3:25 p.m.
1 hour until the gloaming
I went to grab my things. Ralph called over to me and told me that neither Tod’s teacher nor the principal could give us anything on the man except that he was “big and white.” No one had been able to locate Mrs. Unger.
I tried Radar on the radio one last time.
Still nothing.
Tod was missing and all I could think of was that box Radar had been holding, and of the finger the kidnapper had left behind in Carl Kowalski’s refrigerator and what he’d done to Colleen and Adele.
He abducts. He makes demands. He mutilates his captives. And he’s escalating.
What? What would he have asked Radar to do?
Honestly, I had no clue.
When Radar left, he’d implied that he was going to his house, so I decided to try there first. From here I could get there just as quickly as if we dispatched a car. And he was my partner. I wanted to be the one there if something bad really was going down. I asked Ralph to stay on top of things here and to call me if we heard from Radar.
Calvin saw me getting ready to go and when I mentioned vaguely that I was following up on a lead, he surprised me and offered to come with me.
“I can’t do that.”
“Actually, my boy, you can, as long as I’m not in the front seat.”
I wished he didn’t know so much about law enforcement.
“I’m sorry, I-”
“You drive,” he said, as if that were a choice. “I’ll bring my computer. With the information your team pulled up on Basque’s activity nodes, I’m close to formulating a crude model of his cognitive map.”
“You can work on that here.”
“But you can’t get my results in real time.”
“Can you find him? Can you predict where he might’ve gone?”
“No. But I might be able to find his anchor point.”
I rubbed my head and tried to think things through.
It was possible that Basque had something to do with what was going on with Radar and Tod. I wasn’t sure how, but I was willing to do whatever it took to find them, especially if, as I feared, something bad had happened to Tod.
This was way unorthodox, but Calvin would be safe in the back of the car and I could pick his brain as we drove.
“Don’t tell anyone I’m doing this.”
He closed up his laptop and headed with me for the elevators. “Mum’s the word.”