If this wasn’t the guy they wanted, it was one hell of a coincidence.
“All right, Jay, I’m impressed. What will it take to get the car rental company to give us the tracking information?”
“Already done, Boss. You want to guess where he’s going?”
“Surprise me.”
Jay laughed again.
36
It was almost nine P.M. when Ventura rolled into the small tourist village of Port Townsend. And though he had the GPS maps his ops had sent in with their electronic reports, he spent thirty minutes driving around, getting a feel for the place. Situated on a fat, semi-hook-shaped isthmus jutting into Puget Sound, the sleepy town had once upon a time been the gateway to the U.S. Northwest via the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Those glory days were long past, and now the tourists came to see some of the prime examples of Victorian-style houses left in the country. Ventura had been here in the daylight, and it looked almost as if somebody had gone back in time, grabbed a section of San Francisco just before the Great Earthquake of 1906, and dropped it up here. Some of the larger and more ornate old houses were now commercial businesses or bed-and-breakfast lodgings, but many of them were still in use as regular housing. There was a paper mill still working down on the waterfront as you got to town, but other than that, not much industry.
The main drag downtown was Water Street, where most of the old buildings were pre-turn-of-the-century. There was a restaurant and marina at the end of the street, and a lot of nicely kept wooden boats moored there.
Above downtown, overlooking a bluff, Lawrence Street was the parallel uptown road. Here were stores, a theater, and other odds and ends. From Lawrence Street, Taylor Street ran up the hill to Foster, which was where Morrison’s house was. A bit farther to the north was the old Fort Warden Military Reservation, now a park where you could rent an officer’s or a noncom’s old house and spend a few days hiking and exploring the long-empty bunkers. Morrison hadn’t snagged one of the Victorian homes, but a more modest stone house built in the 1920s. It hadn’t been cheap, according to his operative’s research, but it wasn’t outrageously expensive, since he’d bought it just before the big real estate boom hit here. Houses that had been going for two hundred thousand three years ago now went for half again that much. The town was in the Olympic rain shadow, and while they did get some rain and wind, it was a lot less wet than much of northern Washington state. A lot of the baby boomers had decided this was a good place to retire and enjoy their golden years.
After his reconnaissance patrol, Ventura found a restaurant still open and had a late supper. He took his time, and when he was done, he parked downtown and located a busy pub. He bought a beer and nursed it, killing more time. It was after ten-forty-five P.M. when he left, having spoken to nobody but the waitress.
At this time of night, given the lack of traffic — there was almost none — Ventura didn’t drive past Morrison’s house even once. If the Chinese had people watching, or if some laggard fed had hung around, a car passing by would certainly be an object of interest if it was the only one they’d seen for an hour or two. He knew where the house was, knew how to get there, and he would be a lot harder to spot on foot, as long as he didn’t walk down the middle of the road waving a light.
He had made some purchases when he’d gotten here. There was a big grocery-department store complex on the highway into town, not quite a Wal-Mart, but big enough. He stopped there and bought black jeans, a black long-sleeved T-shirt, and a navy blue windbreaker, as well as a pair of thin-soled black wrestling shoes. He’d changed clothes in a public rest room downtown after he left the bar, putting the new clothes on under his pale gray slacks and white shirt. The rest room was not far from the police station, which appeared to have all of two people manning it.
He parked the car five blocks away from Morrison’s, in a line of other cars at the curb. If some sharp-eye local patrol cop happened to notice a vehicle that didn’t belong to anybody he knew on the street, likely he would think it was somebody visiting. A rental car with Washington plates wouldn’t exactly scream “trouble.”
He had the Coonan under the windbreaker — it was chilly enough to justify a light jacket, if not two shirts and two pairs of pants — and he carried a set of lock picks and spare magazines in one windbreaker pocket, a small flashlight in the other. Probably nobody would notice him at this hour. In his mind, he was B. W. Corona, married, two kids, up to meet his family for a holiday. He was staying at a local B&B down in town — he couldn’t remember the name, but it was that big Victorian place on the corner, you know? — and he was out walking because he couldn’t sleep.
Subterfuge was in the attitude. A cop might stop somebody skulking from shadow to shadow if he spotted him, but a tourist out walking had a different look, a different feel to him. Until he got closer to his destination, that was what Ventura was going to be, a tourist. A local cop would see nothing more. And when the bars started to close, that was probably where the local patrol car would be — looking for drunks.
Once he was within a block or so of his destination, Ventura would shuck the white shirt and light slacks and become a ninja, part of the night. He would be invisible in the darkness, but if a cop did somehow miraculously see him, then it would be the cop’s bad luck.
At this stage of the game, he couldn’t leave anybody behind to tell tales.
He’d find a quiet spot and wait until it was late enough for the widow Morrison to get to sleep, then he would move.
The rental car waiting at the Port Townsend Airport was a six-year-old Datsun that was badly in need of a tune-up. Only thing they had available, the guy from Rent-a-Beater had told him. Somebody had rented the good Dodge only half an hour earlier. The contract had been done over the phone, the rental place was closed, and the keys were over the sun visor.
Trusting souls up here. Then again, somebody would really need a ride pretty bad to swipe this hunk of junk.
The Datsun chugged and rattled along, ran ragged, and nearly stalled several times. The dash GPS was broken, but there was a worn and greasy paper map in the glove box, and between that and his virgil’s GPS, Michaels was able to locate the address he wanted.
He knew that Ventura had been headed here. Jay had gotten the GPS readings from Brink’s, and Port Townsend wasn’t really on the way to anywhere else, unless you planned to catch a ferry to the San Juan Islands. By nine, Ventura’s rental car was in the town, and it was still here now, at eleven, but Michaels had to hurry, he might already be too late.
It wasn’t that outlandish, when you thought about it. This was where Dr. Morrison had lived, and within an hour of his estimated time of death, a man going under the name of Corona, who was in all likelihood the late doctor’s bodyguard, had gotten on a plane headed this way. He could be going somewhere else in this town, that was true, but this was one more coincidence that didn’t play.
There must be something in Morrison’s house that Ventura/Corona wanted, something worth taking a hurried flight here for. And what did Morrison have of value? Well, that was pretty obvious.
Maybe it was something else. Maybe he was coming here for some other reason entirely, but Michaels couldn’t think of any offhand.
Michaels could call the local police, get some backup from the county sheriff, and maybe a few state police officers for good measure. Surround Morrison’s house and grab Ventura when he showed up. Simple.