Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,103

after the inspection, “Vehicle is clear.”

“It’s his van,” says Elizabeth, going closer now that the threat of gunfire is over, moving the camera in on the license plate.

Yes. It’s his plate. The one the ALPRs caught last night.

What about inside the van?

As if someone is reading my thoughts, the image on the screen jumps back and the rear of the van lifts open. A hydraulic ramp rises, unfolds, and drops to the ground.

“You see inside the van, Emmy?”

I do. In the rear of the van are several open boxes filled with underwear and socks and T-shirts, a pile of shirts and pants, and what appears to be two storage crates, the ones whose dust outlines we saw in Wagner’s apartment this morning.

This keeps getting stranger and stranger…

The phone turns so that Elizabeth is looking at me. “He had a getaway planned all along,” she says. “He must have been in a hurry. Wait.” The screen is suddenly pointing downward, and agents are calling to Elizabeth. The jerkiness of the video would be nauseating if I weren’t so transfixed.

I reach for the water bottle that Tom Miller gave me but then stop short.

“Does this look familiar?” The screen shows the driver’s seat of the vehicle, which is Wagner’s wheelchair, complete with the American flag on the armrest.

His van and his wheelchair, both left behind.

“Elizabeth,” I say, “can you run the camera around the van? So I can see all sides of it?”

“Sure.” She lowers the phone again; I’m staring at the side of her pants, then the floor, then the sky. I look away to avoid motion sickness. When the image stabilizes, I see that Elizabeth has backed up to give me an overall view of the van’s driver’s side. An agent is holding a mirror on an extension pole under the vehicle, searching for explosives. Another is doing the same thing over the top of the vehicle.

“Wait,” I say, catching something in the top mirror’s reflection. “The roof of the van. I saw something. Some color. Something yellow.”

Elizabeth calls out to the agent. She walks toward him—more queasiness-inducing movement of the phone—and fixes the camera right on the mirror hovering over the roof of the van.

I see a yellow star on a black background, the words U.S. ARMY below it.

A U.S. Army seal painted on the center of the roof of the Caravan.

“Elizabeth, let me call you back in two minutes,” I say. I end the connection and pull up some of the videos that Officer Ciomek sent me from the Chicago POD cameras. The ones from the mounted camera with a downward angle.

Each one, to varying degrees, shows the roof of the van. The video clips are grainy, and they’re in black-and-white, but they’re enough for me to see what’s on the van’s roof—and, more important, what is not.

No yellow star. No U.S. Army seal.

I call Elizabeth back. “It’s not the same van,” I tell her. I explain about the video clips I have from the POD cameras in Chicago.

“Well, he might have a second van,” says Elizabeth Ashland. “In fact, that’s probably how he made his escape last night. He kept a second van here in the garage. He dropped off the one registered to him and drove off in the second one. I bet he has a second wheelchair too.”

Maybe. It’s possible. But I don’t know what to think about anything Elizabeth says anymore.

The cash. The Taser. The Garfield watch. And now the clothes. Four things that don’t make sense.

Books. I need Books. It’s been about half an hour since he left; he’s probably just getting to the store to receive the load of new releases.

I dial his number and wait. He doesn’t answer. It goes to voice mail. I don’t leave a message. He’s probably busy dealing with the new shipment.

Maybe Petty’s there to help him.

Petty.

I breathe in and out.

Maybe the cash, the Taser, the cartoon-cat watch, the clothes—maybe they make sense after all.

I hang up and dial Rabbit. “Hey, kiddo.”

“What’s the latest?” she asks.

I give her my best one-minute update. With my free hand, I reach for the bottle of water Tom gave me, lift it by its blue top, and drop it into my bag. I need to eat and drink soon or I’m going to pass out.

“I need some quick background, as fast as you can,” I say.

“Hit me with it,” she says. “I’ll get Pully on it too.”

I finish with Rabbit, hang up the phone, leave the conference room, and run down