Chapter 33
After a brief struggle with her police officer principles, Tina drove the blue CRV with the Uber placard to another part of the parking lot, out of range of the security cameras.
She didn’t have a warrant to search it, and shouldn’t even have his keys.
Any evidence she found would be off-limits if he was ever charged with a crime.
She could imagine her fellow police officers raging at her for making their jobs more difficult.
But the urgency of locating Jessie outweighed those concerns, and besides, she was on vacation. This was personal, not professional.
Since she did owe Marigold a report in her “private investigator” capacity, she texted her.
Adam Johnson has been located. He’s currently heading to Concord Hospital in New Hampshire. Unconscious after being hit by car. Using the name Seth Baker.
Marigold quickly texted back. I’ll head there now.
See you there. We need to interrogate him about Jessie.
Ten-four.
Jack searched the back seat of the car while she sorted through the glove compartment.
“This car is registered to Kate Mansfield,” she said. “Looks like he borrowed it from his mother. No wonder there’s a crocheted dreamcatcher hanging from the rearview mirror. And that explains the reddish grayish hair in the trunk.”
“Kate Mansfield doubles as an Uber driver?”
“Maybe, to make ends meet? Maybe crafters have trouble competing with Etsy these days. Other than that, it’s pretty tidy up here in the front seat. How’s the back?”
“A pile of quilts. Maybe she was planning a delivery before Seth borrowed her car—or filched it. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
Poor Jack was sounding pretty gloomy.
“Hey,” she said gently over the headrest of the passenger seat. “It was a long shot. So what if there’s nothing in his car? We’ll head to the hospital next.”
“And if he doesn’t wake up?”
“Then we keep trying. One way or another, I promise you we’ll keep trying. This is what a lot of police work is, you know. It’s one step after another, often turning up nothing, until you find that one thing that leads you in the right direction.”
He groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “I should have stayed out of sight. We could have kept following him and he probably would have led us right to her. But no, I had to be a hotshot and go confront him like a jackass.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” she began, although part of her had thought exactly that when he’d charged into the cell phone store.
“Be honest. I didn’t listen to you. You’re an actual cop, and I just bolted into that store like I knew what I was doing. I should have stayed in my own lane.”
“Your lane is finding Jessie. I don’t blame you for wanting to confront him. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake at all. Maybe you learned something. Sometimes I do that during an investigation. I do something unexpected just to see what gets stirred up. You had him so panicked he ran into traffic.”
She stopped in the midst of looking through Kate Mansfield’s paperwork. “Hang on. What if he wasn’t running into traffic?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if he was running to something, not just from something?”
“Like what?”
Tina’s gears were turning now. “It’s been bugging me ever since I chased him, the way he just took off across the lot.
Okay, bear with me here. The hospital was clearly a trap.
Celine let her brother know that you had her phone.
He lured us to the hospital parking lot with his pretense of needing a car.
He probably wanted visual confirmation of our identities.
Once he knew who we were, he signaled to the sniper to let loose.
Probably that was the same guy who set fire to your Audi. ”
Jack winced at that painful memory.
“But maybe he actually did need wheels. He can’t keep driving his mother’s around, especially if she needs it for her Uber moonlighting. Maybe that little strip mall is where he went to pick up a new burner phone and a new vehicle.”
Jack was slowly nodding. “So the car that Celine sent for him could be somewhere in this lot.”
“Exactly. I definitely got the impression he saw a safe haven in that lot and was running for it.”
She climbed out of the driver’s seat, impatient to get going. But Jack was busy tugging one last piece of clothing from the pile. Eventually he disentangled the item he was chasing, and held it up so she could see. “Found something,” he said triumphantly.
“Is that Jessie’s?”
It was a pretty suede jacket with a multitude of pockets in a stunning forest green color. Her mouth watered at the sight. Despite her penchant for black on the job, she loved beautiful clothes. If she ever took a vacation—a real one—she had a wardrobe wish-list ready to go.
“Yes. That’s what I thought I saw when he whizzed past me. Did he bring it along to fool us?”
“Not sure what he was thinking, but check the pockets,” she told him.
He rummaged through each one—it took a few moments since the jacket was blessed with at least six pockets that she could see, not counting the inner ones—and pulled out a very incriminating-looking plastic baggie.
At first she assumed it contained drugs, but when she took a closer look, she saw that it held a piece of paper that had been folded up many times over until it was a small square. The baggie was made from a thick plastic that was clearly trying to protect the scrap of paper.
“Go ahead,” she urged him. “Unfold it.”
“But isn’t it evidence? Shouldn’t we dust it for fingerprints or something?”
“Right now, we need to find Jessie. Here, I’ll do it.”
He handed her the bag, holding it carefully between two fingers. Minimizing her own contact with the baggie, she pried it open and gently retrieved the folded piece of paper.
It had been creased and manipulated, folded and unfolded so many times that it was practically falling apart. “Someone has referred to this many times,” she said, as she spread it open. “God knows why.”
The paper contained nothing but squiggly lines that scurried across the page as if they’d been left by a manic mouse.
There wasn’t a straight line to be found, just curves and deep indentations and protrusions.
It was all one line, she saw, as she looked more closely.
It started at one end of the page and ended at the other, but all the detours and wandering covered a good half of the surface of the paper.
“What is it?” Jack stared at the black ink drawing. He pointed at a smudge in one corner of the page. “I think it’s a copy. Like a Xerox.”
“You’re right.” She nodded in agreement. “It almost looks like the original was drawn in pen and ink, the old-fashioned kind. See these brush marks?”
“So it’s a piece of artwork? Calligraphy gone mad?”
She snapped some photos of it, then carefully folded it up and sealed the baggie. “Let’s find his other car.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“Watch and learn.” She winked at him, happy to see that his mood had lifted now that he’d found Jessie’s coat.
He kept it with him, holding tight to it as they crossed the parking lot and headed for the bank branch she’d noticed as she chased Seth down the sidewalk.
She pegged it as the most likely to have security cameras aimed at the parking lot.
A flash of her badge got her into the security office, where a guard showed her how to access the last hour’s footage on their computer system.
“Have I ever mentioned how much I love the digital age?” she murmured to Jack. “I’d hate to be a detective back in the era of VCRs. Can you believe you had to just watch a tape roll and press a big bulky pause button to rewind? I know, champagne problems.”
She went back about half an hour and they both watched intently as cars came in and out of the lot.
“What are we looking for?” Jack asked.
“A car that isn’t going anywhere. The staffers all have spots in the employee section here.” She pointed it out. “Everyone else is a visitor, and all these stores are high-traffic.”
They reached the moment when Seth ran in front of the Volvo. She paused there and traced a direct line on the monitor that would have been Seth’s route if the Volvo hadn’t slammed into him. “That Saab, maybe? Or the Toyota Tercel behind it?”
She let the tape play in fast forward, keeping an eye on the two cars in Seth’s direct path. For the next fifteen minutes, neither of the cars moved. Then a mother and her toddler got into the Saab and pulled away. The Toyota still hadn’t budged.
“I think that might be our target. Let’s go take a look.”
They emerged into a sprinkle of rain, which quickly picked up into a steady drizzle as they hurried toward the Tercel. “Would Celine really leave such an unglamorous car for him? That Tercel has to be fifteen years old.”
“If you’re trying to stay off the radar, older cars are better. The fewer electronics, the fewer chances to leave traces behind. I know of one case where the police were able to pull up the suspect’s home destination on their car’s navigation system.”
“I wish we could get that lucky.”
“Same. But we won’t.”
They reached the Tercel, which was the most generic possible gray color. A car like this would never be noticed by most people. Perfect for someone trying to lay low. She peered through the window and saw the key tucked into the nook in the dashboard.
“Ready to break and enter?” she said lightly.
“I mean…aren’t we going to be on camera doing exactly that?”
“Well, no, because I turned off their cameras, didn’t you notice?”
“Jesus. I guess it’s a good thing you’re on the side of law and order. You’d make one hell of a criminal.”
“I will try to take that as a compliment.” She slid into the driver’s seat and hit the jackpot right away. A parking ticket had been tossed to the floor boards of the passenger seat.
“This car was parked for three days at this address in Harbortown.” She handed it to Jack, who was standing just outside the car, so he could check it out. “Do you know it?”
“No, it means nothing to me.” He handed it back. “What does the registration say?”
She rummaged through the glove compartment and retrieved the paperwork. “Holy shit.”
“What?” She heard excitement in his voice, the same that pulsed through her veins. This was what progress felt like.
“This car is registered to Benny Clyde, and the address is the same one on the parking ticket.”
“So Celine is working with the Clydes?” He frowned, shaking his head. “I don’t see it.”
“No. I’m thinking he reached out to the Clydes for a new vehicle, not Celine.
Seth thought he’d lost us after the trooper stopped him.
When he saw us at the cell phone store, he panicked because he’s not a practiced criminal.
Went right for the car for a quick getaway.
He was so rattled he didn’t notice the Volvo. ”
She took a photo of everything, then extracted herself from the car, leaving the parking ticket where she’d found it. Her hope was that no one would ever know they’d been inside. “We should have time to check out this house before Seth wakes up. They’ll be running tests on him for a while.”
“Do you think Jessie could be at this house?”
She didn’t want to get his hopes up, but in her opinion, it was certainly possible. “I think we should check it out.”
He nodded, clearly trying to control his nerves, then gestured at the blue Honda. “What should we do with Kate Mansfield’s CRV?”
“We’ll leave it here. The tracker’s still on it. We might get a ping.”