Chapter 1
FBI Missing Persons Unit. July 2004
Four people sat silently around a desk, each one lost in their own thoughts, each one staring at the phone, willing it to ring.
Around them lay piles of papers, boxes of files, empty coffee cups and sandwich wrappers. A half eaten brownie was discarded in one corner, and a box of cigarettes lay open and half empty in another. The air in office was stale, musty even, as if noone had opened a door or a window in days.
It was probably true.
They didn't speak to each other anymore, not out of anger, not through any fault of their own, they simply couldn't. Fear, worry and exhaustion were all they seemed to know.
Its funny how noisy silence can be though, they could here the noise coming from outside the office, people murmuring, talking on phones, calling out to each other on the corridor and on the stairs. They could hear the sounds of the city from outside the open window. The noises of New York, taxis and cop cars, ambulances, the noise of machinery.
It didn't help. Hearing the world go on, listening to people go about their everyday lives like that. It just didn't help.
'They should be doing the same thing', Jack Malone thought, as he watched Danny Taylor rise and start pacing the room for the fifteenth time that day.
They should be working on whatever the latest missing persons case was, they should be sitting about, talking, discussing the case, looking over the evidence as normal.
Sam would go through the phone records, her quick eye could always pick out the strange numbers, the ones that looked out of place, the extra long phone conversations, she could pick out patterns too, like if someone was calling at the same time every day or every week. That was what she was good at.
Maybe her and Danny was go and talk to the suspect, and if she was female then Danny would turn on the charm, he'd get them to open up, he'd chat and talk, they'd get relaxed, and then they'd let something slip. Danny could always get people to talk.
Maybe Viv and Sam would go over instead, sometimes the most cautious suspect would let their guard down in the presence of two women, especially the men.
And then there was Martin……..
"Danny, for god's sake sit down" Jack Malone finally snapped at the younger agent. "you're making me dizzy", he added, in a softer tone this time. 'Its getting to me just as much as you Taylor' his tone implied.
Sam looked up from her computer. "Jack, I think maybe I've got something here"
Danny walked over and stood behind her, one hand on the back of her chair, she could feel the tension, feel it bouncing off him against everyone else. "He feels guilty" she thought. "He thought he had Martin all figured out, hell, maybe he was even a little jealous. But not anymore."
"Well?" Jack asked, almost irritably not looking up from the file that he was reading. He was tired, hell, they were all tired.
Martin Fitzgerald had been missing for two days now. Three very long, tense and very anxious days.
At this stage Vivian had joined Danny on the other side of Sam. Jack looked up, irritated by their silence. "Sam? What did you find…." He began but stopped.
Samantha had gone white, Danny was looking at the computer screen in disbelief, that look he always got when they came up against something tricky in anycase. You could hear a pin drop in the room.
Vivian was the first to speak.
"Jack, I think you should read this"
And as he moved over to where the little group were huddled, and as he read that newspaper article, suddenly so many things fitted into place for Jack Malone. 'I was wrong, I never knew, never even guessed.'…….
"Danny!" Noone had spoken a word for maybre three or four minutes and Jack's voice made them jump.
Danny looked, and saw reflected in his boss's face, all the rising anger he too was feeling.
"Get your things, we're going to pay the mighty Victor Fitzgerald a visit."