Jack leaned back in his chair and stretched. All of this work on the computer was killing his back. He’d been staring into the screen on his laptop for three hours now, just sifting through all of the sightings for the day.
The problem wasn’t that they weren’t finding Nadina Jones and John Andrews. The problem was that the two of them were being spotted everywhere, every day. For the last few months, they’d had an increasing number of sightings. The first two times Nadina had been caught on camera, the whole team had rushed to follow her, only to find a dead end. Now it was at the point where they no longer even chased after her– or rather, they couldn’t. She was sighted so often, and in so many different locations, that it was impossible to follow her. She had not resumed contact with her acquaintances in Switzerland, nor had she contacted any of the boy’s relatives back in London. But she was seen everywhere, and her credit cards were still active and being used all over the world every day.
Her face had tripped facial recognition software in six different countries today alone. This afternoon, she was clearly seen on camera shopping, walking down a street, visiting a bank, playing in a park– all with John Andrews right there with her. Someone somewhere had real pictures of the two of them.
And the images were current. Of that, Jack was absolutely certain. In the pictures and videos over the last few months, the marks on John’s face and arms had healed, his hair had grown into his eyes and then been cut short again, he had grown taller, he had gotten new clothes and shoes. He no longer appeared to be wearing diapers, which suggested he had been toilet-trained. He also seemed to be getting progressively healthier and happier, and it even looked as though Nadina were educating him, but for what purpose, he couldn’t guess.
From watching their interactions, he had to wonder if perhaps Karl Waiblingen had been right about these two. Perhaps Nadina Jones really did genuinely love John Andrews. It would certainly seem so, from the footage they had. Alternatively, though, Jack had to keep in mind that what images they did have were given to them by some unknown party, and he couldn’t be sure whether what he saw was genuinely candid, or if that person was selecting only certain images, or even if it was all a show that had been put on just for his benefit. Take the boy out, act nice for the cameras, then back to whatever the reality was. It was a possibility that Jack didn’t like to think about, but one which inspired him to continue his search, no matter how bleak it seemed.
In all of the pictures, they didn’t seem to be on the run, didn’t appear to be in hiding at all. The two of them looked as if they were settled somewhere, and going about their daily lives. But in the course of a day, they were seen all over the world. Her credit card was used to buy chewing gum in Mumbai, and then used to buy lipstick in Venezuela three minutes later. They were seen buying bread at a bakery in Poland, then they were spotted walking away from a bakery in the United States, then they stopped to have lunch on a park bench in South Korea, then she was pushing him on a swing-set in Canada. Obviously they were watching the pair go through their day, but somehow someone had changed the settings, and this person had also managed to transfer these images onto security footage around the world.
So where was the real bakery? Where was the real park bench? They were no closer to figuring that out than they had been three months ago.
Once they had figured out what was happening, Jack and his colleagues had begun studying the pair in more detail, trying to pick up any clues as to where they really were. At one point the two of them had been sitting out-doors somewhere doing a bit of studying. Nadina was showing John a series of educational flash-cards. One image clearly showed the front of the card. The letter P. A drawing of a butterfly. And, under the picture, the word papillon. Immediately the team began to focus their search on places where French is a commonly-spoken language. But two weeks later the pair were clearly seen reading Petrosinella, in Italian, while little John wore a shirt with a picture of a Japanese cartoon character on it.
At this point they had no leads.
Jack swirled the last few sips of cold, bitter coffee in his cup. He really ought to stop drinking so much of the vile stuff. After sipping poor-quality hotel coffee nearly non-stop for a few months, the drink had lost all of its appeal and lately it was beginning to make his stomach hurt just to smell it. But he still drank it almost constantly to stay alert and keep his concentration on the case. He would set aside some time once this was all over and take better care of his health. But as long as that little boy was still out there somewhere with that psychotic murderer reading him bedtime stories and doing who-knew-what-else, Jack simply couldn’t justify wasting eight hours of every day sleeping.
When he wasn’t staring at fake images on a computer screen, he’d been keeping track of those people in Switzerland. Swiss police had continued to watch them from a comfortable distance, and they had been sending weekly updates. Hespah Stille had fully recovered from her various procedures and was now living in an absurdly large house with her lawyer, a handful of what appeared to be domestic employees, and two new faces. A young man and a teenage girl had recently arrived from Malta and were now living with Ms. Stille and Mr. Waiblingen in their ostentatious-looking mansion. The girl appeared to have some sort of mental problem, judging from how carefully the others treated her, and she seemed to be of delicate health, overall.
If they ever did finally find Nadina Jones and get John Andrews back home to his relatives safely, Jack hoped to be able to spend some more time investigating these unusual people. Their odd, secretive actions went beyond the eccentricities of people who had too much wealth for their own good. He knew they were hiding something, and he felt certain they were engaged in some sort of criminal activity. He just didn’t know what it was.
Jack glanced around the room. He knew his colleagues were getting restless. They were no closer to saving that boy than they had been when the case had first gone international. The terms "wild goose chase" and "dead end" and "cold case" had been tossed around a lot lately, and it was obvious that everyone was ready to go home to their families. They needed a solid lead, and soon. Otherwise Jack was afraid everyone might be pulled off of the case and little John Andrews might never be found.
