Jacob had never seen this much nothing in the whole of his life. The part of Nebraska he was currently driving through probably had a higher population of cows than people. No buildings except the farms that appeared every half mile or so. This was truly Hicksville, USA, and the last place Jacob would have expected to find a friend of Reddington's.
Jacob spotted the mailbox with the number that matched the address Reddington had given him. He pulled down the long drive until he was in front of a blue farmhouse. It was small, but well maintained. Sam Milhoan obviously took pride in his home.
Jacob lopped up the porch steps and knocked on the white door. After a minute a man with gray hair answered. Jacob first impression was that he had the face of a cowboy. Sam Milhoan's tanned skin and rugged features would have looked right at home in a John Wayne movie.
"Can I help you?" Though his words were polite, Milhoan's tone unmistakably said, "What the hell are you doing here?" Jacob offered his most charming smile.
"Actually, I'm here to help you. Our mutual friend told you I was coming." The cowboy's frown deepened.
"I expected someone a little older." Really, the guy was going to bust Jacob's balls about age, when the 50 year-old private eye he'd hired had turned up jack shit? Still, it probably wouldn't be prudent to bring that up. Milhoan's cooperation might prove useful, and the man was a friend of Reddington's.
"I get that alot. May I come in?" Milhoan paused a moment, then nodded reluctantly.
"Sure." He pulled opened the door and allowed Jacob to pass thru to the front hall. Milhoan gestured for Jacob to move into the living room. Clearly he thought they were going to sit down and chat, which frankly Jacob didn't have time for. The longer it took to find Elizabeth Scott, the greater the chance she'd be in trouble by the time he got there.
"I don't want to waste your time here, so I'll get right down to it: Why'd she run?" Reddington had mentioned a "delinquent" named Frank, but he'd had no more details to offer than that.
"How that will help you find her?" Answering a question with a question. Classic defensive maneuver. Interesting. Was Milhoan feeling guilty about something?
"It might not, but it'll definitely help me figure out how I should convince her to come back." This was not a situation where Jacob could knock his target over the head, zip tie her and deposit her back at her father's farm. He'd have to convince Scott she wanted to go home.
"Lizzie and I had always been close, but lately things have gotten...tense. She's become a young woman. Rebelling. It's a phase most teenagers go through." Was he being deliberately vague and unhelpful or was it pure coincidence he was speaking in cliches?
"Most teenagers don't run away, not for this long, not when they have a good place to come back to." Elizabeth and her father certainly seemed close enough in the photograph Reddington had shown him. Reddington, who knew the man well, swore he was a good father. If that was the case then why had Scott taken off?
"Liz is...strong willed. Smart. She has a temper and a hard time admitting when she's wrong." Getting information from this man was like pulling teeth.
"And what is she wrong about?"
"Her boyfriend. Frank Geller. High school dropout. He's a petty thief." Jacob felt the disapproval in the man's voice was somewhat ironic, given his close friendship with Raymond Reddington, but resisted the urge to point it out to Milhoan.
"Can I see her room?" Hopefully he find something there to help give him a better sense of the girl. Something wasn't quite jiving with the story he was being told by Reddington and Milhoan. Both of them described Elizabeth Scott as being strong-willed, and smart. That didn't sound like a girl who'd risk her future to play Bonnie and Clyde with some two-bit grifter.
The first thing that struck Jacob as he stepped into the bedroom of Elizabeth Scott was that she was a girl of contractions. She had two framed posters in her room, one of Destiny's Child and the other of Elvis Presley. Ballet shoes rested on a shelf, next to a framed photo of Elizabeth at a gun range. Modern Pop and oldies Rock. Dancing and firearms. Her tastes were eclectic to say the least.
"Not a lot of photos of friends." There were a few group shots from what looked like a well attended birthday party, but none of Elizabeth with just one or two other girls. Her smile was different than the one he'd seen in the photo Reddington had shown him. It was pleasant, but...less free somehow. The effect of age perhaps?
"There was a group she used to spend time with, but in the past year she's fallen out of touch with them."
"Because of the boyfriend?" Jacob's eyes fell on a framed photo of Elizabeth and her father on the desk. They were standing in front of a truck and had their arm draped around each other's back. Though the photo couldn't have been much more than a year old Milhoan looked completely different than the sour man who'd greeted Jacob at the door. His face was lit with good humor and obvious love for the girl beside him. As for Elizabeth, she wore the same infectious grin he'd seen in Reddington's photograph. Something about that smile made it hard to look away. The photograph seemed to substantiate Milhoan's claim that he and his daughter had been close. Comparing this photo to the one in which she was surrounded by 'friends' it was clear who she was more comfortable with.
"No, it happened before. And I suppose she was never really...close with any of them." So whatever changed happened before the arrival of Frank Geller. He was a symptom, not the disease. Jacob turned his attention to the computer on Scott's desk. That was probably his best bet to finding out what Scott had been up to in the past few months. He pushed the power button and dropped down into the seat. As soon as it booted up it asked for a login password.
"I don't suppose you know her password?"
"No." Jacob sighed. It couldn't be easy.
"Okay. I'm going to need her phone number, birthday, and social security number. Throw your birthday and social on there too." To his credit, Milhoan only hesitated about a five seconds before doing as Jacob asked.
"Anything else?"
"Yeah, I need to work, and I'd prefer it if you weren't hovering while I do. If I need anything I'll call you." Milhoan scowled, but nodded and left the room.
"Okay Elizabeth. Just you and me now. What makes you tick?" He started with the boyfriend's first name followed by every combination of the personal numbers he could think of. He did the same with the last name. Nothing. He tried Milhoan's name next with the same result. He attempted using her favorite bands, inputting the artists' names, and their most notable song titles. Zip.
Jacob rose from the chair and circled the room until he came to Scott's bedside table. Next to the alarm clock rested a well-worn copy of The Wizard of Oz. Farm girl in the middle of nowhere takes fantastical journey. No wonder she seemed to enjoy it.
He grabbed the book and brought it back to the computer desk. He tried the title, the author, 'dorothy' 'oz', 'toto',' no place like home', and 'kansas' without success. Jacob rubbed his neck. What else? What would a teenage girl use as her password? His eyes fell on the ballet shoes. Shoes. Maybe that was it. When the computer rejected all possible combinations of "ruby" and "slippers" Jacob felt ready to toss the computer out the window. He knew Reddington had people who could crack this in under an hour, but Reddington had made it clear he wasn't to use any of the network contractors unless it was an absolute emergency. Besides Jacob wanted to do this himself to prove to Red he was trustworthy and that he could get things done.
Of course, it was going to be hard to prove that when he couldn't maintain to figure out a 17 year old's password. He cracked open the book and started flipping through the pages. It had been highlighted in spots and there were notes in the margins. I looked like Scott had been doing some kind of an analysis, probably for a school project. He studied the margins until he found: 'Silver shoes=silver standard.' That was it. The Judy Garland movie had the iconic ruby slippers because they were taking advantage of Technicolor, but the book had 'Silver shoes' take Dorothy home. Jacob typed 'Silver shoes' and just like that he was in.
Searching web history he was bombarded with websites on adoptees' rights. So Scott was adopted. Given the different last names, he'd assumed it was either that or her parents hadn't been married. Going into her emails he found hundreds missives to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, requesting information on her original birth certificate. A quick skim of the replies taught Jacob that her quest had been fruitless.
He imagined Elizabeth sitting at her desk, writing formal request after formal request, tapping sharply on the keyboard as she became more and more frustrated. Stubborn, smart, short tempered Elizabeth. A girl who didn't form close bonds with her peers and had given up the pretense. A girl who dreamed of magical journeys that would lead her home. Would a girl like that give up her search? No. She'd come up with a new plan.
Her father had been disdainful of Elizabeth's boyfriend, because he couldn't understand what his smart, beautiful daughter saw in a petty criminal, but Jacob did. What Elizabeth Scott had seen in Frank was someone willing to break the law. Someone who could help HER break the law. Jacob felt a smile creep across his features. Elizabeth wasn't some dumb lost little lamb lead astray by romantic delusions. She was a ruthless pragmatist, doing whatever took to achieve her goals. Jacob found that far more interesting.
