Gamma Blade - Tim Stevens Page 0,40

and thumbed the keys with shaking hands. “Here.”

He held the phone up so both detectives could see the screen. A jerky video clip was playing. In it, a chubby boy, his face a rictus of terror, was struggling in the grip of a muscular man who had his arm across the boy’s neck. The man’s face was out of the picture, and Venn noted no distinguishing marks on the forearm, no tattoos or scars.

The background was a haze, a blur of movement. But just near the end of the six-second clip, something swung into view.

“Hold on,” Venn said. “Stop it there. Go back a few frames.”

Fuentes did so.

“Freeze it.”

Just above the boy’s right shoulder, and behind him, a flattened oval shape was visible. It was bifurcated horizontally by an indistinct line, which divided a dark half below from a lighter section above.

Venn couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a porthole, with a line of sea-surface beyond it.

“A ship,” he said. “Or a boat.”

“Yes,” said Fuentes fiercely. It was the first time Venn had heard anything but fear or despair in the man’s tone. “I have looked at this clip over and over again, Mr Venn. I have studied every frame. And I am convinced that Hector is aboard a boat.”

Venn glanced away, understanding.

Fuentes nodded. “So, you see, when I first met you in the office, and I heard that you wanted to talk to Brull about a boat... I believed you could help me.”

Venn studied him. “Why?” he said. “I could have been in cahoots with Brull. I might have been one of the men who was holding your son.”

Fuentes shrugged awkwardly. “I cannot say why, exactly, I felt hope right then. But you looked to me... I don’t know. You looked to me, Mr Venn, like a man who was on the side of good. I thought maybe you were an undercover cop. Or a private investigator. And I admit, I was not being rational. There was no reason you mentioning a boat had anything to do with Hector’s disappearance.” He drew a long breath. “But I felt I had nothing to lose. I had just offered Brull the last thing I had. My life. My life, in exchange for my son’s. Of course, Brull laughed in my face. But I knew I had to approach you.”

Estrada said, “You didn’t go to the police when you first learned your son had been taken?”

“I could not, Detective,” Fuentes said. “If Brull heard the police were looking for the boy, and he surely would find out, he would kill him. And probably Helena, and our daughter Aletha. And me, though I do not care any longer.” Without warning, Fuentes seized Estrada’s arm. “Please. You cannot tell your department. They will post flyers with Hector’s photo all over the city. Brull will know at once -”

“Calm down.” Estrada extracted her arm. “Like Detective Venn said, this is unofficial. We’ll tell nobody.”

Fuentes looked at Venn again.

“Will you help me?” he said.

Venn thought about Brull. About the way the guy had sat there, behind his desk, a sleazy king in his crappy two-bit throne room, with the jewelry winking in his teeth.

He thought about Beth, and the life growing within her. The life he’d helped to kickstart.

He said, very slowly and carefully: “Carlos. I swear to you, on my mother’s grave, that I will get your son back to you.”

Venn was aware of Estrada’s glance in his direction, but he didn’t return it. He kept his eyes focussed on Fuentes’.

He saw, by the desperate hope in the bloodshot gaze, that Fuentes believed him.

“Thank you,” the man whispered.

Chapter 19

The afternoon sessions of the conference were intense, far more so than the grandstanding morning lecture. By the close, at six pm, Beth was feeling wrung out, though intellectually stimulated and buzzing with new ideas.

She milled with the others in the lobby outside the auditorium, discussing the talks they’d heard and participated in. She’d made several new contacts during the course of the day, with prominent research physicians across the country, and even a few from the UK and Scandinavia, and already she was mentally planning the coming week, when she’d schedule Skype calls and emails to them around her working days.

The delegates began to disperse, gradually, many of them heading for the hotel bar to continue their discussions, others leaving for the airport, still more making for the elevators and their rooms to freshen up before the evening’s festivities.

Beth had been invited to no fewer