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I rechecked the street just as a van pulled up in front of our suspects’ house.
“I gotta go, got activity here.” I hung up immediately and dialed Neil while running downstairs to my car.
“Boxer,” he answered.
“Tan van just pulled up.”
“I’m on the way.”
The phone went back in my pocket as I slowed to a walk and opened the door to the street.
Walking across the street, I made it into my car before the van driver restarted his vehicle.
One of the suspects came out of the house and started his car just after the van pulled away.
Nobody else had gotten out to enter the house, but they could be going to a drop-off point somewhere else.
“Radio check,” Neil’s voice came in through my earpiece.
“Just pulling out now,” I responded.
At the intersection, the van went right, and the suspect’s car went straight.
I chose to follow the van.
“I’m two blocks away,” Neil said.
I pressed talk. “The van turned right on Ninth.”
“Got it.”
A few seconds later, the van surprised me by stopping again. This time it was clear it wasn’t our van. The driver opened the side door, carried a package to the door, tapped his handheld scanner, and remounted the van.
“Neil, false alarm. The van is only package delivery.”
“Shit. Okay. I’m turning around.”
Before I started back to my observation perch, a text arrived on my phone, and I stayed parked to read it.
PARSONS: Read the BENSNAP file. I’ll get you access
She has a bug up her ass about something.
Another thing for my to-do list in all my free time.
Back on the suspects’ street, it took two trips around the block before I found another parking space on the same side of the street as them, just not as close.
Upstairs, I settled in for more boring street watching and popped the top on another Pepsi. With nothing going on, I hefted my laptop and logged into records retrieval.
Looking up BENSNAP got me to the file with a surprise. It was markedSpecial Access - Restricted, meaning it wasn’t available Bureau-wide. It was her kidnap case. The Deborah Benson kidnapping had apparently been high profile enough when it happened that the case merited a name from headquarters in addition to its case number—another parallel to Patty Hearst.
The system demanded I re-verify my badge number and fill in another field for referring agent name, which was something I’d never come across before.
E. Parsonsdidn’t work. I pulled her card out of my wallet and entered her full name, which opened up access to the file. This was a level beyond what I normally dealt with.
It wasn’t a large file as kidnapping cases went, and I started at the beginning with periodic checks of the street below.
The surprise came in the first pages.
