And over the course of that time, four different black Explorers left that parking garage, windows so dark you’d need X-ray vision to determine the cargo. They could have been simply taking the SUVs out to get serviced; or taking some politicians or federal judges home; or transporting some other witnesses, some other sad sacks who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Or: They could have been taking Melody right out from under me.
More than once I doubted if I should follow any of those Explorers. But like Gardner, I was playing the long shot, and as I’m sure he would’ve counseled me, the only way to win big is to risk big.
The depression set in around the time the evening rush hour came to a close. The flurry of activity around that parking garage as people left at the end of the workday kept my attention. But once the sun set, so did my expectations. I could see through the grate of the gate that the deck was mostly empty. I became increasingly convinced that Melody had left hours earlier in one of the other Explorers. All I had to show for my day was exhaustion and hunger and a cramp in my lower back that wouldn’t find relief until I returned to New York with my head in my hands.
But just after six o’clock, a pair of black Explorers left the garage in tandem, and one of the license plates matched an SUV I’d just tailed hours earlier: J21263. I had two seconds to decide: Wait for the other vehicle to emerge later, since the other one did the leading last time and likely carried the cargo I was after, or follow this pair and hope and pray Melody rode inside. For all I knew, Melody might not be transported for days, might take a long time to regroup and get her ready to relo, but the fact that two Explorers were traveling together—the first time that had recurred since I arrived at the courthouse—coupled with the familiar license plate, I didn’t really need to engage in decision making; instinct had me put the car in gear.
And so I followed them, knowing the chance I was taking was my last.
We wound southward through the city of Baltimore in a manner suggesting they were following some playbook pattern to prevent tailing, weaving through a maze of exit ramps and roads that changed names; thankfully, I made a lot of green lights. Had my car not had the acceleration and handling it did, they might’ve shaken me.
My anxiety dropped as we merged onto the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, then spiked again at the thought we might be headed for Washington, DC, that whatever rode in those SUVs was just being transported from one courthouse to another.
But halfway down the parkway, we returned to Maryland Route 32 and started heading toward Annapolis. Route 32 ended onto I-97, which we followed to its end six miles later, and as the only choices at the end of the interstate were to go east to Annapolis or west to DC, the SUVs split, each going in opposite directions. I wasn’t sure if they were following some procedure for throwing off a tail or if it was just coincidence, but the event put a distinct amount of doubt in my head.
The only choice to be made was the obvious one: I followed J21263.
We exited onto U.S. Route 50 and started driving directly east, right for the Atlantic. Though around the time we reached Salisbury, Maryland, and merged onto U.S. Route 13 on our way down the Delmarva Peninsula, I started picking up a middle-of-nowhere vibe perfectly suited to someone on the run, slapped my hand on the steering wheel at my increasingly likely win; my horse was coming from behind on the final turn.
This location, if not her final stop, should have been added to some future list back at Justice. The Delmarva Peninsula hangs off the mainland of the central Atlantic coast like a clump of hair that has broken free of a barrette, so widely separated by the Chesapeake Bay that it cascades down three states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia). There is no simple way to get here; you have to go around or over things: to the top of Delaware and down, cross in the middle at Maryland’s Bay Bridge as I had, or up from the very bottom at Virginia’s Bay Bridge-Tunnel outside of Norfolk. That makes it