“Yes.”
“Call me when you’re locked in and logged on.” He hung up.
Holly got to her feet, pulled up her bikini bottom, grabbed the bra top and called Daisy, who loped toward her. Inside the house, she put on a robe, just in case Lance wanted to talk face-to-face, and let herself into her little office. She logged on, then called Lance. “It’s Holly.”
“The geek has visited me again. Our intruder logged on twice today, most recently less than ten minutes ago. Because of a glitch, the geek could only track his last log-on, which was the FAA computer, and wasn’t able to figure out where in the FAA databases, so he doesn’t know what the intruder was doing there.”
“If he’s who you think he might be, he could be making a new pilot’s license for himself or creating an aircraft registration.”
“That’s right; our man flies himself.”
“Any news on his location?”
“He’s narrowed the possibilities to about a three-mile stretch of Vero Beach, less than a mile wide. I’m sending a map.”
Holly watched the screen as the image popped onto her computer screen. “It’s the southern half of Vero’s island,” she said.
“Yes, and somewhere between the western shore of the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic.”
“Well, it’s not exactly a street address, is it?” Holly asked.
“No, but we’re getting closer.”
“Are we really?” Holly asked. “We’re talking about three square miles of densely populated Florida, with God knows how many houses and apartment buildings.”
“I just thought you’d like to know,” Lance said. “Goodbye.” He hung up.
You just thought you’d like me to know, Holly thought. She had pretty much shaken off the desire to nail Teddy Fay, but Lance apparently hadn’t. She had her suspicions about Jack Smithson, but she had already decided not to pursue them.
She logged off the computer and locked the door behind her. Maybe it was time, she thought, to have another look at Jack’s house. She put on some jogging clothes and went outside. “Come on, Daisy,” she called, “we’re going for a run.”
Teddy sat with Lauren at the barbecue shack, eating Brunswick stew, a conglomeration of chicken, corn, tomato and, if you were in the right part of Georgia, maybe some squirrel or possum. Delicious. “How’s work,” he asked. “Are you making ready to pull out?”
“I’ve got one more job to do,” Lauren said. “Just a detail to wrap up.”
“How long?”
“A week; two, tops.”
“Have you told the boss?”
“No, I think I’m going to leave without giving notice.”
Teddy thought about that. Such an action might excite too much interest in Lauren’s departure. “Give him notice,” he said. “Hurd’s been good to you, and you owe him that.”
Lauren sighed. “You’re right. I’ll tell him tomorrow.”
Holly ran down the wet sand at a clip, a good three miles to where Jack’s guesthouse sat, just above the beach, with Daisy happily running alongside her. She reached the house a little after six, and, after ascertaining that neither Jack’s nor Lauren’s car was parked outside, she picked the front door lock and stepped out of her running shoes. “Daisy, stay here,” she said to the dog. Daisy sat down on the porch and watched as she went inside in her stocking feet.
Holly stood in the living room for a moment. Then she saw a flashing light on a black box on the desk in Jack’s study. There was an alarm system, and now it began making a chiming noise. She walked to the desk, picked up the phone and listened. All she got was a dial tone, so she knew the alarm system wasn’t calling a security service or Jack’s cell phone.
She didn’t know how much time she had, so she worked quickly. She went into Jack’s bedroom and rifled all the drawers and the closet, careful to leave no trace of her unauthorized presence. Then she went back into the study and switched on Jack’s computer. All she got was a window requiring a password, and she didn’t have time to work on that, so she shut it down again. She found no papers of any interest in the desk, only a few utility bills, already paid. She got up and opened what appeared to be a closet door, and it was, but it contained something very interesting: a Fort Knox safe with a digital lock. The thing was five feet high, and she reckoned it weighed six or seven hundred pounds.
Now why would Jack Smithson need such a large safe? Did he have a camera collection or, more likely, a gun collection? Or maybe a lot of cash? She would like to know, but she would need specialized equipment to get the safe opened, and she would have to get that from her house in McLean, Virginia.
She let herself out of the house and locked the door behind her. The alarm would reset itself after a few minutes, and she doubted if it recorded to a computer log, so Jack wouldn’t know she had been there.
She got her shoes on again, then took a couple of palm fronds from under a nearby tree and swept her path clean of hers and Daisy’s footprints all the way to the high-water mark. Then she jogged back to her house, arriving sweaty and tired.
She still had her suspicions, but she couldn’t back them up.
53
The following morning, Lauren knocked on Hurd’s office door with some trepidation.
“Come in,” he called out.
Lauren walked in and sat down. “Okay,” she said, “I have a better plan.”
Hurd sat back in his chair. “I’m all ears,” he said.
Lauren explained her plan to conceal video and audio bugs in Jimmy Weathers’s car, along with a GPS locator.
“I’ll need a surveillance van, two chase cars and a helicopter,” she said.
“Wait a minute,” Hurd said. “We can’t requisition all that equipment on the off chance that some night he might go after another woman. He might take weeks to do that.”
“I still plan to be the woman,” she said.
“Lauren, I’ve already ordered you not to do that.”
“Listen to me, Hurd. We’ll have the two chase cars just far enough away to be out of sight, and the helicopter maybe a mile away. All I’ll have to do is speak a code word, and they’ll be all over Jimmy.”
“All right, suppose it takes them a minute or two to arrive. How are you going to handle Jimmy?”
“I’ll have two weapons concealed in the car.” Hurd started to speak again, but she interrupted. “And I have some fighting skills.”
Hurd leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk. “Lauren, I apologize for having to say this, but you weren’t able to fight off Jim Bruno when he…”
“That’s true,” Lauren admitted, “but if I had had help to call for, the rape would never have happened. All I have to do is hold Jimmy off for a minute or two, and it will be that part of the video that will be valuable in court.”
Hurd just looked at her and said nothing.
“Hurd, if this were a drug bust, you’d let me do it.”
“If it were a drug bust, you wouldn’t have to provoke a violent response to make an arrest.”
“That’s true, but you’re underestimating me. I’m tougher and better trained than I was with Bruno; I could hurt Jimmy, if I had to, and I’ll still have two weapons to fall back on: one under the dash and one under the seat.”
“Something else,” Hurd said. “Even if this worked, we’d only have Jimmy on one count of attempted rape.”
“I think I can get him to confess beforehand,” Lauren said. “I think when he gets excited, he’ll talk about it.”
“But he’ll know that if he did that, you could testify against him.”
“Of course, that’s the idea. Hurd, if Jimmy is the killer we think he is, he would plan not to leave me alive to testify.”
“And you think that notion is the way to talk me into this?”
“You know it’s true,” she said.
“Everything will depend on the chase cars getting to you before he kills you.”
“I know that,” Lauren said. “Sometimes you have to take a chance to get a serial killer off the street.”