“Right here,” a nervous voice replied.
“Phase two,” Daphne said. “And make it
Martinelli headed back into the waiting area and watched through the window as the Explorer moved along. Twice she caught sight of Garman inside the car, and both times his rag worked furiously against the glass. It was time. Her legs didn’t want to move. A man pushed into the waiting area: Ernie Waitts, a narco undercover cop.
As she approached the Explorer, she saw that the exterior was sparkling clean, from roof to wheels.
She took long strides, for Garman had pushed the far door open and was backing out of the vehicle, still wiping as he went. She called out to him, “Young man! Young man!” as Daphne told her. “Did you get it cleaned up?”
His body language stopped her cold, for he faced her with square shoulders, standing much taller than before. A different person.
She did not look again at Jonny Garman; the woman whom she had become for this charade could care less. Instead, she swung open the passenger door and ran an inspecting finger over the dash, satisfying herself that the sticky mess was gone for good.
A moment later she was safe behind the wheel. Safe, but for how long? she wondered, feeling like the guinea pig she was.
Daphne sat transfixed. They would have to wait to study the tape recorded inside the car. But as far as she could tell, Garman had never gone for the glove box and the registration therein. The address. It seemed impossible to her that she had judged him incorrectly. She had failed. A woman-some earlier customer-was going to die that very evening. She mumbled, “I just can’t believe it.”
Boldt, too, seemed in a daze. “Maybe he has access to DMV information,” Boldt proposed. “Run the tag and lift the address that way. We don’t know anything about this guy.”
“No, we don’t,” Daphne agreed. But she did know, and so did he, she suspected.
“Maybe he’s a computer hacker. Who knows how he gets these women’s addresses?”
He wouldn’t look over at her; for Daphne, that said enough.
“Jesus, Lou,” she muttered.
Boldt said, “We go ahead as planned. Martinelli did a great job. We watch the place and we wait for him.” Radio traffic filled their ears. Boldt responded to none of it. “We watch and see what he does. We follow. We have a huge surveillance team in place. We’ll stay with him, Daffy. We can beat the damn odds. This guy is not heading home to read a book tonight. This much we know. This much we made sure of.”
“I’m sorry,” she apologized in a hushed whisper. But not to him, as he believed. Her apology was to Jonny Garman’s targeted victim-the one for whom he had sent the poem. The one she feared was scheduled to die.
52
Ben waited with Susan in the houseboat for an hour before they both became restless. Daphne was late, and despite his pleas Susan would not leave him alone there. Since their visit to the park, he could not stop thinking of Emily. He’d had it with the entire Daphne/Susan program. He wanted out.
Susan, attempting to sound composed, suggested they head down to the police department, where Ben knew he would sit around bored for hours. “She’ll call,” he said.
“She has been in the same meeting for nearly an hour and a half. I can’t stay with you, Ben. You’ll have to wait for her there.”
“I’ll wait here,” he suggested, for about the fifth time.
“Don’t test me, young man. It’s downtown or the center for you.”
“The center?” he objected. “You don’t mean I have to
“Your choice.” Susan stood. “Downtown or the center?”
Ben was terrified at the thought of spending a night in the youth detention center.
“Downtown,” he answered.
Ben and Susan stepped through Homicide’s controlled door.
The place was jumping, cops hurrying back and forth like they were in the middle of a fire drill, most of them carrying paperwork, all of them looking tired. Some with their guns showing, which Ben thought was cool.
Susan kept stopping people and asking for Daphne or Boldt, and finally one of them listened long enough to point down a hall and say something about a lieutenant.
Susan pointed to an office chair pushed up against the wall and told Ben to take a seat.
“I want to come,” he protested.
“Now!” she directed him, turning his shoulders and giving him a slight push.
Ben headed to the chair.
Susan headed down the hall.
Ben was alone for the first time in ages.
He couldn’t get his mind off Emily. If he just got up and walked through that door …
If he stayed in that chair, Susan would put him in the youth center for the night. He felt convinced of this. Conversely, their threats to hurt Emily’s business rang hollow; they needed him as a witness.
He carefully slipped his hand into his pocket to make sure he still had the five bucks Daphne had given him for emergencies.
He slipped off the chair, glancing around surreptitiously. No one seemed to be taking any notice of him. Susan remained down the hall and out of sight, right where he wanted her. He walked casually toward the exit, through the continuing chaos, a kid looking for the bathroom.
Of the ten or fifteen people in the immediate area, only two women looked over and caught his eye, and they both offered him forced smiles, the way librarians do. He continued walking toward the door, shoulders straight, his back arched-just the way Daphne had told him to carry himself-sure that someone would get in his way and prevent him from leaving.
But no one said a thing.
Ben walked out through the door and broke into a run for the elevators the moment he rounded the corner.
Emily! he thought, his heart swelling to the size of Montana.
53
Daphne knew that from the moment Jonny Garman had been identified at the Lux-Wash, he would never spend another moment of his life completely alone. There would always be someone keeping him under surveillance or in the cell next to him. There would be attorneys and counselors and doctors and judges and juries, but he would never be alone.
On the extremely unlikely chance that Garman was not working solo, that an accomplice other than Hall or his father existed, the police could not risk a face-to-face meeting with their decoy, Marianne Martinelli.
Leading Daphne and Boldt’s frustrations was that the phone line at 114 Lakewood Avenue was dead, having been out of service since the house had been repossessed by the city. This became of importance as Martinelli’s walkie-talkie began to lose battery power. At 4:43 P.M., the reconnected telephone at 114 Lakewood Avenue rang
