Chapter 27: Eyes on Seattle

As soon as I was satisfied Andi and Cali were okay, I headed to my apartment. I was on a mission. I knew now that Mel had been snatched from the street by someone who knew where she would be and when. I knew that there was more than one person involved. And I knew that Mel’s time could be up already.

I launched all computers and dove directly into my previous searches. One of these bastards had to be Patterson or involved with him. Whom had Mel told she would be downtown on Thursday morning. Who was waiting for her? And where had she been taken? I received an Amber Alert notice on my cell phone as I was just diving in. Mel’s disappearance had been officially reclassified as a kidnapping. Jordan’s timing was perfect.

I started scanning the neighborhoods where I’d posted notices and the email that had come in as a result. Each notice I’d posted had been vandalized. A big stamp reading “Canceled” defaced each bulletin. I ran through the 250-some email responses I’d received since posting the notices and finally came to the one I feared.

“Too bad. Such a filthy slut. I want a nice girl.”

I called Andi but got no response. I’d been digging for over two hours since I left her and Cali. She must have turned the phones off so they could have peace while they slept and recovered. I left a message and went back to work. I didn’t want Cali out of Andi’s sight.

With the number of cameras in downtown Seattle, the obvious next step was to try to track where they had gone after the bus tunnel; and bus tunnels had twenty-four-hour camera surveillance. I tapped into the Metro site and started worming my way inside. Metro was a county agency and as a result I had to fight my way through a whole different set of protocols than those for the city government. I ended up using a crude hack to get to the video feed from KC Metro. From there, I had to search back through archives to find the date and time of the kidnapping. It was tedious work and I was already wishing I had more coffee. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept, but my eyes kept closing on me.

When I finally found recordings of the right tunnel and the right time, I kept replaying them and rechecking the time.

There was nothing on the tape that showed Mel entering the bus tunnel.

My options were running low. I opened my curtains and saw that it was dark outside. How long had I been at this, vacillating between intense concentration and sleep? I needed more coffee, and I needed more information. Why was Mel downtown when she should have been in school?

I slid my tablet into my belt-bag and crossed the alley to see Andi and Cali. I knocked lightly on the door, realizing it was already past ten o’clock and they could be sound asleep. A few seconds later, the porch light came on and Andi opened the door. She looked drowsy and fell into my arms as she pulled me through the open door.

“What a day,” she sighed. “I fell asleep in front of the TV.”

“How’s Cali?”

“She slept most of the day. I haven’t heard her stirring yet. I should get her some food.”

“The poor kid.”

“She thinks it’s her fault because she wasn’t with Mel. She said Mel wanted her to cut school and come downtown with her. Then with Olivia blaming her for Mel running away, she’s just been a wreck.”

“What did Mel want Cali downtown for?”

“Something about the prom. Mel kept telling Cali she had a surprise for her. Everyone was so dead sure Mel ran away that Cali believed it, too. What a mess.”

“Did anyone contact Olivia and James?”

“I called them right away, but while I was on the phone, the police arrived and they kind of freaked out and hung up.”

“I’d like to ask Cali some questions if you think she can handle it. The police are moving, but they don’t have all they need yet.”

“I’ll go see if she can wake up enough to talk and eat something. She didn’t even finish lunch.” Andi went down the hall and I stepped into the kitchen. It wasn’t like Andi to have left the food and dishes from the meal on the table, but there they were. I started cleaning up the mess we’d left and wrapped the remaining bread—already turning crusty—in a plastic bag. I heard Andi moving from place to place down the hall and then she burst back into the kitchen looking panicked. “She’s gone!”

“Jordan, we need help. It looks like Cali has gone to try to find Mel. Andi had her cell phone off so they could sleep this afternoon, but when she turned it back on there was a text from Cali that said, ‘Got a text. Going to help Mel.’ I don’t think Mel sent any text messages. Her parents cancelled her cell phone the day she went missing and it hasn’t been reactivated.”

“I’ll subpoena the phone records,” Jordan said, “but I can’t get into town to help you. I’ll put out an APB and an Amber Alert. As soon as I’ve got a search coordinator, I’ll forward the name and number to you. We’re getting ready to board Patterson’s yacht out in the Sound. I’m half a mile off-shore.”

“I’m going after her. I think I know where to start, at least. The correlation of the other missing kids over the past five years have all been going downtown sometime close to the last time they were seen. We’re starting at University Street Station.”

“There will be uniforms in the area. I’ll let them know to watch for you. Keep your phone live so we can reach you and let me know what you see. Don’t try to make a capture. Let the police do their job.”

“It’s not a job to me, Jordan. It’s Cali.”

I disconnected and grabbed Andi by the hand. She already had her jacket on and we went to her car. While Andi drove, I tapped into the gaming community. This wasn’t the game I intended to play tonight, but it was much more important than tracking down a credit card thief. Still, the EFC team could be useful. I sent the message via my office email. Even though I wasn’t using a tapped keyboard, I was sure my email would be monitored. Just to make doubly sure, I cc’d everyone on my team.

“Eyes on Seattle. Find the Kidnapper. Starting Now! It’s not a game. Big reward!” I attached the video of the original kidnapping, a photo of Cali, and estimated time she went missing. She had an hour’s head start.

I desperately hoped we weren’t too late already.

Andi drove down Third as we scanned the area hoping we’d see Cali on a street corner. You can’t get in or out of some of the garages down here after eleven, so we didn’t try to park. By the time we stopped at Madison, forty players had registered and were receiving data files from me for tapping into the city’s many cameras. I just didn’t have time to waste on bastards who weren’t playing my game, so I heightened my online defenses. I was here to find Cali and I needed every single one of my fellow geeks to help me do it. I started keying instructions into the tablet calling for maps of the city and camera angles on the bus tunnel entrance.

My cell phone chimed a text message and I read “Amber Alert: Cali is missing. We need help searching downtown.”

“Did you just text me?” I asked Andi.

“I sent a message to the faculty lounge list.”

“Good thinking. I’ve got online help, but we need feet on the street. We can use all the help we can get.” I heard Andi’s phone start buzzing with incoming messages as one by one our friends told her they were on the way. “No word from Cali yet?”

“No answer on her phone and no response to the text messages,” Andi said. Tears were running down her cheeks. She shook her head and turned the car onto Columbia and then raced up First to Pike and looped around on Second. My gamers started reporting in with images from cameras located in every conceivable place—garage entrances, bus stops, traffic cameras, banks. The number of feeds was overwhelming, and the fact that I was controlling four online computers in my home and office remotely didn’t help. The first images, of course, came from the EFC external camera recording from the past hour. It began running at 4X speed, streaming images of a mostly empty street. I had a thought and contacted a gamer I knew from experience to be a good strategic thinker.

“I think the kidnapper operates from these coordinates,” I said in my message. I fed him a package of data that included the IP address of Philanthropolis and the path I’d used to track him down. “He’s egotistical enough to think he could be online while we do an IRL search. Here are some known aliases. See if you can track him.” I got a grin in response and saw a team of players peel off into Philanthropolis.

Then I got an alert that chilled me. In the images playing on my screen I could clearly see Cali standing outside the bus tunnel entrance. The timestamp showed 9:50 p.m. Three minutes later, a man emerged directly behind her and dragged her back toward the tunnel with his hand over her mouth. This time the image was clear.

I immediately forwarded the clip to Jordan and got confirmation a minute later that an update to the Amber Alert had been issued, sealing off ferry and train traffic. The image had been forwarded to bus drivers, taxi drivers, and local media. “I need eyes in the tunnel at all stops starting at 9:50. Move outward from the tunnel in one block increments. I want every live camera in Seattle raided.”

A gamer message flashed on my screen. “Is that John Patterson in the video?” I replied in the affirmative and received a skull and crossbones emoticon. The gamers were pissed.

Jan and Donna Garrick rolled up beside us and asked where we wanted them to check. We sent them to cruise up and down the waterfront. That was where Seattle was most vulnerable and was the furthest out that I could imagine Patterson and Cali could have gone by now. Jordan had said Patterson’s yacht was anchored out in the Sound, so the Marina was a logical place for him to head. Sara Gates and Sandy Halstead were then sent south. Of all our friends, the two musicians would be most familiar and comfortable with Pioneer Square. Andi took over coordinating our friends as I started reviewing images flashing on my screen from various cameras.

He’d done it again. He disappeared into the tunnel entrance, but never showed up on the security cameras once inside. Andi turned up University and I jumped out of the car and headed for the tunnel entrance. Watching a live feed of the University Street tunnel and the EFC security camera on my tablet, I entered and headed to the escalator. I saw myself disappear from the EFC feed just after I left the street. I watched the tunnel cameras as I emerged into the tunnel at the bottom of the escalator. I didn’t come on camera until I was ten feet into the tunnel. In that ten feet, there was an access door to the maintenance shafts. I felt my stomach tie in knots as I tested the locked door. I sent a message to the police ground team and was joined in the tunnel five minutes later by two uniformed officers and a Metro maintenance worker. I was ordered to stay out of the tunnel as they unlocked the door and went in. I ran back up the escalator. All busses and trains were being stopped and the tunnel stations searched.

Andi brought the van around on Third to the entrance and was anxiously waiting for me when I came out. I slid into the seat next to her and gave her a hug. “We’ll find her,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “I swear we’ll find her.” She nodded. I could see her jaw clenching. Her hands both gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were blue.

I looked at the game status. Eighty more players had joined in the past ten minutes. Word had gone out that we were chasing down John Patterson. Once they saw the video of the kidnapping, the gaming community went out for blood. When one of their own became a pariah, there was no mercy. Everyone felt betrayed. But, predictably, nearly a dozen had joined forces with Patterson thinking it was just an exciting new game.