Lacking permission to request support from the Bureau’s San Francisco field office, Pender decided to try a different approach. Before leaving for Marshall County, he dropped by the Buchanan Street offices of Epstein Investigative Services. The receptionist, Tanya, an otherwise attractive young lady with Smurf blue hair, was bristling with rings, studs, and so many piercings it looked as though someone had taken a riveting gun to her face. Even before Pender tinned her, he could tell that she was as yet unaware that Epstein had been kidnapped only a few blocks away.
He broke the news gently, stressing that there was every reason to believe Skip was still alive. Tears sprang to Tanya’s eyes nevertheless. Don’t cry, Pender wanted to tell her, you’ll rust.
Minutes later, he was addressing the assembled staff in a small conference room behind the bull pen-you could tell by the ping-pong table that it was seldom used for conferences. A motley crew, casually dressed for the most part in T-shirts, bowling shirts, jeans, and cross-trainers, they sat in stunned silence after Pender finished talking.
“Come on,” he urged them. “You guys are all pros, you find people every day of your lives. If you’ve got any ideas, now’s the time to speak up.”
A tiny woman wearing a softball jersey raised her hand tentatively, revealing a heavily tattooed forearm.
“Yes, what’s your name, dear?” said Pender.
“Sandy Pollock-and don’t call me dear.”
“Sorry, no disrespect intended. What’ve you got?”
“Do you know if Skip had his cell phone with him when he was taken?”
“I believe so. I know he had it with him yesterday-he called me from it while he was driving home from Salinas, and I didn’t see it anywhere around the apartment.”
“Great. Far out. Tanya, would you get me Skip’s cell number and his service provider so I can get hold of their security people? Then assuming he has his phone turned on, if he makes a call or takes a call, it doesn’t matter how short or long it is, they can still get the GPS coordinates by triangulating from the location of the microwave relay towers.”
“Sandy, Sandy!” Short guy, big head, tragic acne, trifocals. “Give me the number. I’ve got an automatic dialer rigged up back in my cubicle-you know, for radio call-in contests and stuff. I can set it to continuous calling.”
“And let’s hook it up to a tape recorder,” the office manager suggested. Older than the others, sideburned and pudgy, he was the only necktie wearer in the room apart from Pender. “Even if he can’t say anything, they might be able to narrow down the search parameters based on ambient sounds, stuff like birdcalls, traffic noises, railroad crossings. I saw that on Tales of the FBI,” he added, with a friendly nod in Pender’s direction.
Twenty minutes later, Pender was still trying to process this new information about cellular call tracking. The implications for law enforcement in general were staggering. But then again, so were the implications for a special agent who had been thinking about calling his boss to report that he was at the San Francisco airport but couldn’t get a flight out until Monday, when he was actually calling from a rent-a-car on the road to Marshall County, because his gut told him that’s where Sweet was holed up with his latest captive-assuming, of course, that he hadn’t already killed him.