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God, I hope not, Emma thought.
“There were two guys,” Raul said grimly. “One wearing a size eleven boot and one wearing a size thirteen boot.”
“Big guys,” Colin said. His jaw muscles were working. “Toby weighs 140 pounds. It was no contest.”
“No,” Raul said. “And kidnappers tend to be armed.”
Emma shot a warning glance at Raul but he’d turned away. But then again, Colin was an emergency room doctor. He’d probably seen more bullet and knife wounds than she’d had hot meals. And they had to be realistic if they had any hope of finding Toby.
“They took Toby’s computer, I think.” she said. She’d been subconsciously looking for it in the living room. It wasn’t in the bedroom. “Let me check.”
There were two other rooms in Toby’s apartment, one set up as a study and another as a guest bedroom. She checked the rooms, the closets and the two bathrooms, then walked back into the bedroom.
Emma touched Raul’s arm. “Yeah, his computer’s missing. All his devices are. He has a couple of iPads and two normal laptops and I can’t find them. And there’s one he always has with him. It’s a beta prototype someone gave him, with revolutionary software. It’s unmistakable, with a swirly purple and cream cover. I can’t find it anywhere.”
Raul thought for a moment. “Would it be easy for just anyone to operate?”
“God no. It took him a couple of days to tool around it and familiarize himself with the operating system. And anyway, he’d have very good security. His tablets are all password and thumbprint protected.”
“Then they need to keep him alive if he has actionable intel on that computer.”
Actionable intel.
“Yeah. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yeah.” A breath she hadn’t realized she was holding whooshed out. Colin looked relieved. Then he frowned. “Unless they try – they try to torture it out of him.”
Raul’s face tightened, but he said nothing. “Okay, let’s finish checking the place. Notice what should be there but isn’t. Or something that’s there but he should have taken with him. Basically, just take notice of anything unusual.”
They let Colin take the bedroom. Emma took the study and the bathrooms and Raul took the living room and the kitchen. After half an hour they met in the living area.
“Okay, sitrep,” she announced and smiled sweetly at Raul’s raised eyebrows. “I love thrillers. Colin, you go first.”
“The suitcases I’m aware of are all still in his closet and it doesn’t look like any clothes are missing. The hanging clothes have been swept to one side. I imagine they were looking for hidden panels, but this place doesn’t have anything like that. They checked the drawers of the nightstands but it doesn’t look like anything was taken. The same for the drawers of his dresser. He’s neat and the contents of the drawers were disturbed, so they searched them. No way of knowing if they took anything, but I doubt it.” His mouth tightened. “I did find some blood on the sheets. I think they might have hit him while he was sleeping.”
“And dragged him out of bed,” Emma said, appalled at the picture in her head. Two men breaking into her friend’s apartment, striking him while he was asleep and dragging him, bleeding, away.
Time for her report. “Both bathrooms are intact, his travel trousse is on the sink counter, toothbrush is in its holder. In his study, I found two old tablets but not the laptops, and as I said, not his special one. Like Colin said, I think they checked the contents of his desk drawers and the closets. In the living room, everything is intact. It wasn’t a robbery, that’s for sure. Besides the electronics, there’s a really expensive TV, a bunch of silver frames and those two framed lithographs on the wall are a Matisse and a Giacometti. Originals. I remember when he bought them. Nothing of value besides his electronics was taken. Is his wallet here?”
“Yes,” Raul said. “I found it in an enameled jar on a table near the door. His wallet and a slim leather holder with four credit cards. Inside the wallet was about two hundred dollars. And there were the keys to the house.”
“He emptied – empties his pockets the instant he comes in the door,” Colin said softly. “He says he likes to get rid of the day as soon as possible.”
“What about his car?” Emma asked. “He’s got the latest model of the Elektrica, that electric car. He loves that thing. It doesn’t have a key but it’s got a card.”
Raul strode over to the enamel bowl and stared down. “No cards. Just credit cards in his wallet.”
“Should we go down to the garage to see if his car has been taken?”
“No need.” Raul picked up the intercom and pressed five. It had a little printed legend, Lobby. “Hi. This is Raul Martinez. We just spoke. Do you have video cameras in the garage? Yes, excellent. Can you check to see if Toby Jackson’s Elektrica is in its parking slot? Yeah, I’ll wait.” Raul held the receiver against his chest. “We should also ask if we can see footage of the night he was kidnapped. Sunday.”
Emma drew in a breath. “Um. Really not necessary to ask. I can, um, find out more quickly than he can, probably. I could have found out if his car is in the garage, too.”
Raul looked at her. “By ‘find out’, do you mean hack?”
“Um. Yeah.”
“Excellent. Yes.” He straightened as the security guy in the lobby came back on the line. “No? Thank you very much. So –” He took in a deep breath. “The car’s gone. I imagine that one of the guys drove it away. Probably to make anyone looking for Toby think that he’d taken an unexpected trip. I don’t think they imagined anyone would actually come here, to Toby’s apartment. Not too sure how to find Toby. Hack into the traffic cams during a period we think he might have been taken but that’s not going to be easy if it was nighttime.”
Emma had seated herself on the couch, her laptop on the coffee table. Her laptop didn’t have the visual flair Toby’s did but it was pretty cool. “I have an idea about how to track down Toby’s car, but before that, I think we can say that Toby was taken at 3 a.m. Tuesday night. And we can say that sort of by default because that’s when the security cam system in the building was hacked.”
