“Want to knock?” Kaiser asked.
“Got your carry?”
Kaiser patted his waist, under the loose cotton shirt.
“Keep it handy. Let’s go knock,” Letty said.
They did, but got no answer. “Probably at work,” Kaiser said.
“The neighbors are probably going to tell her that we were asking, too,” Letty said. She looked back at the house, then up and down the street. “Damn it. I think this was about where I saw that truck parked. The one with the sticker. This might be her house.”
“Don’t start thinking about coming back at night,” Kaiser said. “I don’t think this would be a street where you’d want to do that.”
Kaiser drove, taking them back to the hotel, while Letty called Greet at DHS. “We need to have you call the Yandel Investment Corp. in Denver, Colorado, and see if they can give you the name of the woman who rents one of their houses in El Paso...” She gave Greet the house number. “If you get her name, we need you to turnthat through NCIS to see what kind of record she has... and maybe see if you could get her tax returns, figure out exactly what she’s been doing here in El Paso.”
“Tax returns will take a court order, but, it’s usually fairly quick,” Greet said. “I talked to Senator Colles, he’s been goosing the FBI, but I haven’t heard back. Things are moving, but I can’t guarantee how fast they’ll be going.”
“I already had that lecture from John,” Letty said. “Call us soon as you can get this stuff. There’s a chance this woman could be Jael.”
Hawkes had beenwatching them through a window as they worked the street. That anyone should be working the street was unusual enough, but that it should be a big, tough man with a slender young woman rang alarm bells.
Soon enough, they were knocking at her door. She was sitting in a bedroom, on the floor, arms wrapped around her legs. Trying not to breathe. They knocked some more, then walked away. Without moving a curtain, she stood up and watched them go.
She called Low. “Those investigators are here. They don’t know exactly where I am, they’re knocking on doors up and down the street. But it’s them.”
“Damn. If they call the cops...”
They talked about what Hawkes should do if the investigators came back before she could get out—cross the backyard, climb the fence, Low would pick her up on the next street. She’d been ready to abandon the house anyway, she’d sold everything of value, including her Jeep, packed the clothes she’d need for her escape. Now she carried her bag out to the Subaru in the garage, along with three grocery sacks full of books, a box of dishes and silverware, bedding, including her pillows, and a six-pack cooler, and loaded up the car.
She did the landlord’s rep, who was nice enough, a thin, pale man with a tentative smile, who’d always been polite with her, the favor of emptying out the refrigerator, taking anything that might spoil to the garbage can, pouring two quarts of milk down the sink. When she was done, she stood in her bedroom, moving back and forth between windows on opposite walls, looking up and down the street.
No sign of a cop, or any unknown car, or the Explorer.
When she was satisfied, she took a last turn around the house, looking for anything she might have missed. She didn’t bother to try to wipe out fingerprints, or any of that. The Feds would figure out soon enough who she was, and the Army not only had her fingerprints, they had samples of her DNA.
Turned one last time at the garage door: she’d lived in the house for three years, felt no affection for it at all. Shook her head, ran the garage door up, backed out, and a minute later, was gone for good.
“Her name isJane Jael Hawkes and she has no criminal record at all,” Greet told Letty. “But she’s your girl. How many women you know with a middle name like Jael?”
Letty was sprawled on her bed, her phone set to “speaker.” Kaiser sat on a corner chair, immersed in a beat-up copy of Alan Furst’s novelRed Gold, which Letty had loaned him. “She was in the Army until twelve years ago, clean record there. She’s really invisible, no presence on social media, at least, none we can find, no mentions in the local newspapers. Military records show she used the G.I. Bill to go to college at UTEP. Don’t have her tax records yet.”
“Army—stationed at Fort Bliss?” Letty asked.
“No, Fort Polk, Louisiana.”
“Is Fort Bliss a place where you might get some military C-4?”
“Oh... heck, I don’t know,” Greet said. “I wouldn’t be surprised, I guess.”
Letty said, “Hang on for one minute... I need to check my computer.” She did that, then came back to Greet: “Billy, the commanding general at Fort Bliss is named Thomas D. Creighton, he’s a major general. Could you give him a ring and ask him if we could come over to chat with him?”
“Two-stars are pretty important,” Greet said. “I mean, I’m pretty important, and I’m only the equivalent of a colonel.”
In the corner, Kaiser looked up from the book and raised an eyebrow.
“Could you call him?” Letty asked. “Tell him you’re a three-star and if he doesn’t talk to us, he’ll be a one-star by dinnertime.”
“I’ll get back to you on that,” Greet said.
