Chapter Four
New York City 10:00 a.m..
Saturday April 26th, 2007
Knock, knock, knock. A young black man knocked on a apartment door, as he looked at his watch. He frowned as there was no answer to his knocking on the door.
"Hey Amber, are you in there? It's Sheldon, open up." called the young man, Sheldon as he knocked on the door once more. When his knocks still went on answered he reached into his jacket and pulled out his key's. He found the one that went to the door, slipping it into the lock and unlocking the door. He went into the apartment; the placed looked like it always did, like a hurricane had blown thru.
"Amber, are you still in bed asleep, you know that you were suppose to meet me an hour and a half ago for breakfast." said Sheldon as he walked thru the apartment and into the bedroom. He found the bed made and it looked like it hadn't been sleep in. Sheldon turned around and reached for his cell-phone as he noticed a number of things. He noticed that some of Amber's cloths were missing and that her purse was gone, and then he noticed that a lock box that was always on her dresser was gone as well. He pulled out his cell phone and started dialing the cell phone.
New York City 10:15 a.m..
Sheldon was waiting outside Amber's apartment as two men walked up to him.
"Sheldon, what's going on?" asked the younger of the two, he was tall and had thick brown hair.
"Mac, Flack, this is Amber place. We were suppose to have breakfast this morning, but she never showed up, so I came over here to check on her to make sure that she was ok. Because she wasn't answering her cell or her home phone, so I get here and knock on the door a couple of times but there is no answer. So I have a key to the place so I let myself in. I looked around a bit, only she's not there and there are a few things gone. Most of her clothes are here, and other stuff like that, but a locket that I gave her is gone as is this lock box that she always kept on her dresser." said Sheldon as he led them into the apartment, and into the bedroom.
"Are you sure that she just didn't take off for the weekend or something?" asked Flack as he looked around the bedroom.
"Yeah, I'm sure. Like I said, we were supposed to have breakfast this morning. I was going to ask Amber to move in with me, we have been dating for about a year and a half." said Sheldon as they walked back out to the front room.
"Sheldon, when was the last time that you saw or talked to Amber?" asked Mac, as he looked around the room. He saw a lot of CD's and sheets of music, plus a couple of stuffed Teddy bears on the shelves.
"Uh, I saw her, at breakfast, and I talked to her the last time at seven fifty. We were going to go out but… but she called and told me that a guy from a radio station down in Miami was taking her out to dinner. I just thought about that really, she was excited about it, really excited. But people from other stations have came up here before and she has never reacted this way before. And she would have talked to me about them, because they usually call in advance, but when I talked to her on the phone that was the first time that she had said anything about it." said Sheldon as he looked around the apartment, looking for something. He headed to a large desk in one of the corners; he stopped and put on a pair of gloves that Mac handed him.
"Do you think that she might have been lying to you?" asked Mac as they looked thru the front room.
"I don't know. This is her planner, she writes down all the things that are important to her in here. Look that is her mother's birthday, and this today, and you can see that she has it written that were going to have breakfast. Now, last night… she has the name Jason written down, in red and gold. I've seen her do that before, a couple of people in her planner and phone book. They have their names written in colors or outlined in colors." said Sheldon as he handed the planner to Flack who looked thru it as Mac and him looked around at the place, Mac noticed a beer bottle sitting on the table in the front room.
"Sheldon, dose Amber drink often?" asked Mac as he held up the bottle.
"No. In fact she hardly drinks at all. And not that stuff any ways. That's a Untouchable Pale Ale, friend of mine in college use to drink that stuff, it's one of those microbrews. The only place to get it around here would be… Black River Trading Co. out in New Jersey. It's made back in California, Mac… why would Amber have beer here that she nor I would drink and that none of her friends drink either?" said Sheldon as Mac put the bottle in a bag to be taken to the lab.
"I don't know, but I think that we had better head in to the lab and see about finding out everything that we can about your girlfriend." said Mac as they looked over the place one more time then they left. They went back to the lab, it took them fifteen minutes to get to the lab, and started working on everything that they had taken from Amber's apartment; her planner, her laptop, the beer bottle and a small photo album that looked like it had been tossed onto the bed and then left. Mac, Sheldon and Flack gathered everybody into one of the labs.
"Ok, everybody. Here's the deal, Sheldon's girlfriend Amber Wilton has gone missing and were going to find her. Now, Danny, I want you and Lindsey to take the planner and laptop and get to work on them. Stella, I want you and Sheldon to take a look at that photo album and see if Sheldon knows any of them. I'll work on the beer bottle, Flack your pulling the phone records, right?" asked Mac as they all nodded and started moving to do what they were told to do.
"Yeah, cell and home phone. I'm also going to see if we can track it." said Flack as he left the lab.
New York City 3:55 p.m.
They gathered around the lab table once more.
"Ok, what do we have people?" asked Mac as he looked around the table.
"Ok, after Amber talked to Sheldon at seven fifty she, received another call at 8:15 p.m., it was from a pay phone out in front of her building. Now, I talked to one of her neighbors, he said that he saw her leave the building about 8:30 p.m. with a young man. And this is were it get interesting, the young man that she left with, her neighbor saw on T.V this morning as a missing person. Texas Ranger Jay Mason, but here is the clincher, the neighbor remembers Amber calling him Jason. He heard her yell at him, calling him Jason Lee Scott. What's more, for the past week, Mason has been calling Amber twice a day. We went back about six months; there are calls once a week, every month. There is also calls out to Vegas, LA, and Denver, plus calls down to Miami and D.C." said Flack as he flipped thru his notebook. Mac nodded as he finished his report and then turned to Danny and Lindsey.
"Ok, well we have gotten a little way into the laptop and the planner. Amber seems to have some kind of weird coding system. Ok, here, take for example. This is the phone number for someone named Rocky, he is red and blue. Ok, anything that has to do with him is in red and blue ink, be it written every other color or one color and the other outlining. Now at first we thought that this was a code that was used to show friends from people in the radio business, but then we noticed that there is only nine people that have this coding. So since we only had the first names and the phone numbers we checked them." said Danny then he turned to Lindsey and nodded at her, she turned to a broad and pulled it out front. There were ten photos on them.
"Ok, so what we have is this. Jason, red and gold is one Jay Lee Mason, Texas Ranger. Then we have a Tommy; green, white and red and he is listed in the computer as Jason Thomas Thorten, a Dojo owner in Miami. The next one is Adam, black and green, and is Dr. Alexander Yong Masters, ER doctor out in LA. Then Rocky, red and blue is one Anthony Stephen DiNozzo, who just happens to be a NCIS agent down in DC. Next is Billy, blue and no other color, is Dr. Will David James who is an M.E out in Vegas. After him is Justin, blue only again, is John David Dunne and he happens to be an ATF agent out in Denver. Then we have Trini, yellow only again, is listed as Lisa Thuy Tran and owns a Dojo with Mr. Thorten down in Miami. Then we have Kat, pink only again, is Kelly Jane Wilson who is a dance teacher over in London. And last we have Tanya; yellow only again, is Alisai Nakia Carson and is a Vet out in Vegas and lives with Mr. James." said Lindsey as Danny wrote down the names under the photos as she called them out.
"We run the phone numbers to get last names, and that's when we found out that the names didn't match up. At first we thought that they were nicknames, you know, Tommy for Thomas. But then we looked at the rest and they don't match up that way. So, we have to think, why would Amber have the names of friends down but the names not match up?" said Danny as he looked at Sheldon, then at Mac.
"I don't know these people. I've never heard her talk about, either of the group of names. Uh, you could ask her friend Tasha Pell, she works at the station with Amber." said Sheldon as he looked at the faces that had been put up on the broad.
"Ok, Stella, what do you and Sheldon have for us so far?" asked Mac as he looked over at Stella.
"Ok, well this album is like most of them there from after college. Amber doesn't have any photos from before that time; they were lost in a fire right before college. But we did find this one." said Stella as he held up a photo of three children.
"Do you know who they are?" asked Mac as he looked at the photo, taking it from Stella's hand.
"The one in the middle is Amber I think, I don't know who the other two are." said Sheldon as he looked at the photo, then back at Mac.
"Ok, now the DNA test has not came back yet. So, I think that Sheldon and I should go to the FBI building, that's were the search for Texas Ranger Jay Mason is being handled." said Mac, everybody just nodded at him, then they all got up and off they went.
