The cab driver who delivered the package was a recent immigrant from Pakistan. They detained him at the station, putting him in an interrogation room until Bell arrived. The bulky manila envelope had Bell’s name scrawled on it in block letters, along with the precinct. Nothing else. Bell looked in at the cab driver and then left him waiting while he pulled on latex gloves and opened the package. Inside was a baggie containing a small smear of blood and skin. Written on the baggie with a magic marker were the initials VJ.
“Who is VJ?” Lynn asked when Bell took the envelope and baggie to show her.
“Vanessa Jackson,” Bell said.
Lynn thought about that. “We need to swab the parents.”
Bell called Rachel Jackson and asked her to come to the station but he didn’t tell her why. She grew anxious, fearing the worst, so he told her simply that they might have a lead. He didn’t want to tell her over the phone what it was.
The cab driver’s name was Azhar. Bell gave him a cup of coffee and sat across from him. The man spoke English fairly well. Better than a lot of New Yorkers, Bell decided. He was maybe thirty-five, wearing brown pants and a checkered short-sleeved shirt. He was perspiring in the heat of the room.
“A man approached me outside Grand Central Station,” he told Bell.“He waved me down. I told him to get into my cab but he did not want to do this. He hands me the envelope and asks of me to deliver it to this station. And he gives me this.” Azhar pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his shirt pocket.
“Was he wearing gloves?” Bell asked.
“Yes, he was wearing gloves. In spite of this warm weather we are having.”
Bell nodded. Lynn was checking the envelope and baggie for prints. Bell guessed they would find Azhar’s only on the envelope and none at all on the baggie. The same would be probably be true of any DNA, but they would have to try.
“What did he look like?” he asked the cab driver.
“A white man,” Azhar said. “Maybe the same height as you. Clean shaven. A somewhat heavy man.”
“Round face?”
“A round face. Yes.”
“Did he look like Curly from the Three Stooges?”
“Stooges?”
“Never mind. What else did he say?”
“He told me I must do as he asks. If I do not wish to do so, I should tell him.”
“And you agreed.”
“Yes. It seemed a simple thing.”
“An easy hundred bucks.”
Azhar nodded. “Yes. An easy hundred bucks.”
“That’s all he said?”
“Yes.”
“Where did he go?” Bell asked. “Did he walk into the station?”
“No. He stood there as I drove away. I looked in the mirror and still he was standing there. Maybe he stands there now.”
“I doubt it,” Bell said.
He left and went downstairs for a copy of the sketch they had of the guy who’d stuffed McIlroy in the trunk of the limo, the guy they assumed had grabbed the kid. The sketch McIlroy had helped render afterward. Bell took it back to the interrogation room and showed it to Azhar, who squinted as he looked at it, tilting his head one way and then the other.
“Maybe,” he said.
Bell was thinking it was more than maybe, although the sketches were always an iffy proposition. And this one had emerged from the beer-soaked brain of a limo driver who had just passed several hours in the trunk of a car.
“Now I can go?” Azhar asked.
“Not yet,” Bell said. He didn’t tell the cabbie that he was in for a long night, by the time they checked out his immigration papers and his employment record and the personal details he’d given. Bell hoped for his sake that everything was in order. He suspected that it was; otherwise the man would have tucked the hundred in his pocket and tossed the package into the nearest trash can.
When he went downstairs again Rachel Jackson was there, waiting for him, dressed in black jeans and a hoodie with some designer’s initials on it. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing glasses. He hadn’t seen her in glasses before. Maybe she wore contacts.
“What’s going on?” Her voice was thin with worry.
“We got a delivery,” Bell said and he took her upstairs to the lab where Lynn had the baggie. She’d already transferred the contents to a glass slide and documented the DNA. When Bell explained the situation, Rachel sat down heavily. Her eyes welled up.
“This is not as ominous as it seems,” he said. “First off, we need a sample of your DNA to see if this is even your daughter. And secondly, I wouldn’t call this a threat. Keep in mind that at no point has this woman threatened to harm Vanessa. If that was the case—they’d be sending a finger or an ear. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. What this is—if it turns out to be genuine—is a response to your husband constantly saying that he doesn’t believe these people have her.”
“But that’s my daughter’s blood,” Rachel said. “What—they cut her?”
Lynn stepped forward. “I wouldn’t say she was cut. Under the microscope there’s no sharp edges. A little bit of skin and a little bit of blood. Looks to me like somebody scraped their elbow.”
“Let’s do the swab and see what we have,” Bell said.
“Is your husband coming?” Lynn asked.
“He’s out of town,” Rachel said quickly. “Why do you need both?”
Lynn paused. “We can swab him when he gets back.”
She swabbed Rachel’s mouth and told her she would have the results by the next day. Bell walked Rachel downstairs. He called a cab and they stood outside waiting for it.
“Why are they doing this now?” Rachel asked. “I asked her to call me.”
“I suspect this is for your husband’s benefit. If the DNA matches, he’s finally going to have to admit that these people have your daughter.”
Rachel nodded. “He called. He saw the press conference.”
“And?”
“He’s not happy with me.” She looked over. “He says the FBI isn’t happy with you.”
“We’re an unpopular pair,” Bell said. “I guess we’ve got a lot of nerve, trying to find your daughter.”
Rachel actually smiled, but it faded. “What happens next?”
“I think she’s going to call you again.” Bell nodded his head toward the station behind them. “They’ve gone to a lot of trouble to convince you that they have her. So they’ll call. When they do, I suggest you find out what they want.”
“And then what?”
“And then give it to them.”