Chapter 27
“That’s the whole message?” I asked. We were on a really cool government jet, and we had just listened to the ransom request for Abby Rocksbury-Baltin.
The kidnapper used a machine-masked voice, but the girl’s voice was real and unadulterated when she had said I’m as right as the rain in Spain when her mother had asked for proof of life.
“Odd phrase to use,” Chen noted.
“My Fair Lady,” I said. “The rain in Spain lies mainly in the plain.”
Carmine was giving me an amused look. “My grandma liked musicals,” I said defensively.
“Chen?” Steele asked, ignoring our side chatter.
“Fourteen-year-old Abigail Rocksbury-Baltin went to bed at approximately ten PM last night but failed to come down for breakfast. Her mother went to check on her and found the room empty, as was her bathroom. She, her husband, and the wife’s assistant searched the house.
The alarm pad showed it was deactivated at three-sixteen AM by code.
External cameras showed the daughter heading down the walkway with two unknown men in hoodies.
The ransom call came three hours later.”
“Who called the director?” Kessler asked.
“Who didn’t?” Steele responded with a snort. “Governor, both California senators, and the heads of two major streaming services.”
“Can’t Meghan and Trevor solve the case and kill the bad guys themselves? Action heroes and all that?” Kessler asked.
“They are wonderful actors,” Rao said, dead serious. “Very gifted. They aren’t really deadly assassins, superheroes, or spymaster ex-military types.”
It was the longest speech I had heard come out of Rao, and it was very revealing.
“Someone’s already starstruck,” Carmine noted.
Rao shot her a hard look, then turned away.
“This is an extremely high-visibility crime,” Steele said. “The whole world will be watching, and we are under a lot of expectations.” He looked at me as he said it.
“Um, I’ve never done this before. I don’t have any investigation training,” I said.
“Listen, you are always extremely useful in every situation I’ve ever seen you in,” Agent Carmine said, holding my gaze with her own. “Just do what you do and forget about the drama. There’s a fourteen-year-old girl who needs you to be you.”
Best thing anyone could have said. “Right. Let’s find her.”
We landed at LAX and taxied to a private jet hangar, where we were met with half a dozen black SUVs.
We loaded those up with gear and HRT guys as well as the six of us.
I had been surprised that Red would accompany us, but Steve would back her up in Washington and her on-site skills might be too important to leave behind.
“My portable equipment is actually very powerful,” she said to me when I asked. “Like several hundred thousand dollars of powerful with connections that that I’d have to kill you if I told you about.”
“Sweet talker,” I said with a grin.
The family lived on exactly the kind of estate you would imagine, a multi-acre compound with pool, tennis courts, basketball court, multi-car garage, and a huge outdoor living area and patio kitchen that faced a mountain view. It was a good ways outside of LA and it was completely walled in.
We pulled in front and I got out, immediately heading for the outside of the building. Steele and Chen went to meet the local agents, the actors, and various law enforcement types but Carmine came with me, along with four HRT guys.
“Where are you headed?” she asked.
“Abby’s bedroom is on the second floor on this end of the house. I want to find anything I can.” The initial report had a floor plan and aerial photos of the compound.
“Okay; they stood here and looked up at her windows,” I said.
“Lots of foot scuffling, so they were impatient. Chewing tobacco spat all over the place. Then they crossed the gravel path here and went right up to the wall. Two sizes of basketball shoes. Smaller pair climbs first, going up the trellis. See the ripped vines. The bigger went next, but he pulled the trellis off the siding.”
“How are you seeing that?”
“There’s a little gap there between the anchor and the siding. And I can see loose movement on that side of the frame. Oh, is that blood? Yeah, he stuck himself on a nail maybe. It dripped down behind the trellis slats, but I can see it from underneath.”
“What’s going on?” Kessler asked, coming up on us.
“Creepy bastards watched a little girl through her window, then climbed up this trellis and broke in,” Rose told him. “One cut themselves on a nail or thorn.”
“Awesome; let me go get some CSI techs. We’ll need a ladder to get that blood,” he said.
“Anything else?” Rose asked me.
I studied the window, but it was too high above me for much detail. “Window was either jimmied or never locked in the first place. Also not alarmed. Let’s go in.”
We circled around the house to be thorough, then entered through the front door.
Techs were dusting everything for prints, and I saw Kessler talking to what might have been the lead tech, waving his hands toward the outside.
The house was magnificent, big and open concept with a large group of people near the kitchen that included Steele, Chen, Rao, the famous parents, and a bunch of anxious law enforcement types.
We headed for the stairs. I turned and glanced back at the door and froze.
“What?” Rose asked.
“Splotches on the wall under the alarm keypad. Black and green. Hmm,” I noted before heading upstairs. Abby’s room was easy to find despite the size of the place. Actually, rooms would be more correct to say: bathroom, bedroom, and king-sized closet. I took it all in at a glance.
“What are you doing up here?” a female voice said. We turned and found Meghan Rocksbury standing in the hallway, staring at us with a frown.
“We’re investigating your daughter’s kidnapping,” Rose answered.
“With a child?” the famous actress said in a sharp tone, pointing a finger at me.
I looked at Rose and lifted both brows. She nodded and turned to the worried mother while I kept looking. “Ma’am, we’re doing our job,” she said.
“With an intern? The director told me he was sending his best help. You better not destroy evidence before his people see it or by God, you’ll be sorry.”
“Ma’am, we’re part of that special task force,” Rose said. I kept looking.
“She’s smart,” I said, studying the books on the shelves and the plaques on the walls. Lots of science contest awards, writing awards, school certificates.
“She’s smarter than her father or me,” Meghan said.
“And you’re both accounted as two of the savviest talents around today,” I said. “You have her in special classes? Some kind of tutoring program?”
“She skipped a grade and is in the gifted program in her high school. This is ridiculous; I’m getting the senior agent in charge.”
“Awesome. We’ll be right here when you get back,” I said, moving over to Abby’s desk, where she had taken research notes on a pad of paper. “Old-school… nice.”
“You getting anywhere or just poking at the worried mother?” Rose asked.
“Getting lotta where,” I said, then grimaced at my own English.
Abby had printed articles out from online news sources, all concerning gangs in LA.
Her notes were organized and neat, headed with Government and Civics Summer Project.
One of the articles was on the floor where it had been knocked from the desk.
“She’s getting a head start on her fall classes,” I said.
“She wants to graduate early,” a male voice said.
I turned to find one of the most famous celebrities on Earth standing in the doorway with his equally famous wife and Agents Steele and Chen, and a captain in the California Highway Patrol.
Trevor Baltin was studying me with a curious expression, his handsome brow furrowed.
He was known for a fast sarcastic wit that was at odds with his extreme good looks.
“Cassie?” Brian Steele asked.
“Yes, Agent Steele?”
“What have you got for us?”
“Two males surveilled Abby’s windows for at minimum two hours from under the palm tree across the walking path.
Long enough for one to spit chewing tobacco at least twelve times.
Then they went up the ivy trellis, with the smaller of the two climbing easily and the larger breaking the trellis supports and puncturing his hand on wood, nails, or a thorn, leaving a hidden blood deposit.
They came in through an unlocked window.
Actually, the windows are all unlocked and unalarmed.
They surprised Abby and likely threatened her with violence to her and/or her parents.
They walked her downstairs, where she entered the security code, and they left the property.
“Abby is highly intelligent and quick-thinking. At some point during the abduction, she managed to pull or knock part of her summer work to the floor. I believe this was intentional, as she is hyper organized. Her summer project is a paper on gangs in LA, and the specific article was on the Street Demons, a subsect of the Mexican Mafia. She also managed to grab a paint strip on her desk”—I pointed at smeared black and green paint on the white desktop—“and she used it to leave a smear of green and black color under the keypad downstairs. It would have been too dark for her captors to notice. Those happen to be the colors of choice for the Street Demons. She’s telling us that her attackers are gang members.
Question: Does Abby speak Spanish?” I directed at Trevor, whose eyes had gotten larger.
“She does,” he said with a nod.
“She likely heard her abductors speaking, which would give her lots of info. Oh, and her choice of wording when asked to speak on the phone was intentional. She used Spain to emphasize the Hispanic connection and perhaps her general location. Isn’t East LA heavily populated with those gangs?
We must have a gang expert in the local office, right? ”
Steele smiled and turned to an agent I didn’t recognize. “Ed?”
Ed was staring at me, blinking, but now he nodded and pulled out his phone to make a call.
“Cassie already told Kessler about the blood, so the techs are pulling samples,” Red said from the rear of the group. “We’ll run it for a match immediately with the rapid identification protocol.”
“What’s your working theory, Cassie?” Chen asked.
“I don’t know a lot about gangs, except what I picked up from military…” I started, but Agent Steele waved a hand.
“No background, Cassie. Still restricted,” he said, earning looks from the actors, the cops, and the FBI agent Ed.
“Right. Well, I think we got a couple of low-ranking members who are trying to make a big score for the gang.”
“Our daughter is held by gang members?” Meghan asked Steele.
“It’s just a theory,” Agent Steele said.
“And she’s way, way smarter than her captors,” I said. “She’s left clues all over the place.”
“That no one picked up on,” Trevor said. “Except you.”
“If this is right, we can likely bargain with the gang leadership,” Chen said.
“We have our own task force with LAPD, the bureau, and CHiPs,” Ed said, putting his phone in his pocket. “I have them reaching out to their CI networks and directly to the Street Demon captains. We should know something in a half hour or so.”
“Sooner than that,” Red said, staring at her tablet. “DNA hit on one Mateo Lopez, priors for assault, drug dealing, harassment, and a known connection to the Street Demons.”
Meghan sucked in a sharp breath.
“Ma’am, your daughter is not just smart but quick on her feet,” I said. “She’ll listen and let them think she doesn’t understand. She’s like one of the characters you’ve played, but real life.”
“Actually, you’re a bit like one of the character’s Meghan played once. Remember, dear, the savant?” Trevor asked his wife but watching me.
She started to nod, but Agent Steele spoke up.
“Okay, thank you, Cassie. Why don’t you and Agent Carmine head outside and check out the main gate of the property,” he suggested.
Right. Dismissed before the questions got real.
“Yes sir,” I said, and threaded my way through the people and out of the bedroom. Red gave me a fist bump as Agent Carmine and I headed to the stairs.