together. But I’d convinced myself that even if I was wrong, I wasn’t giving him any outs. O’Shea would still be there, and the fact that he was willing to spend this much time with me was easing my doubts that he was the man Richards thought he was.
We had sketched out a plan that was simple and believable because the bulk of it was true. I’d learned a long time ago that the trick to getting confidential informants to lie well was to give them enough truth to sell it.
All I wanted Marci to do was to call Morrison, tell him that she had gotten a personal visit from the tall guy who’d been with the woman detective. When he asked her what I’d talked about, she needed to convince him she was too scared to tell him over the phone. That she needed to see him. I didn’t need to instruct her to sound scared. She was tough, she was angry, but her fear was real. She did exactly as we had planned and Morrison told her he’d be by before the end of her shift. She called me. I called O’Shea.
O’Shea brought a couple of Nextel cell phones from his job so we could stay instantly connected. It was the way business was done. A high tweet came from the cell. I clicked back.
“Your boy is here,” O’Shea’s voice came over the Nextel. “And this one’s got some balls, Freeman. He’s in his goddamn squad car.”
“You’re sure?”
“Same guy I snapped the picture of. He parked the unit over on the other side of the lot and is walking into the front door of the bar now.”
“He’s in uniform?”
“No. Plainclothes.”
“What’s the number on the car?” I asked, and when O’Shea read it off I matched it to the number I’d scribbled down when watching the cop car in the parking lot, thinking it was security, knowing now that it was no such thing.
“When he comes back out, you’re on him; if he leaves on your side, I’ll follow and we can switch up the line.”
“I know how to work a two-man tail, Freeman.”
“Yeah, all right,” I said. I was nervous. A two-tail was not a difficult technique, but South Florida was not a big urban city like Philly where parallel streets are a common layout and traffic moves like patterned waves that rush and stop at lights. But if I was correct, or better, lucky, most of this tail was going to be on the highway leading out to the western part of the county to the Glades.
If I’d read Marci right, she would be in Kim’s now, down in front of the last seat, telling Kyle that I was a private investigator working for the family of some bartender from up north who’d disappeared down here months ago. In a way, it was a truth.
She would tell him that I had worked a theory that the girl had been picked up by someone who had dated her, killed her and then dumped her body. Another truth, and when I had gone over this part with Marci she had again blanched and the look on her face was exactly the look I hoped she was using now.
“And if he asks you why I think that, you tell him that I’ve found evidence, DNA evidence, and all I need to do now is find corroborating witnesses to set up a time line so the authorities will take the cases seriously.”
The tricky part, I told her, would be if he didn’t ask about where I got DNA. Then she was going to have to offer up the lie about my finding a body in the Glades. She had nodded at the instructions, said she could do it. But this wasn’t some drunk she would be trying to convince. There was something raw about the way she used his name. I could not dismiss the feeling that she was too anxious to hurt this guy and if that showed through, no way was this going to work.
“Whatever you do, Marci,” I’d said, “don’t go with him.” She’d tightened her mouth and I repeated my instruction. “Don’t go with him or it’s off.”
Morrison was inside for forty-five minutes. O’Shea buzzed me when he came out.
“Guy’s marchin,’ Freeman,” he said into the cell. “Looks like a man on a mission and hasn’t looked left or right yet.”
I started my truck, figuring his pattern would be the same and he would exit the center