Chapter 18 Maggie #2
She pulled over a chair and sat down beside him.
All she saw on the screen was a photograph.
If this was Ingrid’s message, it only raised more questions.
The photo was of a bespectacled man in a gray suit standing on a street corner, holding a briefcase.
He appeared to be in his fifties, short and stocky, with a comb-over that could not disguise the fact he was well on his way to going bald.
The camera had captured a passing car as a blur of motion off to the side, and to the man’s left was a stopped bus.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“I don’t know. But this photo means something. It has to mean something.”
“Why?”
He took a deep breath and sank back in his chair. “I kept thinking she must have left some clue about where she was going, what she was planning. So I came downstairs and looked through her email accounts.”
“You know her passwords?”
“I’m not entirely clueless.”
“Well, what did you find?”
“Not much of interest. A lot of emails about conference logistics, travel arrangements, reservations for the speakers. I thought there had to be something more, so I went into the trash folder to see which emails she’s deleted.
I was surprised to find it completely empty.
Zero items.” He looked at her. “How often do you clear out your trash folder?”
“When I think about it.”
“Exactly. Most of us empty our trash bins only when we’re tidying up, or we think it’s getting full.
But to find it completely empty? That made me think there was something in there that she wanted to permanently delete, and that’s why she cleared out the whole folder.
So I started digging, to find out what she’d deleted.
I did a data carve and pulled out my old FTK software to scan the hard drive. ”
“And?”
“I found this deleted photo. It was sent in an email early Tuesday morning at 3:26 a.m. That’s fourteen hours before she boarded that plane in Belfast. There were only two words accompanying the photo: Call me.
Twenty minutes later, she deleted this email and then emptied the trash folder.
Obviously, she didn’t want me, or anyone else, to see it.
I wouldn’t have known it even existed, except for that strangely empty trash folder. ”
“Who sent this?”
“I don’t know. The sender’s address is just a ten-digit string of numbers. And it was sent to one of Ingrid’s old personal accounts, one I don’t think she’s used in years.”
“What does it mean, this photo?”
“I have no idea. I’ve been staring at this man’s face for an hour, wondering if I know him. But I don’t recognize him.”
Maggie didn’t either. With his briefcase and gray suit and generous belly, he looked like a banker or a bureaucrat, someone who spent his day at a desk.
If Ingrid had left her husband for a lover, this was not that man.
Maggie could see the attraction of someone like Rodrigo Estrada, but not this person.
“Have you run him through facial recognition?” she asked.
“I turned up no matches. He’s not in our database. Which, in itself, is curious.”
“Widen the search. Check Interpol.”
“That was my plan.”
She studied the image, trying to understand its significance, focusing on each element in turn.
A man in a suit, face turned toward the camera, looking distracted.
A bus stopped beside him. A blurred car caught in freeze-frame as it moved past in the other direction.
A nearby tree, in full leaf. In the background was a four-story brick building with large windows.
Lloyd zoomed in on the man’s face. Thick jowls, wire-rim glasses.
“There’s nothing particularly distinctive about him,” said Maggie. “But that face must be in some database.”
“Let’s see if we can identify his location.” Lloyd zoomed in on the bus. It was painted white on top and blue at the bottom. The shot had captured the rear of the bus, as well as a portion of its left side. A yellow license plate was in view: BG-SR-52. Glowing in the rear window was the number 21.
“No tailpipes,” said Maggie. “It’s an electric vehicle. A modern fleet.”
Lloyd next zoomed in on the side of the bus, where they could just make out a logo with the initials GVB.
“I think this is an Amsterdam bus,” he said.
He opened up a new window and pulled up images of Amsterdam buses.
A similar bus appeared on-screen, with the same blue-and-white design, the same GVB logo. “Confirmed. This is Amsterdam.”
“Where does Route 21 take this bus?”
Lloyd navigated to the Amsterdam bus route map. “Number 21 goes from Amsterdam Centraal to Geuzenveld. It has twenty-six stops, starting from De Savornin Lohmanstraat to Centraal Station. It must be a busy route. It goes every ten minutes.”
“Twenty-six stops,” she said. “Which stop is this one?”
He expanded the photo of the man to full screen.
“This looks like a two-way street. Large tree here, just at the edge of the frame. Could be part of a green space. Let’s see which parks are on Route 21.
” He toggled to Google Earth and typed in a search for parks.
Dozens of green dots appeared on the map.
“That’s a start,” he said. “Now we just follow bus route 21. See if we can match this image.”
Lloyd’s fingers were flying, tapping keys, clicking through image after image.
Only hours ago, he’d been paralyzed by despair and booze.
Now he was wide awake with all cylinders firing.
At last, he had a task he needed to complete, a puzzle to solve.
Lloyd Slocum might be long retired, but he had not lost all the skills that had served him as an analyst.
He halted on a street view. Put it side by side on-screen with the photo of the man in the gray suit.
“Compare this tree,” he said.
The image on Google Earth showed a tree with bare branches, clearly shot in wintertime. In the photo with the man, the tree was in full leaf, and the grass beneath it was green. But the shape, the branch pattern, left no doubt. It was the same tree.
“And that’s the same building,” said Maggie. “It’s on Antony Moddermanstraat.”
Lloyd heaved out a sigh and sank back in the chair, looking exhausted by his frantic labor at the keyboard. “But what the hell does it mean?”
“It’s a start, at least,” she said. “Maybe Interpol has him in their facial recognition database. Do you still have contacts there?”
“They’d be close to retirement now.”
“Reach out, see if they know who this fellow is. Declan can make inquiries, as well.”
“I don’t know, Maggie.”
“Don’t know what?”
“If we start asking questions, we could open up a can of worms. There’s a reason Ingrid didn’t share this with us, and I might screw things up and get her hurt. Or . . .” He paused. “The truth is, I’m almost afraid to dig any deeper. I may not like what I learn.”
“After all these years of marriage, you’re really afraid of what you’ll find out about her?”
He looked at Maggie, his glasses reflecting the glow of the computer screen. “I’m starting to doubt that I do know her,” he said softly. “But I have to believe—I want to believe . . .” He pulled off his glasses. Head drooping, he rubbed his eyes. “Right now, I’d be happy just to know she’s alive.”
Maggie touched his arm. Said gently: “She’s alive.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“You just have to trust me on this.”
He gave a weary laugh. “I’m finding my faith is in short supply these days.”
“Well, what’s not in short supply is your friends. We’re going to get to the bottom of this. We’ll start by finding out who this man is.” She looked at the screen. “And what he has to do with Ingrid.”