“You’re right about that, Detective, but the woman who hired him could still be around.”
“The ex-wife?”
“It’s gotta be.”
“You think she’ll hire another man?”
“Maybe, or maybe she’ll want to do it herself. I know her. She’s very determined.”
“You may have a point,” Romera said. “I’ll put a couple of uniforms on Eagle’s hospital room.”
“Twenty-four hours a day?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“They should get a list of nurses authorized to be in there and check everybody against the list who goes into the room.”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks for calling.” Romera hung up.
“He didn’t sound too enthusiastic to me,” Cupie said.
“Maybe not, but he’s got enough street smarts to know that if Eagle gets killed in the hospital he, personally, will be left holding the bag. He’ll put the guards on.”
“I guess you’re right,” Cupie said. “So, what are we going to do?”
“Maybe we can stop her from getting as far as the hospital,” Vittorio said. “If we can find her.”
37
Todd Bacon sat in his hotel room, staring at his computer screen. He had reported in, told Holly Barker that her idea had worked but that he had lost Lauren Cade. She had not been pleased, and he wasn’t pleased with himself, either.
Now he was faced with new difficulties. Lauren, knowing that she had been spotted, would go to ground, and what’s more, she now knew what he looked like. He didn’t even know if it had been she in the Volvo station wagon; that was just a guess.
Nevertheless, he logged on to the Agency mainframe, accessed the New Mexico DMV records and did a search for green Volvo station wagons. They were apparently popular in the state, because the search turned up fourteen of the cars in green, none of them in Santa Fe. There was, however, one in Taos that had been registered the day he had spotted Teddy in the Grand Cherokee. That would have been the day he would have traded cars, and Teddy certainly knew enough about the Agency’s computers to hide the trade.
This was a lead so slim that it hardly qualified as a lead, but it was all he had. The Taos car was registered to a Walt Gooden. A quick call to 411 confirmed that no one by that name had a phone in Taos, nor did he, after another check, have one in Santa Fe. Well, Teddy wouldn’t have registered the car in the alias he was using, would he?
Todd continued to deduce. If Lauren had gone to ground after being spotted, would Teddy have done the same? And if so, what might cause one of them to leave wherever they were living? They weren’t going to run-they had already demonstrated that. But they could just wait him out. After all, Todd wasn’t going to spend the rest of his career on this job, no matter how important it was to Lance Cabot.
Food. They had to eat. Maybe one of them would leave to buy supplies-not only a meal but groceries. Todd reasoned that they would not go just to a convenience store, where choices would be limited, but to a proper supermarket, where they could find a large enough variety to keep them in good meals for an extended time, maybe a week or ten days.
In his travels around Santa Fe Todd had seen only one large supermarket, though certainly there must be more. He had seen a large Albertsons in a shopping center with a big parking lot. It was as good a place to start as any. He went down to the garage and started to get into his rented red Taurus, then stopped. Teddy had already seen that car. He went into the hotel, to the rental car desk, and exchanged the Taurus for a silver Toyota, then drove to where he had seen the Albertsons store.
A sea of cars greeted him. He figured if they were going to shop for groceries, they would park as close to Albertsons as possible, so he started at the front door and began driving slowly up and down the rows of parked cars, checking for Volvo station wagons. He found a silver one and a white one but no green one. He continued to look.
Finally, he had covered the entire parking lot without finding the car he was looking for. He’d come back tomorrow and start again. Then, as he was driving back toward the supermarket, he saw a green Volvo station wagon, empty. He checked the plates: New Mexico, Santa Fe County. He double-parked, got out of his car and tried a door on the Volvo. Locked. He walked slowly around the car, looking inside. He saw a map of the state and nothing else.
Todd returned to his car, opened the trunk and opened a case he traveled with. He chose two items, closed the case and the trunk, and returned to the Volvo. He looked around for cops or someone paying attention to him, found no one, then dropped to the ground, crawled halfway under the car, far enough that no one could reach unless they crawled as far as he had, and attached the little box magnetically to the frame. He pressed a button on the side and watched a red light start to flash. It would continue for two minutes.
He got up from under the station wagon, went back to his car, drove a hundred yards away and stopped. He switched the GPS device on and pressed the button for current location. The device took a moment to locate itself, and then a map of Santa Fe appeared. He pressed another button, and a red light on the map began to flash. It had nailed the location of the green Volvo station wagon. Now he didn’t have to closely tail the car; when it moved, he could follow at an unseen distance.
He found a parking space and sat in the car, waiting.
BARBARA WAS WATCHING television in Jimmy’s study when he came home from the studio. “Hi,” she said.
He didn’t reply but went to the bar, poured himself a stiff drink, then flopped down in his easy chair.
“Something wrong, sweetie?” she asked. He hadn’t even offered her a drink.
“Yeah, something’s wrong,” he replied, without looking at her.
“What is it?”
“You remember the pilot who flew us back from Mexico?”
“Of course. What was his name?”
“Bart Cross.”
“Oh, sure. What about him?”
“I gave you his name, remember?”
“I had forgotten,” she said.
“Did you ever speak with him?”
“No. I decided he might not be the right man for the job.”
“Well, Bart is dead,” Jimmy said. “He was shot at his home last night. It’s all over the papers.”
“I haven’t read a paper today,” she said.
“There was something else in the paper,” he replied. “Somebody attacked Ed Eagle with a knife in Santa Fe yesterday but failed to kill him.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Sounds like somebody was doing you a favor.”
“Well, trying, maybe.”
“Barbara, did you hire Bart to kill Eagle? I mean, I knew you were going to do something like that, and I didn’t really care.”
“I think you know the answer to that,” she said.
“Did you hire Bart Cross?”
She said nothing, just went to the bar and poured herself a drink, then came back and sat down.
“Yes,” she said.
“And did you kill him for failing?”
“Jimmy, he made mistakes. The police would have been onto him before the week was out. He’d have given me up in a plea bargain.”
“Well, I can’t argue with that,” he said, “but I don’t like you killing a man who worked for me, somebody I liked.”
“I’m sorry. It was necessary.”
Jimmy took a deep breath and sighed. “Barbara, you’re going to have to leave here and not come back for a long time.”
“All right, if that’s what you wish.”
“I mean right now. I’ll drive you to the airport. I don’t want there to be a record of a taxi pickup here.”
Barbara stood up. “I’ll go and pack now and be ready in half an hour.”
“Thank you,” he said.