Free The Body of David Hayes by Ridley Pearson Page A

sensed a much bigger plan at work, wondering if that plan still called for the abduction of Malone, a.k.a. Liz Boldt.
    Hendersen had caught Boldt’s radio communication and waited on the main passenger deck.
    Malone remained outside in the bitter wind, cradling Liz’s cell phone in her palm as if it held answers.
    Boldt hurried across the deck, jumping a chain that forbadehim from doing so, and climbed the steep ladder. He pounded on the heavy door to the pilothouse, displaying his credentials and shield through the thick glass window.
    A moment later he was inside, relaying the ferry’s latitude and longitude to Riz and company. He checked the ship’s radar, surprised it picked up no boats in the immediate area. No vessels of any kind. He’d been absolutely convinced that some kind of small craft was out there retrieving the money.
    Boldt engaged one of the deck officers, throwing a string of questions at him.
    The man, small but with a thick neck and jutting jaw, replied in a tight, high voice. “The WSDOT website offers ferry-cam-dot-com. Vessel watch. Live video of the terminals. GPS locating of the ferries.”
    “GPS?” Boldt asked. The Global Positioning System’s satellite technology allowed pinpoint location. Given the exact time Malone had thrown that briefcase, a person could evidently visit a website that indicated the ferry’s precise location.
    “On the Web,” Boldt mumbled, realizing that Hayes could know exactly where that briefcase had been tossed overboard. Or had the briefcase bought from Brookstone had a transmitter already embedded in it? Had anyone checked for that? He didn’t think so.
    Boldt scrambled down the steep steel steps leading from the pilothouse and crossed to the upper sundeck, realizing that Hayes could already be heading for the cash. He grabbed for the radio, yanking it from his pocket, dispensing with policy.
    Boldt asked to speak to Riz. When the C.O. came onto the radio, Boldt said, “Tell me Liz is okay.”
    “She’s in a back office with one of our girls,” Riz said.
    “We’re sure?”
    “Positive, Lieutenant. Your wife’s been on the phone with him off and on for the last ten minutes, Malone listening in to those calls and performing as he says.”
    Two guys in their twenties came through the door and into the upper deck area engaged in a heated baseball debate, the only two words that Boldt heard being “sacrifice fly.”
    And then all at once, he had it.
The briefcase would never be retrieved. Sacrifice fly
. Hayes had tested Liz, directing her to withdraw the money and toss it on command, and she had passed that test. But there was something larger at work as well.
    “Oh, shit,” said the lieutenant, known for never swearing. “We’ve been scammed, Reece. He dug a hole and we fell into it. Seal the building!” Boldt hesitated only a second, knowing the trouble he was about to cause if he turned out to be wrong about this. “David Hayes is inside the bank.”

SIX
    BOLDT BELIEVED THAT HAYES HAD used the money drop not only to distract police but to access the bank’s powerful AS/400 servers, described by Liz as the “heart of the data system.” But with the office building currently locked down, and everyone inside the building being funneled out a single exit, proffering ID and subjected to random searches, Boldt’s theory showed signs of collapse. David Hayes was nowhere to be seen.
    An acne-ridden young man named Pendleton Hartsmith joined a florid-cheeked Irishman, Douglas Witte, who headed the bank’s security department. The pair sat with Boldt in a small conference room typically reserved for loan review. It smelled of carpet glue.
    Witte explained that access to WestCorp’s offices required a credit-card-sized ID card, like the one Liz carried. Each and every access was recorded by time, date, employee, and location of entry or egress. The UNIX servers and the AS/400s each required additional clearance for access.
    “Following