Chapter 3
Jackie Vance sat on the couch, her hands folded. For the children's sake, she tried not to look distressed, but as the days had gone on, it became nearly impossible. This was now day five. The agents were great—she couldn't ask for better, almost. (Well, if she were honest, she'd want Gibbs' team—but she accepted that they were more useful investigating.) And they did their best to stay out of her way. In the living room with her now was only agent Marie-Ann Toles, who sat almost out of eyesight, reading a romance novel.
"Mommy, Mommy." Her daughter tugged at her arm. "Can I go take a nap now, Mommy?"
Staring at her, Jackie felt the little girl's forehead. "You want to take a nap, Lily?" After I tried for seven years to get you to do so? "Are you feeling sick?"
"No, Mommy. I just want to say my prayers, and pray for Daddy."
Jackie blinked away tears. "All right, honey. I'll be along shortly to tuck you in."
"Can Marie-Ann do it, Mommy? I like how she does it."
"If she doesn't mind…" Jackie watched as the smiling agent allowed Lily to take her hand and lead her out. And when do I get a moment to say my prayers? she wondered. But she knew the answer. She hadn't stopped praying since the report of Leon's discovered car had come in from Gibbs.
"Mom? Mom, can I go out back and shoot hoops? I'm getting rusty."
Five days inside and Jared's athletic future hung by a sliver, she was sure. "No, Jared. Go read a book."
"Mom, pleeeeeaase? I won't leave the backyard. There are agents out there. I'll be okay." He looked fierce for his small size.
There are agents out there… As much as Jackie wanted to hug her children to herself and not let go of them, she knew that wasn't practical. "Let me see…" She stepped into the kitchen and had a word with Agent Don Kaplan. He readily agreed, and called the two agents working the backyard perimeter to let them know that he was sending Jared out.
Walking back into the living room, Jackie said, "Put your coat on. You're not just wearing your hoodie outside. And be sure to do whatever Don and the other agents say."
Jared whooped and dashed out, barely waiting for Kaplan to escort him out back and satisfy himself that there were no intruders.
Again Jackie felt uneasy, now. She was alone in the living room. Marie-Ann was still off with Lily, upstairs. There were no other agents in the house.
What'll I do if the phone rings? There's no one here to record the conversation.
They could call at anytime!
Fighting the urge to run to the back door and tell Don to get back in here, Jackie tried sitting as still as possible. Her breathing was almost at the level of gasps. Calm down. They won't call now. They won't call now. They've yet to call, period. They won't—
The phone rang.
Still Don was not back! He must be playing a quick game with Jared.
The ringing continued. With a scared look over her shoulder, Jackie slowly got up and went to the phone, trying to remember how the agents got the recording system to work. Leon, I'm sorry if I screw this up… "He..Hello?"
"Stupid of you to let your son leave the house," said a voice, disguised by technology somehow. "You're just asking to have someone grab him."
"Don't you touch my children," Jackie said ferociously. "If you even come near them, nothing on earth will save you. Nothing."
"Don't you think I'm already close?" the voice on the other end laughed. "I've taken your husband. I can take anyone I want to."
"Leon! Let him go! Let him—" But she was already speaking to a dial tone.
"Geez! Sorry I wasn't in here for that, Mrs. V!" said Don, coming up behind her, and looking embarrassed. "Did you get it recorded?"
Jackie still had a death grip on the phone receiver. "I—I think so."
"Great! I'll email it to HQ."
"He said—he said he could see Jared in the backyard."
Don turned away and spoke into his headphone.
Marie-Ann came up on her other side. "Can I get you a cup of tea, Mrs. Vance?"
Jackie nodded, and managed to sit down before the tears came. They're watching the house!
"On our way!" Tony hung up his phone, already rising from his chair. "A call was made to the Vance house," he announced to his team. "Gibbs will meet us in Abby's lab."
After the third playback of the tape, they were all silent for a moment. "Background, Abbs?" Gibbs asked after a moment.
"No apparent sounds, Gibbs, but I'm working on it." Abby punched at the computer keys to get the sound analyzer program running.
"They didn't find anything about the caller?" Tony asked, expecting he knew the answer already.
"Not yet. There were six agents on site. We could only spare two to immediately search the area. Four more from the FBI are on their way, but whoever it is will be long gone by the time they get there."
"Have all of the neighbors been thoroughly vetted?" asked Ziva.
Gibbs thought. "When the Director bought the house, they were. I don't know if anything's been done since."
"I'll check real estate transactions for the neighborhood," said Tim, jumping to a spare computer. Within a minute, he had an answer. "No sales, but two months ago the house next door to the one behind them was foreclosed on. Hasn't been sold yet."
"How did we miss that?" Gibbs growled. "Could be squatters there. Can we check to see what the sightline to the Vances' back yard is?"
"Sure. I'll check Google Maps…Here it is. This is a street view from the front of that house. There are two stories to it. If there's a window in the back, or on the side of the house on the second floor, then they could likely see the Vances' yard."
"Grab your gear!" Tony said to his team. They needed no more encouragement.
It was late afternoon and the sun was setting when an unmarked van with Tony, Ziva and Tim pulled up, just down the street from the suspected house. No lights were on. Tim checked the house with a thermal imaging camera, and detected no warm spots that might be humans.
"Be careful, anyway," Tony directed. They all drew their guns as they approached the house. Is this what Gibbs goes through, this worry about the team, every time he sends us into an unknown situation like this? Tony wondered. And all without antacids!
Ziva had the front door unlocked quickly. The electricity to the house was still on. A quick search of the first floor turned up nothing. Ziva, though, was the first to find a small bedroom on the second floor that provided an excellent view of the Vances' yard and the rear of the house.
"Candy wrapper," said Tony, picking it off the floor with gloved hands. "Careless of the bank. Prospective buyers might not like the trash."
"It is a Belgian chocolate," Ziva said, peering at the label. "Our suspect has good taste."
"I wish we had a time machine," Tim mused. "I wonder how long ago the guy left." He dusted for fingerprints as he talked. "I wish the portable fingerprint scanner wasn't broken. I was getting used to it…"
"I wonder if he will be back," said Ziva. "If we are careful, he will not suspect that we have been here. McGee, you could set up a camera in this room."
"I was thinking of posting a couple of agents here, but I like that idea better," said Tony. "Make the camera happen, McGee."
Tim nodded and turned to go to the van, but then stopped. He called over his shoulder, "You know, you're pretty reasonable when you have responsibility, Tony."
As Tim expected, Tony choked and sputtered, unable to come up with a reply. Leadership was mostly-uncharted territory for him.
"A candy wrapper?" Abby glared at them, shortly thereafter. "You bring me a candy wrapper and expect me to work miracles from that?"
"Well, uh…do the prints on it match the prints McGee found at the scene?"
"Honestly; sometimes I think I should just go along with you guys and process the crime scene on site," Abby grumbled.
"But you are afraid of violence, Abby," Ziva put in, not unkindly.
"As is any sensible person! Okay; there are at least four different people's prints in what McGee picked up. That makes sense, for the family of four that you say used to live there. Now if this crook was clever, he would wear gloves while watching the Vance house."
"Fortunately for us, crooks often think they won't get caught," said Tim.
"Right-o, Timmy! And—even if our mystery caller wore gloves when he called today, he probably wasn't wearing them at the time he bought the candy bar!"
But the fingerprint search could not come up with a reliable match. "Someone this ruthless, with no prints on file..they're either a babe in the woods as far as criminal; records or other needs to be fingerprinted, or…"
"Stop the scan, Abby," Ziva directed. "Let us have a close-up of the prints…See? That looks abnormal, yes?"
"The swirls are damaged," Abby agreed. "I always thought it was impossible to destroy one's fingerprints, but…"
"Not entirely. There is an increasing attempt by some people to mutilate their fingers. A doctor can transplant small sections of skin from another part of the body and graft it onto the fingertips, Or make deep cuts and resew the skin."
"The finger swirls won't just go back?"
"Not if the job is thorough."
"So we can't tell who this guy is."
"Get me some DNA," said Abby. "He can't change his DNA."
"He didn't leave any behind."
"Then…you've got to find something else. Or hope that he returns and McGee's hidden camera catches him."
Other agents were assigned to knock on neighbors' doors to see if they'd seen anything. Tony put Abby on measuring the sightlines from the data they'd given her on the house (including pictures Tim had taken from the bedroom window) to determine if one could see the Vances' driveway from there, to determine when the Vance's car might have left. It seemed unlikely. Tony knew he was moving up in the managerial ranks when he started to add up the number of agents involved in the search for Vance, and the man-hour cost to the agency. He shuddered.
"We're missing something," Tim said, staring at his computer screen back in the squad room. "I don't know what, but we're missing something, and it's driving me nuts!"
"Let's think this through," said Tony. "Someone overtakes Vance's car, kills his bodyguards, and takes off with Vance. No ransom demand is made. We start to wonder if there will be one. Then, five days after the abduction, comes a call to the Vance home from someone who can see the house. Why would they do that unless they wanted to keep the family in terror?"
"Let me call Ducky and ask him to come up here." Ziva pulled out here phone. "If we are trying psychology, we should make use of his training."
"Well, it's hard to say; there are so many possibilities." Ducky stroked his chin. "Nonetheless, I believe that a criminal who has committed a simple murder…God forbid, of our Director…would simply move on. He would not hang around and bother the family. I think that with that phone call, he is implying that is the cat and we are the mouse. He is causing us pain while knowing that he can still cause the captive Director pain."
"A classic sadist, would you say?"
"Someone disturbed, I would wager. In his mind he may be out for revenge, or retribution, but he is increasingly driven by the pleasure that inflicting pain gives him."
"God help the Director," Tim murmured.