The Buck Stops Here (19 page)

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying not to look too flustered. “I had to use the restroom and I got myself all turned around.”

A girl pointed the way into the store, and the next thing I knew I was in the meat department. Smoothing my clothes, I grabbed a few items at random and walked to the checkout. I paid the cashier and went to my car. Before I had even started the engine, I could see the blue sedan pulling out of the parking lot and onto the main road. I tried to catch up, but I got stuck behind a big truck and finally lost sight of it.

A thought had occurred to me earlier, when I was sitting on that porch with the green beans, but I needed to go somewhere to check out my theory. I drove around town a bit and finally pulled over at a gas station, parking in such a way that the rear of my car was protected by the building and a tall fence. I pretended to put air in my tires, kneeling down so that I could see the underside of my vehicle. It didn’t take long to find that my theory was correct: A tracking device had been affixed to my car.

Heart pounding, I went into the station to borrow a screwdriver; then I came back out and tried, as discreetly as I could, to pry the device loose. It popped off fairly easily into my hand, and I pocketed it and returned the screwdriver.

Back in the car, I studied the device, a small black metal object about an inch in diameter. It had been affixed to the inside rear bumper with a sticky pad, and I was surprised that it hadn’t fallen off in all of my driving.

I felt a bit ashamed of myself as I looked at it, feeling I should have figured this out sooner. There never had been two cars tag-teaming me. There was only the one, and when I wasn’t in sight, the driver was keeping track of me with this device.

Now that I knew, I had several choices. The easiest, of course, was simply to put the device on some other vehicle and let it drive away. That wouldn’t solve the bigger problem, however, which was to find out who this fellow was working for. That seemed to me to be the more important issue, and one worth pursuing.

I still had an hour and a half before the prison guard was to meet the woman at the Brown Door and give her the $20 payoff. Using that time wisely, I drove to a dollar store and bought 15 helium balloons, some duct tape, and a baseball bat. Then I crammed the balloons in the car and headed out of town, watching the passing scenery for a usable location. Finally I spotted one, a field off to my right with no fencing and an old abandoned barn on the premises. I drove onto the grass and across the field, coming to a stop behind the barn.

Quickly, I got out and ran to the back of my SUV, flipping it open and pulling out all 15 balloons by their strings. I taped the tracking device to the balloon strings, and then I held my breath and let the whole thing go. Much to my relief, the little device was light enough, and the balloons whisked it away into the sky almost instantly.

Without pausing I grabbed the baseball bat, opened the other four doors of the vehicle as wide as they would go, and then crept inside the barn, careful not to leave any footprints in the dirt.

The building was dark inside, but enough slats were missing from the walls that I could see to move around. Trying not to think about rats and snakes and spiders, I situated myself where I could peek through some holes in the front, my view of the highway clear. Sure enough, soon the blue sedan came barreling up the roadway, and then it slowed as it neared the field.

I almost smiled, trying to picture the confusion of the man inside. After all, what did it mean when a tracking device showed that the car had flown up into the sky?

The sedan passed the field twice. On the third try, it drove slowly along and then pulled over to the side of the road.

From where I looked, I could see that my car had left tire tracks in the grass, leading around to the back of the barn. I watched as the guy got out of the sedan and then made his way via a more circuitous route. Trying to conceal himself along the tree line, he ran around the far side of the barn. As he got closer, he darted almost directly toward my car.

I had left the keys in the ignition, and the alert was dinging loudly, over and over, drawing him near. Holding my breath, I watched through the missing slats as he walked to my car and carefully peeked inside.

In that instant, his back to me, I stepped from the barn. Holding one hand at each end of the bat, I whipped it over his head and then jerked him backward against me, the wood pressed tightly against his neck. Afraid he might have a gun, I didn’t stop there. I twisted to one side, lurching so that we fell to the ground, my knee against the small of his back.

“Freeze!” I said, catching my breath.

He didn’t move, his hands splayed out beside him, though he was gasping for air.

“I’ll let you breathe,” I said, “if you don’t move.”

I let go of one side of the bat, and he started choking and coughing as I reached down and frisked him. From what I could tell, he wasn’t armed.

“All right,” I said, sitting up, my knee still against his back, the baseball bat clutched firmly in both hands, ready to swing. “Who are you and why are you following me?”

“You could’ve killed me,” he gasped, reaching for his throat.

“I still could,” I said. “Now who are you and why are you following me?”

He didn’t reply, and so I stood, swinging back with the bat as if I were going to bash him in the head. He didn’t know that I wouldn’t do it, that it was all a bluff. In terror, he rolled over and held up both hands to protect himself, screaming.

“Ten seconds!” I warned.

“Okay, okay!” he said, holding out both hands. Finally, I relaxed my posture enough to let him speak.

“Yeah, I was following you,” he said, breathing heavily. “Don’t hurt me, okay? I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

“Who are you working for?” I demanded, knowing for certain now that he wasn’t FBI. He had been too sloppy for that.

“A guy,” he said. “He paid me to follow you.”

“What guy?” I demanded. “Who?”

“I don’t have a name. He just hired me to tail you. He gave me a receiver for a tracking device.”

“When did he hire you?”

“Monday night. He said I could have the job if I could start right away.”

“How did he find you?”

“In the Richmond phone book. I’m a private investigator. I have a big ad.”

“A big ad?”

“Yeah,” he said, reaching up to smooth out his hair. “‘If you think he’s cheatin’, our price can’t be beaten.’”

“What?”

“That’s my slogan. I do a lot of divorce cases. Though this is the first one where I got to use a tracking device.”

I put down the bat. This was just too confusing to maintain my threatening stance.

“Look, I’m a PI too,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me all about it?”

He sat up, brushing the dust from his clothes.

“Fine,” he said, trying to gain his composure. “Okay. Some guy called my after-hours phone number late Monday night and said he had a tracking device with a ten-mile range that he needed me to use to follow somebody. Apparently someone else was lined up to do this job out of D.C., but you took off sooner than anyone expected. So this guy paid me to pick up your trail in Melville, follow your car, and report back to him. That’s all.”

“Did you see this man in person?”

“Yeah, I drove down and met him in Melville. He gave me a cash deposit and taught me how to use the monitor. You were staying at a motel. I’ve been following you since then.”

I tried to process all that he was telling me. Obviously, my quick departure from Washington, D.C., had taken someone by surprise. They had tailed me as far as Melville and then improvised on the road, hiring this dolt to continue to tail me on their behalf.

“Can you give me a physical description of the man who hired you?” I asked, reaching out to help him to his feet.

“Sure,” he said, taking my hand. “Tall. Dark hair. Good-looking.”

“Age?”

“Early thirties, about the same as you. I thought he was your husband.”

“My husband?”

“Yeah, that’s how I took it,” he said. “He told me to follow you and to watch out for you. He seemed concerned that you might be in some kind of danger. I wasn’t supposed to make myself known unless you needed help out of a tight spot.”

And there we had it. It sounded to me that this man had been hired by Tom. I pulled a photo of the two of us from my wallet and showed it to him. He took one look and nodded.

“Yep, that’s him.”

“Let me ask you a question,” I said. “Are you by any chance licensed to investigate in any of the states I have led you through?”

He looked down at the ground sheepishly.

“Not really,” he said.

“Then let’s do each other a favor,” I told him. “You go on back home to Richmond, and I won’t report what you’ve done to the authorities.”

Twenty-One

Moving fast, I was able to reach the Brown Door by 4:20, just ten minutes before the prison guard was supposed to meet the woman and give her the $20 payoff for having an argument in the common room. The Brown Door was a ramshackle-looking bar and restaurant about a mile out of Americus. There was a hardware store directly across the street, so I parked there and hunched down low in my seat, fixing my rearview mirror so that I could see behind me. Luckily for me, neither he nor she seemed to have shown up yet.

As I waited, I thought about Tom, picturing the scenario of the tracking device from his point of view. In my mind I replayed our entire encounter at the J.O.S.H.U.A. Foundation the other evening, and then I gasped as I realized when he had put the device on my car: Tom’s lawyer, Kimball, must have done it when Tom took my elbow and led me over to the payment booth to pay for my parking. I closed my eyes and tried to picture Kimball’s actions as Tom and I were walking back toward the car. He had been behind it, and then he moved away once we drew near. Now I understood why.

Tom probably had some fancy, expensive PI lined up to follow the tracking device from my home the next day. But then I surprised them all by leaving town immediately! I guess he’d had no choice but to follow me himself, and when I finally stopped for the night, he scrambled for a replacement. It was just his bad luck that the local Richmond PI he had pulled into service wasn’t all that good.

Now that I knew everything, I felt I ought to call and fuss at Tom, giving him a piece of my mind. But I didn’t, because while I should have found his actions invasive and infuriating, in a way, I found them kind of endearing. Despite everything, he wanted to keep track of me. To protect me. He was worried about me.

Soon, a battered brown truck pulled into the parking lot and a man got out, and I put all thoughts of Tom aside for the time being. I thought I recognized the man as the guard, though out of his uniform and in jeans and a T-shirt, it was a little hard to tell. He was slightly paunchy, and his lined face seemed familiar as he sat on his back bumper and lit up a cigarette.

After a few minutes, another car pulled into the parking lot, a low-riding Mustang with the woman I had talked to earlier seated on the passenger’s side. The man walked to that car and leaned over the passenger’s window. I watched as the guard pulled something out of his pocket and handed it in through the window, and then he stood up straight and rapped his hand on the hood of the car. From there, the Mustang sped off and the man walked on into the restaurant. The payoff was complete.

I wasn’t sure how to proceed. A part of me wanted to go inside and confront him. Still, something about that didn’t seem wise or safe. I decided instead to take a closer look at his truck.

Fortunately, the restaurant didn’t have any windows along this side of the building, so as long as the man stayed in there, I would be okay. I parked right next to the truck and tried the door handle, but it was locked. Putting my hands on each side of my face, I peeked inside, hoping to see something that might have the man’s address on it. The interior of the car was a mess, but mostly with fast-food containers and old newspapers. I didn’t see anything with an address. I did notice, however, that the window behind the cab of the truck was open.

My heart pounding, I turned and looked in every direction to make sure there wasn’t anyone watching me. Then I kicked off my shoes, hoisted myself into the truck bed, squeezed my upper body through the back window, and unlocked the passenger-side door. Climbing out of the cab, I opened the door and then opened the glove compartment and quickly rifled through the papers inside. Sure enough, I found a proof of insurance card with a name and address on it: Les Watts, 179 Weyford Lane, Americus, Georgia. I memorized the address before putting everything back the way I had found it. I locked the door, grabbed my shoes, and got out of there.

My heart was still racing five minutes later as I stood in line at a convenience store to buy a bottle of hand sanitizer and a pair of rubber gloves. What I had done, breaking into that man’s car and digging in his glove compartment, was illegal. Now I was about to find his house and take it one step further. The fact that this was wrong, wrong, wrong didn’t really matter at the moment. I felt emboldened by anger, justified by all of the roadblocks that had thus far been put in my way in the course of this investigation—not to mention the fact that my adrenaline was still in high gear from my encounter by the barn.