Caffrey Disclosure

Chapter 39 - Missing Persons

Federal Building. Monday morning. July 12, 2004.

Monday started out as a normal day. Wild theories about clones were forgotten, or at least sidelined as a joke that he'd tell Henry someday when they both needed a laugh.

After the morning briefing, there was a meeting about the latest updates in the search for Robert Winslow. Between the data Travis had collected while undercover and what Mozzie had tracked online, they'd identified the accomplice as a man named Jason Ford.

"From a Ford to a Ferrari?" Peter had asked after Jones outlined how they'd narrowed down the suspect list to Ford.

"That sounds like Robert," Neal said. "Not a lot of imagination. What do we know about this guy?"

"He's thirty-one, lives in Atlanta but telecommutes most of the time. He's logged a lot of travel recently, including trips to Seattle and New York," Jones reported. "At Carlson-Berger he's been a technical project manager for the last three years. Reviews from his managers were all positive. He's worked a wide variety of projects, getting access to the servers for the FBI, the marshals and a couple of other government agencies and some banks. In the last few months he volunteered for one of the least popular assignments in the company: data quality. His latest projects are responsible for checking that data is secure, and that means running lots of queries of data for analysis and validation. It's been the perfect cover for monitoring, inserting and deleting email messages, because he can always claim it's a test."

"What did he do before Carlson-Berger?" Peter asked.

"He was at one of their competitors for a few years." Jones looked down at his notes. "Similar kind of job to what he has now. And before that he was at Win-Win. He started working there part time while he was a student at Loyola in Baltimore, where he was a double major in Business and Computer Science. At first he was an intern in the IT department, but according to Allen Winston he was interested in the investigations side of the business. He showed some talent and sometimes they'd send him undercover for a quick assignment, usually working with a more senior member of the staff. When he finished college he was offered a full time job. His title was project manager, so officially he was in the IT department, but between projects he'd take investigative work. He traveled quite a bit in those investigations. Winston says that most of those cases were managed by Robert, who destroyed the records before he disappeared."

"Did Graham Winslow have anything to add?" Peter asked.

"Not yet. I couldn't get hold of him."

"That's odd," said Neal. "He's always been available for this case. Finding Robert is his top priority." Graham had sent the email as Mozzie had arranged yesterday, and Neal had responded. Robert should believe Henry was being sent to Alaska. "Anything about Ford's family? I'm going to bet his father is deceased or out of the picture."

Jones nodded. "Died when Ford was a kid. How'd you know?"

"Lucky guess." But Neal was thinking back to the psychology courses he'd attended when Henry was getting his masters.

"Care to elaborate on your guess?" Peter asked in a tone that was more an order than a question.

"This guy started his part time work at Win-Win right after Robert and Noelle's divorce was final. They would have been separated for a while before that. There was a distance from Henry, on a lot of levels. Robert didn't see him often, and would have been feeling pressure from Graham, who wanted assurance that he wouldn't lose touch with his grandson. Robert would have blamed Noelle for the distance, and to prove it he probably decided to mentor a young man. He wanted to show he could build that bond and train someone to be an asset to the company. Unlike Henry, who took having a father for granted and wanted to stay away from his dad, Jason Ford would have been eager to spend time with a father figure."