Page 56 of Save Her Life

Brice gathered the photographs back into a folder and left the room. A moment later, he joined her and Elwood.

“You did well in there. We’ll get him.” Her phone rang, and she pulled it out to see it was Lakisha and answered. As shelistened to her message, she was smiling. Then she said, “We’ll be at your desk as fast as possible.” She hung up and signaled for Brice to join her. “You’re on a break from the interview, so you might as well join me.”

“Hold up,” Elwood called out. His authoritative tone had her stopping in the doorway and turning around.

“We need more proof against Duane,” she said, “and we just might have it. That was Lakisha Hester from the Science and Tech Branch. She has CCTV footage ready to watch from the area around DiversaBlend.”

“Go. In the meantime, I’ll dispatch agents to find this Lucy, see if we can poke a hole in Novak’s alibi. I’ll also send some to canvass the neighborhood surrounding the Novaks’ property to see if anyone else saw Duane at his parents’ place with someone or caught the plate number on that Ford.”

“Thanks.” She hustled out, not about to wait around in case he changed his mind.

TWENTY-SIX

Sandra and Brice got out of the car and passed through the security measures at FBI headquarters and then on to where the Science and Tech agents were holed up.

Lakisha waved them over when they were close to her desk and got up to hug her.

Sandra wished she hadn’t done that because she could feel herself flaking apart. “Thank you, but we should probably just watch that video.”

“Yeah, of course.” She dropped back into her chair, clicked on a file, and M Street NW came onto the screen. “Oh, just one quick thing. I was able to determine the man from the DiversaBlend video was six foot two inches. I couldn’t make out anything else that was useful. All right, so are you ready?” Lakisha made eye contact with Sandra.

As I’ll ever be…Sandra nodded, and Lakisha hit play on the video.

The footage was a sideview and captured Olivia leaving DiversaBlend, wearing her backpack and carrying her violin case. She started to move down the sidewalk. The man in the fleece-lined jean jacket was only about ten feet behind. Others were on the sidewalk too, and Olivia was weaving betweenthem. It could certainly be Duane Novak, but none of the angles captured the man’s face directly, and he’d put on a ballcap. His head was facing slightly downward, not affording a strong profile shot either. Likely intentional.

Olivia continued to walk down the sidewalk and picked up speed. There was a black van parked at the curb, and Sandra wished she could climb into the video and travel back in time, because she had this sixth sense of what was about to happen.

She continued to watch as Novak swept behind her daughter and pushed her toward the side of the van. Likely inside. The video didn’t have sound, but Olivia would have likely been so startled she hadn’t a second to scream. And if the people behind this were anywhere close to being professional criminals, they’d have silenced her by some means the moment she was tucked into the vehicle.

The van merged into traffic seconds later, and no one on the sidewalk seemed to pay any attention.

“Liv.” Her daughter’s name left her lips in a whisper.

Lakisha hit pause. If she or Brice had heard her, they respectfully gave no indication. Both kept their gaze on the screen and were silent. But what was there to say? It was a scenario she had pictured, even expected, but watching it take place was surreal. In fact, until now a tiny part of her clung to the hope she was somehow misreading things. That Olivia would miraculously turn up unharmed with an explanation for her disappearance. That was the mother in her begging for a reprieve. What she’d seen just confirmed what the fed in her knew all along. Her daughter was kidnapped.

“Sandra.” Lakisha was the first to break the silence.

Now Lakisha and Brice looked at her. Sandra was numb as her heart raced. “We knew someone took her. We just have the irrefutable proof now.” The more affirmative she spoke, it might sink in.

“It might not have been the Ford sedan, but that guy’s build and gait sure looks like Duane Novak’s,” Brice put in.

She nodded but wavered in confidence. The man on the video was without a face. Was it Novak? Regardless of whether it was or wasn’t, what did this man want? So far, this person was a coward without a voice who’d snatched a child from the street.

Thankfully her mind continued to work, but thoughts were forming so rapidly, it was challenging to grasp one. “The van could belong to another friend. Any shots of the license plate?”

“Let’s find out.” Lakisha reversed until the black van pulled up and the angle made it possible to see that the front plate was blacked out. The tech forwarded and the same applied to the rear plate.

“They thought this through,” Brice said.

Sandra shot him a look. If he wasn’t going to offer something helpful, she’d rather he kept quiet. “We need to know where they went.”

“Already on it.” Lakisha clicked here and there, but it didn’t take long to see the van headed out of the city, across Key Bridge.

Lakisha slumped in her chair. “I’m sorry, Sandra. I wish that…”

Sandra put a hand on her shoulder and took a shuddering breath. “We’ll figure this out even if Novak refuses to talk. We’ll find his friend.” After all, tracking people down was what she was good at, and it always started with a base of facts. “They were waiting for her,” she said. “They must have known about her routine of going to DiversaBlend after school. They waited until she was alone and snatched her.”

“It seems we all agree there were at least two,” Brice said. “Novak and the driver.”

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