Speaking In Tongues

Ko

The old Greek immigrant was petty, weak, dangerous, a cross between a squirrel and a ferret. He was a born liar and had an instinct for knowing human nature cold. He put stills next to smokehouses, stills next to factories, stills in boats, disguised them like henhouses. Hid his income in a hundred small businesses. Once he smooth-talked a revenuer into arresting Ko

So from the age of five or six Ko

This was a skill to be practiced slowly and tediously. And this was how he was going to find the man who’d kidnapped Tate Collier’s daughter.

Ko

He then spent the next two hours taking electrostatic prints of the twelve tire treads that he could isolate and differentiate-ones he determined weren’t from Megan’s car. He then identified the matching left and right tires and measured wheelbases and lengths of the cars they’d come from. He jotted all this, in lyrical handwriting, into a battered leather notebook.

He then went over the entire parking space with a Dust buster and- hunched in the front seat of his car-looked over all the trace evidence picked up in the paper filter. Most of it was nothing more than dust and meaningless without laboratory analysis. But Ko

Speeding back to the office, the detective sat down at his computer and ran the wheel dimensions through the motor vehicle specification database. One set of numbers perfectly fit the dimensions for a Mercedes sedan.

He examined the electrostatic prints carefully. Flipping through Burne’s Tire Identifier, he concluded that they were a rare model of Michelin and because they showed virtually no wear he guessed the tires were no more than three or four months old. Encouraging, on the one hand, because they were unusual tires and it would be easier to track down the purchaser. But troubling too. Because they were expensive, as was the model of the car the man was driving. It was therefore likely that the perp was intelligent, which suggested he was an organized offender-the hardest to find.

And the sort of criminal that presented the most danger.

Ko

He made thirty-eight phone calls and by the time he hung up from speaking with the last parts department manager on his list, faxes of bills of sale were starting to roll into police headquarters.

But the information wasn’t as helpful as he’d hoped. Most of the sales receipts included the manufacturer of the customer’s car and the tag number. Some had the model number but virtually none had the color. The list kept growing. After an hour he had copies of 142 records of the sales of that model of Michelin in the past twelve months to people who owned Mercedeses.

He looked over the discouragingly lengthy list of names.

Standard procedure was to run the names through the outstanding warrants/prior arrests database. But a net like that didn’t seem to be the sort that would catch this perp-he wasn’t a chronic ‘jacker or a shooter with a long history of crime. Still, Ko

“It’s seven forty-two on a Saturday night, boss,” the assistant pointed out.

“You had di

“Lemme tell you something, Ko

Dutifully, he did. As he returned to his desk he grabbed his ringing phone.

“Detective Konstantinatis, please?”

“Yeah.”

“This is Special Agent McComb with the FBI. Child Exploitation and Kidnapping Unit.”

“Sure, how you doin’?” Ko

“I’m doing a favor for my boss in Quantico. He asked me to take a look at the Megan McCall case. You’re involved in that, right?”

“Yup.”

“It’s not an active case for us but you know Tate Collier’s the girl’s father, right?”

“Know that.”

“Well, he did some pretty good work for us when he was a commonwealth's attorney so I said I’d look into her disappearance. As a favor.”

“Just what I’m doing, more or less. But I’m go

“Are you really?”

“Found some interesting forensics.” Ko

“That’s good to know. We ought to coordinate our approaches. Do some proactive thinking.”

“Sure.” Ko

The agent said, “I’m up at Ernie’s, near the parkway. You know it?”

“Sure. It’s a half mile from me.”

“I was about to order di

He paused for a moment. “Why not? Be there in ten minutes.”

“Good. Bring whatever you’ve got.”

“Will do.”

They hung up. Ko

“Don’t worry. We got the feds on the case now.”

“My.”

He took the stack of faxed receipts from her desk, shoved them into his briefcase and headed out the door.

Ko

22

Aaron Matthews sat at a booth in a dark corner of the restaurant, looking out the window at a tableau of heavy equipment, bright yellow in the dusk, squatting on a dirt hillside nearby.

This was an area that five years ago had been fields and was now rampantly overgrown with town houses and apartments and strip malls. Starbucks, Chesapeake Bagels, Linens ‘n’ Things. Ernie’s restaurant fit in perfectly, an upscale franchise. Looked nice on the surface but beneath the veneer it was all formula. Matthews stirred as the waddling form of Detective Konstantinatis entered the restaurant and maneuvered through the tables.

Watching the man’s eyes, seeing where they slid-furtively, guiltily.

Always the eyes. Matthews waved and Konstantinatis nodded and steered toward him. Matthews had no idea what official FBI identification looked like and wouldn’t have known how to fake some if he had but he’d dressed in a suit and white shirt-what he always wore when seeing patients-and had brought several dog-eared file folders, on which he’d printed FBI PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL with stencils he’d made from office materials bought at Staples. These sat prominently in front of him.