Chapter 15:
Vivian shot Martin an expectant gaze after he put down the phone. She didn't even have to ask the word "And?", she could see the answer in his face.
"Nothing."
He said simply and she definitely didn't like that answer.
"Absolutely nothing?"
"Absolutely. The last known address, Brooks left at that clinic, doesn't exist. Due to the testimonies of his two sisters and his mother, he didn't contact his family either. Neither jurisdiction nor FBI knows anything about his current residence. The only thing we know for sure is, that he didn't leave the country – at last not in a legal way."
"I haven't been any more lucky. Former friends were hard to find and the couple of them I've found haven't been very cooperative. As a final result they all told me they don't know where he is."
Martin resumed the results.
"So: he doesn't have a current residence, no address, no phone and no bank account – at least none of which we know. His family doesn't have any contact to him, and the friends he has are covering him. We have no idea where he is, which resources he has or what he is going to do next and we've almost no chances to find out anything more."
Vivian took a moment to think about it before she answered.
"That's pretty much it."
After Sam and Jack had left the prison – standing at the parking area now – she kept him from getting into the car. She still was furious about his actions, about using the interrogation's result – without filling her in or even giving her a sign of what he would do – to force Erika to testify. But she tried to ignore her anger for the moment. There was enough time to complain about this later. For it had worked. There were other things that had top priority, right now.
"Do you believe her?"
"I'm not sure. This whole emotional outbreak could've been faked, to lead us to wrong conclusions, to get rid of us. But she was right when she told us, she had difficulties to control herself. She reacts much too emotional, too impulsive, without thinking about the consequences. You can see it in her behavior towards Brooks... I believe she is telling the truth."
Sam nodded approvingly, she didn't feel any different. She considered Erika's testimony to be true, too. Just that it didn't help them in any way.
"So, what are we going to do next?"
"We've to concentrate on Brooks. Everything leads to him. If we'll find the person he hired to take the picture of Andrea, then we'll find her and Danny too." They weren't even back from Illinois one and a half hours and back in the department for 30 minutes and all they had heard were bad, discouraging news. Martin had filled in Jack and Sam about the investigation considering Brooks habitation. All their investigation hadn't let to any conclusion up to that point, and Jack didn't like that fact after all.
They were sitting at the conference table after Martin had finished his lecture about the - not existent - results considering Leeland Brooks.
"We're not getting any further."
Jack stated. It sounded emotionless, but they could see in his face, that "emotionless" was the last thing he was. "Furious" was the word that got closest to it, because he was right: they weren´t getting even a single step closer to a result. But that wasn't all he was feeling and they could see this in his face, too. He seemed to quarrel with himself, to weigh chances against each other. He was thinking about something intensively, something only he knew about and something – that was the way Sam was interpreting his behavior - he hadn't told them anything about by now and actually didn't want to talk about. He was holding back information once again.
"So, what do you propose?"
Sam tried to force him to answer, to tell them what he knew. But she didn't want to push too hard. She knew, any hint to the fact, that he had to tell them about it and that he was endangering both – Danny's and Andrea's safety – if he didn't, was unnecessary. He knew that himself, that was why he was thinking so hard.
"I don't know."
He sounded seriously uncertain about what to do and a tone of desperation could also be heard in his voice.
"I don't know."
He murmured more to himself this time. He looked at Sam again who – by now – was on the edge of actually forcing him to tell her what was bothering him.
"Give me some time. Maybe there's another opportunity to find out something about Danny's and Andrea's current residence."
He didn't even wait for her reaction but went to his private office to make some phone calls. Sam watched the door closing behind him...