Grant Eustace knew that “smart” came in many flavors. There was “book smart” and “street smart”, “Apple genius” and “common sense.” Eustace had no illusions about his own place in that hierarchy. He knew that he was never going to be on Kane’s level, not in a million years and that the word “clever” would never appear on his evaluation forms, but he did have one talent that was as valuable to a cop as diamonds and gold – cunning. As if he possessed some kind of crook-radar, Eustace could spot a wrong guy, a predator trying to blend in amidst the sheep, from thirty feet away. Half an hour ago his alarm had started going PING-PING-PING.
There was nothing overtly wrong about the target. His clothes were right – jeans, black sneakers, a worn, blue-wool jacket buttoned up to the top – but there was something about his body language, too focused, too determined, that sent a tingle up Eustace’s spine.
It had started out as a simple reconnaissance mission intended only to familiarize himself with Mr. Justice Hopper’s daughter, to get a feel for her in case Kane’s theory about getting to the judge through his family might be right. According to a friend at the IRS Kathryn Hopper had had a varied career – cocktail waitress, Amway salesperson, telemarketer, receptionist, bartender and now she was the owner-operator of something called “Personal Essentials DC.”
Eustace made a Google search and found that “Personal Essentials” was a franchise operation that hosted the equivalent of a migratory Tupperware party for cosmetics in bars and taverns instead of ranch-style living rooms. The parent company furnished Kathryn with a catalog of wholesale lipstick, nail polish, perfume, makeup, breath mints and whatever else a woman who spent four hours in a bar might have a craving for. She sold the stuff out of a suitcase, bar-to-bar, after paying a cut to the manager for allowing her to hang around his establishment. Eustace suspected that now and then her inventory probably also included a few joints, some special nose powder and a hit or two of meth. He figured that she was keeping the existence of her special merchandise secret from her father who was probably thrilled that she was at last earning enough money to be able to pay her own rent.
I bet he wonders if she’s really his kid, Grant mused. Maybe he thinks the wife might have slipped out the back door one afternoon while he was sending some punk to the slam but now that he’s one of the Supremes he’s too afraid of the answer to grab a sample of her DNA. Not that Eustace was disappointed in Hopper. Human weakness was, after all, his bread and butter.
He found the girl by marking her car as “Identify But Do Not Stop” and waiting to see if some patrol unit with a plate reader passed her in traffic. It took a while but around 4:30 the system sent an email to his phone that her Civic had been spotted at a GPS location that corresponded with the address of a bar on Florida Avenue. It was not the sort of place you would expect to find the daughter of a Supreme Court Justice.
Eustace parked across the street and then, more out of habit than anything else, walked the neighborhood just to see if anything or anyone rang any bells. He spotted a junkie floating around, looking for something to steal, and a kid who made him for a cop from twenty feet away and quickly ran inside. Probably a lookout for a drug dealer in one of the apartments Eustace decided. And then there was the guy who set off his alarm – Caucasian, mid to late thirties, five-eleven, one-eighty, brown hair and heartless blue eyes. Eustace had seen eyes like that many times before, on punks and cons, bent correctional officers, on two-bit killers and pimps who would sell their own mothers for twenty dollars and a stolen watch.
The guy wasn’t doing anything special, just wandering down the street and checking out the shop windows along the way. Eustace committed his face to memory and retreated to something called “Bean Town” where he took a seat by the window and ordered a coffee, black. Twenty minutes later he spotted Kathryn Hopper coming out of the Wilmington Tavern. She matched the stats from her DMV file, about five feet nine, thin, with long brown hair framing a long white face. She dumped a small suitcase onto her Civic’s passenger seat and then got in on the other side. Eustace slurped the last of his coffee and jogged back to the department Malibu that he had parked three cars down. He followed Kathryn a few blocks southwest toward the Amtrak Station where she parked and then lugged her suitcase into The Caledonia Grill. “Best Crab Cakes In Town” a faded sign next to the door promised. Eustace had his doubts about that but he was getting hungry and he figured she might be in there for a while, plus it wasn’t getting any warmer now that the sun had gone down.
Two hours later Hopper began to pack up her case and Eustace preceded her into the night air that now had fallen to under forty degrees. A flicker of motion caught his eye when she trudged back to her Civic. The guy was wearing a knit cap now and a pair of black gloves but it was the same man all right. Hopper started her engine and a cloud of white vapor spewed from the pipe. Eustace pulled out ahead of her and drove past the doorway where Mr. Blue Wool Coat had been huddled. Eustace wasn’t surprised to see that the watcher was gone. If he was following the Hopper woman the guy would need to be back in his car, ready to pick her up at the end of the block. Eustace made a right at the corner, doused his lights and pulled into a bus stop. A moment later Hopper’s Civic passed through the intersection still trailing a cloud of vapor that signaled a pin-hole leak in her head gasket.
Hopper had barely cleared the far corner when a pair of headlight popped up and a black Ford Fusion turned left on 3rd Street fifty feet behind her. Eustace made a U-turn, flicked off his lights, turned right on 3rd and pulled briefly to the curb before turning them back on. He marked the shape and height of the Fusion’s taillights and stayed as far back as he could, occasionally pulling into a gas station or parking lot, then starting out again a few seconds later so as to appear to be a different vehicle entering the street.
Ten minutes later Hopper dragged her case into another bar but this time Eustace concentrated on the Ford, passing it when it pulled into an abandoned burger joint then circling the block and coasting without headlights into a loading zone fifty feet behind and across the street from where the Fusion sat beneath a weathered sign that read: “Blizzard Shakes!”
It was too dark to read the Ford’s plate so after giving the driver ten minutes to relax Eustace disconnected the Malibu’s dome light and slipped into the shadows. He headed away from the Ford until it was out of sight then he crossed the street and crept up the sidewalk on the other side. When he neared the edge of the abandoned burger joint he got down in a crouch and slipped from shadow to shadow until he got close enough to read the plate. Lucky for me there’s a full moon, he thought and smiled as he memorized the digits. He watched the car for another half minute but he couldn’t tell if anyone was inside. Slowly, he retraced his route up the deserted street back to the Malibu. He had parked it facing against the flow of traffic with the driver’s door closest to the curb so that the body of the car masked his exit and re-entry.
Bent over he hurried past an alley next to a closed auto-parts store and duck-walked into the shelter of the car. Just as he was reaching for the door Eustace heard a faint squeak and then a puff of air brushed his cheek. As he turned toward the sound his life collapsed like a popped balloon when an ice pick slammed through his ear and into his brain.
The man who now called himself “Donald” muscled Eustace’s limp body into the Chevy’s back seat and quickly rifled through his pockets. “Homeland Security” – Fuck! he hissed when he saw Eustace’s creds. Now what?
If he left the body here they might connect it to Hopper’s daughter. If he drove it across town then he’d need some way to get back to his car without leaving any witnesses like cabbies or bus drivers and their associated surveillance cameras. As a compromise he dumped the Malibu as close as he could to the Capital Metro South station then walked the mile or so back to his Fusion.
He took Eustace’s phone, watch, wallet and ring with him to make it look as much like a robbery as possible. The real questions were: How much did Eustace know about him and who had he told? Hopefully, the agent’s phone with its call log, texts and emails would tell him if HS was running a formal operation on the Hopper woman or if Eustace had just been doing a routine check and something had spooked him. That would make sense since formal stakeouts were always handled by two-man teams and Eustace was clearly operating alone.
Well, Donald thought, I’ve got two more weeks to run the operation if I need them. Let’s just take this one step at a time.
While Donald was planning his next move, back in the Metro Station lot, unnoticed, Grant Eustace was slowly and quietly cooling down to ambient temperature.