The Chain(72)

“And then you came here,” Rachel says.

“We moved to Cambridge in 2004. I was offered an associate professorship with tenure. Who turns down something like that at MIT? All was good until 2010, when…” He chokes up and his voice dies away. He takes another drink and pulls himself together. “My wife was bicycling home from her studio in Newton and was hit by an SUV. She was killed immediately.”

“I’m sorry,” Rachel says.

He smiles weakly at her and nods. “It was terrible. I wanted to die, but I had a daughter. We got through it. A thing like that. You think you won’t, but you do. It took us five years. Five long years. Things were finally starting to turn around, and then…”

“The Chain,” Pete says.

“March fourth, 2015. They took Anna when she was walking home from school. In Cambridge, in broad daylight. It was only four blocks.”

“They took my daughter at the school-bus stop.”

Erik takes out his wallet and shows them a picture of a bright-looking curly-haired girl in jeans and a T-shirt.

“Anna was thirteen years old, but very shy, young for her age. Vulnerable. When they told me what I had to do to free her, I could not believe it. How can anyone contemplate such things? Nevertheless, I did what I had to do. Anna was kept underground in the darkness for four days before she was released.”

“Oh my God.”

“She never recovered from the ordeal. She began having seizures, hearing voices. A year later, she tried to kill herself by cutting her wrists in the bathtub and she’s now in a psychiatric hospital in Vermont. When I go to see her, sometimes she doesn’t even know me. My own daughter. She has good days and bad days. Very bad days. My beautiful, intelligent Anna, in a bib, being fed baby food with a plastic spoon. The Chain has ruined my life and my daughter’s life and ever since then, I have been looking for a way to kill it.”

“Is there a way to kill it?” Rachel asks.

“Perhaps,” Erik replies. “Now it is your turn to speak. What’s your story?”

Pete shakes his head. “No, this isn’t a quid pro quo. Like you say, we don’t know you from Adam—”

“They took my daughter,” Rachel says. “I had to take someone else’s little girl. I’ve been having nightmares ever since. My daughter’s in a very, very bad place.”

“And you have cancer,” Erik comments.

Rachel smiles and unconsciously touches her thinning hair. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

“And you are from New York,” Erik says.

“Maybe I’m just a Yankees fan,” Rachel replies.

“You are both. And you are a brave Yankees fan. One who does not mind getting dirty looks from every single person in this town.”

“I’d be happy if it was only looks,” Rachel says and manages another smile.

“I have been researching the entity known as The Chain for over a year now,” he says and passes his notebook to Rachel and Pete. They undo the elastic strap and open it.

It is filled with dates, names, charts, observations, data points, extrapolations, diary entries, essays. All written in black in a spidery, tiny script. Written, they note, in a cipher.

“At first there was nothing; fear kept people quiet. But then I dug deeper and I found references to The Chain in anonymous personal ads in newspapers. I noticed one or two obscure hints here and there. An odd crime report that did not add up. I did a sieve-map analysis, statistical-regression analysis, Markov chain modeling, a temporal-event analysis. I collated the results and regressed them, and I have come to a few conclusions. Not many, but a few.”

“What conclusions?” Rachel asks.

“I believe The Chain began sometime between 2012 and 2014. The regression analysis leads back to a median date of 2013. The ones who run it, of course, want us to believe that it is an ancient entity that has not been bested in scores, even hundreds, of years, but I think this is a lie.”

“An ancient provenance makes it seem even more unbeatable,” Rachel agrees.

“Exactly. But I do not think it is ancient,” Erik says and he takes another sip from his glass.

“I don’t think so either,” Rachel says.

“What other conclusions have you reached?” Pete asks.

“Obviously, the builder of The Chain is very intelligent. College-educated. Genius-level IQ. Very well read. Probably around my age. Probably a white male.”

Rachel shakes her head slowly. “I don’t think so,” she says.

“I have done the research. Predators like this generally operate within their ethnic group. Even allowing for the pseudorandom element in victim selection. He’s around my age or perhaps a little older.”

Rachel frowns but says nothing.

“The Chain is a self-perpetuating mechanism whose purpose is to protect itself and make money for its founder,” Erik goes on. “I believe The Chain was designed by a white male in his late forties early in this decade, perhaps as a response to the recession and banking crisis. Possibly adapted from Latin American replacement-victim kidnapping models.”

Rachel takes a sip of her Guinness. “You might be right about the inception date but you’re wrong about the age and the gender.”

Erik and Pete both look at her with surprise.