“Morning,” the woman says, and smiles.
Alice does not recognize the voice.
“Morning,” she answers, and goes to the door marked WOMEN, and tries the knob.
“Occupied,” the woman says.
Alice still does not recognize the voice.
“Are you waiting?” she asks.
“Nope,” the woman says.
The door to the ladies’ room opens. A fat woman in a flowered dress comes out, smiles at both of them, and then goes toward the front of the building. The black woman is now putting sugar into her coffee. Alice goes into the ladies’ room.
The room is an entirely gray entity. Gray tile floors, gray Formica countertop, gray porcelain sink, gray door on the single stall in the room.
She throws the bolt on the entrance door. The click sounds like a minor explosion in the small confines of the room.
She approaches the gray door. She enters the stall — the fat woman has forgotten to flush — puts the bag down alongside the toilet bowl.
For a moment, she stands alone and silent in the small cubicle. Then she leaves the stall, and leaves the ladies’ room. The black woman is still there at the coffee machines, sipping from the cardboard container.
Alice walks over to her.
“Are you the one?” she asks.
The woman appears startled.
“Are you the one who has my children?”
The woman says nothing.
“If you are, then listen to me,” Alice says. “If you don’t let my kids go, I’ll find you and kill you.”
“Gee,” the black woman says, and goes immediately to the ladies’ room door. She grabs the doorknob, turns to face Alice, looks her dead in the eye. “Be gone when I come out,” she says. “Do anything foolish, and they die. We’ll call you.” She nods. “You understand what I’m saying?” she says, and stares at Alice a moment longer before opening the door and entering the ladies’ room.
Alice hears the click of the bolt.
“I hope you understood me!” she shouts to the closed door.
But her threat is an empty one.
They have the children.
There is nothing she can do.
Nothing at all.
The three detectives have positioned themselves outside the Shell station in a classic triangular surveillance pattern, ready to pick up on the perp the moment she comes out of the convenience area, if indeed she’s in there. They have to assume she’s in there. They haven’t spotted a blue Impala in the station area itself or parked on any of the surrounding side streets, so they can only think she walked from wherever she parked the car, if in fact she drove the blue Impala and not some other vehicle here to the station. But she has to be inside there. Nobody in her right mind would leave a satchelful of hundred-dollar bills in a public ladies’ room for longer than five minutes.
The detectives know they are not quite as Mickey Mouse as Alice Glendenning believes. They have already ordered backup from Captain Steele, and four unmarked CID cars are waiting to pick up the perp’s trail the minute she steps into a car, if she steps into a car. One of them is parked facing the distant Gulf, its nose pointed toward the Crescent Island ferry, in case she decides to head out that way. The other is parked facing east on Lewiston, in case she decides to go for I-75. The other cars are facing north and south, on either side of 41, should she decide to go either north to downtown Cape October, or south to Fort Myers. All four cars are within reach of easy radiophone contact if/when Sloate, Di Luca, or Cooper, on foot, have any information to relay.
From all three vantage points, they each and separately see Alice Glendenning come out of the convenience area and walk rapidly to her black Mercedes. She is no longer carrying the Louis Vuitton bag. Good. That means the perp now has the evidence money in her possession, which further means they can arrest her without a warrant. Arresting her is not what they wish to do, however. What they wish to do is follow her to wherever she and her blond accomplice are holding the kids. That is their hope and their plan.
Mrs. Glendenning is in the car now.
The Mercedes engine kicks into life.
Sloate figures she will now be heading home.
Good, he thinks. Just stay out of our hair.
We’ve got the situation under control here.
From where Christine is crouched beside the small window in the ladies’ room, she can see the black Mercedes backing out of its space, and then circling past the gas pumps, and making a left turn on the corner, heading north on 41, toward downtown Cape October.
She looks into the Louis Vuitton bag.
All that money in there looks so sweet and beautiful.
She comes out of the ladies’ room, walks past the coffee machines and the counters bearing fast food junk food, and then stops at the counter to pay for her coffee. In a moment, she is out the front door, walking across the asphalt pavement past the gas pumps.
Almost jauntily, she steps out into the balmy morning.
The three detectives are right behind her.
The girl is very definitely black.
Some five-seven or — eight, Sloate imagines, sporting a short green skirt and a busty white T-shirt. Good-looking girl. Splendid legs, sweet ass. Gold bracelet on her right arm, the one carrying the Louis Vuitton bag.
She struts off 41 and begins walking west toward Citrus, a cell phone to her ear now, supremely sure of herself, the bag full of bogus bills bouncing on her right hip. She knows that as long as she’s got those two kids tucked away someplace, no one’s going to touch her.
Sloate is on point.
Cooper is across the street from him, and several yards behind, in case she decides to turn right.
Marcia Di Luca is on the other side of the street, should the girl decide to hang a Louie.
She is approaching Citrus now, will she go right or left? Cooper wins. She makes the right turn, and he assumes point at the A position, picking up at once, allowing Sloate and Di Luca to fall back into new locations at the B and C corners of the triangle. They have done this sort of surveillance many times before, but never when the lives of two children were at stake.
They are far enough back from the girl to avoid suspicion. Moreover, Di Luca is wearing rayon tailored slacks and a floral-patterned, short-sleeved blouse, whereas Cooper is wearing jeans and a striped T-shirt, and Sloate is wearing a wrinkled linen suit with an open throat sports shirt. They hardly look related by class, status, or profession. They are merely three disparate citizens out for a morning stroll, nothing more on their minds than enjoying the brisk breezes that suddenly sweep the streets, presaging rain.
The girl seems to be enjoying her stroll as well. Her step is brisk. Sloate cannot see her face, but he’s willing to bet she’s smiling. He’d be smiling, too, a bag full of hundred-dollars bills in the kip, he’d be laughing all the way to the bank. They are quite some distance from the Shell station now, still heading north on Citrus, and still no Impala or any other kind of pickup vehicle. By radiophone, Sloate has already informed the unmarked mobile units of the detectives’ present location, and has advised two of the cars to move into position at the eastern end of Citrus, where it rejoins 41. He has asked the remaining two cars to stay far behind the ABC team on Citrus, ready to move in to pick them up should the blue Impala surface. He is hoping that will be soon.
It is Di Luca who first spots the car.
It is parked in a side street a block ahead of where the girl now steps out with a longer stride. She knows she’s almost home free, Di Luca thinks, and quickens her own step. “Suspect vehicle on Citrus and Graham,” she says into her radiophone. “Nose pointing east.”