“I don't want my shoes shined, nor the taxpayers' money thrown out the window for baby-sitting service. What in hell makes you think Carl Waters is involved in this? There's no evidence to prove that, and you know it.”
Ted looked him right in the eye fearlessly. “All the evidence I need is here.” He pointed at his gut. He had already sent an undercover policewoman out, dressed as a meter maid, to check the cars lining Fernanda's street. There were no meters, but cars had to have permit stickers in order to park for longer than two hours, so the meter maid's presence would seem entirely reasonable to anyone who saw her. Ted was anxious to know what she'd come up with, who was sitting in parked cars, what they looked like, and he had told her to run a check on every license plate on the block. She called while Ted and the captain were still going at it, when Ted's bureau secretary came in to tell him that Detective Jamison had something for him, and said it was urgent. The captain looked annoyed when Ted took the call, and Ted stood there for a long moment, holding the phone and listening. He made a few unintelligible comments and thanked her, and then looking at the captain, he hung up.
“Now, I suppose you're going to tell me that Carlton Waters and the guy the FBI busted are standing on her doorstep with shotguns.” He rolled his eyes, he'd heard it all before. But Ted looked serious as he looked him in the eye.
“No. I'm going to tell you that Peter Morgan, the parolee who had Waters's number in his hotel room, is sitting in a parked car across the street from the Barnes house. Or it sounds like him. The car is registered to him. And one of the neighbors said he's been sitting there, or up the block, for weeks. They said he looked like a nice man and they never thought anything of it. They didn't seem worried.”
“Shit.” The captain ran a hand through his hair and looked at Ted. “This is all I need. If they kidnap that woman, it will be all over the papers that we didn't do a damn thing about it. All right, all right. Who've you got on it?”
“No one yet.” Ted smiled at him. He didn't want to be right about this, but he knew he was. And it had been a lucky break that Jamison had found Morgan sitting there. He was going to instruct his men not to touch him. He didn't want to scare him off. What Ted wanted was to catch all of them, whoever they were, and however many, whether Carlton Waters was involved or not. Whatever this conspiracy was against her, all Ted wanted was to blow it sky high, arrest the men involved, and keep her and her kids safe. It would be no small feat.
“How many of them are there, the Barnes woman and her kids, I mean?” the captain asked, sounding surly, but Ted knew him better than that.
“She's got three kids. One leaves for camp tomorrow. Another one leaves for Tahoe the day after, and we can cover that through the sheriff at Lake Tahoe. After that, it will just be her and a six-year-old kid.”
The captain nodded in answer. “Give her two guys around the clock. That ought to do it. Is your buddy Holmquist giving us anyone?”
“I think so,” Ted said cautiously. It was a little awkward that he had told Rick about it, before he'd gone to the captain, but it happened that way sometimes. When they traded information, cases got solved more quickly.
“Tell him what you just found out about Morgan, and tell him to kick in two guys for sure, or I'll kick his ass the next time I see him.”
“Thank you, Captain.” Ted smiled at him and left his office. He had some phone calls to make to set up the protection for Fernanda and Sam. He called Rick and told him about Morgan. And he had a junior officer print out a mug shot of Morgan so he could show it to Fernanda and the kids. And then he took a folder out of his desk, and wrote a case number on it, to make it official. Conspiracy to commit kidnap, he wrote in bold letters. He wrote in Fernanda's name, and those of her children. And where it said to list suspects, he wrote Morgan's name. For the moment, the others were too remote, although he jotted down Phillip Addison's name, and wrote a brief description of the file he had on Allan Barnes. This was just the beginning. Ted knew the rest would come. The little pieces of sky were falling into place. It had just gotten a little bigger. All he had in that piece of sky now was Peter Morgan. But he felt in his gut that the others would be in the puzzle with him before too long.
Ted drove back to Fernanda's house at six o'clock that evening. And as he had earlier, he made a decision to enter the house visibly, like a guest, and look casual about it. He had taken off his tie, and was wearing a baseball jacket. The policeman he had brought with him was wearing a baseball cap, sweatshirt, and jeans. He could have been one of Will's friends, and Ted his father. She and the children were eating pizza in the kitchen when they walked in. They had let Ted in as soon as they saw him through the peephole. And the young man he had brought with him had brought some things with him in an athletic bag slung over his shoulder, which coordinated well with his youthful, athletic demeanor. Ted quietly asked him to set up in the kitchen, and then after asking Fernanda's permission, he sat down at the kitchen table with her and the kids. He had brought an envelope with him.
“Did you bring us more pictures?” Sam asked with interest, as Ted smiled at him.
“Yes, I did.”
“Who is it this time?” Sam was acting like the official deputy Ted had made him the last time. He tried to sound blasé about it, as his mother smiled. There wasn't much to smile at right now. Ted had called and told her about Morgan. Apparently, he'd been outside for weeks, and she'd never seen him once. It didn't say much for her powers of observation, and she was worried. Ted had told her that there would be four men at her house shortly after midnight. Two SFPD and two FBI. Sam was very excited about it, and wanted to know from Ted if they'd be wearing guns. Sam had asked his mother earlier, but wanted confirmation from him.
“Yes, they will,” Ted responded, as he took the mug shot out of the manila envelope he had brought with him, and handed it to Will. “Is this the man you saw in the car across the street?”
Will looked at it for less than a minute, nodded, and handed it back to Ted. “Yes, it is.” He looked slightly sheepish. It had never occurred to him to tell his mother that he had seen a man in a car who had smiled at him. He just thought it was a random coincidence that he had seen him twice. He looked like a nice guy. And something like his dad.
Ted circulated the mug shot around the table. Neither Ashley nor Sam recognized him, but when the photograph reached Fernanda, she sat and stared at it for a long time. She knew she had seen him somewhere, but couldn't remember where. And then suddenly, she remembered him. It had either been at the supermarket, or the bookshop. She remembered dropping something and his picking it up, and just as Will had said, it had struck her at the time that he looked like Allan. She explained the circumstances to Ted.
“Do you remember when that was?” he asked calmly, and she said that it had been sometime in the past few weeks, but she wasn't sure when, which confirmed that he had been watching them for a while. “He's out there now,” he explained quietly to the kids, and Ashley gasped. “And we're not going to do anything about it. We want to see who comes to talk to him, if anyone, who spells him off, and what they're up to. When you go outside, I don't want you to look for him, or notice him, or acknowledge him. We don't want to scare him off. Just act like you don't know anything about it,” Ted said calmly.