Red flags, p.17
Red Flags, page 17
Luis asked, “Buy? With real money?”
“If they can get hold of a credit card, yes. They can pay outright or they can get a discount by playing the game a lot. It unlocks rewards more slowly.”
Luis showed more comprehension than nongamer Ellie felt. Still—“But they’re not buying real stuff.”
“What’s real anymore?” Darnell asked in a hollow tone. “There’s a reason so many games use coins or gems as rewards, because what is valuable in real life seems equally valuable even when in a virtual world. Even a meaningless number, as long as it keeps going up, makes us feel like we’re gaining value. It tricks players—children and adults—into equating them with real-world value.”
“Where does an algorithm come in?”
“Timing, spacing, perception. The rewards come fast and furious when they start, moving up levels, earning extras. But then it takes longer and longer plays to get to the next level, and when you get a reward is no longer steady—unexpected rewards are very motivating, but only to a point, so some rewards are fixed and others variable, getting the best of both techniques.”
Nakala said, “It’s the reasoning behind the coding. Darnell is a behavioral psychologist.”
He yanked on the tie again and the words came faster. “But we’ve hidden all these manipulations so players feel like they have control over their choices in the game, but it’s illusory—the game progresses pretty much the same, no matter what choices you make. Actual control is not important. It’s the illusion of control that’s important. Think of Tetris. You don’t really have any control over what drops from the top, but making the connections feels good.”
“So, yes, we have manipulating people, children, down to a science,” Darnell said. Now that he had begun on the topic, his analytical mind had to explain it thoroughly. “We offer loot boxes, a virtual box with a mystery virtual item, yet you have to pay real money for it—but once the attached credit card is entered, you can gamble on a mystery prize with just a click of the mouse. We might as well set kids in front of a slot machine. No one terms it a ‘gambling addiction, ’ but that’s exactly what it is. Like adults playing poker, kids can play themselves into crippling debt. A couple years ago a high school student with a part-time job and no car racked up nearly fourteen thousand dollars in tiny in-app purchases.”
“They say it’s ‘manufactured addiction,’” Nakala said. “But so what? Everything online is designed to keep you online. Like Facebook introducing the News Feed or getting a magic coin when you move up a level in Bejeweled or Twitter posting What’s Trending Now. Don’t you want to see these tweets? Keep scrolling.”
Or TV channels having a million commercial breaks, but not between the end of one show and the beginning of another—because they don’t want you to change the channel, Ellie thought. No matter what line of business you’re in, it’s easier to keep an existing customer than get a new one.
“They take my kid over that?” Nakala said, her voice husky with fear and anger.
Her husband said, “It is manufactured addiction. It’s also good business sense. Gabriel believes other gaming platforms are jealous and egging on critics from behind the scenes, which isn’t hard when the whole fight is in the virtual world, anyway—a comment on a post here, forward a link through an anonymous email there. You can get anyone to do anything. All you have to do is find their buttons.”
“And they found ours,” Nakala said. Her fingers trembled as she pressed a fist to her mouth.
Luis summarized: “They want you to renounce this addiction algorithm at the hearing tomorrow so that the senators will vote to keep the DM ban and other measures in place. Can you do that? Until Noah’s safety is assured?”
Darnell appeared surprised at the question. “Of course. I’ll—I’ll say whatever they want.”
“Doesn’t even make sense,” Nakala murmured, clearly trying to make sense of the kidnappers’ logic. “KidFun can propose a new bill at a new hearing. They going to kidnap children every single time?”
“I don’t care,” her husband said. “It won’t be mine.”
Ellie wasn’t sure if he meant the children or the algorithm. From what Hunter and Gabriel said, it had sounded like KidFun would go bankrupt after a no vote, which meant Darnell would be out of a lucrative job. He valued his child more. Good for him.
Luis went over the steps the FBI were taking to question school employees, enhance the video, list all registrations of similar vehicles, and examine toll booth records. He added, “We’re going to take this phone to try to trace the text to its source.”
Burner phone, Ellie thought. It’s already been destroyed.
The FBI agent encouraged Darnell to make a list, check KidFun’s memos and emails, try to find examples of the worst criticisms the company had received. Meanwhile, he dropped Darnell’s phone into a paper envelope and handed it to Ellie.
Michael Tyler walked her out. “Please let me know what you get from it, as soon as possible. You have my card, right?”
“Yep.” She started to turn away, then stopped. “How would the kidnappers know what Darnell’s job is at KidFun?”
He didn’t seem to find this a smoking gun. “Company website. It has a page with the execs and their bios. But, sure, our kidnapper could be someone inside KidFun who thinks they need to be a whistleblower. Gabriel Haller is also making a list of critics, including ones inside the company. Any news at your cousin’s house?”
“News? No.” She should get going, get on the phone with dispatch to call in the digital forensic person on call, but hesitated. “Have you ever seen a radical group like this? Kidnapping kids to save kids from greedy corporate manipulators?”
“No. But I can’t say I’m surprised.” At her look he went on: “Every group thinks they’re the white hats, riding in to save people from themselves. They’re not kidnappers or terrorists, they’re concerned citizens, and the only way to get these greedy corporate types to think about harm coming to children is to make it their own children.”
“Whoever took the two boys means to force Darnell and Hunter to go on national television, shred their personal integrity, and lose their livelihood. They won’t actually be standing off camera with a loaded pistol, like a military junta in a presidential palace, but they might as well be.”
“Exactly.” A tight cord of muscle stretched angrily across his jawline, suppressed rage seeking an outlet. “Maybe that’s why they’re not concerned about the next round of bills and the next legislative session. Money talks and lobbyists spin, but C-Span videos live forever on YouTube.”
She said, “But then where does the ransom fit in?”
“I don’t know. My guess is that one member of the group isn’t motivated entirely by idealism. It’s galling enough to give in to one demand, much less two. But unless we can find those kids, we don’t have a choice.”
She should get going. But for the first time they were alone together, and Ellie grabbed the opportunity. “Why are we working with the Locard? A private institute? It’s an impressive facility, but what do they possibly have that the FBI doesn’t?”
“Time,” he said. “The lab is overwhelmed with materials from that mall shooting, and the Carolina serial killer.”
“I know, but—”
“And the order came down from somewhere above to cooperate with Hunter Carlisle. Apparently, he has a friend or former client somewhere on the upper floors. Not one that’s going to save him if he’s guilty”—he watched her face as if to gauge her reaction to this, but she didn’t blink—“but enough to indulge him where the Locard is concerned. And I didn’t protest.”
He seemed like the type who would protest. She waited for his explanation.
“I’ve seen the Locard work miracles. And I trust Rachael.”
Then I guess I’ll trust her too.
“Besides,” he added, “if the Carlisles are hiding something, why on earth would he hire them?”
They gazed at each other for a long moment. Then, holding the wrapped cell phones gently in one hand, Ellie left the house and headed for E Street.
* * *
An hour later a thirtyish man with a black beard trimmed to nanometer-level precision handed the crushed cell phone back to her. She had checked for prints with the alternative light source and tried a quick dusting with black powder, but got only a wonderful image of a tire track—which she had dutifully photographed, with scale, since the kidnapper might have purposely dropped it under their own tire to make sure. That would have been smart.
After that, she’d brought it to another part of the lab to meet the digital forensic tech who examined the cracked screen and scratched backing before locating the correct type of power cord to plug it in. He pushed the button on the side. Nothing happened. He pushed it again. Nothing happened.
“Well.” He unplugged the cord. “I might be able to do something with it, but it will take a week or three.”
Ellie knew the answer, but asked, anyway, “Are you sure? Isn’t there anything you can tell me? It belongs to a kidnapped ten-year-old.”
“I get that.” He sipped coffee from a metal travel mug and envy rose up in her like a geyser. “That’s why I’m not going to waste your time. Our equipment here is all about downloading and organizing and parsing computers and cell phones that work. Not about downloading ones that have been shredded. It doesn’t have a media card, so I can’t dig through the rubble and find it. I’m sorry, but my strengths don’t help us here—what we need is one of those cluttered little storefronts where they fix your iPad after your kid drops it off the balcony. And they’d still take weeks.”
“That’s not going to work.”
“Sorry. It’s the best I can offer.”
He sipped again, and this time she didn’t think about coffee. “That’s okay. I have an alternative.”
11:15 p.m.
With the requested blessing of her supervisor, Ellie made her second trip out to the Locard Institute in what seemed as many hours. Rachael did not meet her there; as they spoke during Ellie’s drive, she said her son was having a meltdown—someone did not have enough naptime today—and she didn’t wish to leave unless absolutely necessary. Ellie heard a strain in her voice that seemed to go beyond dealing with the terrible twos. But Rachael arranged for the aforementioned tech whiz Agnes to take in the broken cell phone and see what she could do with it.
Ellie had also informed the FBI agents, who agreed to the plan. They could drive it out to the lab at Quantico, but since Agnes was geared up and ready to go, they decided to stay the course. Should Agnes fail, they would retrieve the phone immediately.
Things had changed, Ellie knew, in a low, subtle way that no one would ever say out loud. The possibility had never gone away that Mason had been killed inside his own household and the kidnapping story a badly constructed cover-up. But the disappearance of Noah Thomas, and the subsequent instruction to his father, verified the disappearance of Mason Carlisle and the subsequent instruction to his father. Noah Thomas had definitely been kidnapped by a mysterious woman in a white van, and the phone that might have tracked his location ominously destroyed. So maybe Becca and Hunter aren’t hiding anything. And maybe Ellie isn’t a litmus test or a potential scapegoat.
The thought cheered her.
A GPS in the ERT van helped her find her way back to the impressive building and she wound through the forest path from the parking lot, trying to consider the dark woods as peaceful and not the stuff of many a horror movie. Actually, it was peaceful, and the path well lit to keep one from stumbling off the edge. Only the whiff of decay near the body farm ruined the idyll.
A figure hovered behind the same door she had entered with Rachael, its form visible through the glass. Ellie knocked, then stepped back as someone snapped the door open with an impatient force, overpowering the automatic mechanism.
A twentyish woman, all angular cheekbones of white skin and straight brown hair pulled into a severe ponytail, peered through old-fashioned cat’s-eye glasses. “Are you Dr. Carr?”
“Yes. Are you—”
“Sign here.” Agnes—for this could only be Agnes—thrust a form at her with two carbons under the top sheet, already completed with the Locard case number, the Metro PD case number, the FBI case number, the address of Noah Thomas’s house, and broken cell phone written for the description. Ellie signed in the proper box, which Agnes had colored in with a yellow highlighter to avoid any errors. Agnes had already removed the evidence bag from her hand in a maneuver so deft she might have come from a family of grifters.
Ellie handed the form back. “Do you think you’ll—”
“Yes, probably.”
“Be able to get any call history or text—”
“Yes.”
Of course you will. Because this is the Locard.
Agnes peeled off the top layer of the form and handed Ellie the middle copy. “I’ll call you as soon as I have anything. Dr. Davies gave me your number.”
“Thank you. We really appreciate you coming in on overt—”
But Agnes had already shut the door.
Chapter 24
Day Two
Friday, 6:30 a.m.
Sophie Tran woke up to see a boy staring at her.
She blinked, the picture not making any sense. What was a strange boy doing in her room? More importantly, she felt stiff, overwarm, a little hungry, very thirsty, and really needed to pee.
Then the rest of it crowded in. The boy was not Liam and this was not her room. It was a weird, dark cavern and she lay on a scratchy mattress without sheets or pillow, in all her clothes, including her shoes. Someone had thrown a soft blanket over her, which she didn’t need, because it was stifling in the airless place, the late summer humidity crushing her chest and leaving a thin sheen of sweat along every inch of skin. She sat up—jerked upright really, and expected her head to hurt, but it didn’t.
There was no one else in the—barn? The rough wood walls, the remnants of hay on the packed dirt floor, the smell—she might be a city kid, but this had to be a barn.
No one there but the Black kid, who sat on an identical mattress about twelve feet away. He did not look at all familiar, though about her age and size. He said nothing and didn’t move toward her—more than that, he looked as miserable as she felt. Not a threat, she assessed. Another victim.
She had a million questions, but when she croaked out the first words from her dry throat, they said only, “I have to pee.”
He gestured toward a big blue plastic box in one corner. “There’s that thing.”
Sophie had used a Porta-Potty once in her life, that she could remember, on a road trip to the Grand Canyon with her mom and her aunt and a couple of cousins, and they’d stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and their bathrooms were broken. She remembered it as hideous and swore she’d never step in another one. But glancing around at the dim, largely empty space, she very quickly guessed that she had no more choice than she’d had at that gas station and stumbled over to the corner. The barn was dim—a piece of her brain figured it was early morning, the sun only beginning to come up—but inside the plastic toilet with the door latched, and she made sure it was latched—no matter how bad she had to go—it was nearly pitch dark. Somehow she found the toilet paper and lined the top of the toilet seat, because she’d pee her pants before she’d touch even her butt to something that gross, and then finally she could let go.
The place stank, but the one in the Arizona desert had been much worse.
Okay, now that she had a private moment to think: Liam and his mom had drugged and kidnapped her, only to lock her in a hot barn with a strange kid.
Why? Where? What should she do now?
As much as she didn’t want to reenter that nightmare, she didn’t want to stay in the stuffy plastic toilet either, so she used a liberal amount of hand sanitizer from a dispenser on the wall and turned the handle.
The boy hadn’t moved, for which she felt grateful; she was too terrified right now to deal with much. He seemed to be waiting for her to get up to speed.
So was she.
She noticed the table without chairs had a ton of stuff on it that looked like—yes, food. And water! And another bottle of hand sanitizer, which she used again, since she’d had to touch the handle of the Porta-Potty to get out of it.
After that, a bottle of water—they even sat in a bucket of ice to keep them cold. She downed practically the whole thing, choking a little. The table had been spread with plenty of snacks—granola bars, Pop-Tarts, beef jerky, brownies, Chips Ahoy!, Doritos, a bowl with oranges, bananas, and apples, and a now-warm bag of mini carrots. At least no one intended to starve them, but they couldn’t last long on that stuff. Snacks, her mother always reminded her, were a treat; they were not food.
She turned to the boy. “Where are we? And who are you?”
“I don’t know, and I’m Noah Thomas.”
Succinct and to the point. Sophie felt better. At least she was stuck with an ally, not an idiot or some sobbing baby.
He went on, speaking quietly, his voice controlled. “We’re out in the country. We were on 270, but I lost track after that.”
“You were awake? That woman—”
“Millie,” Noah said. “I think.”
Sophie realized that she didn’t even know Liam’s mom’s name. She didn’t even know Liam’s last name. He had said he went to Westminster Middle School, but she had never verified it in any way. Despite the warnings of her mother and her teachers and every other adult in her life, Sophie had done the one thing they told you never, ever to do: She had gotten in a car with a stranger.
She wanted to cry.
Clutching the water bottle, she sank onto the mattress she’d apparently spent the night on.
