Tommy's description of his friend was perfect.
The flight into St. Louis had been wretched, but once Camille laid eyes on Sam Babington, that mess was all but forgotten. He was as advertised: big, strong, and rugged, and she walked straight up to him and held out her hand without even stopping to inquire. When he smiled at her—and it was one hell of a smile—it could've been an angel or a devil looking back at her.
"Mr. Babington, thanks so much for picking me up. I understand St. Louis isn't your favorite place."
He squeezed her hand warmly and laughed. His was a rough, booming chuckle. He radiated warmth, and his smile seemed to broaden.
"Nah, it's a nice town. I just had some bad experiences recently. Anyway, I was coming straight through here—and it's me who owes you thanks. We been like fish out of water. Having a professional come help is deeply, deeply welcome."
He took one of her bags, and the two began moving to the exit.
"You have any checked bags, detective?"
"No, just these. And, please, call me Camille. May I call you Sam?"
He laughed again. "Everybody does."
Sam almost immediately had hit pay dirt the day before when calling online vendors. As soon as the merchants had realized that they might not get paid for the costly items they'd sold to a stolen card, they'd become helpful—especially after Sam guaranteed them payment in full for whatever items had been purchased on Amy's card. All but one of the companies identified the place of delivery as an address in Rolla, Missouri, about 100 miles west/southwest of St. Louis. Sam had left Effingham late that night, and Camille had volunteered to meet him in St. Louis on his way through.
"It's another hour and a half or two hours until we hit Rollo, Camille. If you're hungry now, you may want to eat. Otherwise, we can always get something on the road."
"Let me grab a banana and a bottle of fruit juice," she said, walking up to a kiosk. "I'll be good until we stop."
Thirty minutes later, they were cruising southwest on I-44 in Sam's borrowed SUV. Camille had given Sam several new smartphones Tommy had provided, and, as he drove, she studied some papers she'd also brought with her.
"The forensics report you gave me is interesting. It didn't find anything, which is good in its own way."
"Say again?" said Sam.
"No significant hair, fibers, or blood, and most important, no fingerprints."
"No fingerprints?" he queried.
"None. Except for prints the lab already identified as being from the tow-truck driver and you, there were none ... not even your friend Amy's. And the lab was thorough. They even looked in places most thieves forget to clear, like the seat adjustor or the rear-view mirror. Nothing. That tells me a lot. Someone wiped that car ... carefully. It isn't the kind of service you get at a car wash, not even the deluxe kind."
"Also," she continued after a short while, "according to Tommy, you found all of her luggage in the back of the vehicle. Even her purse?"
Sam puckered his lips in thought. "Yeah, everything was."
"And the local PD hadn't done any sort of inventory?"
"I didn't think to ask, but there wasn't any paperwork for it. And it didn't look like her things had been gone through. Does it matter?"
"Maybe not. I've never known a woman who didn't drive with her purse in the front seat with her. Your friend might be the exception, but maybe someone other than her put it there. Also, think about where you found the car. It was in a parking lot at a store open 24-7. It took, what, three weeks for it to be reported?"
Sam nodded in understanding.
"That wasn't an accident," the detective continued. "A pricey car like hers would have been noticed in a few days if it'd been left in a parking lot of a store with regular hours. Your friend wasn't abducted there. She was grabbed somewhere else, and then her car was taken to a second site, where it was wiped and cleaned thoroughly. Then the vehicle was dumped in the place the police found it ... in a place where it was unlikely to be noticed for several weeks. I doubt very much whether your friend even got within a few miles of the place her vehicle was found." She paused, biting on a pencil and continuing to gaze at her papers. "We're dealing with professionals."
They drove in silence for a few minutes.
"You tried to get on a flight the other day," she began again. "Any trouble?"
"None. I got on fine, but got off at the last minute. The same with Philly."
"I was thinking about that on my flight this morning." She twisted her lips another moment. "Tommy tells me that your friend enjoyed the finer things. When she travelled, it was always business or first class. She always took a cab or a limousine to and fro. And she always stayed at upscale hotels and ate at the better restaurants."
He chuckled quietly. "That definitely was Amy."
"Think about it," she said. "Upscale hotels tend to have tight security and lots of servants around, airlines tend to cater to the higher paying customers, and limousines and cabs always have drivers. In the life she lived, she always had someone with her, or near at hand."
Sam waited for Camille to continue.
"The people who targeted your friend needed to cull her from the herd. They needed to get her alone. I'd wager that's why she was placed on the no-fly list. Alone on a highway, she'd be more easily targeted."
The young woman continued, as if on a roll. "Now ... they may've tracked her by her cell phone. But at some point, someone would've had to place her under close surveillance. Professionals need at least four, and as many as six or eight, trained operatives to conduct good, dependable surveillance of a mobile target, which usually means at least three chase vehicles. They would've needed to have eyes on her to learn her habits and to form a plan to abduct her that minimized their exposure. All of that would've taken time—days, if not weeks. This was not a fly-by-night operation."
Sam's face had continued to cloud as the detective spoke. The picture Camille painted was dark, sinister, and daunting. "I think you're hitting close to the truth."
"Let me make a couple of calls," she said. The previous day, Camille had contacted the local PD who had investigated two of the disappearances from the list Tommy had provided. She'd gotten a little traction, but not much.
The first case about which she'd called, a friend of Sam's named Siobhan Meggs, was long cold. The woman had disappeared about nine years ago, somewhere between her Boston home and her office. After some haggling, a desk sergeant had agreed to email Camille the casebook. She hadn't had the chance to look the file over in detail, but she'd seen enough to realize it was thin.
The second call she'd made concerned another friend of Sam, one Darien Johnny, from Louisville. The answer was much the same. The casefile was one piece of paper, noting that the family had complained of his sudden disappearance. The investigation seemed to have consisted of a few phone calls, with a conclusion that there were no obvious signs of foul play. Johnny had gone missing six years ago.
At least the report had an address and phone number of the man's sister, she thought, if it's still current. Camille made a note to call Johnny's sister later.
Over the next hour, she made three additional calls, concerning Christy Sue Fennel, of San Diego, Quinten Danes, of McAllen, Texas, and Eric Temple, of Fitchburg, Wisconsin. All were friends or acquaintances of Sam who had gone missing over the last five years.
There was little cause for optimism. In each instance, she found detectives willing to pass on the casefiles, but each had cautioned that there was little evidence to suggest any wrongdoing. The three simply had disappeared, with little or no trace, and, as one detective told her, "Sometimes folks just take off."
By the end of that hour, they were approaching Rollo, and Sam volunteered a thought.
"Christy Sue stayed with me for a few months back in the day. She was the sweetest girl."
"How'd the two of you meet?"
He shifted in his seat and was somber when he spoke.
"She was from down Tennessee way, I think, or somewhere down south. Her family moved a lot. I guess they were spiritual and worked the big-tent religious circuit. She had this Gift ... sort of the ability to look at a person and to tell whether they were sick and how bad. As young as she was when the Gift came out, there was no way for her to control it. I reckon she had some pretty awful visions of people she met, the kind of sights a child should never see. I don't know whether her folks thought she was touched or what, but they put her to work in a revival show when she was just a sprout."
"But she made it to Chicago?"
"I don't know how," he replied. "She must have heard about me from somewhere. When she showed up at my door, she was this skinny little hillbilly girl who still couldn't control her Gift. I took her in, convinced her she wasn't wicked or crazy, and calmed her down as best I could. She was 16 or 17 then. It must've been—I dunno—1998 or '99. Later, she traveled with Amy Lascar for a while. It was Amy who helped her learn to control her Gift. She was that way."
Sam swallowed a few times before going on.
"Christy Sue joined the navy after that, settled in San Diego when she was discharged, and the last I heard from her she was in her final year of medical school. I reckon she wanted to put her Gift to work."
"You took in a complete stranger?"
Sam glanced at her with what might have been surprise. "She showed up at my door and asked for my help. What else could I do?"
Camille suddenly knew everything she needed to know about Sam Babington.
"I should have looked for her," he whispered.
She reached over and lay her hand on his arm. "You can't watch over the whole world."
He gave her a humorless smile, and they drove on in silence for 10 more minutes before getting off the highway at Rollo