Friday Afternoon, February 20th
Once I got back to the car, I started it and sat there for a few minutes to let the heater do its job then I drove from the park to a spot on the street where I could watch the front of the house for a bit. Boo was content to continue to lie on the passenger seat as she finished off the chewy bone I’d given her.
After about a half hour, I watched as a couple that appeared to be in their early to mid-thirty’s went up on the porch, rang the bell and were admitted inside. I kicked myself mentally for forgetting to grab my binoculars out of the trunk in the rush to get Boo settled and get going when we left that morning. I could tell it was a white man and a white woman but nothing much more and I couldn’t make out the numbers on the license plate of their car where they’d parked it, from my current vantage point.
We sat for better than an hour waiting for something, anything else to happen. Just as I was contemplating rolling down the street and getting a look at their plate number before I headed back to Jov-tech, the couple emerged.
The woman was carrying what appeared to be an infant wrapped in a pink blanket with large white polka-dots so big I could make them out even from where I sat.
Finally realizing what I’d been looking at and snooping around, I smacked my own forehead and called myself a dummy out loud. Boo shot me a look and then stretched herself upside down on the opposite seat.
“It’s probably a private adoption agency,” I said to her as I scratched her exposed belly. While I watched the woman work to get the infant into the back seat, presumably in a car seat, I thought about all that I knew. The card with nothing but a phone number, the vague answering message, no signage outside, not letting a stranger inside and keeping close tabs on me while I was on the grounds; their secretiveness and their vigilance was all explained now. Someone from there had given Katie the card at some point. She had been considering giving Jef up for adoption. It all made perfect sense.
Satisfied with what I now was reasonably sure was going on, I left the Italian village, grabbed a sandwich for lunch and drove back to Jov-tech.
Roman Bakula left work just after 4:30 PM and drove straight home. He pulled his car into his garage as before and entered his townhouse from there as the garage door closed behind him.
Around 5:10, Boo was getting very restless and I was contemplating leaving when a man rounded the corner of Bakula’s little group of townhomes from the opposite end of my position, passed by the first one, walked up to his front door and knocked.
I cursed myself again over leaving my binoculars in the trunk. “I should have grabbed those damn things when we stopped for food and for you to pee,” I told her. She ignored me and continued to hop around.
I couldn’t get a very good look at the man now on Bakula’s doorstep without my optics. To stay somewhat concealed, I’d had to park a bit further away than I would have liked. Against the cold, the man was wearing a long, heavy overcoat and a hat with a brim that shaded his eyes...not that I could see them at my current distance anyway.
Bakula answered the door. The new guy pulled something out from inside of his coat and handed it to him. They chatted for maybe 30 seconds and then Roman closed the door and the other man turned to leave.
He headed back in the opposite direction of where I was, crossed the road, and got into a car parked well up from me and then drove away. Finding that really odd, given that he’d come from around behind Bakula’s building to start with; I decided he was worth a follow to see what sort of intel I could gather on him.