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The trooper barracks is not far from the highway. In fact, it’s strategically located within close proximity of the highway where the troopers constantly patrol the roads for speeders, criminals, and DUI suspects. It’s a single-story, concrete block building with a metal roof. Very unglamorous and entirely utilitarian.
Mary parks the truck next to a yellow and blue trooper cruiser, shuts down the engine, and pulls the keys from the starter.
“Don’t forget your phone,” she says.
“Hang on,” I say, chugging my beer.
“Jesus,” she says, “I hope we’re not being recorded on the exterior CCTV. It would mean my badge.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m sure they’d go easy on you when you tell them who was drinking the beer.”
She opens her door.
“Oh, I forgot about how famous and broke you are,” she says out of the corner of her mouth.
I get out and follow the cop to the front door. It’s a glass door that’s reinforced with chicken wire. Makes me wonder if the glass is bulletproof. My guess is that it is. These trooper barracks are more than small command and control centers, they are also mini fortresses. I don’t know this for a fact, but I can bet each one of them contains a small arsenal of weapons and ammo.
Mary types a five-digit combination into an exterior wall-mounted keypad. An electronic noise sounds along with the releasing of a metal deadbolt. The door opens a few inches on its own.
“Let’s go,” she says. “And do me a favor, Martin. Let me do all the talking if anyone approaches us.”
“I promise,” I say. “God forbid I get in the way of your climb up the New York State law enforcement ladder.”
“Most of all, don’t be an asshole,” she adds as we step inside.
“Hey, it’s me,” I say.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Mary greets the guard sergeant who’s manning a counter behind a Plexiglass shield. He’s got a big computer placed in front of him, along with a complicated telephone system and a microphone. He must be the dispatcher.
“Evening, Lieutenant,” says the gray-uniformed, middle-aged man. “What brings you around tonight?”
“Hi, Fred,” Mary says. “Need to run some phone numbers for my friend here.”
Fred shoots me a glance. He squints his eyes and purses his lips.
“Hey,” he says, “I know you. You’re the mystery man. Love your books. Especially The Vanquished.”
I glance at Mary. She rolls her eyes around in her head like she fully expected this to happen.
“Lots of people like that one,” I say. “And thank you. I’ll have to figure out a way to rewrite it since it’s so popular.”
“You must make a ton of money, travel the world, and meet all sorts of interesting people,” Fred says. “I sit here all day and night and just get fatter.”
“We all gotta do what we gotta do, Fred,” I say. “I’ll make sure Mary brings you a signed copy or two of my books.”
I can tell Mary is anxious to be moving on to her office.
“Say,” Fred says. “How is it you guys are pals? Thought you were married, Mary?”
There it is, the question she was likely dreading.
“Oh well, Mary gives me research information,” I say. “In exchange for beer and wings. We’ve become good friends too.”
“Well, that’s cool,” Fred says. “Nothing wrong with that, now is there?”
“The door, Fred,” Mary says, her face tight as a tick.
“Oh yeah,” he says, “I forgot, what with a celebrity being in the house.”
He hits a key on his computer and another buzzer sounds. This time, the interior metal door that accesses the bowels of the barracks opens.
“This way, Martin,” she says.
“Nice talking with you, Fred,” I say.
“You too, Mr. Jordan,” he says.
Inside the brightly lit barracks, there’s a skeleton crew consisting entirely of uniformed men typing away on laptops or talking on landlines. Mary grabs a visitor’s badge off the wall and hands it to me.
“Put that on,” she says.
She then signs me in via a form attached to a clipboard that also hangs from the wall by a piece of string.
“Fancy operation you have here,” I say.
“Hey, it works,” she says. “This way.”
I follow Mary down an equally brightly lit corridor that consists of white painted concrete block. When she comes to a metal door that reads Lt. Clifton in big black letters, she unlocks the door and opens it. I step in behind her while she hits the wall-mounted switch for the overhead lamp and then closes the door.
She goes to the opposite end of the cramped room and sits down at her desk. Opening her laptop, she logs into the trooper system.
“Let’s have your phone,” she says.
Pulling out my cell phone, I access it with my PIN number and then go to calls and texts. I hand the phone to Mary from across the desk. While she finds the numbers she wants, I steal a quick look around the office. Sparse isn’t even the word for it. Cold and empty is more like it, other than the two framed diplomas that hang on the wall behind her. The diplomas commemorate both her undergraduate and graduate degrees.
“Looks like Jennifer has at least three phone numbers,” she says. “The system should tell us who is paying the bill and which outfit is her provider. Or if it tells us none of these things, then you’ve got a real problem, Martin.”
“Whaddya mean?” I say.
Her eyes focused on her laptop she nods as if answering a question she has silently posed to herself.
“Just what I thought,” she says, sitting back in her swivel chair. “While the area codes are definitely New York City, most likely Manhattan, the cell phones she’s using are ghost phones.”
“Ghost phones,” I repeat. “You mean like disposable phones?”
“Exactly,” she says. “Throw-away phones. You use them a few times and you destroy them. They are the phone of choice for drug dealers and killers. You know, nice people like that.”
“Okay, so what does all this mean?” I say.
“There’s no way to trace the phone numbers,” she says. “And we can’t get a visual off the Ring doorbell system.”
The small concrete block room goes silent.
“We’re screwed, aren’t we?” I say, now feeling the cold dejection run down my spine.
“For now,” she says. “Or at least until Jennifer makes a mistake and shows her face. You happen to have the note she left you?”
I pat my jeans pocket, reach in, and pull it out. I hand it to her.
“We might be able to get some prints off of this,” she says. “If Jennifer has any priors, she’ll show up in the system.”
Something crosses my mind. It has to do with how I would write this if it were one of my mystery novels.
“Give the rabbit a chase,” I say.
“What?” the cop says.
“What if I don’t take your advice,” I say. “What if the next time she texts, I ask her if she’d like to come for dinner. You and your trooper friends can be standing by and waiting to pounce on her for that B-and-E she pulled when she left me that note in the kitchen.”
She nods.
“Could work,” she says. “I’m not sure we have enough to arrest and detain her, but we certainly have enough to take her in for questioning and then scour your place for prints.”
I grin.
“It’s a done deal then,” I say. “I’ll wait for her to text me since she’s using ghost phones. I also don’t want her to get suspicious of anything.”
“Yeah, if you suddenly initiate something after having told her you’re breaking all contact, she might get the feeling she’s being set up. We need to be patient.”
“We ready to go?” I say.
“Just one second,” she says. “I want to check the number that belongs to your new young friends.”
“Matthew and Jenny,” I say.
She types in the necessary info. Once more, she nods.
“Phone is a Verizon cell phone registered to Matthew Grady,” she says. “Pays his bills on time. System doesn’t show that he has any priors. Not even a recent speeding ticket.”
“They’re clean then,” I say.
She gets up and closes her laptop lid.
“Enjoy your barbeque with them,” she says.
“Can we go back to my place now?” I say.
She comes around the desk and cups her hand around my mid-section.
“Is daddy getting restless?” she says.
“Get the cuffs out,” I say.
“Oh, Jesus,” she says. “I hope you don’t stroke out on me.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I feel fine.”
“Famous last words spoken by a famous writer,” she says, opening the office door and killing the overhead lamp.