Vinnie eased off the accelerator and turned slowly into the entrance to the Palmer County Club. He noticed a bicycle rider coming toward him on the cart path to his left with his arm raised indicating that he was about to turn in front of him. Vinnie immediately braked to a stop to allow the resident to pass. With his face low and eyes straight ahead, the biker waved quickly at Vinnie as he hurried over the crosswalk.
As was his habit, Vinnie smiled and nodded at the early morning bike rider, but when his headlamps reflected off of the man’s face and arms, Vinnie’s smile vanished. His heart went to his throat. He bolted up in his seat. It was him! It was the biker guy he had seen sitting across from Ed and Cathy Roberts at the Burger King last evening. He was clean shaven this morning, but he would never forget that dour, cruel face and the horrible tattoo on his right arm displaying a long dagger with a drop of blood dangling from the tip.
Vinnie had gone to Ace Hardware that evening to exchange the washers he had bought the previous week. With Angel at Euchre Club for the evening and not much to eat at home, he had decided to stop at the Burger King and grab a bite. While standing in line, he saw the Roberts talking and eating dinner in one of the booths near the front window. Not wanting to interfere with their meal, he had avoided speaking to them. After Vinnie got his food and sat down, he noticed a biker guy sitting near the Roberts. The man he had just seen on that bicycle was that man. Always the investigator, Vinnie had concentrated on the biker guy because he felt he was watching the Roberts a little more closely than necessary. Also, he noticed that Cathy looked over at the man a couple of times as if she knew him. Ed, for his part, seemed impervious to the presence of the other man, even though the man was in close proximity to him and Cathy.
As the man pedaled by, Vinnie noticed that his attire was much different than it had been last evening-he looked very much like any other Villager. Why would this man be in The Villages at this hour of the morning and only a short distance from the Roberts home?
His senses on high alert, Vinnie fell back in his seat and waited for the biker to pass in front of him. He then drove into the Palmer parking lot at a normal pace so as not to draw undue attention from the biker. Once behind the protecting row of large bushes that bordered the complex, Vinnie gunned it and did a rapid U-turn next to the pro shop. He sped back toward the entrance and then braked hard, coming to a complete stop some hundred feet from the entrance to the country club. His eyes were frozen on the far side of Buena Vista Boulevard. With his engine running, he watched and waited to see if the biker came out of the underpass on the other side of Buena Vista. If he didn’t show up on the other side of the tunnel, this would be just be another example of an overzealous former NYPD detective trying to play cop again, but if he came out of the tunnel and headed for Bridgeport, Vinnie knew he could have a potential problem on his hands.
Vinnie tapped nervously on the steering wheel as he waited for the biker to appear. Suddenly, the lone biker came out of the darkness of the tunnel, riding toward the nearby entrance to Bridgeport. Once inside the gate, he moved deeper into Bridgeport. “Bingo!” Vinnie exclaimed. He yanked on his lights, hit the accelerator and gunned it into the round-a-bout that led to Bridgeport.
Arriving at the gate to Bridgeport, Vinnie paused briefly. He could see the dark silhouette of the biker moving further into the neighborhood. Vinnie eased past the gate. Suddenly, the shadowy image ahead began to circle about and come back toward the entrance. The alert Vinnie quickly killed his lights and gunned it left into the Bridgeport Recreation Center parking lot. He did a quick ninety degree right turn and pulled behind some thick bushes and came to a stop. From this vantage point his car would be hidden by the bushes from the approaching biker. He leaned up and looked past the bushes and saw the bike approaching. The rising sun cast an elongated, eerie shadow of the biker’s churning legs on the street in front of Vinnie’s car. The shadow grew larger and larger as he rode closer. Soon it was enormous, like some dark, sinister, monster perusing the street in front of Vinnie. Vinnie waited and watched, not knowing what might happen next.