"I thought you were off today," Thornton said when Ransom came into the conference room early Monday morning. His team was there, looking tense and worried.
Ransom nodded, glancing at the board with the pictures of the missing people. Below each one was a list of what he and the team knew—or didn't know—about each person. Walking over, he tacked the photo Allyn had emailed him of Liam at the end of the row.
"Another one?" Daniels asked.
"Yeah. He was at the film festival party."
Daniels looked at Thornton. "I don't remember him. Do you?"
"He's vaguely familiar." Thornton smiled dryly. "But considering the… No, wait, I do recall seeing him. He was in the crowd surrounding that actor. Umm, Oliver Wilson. The kid stood out because he was wearing a dark red tux with a red ascot, instead of a bow tie. I thought that was weird, but…" He shrugged.
"Was anyone overly interested in him?" Ransom asked.
"No. I mean he got a few looks, especially from the women, but that was it."
"I've asked the security people at the building to send us the discs from the cameras covering the exits. He should stand out, so at least we'll know which door he used, and if we're damned lucky, they might have caught someone approaching him at that point."
"Or he'll have walked away and out of view, the same as with the other vics," Hanna Lane pointed out.
"Probably." Ransom frowned, recalling the security video they had showing Ellis Patterson leaving the masked ball. His friends said he was with someone. The tall, dark-haired man, but that didn't show up on the tape. "I wonder," he said aloud, "Does our perp know enough to avoid being filmed?"
"Probably," Thornton replied, "considering he's been able to abduct three—and now maybe four—people without anyone seeing it happen.
They spent the next half hour going over, once again, what they knew about the presumed victims, adding the details about Liam into the mix.
"If we had bodies…" Hanna said at one point.
"Then we'd know for certain there really is something going on," Ransom agreed. He was frustrated—and he knew his team was, as well—by the lack of any concrete evidence saying the four missing people really were victims of a crime.
A messenger from the Board of Trade building arrived, handing Ransom the discs he'd requested. Ransom booted up the computer, and the team began going through them, looking for the red tux.
"Seems like Mr. Kavanagh wasn't the only man wearing red," Johnson said when a beefy man appeared on one disc, going out the front door of the building.
"Him I do remember," Daniels commented. "He had more than enough to drink and was pestering some of the young ladies."
"There," Ransom said when they moved on to the view from the rear exit of the building. He paused the scene about halfway through, tapping the screen. Liam was just leaving and seemed relieved by the fact. Ransom started the scene rolling again. Liam moved forward, then stopped, looking to his left. He nodded, saying something. For a brief moment, a second man came into the frame before both he and Liam walked out of view of the camera.
Ransom backed it up, freezing the view of the man, and zoomed in. "Not much to go on, since we can only see him in partial profile," he said.
"Tall, with dark hair, like the description of the man seen with Ellis Patterson," Johnson said.
Ransom zoomed in even closer. "Enough of his right eye to tell that it's gray, which helps. Gray eyes are very rare."
"Normal nose, normal features, as far as I can tell," Thornton said. "He wouldn't stand out in a crowd."
"He didn't," Daniels replied dryly, "if he was inside at the party. And if he was, he didn't make any overt moves on anyone. I was watching for people who did—like the other man in red."
Ransom nodded. He hit Print Screen and pasted the image into a document file which he then printed out. "I'm going to show this to someone I know who attended a fair number of society events. He was at the masked ball the night Patterson disappeared. With luck, he might have seen this man."
"If it was a masked ball, wouldn't the guy have been wearing a mask too?" Hanna asked.
"Undoubtedly, but still, seeing this picture might strike a chord in my friend's memory."
