The Darkness - Jason Pinter [80]
that the guy Chester who kidnapped Paulina is the same guy
who killed Brett Kaiser. Physical descriptions matched.
Curt Sheffield is helping me track him down, going off the
physical info plus access to explosives and drugs."
"Do you think this guy," Jack said, "could be the Fury?"
"I don't think so," I said. "The descriptions from both
Paulina and Kaiser's doorman peg the suspect in his late
thirties or early forties. It's not impossible but I suspect
twenty years ago he would have been a little too young
to run a drug empire."
"So then he must be working for somebody," Jack
said. "Somebody smart enough to go after Paulina, and
somebody powerful enough to have their fingers dug
into the NYPD."
"So how the hell do we find out who this guy is?" I
said. "Sheffield is looking into it, but if Paulina is right
then most of my contacts in the department are useless.
Paulina said this guy showed her a picture of her daughter
that was part of an album posted on a social networking
site. The way these things work is that the only people
who have access to the pictures you post are the people
you accept as friends."
"You're saying this guy would be stupid enough to be
her friend online?"
"No," I said. "But I think he found someone who was
because this particular photo was left off the site. Paulina
gave me a list of everyone her daughter is friends with.
Jack, I know you're used to typewriters and ink quills, but
this is going to take some electronic legwork."
"I can use the Google," Jack said.
"Yeah...I was afraid you'd say that. The list is upstairs.
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Forget about Victoria Kaiser for now. What we need to
do is cross-check everyone on that list with Abigail Cole,
if need be call everyone she's friends with online."
"She's in college, right? That could be hundreds of
people."
"Good thing you don't have any children, you won't
go into it knowing how damn difficult it is to talk to
someone in their late teens or early twenties."
"You're not that far from that age, Henry," Jack said.
"Yeah, I know. Why do you think I know they're all
nightmares?"
Jack laughed. "Okay, sport, let's go. Just one thing."
"What's that?"
"I accidentally spilled coffee on my keyboard. Can you
ask the help desk for a new one? This would be my fourth
and I don't think they'll give me another one."
"Sure," I said. "Come on, George Jetson, let's go find
Mr. Joshua."
30
I forgot what it was like to be a college student.
Abigail Cole had one hundred and ninety-seven
friends on Facebook. Many of them had public profiles,
and from that I was able to glean phone numbers and
sometimes e-mail addresses. To those who had e-mail addresses, I sent notes asking to speak to them in a matter
pertaining to an ongoing investigation. I clearly identified
myself, hoping one would cop to giving Chester the
photo.
At least four of them picked up their cell phone during
class. I could tell this because someone said quite audibly
that if the phone wasn't turned off posthaste, F would be
merely the first of four letters on that student's papers.
When I was in college, one of my dreams was to have
a beeper some day. As young as I was, sometimes I felt
pretty old.
Frustration began to seep in after I'd contacted nearly
thirty of Abigail's friends and made no headway. I wasn't
even sure how many of these people she was still close
to, or whether or not they were real friends or just random
friends-of-friends-of-friends.
There had to be an easier way to do this. And just
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when I was about to brainstorm what that was, Jack came
walking over.
He had a big smile on his face, the kind of smile that
you didn't often see on a man approaching seventy. This
was more along the lines of a young child who'd accidentally discovered a hidden Christmas present that they
didn't expect to be there. Jack almost looked embarrassed
to be happy.
"What's got you so toothy?" I said.
"I think I found it," he said.
"Found what?"
Jack took a chair from