The next time we meetface-to-face, I won’t see it coming.
Chapter Fifteen
The number one reason criminals get caught is lack of discipline. The ones who get away, theso-calledmasterminds, have impeccableself-control, motivated by calculation rather than emotion. Theft, for example, driven by desire for greater wealth can be calculated. Theft driven by desperation, homelessness, starvation, especially involving a child or other loved one, will always involve emotion, and therefore be vulnerable to mistakes.
Murder, kidnapping, assault—the same rules apply. A crime of violence committed to send a message or eliminate a competitor for example, can be calculated. A violent crime driven by anger, fear, jealousy, revenge—these will come littered with evidence that can be found and analyzed. Whether there is justice can’t be predicted, of course. So much depends on the resources and intelligence of the good guys and the bad guys. But mistakes are most likely to be made when the brain is compromised by feelings.
I am about to officially give up on Wade showing when I see Rowan rushing out from the kitchen, the swinging doors slamming against the sides of the cake displays.
“Go!” he yells. “Go!”
So I go. I race out after him and the second officer from our squad. I don’t ask what’s happened. I assume that they’ve spotted him or the truck and that he spotted them back and took off.
This doesn’t make sense to me. There’s no way he would come this close.
We get outside and survey the parking area. It’s a small strip mall with parallel parking at the curb and angled spaces on either side of a grass median. Our people were in the last space at the end of the curb so they could get out quickly, which they have now done. They’ve popped the flashing red light on the roof of their SUV and are in full pursuit of a blue truck, both vehicles now out on the main road.
We can’t catch up to them, so we stand on the sidewalk and watch.
Rowan holds his phone, pacing. Excited. “Do we have him? Tell me we have him!”
We watch as both vehicles pull to the side, two lights down the road. Specks off in the distance. And for a second, just one second, I let myself believe it’s over.
“What’s happening?” I ask Rowan.
Our colleague steps away, also on his phone, also getting an update. They hang up at the exact same time.
Now the burner phone buzzes, and my hope leaves as quickly as it came. I knew better than to let it in.
Rowan stares at the scene unfolding down the street, hands on his hips, shaking his head. “It’s not him,” he says. “Just some kid with a blue truck.”
Some kid who got paid two hundred bucks to drive through this parking lot, slow down in front of the diner, then drive at least two lights away—no matter who followed him. Some kid who got paid in Bitcoin. Who communicated on Reddit with an account that is now gone. Vanished.
“Fuck!” Rowan says. “Fuck!”
I don’t tell him about the messages that wait for me on the burner phone. Guilt tugs at my heart, but the plan is in my head and I cannot let it go. It has become my lifeline. The only way I see out of this. I have convinced myself, and there is no turning back. This is a game Wade and I must play alone.
My nerves settle as we get back in our cars. Me in my Subaru. Rowan and the other guy in the SUV parked around back.
“They’re bringing the kid to the station,” Rowan tells me, and I agree we should talk to him and find out everything we can. I know already there will be no trace.
Rowan doesn’t take any chances. He watches me get in my car and lock the doors. I drive around back as they walk, then follow them. If Wade was hoping to create a diversion, pull the first unit away with the truck, then send me back to my car alone, it doesn’t work. Of course, he knew it wouldn’t because it’s the first thing I consider when we get the news about the truck. Wade is in my head the way I am in his.
I check the messages only when we’re back inside the station, waiting for this kid with the blue truck who will be useless.
The first is a video clip. There’s no time stamp, but it’s recent. Mitch grew a beard after the shooting. I think he felt exposed the way I did, and this made it better for him. It wasn’t rational. Still, he’d never grown a beard before the shooting. Now here he is. With Briana, with the beard. With Briana, sometime after the shooting. Within the past three weeks.
I know the scene. The house. The truck. The people.
It’s Mitch, standing in Briana’s driveway. They are at the end of something, a conversation perhaps. I see them hug. Mitch rubs her back and then lets her go. They don’t kiss, but they do linger. I can’t hear their parting words or even see their mouths as they move, but I can tell they’re speaking even as Mitch gets into his truck.
Wade was on the road in front of the house when he filmed this. It has a fully exposed, sprawling front lawn so he would have no trouble parking and recording through the window. There’s an unobstructed view from the curb up the entire driveway to the house. Mitch would have noticed the blue truck there, which means Wade has access to a different vehicle.
This is confirmed by the second message, which contains a photo of our officers in their SUV at the Ridgeway Shopping Center. I can tell from the angle that it was taken through a car window parked across the median.
Wade was there today, in a different car.
A third message comes in now—short and to the point.
