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The thought of that file folder on Diana’s desk flooded Stacy with a mixture of anger and fear. Stacy managed little sleep that night, so she decided to get up early to begin the stakeout of the mystery person taking money from Colton DeVito’s bank account. The sky overhead was dappled in pink as the sun started to rise, and another day began in Cleveland.
A chill came over her. Even in the spring, there was no softening of the chill from the lake-effect winds slicing down from Canada and over Lake Erie into Cleveland. As Stacy looked around Euclid Avenue, the people moving through the streets were between affluent and impoverished. Euclid Avenue featured fancy stores, replete with their smooth black and glass exteriors, and the stores’ names emblazoned in bright, colorful lettering. Still, the street also featured pawn shops, liquor stores, and dank markets that served more as gathering places for Cleveland society’s less upwardly mobile members.
Stacy sat in her red Camry and scribbled down the information that Dr. Myers had left her on voicemail.
Dr. Myers had completed Monica and George DeVito’s autopsies. As Stacy had feared, George DeVito suffered massive head trauma to the skull’s back from what Dr. Myers suspected was a heavy object with a flat surface. While he couldn’t confirm if the blow to the head killed George before he suffocated on the smoky air in the burning house, the likelihood that he could’ve escaped a burning home without the head injury was high.
Stacy ended the call and tossed the phone into the seat next to her. Someone had been in the house during the fire. Stacy wanted to scream in disgust. If she had been there just a few minutes earlier, she could have cornered the killer and possibly saved two lives. Instead, Monica and George DeVito died in a truly horrific manner.
Stacy closed her eyes, trying to regain her thoughts. She opened them and stared ahead at the U.S. Bank ATM Machine, located near the Wells Fargo Bank on Euclid Avenue.
She had tried to call her mother earlier, but the phone went to voicemail. Stacy realized the time and knew that her mother was probably adjusting to the time change. Melinda had never been someone that liked mornings, and Stacy could remember many weekends when it would be just her and Chance alone by themselves for hours before their mother decided to get out of bed.
Stacy smiled at the memory. Those moments were when she and Chance grew close. They had the conversations that only brothers and sisters can have with each other: talks about fears, boys and girls they had crushes on in school, wishes, dreams, and desires.
A pang of sadness replaced the memories. Stacy and her brother had grown so far apart. She wondered if she’d been too hard on Chance. Maybe what he needed was someone to talk to him, show him care and compassion like Melinda did, even if her complete trust in everything he said and did was sometimes misguided. Now, according to Brandon Deerfield, Chance had facilitated the unauthorized surveillance of cops on patrol so that a batch of dirty cops could push drugs in the streets of Cleveland.
A knock on the glass snapped Stacy back to attention. To her right was Austin, leaning on the window with a cupped hand braced against the glass while holding a cardboard tray carrying two large cups of coffee from Starbucks.
Stacy reached across the space and pulled on the door handle. Austin took a step back as Stacy pushed open the door. A rush of cold, biting air swirled into the car.
“And I thought I was early,” Austin said. He wore a black collared shirt and a pair of brown slacks with tan loafers. The dark shirt brought out the coal-black richness of his moussed hair and the molten-brown hues of his eyes. Austin always dressed in that manner on stakeouts, in case he needed to get out of the car and blend with other people.
He struggled to balance the drink tray as he folded it into the seat and Stacy reached out to steady it.
“Thanks for this,” Stacy said, nodding firmly at the cups of coffee.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. The wind from outside whistled and whipped in behind him. “I can’t even begin to think about anything without coffee.”
Stacy grinned. “I remember.”
She jostled one of the cups loose from the holder and took a deep gulp. The coffee tasted fresh and rich, and the warmth of it made Stacy feel better.
Austin turned in the seat to face her, removing the second cup. “Sleep much?
“Nope. Too much on my mind.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking through the windshield at the bustling morning rush hour scene developing outside. “Same here. I figured I might as well get up and head down here.”
Each of them drank silently for a few minutes.
“So, what’s the plan here?” Austin asked with a curious tone to his words.
Stacy realized she’d been thinking about a short- and long-term plan for this part of the investigation but hadn’t shared it with her partner.
“Let’s see if our person goes to the ATM and makes a withdrawal. Then, I want to know the next stop. Nobody at the bank remembers seeing this person come inside the bank to do anything with the money?”
Austin blew some air over the lip of the cup. “Nope. The bank manager told me none of his tellers remembered seeing our suspect, and when I followed up on my own, they all confirmed it.”
Stacy leaned over the steering wheel, getting a better look at the machine. “Smart. Don’t go inside the bank so people can identify you.”
Austin nodded. “Let’s hope this person leads us to Colton.”
Stacy leaned back in her seat and placed the coffee in the cup holder. “Someone knows that this person has the debit card. Either Colton has given it to them, or someone has given it to them without Colton knowing about it. Either way, this can lead us to where he might be hiding.”
Austin squinted through the narrow streaks of sunlight that gleaned off the windshield. “I think that’s our man or woman.”
Ahead, Stacy watched as a lithe figure knifed through the moving foot traffic on the sidewalk. The workday for most businesses in downtown Cleveland started at eight, and the sidewalks were full of people bustling to their jobs, trying to avoid being late.
The figure moved in balletic waves through the crowd, unphased by the traffic. This person is comfortable with this process now, she thought. The figure wore the same dark sunglasses Stacy had seen in the grainy photo Austin had obtained. This time, though, the person wore a dark black hooded sweatshirt. Stacy watched intently.
“This will only take a couple of minutes,” she mused. “Our person has experience at entering the number and taking out the cash, so it will move fast.”
Stacy keyed the ignition. As the engine purred to life, Austin slapped her on the leg.
“Look, Stacy. His head.”
Stacy looked up from the dashboard console and saw that a rush of wind had blown the hood back from the sweatshirt. For the first time, both could see the exposed head of the suspect.
The hair was dark brown, and Austin pulled out the notepad from his pants pocket. “Dark hair, close-cropped,” he noted. “Bald spot near the crown of the head.”
“Definitely a male suspect, not a female,” Stacy added.
“One piece of the puzzle solved.”
They waited just a few more minutes for the man to finish. From across the street, they could see his head was still downcast as he pulled back from the ATM, ready to move. He tried disappearing into the swarming crowd of people.
“Go, go,” Austin demanded. Stacy put the car in gear and followed.
***
Stacy steered the Camry off Euclid Avenue and onto Grand Boulevard. Austin leaned as close to the glass window on his side of the car as possible. Stacy intentionally drove slowly and waited for stoplights to change from green to red to ensure the suspect didn’t realize he was being followed.
Grand Boulevard was a twisting, narrow two-lane road with sloped, cracked sidewalks that had buckled in some places from the tree roots that lined the road. Stacy looked back in her rearview mirror with frustration as cars kept tailing her. A blue pickup truck was riding so closely behind her that she could see the driver, a round-faced man with a thick beard and beady eyes wearing a Cleveland Browns ball cap.
Stacy turned her attention back to the road. She looked to both sides of the road at the canopy of trees that wisped nakedly in the wind. The sun broke through the cracks overhead, lighting up the buckled concrete and chipped asphalt of the road. In the fall, leaves would line the sidewalks of Grand Boulevard, crunching under the feet of anyone walking. Now, the only sound heard would be the average footfall of shoes against the concrete.
Near a bend in the road, before it jackknifed to the left and disappeared around a turn, the man stopped. He seemed to take in a breath, his shoulders rising and then lowering. Stacy, about two hundred yards behind, slowed the Camry to a near stop.
Austin leaned away from the glass window. “There are some red steps across the street. I bet he takes those.”
As Stacy inched closer, the red wooden steps cut back onto a narrow concrete path that curled back into the woods. It was hard to see where the path went from the road, but it could lead to a clearing where a house might be located. The man in the truck behind her honked twice, and Stacy responded by holding her foot firmly on the brake.
The man looked to the left and then to the right and crossed carefully, looking in the direction of Stacy’s car once. He didn’t seem to notice that they had been following him for nearly two miles. Stacy waited until he disappeared up the steps.
“I’m not going to pull in there,” she told Austin. “Let’s look for another place further up the road to pull off, and then we can walk back.”
“Do it quick. We don’t want him to get away.”
Stacy managed to find another, more extended driveway just a few feet away from the red steps. This driveway was wide and freshly paved. Stacy pulled the car off to the side of the road and got out. Her sudden departure from the car caught Austin by surprise.
The craggy trees overhead shifted and waved above as another stiff breeze weaved between the branches. “Let’s move. Keep your gun close by, but don’t draw it unless something terrible happens.”
Austin wore his Glock clipped to the right side of his belt, near his shield. His dark shirt would blend into the surrounding scenery. Stacy would have to be a little more careful.
They both hiked back down Grand Boulevard into the face of oncoming traffic. Cars whirled by, blowing loose dirt from the sidewalk and road into the air. Stacy coughed as they crossed the road.
Stacy traipsed cautiously up the sloped driveway. Ahead, the house at the top of the hill looked new. It was a series of rectangles constructed of white brick. The shutters that adorned the windows were jet black and looked like they'd just been painted. It rested at the top of a knoll, the lawn so well-manicured that it looked fake. The roof was metal and flat, and there was no chimney. No cars were located anywhere near the property.
Austin found a clearing in between a thicket of bushes and led Stacy over to it. Despite the lack of leaves on the trees, the area smelled minty. The light and shadows of the sun overhead danced across her face.
The front door was made of wood and had a definitive crack down its spine. To Stacy, it looked heavy, too.
Nothing or nobody moved. The air was still, except for the faint sound of rushing cars behind them. Austin crouched down; his breathing quickened. Stacy could hear her own heart beating through her chest.
“How long do we wait?” Austin asked.
“For a little bit,” Stacy replied. “We aren’t going to charge in today, but I just want to get a sense of what might be going on in there.”
After a few minutes, a guy and two girls emerged from the house. The guy that came through the front door was not the same one they had followed. This guy was shorter, more muscular, and his blond hair hung in thick wisps over his forehead. Although one had dark hair and the second girl wore a ball cap to hide her features, the two girls looked like him.
The girls were giggling as the guy said something to make them laugh. They crossed the small area in front of the door and pulled something from the mailbox. It was dark black, matching the hair color of one of the girls. The guy casually flipped through the mail and then stuck an envelope into the girl’s stomach wearing the ball cap. She slipped her fingers around it but didn’t even look down to see what it was. In a few seconds, they both disappeared around the door.
Stacy pushed back a branch and saw something resting against the front wall of the house. It had a long, thin neck and an angular base.
She could see Austin looking at her intently.
“What is it?”
Stacy moved around Austin and took a step out of the thicket into the driveway.
“Stacy, get back. They’re going to see you.”
She swung her arm back and held up an open palm. The wind sliced across the opening, tossing her hair in front of her face. As Stacy got closer, she pushed her hair back from her eyes. That was when she noticed another long, thin object resting next to the mailbox.
It didn’t take Stacy long to retreat to the opening by the thicket. Austin was standing there, fingers hovering over the holster that held his Glock.
His eyes met hers, and they searched her face looking for an explanation.
“There are high powered assault rifles outside of the house.We move in tomorrow with a full-tactical SWAT team.”