Requiem, page 4
Most of her sources knew nothing of the case. One person left a message, but before Roha responded, the exit for Downey came up.
Colleen Eden had suggested they meet at the missing woman’s house. Roha checked her GPS map, which guided her to De Palma. She came upon marked and unmarked police units, a media truck, and a dozen or so people gathered outside Wanda Stroud’s bungalow.
The entire yard and driveway had been taped off.
She parked down the street and walked to the house, doing what she always did upon arriving at a scene: she kept her notebook in her bag and observed. She spotted a blue KTLA news van. A reporter holding a microphone, with a camera operator behind him, was interviewing a man. They used the yellow crime-scene tape and house as a backdrop.
The house was a well-kept stucco bungalow with healthy palms in the front yard. It was immaculate. A small Ford sedan was in the shade of the carport. A pretty place, Roha thought.
Inside the area taped off by police, masked and gloved members of a crime-scene team from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department moved between the house and their truck. Roha went around the vehicles, where she could be alone with a clear view, when a member of the crime-scene team, a woman walking to the unit’s truck, noticed her at the tape.
“Sabrena?”
It took a moment for Roha to recognize the LASD forensic identification specialist who had been close to Cliff.
“Madison?” Sabrena said.
“Yeah, it’s been a long time. How’re you?”
“Good. You?”
“Working it, you know.” Madison glanced around, then stepped closer to Roha. “So, are you reporting on this missing-person case?”
“I might be.” She nodded to the truck. “Why’re you guys here?”
Madison looked around again. She asked Roha, “What do you know?”
“Wanda Stroud, the woman who lives here, landed at LAX after returning from Mexico, and never made it home. Did you find her in there?”
Madison shook her head.
“I can’t say much, but this is routine.” Madison lowered her voice. “We’re processing the house in case someone involved may have come here.”
Roha nodded. Then, noticing the KTLA crew glancing their way, she immediately left Madison, and went to the TV team.
Roha didn’t know them.
“So, guys, what’s up here?” she asked.
The reporter, a man with well-coiffed blond hair and white teeth, let his eyes take a walk all over Roha.
“Who’re you?” he asked.
“Sabrena Roha. I’m with True Signal News.”
He nodded and grinned.
“Chuck Lancaster, KTLA. Just joined the station. Came down from the Bay. My partner here’s a news photographer—J.J. Soledad.”
“So, what’s going on?” Roha asked. “What’re you hearing?”
Lancaster shook his head and shrugged.
“Not looking like a big story. Retired librarian never got home from the airport.” Lancaster leaned closer to Roha, and dropped his voice. “I think she probably had some kind of medical issue and wandered. Maybe got on another plane. Who knows? It’s the best story I got going today.”
Lancaster chuckled, and then glanced over his shoulder. “Some of her neighbors are about to go door-to-door with these flyers for her.” He held up a missing person poster with Wanda Stroud’s picture and details. “We’re going to tag along with them. Want to join us?”
“No thanks.” She smiled. “I’ll just poke around here.”
Lancaster took another lingering look at her. “Good meeting you, Sabrena.”
Soledad nodded to her.
After they left, Roha went to other people at the tape, identified herself, and asked for Colleen Eden.
“We expect Colleen to join us at any moment,” said a woman holding a small dog in her arms.
Roha thanked her, then stepped aside. She checked her phone for messages; more had come in. Some of her sources directed her to others; some promised to get back to her. And one person left a message saying only, “This could be an interesting one for you.” Roha was going to call back when a shadow fell across her phone.
“Hello, I’m Colleen Eden. We’re supposed to meet.”
A woman in her 60s—blue eyes, high cheekbones, almost the same height as Roha—stood before her.
“Yes. Hello. Thank you.” Roha shook her hand.
They stepped across the street, using the shade of a tree to talk in private. Looking at Wanda Stroud’s house, Eden related her friend’s life, the death of her husband, and her health issues. Eden recounted the day Stroud had returned, texting her from the airport with a coffee date for the next day.
“I asked her how things went in Mexico, and she said not so good.”
“What do you think that means?” Roha asked.
“Likely because she didn’t get the answers she wanted from the doctors there, all related to her anxiety and worries about getting sick.”
Eden looked away, blinking back tears.
“This is all so, so wrong, and I’m so scared for her.”
Roha nodded.
“The last thing Wanda texted to me really frightens me now.”
“What was that?”
Eden got her phone, scrolled through her text messages to show her the message.
A weird thing happened on the plane.
Absorbing and processing it, Roha blinked, and then asked Eden, “Weird, like what? What does this mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Eden shook her head, tears rolling down her face.
CHAPTER 11
Los Angeles, California
At Los Angeles International Airport, a dozen people concentrated on their computer screens; some had three or four at their desks.
Suspended high on the wall beyond their workstations were several large flat screens showing live images. The screens occasionally divided into smaller boxes of activity inside and outside of the facility’s nine terminals.
This was LAX’s Airport Response Coordination Center, a 24/7 operation where analysts from several law enforcement agencies monitored the 3,500 security cameras posted throughout the complex. The analysts at the center also kept watch on social media and chased down intel for possible threats. Over the years, LAX had been a target for attacks, and had seen violent incidents.
Wanda Stroud’s case was a priority out of concern for her safety. The fact that her last known location was LAX also underscored the potential that her disappearance could be linked to a threat to airport operations.
The TSA and FBI were checking the flight’s passenger manifest, investigating to see who was onboard and where they sat in relation to Stroud. Agents were checking passport swipes and identifications, running names against watch lists and no-fly lists, looking into backgrounds.
Police had obtained warrants to work with Stroud’s carrier to locate her phone, gain access to all her data, including anything she may have stored online. They were also looking into any activity on her credit and banking cards after her arrival at LAX.
Got her, Elena Cortez, an airport police analyst, said to herself.
She’d been tasked with tracking Wanda Stroud from the moment she stepped from Cielo Ahora Flight CA359 at Terminal B, the Tom Bradley International Terminal.
Working from photos of Stroud, Cortez began tracking her on recorded footage as she moved down through the terminal, and down the escalator to the Customs and Border Protection area, where she joined the line working to the desks and CPB agents.
Scrutinizing the footage, Cortez saw Stroud conversing with a man waiting in the line. He was wearing jeans, and a navy jacket over a white shirt. He had a black-wheeled carry-on and a computer bag over his shoulder. Cortez made notes, then went back to footage showing Stroud and other passengers exiting Flight CA359.
The man was among them.
Cortez resumed watching Stroud on the recorded video. She cleared Customs and continued through the terminal to the baggage claim area. Tracking Stroud from various cameras, Cortez saw her take her phone from her bag and begin texting.
At the carousel, Stroud checked her phone again. Then, as bags from the flight emerged, she reached for a large one with a bright floral pattern, appearing to struggle with it. A man stepped over to help. The same man from her flight she had talked with in the Customs line. He appeared to glance at her luggage ID tag. They talked, and then Stroud rolled her bag to the exit alone.
Using other camera angles, Cortez saw the man talking on his phone.
Switching to other cameras, Cortez picked up Stroud getting into a long line at the taxi area where she waited to be assigned a cab.
Cortez went back to track the man, angles changing as the cameras captured him going to a dark blue sedan in a zone nearby. The driver opened the trunk, placed the man’s luggage there. Both men glanced in the same direction, as if watching something. The man got into the back seat. Cortez tracked the sedan, which moved a short distance before stopping in a tow-away zone. It was directly across from the taxi line, where Stroud was still waiting for a cab.
Cortez leaned closer to her screen as the cameras showed the man leave the back seat of the sedan and approach Stroud. They appeared to talk as he took her bag and gestured to the sedan, where the driver had opened the trunk. The driver hefted Stroud’s flower-patterned bag into the trunk.
Stroud got into the back seat of the sedan with the man.
The driver got behind the wheel.
The sedan left.
Cortez typed commands on her keyboard, and a clear image of the sedan’s California plate filled her screen.
Cortez picked up her phone and called her supervisor.
“Nick, it’s Cortez. I think I’ve got something on our missing woman.”
CHAPTER 12
Queens, New York City
True Signal’s news Sked scrolled on Ray Wyatt’s laptop.
A ping sounded, and a message popped up.
“Anything for me, Ray?” Agnes Finney, at the news desk, asked.
“Nothing today,” he wrote back.
“Okay. Let us know if you want me to send you any leads?”
Send me leads?
Wyatt took a moment. He interpreted Agnes Finney’s note as a subtle nudge, because he hadn’t given her anything for the Sked for some time.
“No, that’s fine,” he wrote. “Got a few things I’m looking into.”
“All right. Thanks,” Agnes said.
Since breaking the Hydra case, Wyatt hadn’t produced many stories of any weight. He wanted to get back in the mix, but none of his ideas had grabbed him. And now…now…
How can I even think of a story with McDade’s revelation screaming in my brain?
He wished McDade had allowed him to copy the new picture of Danny. Seeing Danny at six, Danny now, his face, his eyes, Lisa’s eyes, Lisa’s cheeks…The image had seared itself onto his mind.
In all the time after the fire, there were moments—small, hellish moments—when Wyatt accepted Danny’s death. But those moments were short-lived, especially after he lost Lisa. She never, ever, gave up believing, and told Wyatt with her dying words: Find Danny, Ray. Bring him home.
Now, after all these agonizing years, McDade had given him the promise, and a glimpse of what was real.
That Danny was alive—could be alive.
Soft clicking on the floor pulled Wyatt from his thoughts. Molly, Wyatt’s black lab, came to him, and placed her head on his lap. He stroked her ears.
“I think your nails may be due for a trim,” he said.
She nuzzled him.
“I know what you want, okay?”
Wyatt went to the pantry and got Molly a treat—a soft-baked beef biscuit.
Then he found himself standing in the doorway of Danny’s room, looking at it—untouched from when their world had stopped.
Taking stock, a warm feeling rolled over him.
He remembered how Lisa had decorated it for Danny. “You’re not a baby anymore, sweetie. You’re a big boy.”
There was Danny’s bed, still made with a Star Wars comforter, a stuffed SpongeBob SquarePants leaning against the pillow. There was Danny’s white desk, his storage baskets for his toys. Above, a tiny Cessna hung with fishing line from the ceiling. When turned on, it flew in circles, its lights blinking. Wyatt got the plane for him when he’d been on assignment in Houston.
Wyatt sat on the bed, loving Danny’s art on the walls. Finger painting and crayon drawings. Stick people smiling, all sunshine and happiness.
He looked to the low bookshelf, with Danny’s favorite picture books.
He turned to the night table, reaching for the moose figurine—Danny’s beloved toy that he and Lisa had bought at a gift shop in Banff on their vacation. It was tiny, made of bronzed cast iron, and stood on a marble base. On its underside were the words: Danny Wyatt, Banff Canada. Wyatt had used a knife to scratch Danny’s name there.
Danny loved his little moose.
Wyatt traced his fingers over it, recalling how, after the fire in Banff, weeks had turned into months, with no trace of Danny except his cherished moose toy. Canadian officials had sent it to them by FedEx with a letter of condolence.
It was blackened. One of the antlers had broken off.
He touched his fingers to the letters he’d carved into the base.
Danny’s name had survived.
Wyatt dragged his hand over his face, unable to stop the memories from rocketing him back through time….
Searching for Danny…crawling on his stomach…deeper into the suffocating, disorienting smoke…calling him…his fingers finding Danny’s hand…seeing his terrified face streaked with soot, his eyes bulging…then his hand holding only air as something jerked Danny from him, dragged him back into the churning black clouds of the inferno—
“Daddy!”
Jolted back to the present, Wyatt went to the bedroom window. Outside, he saw a child in a helmet wobbling on a two-wheeled bicycle, the father trotting alongside.
“Daddy, I’m doing it! I’m doing it!”
Wyatt smiled.
Then, he glanced at the moose in his hand.
What am I doing here? Danny’s alive, and what am I doing?
Wyatt went to his laptop.
DeCastilla’s warnings about interfering—about the risk of jeopardizing the FBI’s investigation to find Danny and other children—echoed in Wyatt’s head, but he pushed them aside.
Danny was alive when I had his hand in the fire, and I lost him.
McDade believes Danny’s still alive.
I can’t sit back and lose him a second time.
CHAPTER 13
The Bronx, New York City
Unique Connex Used Computers was near the south end of the Bronx Zoo, north of the Cross Bronx Expressway at the edge of the West Farms section of the borough.
Wyatt wanted to go somewhere out of Queens for this.
An electric chime sounded when he entered. The place had the kind of dark wood paneling you’d find in your grandfather’s basement in Corona. Every shelf was crammed with laptops, desktops, monitors, and an array of components.
The man behind the counter peered over bifocals from his phone.
“Yes?”
“I’m looking for a used, newer model laptop.”
“We got everything, from cheaper, small Dells up to Microsoft Pro 7s, to MacBook Pros. You want one for gaming, graphics, or the basics?”
“The basics. But powerful.”
The man showed him several models before suggesting a high-powered notebook with a 16-inch screen.
“Like new. Fifteen hundred,” he said, turning it on.
“I’ll take it,” Wyatt said. “I’ll pay cash.”
Wyatt knew the store had a security camera, but he wanted to do all he could to reduce his trail. Besides, he wasn’t doing anything illegal. He needed a clean computer that he planned to use to access free wireless Internet service wherever a network was available.
“Cash?” the man said.
“Is that okay?”
Sticking out his bottom lip, the man nodded.
“Also,” Wyatt said. “There’s software, or an app, I need installed. I don’t know much about computers, so can you help me set it up now?”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Counting the cash and putting it in the register, the man said, “What kind of software or app do you need?”
“A dark web browser.”
“I see. And you want it now?”
“Yes.”
“Wait.”
Wyatt watched the man go to the back where a younger man was hunched over a table working on a disassembled laptop. The two talked, glancing at Wyatt, before the man returned.
“It’ll cost you another two hundred,” he said.
Wyatt counted it off, relieved he’d withdrawn more than enough from the bank.
The younger man took Wyatt’s laptop, gestured to him to follow him to his table. After Wyatt explained what he needed, the man began working—typing commands, having Wyatt create and enter passwords. Wyatt wrote them in the small notepad he kept in his back pocket. It took some time before the younger man finished, turning the laptop to Wyatt, moving the cursor to the few icons on the screen.
“This one will get you to free Internet networks, wherever they are, so you won’t need to pay a provider for an account. This one connects you online traditionally—Google, Bing, etc. This one is your dark web browser.”
Wyatt nodded.
“Now, with this, your location is hidden. You can’t be tracked. Your anonymity is nearly one hundred percent secure. Still, some people may see your browsing activity.”
“Thanks,” Wyatt said. The younger man shut things down, and Wyatt collected his laptop.
“Buddy,” the man said, “not my business why you want to go there, but a word to the wise?”
“What’s that?”
“Be careful.”
***
