Lisa began stopping at Jessica Stone’s whenever she had a chance to see if Evans had tried to make contact again. For the past ten days, she hadn’t heard a peep: no phone calls, packages, letters. It was as if Evans had abandoned his entire plan—a possibility Horton had worried about all along.
Then, on Wednesday, May 27, after nearly two weeks of silence, Lisa walked into Jessica Stone’s and…
The bartender, a man who knew Evans because of his affection for Jessica’s French fries and the fact that he had been in the bar several times with Lisa, said he had taken a call earlier that day from a guy named Louis Murray. “It was Gary,” the bartender said, a smirk on his face, as if Lisa and Evans were trying to pull one over on him. “I recognized his voice, Lisa.”
“What did he say?”
“He said to be here at five o’clock tonight; he was going to call back.”
Lisa was, by this point, torn in many different directions. She still loved Evans and was beginning to feel as if she had let him down by “giving him up” to Horton. Nevertheless, she also had an understanding Evans had been responsible for the disappearance of her former boyfriend Damien Cuomo, the father of her child. Running on pure emotional adrenaline, medicating any anxiety she felt with booze and marijuana, Lisa began to turn to Horton for support. There was even a thought that Lisa was becoming attracted to Horton in a sexual manner because they had spent so much time together. Horton, of course, always kept the relationship professional, ignoring her advances, writing them off as a by-product of the rapport he had spent months building. Yet, anything could set Lisa off at this point in the game. Horton had to be careful. The stakes were as high as they were going to get—especially since Evans had called and given a specific time when he was going to call back. Everything had to synchronize perfectly. If one part of the plan went wrong, it would fail. If Evans was back in town doing countersurveillance on Lisa, he knew Horton was sniffing around, setting him up.
Leaving the bar and rushing home, Lisa called Horton and told him what had happened. “I’ll be there at five,” Horton said.
Throughout that afternoon, Horton had every available investigator find anyone named Louis Murray in the Sacramento, California, area. None of the Louis Murrays that Sacramento police found had any ties whatsoever to Evans. He likely had taken on an identity by random. Still, Horton now had a name to alert every law enforcement agency in the country. If anyone named “Louis Murray” was picked up for so much as spitting on the sidewalk, Horton would know about it.
When Horton showed up at Lisa’s apartment to meet her, he started talking about the past few weeks, briefing her on what was going to happen next. There wasn’t time to place a wiretap on Jessica Stone’s or Maxie’s. To get a judge to sign a warrant would take a day, maybe two or three. So he had to rely solely on the trust he had built with Lisa. He did, however, have Lisa sign a waiver, giving the state police permission to record any conversations she had over the telephone. Thus, Lisa was given a tape recorder she could easily hook up to any phone she would later use to talk to Evans.
As much as he didn’t want to let her go off on her own—particularly on such an important mission—Horton had no choice but to let Lisa drive her own vehicle to Jessica Stone’s, while he and two other investigators, DeLuca and Sully, followed at a safe distance—just in case Evans was in town watching them watch her.
At around 4:55 P.M., Horton, DeLuca and Sully, sitting in their car across the street from Jessica Stone’s, watched Lisa drive into the parking lot and walk into the bar.
For a few minutes, she waited nervously at the bar, nursing a beer and smoking a cigarette. Evans, Horton knew, was, if nothing else, punctual. If he said he would call at 5:00, he wouldn’t make her wait.
At about 5:03, the barmaid, a woman Lisa knew, took a call on the bar phone. A moment later, she said, “Hold on,” handing Lisa the phone.
Just like that, Evans was back at the helm, calling the shots.
“Gary?” Lisa whispered.
“Go to Maxie’s right now…. I’ll call you in ten minutes,” he said quickly before hanging up.
Horton, Sully and DeLuca then watched Lisa run out of the bar in a hurry, get into her car and take off.
Follow me, she mouthed as she drove out of Jessica Stone’s and passed them.
“Go,” Horton ordered DeLuca. “Let’s go!”
As Lisa pulled into Maxie’s, Horton told DeLuca to park the car far enough away so they wouldn’t be made if Evans was there waiting for her.
While they waited, DeLuca and Sully told Horton they felt Lisa was nothing more than a barfly who couldn’t be trusted to walk someone else’s dog, better yet run the entire show, as she was clearly doing.
“Why are we playing this game with her?”
Horton had to depend on his instincts. “She’s all we have right now,” he said. “We have no choice but to trust her.”
Lisa was in Maxie’s fewer than five minutes. When she walked out, Horton motioned for her to come over to the car.
“What is going on?” he wanted to know.
Lisa was frazzled. Shaking. Anxious. Unsure of herself. “I don’t know what…the fuck he’s up to,” she blurted out.
“Start by telling us what he said.”
“Now he wants me to drive over to that Irish Pub in Albany. I don’t know,” she added, brushing her fingers through her hair, looking around the parking lot of the bar, “what the fuck he’s doing.”
“Let’s go,” Horton said. “Now.”
The Irish Pub was a twenty-minute drive across town. Horton told DeLuca, who was driving, to stay back even farther. “If Gary’s waiting for her there…Well, I don’t know…he’s…Just go.”
Lisa drove into the parking lot of the Irish Pub and, wasting little time, hopped out of her car and ran into the bar.