Virgil’s sleep was fitful and punctuated by night sweats and menacing dreams. Flames reached for him; ropes of smoke snared his arms. In the background were sirens and yells. Finally, a little before six a.m. he staggered into the shower and tried to lose himself in the pounding water and steam. He spent another hour buying Kleenex, towels, shampoo and the other random things that came with a hotel room but weren’t provided with a furnished apartment. By ten-thirty he had unpacked and stocked the apartment and was trying to figure out what to do next. He stared at his laptop but couldn’t bring himself to endure the frustration of spending more fruitless hours searching for Nicole. He found himself fingering Denny Ivers’ card.
“Do you still want me to take a look at your Limping Man file?” he asked when Denny picked up the phone.
“Bored already? You bet.”
“OK,” Virgil said, looking at his watch, “I can be at your office in about half an hour.”
“Let’s do this the easy way. I’ll give you the case number and my password. Your apartment’s got Internet access, right?”
“Not the fastest, but yeah, it works.”
“OK, let me know when you’re ready to write down the password.”
Virgil got himself another cup of coffee and ten minutes later he was ready to log in.
Novi, Michigan sat at the twisted intersection of Interstates 96, 275, 75 and Michigan 5, a tangle of roads that suited Richard Alvin Yellen perfectly. He paused at a stop sign on Twelve Mile Road and mentally flipped a coin which way to go. He’d spent almost an hour prowling the Twelve Oaks Mall but it didn’t feel right. He’d picked the place because with a Macy’s, a Nordstrom’s and a Lord & Taylor he figured it would be filled with easy-target high-income soccer-moms. And it was, but nothing else felt right. The mall cops paid too much attention to him and the clerks looked at him like he was a bug, stuck-up bitches!
Was it his shoes? No, he told himself. Half the men in the place were wearing sneakers. Sure, maybe they were fancy, hundred-and-fifty-dollar Nike’s instead of his ten-dollar Belmars from Walmart, but that was no excuse to treat him like he had a disease. He saw it in the way they looked at him. He knew what they were thinking: low-class white-trash loser. Ten dollar haircut, ten dollar shoes, Chinese watch with a plastic band. He doesn’t belong here. What’s he doing hanging around someplace where successful people shop?
Fine! he thought. I’ll leave, but I’ll be back.
On the way out he spotted a Mercedes S350 blocked from the security cameras by a shiny new Town & Country van. Impulsively, he pulled in next to it just long enough to slim-jim the door then pop the trunk. A small black bag with lots of zippers lay in the corner. He grabbed it and was heading for the exit less than half a minute after he had parked. Driving one-handed he managed a quick peek inside the bag. A Nikon D750 with extra lenses.
Jackpot! he thought. I can get five, six hundred for it easy. The bastard probably won’t even know it’s missing until tonight. So, where to next?
He checked the map. Not one of those Google things but a real map which always made more sense to him. West on the 96 was Brighton. He liked the sound of it. It sounded rich and quiet and full of holier-than-thou uptight assholes who deserved to be robbed.
He pulled onto the westbound ramp and, as usual, it took the VW Transporter forever to get up to speed, which again started him thinking about getting a newer vehicle, maybe a Honda Odyssey or a Kia Sedona, except that they both had windows and he didn’t want anybody to be able to see inside.
Sure, he could block them off, tape black garbage-can plastic bags over them, but people would notice that right off, and they would remember it. He’d removed all the emblems from his 2000 T4 and nine out of ten people didn’t even know what it was, just an anonymous black commercial van, and that was just the way he wanted it. Maybe if he made a big score he’d get something a little faster, maybe a Chevy. What was that, the Express?
It was late afternoon when he exited the 96. He spent twenty minutes cruising the town, getting a feel for it, and he liked what he saw. Clean, quiet, not a lot of cops, good old-fashioned white-bread suburbia full of assholes who figured that they deserved a perfect life and that nothing bad could happen to them here.
He pulled into the lot in front of a Kroger and lazily pushed a cart through the aisles. He noticed her right off. About forty with a lot of jewelry and a pinched expression on her face as if everybody needed to get out of her way.
He got in line ahead of her and paid cash for a loaf of white bread and a package of sliced ham. She used a fancy charcoal gray VISA, which was a good sign, though he almost never used stolen credit cards because they were too easy to trace and the ATMs all had cameras.
He waited outside and followed her through the rows of parked cars. He’d paid attention to what she bought – Weight Watchers and Stouffer’s frozen entrees, the kinds of things a busy woman who lives alone might eat. She got into a silver 7 series Beemer. Real estate broker? Lawyer? he wondered.
He hurried over to his van as fast as he was able, his left leg hurting, his limp becoming more pronounced with each step. He thought again of the bastard who had wrecked his knee and smiled at the memory of how he’d fixed him, fixed him good.
Yellen followed her through the end-of-day traffic and watched her pull into an upscale house on a large lot. The lights only came on after she entered which told him that he had probably guessed right about her living alone. He figured he’d come back after it was full dark and cut his way through one of the back windows. Then he’d see what he could see.
He cruised past the house, grabbed some burgers at the takeout window and ate then in his van. By the time he returned to her neighborhood it was almost full dark. All he needed was someplace nearby where he could stash the van and— Who the hell is that? he muttered when an Audi turned in front of him and pulled into her driveway. He slowed just long enough to see her open the front door and give the male driver a big hug.
Fuck! he thought, and set off in search of some quiet place where he could park his van and sleep away the night. Tomorrow was another day.