The picture was dark, but we could see Erin Easton in her sparkling pink top being helped out of the back of the box truck by a man. His face was turned away from the camera, but he was wearing the same baseball cap we had seen in the surveillance video.
“It gets better,” Venetia said. She swiped the screen, and this time Erin and her abductor were in close-up, their faces lit by one of the glaring overhead parking-lot lights.
“Shit, shit, shit!” McMaster said. His hand swooped in and grabbed her phone.
Venetia immediately let loose a barrage of F-bombs and tried to wrestle it back. Koulermos jumped in and pulled her off him.
In less than three seconds, I went from the high of catching a break to full-blown rage at a rogue retiree.
I wheeled around. “Phone!” I said.
McMaster handed it over. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Not now!” I turned back to Venetia. “You okay, Ms. Jones?”
“I’m good,” she said. “You good?”
“Real good. I’m going to need to keep your phone.”
“No problem. I got a backup … or two.”
“Did you see where they went?”
“Sorry, honey. I got a business call just then. By the time I looked up again they was gone. One thing I can tell you—wherever they went, they wasn’t walking. That girl was not too steady on them red-bottom stilettos.”
“Thanks. Officer Koulermos will take you to the precinct. I want you to write up everything you saw. He’ll also take the case number on that little Rolex misunderstanding.”
She flashed me a smile that was one part gratitude and three parts victory.
I handed the cop a twenty. “Buy Ms. Jones some dinner.”
“There’s a real fine sushi-takeout place on Amsterdam,” she said, “but it’s not cheap.”
I handed the cop another twenty. It was a small price to pay for a picture of the kidnapper.
As soon as Koulermos led Venetia to the car, I turned to McMaster and held her phone to his face. “Who is he?” I said. “And where do I find him?”
CHAPTER 13
HIS NAME IS Bobby Dodd,” McMaster said. “He’s been obsessed with Erin for years. It goes back long before I started working for her. He’s broken into her home four times. Once here in New York, another time at her house in Aspen, and twice at her villa in Tuscany.”
“Was he ever collared?” I asked.
“No. We knew it was him, but we never had enough proof.”
“Erin’s doing pretty well for herself if she’s got three homes,” Kylie said.
“She’s got five. It used to be six, but Hurricane Irma destroyed the beach house on Anguilla. Insurance covered less than twenty percent of the loss. Erin is a real estate junkie. As soon as she pulls together four or five million dollars, she starts looking for something new to buy or renovates and redecorates one of the houses she already owns. She makes a lot of money, but she has almost no liquid assets.”
“Maybe that’s why Dodd waited till after the wedding ceremony before he abducted her,” Kylie said. “She doesn’t have ransom money. Her new husband does.”
McMaster shook his head. “I had the same thought, and now I’m kicking myself for it. As soon as we knew she was kidnapped, my mind jumped to the ransom demands. That’s why I didn’t immediately think of Dodd. She’s got more than one stalker, and Dodd isn’t the type to do this for money.”
“Then what does he want?”
“Her,” McMaster said.
“You don’t think he’ll ask for ransom money?” Kylie said.
“He might. But that doesn’t mean he’ll let her go if we pay. The man’s got a PhD in crazy. I don’t know if God told him this or he just came up with the idea on his own, but he’s positive that he and Erin are soul mates and they’re destined to be together forever. He’s told her that in the letters and e-mails he’s sent her and in person every time he’s gotten close enough.”
“What about an order of protection?”
“If Erin filed an order against every looney tune who stood in the crowd professing his love for her, she’d spend a hell of a lot of time in court. Celebs know they live in a fishbowl. They don’t get litigious unless it gets physical or if there are kids involved. They just beef up security and move on with their well-documented lives.”
“What else can you tell us about Mr. Dodd?” I said.
“He’s forty years old, grew up in Clarksville, Tennessee. His grandfather was a stonemason and started teaching the kid the tricks of the trade when he was only ten. He was quite the craftsman, but his father was a Marine, and Bobby wanted to follow in Daddy’s footsteps. He enlisted in the Corps when he was eighteen and served twelve years, so he’s well trained in self-defense, weaponry, concealment, and survival techniques. He’s smart. Not like Jeopardy! smart; more like Rambo smart. If he decides to go underground and squirrel Erin away in some cabin in Idaho or Montana or God knows where, we’ll never find her.”
“You have a file on him?” I asked.
“A fat one. I can access it from my phone and send it wherever you want.”
“For starters, e-mail it to me and Kylie. We’ll open up a case with Real Time Crime and get people down at One PP digging up anything and everything they can find on Dodd. The private correspondence you have from him to Erin won’t be on their radar, so thanks—that’ll help.”
“We should call in the Violent Felony Squad,” Kylie said.
The computer cops at Real Time feed us valuable data, but they never leave their desks. The Violent Felony Squad is an elite team that will visit Dodd’s known hangouts, comb through his social media activity to track down possible accomplices, check his credit card usage, and try to find him by analyzing dozens of his other daily habits, patterns, and routines.
“I agree,” I said. “Violent Felony will give us eyes, ears, and feet on the street.”
“Are you sure that’s as deep as you want to go?” McMaster said. “We’ve got Dodd’s picture. If you release it to the media, you’ll have eight million pairs of eyes looking for—”
Kylie cut him off. “Dodd doesn’t know we know who he is. If we release his picture to the media or even just circulate it through the department, he’s going to find out. And if he’s as cunning as you say he is, once he knows we’re onto him, he may drop off the face of the earth completely. Violent Felony is the best way to do an intense search and keep it contained.”
“Your call,” McMaster said. Clearly he didn’t agree. But at least he was finally coming around to the understanding that he didn’t get a vote.
Kylie and I had bent the rules by bringing him up here. It had paid off because as Erin’s chief of security, he’d recognized the perp. But without that bird on his shoulder anymore, this was as far as he was going to go. I figured it would be easier on him if Kylie cut him loose. I gave her a head nod, and she caught it.
“Thanks for everything, Declan,” she said. “I got the e-mail you sent. Zach and I are going to shoot up to the Bronx and check out Dodd’s last known address.”