Olange Residence, Norwood Heights District; Chevy Chase, MD
Peter Olange, six-one with neatly trimmed white-blond hair and a strong, athletic build, gets out of his car—a late model black Lexus SUV. It’s broad daylight, but the street beyond the driveway of the Olange home is empty, which makes sense. It’s a neighborhood full of professionals, and most are already gone for the day, so there isn’t a lot of traffic on the quiet, tree-lined street.
Peter grabs a backpack out of the back of his SUV and heads for the front door when a familiar black panel van pulls into the driveway behind him. Peter stops and turns around as the man in the black hoodie with a yellow smiley-face mask jumps out of the van and approaches him. In the blink of an eye, Smiley-Face pulls a Taser from his pocket and points it at Peter who is shouting at him. He drops his bag and turns to run, but it’s too late.
His body grows entirely rigid, and Peter falls to the ground, twitching as thousands of volts of electricity are pumped into his body. Smiley-Face seems to give him another goose of power, making the kid spasm again. Moving quickly, the man in the mask drags the large, well-built Peter back to his van, and though he struggles with the kid’s inert weight, he manages to muscle him into the back. He quickly puts a pair of zip ties around Peter’s wrists and ankles, then slams the door shut and dashes back around to the driver’s side and is gone.
“Two minutes. Tops,” Astra says as she stops the video feed.
“Efficient. Fast,” I say. “Our guy came into this with a plan and executed it flawlessly.”
I almost added “just like at the Barlow scene,” to the end of that sentence, but managed to bite it off before I did. If the Olanges noticed the omission, they give no indication. In fairness, they’ve probably got bigger things on their minds at the moment.
“Wh—what does that mean?” she asks.
After searching their son’s backpack and his bedroom, collecting a few things we want to take a closer look at, Astra and I sat down with Peter’s parents, Susan and Dutton Olange, who are sitting across the table from us. They’re huddled together with Dutton’s arm around his wife’s shoulder, their eyes red and puffy. Susan’s face is mottled and streaked with tears, and she’s clutching a crumpled, worn tissue in her fist.
“It means that the man who took your son has been watching you all for a while,” I reply evenly. “He knew your routines, the neighborhood, and the optimal time to strike.”
She shudders, and Dutton holds her a little tighter, grief and fear creating inscrutable expressions on their faces. Susan dabs at her eyes with her tissue and sniffs.
“This is a good neighborhood… a good community,” Dutton says, his voice soft. “Who would do something like this?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” I say. “Now, have either of you noticed anybody unusual in the neighborhood? Somebody who doesn’t belong?”
The couple shares a look with each other, then both shake their heads. “No,” Susan says. “There wasn’t anybody out of place that we noticed. No strange cars or anything like that. Not that I noticed.”
“Not that I noticed either,” Dutton echoes his wife.
“I saw that the rear of your property backs up to some woods,” I say.
Susan nods. “Yes. It’s the nature preserve.”
“That’s probably where he surveilled your family from,” I tell them. “I’m guessing he spent some time back there learning your routines.”
Susan covers her mouth with her trembling hands as fresh tears spill down her face. “Oh my God. How could we have not seen this?”
“It’s not your fault, Mrs. Olange. You couldn’t have known. People who do things like this… they make a habit of not being seen,” Astra says softly.
The squelch and crackle of the police radios echo into the dining room as troopers from the state’s Criminal Investigation Bureau make their way through the house collecting evidence. They’re not going to find anything in the house. The driveway is the crime scene. Not that they’re going to find anything out there either. Our guy is methodical and disciplined. He’s clean. But the troopers are already upset enough at us bigfooting our way onto the case and taking over that I don’t feel like antagonizing them further by pointing that out, so I just let them do their thing.
“Okay, walk me through what happened again,” I ask.
She draws in a breath that’s shaking as hard as her hands and dabs her eyes again. “I—I came home from the office and found Peter’s backpack lying in the driveway. When I didn’t find him in the house, I tried calling his cellphone, but it’s in his backpack. I was worried, and his bag being in the driveway made no sense, so I checked the security feeds. When I saw what happened, I called the police and then my husband.”
“Okay, has Peter mentioned anybody following him around? Anybody who’s given him a strange feeling lately? Anybody he doesn’t know turning up in strange places?” Astra asks.
Susan shakes her head. “No. Nothing like that.”
“He hasn’t said anything like that to me either,” Dutton replies.
“And neither of you has noticed anybody you don’t know watching you?”
They shake their heads but don’t say anything. They both look exhausted. Emotionally spent. Their fear and grief over watching their son be snatched right out of their driveway is obviously starting to take a toll on them.
“So, what’s going to happen now, Agents? Are we going to get a ransom call? Is that what this is about? We’re willing to pay whatever they want,” Dutton says.
Astra glances at me, her face troubled. Senator Barlow still hasn’t received a ransom demand after smiley-face man snatched Ashley, so I have no reason to think the Olanges will get one. This isn’t about money. It’s about something else, but I just don’t know what it is yet and won’t until we can figure out what the connection between Ashley Barlow and Peter Olange is.
“We don’t know just yet,” I tell them. “We’re going to let the Maryland State Police set up a listening post in your house, though, just in case a call does come in.”
Susan pins me to my seat with an icy stare, and I see a flicker of something in her gaze. She’s sharp. Very sharp. I get the feeling she can see through us and knows there are big parts of this story that we’re leaving out of the telling.
“You don’t think one’s coming in, though, do you?” she asks.
“I really can’t say right now, Mrs. Olange. It’s best if we just let this all play out,” I respond.
“What is going on, Agents?” Susan asks. “I’m getting the feeling you know who this man is. Have you dealt with him before?”
“What?” Dutton asks, a look of surprise on his face. “Has he abducted somebody else?”
“Again, I’m sorry that we can’t tell you more right now,” I reply. “But we are going to do everything in our power to bring Peter home. I promise you that.”
“You can’t tell us more… so, what you’re saying is he has done this before,” Susan says.