Dead ends. In the past few hours, that was all Jack Malone was finding. They irritated him. "Nothing, huh?"

"With a young wife and newborn in tow, he's out of a job because of last night."

Jack mulled for a moment before replying, "That doesn't leave much motive."

"Exactly. It just doesn't fit the profile. If he'd wanted to break the law, he would have found a more convenient way to do so. He certainly wouldn't have done it at work."

The claim made sense. However, that didn't mean he had to appreciate the new questions this answer left in its wake. Storing the information near the front of his mind, Jack shifted gears with the ease of a well-oiled carburetor. For now they would direct their attention elsewhere. By this point he and Samantha had left the facility and were now trudging up the side of a barren road towards Jordan's last known advent.

A nearby officer hurriedly motioned towards them, and Jack regarded Vivian once more. "I'll call you back." He closed the phone with a 'click.'

Samantha turned to Jack, reading him. "No luck, huh?"

"It doesn't seem to be our day for it."

The youngest of a conglomeration of officers greeted them by the crime scene. "FBI?"

Their badges appeared once again. Jack was beginning to feel like a prepubescent boy in a liquor store. "Missing Persons Unit. What've you got for us?"

"Two things," he informed.

Sam turned to Jack with an impressed glance.

The officer led them to a ramshackle phone booth. To call it ancient would have been a kindness. Brownish-green grass grew unhindered in tall shoots around the rusty booth, and a myriad of graffiti lined its walls. To be blunt, it was as typical as any phone booth Jack had ever seen.

"The K-9 unit traced her scent to this point." The young officer gestured to a corroded shard jutting out from the side of the booth. "We found skin residue on the outside, along with some traces of blood. The guys sent it to the lab, but we're still waiting on results."

Examining the jagged edge, Jack felt a conflict brew within him. If the test results came back positive, the next step could be taken. Proof of Jordan's existence at the phone booth was high quality. It placed her at a certain date and time, and hopefully would bring them one step closer to discovering her whereabouts. However...the keys words here were "traces of blood." The surfacing of such a clue opened up far too many unpleasant scenarios. He made a face. It left a bad taste in his mouth.

Samantha narrowed her eyes at the officer. "You said there were two things."

The officer reacted as if she'd held a hot poker to his rear. "Yes," he affirmed. He held up a finger, indicating that they wait and literally ran over to his superiors.

Following his retreating form with her eyes, Samantha muttered to Jack, "Since when did the NYPD start recruiting the puberty police?"

Jack smirked a little. Her observations were sound. The kid was barely a day over twenty-one, and with his wispy blonde hair and baby- blues, he would make a more convincing model for Old Navy than a hardened city cop. Jack began to fall into routine, categorizing, estimating, profiling... The kid probably came from Indiana or Ohio; that accent was a dead giveaway. He was a farm boy, born and raised, and he had left for the city in hopes of finding adventure and excitement, a break from his mundane existence. He was book-smart and worked hard at school, or else he never would have gotten this far. He joined up right after college. This was probably one of his first assignments, a hand-out from his lieutenant to let 'junior' get his feet wet. He'd never been to a murder scene. He stuttered around women, and he had yet to actually use the bulging gun in place at his side.

Jack blinked as the officer turned around with an overly satisfied smile, before his mind jolted back to the case at hand. After a short exchange, the kid returned with a handful of computer readouts.

It was obvious that the young officer hadn't a clue that he was being boxed and packaged. "We got these from the phone company." He handed them to Samantha. "It's a list of the all the numbers called in the last twenty- four hours."

Samantha perused the papers in front of her. The packet consisted of three pages, a fair amount for a phone booth sitting out in the sticks. To her continued surprise there were quite a few calls made before, at, and after midnight. She frowned at the length of numbers that stretched out before her.

Jack noticed the same. He looked up to the officer. "We'll need a copy sent to our office." The rookie nodded double-time and went to see that their needs were met. Watching him, Jack shook his head. The officer's zeal was irksome. However, it was a change he could welcome, when you considered that most of the joint investigations between the NYPD and FBI tended to end in a Mexican stand-off.

Samantha usually would have made a crack about newbie's pension for brown-nosing, but from her pensive frown, anyone could see that she was lost in thought. S taring at the phone booth, she addressed Jack. "Seems like Coliandri left behind more pieces that we thought."

"Looks like it," Jack replied. Details of her escape were emerging, gradually piecing together the events that led to her disappearance. I n nearly an instant, they had gone from a complete absence of clues to a magnitude of evidence. Part of him questioned their luck, but another part just remained grateful. Good fortune was hard to come by.

The rookie returned triumphant. "A copy was faxed to your office. It should be there any minute."

A memory of Jack's own first days on the force swelled back to him. He hadn't summoned the memory. It had more smacked him in the face, like a surprise wave at the beach. He recalled the uncertainty, the readiness to please... The passionate yet fleeting ideals that he called him to the FBI in the first place. With it he had no choice but to dispense one of his rare smiles.

"Thanks," he said.

The rookie smiled back.

As they walked away, Samantha cast her eye at Jack. "What was that all about?"

"Keeping up appearances. After Ms. Charlot's dance party, it's nice to see a little enthusiasm."

Samantha raised her eyebrows before reverting back to her initial concerns. "There were a lot of digits on that read-out."

"I know," he grumbled. "Plenty of places she could have called. Plenty of people she could have gotten in touch with."

"So, she escapes from Northeast. She calls someone to play get-away driver. Said person shows up... and she leaves behind her blood on the phone booth." She rested a pen in the crock of her mouth. "We could have foul play on our hands."

It was Jack's turn to frown. "With the company she keeps, I wouldn't be surprised, but we won't know for sure until those phone numbers are traced."

With a confirming nod, Samantha averted her gaze as if to say 'good luck with that' and went to speak again to one of the other officers in hopes of learning more about their rapidly evolving situation.

As promised Jack called Vivian back. "Hey, Viv. You know that second assignment?"

She answered. "The one I detest with my entire being?"

"Yeah, that one. You'll now have a full and extensive knowledge of every caller in the last twenty-four hours from Birch St. public phone services. How many people can brag about that?"

Her voice was saturated by sarcasm. "I'll the envy of the useless talents ball."

"I thought they didn't judge that 'til January?"

A click of the phone let him know she'd hung up on him. It didn't faze him. Vivian was agitated, but such an emotion served to fuel her. She'd pick through the numbers with a fine-tooth comb. It was how she operated; it was why he had hired her. With no more evidence to report, Jack and Samantha started back down the hill to Jack's car. If he knew Vivian, she'd have something worth showing him by lunchtime.