For dinner Georgia made a grilled cheese sandwich, added chips and dill pickles, and ate in her kitchen. The room wasn’t big, but she’d been able to squeeze in a tiny table under a large double-hung window. During the day she liked to watch the sun glitter through the trees, fingers of light and shadow making abstract designs on the walls. Of course, in winter, the sun was gone by four thirty, and despite a cheery day once in a while, this winter had been especially gloomy. After a week of overcast, the media had proclaimed Chicago more depressing than Portland.
She finished the sandwich, took a Snapple into the living room, and went online, hoping to identify, or at least narrow down, who owned the SUV. But first she had to figure out what model it was. She searched SUVs, clicked on the images, and studied the photos. She ruled out a Mercedes—its headlights were too elliptical. It wasn’t a Hyundai, Audi, or Ford, either. Toyota and Nissan were close, although she might be sending herself down a blind alley if it turned out to be a Chevy or Honda. Still, she had to start somewhere. She printed out pictures of three or four models and pinned them up on the corkboard behind her desk.
She didn’t have an in at the Illinois DMV, but she had the next best thing: a set of databases so reliable they were used by police departments all over the country. Her favorite was FindersKeepers, which allowed her to slice and dice information in any number of ways. She logged on to the website, agreed to a onetime charge of fifteen bucks, and clicked on “Find vehicle.”
When prompted for the type of car, she entered “Nissan,” “Black” for color, and for model, “SUV.” For the year of the car, she selected “All years.” She was asked what states she wanted to search. “Illinois.” There were several options when it came to license plates: “All,” “Starts with,” “Ends with,” “None.” She chose “Starts with” and entered “633.” She clicked on “Find.”
Three seconds later, she was looking at a list of twenty-three black Nissan SUVs that had Illinois plates beginning with 633. Each listing included the VIN number, the full license plate, the date the auto was registered, make, model, and year, and best of all, the owners and their addresses. She was printing out the list when she heard a car outside gun its motor. She went into her kitchen and gazed out the window. The car immediately took off down the street and out of sight. She could only catch a glimpse of the vehicle, but it was dark and boxy and looked like a van—maybe an SUV.
She shivered and studied the row house across the street. A single mother with young children lived there, and their lawn, in good weather, was kiddie heaven, strewn with toys, bikes, and wagons. Now, though, the lawn was desolate and empty, and the blanket of snow covering it was rutted with scraggly grass. Was the driver of the car visiting her neighbor?
The snow cover threw off a muted blue glow that turned the dark into a faux twilight, but the eerie illumination was oddly comforting, allowing just enough light to keep predators from lurking unseen. Georgia took a good look up and down the street. No more strange cars, no media, no people. That was good. Still, she pulled down the blinds and double locked her door.
She went to her closet and checked her guns. She still had her 9 mm Sig Sauer, but she’d recently bought a Glock 26, a “baby Glock.” The size of a snub-nose, it could be concealed in her pocket or bag. She loved how it felt; its recoil was almost as gentle as the Sig’s. Like the Sig it was a 9 mm and could take ten plus one in the chamber. She took it into her bedroom and slipped it in the drawer of her nightstand.
She undressed, got into bed, and tried to distract herself with a graphic novel. She’d been reading them more often: with her dyslexia, they went down easily, and she loved the illustrations. Within a few minutes, though, she put it down. She knew what she wanted; it wasn’t a character drawn on a piece of paper. But instead of a warm body curled up beside her, calming and comforting, she had a pulp novel and a loaded gun.