CHAPTER 70 The Kidnapper
The Kidnapper
Everybody is back in Terlingua and so I, too, am back to the little house I suspected all along. I stake it out four times a day. It’s easier to do it now, though it remains a shut-up mystery.
Still, obsession yields results, so I set up a proper schedule so I will soon have every single hour covered. She has got to come out some time.
Morning, afternoon, evening and then night. But there’s no movement, even though the lights go on and off. This time, I have the things with me. The tape, the ropes, they’re in a bag on my back. If I see her, she’s mine. Forget overpreparation, underpreparation is a risk, too.
I sit cross-legged in the dirt at two o’clock in the morning, hips aching, hands filthy from leaning back on them, just watching for any kind of flicker within.
There’s always nothing until there’s something.
Sure enough, when I return at six o’clock in the morning, she is just leaving in a taxi that pulls off as I walk by.
This spurs me to act. I risk a call to the county appraiser’s office, something I don’t want to do for obvious reasons.
They answer, and I give false details of my own, but a nearby address.
Say I’m a neighbour, the tenant is problematic and I suspect they’re up to no good.
They don’t know who the tenant is, say it’s not on the records as let.
They will find out who the landlord is and call me back.
Tomorrow, I will come back and stay the night. Two until six. People are creatures of routine and habit, after all. Let’s see.