I wasn’t actually planning on taking Monnie along, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. So we dropped her SUV off at her house and she rode with me to Dale City. I’d already called ahead and spoken to the girl’s mother. She sounded nervous, but she said she was glad the FBI was finally coming to talk to Lili. She added that “nobody can ignore Lili for long. You’ll see what I mean.”
A young girl in black coveralls answered the front door. I assumed she was Lili, but that turned out to be wrong. Annie was the twelve-year-old sister. She certainly looked fourteen. She beckoned, and we stepped into the house.
“Lili is in her laboratory,” said Annie. “Where else?”
Then Mrs. Olsen appeared from the kitchen and we introduced ourselves. She had on a plain white blouse and a green corduroy jumper. She was holding a greasy spatula, and I couldn’t help thinking how casual the domestic scene was. Especially if what Lili thought she had come upon was real. Had a fourteen-year-old found a possible trail that would lead us to the kidnappers? I’d heard of cases solved in stranger ways. But still . . .
“We call her Dr. Hawking. Like Stephen Hawking? Her IQ is up there,” said her mom, poking the cooking utensil upward for emphasis. “Smart as she is, Lili lives on Sprite and Pixie Stix. There’s nothing I can do to influence her dietary habits.”
“Is it all right if we talk to Lili now?” I asked.
Mrs. Olsen nodded. “So I guess you’re taking this seriously. That’s so wise with Lili. She’s not making any of this up, believe me.”
“Well, we just want to talk to her. To be on the safe side. We’re not sure that this is anything, really.” Which was true enough.
“Oh, it’s something,” said Mrs. Olsen. “Lili never makes a mistake. She hasn’t so far, anyway.”
She pointed the spatula up the stairs. “Second door on the right. She left it unlocked for a change, because she’s expecting you. She instructed us to stay out of it.”
Monnie and I headed upstairs. “They have no idea what this could be, do they?” she whispered. “I almost hope it’s nothing. A false lead.”
I knocked once on a wooden door that sounded hollow.
“It’s open,” came a high-pitched female voice. “Come.”
I opened the door and looked in on a pine bedroom suite. Single bed, rumpled cow-pattern sheets, posters from MIT, Yale, and Stanford on the walls.
Seated behind a blue halogen lamp at a laptop was a teenage girl—dark hair, eyeglasses, braces on her teeth. “I’m all set up for you,” she said. “I’m Lili, of course, of course. I’ve been working on a decryption angle. It comes down to finding flaws in the algorithms.”
Monnie and I both shook Lili’s hand, which was very small and seemed as fragile as an eggshell.
Monnie began. “Lili, you said in your e-mail to us that you had information that could help with the disappearances in Atlanta and Pennsylvania.”
“Right. But you found Mrs. Meek already.”
“You hacked onto a very secure site. That’s right, isn’t it?” Monnie asked.
“I sent out some stealth UDP scans. Then IP spoofing. Their root server bit on the false packets. I planted a source code for the sniffer. Finally hacked in using DNS poisoning. It’s a little more complicated, but that’s the basic idea.”
“I get it,” Monnie said. Suddenly I was very glad she was there with me at the Olsen house.
“I think they know I was on with them. Actually, I’m sure of it,” said Lili.
“How do you know that?” I asked her.
“They said so.”
“You didn’t get into too many specifics with Agent Tiezzi. You said you thought someone might be ‘for sale’ at the site?”
“Yeah, but I blew it, didn’t I. Agent Tiezzi didn’t believe me. I admitted I was fourteen, and a girl. How dumb of me, right?”
“I won’t hold it against you,” Monnie said, and smiled kindly.
Lili finally cracked a smile too. “I’m in big trouble, aren’t I? Actually, I know I am. They might already know who I am.”
I shook my head. “No, Lili,” I said to her. “They don’t know who you are, or where you are. I’m sure they don’t.”
If they did, you’d already be dead.
Chapter 66
IT WAS SO EERIE AND STRANGE, being in the young wunderkind’s room—with her life, and her family members’ lives, possibly in great danger. Lili had been a little coy in her message to the Bureau, so I understood how the tip might have fallen through the cracks. Also, she was fourteen years old. But now that we’d met and spoken to Lili face-to-face, I was sure that she had something real that could help us.
She’d heard them talking.
Someone had been purchased while she listened.
She was afraid for herself, and for her family.
“Do you want to go on-line with them?” Lili asked in an excited voice. “We could! See if they’re together now. I’ve been working on some cool anonymizing software. I think it will work. Not sure, though. Well, yeah, it’ll work.”
She smiled broadly, showing those beautiful braces.
I could see in her eyes that she wanted to prove something to us.
“Is this a good idea?” Monnie leaned in and asked me.
I pulled her aside and lowered my voice. “We have to move her and the family anyway. They can’t stay here now, Monnie.”
I looked over at Lili. “Okay. Why don’t you try to get on-line with them again. Let’s see what they’re up to. We’ll be right here with you.”
Lili talked constantly as she went through the various steps to get through the site’s passwords and encrypted protection. I didn’t understand any of what the fourteen-year-old had to say, but Monnie got most of it. She was enthusiastic and supportive but mostly impressed.
Suddenly, Lili looked up in alarm. “Something’s all wrong here.” She went back to her computer.
“Oh, shit! God damn them!” she swore. “Those creeps. I can’t believe this.”
“What’s happened?” Monnie asked. “They changed the keys, didn’t they?”
“Worse,” Lili said, and kept tapping out commands rapidly. “Much, much worse. Awhh, horse spit. I can’t believe it.”
She finally turned away from the glowing screen of her laptop.
“First, I couldn’t even find the site. They set up this very cool, very dynamic network—it was in Detroit, Boston, Miami, bouncing all over the place. Then, when I did find it, I couldn’t get on. Nobody can get into the site now except them.”
“Why is that?” Monnie asked. “What happened between the last time you got in and now?”
“They installed an eye scan. It’s almost impossible to fool. The whole thing is run by this guy who calls himself Wolf. Wolf’s a very scary dude. He’s Russian. Like a wolf from Siberia. I think he’s even smarter than I am. And that’s fucking smart.”
Chapter 67
THE NEXT DAY I WORKED in the SIOC conference rooms on the fifth floor of the Hoover. So did Monnie Donnelley, who still felt as if she were in limbo. We were keeping what we had learned from Lili Olsen quiet so that we could check out a few things. The main room was humming around us. The abductions were a major media story now. The Bureau had taken an incredible amount of heat in the past few years; they needed a win. No, I thought, we need a win.
A lot of important Bureau people were at the group meeting late that night: they included the heads of the Behavioral Analysis Unit-east and BAU-west, the unit chief of the Child Abduction Serial Murder Investigative Resource Center (CASMIRC), and the head of Innocent Images in Baltimore, an FBI unit dedicated to finding and eliminating sexual predators on the Internet. Stacy Pollack led the discussion again; she was clearly in charge of the case.
A male student from Holy Cross College in Massachusetts was missing, and a close friend of his had been found murdered on campus. Francis Deegan’s physical resemblance to Benjamin Coffey, the student kidnapped in Newport, led many of us to believe that he
had been selected as a replacement for Coffey, who was feared dead.
“I want to get approval for a reward, maybe half a million,” said Jack Arnold, who ran BAU-east. No one commented on the proposal. Several agents went on making notes or using their laptops. Actually, it was dispiriting.
“I think I have something,” I finally said from the back of the room.
Stacy Pollack looked my way. A few heads popped up, reacting to the break in the group’s silence more than anything. I rose at my seat.
The FNG had the floor. I introduced Monnie, just to be cute. Then I told them about the Wolf’s Den and our meeting with fourteen-year-old Lili Olsen. I also mentioned the Wolf, who, according to Monnie’s findings, might have been a Russian gangster by the name of Pasha Sorokin. His pedigree was hard to trace, especially before he moved out of the USSR. “If we can get inside the Den somehow, I think we’ll find out something about the missing women. In the meantime, I think we need to put more heat on some of the sites already identified by Innocent Images. It seems logical that the pervs using the Wolf’s Den might visit porn sites too. We need help. If the Wolf turns out to be Pasha Sorokin, we’ll need a lot of help.”
Stacy Pollack was interested. She led a discussion in which both Monnie and I were given the third degree. It was clear that we threatened some of the other agents in the room. Then Pollack made a decision.
“You can have resources,” she said. “We’ll watch the porn sites twenty-four/seven. Thing is, we have nothing better at this point. I want our Russian group out of New York on this too. I can’t quite believe Pasha Sorokin would be personally involved in this, but if he is, it’s huge. We’ve been interested in Sorokin for six years! We’re very interested in the Wolf.”
Chapter 68
DURING THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, more than thirty agents were assigned to surveillance of fourteen different porn sites and chat rooms. It had to be one of the most lurid “stakeouts” ever. We didn’t know exactly who we were looking for—other than anyone who happened to mention a site called the Wolf’s Den, or possibly the Wolf. In the meantime, Monnie and I were gathering all the information we could about the Red Mafiya and especially about Pasha Sorokin.
Later that afternoon, I had to leave. The timing couldn’t have been much worse, but there wouldn’t have been any good time for this. I’d been asked to attend a preliminary meeting with Christine Johnson’s lawyers at the Blake Building in the Dupont Circle area. Christine was coming after Little Alex.
I arrived at a little before five and had to fight the tide of office workers streaming from the unusual twelve-story structure, which actually rounded the corner where Connecticut Avenue met L. I checked the downstairs registry and saw that the tenants in the building included Mazda, Barron’s, the National Safety Council, and several law offices, including Mark, Haranzo, and Denyeau, which represented Christine.
I trudged to the elevator bank and pushed a button. Christine wanted custody of Alex Jr. Her attorney had arranged for this meeting in hopes of resolving things without going to court or resorting to alternative dispute resolution. I had talked to my attorney in the morning and decided not to have him present, since this was an “informal” meeting. I tried to have only one thought as I rode the elevator to the seventh floor: Do what is best for Little Alex. No matter what, or how it might make me feel.
I got off at seven and was met by Gilda Haranzo, who was slim and attractive, dressed in a charcoal suit with a white silk blouse knotted at the throat. My lawyer had competed against Ms. Haranzo and told me she was good, and also “on a mission.” She was divorced from her physician husband and had custody of their two children. Her fees were high, but she and Christine had gone to Villanova together and were friends from back then.
“Christine is already in the conference room, Alex,” she said after introducing herself. Then she added, “I’m sorry it’s come to this. This case is difficult. There are no bad people involved. Will you please follow me?”
“I’m sorry it’s come to this too,” I said. I wasn’t so sure that there weren’t any bad guys, though. We’d see soon enough.
Ms. Haranzo led me to a midsize room with gray carpeting and light blue fabric walls. There was a glass table with six tony black leather chairs in the center of the room. The only things on the table were a pitcher of ice water, some glasses, and a laptop computer.
A row of tall windows looked out on Dupont Circle. Christine was standing near the windows, and she didn’t speak as I entered. Then she walked over to the table and sat in one of the leather chairs.
“Hello, Alex,” she finally said.
Chapter 69
GILDA HARANZO SLID into her seat behind her laptop, and I chose a spot across from Christine at the glass conference table. All of a sudden, the loss of Little Alex seemed very real to me. The thought took my breath away. Whether it was a good decision or not, fair or unfair, Christine had walked away from us, moved thousands of miles away, and hadn’t been to see him once. She’d knowingly relinquished her parental rights. Now she’d changed her mind. And what if she changed her mind again?
Christine said, “Thank you for coming here, Alex. I’m sorry about the circumstances. You must believe that I’m sorry.”
I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t that I was mad at her, but—well, maybe I was angry. I’d had Little Alex almost all his life, and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him now. My stomach was dropping like an elevator in free fall. The experience was like seeing your child run into the street, about to have a serious accident, and not being able to stop it from happening, not being able to do a thing. I sat there very quietly and I held in a primal scream that would have shattered all the glass in the office.
Then the meeting began. The informal get-together. With no bad people in the room.
“Dr. Cross, thank you for taking the time to come here,” Gilda Haranzo said, and threw a cordial smile my way.
“Why wouldn’t I come?” I asked.
She nodded and smiled again. “We all want this problem to be settled amicably. You’ve been an excellent caregiver, and no one disputes that.”
“I’m his father, Ms. Haranzo,” I corrected.
“Of course. But Christine is able to take care of the boy now, and she is the mother. She’s also a primary-school principal in Seattle.”
I could feel my face and neck flushing. “She left Alex a year ago.”
Christine spoke up. “That isn’t fair, Alex. I told you that you could take him for now. Our arrangement was always meant to be temporary.”
Ms. Haranzo asked, “Dr. Cross, isn’t it true that your eighty-two-year-old grandmother takes care of the baby most of the time?”
“We all do,” I said. “And besides, Nana wasn’t too old last year when Christine left to go to Seattle. She’s extremely capable, and I don’t think you’d ever want Nana on the witness stand.”
The lawyer continued, “Your work takes you away from home frequently, doesn’t it?”
I nodded. “Occasionally it does. But Alex is always well cared for. He’s a happy, healthy, bright child, smiles all the time. And he’s loved. He’s the center of our household.”
Ms. Haranzo waited for me to finish, then she started in again. I felt as if I were on trial here. “Your work, Dr. Cross. It’s dangerous. Your family has been put in grave danger before. Also, you’ve had intimate relationships with women since Ms. Johnson left. Isn’t that so?”
I sighed. Then I slowly rose from the leather chair. “I’m sorry, but this meeting is over. Excuse me. I have to get out of here.” At the door, I turned back to Christine. “This is wrong.”
Chapter 70
I HAD TO GET OUT of there and put my mind somewhere else for a while. I returned to the Hoover Building, and no one seemed to have missed me. I couldn’t help thinking that some of these agents squirreled away in the home office had no idea how crimes were solved in the real world. They almost seemed to believe that you fed data into compu
ters and eventually they spit out a criminal. It happens on the street! Get out of this windowless “crisis” room with all the bad air. Work the sidewalks! I wanted to shout.
But I didn’t say a word. I sat at a computer and read the latest on the Russian mob. I didn’t see any promising connections. Plus, I couldn’t really concentrate after my meeting with Christine’s lawyers. Just past seven, I packed up my things and left the Hoover Building.
Nobody seemed to notice me leave. And then I wondered—Is that such a bad thing?
When I got home, Nana was waiting at the front door. I was just walking up the steps when she opened the door and came outside. “You watch Little Alex, Damon. We’ll be back in a while,” she called through the screen door.
Nana limped down the front stairs and I followed her. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“We’re going for a drive,” she said. “You and I have some things to talk about.”
Oh, shit.
I got back in the old Porsche and started it up. Nana flopped down in the passenger seat.
“Drive,” she said.
“Yes, Miss Daisy.”
“Don’t give me any of your lip, either, or your sorry attempts at wit.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s a good example of your lip.”
“I know it is, ma’am.”
I decided to head out west, toward the Shenandoah Mountains, a pretty ride and one of Nana’s favorites. For the first part of the drive, we were both fairly quiet, unusual for the two of us.
“What happened at the lawyer’s?” Nana finally asked as I turned onto Route 66.
I gave her the long version, probably because I needed to vent. She listened very quietly, then she did something unusual for her. Nana actually cursed. “The hell with Christine Johnson. She’s wrong about this!”
“I can’t completely blame Christine,” I said. As much as I didn’t want to, I could see her side of things.