Bell leaned against the door jamb, watching. Sam hadn’t bothered to get to his feet. He sat behind the desk, calmly looking at his wife, who had just come into the room. The campaign manager and the camera guy were standing to the side; neither had said anything since Dugan had stormed in.
“Why?” Rachel asked, her voice cracking. “Why would you do that?”
“As I have just explained to the agent here,” Sam said, pointing his chin toward Dugan, “I was doing back-to-back radio interviews on the land line. I had to turn my cell off, quite obviously, for that. Why is everybody having such a hard time understanding that?”
“I can’t do this,” Rachel said softly. Bell stepped forward, almost involuntarily, thinking that she might collapse.
Sam held up his phone. “It’s on now. She’ll call back.”
“She won’t call back,” Dugan said. “She knows we have the location. She’s long gone. Like yesterday. You remember yesterday—when you hung up on her?”
“I remember yesterday,” Sam said. “It was day three of the FBI’s ongoing incompetence in this matter. And this would be day four of the same.”
Dugan turned and walked out. Bell waited a moment, watching Rachel Jackson. Sam seemed to notice Bell for the first time.
“What is the NYPD doing at this time?” “Waiting for a break in the case,” Bell told. “You know—like a phone call.”
He left the room then as well, moving through the house to where Heyward, his cellphone to his ear, was in the process of updating the location map, while Dugan stood by watching. The call had come from Hershey, Pennsylvania. Heyward encircled the town in red before stepping away, still talking to somebody on the phone.
“It’s a circle,” Dugan said. “Closest thing we have to a pattern. They’re moving counterclockwise around the city.” Using his forefinger, he tapped the locations on the map. “New York to Greenfield, Greenfield to Elmira, Elmira to Hershey. Which means—they should continue moving south, toward Baltimore. Maybe back east to Newark. Definitely a pattern.”
“A pattern signifying what?” Bell asked. “All we know is that so far she’s been calling from small town pay phones. Clockwise, counterclockwise, corkscrew—it doesn’t tell us shit.”
“It tells us that they’re on the move, and we now know the direction.”
“We don’t even know it’s they,” Bell reminded him. “You’re under the impression they’re moving the little girl from town to town?”
“It would seem that way, wouldn’t it?”
“No,” Bell said. “Not to me.”
“So you’re with Sam Jackson on this,” Dugan said. “You think this woman is just a scammer?”
“Oh, I think she has the girl,” Bell said. “Or she’s working with somebody who does. This is too well-orchestrated to be somebody just throwing darts at the wall. But I don’t see them moving the girl. Her picture is on every website, every newspaper. The six o’clock news. What do they gain by moving her? They’ve got her stashed somewhere.”
Dugan flicked the back of his hand toward the map. “Where?”
“If I knew that,” Bell said, “I’d go and get her.”
“Okay, hold on,” Heyward said into the phone and he looked at Dugan. “Pay phone’s in a little community center, middle of town. I got one of the local cops on the line. He’s at the scene now. Phone’s in the entrance, no cameras. They’re going to dust for prints.”
“Good luck with that,” Dugan said.
Heyward began talking into the phone again, telling whoever was on the other end to speak to anybody working at the center, and anybody who might have been in the area at the time the woman called.
Dugan was on his own phone then, instructing somebody to get their asses over to Hershey to do a door-to-door canvas of the neighborhood around the community center.
“Somebody saw this woman,” he said into the phone. “Somebody at that building, somebody on the street. And somebody saw her get into a car. She’s not invisible. You and Malone need to get over there. I don’t want the local cops fucking this up.”
Bell was looking at the map. The last remark was for his ears and he knew it. He smiled. Fuck you, Dugan. He considered the route again. Greenfield, Massachusetts. Elmira, New York. Hershey, Pennsylvania. Dugan was right—it was a circle moving counterclockwise around the city. But that didn’t tell them anything, and it certainly didn’t suggest where the woman would call from next. But why those towns? Bell was inclined to believe that they weren’t random. And they hadn’t been chosen because they all happened to have pay phones located in relatively private areas. There were thousands of towns that would qualify. There was a method to what she was doing, but Bell had no clue as to what it was. He took a step forward, closer to the map, looking again at the towns in question.
“You’re assuming that the woman is traveling in a circle,” he said over his shoulder.
Dugan was sending a text and he finished before looking up. “I’m not assuming anything. I know she’s traveling in a circle. You’ve got eyes, don’t you?”
Bell traced the route with his forefinger. “So you’re saying she drove to Greenfield, then she drove to Elmira, then to Hershey.”
“Yes,” Dugan said impatiently. “She called from those three towns.”
“If she’s got the little girl, then that means she’s dragged the kid across three states so far. I don’t buy that. Why would she risk a routine traffic stop with the kid in the car?” Bell tapped his finger on the map, on a spot roughly in the center of Dugan’s circle. “What if they’re holed up here someplace? She drives to Greenfield, makes a call, and goes home. Drives to Elmira, makes the call, and goes home. And then Hershey, same thing. It’s a circle, but she’s not moving in a circle. She’s operating from the hub.”
Dugan shook his head. “Why would she be doing that?”
“To confuse us.” Bell smiled. “And it’s working. Right, Special Agent Dugan? The question remains though—why those towns? Is it random, simply because they’re far apart? Is that all it is?”
“You’re forgetting I’m not buying your fucking hub theory,” Dugan told him.
Bell kept looking at the map. “You ever play Keep Away when you were a kid, Dugan? You’re in the middle and your buddies are tossing the ball back and forth and they’ve got you running every which way. You ever play that?”
“No,” Dugan said. He was looking at his phone again, not all that interested in the conversation. “I wasn’t into playground games.”
“Well, that’s what she’s doing with us,” Bell said. “She’s playing Keep Away.”