It was many hours before they were able to drive back to the city. Night had settled in, and the city lights twinkled in the darkness. Ryan stifled a yawn, if he had known he would be catching a case like this, he would have slept more the previous night. Probably. They had been driving in silence since they left the Pauling estate and finally, curiosity overcame exhaustion; he turned to Hawkins,
“So, did you find anything else back at the scene? You were out pacing the grounds for quite a while.”
Hawkins seemed to have been lost in thought, because she started at the sound of his voice.
“I didn’t find much, unfortunately. There was a side gate where the subject must have left with the boy. It was locked, but only from the outside, so once he was in, he could have easily gotten out that way.”
“I was wondering how he managed that. It would have been impossible for him to scale that fence again with Alex Pauling in tow.”
“Certainly,” Hawkins agreed. “So did they tell you how long it will be until we get the results back on that evidence we collected?”
“Yeah, they are bumping it to the front of the line, high priority; they’ve probably started it already and are planning to work all night. The techs think that they can manage it by sometime tomorrow.”
“They know our deadline, right?” Hawkins replied impatiently.
“Hey, that is the best turnaround time in the country,” Ryan reminded her. “And the only reason you are even getting it that fast is because this case has priority. You should feel lucky, if we sent it to the RCMP or a local lab, it could take months. Their backlog is terrible.”
“I know, I know. I suppose I should keep my expectations realistic. I just really hate waiting.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Well, I guess now is as good a time as any to get a couple of hours of sleep and get ready for tomorrow. We can’t really do anything more without the results. Want me to drop you at your place?”
“Sure, that’d be great.”
He gave her directions to the apartment building in the city. She pulled up out front and stopped next to the curb.
“I’ll call you when we get something. I am hoping we’ll have a lead on where to start looking for our guys by morning.”
“And you will really call me?”
“Cross my heart,” she replied, with an innocent smile.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he stepped out of the car and shut the door behind him.
Hawkins flipped him a little wave through the window and drove off into the night.
Ryan stood on the curb until she was gone, then turned to look at the dark window of his little apartment, several stories up. He didn’t really want to go there now. It had been a bad day. Any case where children were involved took their toll, and the emotional exhaustion of dealing with the father, coupled with trying to keep up with Hawkins had worn him out. What he wanted more than anything right now was a drink. He checked his watch; he had awhile until any results would be back anyway. Without even a backward glance at the tiny, empty rooms and old takeout food that awaited him, he turned back around and strolled off down the street.
Taylor Hawkins pressed the RFID chip in her forearm up against the scanner and waited as the system verified her identity. After a moment, the door slid open, and she entered the elevator and hit the button for the 4th floor. She had lied to Stone, of course. A case like this, she wouldn’t be done until the boy was home with his father. But Stone didn’t need to know that. She had been forming a theory since they had left the scene, and she had been waiting for a chance to get rid of him so that she could think about it more seriously. Ryan Stone didn’t really seem like a bad guy, aside from the whole snitch thing. From his file, she knew that he was a bit of a playboy, but he was smart and perceptive enough to be good at his job, when he decided to make the effort. And she had to admit, he had done an admirable job keeping Pauling off of her back. But she was dealing in hard evidence now; he would only get in her way. This was nothing new, Hawkins had had partners before and it never ended well. She just needed to put up with him until he quit. So, she would go and get him when she had something useful for him to do. For now, she needed to focus. Back when they were at the estate, Hawkins had been sure to walk the property carefully, it had become clear that her new supposition was correct. Over by the gate house, she had found tire tracks in the soft soil off the path, where the vehicle had pulled over and let off both of its passengers. They had each left distinct footprints. It appeared that whoever had hired them had only specified what to do once they got into the house, because only there was the crime even superficially professional. It was very strange, she thought, that a person who had been able to coach two amateurs into an almost perfect kidnapping had been so lax as to ignore every other aspect of the crime. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like it must be intentional. Every aspect of this crime was counter-intuitive: the professional amateurs, their incomplete preparations, even the ridiculous demand. And that ransom note… She could sense a certain underlying thread running through this case, some greater purpose connecting the seemingly random, sloppy actions. Whoever was doing this, they clearly wanted something that wasn’t in that note. Hawkins knew that she had to figure out what that was, before it was too late. Some might say that it wasn’t relevant why the boy was taken, as long as they found him, but she knew better. It was like pulling a weed, if you didn’t get to the root of it, it just grew back. The same was true here, if you didn’t understand the entirety of the crime, you were just opening yourself up to nasty surprises in the future. And everything about this case felt like a nasty surprise in the making. Hawkins exited the elevator and hurried down the hall to her office. Once inside, she closed the door and drew the blinds, shutting out all light. Sitting in the dark, she flipped on the surveillance videos she had taken from Pauling’s security system. The first agents on the scene had taken the files from the day of the crime, but she had gone back to retrieve every file from the last several weeks, as far back as they were kept. She was certain that the subjects had at least visited the estate once before the big night and hopefully, they would be on the video. If they had driven up, that would stand out, because Pauling’s private drive had very little traffic. As she fast forwarded through the recordings that covered the fence line, she finally managed to put her finger on what was bothering her most about this case: NIA protocol. Agents summoned to a case like this would have made their initial assessment about the sophistication of the crime based on the immediate scene, before continuing to analyze the rest of the house and grounds. Someone familiar with protocol would know that this was the exactly how you would need to frame a crime to get it flagged as both urgent and top priority; provided that you didn’t care if it fell apart upon closer inspection. What she couldn’t figure out is why someone would have gone to all that trouble. Was it possible that this was someone with ties to NIA or another government agency? No, it was likely just a coincidence. There was nothing to be gained from elevating the threat assessment. Hawkins sighed, rubbing her face with her hands, it could just be someone who had listened to too many true crime podcasts. It was impossible to tell from the information she had. Hopefully, when she found the people who did this, they would shed some light on the matter, because as it stood, nothing about this case made any sense.
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Pausing the video, Hawkins rubbed her eyes. It was 3:30am and she had only gone through about 1 week of surveillance; so far nothing had jumped out at her. It was mind numbing work, and she wished that she could speed it up more, but she couldn’t risk missing something. The only thing she had learned so far was that Pauling left home early, got home late and apparently didn’t bring guests or business associates by the house very often; all of this was consistent with the statement Pauling had given to the other agents. This made it even more interesting that the kidnappers seemed to know exactly where to go to get to his son, as the layout of the house would be known to few people. When her eyes finally regained the ability to focus, she resumed the video. Less than a minute later, Hawkins finally saw something unusual, and she quickly slowed the video down to normal speed. On screen, a black van drove slowly up the drive, and stopped at the guard shack. The driver pulled out a large map and waved the gatehouse guard over. It appeared that he was asking for directions. He opened the map and raised it up to eye level, blocking the guard’s view. The man in the passenger’s seat got out and lit a cigarette. Casually, he strolled away from the van and along the fence line, puffing his cigarette and glancing over through the bars every couple of feet. He got farther and farther from the van, until finally, he vanished from view. The driver was still talking to the guard, occasionally pointing to the map to punctuate a sentence. After several minutes, he offered the guard a cigarette and the two men stood, smoking, for almost 15 minutes before the passenger reappeared and got back into the van. Then, the van drove off. Hawkins sighed, this was interesting, but not really much help. The men both wore ball caps and made sure to hide their faces from the camera; the van’s plates had been removed. But, she took a still shot of the van from the screen anyway and made a note to have an agent talk to the gate guard and see if they could get a description of the men he had spoken too. She wasn’t holding out much hope though, it had been over a week since then. Most people couldn’t give an accurate description after 5 minutes, let alone 7 days. But she could always hope.
By the time she had finished taking photos and finding an agent who was available to go get a statement from the guard, it was 6am and sunlight was starting to bleed over the horizon, coloring the sky a dusky pink. Hawkins returned to her office; picking up the phone, she dialled the extension for the Biology lab.
“DNA forensics, this is Carson.”
“Hey Carson, it’s Taylor Hawkins. You got anything for me yet?”
Carson groaned,
“Hawkins, these things take time. You should know that. I have been working on this all night.”
“So, what have you got to show for it?” she quipped.
“Bloodshot eyes, 5 o’clock shadow and a girlfriend who isn’t speaking to me. It was our anniversary yesterday. We had dinner plans. Theatre tickets.”
“Anything useful?”
“You are an asshole, you know that?”
“People have mentioned it.”
“Look, give me about an hour, I should have something for you then,” Carson sighed.
“That’s what makes you the best in the business, Carson,” she chuckled.
“No, that’s what makes me a sucker, Hawkins. See you in an hour.”
The line went dead. Though she complained, the results really were incredibly fast. The new lab head had streamlined the process. In her days in the Bio wing, the turnaround time had been at least days, usually much longer. She checked her watch; an hour gave her just enough time for a quick nap. Hopefully, Carson would give her a solid lead, and if he did, she would need to be well rested. Relatively speaking. Setting her phone alarm for 7am, she lay her head on her desk and dozed off.