beside her. Don't suppose there's any last hope of talking you into using this, is there?

Agent Harland shook his head once, unamused. Andie listened through her audio headset as Harland checked in with each of his team members. The final exchange was with site surveillance, a two-man team who had the important job of approaching the house and scoping out the scene before the others made their move.

Two bedrooms, both on the west side of the house, the surveillance agent reported. Kitchen, dining, and TV room on east side. One subject confirmed in the master bedroom. Large, probably male. Appears to be asleep. There's a large room in the northwest quadrant, a converted garage. Can't get a visual. Old garage door is gone and replaced with drywall. No windows. Infrared camera scan shows what appears to be a smaller subject with no visible arms or legs, as if curled into a ball. Possibly a woman in the fetal position.

Andie listened with interest. An infrared camera picked up body heat, effectively looking through walls to find a living and breathing human being. A body lying in the fetal position, curled into a ball, sounded entirely consistent with a woman who'd just been tortured. Then again, so did a body with no arms or legs. Either way, there was no guarantee that Mia was still alive. Andie knew that Mia's body would still give off detectable levels of warmth at least two or three hours after death, losing on average one and one-half degrees per hour.

Good work, Harland said into his bone microphone, speaking without emotion. On three we're yellow.

Andie didn't live and work beneath the SWAT rainbow, but she knew that yellow was code for the final position of cover and concealment. Green was the assault, the moment of life and death, literally.

One two three. Harland sprang from the ravine and moved quickly toward the house. Andie remained under cover, watching with the aid of night vision as the SWAT members executed their well-choreographed movements in a wave of utter silence. They moved toes first, then heels, knees bent to absorb recoil in case they had to fire. Two agents approached from the east to cover the back door. Two others closed in from the west and assumed positions in front of the house, but not too close, strategically stopping just beyond the reach of the glowing yellow porch light. Harland continued around the west side of the house and joined up with the agents in the rear. The plan was for the point agents to enter from the rear of the house, where there was only darkness, and flush the occupants out the front door, into the light, and straight into the sights of two SWAT members with M16 rifles. If that wasn't enough, somewhere in the trees, invisible even to Andie, was a trained sniper who could shoot the cap off of a beer bottle at two hundred yards.

Andie couldn't see the back of the house, but she heard their maneuvering with the aid of her headset.

On three we're green, Harland whispered, his voice breaking the radio squelch in Andie's ear. He counted slowly, deliberately, a man with ice water in his veins. At the count of three, Andie's headset resounded with the crash of a door and shattered glass. She braced herself for the crack of gunfire, but she heard only the shouts of Agent Harland and his team as they swept through the house.

Down, down! Get down on the floor!

There was a crackling over the radio and more shouting. Outside the house, directly in Andie's line of sight, the agents in the front yard moved from their yellow positions of cover and approached the porch. Then, suddenly, they both hit the ground as a gunshot erupted inside the house. It was so loud that Andie would have heard it without the headset. The outside agents resumed cover behind trees. Andie ducked back into the ravine, cautiously raising the night-vision binoculars just enough to see what was going on inside the house.

A minute later, the front door opened and Harland stepped out. Standing on the porch, he gave a hand signal as he announced over the radio, All clear.

Andie jumped to her feet and ran toward the house. The technical agent and forensic specialist were right behind her. If Mia was inside, Andie wanted to do the talking. If her kidnapper was there and still alive, Andie didn't want some clever defense lawyer arguing that he had confessed to a crime with a gun pointed at his head. She hurried through the front door and found Harland in the back room. He and another SWAT agent were standing over a large man who was facedown on the green sculptured carpet. He was wearing only boxer shorts. His hands were clasped behind his back with plastic cuffs, but he appeared to be unharmed.

Where is Mia Salazar? Harland shouted.

I got no idea what you're talking about! the man said, his voice shaking.

Where is she? said Harland.

Andie said, What about the other subject in the converted garage?

A Rottweiler, said Harland.

They shot my dog! the man said, still facedown on the carpet. What'd you go and shoot my dog for?

Shut up! said Harland.

You shot the man's dog? said Andie.

It was a monster. Big enough to look human in the Infrared camera. Went right for my throat when we broke down the door.

I'm gonna sue you bastards, I swear! the man shouted.

Harland continued to bark out orders to his team. Check the attic. Crawl space, too. If Mia Salazar is here, we need to find her - now!

She's not here, said the technical agent as he entered the room.

Harland shot him a look of annoyance. I don't think that's for a techie to say.

Fine. Keep searching, said the technical agent. Henning, you need to have a look at this guy's computer.

Andie followed him into the TV room. The light from a glowing computer monitor reflected off the little sparkles in the popcorn ceiling. He's fairly high-tech, said the technical agent. Twenty-one-inch flat-screen monitor. A favorite of gamers and porn addicts.

Which one is he?

Both, judging from the cookies on his hard drive.

So, is he our man?

Nah. He's a host, not the parasite.

What do you mean?

With a click of the mouse, the tech agent brought an image to the screen. Here's what our kidnapper transmitted from the Kwick-e Copy Center this morning. Probably came under the cover of a free porn e-mail, which invaded the guy's hard drive when he opened it. It's parked in the system subfile of Windows, a fairly typical way for any virus transmitted by Internet to invade another computer. Except it's not technically a virus. It's purely a data file. Have a look for yourself.

He clicked on the folder, and Andie read the taunting message:

Fools! You make this so easy! All I have to do is send an infected e-mail to a convicted sex offender, and you morons are all over him. You got the wrong man. Be sure you get the right number. Payment is due in five days. Delivery instructions to follow. P. S. Mia and I are already working on a sequel. The ending is guaranteed to make her cry.

For several chilling moments, Andie was unable to tear her eyes away from the screen. She was reading it for the fourth time, exploring the mind of a sociopath, when the technical agent broke her train of thought.

You want to tell Martinez, or you want me to call him and test the waters first?

Andie suddenly felt as if her neck were on a chopping block. It hadn't been her idea to go in with SWAT, but this was her team, and the captain always went down with the ship.

I'll tell him, she said, her voice tightening with an acute sense of dread.

Chapter
24

Jack was one of the first people in Miami to get his hands on the morning paper. He was waiting outside the Tribune headquarters, well before sunrise, when the first delivery truck rolled onto the street. Alone in the front seat of his car, he devoured the page-one story beneath the steadily weakening glow of a yellow dome light, his hands trembling as he read and reread the disturbing headline: KIDNAP VICTIM'S LOVER REFUSES TO PAY RANSOM.

In at least one respect, Eddy Malone had been true to his word. To Jack's relief, there were no lurid excerpts from the ill-gotten audiotapes of his most private moments with Mia. On the other hand, the article didn't exactly go out of the way to exonerate him:

In an exclusive interview with the Tribune, Jack Swyteck, son of former governor Harry Swyteck, has confirmed reports that he was having an affair with the thirty-year-old wife of Ernesto Salazar prior to her kidnapping. Swyteck - a savvy criminal defense attorney and respected former prosecutor - claims he had no idea that Mia Salazar was married to the multimillionaire developer, even though they saw each other extensively over a two-month period while Mr. Salazar was out of the country on business.

It went downhill from there, making it seem highly unlikely that anyone would actually believe his claimed ignorance. He was ashamed, only slightly consoled by the fact that his abuela still couldn't read an English-language newspaper. But he had to separate the embarrassing from the truly life-threatening, because the meat of the article was indeed dangerous - for Mia.

What would the kidnapper do now that it was printed in black and white that no one intended to pay a ransom?

Seeing his refusal to pay splayed across the front page was painful, but the facts were the facts. Mia was another man's wife. Jack had let himself fall for her only because she'd deceived him. How did that make it his responsibility to pay a ransom? Wasn't it enough that he'd put his life in danger and tried to deliver the proof-of-life payment? Of course, none of those details made their way into the article. Jack had called Agent Henning last night, immediately after hanging up with Malone, and she'd confirmed that the entire proof-of-life episode was one aspect of the kidnapping that the FBI had succeeded in keeping out of the media. Secrecy was good for the investigation, but the immediate result was a story that was in keeping with the tone of Eddy Malone's remarks to Jack on the telephone: So you steal another man's wife, she gets kidnapped, and your position is Too bad, so sad, you're on your own, baby'? Those weren't the exact words in print, but the implication was undeniable.

Jack folded the newspaper in half and tossed it onto the passenger seat beside him. The sun had begun its climb above the bay, and the many thousands of lights that had brightened the nighttime cityscape seemed to dissolve into a blue morning sky. With the early rush hour just under way, Jack knew that if he hurried, he could reach William Bailey at his house before he left for work. He zipped onto the I-95 on-ramp and took the first exit to historic Bayshore Drive. It was Jack's good fortune that the housekeeper answered the door and let him in. He found Bailey having coffee in the breakfast nook, the Tribune article spread across the round glass tabletop in front of him.

My, what a coincidence to see you, said Bailey, looking up from his newspaper. With a wave of the hand, he invited Jack to join him.

It's no coincidence, said Jack as he took a seat.

Confronting Salazar's attorney at his home was arguably impulsive, but the one-two punch of the late-night telephone interview with Malone and this morning's distressing front-page article had Jack feeling the need to take action. Bailey seemed like a logical place to start.

You want to tell me how Eddy Malone got his hands on the Jack and Mia audiotapes? said Jack.

Tapes? Bailey said as he spread strawberry marmalade atop his bagel and cream cheese. What audiotapes?

That's a pretty unconvincing denial, said Jack. Malone threatened to quote from some tawdry audiotapes of me and Mia unless I admitted to the affair. So I admitted to it.

Bailey chewed his bagel, saying nothing.

Jack said, You should at least thank me. I could have gone on record and accused your client of breaking and entering my house to record our conversations.

I can assure you that Ernesto Salazar had nothing to do with those tapes.

Cut the crap, said Jack. How else could Salazar have coldcocked the FBI with that surprise proof-of-life question? You know what I'm talking about. The joke - location, location, location. There's no way Ernesto would have known about that if he hadn't bugged my house.

Bailey laid his half-eaten bagel aside and neatly brushed away the crumbs. Without a hint of emotion in his voice, he said, Are you willing to agree that this conversation never happened?

Only if that's what it takes to get a straight answer from you.

Bailey nodded, then looked Jack in the eye and said, We never gave Malone the tapes.

Don't get cute with me, said Jack. What did you do, give him a transcript of the tapes?

Malone called Ernesto and asked for the tapes. It was out of the blue. I'm not sure how he found out about them, but we refused to give them to him. We refused to talk to him. We refused to acknowledge in any way that Ernesto's wife was sleeping with another man.