THE SUN WAS SETTING behind him when Livermore hit the Texas panhandle. He found an electronics store in Amarillo and went to the photography counter, gave the woman the flash card from his camera, asked for eight-by-ten prints in the best quality she had. While he waited, he went through the rest of the store until he found the GPS trackers.
He settled on a SilverCloud Sync GPS with a magnetic mount. Two inches square, it would fit in any vehicle’s wheel well and operate for days at a time, at temperatures as low as twenty below zero.
When he took the tracker to the counter, the woman was looking at the prints she had made. The half dozen shots of Alex McKnight, walking out of the hotel lobby.
“Are these . . . surveillance pictures?”
She was smiling as she said it. It was obviously the most interesting thing that had happened to her all day.
Livermore put a smile on his own face to mirror hers.
“Yes,” he said. “They are.”
She was in her late twenties, maybe thirty years old. Her hair was dyed a shade of beet red that didn’t look quite natural. A shade she probably should have left behind in her teenage years, Livermore thought. She wore a lot of makeup around her eyes, and her fingernails were painted the same shade of red as her hair.
She thinks this makes her interesting, Livermore said to himself. Painting her hair, painting her nails . . .
“Why were you watching him?” she asked as she paged through them again, one after another. “Is he wanted for something?”
He took the photos from her gently, noting the fingerprints she was leaving on the glossy surface of the paper. He would have to clean them now.
“I can’t talk about it here,” he said.
“I get it. Top secret stuff.” She pantomimed zipping her lips shut and throwing away the key.
“You could say that.”
“So are you a cop? No, wait, let me guess.”
She backed up a step, looking him up and down. Livermore waited patiently. He took a quick glance toward the front of the store, then the back.
The place was empty. They were alone.
“I don’t think you’re local,” she said. “You sure don’t sound like you live around here.”
She has a good eye for detail, he thought. And a good ear.
“So I’m thinking you’re something federal. FBI, maybe, or a marshal.”
She’ll remember everything about me. And she’ll remember these photographs.
“I’m going to say a U.S. marshal. That’s my guess.”
He smiled again. “What’s your name?”
“Irene.”
He nodded. “So, Irene, let me guess what your job is.”
“No, see, this is just until my—”
“Until your band hits it big,” Livermore said. “And you can stop driving around in your little Hyundai.”
She looked at him with surprise. “How did you—”
He nodded to the set of keys resting on the stool behind her, next to her purse. There was a guitar pick with a hole drilled through it attached to the ring, and the Hyundai symbol was prominent on the biggest key.
“In the meantime,” he said, “you sell electronics to people who don’t understand how they work. And you develop photographs.”
Her smiled faded slightly. “Yes . . .”
“And when you develop those photographs,” he said, taking a half step closer to the counter, “sometimes you break up the monotony by looking at them, by trying to imagine the story behind them.”
“I didn’t mean to do anything like that. I was just—”
“You do this with all of the photographs you develop. To pass the time.”
She looked down and cleared her throat. “No. Not really.”
“Someday a man will walk in here with some pictures,” he said. “Pictures you aren’t supposed to see.”
She looked toward the front of the store, like she was hoping someone else would come in. But there was nothing but the darkness outside.
“You won’t try to imagine the story behind those photographs. You’ll try to forget them. Wish you never saw them. But he’ll know.”
“Okay,” she said, clearing her throat again. “Can I get you anything else?”
“You need to be careful with a man like that. The fact that he’s bringing his photographs here . . . It means he has an appreciation for the finished product. He wants a good-quality print. But it also shows a lack of self-control. He’s taking a risk by letting them pass through your hands. A risk he’s prepared to deal with if he has to.”
She looked back at him without saying a word. The entire store was silent.
“You don’t want a man like that walking into this store,” Livermore said. “Not if you’re here all by yourself.”
She looked down at the phone, then at the front of the store again. Then back to Livermore. “The manager is usually in the back.”
“Usually. But not right now.”
She didn’t answer. She put her hands together to stop them from shaking.
Livermore checked his watch. Then he smiled at her one more time.
“You’ll be closing the store soon,” he said. “Looks like you’ll be safe for tonight.”
Like the man in the gas station back in New Mexico, she would remember him. She would be able to describe him exactly, re-create his face, transcribe virtually every word he had said to her. Once again, a foolish move for any other man. A tightrope act that Livermore would not trust to anyone else.
He put the GPS tracker on the counter, next to the envelope containing the prints, and paid for it all with cash. She rang up the transaction quickly, and her hands were still shaking as she put everything in a bag.
“Enjoy the rest of your evening,” he said.
Then he went out to his car to wait for her.