Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,98
audible,” Books says.
“So he kills his phone at two thirty-eight a.m. in order to conceal his movements from us,” I say. “Then we catch his license plate at four thirty-one a.m. on the county road. And it took him only about thirty minutes, you said, to reach that spot.”
“Approximately, yes,” Rabbit says.
“So that’s a two-hour window, with only thirty minutes built in for travel. What did he do in those other ninety minutes?”
As if Rabbit knows.
We’ll deal with that later. This is huge. Wagner finally made a mistake. Looks like he was forced into it, but we’ll take a mistake however we can get it.
“Let’s go,” says Books.
98
WE USE the data points that Rabbit sent to our phones. It takes us less than thirty minutes to reach the spot on the county road where Wagner’s license plate was tagged first. We are out of town, a rural area full of cornfields.
“There,” says Books, pointing off the road toward the sloping shoulder at a car’s fender, bent and battered, part of the carnage from the car accident. Some shattered glass is sprinkled along the side of the road.
“So Wagner gets to this spot and he hits a police blockade, he can’t go any farther,” says Books. “He has to backtrack. We know he ends up taking Bell Road to get back on the county road about two miles up ahead.”
Books does a three-point turn and drives east to the next turnoff. “He’d have taken this road,” he says. We go left and follow the road until we reach a strip mall. There’s a tailor shop, a real estate agent, an ice cream parlor. Signs for the interstate point left.
“We know he didn’t take the interstate,” says Books. “But this will get us to Bell, right?”
“That’s what the map says.”
So we turn left, heading west again, until we reach Bell Road. He takes another left, and we travel north, back toward the county road. On top of the sign for the approaching intersection with the county road is a mounted reader, the one that tagged Wagner’s license plate the second time.
Books moves the vehicle up to the T-intersection and pulls over to the side.
“So what does Wagner do at this point?” he asks. “Does he go right—west?”
“Probably,” I say. “That’s the direction he’d been headed when he hit the police barricade.”
Books looks at me. He reaches for his phone and dials up Bonita Sexton. “Rabbit,” he says, “we’re at the intersection of Bell and the county road. If I turn right and go west, when’s the next ALPR?”
“It’s…three miles up ahead. There’s a speed camera and an ALPR.”
“But he didn’t hit that one,” I say.
“No, he didn’t. That ALPR didn’t register Wagner’s license plate last night.”
Books asks, “Are there any turnoffs between where I am right now and that ALPR?”
“Not according to this map,” I say, looking at my phone.
“No,” says Rabbit. “No turnoffs.”
“So he didn’t turn right at this intersection,” says Books. “He must have turned left.”
“He headed back east?” I ask. “Back toward the police barricade?”
Books’s eyebrows lift. “Maybe there’s something between here and that police barricade.” He turns left and heads east on the county road.
Nothing but foliage and green fields for the first mile. Then we see the sign, XTRA STORAGE, standing tall and wide, far off the road.
A storage facility. An acre of concrete. A series of large sheds with wide white doors. Large enough to park a tractor or a boat in.
Or hide a person in.
Books pulls the car over again, this time along the side of the county road. He picks up the phone and dials it. “Elizabeth,” he says, “I need agents right now.”
99
WITHIN THE hour, federal agents have swarmed the storage facility and are searching around the perimeter. They’re wearing flak jackets, their weapons drawn. For all we know, Wagner is inside one of those locked storage sheds. It would be odd, but everything about this case is odd, and nobody’s taking any chances.
The storage site is not manned by any employees. That would have helped. Apparently, this is the kind of place that lies dormant most of the time and doesn’t require much daily upkeep.
Back at the Hoover Building, agents are trying to contact the owner of the facility to find out who rented these sheds and how to get them open. Arguably, we need a search warrant for this, so Books is working with a lawyer at Justice on yet another warrant application.