The front passenger seat holds a pair of binoculars, a brown package with a cheese sandwich, an apple, two bottles of water, and a package of cigarettes. The insulin needles rest in a small cooler on the floor of the backseat. He’s prepared to wait, but after only an hour he sees Welbrook emerge wearing dark pants and a soft-looking tan jacket that looks like suede. The unique engine hum of a diesel signals Welbrook’s on the move as his car rolls gently down the block in the other direction. Stern follows him at some distance. At this time of year he can see Welbrook’s car with ease from thirty yards away.
Welbrook drives into East Hampton and parks near the Ralph Lauren store. The high season is over and Stern has no problem finding a parking spot some four spaces behind.
His eyes follow Welbrook into Ralph Lauren. From outside the front window he watches his quarry buy three shirts that are on sale at over one hundred dollars each and have them gift wrapped.
He trails the man into a few other stores, but these visits are brief. After wandering for another fifteen minutes, Welbrook heads back to where he parked his car and enters the Starbuck’s a few doors down. Stern watches him order a coffee, take a seat at a window table, and wait. Stern stands across the street in front of the movie theatre, leans against a parked car and periodically watches the image in the window sip from a cup. The wait isn’t long. A man closer to Stern’s age joins Welbrook, who stands to greet his guest.
The man has short cut dark hair and wears jeans with a sports jacket. They lean into each other as they meet and the convergence ends with a full kiss on the mouth right there in the nearly filled coffee shop. Welbrook hands the man the gift-wrapped package and they hug before sitting down.
The suddenness of it all momentarily paralyzes Stern. One of his two suspects has just openly announced he’s gay and thereby removed himself from serious consideration in less than two minutes. And all of this happens after Stern has spent months agonizing over whether the admittedly attractive-looking Welbrook has ever fucked Heidi and is still hiding her away somewhere out here in some deserted dune cottage. He smokes a cigarette and then another before he reenters his car and heads to the motel where he can regroup and plan his move with Posner.
He decides to shadow Posner with more caution. Welbrook’s unintentional revelation has increased the odds to infinite levels that Posner is the man he’s after. He intends to follow Posner to the extent necessary to determine his behavior patterns and then confront him. Yes. He will challenge Posner to tell him where Heidi is hidden. And when he finds her, that’s when he’ll kill Posner. And then it’ll just be Heidi and him. Just like before.
Posner seems less gregarious than Welbrook, as he seems to stick closer to home. Stern has chosen a spot for observation on the corner farthest from the house. His small blue rental car is barely visible from Posner’s home, but not without some effort. Stern sits as he had with Welbrook, with enough food and water for a long day of waiting. This is what much of police work must entail, he thinks. Waiting and then waiting some more.
He positions himself that first day before seven and waits until the rain comes. It starts slowly, but after a few hours the wind gusts and sheets of water convince him that only a madman would attempt to move around and so he goes back to his motel.
He sits there in the small tidy room for nearly a full day while the storm hurls its engorged fury at the hamlet, which at that time is anything but a resort. At one point the lights go out, but the motel has its own generator and power is restored without incident. There is nothing Stern can do but wait and he falls asleep fully clothed. The night does not bring the expected dream, and he wakes not only refreshed, but convinced that he now closer to the truth and to the point where he can both rescue Heidi and exact justice.
When the weather returns to normal, daylight greets him with a cloudless blue sky. Even here, a mile from the beach, the storm’s effects are obvious. Broken branches are strewn across the parking lot together with a miscellaneous assortment of rubbish, including broken lawn furniture, plastic garbage bags, and one red-soled flip-flop that lies perched atop a scattered pile of leaves. He walks to his car, brushes a small ragged branch off his windshield, and then walks to the office to see about the local roads. The news is not good. Trees and power lines are down everywhere. He is advised to stay close to the motel. In this regard he is lucky. A restaurant is open less than a hundred yards away so he won’t be forced to drive anywhere.
He is reluctant to accept the fact that he will need to wait but refines his plans to catch up with Posner the next morning. Later that day he calls Posner’s number to confirm his prey has not evacuated. It is a possibility. He knows Posner and his wife have an apartment in the city but he guesses that Posner spends much of his time out here. To be closer to Heidi, he thinks.
Posner answers on the fourth ring, just as Stern is about to give up. So he’s home. Good.
He hangs up without speaking.
He wakes early on Thursday and is so anxious to get to Posner’s house that he forgets breakfast. He doesn’t care, and is there just before eight. He parks down the block in the spot he’d chosen earlier in the week. It’s another clear day. The streets here have already been emptied of debris and almost all of the houses are vacant. He rolls the window down and hears a still angry surf behind him as it says a final goodbye to the storm. Otherwise there is a stillness that unnerves him.
It is so calm that the sound of the engine starting on the blue Lexus in Posner’s driveway shatters the air as if it were a thick and brittle object. He hasn’t even noticed that Posner is already in the car when he arrives. He’s lucky and knows it. Another few minutes and Posner might be off somewhere, and he would waste a full day’s surveillance.
Posner backs slowly down the driveway onto an empty street. “He’s a careful man. I’ll have to remember that,” Stern says to the empty passenger seat. He has begun to talk to himself aloud with some regularity in the past few months. Sometimes it’s to Heidi, but more often to an unknown audience, a shapeless companion who agrees never to disagree.
Stern watches as Posner turns onto the main street and moments later accelerates onto the highway going east. He’s easy to follow. There are few other cars in sight. But he must lay back more than a casual distance to avoid drawing even accidental attention. Posner stays at the limit of fifty-five although the road ahead is empty. A town police car comes from the other direction and Stern sees Posner’s brake lights flicker as the cars near each other.
“What’s he afraid of?” Stern asks aloud. “You’re going slowly enough. Feel guilty about something, do ya?”
He follows Posner into the village of Montauk past the mostly empty motels and food shops. Posner drives through the village without stopping and picks up speed as he reenters the highway still going east.
“How much farther can he go? He’s gonna be in the ocean pretty soon.”
At this point there’s no other traffic so Stern has to fall farther behind. He loses sight of Posner as the road bends and when it straightens out the blue Lexus is gone. Stern speeds up and goes for another mile before he realizes that Posner must have turned off. He makes a sharp U-turn and speeds back the other way. He barely looks at the road ahead as he scans both sides of the highway until he comes to a sign announcing the Montauk Overlook turnoff and wonders why he didn’t see it when he first passed. He slows and enters the parking lot and sees the blue Lexus on the far end where it’s hidden from the main road.