Day 9 – Saturday night
Host hotel
They took their leave of the sisters and drove back to the hotel. Jim followed Ginny into her room, closed the door behind him, then leaned against it, his eyes on her.
“Thank you.”
She hung up her coat then turned and smiled at him. “You’re welcome. What for?”
“For letting me come with you tonight. I would have been worried sick not knowing where you were or what you were doing or when you’d be back.”
She laughed. “You sound like an old woman. Speaking of which–” She pulled her phone out and dialed home.
“Mom? Yes, sorry it’s late. We were out having dinner. Jim and I. Yes, he came down to help with the emergency. I’ll bring him home with me tomorrow.” She looked at him. “Mother says hello.” She turned back to the device. “Yes. All right. Yes. I love you, too. Goodnight.”
She slipped the phone back into her purse. “There, that’s done. Now where were we?”
“You had just called me an old woman.” He dropped gloomily into the desk chair. “The truth is, I feel like one. This whole thing has gotten so much bigger than I anticipated.”
She nodded. “Not just a simple little murder. Now it’s a case of state law versus restraint of international trade.”
He caught her eye. “I hope Clara’s wrong. I hope—and this sounds awful, but I’m going to say it anyway—I hope Phyllis’ murder turns out to be personal. I don’t like playing spy.”
Ginny looked up. “Who said anything about spying?”
Jim caught his breath and back-peddled hastily. “No one. It just has the flavor of a spy novel to me.” He jumped to his feet, crossed to where she stood, and scooped her up in his arms.
“Jim!” she squeaked. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He dropped her on the side of the bed farthest from the door, then settled down beside her. “Manning the gates. You sleep. I’ll keep guard.”
She curved toward him, her eyes on his face, a small frown forming. “You look tired. Did you get any sleep last night?”
“Three hours in the call room at the hospital and four here.”
“Well, you look as if you could use more. Go back to your room. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He reached over and stroked her cheek with a fingertip. “Didn’t I just tell you I wasn’t going to leave you alone?”
She nodded. “I heard you, but I assumed you were exaggerating. You cannot spend the night in my room.”
“Just for tonight. I promise I won’t misbehave.”
She shook her head. “Not gonna happen.” She sat up and looked at him, frowning. “What’s bothering you, Jim?”
“Nothing. I just want to be with you.”
She rolled off the bed, came around, and tugged on his arm. “Up. Out. I need my sleep. I’ve got another half day of conference tomorrow.”
Jim sat up, then swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat watching her as she tried in vain to pull him to his feet. Talk about not gonna happen. He could force the issue, but he had to admit that he really was tired and she was probably as safe here as anywhere in the city. He stood up.
“You’ll lock the door.”
“Of course,” she said. “Come on.”
“All right.” It would be easier to think in the morning. “But come tuck me in.”
“Jim!”
He had hold of her hands now, pulling her toward the hallway. “Come on. Tuck me in and kiss me goodnight.”
“Jim! Someone might see!”
“We will walk decorously side by side in the public spaces. Come.”
They made their way up to his room, two floors above. Jim fished out his room key, opened the door and started to enter, then froze. Someone had been in the room.
To help him sleep, Jim had covered the power button on the television with one of the ubiquitous hotel advertisements. When he opened the door, the bright red light caught his eye. He glanced down at the doorknob, seeing his Do Not Disturb sign still in place. Considering his late arrival and the fact that he’d slept in this room most of the day, it was unlikely that the intruder was the maid.
He pushed Ginny behind him and flipped on the light. The room was empty, but his make-shift LED cover was now lying on the floor. He went straight to his overnight bag, pulled the zippers open and looked inside.
The envelope was gone.
He grabbed his belongings, stuffed them into the bag, then grabbed Ginny’s hand and pulled her into the hallway. “Come on.”
“Jim, what’s wrong?”
“We’re leaving.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
He took her back to her room and helped her pack, his mind racing. Someone had followed him here. Someone who knew what he was carrying. Someone willing to break into his hotel room to retrieve the evidence.
They checked out, rode up the parking garage elevator, and stepped out into the concrete structure. Ginny was leading the way, but glancing back over her shoulder, her face full of unspoken questions. It wasn’t until Jim’s eye fell on the car that he stopped. Retrieve the evidence, eliminate the witness.
“Ginny, wait.”
She turned to look at him, her hand halfway to the trunk latch.
“Ginny, sweetheart, please, back away.”
She stood without moving for a moment, her eyes locked on his, then did as asked. Jim sighed his thanks to whatever deity might be listening.
He motioned for her to come to him. When she did, he slid an arm around her waist and steered her back inside. It took him twenty minutes to locate Agent DeSoto. It took the Austin bomb squad only ten minutes to respond.
Jim was sitting in the hotel lobby with his arms around Ginny, fending off her questions, when the police officer approached.
“There was something there, all right, but it isn’t a bomb. It’s a tracking device.” He held it out to show them. “Can’t have been there very long either. The case is pretty clean.” He slid a gloved fingernail along the edge of the plastic case, then opened it to show them the electronic device nestled inside. “Attached by a magnet. GPS locator. Available off the Internet. What do you want us to do with it? I mean, if it’s evidence, we’ll need to bag it.”
Jim looked up from the device in the officer’s hand. “Can you give me a minute? I want to hand that question off to someone else.”
Jim called DeSoto again and explained what they’d found. “The question is, do we give it to the police here or bring it to you, or what?”
“Let me think a minute.”
Jim waited through the silence on the other end of the line.
“Dr. Mackenzie? Can you put the officer on the phone?”
“Sure.” Jim rose and handed over the phone, explaining DeSoto’s role. He watched as the police sergeant walked out of earshot, waited while the two officers of the law came to a decision, then took the phone back when it was handed to him.
“Here’s what we’d like to do. The device is evidence and we want to preserve that for use in court so we have to maintain the chain of custody, but we don’t want to alert the bad guys.”
Jim listened as DeSoto outlined the procedure for bagging and tagging the device, then signing it over to him, to be held until he could turn it over to DeSoto or someone designated by him to receive it.
“Can you do that? It means leaving the evidence bag, tracker inside, in the car, so that whoever put it there won’t notice.”
Jim nodded into the phone. “We can slip it into the door pocket so it will stay put until needed. Can we figure out who put it on her car?”
“Possibly. Officer Weems is going to photograph the device and send me a copy of the image. With the serial number, we may be able to track the purchase. Get back to Dallas,” DeSoto instructed. “I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”
Jim hung up the phone, then accepted the evidence bag from the police officer, signing where indicated.
“Since this is going to be out of police custody, we would like to emphasize that whether or not this perpetrator is caught and whether or not he goes to jail, might hinge on your diligence. Please check on the bag regularly, in a private place like a closed garage, to make sure it’s still safe. We would hate to let a criminal slip through our fingers because of a procedural glitch.”
“I understand.”
The officer nodded. “Have a safe trip.”
“Thanks.”
Jim held the door while Ginny got in on the passenger side of the car, then settled down to drive back to Dallas. They were an hour out before she spoke.
“Are you ready to tell me what’s going on?”
He took a deep breath, then explained about the ambush at the state capital and his role as courier and how the disappearance of the fake drugs implied he was being followed.
She was silent for a long time after he finished. “You think they’re planning to kill you?”
Jim shook his head. “No, at least, not yet. If they had wanted to, they could have gunned me down at any time. Or planted a bomb instead of a tracking device. Whoever this is, they wanted to know where to find us.”
“Us?”
He reached over and took her hand. “It was your car. You and I were out on the town in that car until late, which means they knew which car to bug, and were ready to move in swiftly once we got back to the hotel. That requires resources and organization. We have to assume that, if they’ve decided I’m a threat, the same is probably true of you.”
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