Forgive Me(38)

When she saw them, she tailed young, single girls because that was the bait that attracted this shark. The girls came in all shapes, sizes, and colors, but shared one common attribute—they came, and in great numbers, too. It was a Saturday, and Angie was having a hard time keeping up with the endless flow of bodies that came in and out of Union Station. Everyone there had a story and she couldn’t help but wonder if some of the girls she followed were just like Nadine—na?ve girls from troubled homes who fled their sad circumstances thinking they would be safer, happier on their own. Angie had been in business long enough to know they were almost always mistaken.

Mike checked in a couple times from his bouncy house party. In the background, Angie could hear what sounded like a bazillion kids making enough noise to drown out a fleet of jet airliners.

“So any luck?” Mike shouted into the phone.

Angie scrunched up her face as she struggled to make out what he said. “How do you stand all that racket?”

“What?”

Angie sighed. “I’m fine. No luck yet!” She startled a young couple walking by, who shot her an aggrieved look.

“Did you say he’s in a truck?”

“Good-bye, Mike.” Angie ended the call.

The only news she had to share was that she wasn’t alone on the assignment. Vincent had circulated the man’s photograph to everyone in mall security, as well as Amtrak police and the TSA and DHS security teams assigned to the station. He also sent a group e-mail to all the merchants to be on the lookout for the man in the attached photograph. He said only that the man was a suspect in an ongoing shoplifting investigation. Vincent believed that would get as much attention as the truth, and wouldn’t start a panic about a possible predator running loose.

Angie trailed a willowy girl in a strappy dress into The Body Shop, and then into Papyrus, then over to Nine West. She remembered how much she hated shopping. The joy of trying on a pair of jeans just for fun was utterly lost on her. She got her high from making a break in a case, not saving 10 percent by opening a new J.Crew credit card account. Shopping to her was long lines, annoying environments, and clothes that didn’t fit quite right.

By four o’clock, she was feeling low on energy so she got a green drink at Jamba Juice and sat in an Amtrak waiting area to recharge. She called Bao to check in.

“What’s going on?”

“Just home working on that code.”

“And?”

“And I’ve tried everything. Got some crypto guys who are better at this than me to take a few swings. There are all sorts of ciphers and codes terrorists use that we’re trying.”

“Bao, my mom was not a terrorist.”

He gave a little chuckle. “Yeah, yeah, for sure. But the tricks are still good, so we’re trying ’em all on for size.”

“How’s it going?”

“Slowly. It could be a substitution pattern. That’s a pretty basic technique. Since we’ve established your mom was not a terrorist, it makes sense the code wouldn’t be too sophisticated.”

“What’s substitution?”

“Basically it’s two alphabets, and you shift one or more characters to the right or left. But these can be super tricky to crack if the alphabet is scrambled.”

Angie took out the photograph, spent a moment looking at the girl’s face, and turned the image over to see the words on the back. There was that code—IC12843488. Most of the coded message was numbers, which made Bao’s efforts a little confusing and perhaps misplaced. “There’s hardly any letters here,” she said.

“Well, what if May God forgive me is in code?”

That made more sense. “So we think the message says one thing, but it really means something else.”

“If we can figure out the key, perhaps. But we don’t have a lot of text to count letter usage or help us look for patterns. That kind of makes it uncrackable.”

“Is there another technique my mom could have used?”

“If I focus on the numbers, it might tell us a different story.”

“What kind of story?”

Bao made a hmmm sound. “Think about a telephone keypad. A keypad has numbers associated with letters, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So then it’s a game of matching. Can we make any words out of the different combinations? There’s also the Caesar Shift cipher.” Bao was in full brain dump mode, but Angie’s focus was too fragmented to let her concentrate.

She gave him a half listen, keeping her eyes out for any youngish girls traveling alone, apart from their pack. Girls who looked like they were lost among the crowd. Girls who seemed unsure of themselves. The streets were a Darwinian place, and hunters like the handsome bald guy were experts at spotting the weak ones.

Angie tried to follow Bao’s description of the Caesar Shift, making a drawing on a napkin to keep up. Angie’s big takeaway was that Bao had his work cut out for him.

“Keep it going, Bao. I appreciate all you’re doing.”

“Working hard. What’s the story there?”

“Keeping my eyes open. We sent a picture of the guy from the surveillance tape to the DC police, so that’ll give us extra eyes on our prize.”

“Good deal. Hang tough, Ange.”

“You too, Bao.”