Chapter 7
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Patterson’s wallet held one more item behind the firearms qualification card. A photograph of two men standing in front of a brick building. Same face, same build, same posture.
The resemblance was close enough that Flint had to look twice to find the differences. Cody was heavier through the neck. The other man, presumably Kyle, stood a half step forward with his weight on the balls of his feet.
Flint slid the photograph back into the wallet and placed it on the workbench beside the weapons.
“Your twin brother. When was the last time you talked to him?”
“Few months back. He called to say he was in Texas. Kept the details to himself.” Patterson flexed his bound wrist against his thigh. “That was the last I heard from him.”
“And you came here to find him.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Flint pulled the folding knife from the workbench drawer and cut the zip tie. Patterson rubbed his wrist where the plastic had bitten in.
“My files are in the car,” Patterson said. “Everything I’ve put together on Kyle’s movements. You want to see what I have, it’s in the sedan.”
Flint studied him for a moment. The offer was deliberate. Patterson was trading access for cooperation. A cop’s instinct. Give something to get something.
“Let’s go.”
He collected Patterson’s revolver and backup piece from the workbench and handed them to Patterson.
They walked out of the garage and through the back gate into the alley.
The sedan was parked where Patterson had left it, four houses up on the same side of the street. The streetlight on the corner was too far away to help. Flint could see the shape of the car but not the details.
Abruptly, Patterson stopped walking.
Flint saw it a second later. The driver’s door was closed but the passenger door stood open six inches. The dome light was off, which meant someone had switched it to the manual position to keep the interior dark while they worked.
Patterson moved to the passenger side. He looked inside without touching anything. His gaze quickly scanned the area. “They broke in.”
Flint came around and looked over Patterson’s shoulder. The glove box hung open, papers scattered across the passenger seat and footwell. The center console lid was up. The rear seat had been pulled forward from its normal position, exposing the trunk access panel, which had been pried loose.
The thief had searched the car methodically and fast. Every compartment was opened, contents checked, and then he’d moved on.
“What did he take?” Flint asked.
Patterson walked around the car checking each area, cataloging what was wrong.
“Laptop’s gone. The folder with printouts of my brother’s credit card records and phone activity are also gone.” He leaned into the back seat and checked behind the displaced cushion. “The road atlas I’d been marking up is gone, too.”
“What about your phone?”
Patterson tapped his jacket pocket. “On me the whole time. Everything else was in the car.”
“You have backups?”
“Some of it. There’s cloud storage on the laptop.
The credit card records I can pull again.
The phone records, too.” He straightened up and looked at Flint.
“But the atlas had my notes. Locations I’d checked.
People I’d talked to. Routes my brother might have taken.
I don’t think I can recreate it all from memory. ”
Flint looked along the street in both directions. The thieves were long gone. The break-in was a crime of opportunity. They’d moved in while Patterson was in the garage.
Which meant they’d been watching Patterson, knew he was inside, and had made the most of it.
“You were being followed,” Flint said. “You didn’t notice?”
Patterson shook his head. He was a retired cop, and he had missed the tail. Whoever was following him was good at surveillance, sure. But he’d been preoccupied, too.
Scarlett came outside and Flint waved her over. She walked with her hand inside her jacket, which was where she carried her weapon.
“This is Cody Patterson. Retired Indiana police. Someone tossed his car while we were in the garage,” Flint said. “This is Kathryn Scarlett, my business partner.”
Patterson and Scarlett nodded to each other while she quickly scanned the sedan’s interior and the scattered papers.
“Show me what’s on your phone,” Flint said.
Patterson pulled it from his back pocket and scrolled through his photos.
“Yesterday, I was watching a commercial building in Langford when a woman drove up.” He glanced at Scarlett.
“You and your SUV. The one that’s parked in front of Flint’s house.
You spent about an hour at the building and the surrounding area, then drove back to Houston. I followed.”
Scarlett’s expression held steady, but Flint saw the small shift in her posture. She had been alone in Langford yesterday, and now she knew someone had been watching.
“I parked outside the Houston building. A man approached on foot. He seemed to go in through the front entrance, but I couldn’t see him well enough at that point to confirm.
He never came out. When six o’clock rolled around, I figured he must have gone out the back.
So I drove around to the alley and found the attached garage.
” Patterson turned the phone so Flint and Scarlett could see the screen. “These are a few snaps.”
Six photographs. The first three showed a man in dark clothing approaching the Scarlett Investigations building entrance. He was lean, average height and build, wearing a ball cap pulled low and a messenger bag across his chest.
The images were taken from a distance, but the resolution was good even if he didn’t get a shot of the guy’s face.
“That’s the messenger bag I saw,” Scarlett said.
The next two photos were of the thief while he was inside the garage, shot through the gate. In the fifth photo, his face was partially visible in profile beneath the cap. The sixth image showed him at the wheel of Scarlett’s SUV driving out of the garage.
“He drove about two miles to Navigation Boulevard. He left the SUV, got into a gray pickup truck, and drove away.” Patterson scrolled to two more photos and showed the gray truck.
It had Texas plates not clear enough to read.
“I stayed with your SUV until you picked it up and then I followed you here.”
“You could have called the police,” Scarlett said, peeved that he’d been following her.
“I could have,” Patterson agreed. “We all know how that would go.”
Scarlett’s frown didn’t let up, but Flint nodded. A retired cop running an unofficial missing persons case had every reason to stay clear of police. Volunteering information in a situation like this was almost always a mistake.
“The thief won’t be back tonight. Let’s go inside.” Flint, still holding Patterson’s phone, turned to walk toward the house and they followed. On the way, he sent Patterson’s photos to himself and to Scarlett before he returned the phone.
After they settled in, Flint poured coffee for three and gave Scarlett a quick update on their conversation in the garage. Patterson wrapped his hand around the mug and drank half while he waited for Flint to finish.
“I traced my brother to Houston. His last credit card activity was fuel and a motel room on the Gulf Freeway. I found his rental car parked at Hobby Airport in the long-term lot. Keys were under the mat. He’d left a few personal items in the glove box.
” Patterson stared into the coffee. “He vanished after that. I checked every airline and car rental within a hundred miles. Found absolutely no records after that motel.”
“So why did you go to Langford?” Flint asked.
“Kyle’s phone records showed calls to a number in Langford in the days before he went quiet.
I drove out there and started looking around.
It’s a midsized town. Connecting the phone number to a commercial property near the old part of downtown was easy.
” He drank the rest of the coffee. “That’s where I was when you showed up. ”
“What kind of commercial property?” Scarlett asked.
“Strip mall. Mixed-use retail. Closed up. The sign says Keane Development. I haven’t had enough time to go further with it.”
Flint said nothing and Scarlett followed his lead.
“I gotta get some shuteye. I’m running on fumes.” Patterson set his mug on the counter. “I’ll be at a motel on the Gulf Freeway if you want to continue this in the morning.”
“Same motel your brother stayed at?”
“Yep. Same one. Same room, even,” Patterson replied. “Maybe someone will show up looking for him. Or maybe he’ll come back.”
Flint didn’t say how unlikely that was.
He and Patterson exchanged cell numbers, and they walked him to the front door. Patterson stepped onto the porch.
“Whoever went through my car knew what they were doing. They’ve targeted me.” He looked at Flint. “Watch your back.”
Patterson walked to the sedan. He checked the interior once more, closed the passenger door, and got behind the wheel. He started the engine and flipped the headlights on. Flint and Scarlett watched until he pulled away from the curb and disappeared around the corner at the end of the block.
Flint closed the front door and turned the deadbolt. Scarlett was leaning against the kitchen counter with her arms folded when he found her again.
“Tell me about Keane Development,” Flint said.
“I don’t know much about it yet, either,” Scarlett replied. “The building was locked up. The parking lot was empty. I parked down the block for a while to be sure. The place was dead.”
Flint nodded. “See anything else while you were there that might be relevant?”
“His house is on a street called Ridgemont on the north side of town. Nice neighborhood. Big yards. The house is unoccupied and locked up, too.” Scarlett sipped more coffee.
“I talked to a neighbor who said the Keanes had been wonderful people. He worked a lot, but they seemed devoted to each other.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah.” Scarlett unfolded her arms and stood straight. “There’s an old fort on the edge of town. Stone walls. Nineteenth century. One of those frontier forts the Army built before the Civil War. I drove past it on my way to the Keane house. I barely noticed it at the time.”
Flint replied, “You think that’s the fort she meant for your meetup?”
Scarlett shrugged. “You heard her. She said meet me at the fort. She didn’t say which fort or where I might find it.”
She glanced at the wall clock in Flint’s kitchen. Ten minutes past two. “We need to look at your exterior CCTV.”
“Yours, too,” Flint replied.