Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,99
sea of agents. “If he’s here, he’s done,” he says. “He’s not getting away. It’s just a matter of time.”
“He’s not here,” I say. “I don’t see him pinning himself down that way.”
Books shrugs. We just don’t know yet. We can’t even be sure that Wagner came here.
“This will take a while,” I say. “Let’s make our next stop. We can come back.”
We get in his car and head to our next destination. I drive so Books can keep in touch by phone with Justice and check on the attempt to get inside those storage sheds.
While he talks, I try to sort through everything we’ve learned today. It all adds up to…weird. All that cash. The Taser under his bed. The Garfield the Cat watch in his trash…
I see the sign up on my right, a polished slab of granite that reads A NEW DAY: REHABILITATIVE AND PHYSICAL THERAPY.
Which matches the name on a business card we found in Wagner’s home this morning.
Books shows his badge at the front desk to an elderly man, bald with a ruddy complexion. It’s always something to see the look on a person’s face when he hears an agent say, “FBI.”
“Lieutenant Wagner,” says the man in answer to Books’s question. “I haven’t seen him today.” The man starts leafing through the daily sign-in sheets. “He’s usually here early on Thursday mornings.”
“Oh, sure, everyone knows Lew. He’s quite a character.”
“He’s usually here on Thursdays?”
The man hums to himself. “I wanna say Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday? He’s outpatient. He comes for PT. No,” he says, looking up from the pages, “he’s not here today.”
It’s what we figured. It wouldn’t be much of an escape from the authorities if he’d stopped in for his physical-therapy session first.
“You said Wednesday was one of his days,” I say. “So was he here yesterday?”
“Well, now, I think I saw him yesterday. Let me see.” He flips back and sorts through some pages. “Yes, he was. Signed in at eight forty-seven a.m.”
“Is his physical therapist here?” Books asks.
“That I don’t know. I don’t know who works with who.”
Books nods and smiles. “Would you do me a favor and call your administrator or whoever runs this place?”
“Yes, sir.” He picks up his landline phone and punches a button.
Just then, my phone rings. Officer Ciomek from Chicago. “Natalie,” I say into the phone.
I hear her saying something, but it’s garbled. And then the connection fails.
I call her back, or try to, but the call won’t go through.
“I can’t get a signal in here,” I tell Books. I walk outside into the climbing heat, the sun high overhead, and call her again.
“Sorry,” I say. “Call dropped. You got something for me?”
“Got some vid for you, girl. From the Friday before the bombing.”
“Tell me.”
“I have POD footage capturing a Dodge Caravan—the same Dodge Caravan—driving past the payday-loan store three different times between three twelve p.m. and three twenty-eight p.m. that Friday. That would be three hours before Mayday disappeared from his spot.”
Right. In the store video from the car wash north of the bombing site, we saw the homeless guy, Mayday, leave his spot across the street from the payday-loan store at 6:15 p.m. the Friday before the bombing. That, we think, is when Darwin—Wagner—paid him off for that spot. Now we have Wagner in Chicago three hours earlier.
“He drove by the store three times in, what, sixteen minutes?”
“He was casing it.”
“And it was Wagner’s plates?”
“Can’t get a license plate. Our POD cameras aren’t that focused.”
“Did you get a shot of him driving?”
“Nope. You know how our PODs work, right? The cameras rotate every few seconds. We just get a little video clip, then the camera turns away and picks up a different angle. It gives you a freakin’ headache going through them.”
Inside the clinic, Books is talking to some woman, probably the one who runs this place.
“Natalie,” I say, “are you sure it’s the same Dodge Caravan?”
“They all look like the same van to me. And what are the odds that three different Dodge Caravans were cruising around that spot at that time?”
I don’t know. I don’t know enough about cars. I thank her and end the call just as the phone beeps with the arrival of the video clips.
I pull them up one at a time. Each one, grainy, black-and-white, shows a four- or five-second clip of a Dodge Caravan proceeding southbound on Broadway in Chicago; the time stamp in the corner of the screen shows