Page 44 of Pied Sniper

“This is a kidnap for money, not a murder,” I said. “The video proves that.”

“There’s one other person in the video,” said Delgado. “It looks like she’s reading what she says. Someone told her exactly what to say. There’s no evidence to suggest more than two unknowns, not at this point.”

“The shot doesn’t have any natural lighting and although they draped a sheet over the wall, I can see brickwork, some pipework, and what looks like an original wood floor in the left corner. That narrows down the location possibilities,” said Lucas.

“By how much?” asked Solomon.

“We can eliminate all newer buildings, both residential and commercial. It could be a warehouse and it’s unlikely to be leased because that would leave a paper trail. I can search for available rentals or buildings scheduled for demolition. It could even be inside the basement of an older house, maybe a foreclosure, or one that fails inspection. We can safely assume a kidnapper wouldn’t use their own home. I need to examine the video more closely to restrict the search parameters,” explained Lucas. “I want to isolate the audio too. Perhaps I can pick up something from that.”

“How did Abigail take it?” asked Delgado.

I turned to look up at him. “Understandably, she’s frightened for Tiffany. She wants to follow their demand not to alert the police. She also wants to arrange for the money to be available. I told her not to do anything until she has further proof of life.”

“Smart thinking,” said Solomon. “We need to know Tiffany is still alive before any ransom is paid. Now that we know what we’re dealing with, I like our chances of tracing another call or video. I want to send one of our guys to sit with Abigail.” He looked around, waved, and caught a tall man’s eye before indicating he should come over. Standing, Solomon walked over to meet him, leaned in and spoke. A couple of minutes later, the man was packing up a bag and signaling another guy to join him. “Alert Abigail and tell her two of our guys are on their way over and will remain with her.”

“For protection?” I asked.

“That, and they’re both ex-cops with some experience in call tracing. We’re expecting further contact and we need a call for proof of life. When contact is made, we have people on the ground to deal with it,” said Solomon.

“Abigail’s afraid if she involves the police, Tiffany will be killed instantly,” I explained, “but I think we should inform Maddox and Garrett anyway.”

“I agree. We’ll inform the taskforce discreetly and pass on this video. Right now, they’re following a number of possibilities. With this lead, they can consolidate the search, narrow their parameters, and we can all work together to find her,” said Solomon. “Lucas, please send it to both Maddox and Garrett now.”

“We have less than twenty-four hours left,” I reminded them.

“Which are a lot more hours than we thought we had,” said Solomon.

“I can work on the metadata. If they’re professionals, our guys will realize that and scrub any useful data. They might have used a VPN to mask their location.”

“A what?” I asked.

“A VPN. A virtual private network. It obscures the user’s identity and masks their IP address. The user can appear to be anywhere in the world.”

“I really hope they’re not doing that.”

“If they’re smart, they will, but I’m smarter. If they’re not, I’ll find something usable pretty quick. I’ll get back to you,” said Lucas.

I scooped up Tiffany’s laptop and stuck it under my arm. “While you do that, I’ll start investigating what’s on this,” I said.

“I’ll walk down with you,” said Solomon, rising when I did. “Lucas, tell me as soon as you’ve got something. Delgado?”

“I’ll keep reviewing the threats Lucas uncovered,” Delgado said, sliding into one of the now vacant chairs.

“At least, we know she’s most likely alive and they’ll keep her that way,” I said to Solomon as we left the office. “But there’s still a long list of people who had it in for her. That list Lucas showed us was hundreds of data points long!”

“I feel we might be on a wild goose chase with the visible threats made online. A professional kidnapper wouldn’t do that. They don’t announce their intention to hurt or kidnap; they just do it.”

“Then why tell Lucas and Delgado to comb through all that material?”

“We need to cover all bases, just in case it is a crazy who stopped fueling their anger with shitposting online. Plus, with Tiffany’s online presence as visible as it is, someone might have seen something, or know something about her disappearance and feel compelled to tell us. For all her enemies, she has plenty of supporters too.”

“I guess there are some people who want to hitch a free ride off her fame too. Maybe get two minutes in front of a news camera.” Even with Abigail’s statement to the press, they’d likely swoop on someone else to add exclusive elements to their coverage. I wondered if that were good or bad. It really depended on whom we found crawling out of the woodwork.

Solomon nodded. “We can’t rule that out, or that anyone doing so would be acting on Tiffany’s behalf,” he added. He tapped the laptop. “What do you expect to find on this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a direct threat? “If you don’t give me this, I’ll get you!” that sort of thing? An indication of someone she really pissed off? Emails with Jonathan Brett?”

“You think this could be revenge? Even though they demand money?”

---