Tracking Romanescu

“Have you looked through the files I’ve sent to Sean?” I ask.

If I’m going to have to deal with Irene being my constant tail, I may as well make good use of her, and that means filling her in, should it be necessary.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“You’ve got them memorised back to front,” I say.

“On the money, Mr. Ashworth,” Irene says, sounding all too much like a condescending teacher. “We’ve been reading the contents of your phone ever since you moved in.”

But not the most important parts, I think. I give her a good-natured smile.

“So you know I’ve got nothing to hide,” I say.

“I believe you,” she says, too convincingly. “It’s just the ones above who don’t.”

“Of course,” I say. I lean back in my seat and think for a moment. What part of this case do I need help with? “Have you looked into the case of Sorina Romanescu at all?”

“She’s the girl that you think was at the Playboy party,” Irene says. “Seemingly no record anywhere in the United States. Almost certainly illegally trafficked into the country.”

“That’s the one,” I agree. “I need you to track her down. We’re going to see what kind of information we can get out of her.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” she mutters. “No record. Anywhere. Can’t draw a bead on her in the United States.”

“Now, what kind of attitude is that, coming from a former FBI agent?” I ask. “If I didn’t mishear you a minute ago, you’re mine to command. So let’s get cracking on that missing, girl, shall we?”

Irene gives me the evil eye, but she slowly pulls open her laptop, opening up a browser. A moment later, a dozen blank search results spill onto her screen, the unsurprising consequence of looking up a missing person.

“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” she says, staring at the screen. She glances back at me. “What do you suggest I do next, my great commander?”

“Use a bit of creativity,” I say. “Is the first page of Google really the best thing that you can come up with? Come on, this is shoddy work, and you know it. I could do better with one hand tied behind my back.”

“Is that right?” Irene says, something flashing in her eyes.

Oh, have I got her attention now?

“Want to bet? First one to find a lead on Romanescu gets a hundred,” I say.

“Keep that hand behind your back, and we have ourselves a deal,” she laughs, but we both know better. This is a competition, and it’s about to get dead serious.

I put my hand behind my back, and Irene’s hand is instantly a blur on the keyboard, flipping through data sources at a speed so fast that I can barely follow what’s happening on her screen, much less focus on my own.

I realise, as I spend half a minute hunting-and-pecking on my keyboard with my right hand to complete a simple search, that I’m going to lose this bet. But that’s fine. I didn’t make this bet to beat Irene. I get what I really wanted out of it by observing Irene work.

I have good reason to believe that the methods she’s using now are the same ones that Vidocq’s team would have employed in their search for Markus Najbreit. And if I know how they’re trying to search for me, I’ll always be able to stay one step ahead of them.

So I continue working in my agonisingly slow manner, never letting more than a couple seconds pass between each time I flick my gaze to Irene’s laptop, getting a sense of what she’s up to.

The minutes quickly pass into hours. I hadn’t had the time to look into the Romanescu case too deeply before, but the annoyance on Irene’s scrunched up face confirms what I’ve always thought might be the case—there’s absolutely nothing to be found on this girl. Yet another failed database search later, and she’s practically scowling at her laptop, telling it to produce something for god-damned once.

I hum a good-natured tune, staring at my own screen full of null results, wondering if Irene is going to give up any time soon. But it turns out that I’ve got nothing to fear, as she suddenly perks up. I glance at her screen. Something looks promising there. A couple minutes later, and she leans back in her seat, exhaling.

“Finally,” she growls, and then she stares at me, triumphant. “Now this is what I would call a lead.”

“What have you got?” I ask her, looking at the tangled mess of red dots on the map of LA she’s pulled up.

“Matches from local traffic cameras,” she says.

She taps on one of the red dots, and it expands to show a blurry photograph of several pedestrians crossing the road. A circle appears around one of them, a pale-skinned girl that looks skinnier-than-healthy, and Irene taps her keyboard a couple times, zooming in one the image. Though the camera quality is poor, the broad facial features correspond to those from the Playboy party footage that Sean captured, and the missing person report from Interpol that I first used to identify the Romanescu girl too.

“The algorithm doesn’t give any individual photo a very high match-rate,” Irene says, clicking on a few other red dots and showcasing the photos to me. “But with so many photos in the same neighborhood, all over the last couple of weeks? Pay up.”

“Great work,” I chuckle, pulling my left hand out from behind my back for the first time in hours, using it to reach for my wallet. I pull out a crisp hundred, setting it down on the desk in front of her. “You put that together quickly. Surprisingly quickly.”

“It comes from practice. What would you like me to look at next?” she asks, not-so-deftly changing the topic.

“Nothing, for now. Let’s call it a night,” I say, and as I get up to leave the Bunker, I internally wince as I see Irene following me.

I’m never going to know peace now, am I?