Puller proceeded to tell him about Gorman and the possible issue he had found. His friend told Puller he would look into it and get back to him.
Then Puller turned his attention to the other person: Nora Franklin.
Accessing both databases available to the public and those available only to a handful of people like him, Puller quickly accumulated what looked to be significant material. Taken alone, none of it added up to much. But when it was all put together, Puller sensed something that was important. He sensed a pattern.
Later, his phone buzzed. It was his friend, Don.
“Got what you wanted. It was a six-month period. Best as I can tell Gorman went back to Austria for a sabbatical.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But passport control records don’t indicate that.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Don. “That puzzled me, too.”
“And the airline he flew on after he got overseas was curious as well.”
“Right, it’s a sub of Aeroflot. Is this something we should focus on?”
Puller said, “I’ll let you know the answer to that as soon as I can.”
He clicked off and went back to the search on Franklin. He was looking at two things: financial disclosures and travel, going back fifteen years.
The financial disclosure forms required by the government were, to his mind, a joke. Everything could be placed into ranges. One million to fifty million. Assets could be hidden behind shell companies, or in relatives’ names to avoid having to disclose. There were a million different dodges, and Puller had found that the politicians with the most money and assets worked very hard to hide their wealth. For electability reasons, they would much prefer to have the image of just being ordinary folks working for a living.
What he found with Franklin was a mountain of diversions and inconsistencies. He marveled at the fact that no one had called out the woman on this before. Then the truth struck him: Why would her colleagues call her out when many of them were probably doing the very same thing?
When he looked at the timeline of her history and travel, something seemed to click in the back of his mind. That’s when he digitally laid Gorman’s timeline over Franklin’s. There was only one time period that matched.
A six-month sabbatical that both had taken at the same time. Only Franklin had not flown on a sub of Aeroflot. But she had ended up in Austria. And from there she could have gone anywhere by car or train or private jet, and Puller would have no accurate way to track that. The other thing that stuck out for him was the fact that shortly after Franklin returned to the States, she started her first bid for elected office. She had now won reelection multiple times and had a lofty perch on Ways and Means, and other committees, including—tellingly, for Puller—the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, meaning she was privy to most of the important intel secrets of this country.
A feeling of dread rising up in him, he placed all this in a file and emailed it to Pine. Then he sat back in his chair and wondered what else he could do to help.
A phone call he got a few minutes later answered that question for him.
Chapter 56
PINE HELD UP THE PAIR OF PAJAMAS as a whirlwind of memories engulfed her.
They were small, the size for a tall six-year-old, as Mercy had been. They had pink ponies on them. They were the PJs that Mercy had worn the night she vanished. Pine had a matching pair that their mother had bought them, although Pine’s were not pink, but blue.
She held the cloth up to her nose, hoping that it retained her sister’s scent. After all these years…there was none. It was just mildewed and smelled foul.
She picked up the packet of letters that had been underneath the pajamas. By her quick count, there were more than a dozen of them, faded and yellowed.
They were all addressed to Ito Vincenzo and had been sent from Leonard and Wanda Atkins in Taliaferro County, Georgia.
She opened the first one. It was dated three months after Mercy had been abducted.
She looked down at the signature at the end of the letter.
Len Atkins.
As she read the letter her mouth kept dropping and her eyes grew teary.
So happy we could give the girl a home.
They named her Rebecca.
The money you sent was a godsend.
And you more than paid me back for saving your butt in Nam.
Take care and we’ll send pictures when we can.
Pine thought, Rebecca? Pictures? Nam?
She tore through the other letters, most of which had a similar theme. They were all dated a year apart. But there were no pictures in any of them.
Ito Vincenzo had apparently given Mercy to another family, the Atkinses of Taliaferro County, Georgia.
Pine did a quick Google search and learned that in 1990 Taliaferro only had 1,900 people spread over nearly two hundred heavily wooded square miles. She learned there were even fewer people living there now, making it the least populated county in Georgia and the second-least populous county east of the Mississippi. She did another search and found that Taliaferro was a three-hour drive from her old home in Sumter County.
Pine inwardly groaned.
You idiot.
She had learned on her trip back to her old homestead that a man she now knew to be Ito Vincenzo had gotten into a fight with her father the very next day after Mercy had been taken. Once Pine had also learned that he had been the abductor, it should have been clear that Ito had taken Mercy someplace relatively close by. Otherwise, he could not have been back the next day to have the altercation with her father.
She tore through the rest of the box. At the very bottom, under a layer of old clothes, was a metal box. Inside were two things: old check registers and a single photo, an old Polaroid.
Pine gripped the photo but didn’t look at it. Not just yet.
It could be one of Ito and his family. But there had been all those photo albums for that. Why put one in here?
She set it down and picked up a check register.
The entries were neat and detailed. Ito had been a very organized man, apparently.
She scanned down the date column until she came to the relevant time period.
There it was. A check for $500 made out to Leonard Atkins. She quickly searched the other registers. She found a dozen more entries for $500 paid out to Atkins.
Five hundred bucks a year for a little girl’s expenses? It didn’t seem nearly enough, not even in Taliaferro County, Georgia. She glanced at the last check entry for the last register in the box. June 13, 2002.
And why had the money been paid at all? If Ito had gotten a little girl for the Atkinses, why hadn’t they paid him, not the other way around?
And how did he even know the Atkinses? They presumably were from rural Georgia, and Ito had spent his whole life in New Jersey. Vietnam?
Pine slowly put down the check register and stared at the facedown photo. The moment of truth had arrived. She felt her adrenaline spike and a wave of anxiety sweep over her with such force that she thought she might be having a panic attack.
If this is a picture of Mercy, what would she look like? Will we still be identical?
Pine had lifted the photo off the plywood floor when she heard a noise outside.
She thrust the photo and some of the letters into her pocket, hastily put the things back in the box, clambered down the attic stairs, and lifted them and the ceiling door back into place. She hustled to the window.
A car’s headlights were pointed straight at the house as a Subaru Outlander pulled into the driveway. Then the driver killed the lights and stepped out. The passenger in the front seat did the same. They were dressed in jeans and ski jackets against the foggy chill.